Killshot

“Tell you the truth,” Wayne said, “I never thought about it.”

“She didn’t. She named me after Guy Lombardo’s brother, Carmen Lombardo, he sang with the band. His big number was ‘Sweethearts on Parade.’ Mom said it was her and Dad’s song when they were going together.”

“You’re putting me on,” Wayne said. “Aren’t you?”

“I could change my name to Bambi,” Carmen said, “except I’d be afraid you might shoot me. How about Kim? Barbie, Betsy, Becky ...You have to be little and cute to have one of those.”

“You’re cute.”

“No, I was cute in high school, I outgrew it. When you’re really cute that’s all you have to be, you make a career out of it. Someone asks you what you do, you say, ‘Nothing, I’m cute.’ ” She looked out at the police car parked in the yard.

Wayne watched her for a moment. “We don’t seem too shook up over this.”

“If we did move away for a while,” Carmen said, turning to him, “we don’t see your folks that often, we could be back before they knew we were gone.”

“Or go up there to the farm,” Wayne said, “if we have to hide, which irks the shit out of me. Or go down to Florida, visit your dad. That wouldn’t be hard to take. I think what they said is bullshit, we stay with relatives there’s a chance they could find us. I’m leaning more toward what you said, it doesn’t have anything to do with the Mafia.”

“But they want to believe it does,” Carmen said, “and if they’re right ... well, we’d be better off in Cape Girardeau than here.”

“I never heard of it.”

“It’s on the Mississippi . . .”

“I still never heard of it,” Wayne said. “You can’t tell much from the literature.” He took a sip of beer. “What do you think it’s like?”

“I don’t know,” Carmen said. “You want to find out?”

Wayne didn’t answer, looking out the window now at the police car. “We’d have to tell Matthew. Make up a story for your mom. Tell her I’ve be come a boomer, gone down to Missouri to work on permit, they got this two-story structure they’re putting up.”

“It’d be a change,” Carmen said.

Wayne turned to look at his wife. “You wouldn’t mind doing it, would you?”

“Well, if it’s a choice of going to Cape Girardeau or getting shot at.” She took a sip of beer and said, “Every once in a while I wonder what it would be like to be someone else. See the way they look at things and what their life is really like.”

“You’re telling me,” Wayne said, “you’d rather be somebody else than who you are?”

“No, I don’t mean become someone else, permanently.”

“You’re just nosy then.”

“There was a movie we saw a long time ago,” Carmen said, “where Jack Nicholson takes on another man’s identity who died and then finds out people are after him thinking he’s the guy?”

“Yeah ...?”

“I don’t remember the name of it or what reminded me. It isn’t anything like what we’re into at all.”

“Jack Nicholson’s in it and they’re in Spain? He’s driving around in a red convertible with this broad he picked up?”

“That’s the one.”

He watched her nod, calm as always, that clear look in her eyes. Sometimes she knew things before he could figure them out and she’d tell him you had to feel as well as think. Feel what? She’d say, just feel, that’s all.

“Why can’t we go anywhere we want?”

She didn’t answer him.

“We can. Who’s gonna stop us?” Arguing with himself.

She touched her hair and seemed to shrug. “They have a house for us, two bedrooms . . .”

“I can just see it.”

“It sounded nice, on the edge of a woods.”

“We have a woods,” Wayne said, “right out there.”

The sheriff’s deputy from the living room came in carrying a cup and saucer. He didn’t look at Wayne. He said to Carmen, “I wonder if you could spare a refill?”

“You having trouble,” Wayne said, “staying awake?”

The deputy glanced at him with his blank look, but didn’t answer. Carmen poured him a cup of coffee. She got a milk carton from the refrigerator and brought it to the counter where the deputy was helping himself to sugar.

Carmen said, “Would you like some cookies? Or I can make you a sandwich.”

Stirring his coffee, the deputy said, “Like what kind?”

Carmen paused. Wayne watched her reconsider and tell him, “Why don’t you take the cookies, all right?”

He did, a plateful of chocolate chip with his coffee, back to the living room where the television was going, television laughter letting the deputy know what was funny.

Wayne said, “We have to get out of here.”

Carmen nodded. “I think so.”

“We’ll give them three weeks to find those guys and that’s it,” Wayne said. “Deer season opens we’re coming home.”

12

ARMAND HAD TOLD RICHIE, “All right, from now on you don’t leave my sight. You go off and do crazy things.”

“All I did was blow out a couple of their windows. I didn’t get caught, did I? I brought us the car.” A nice one, an all-black Dodge Daytona with smoked-glass windows as dark as the body. Stuck in Donna’s garage all week. If it was clean why hide it? The Bird had only one thing on his mind:

“You don’t leave my sight.”

“Okay then,” Richie had said, “how about when I go to the bathroom? You want to watch? How about when I give Donna a jump and you’re in there looking at The Price Is Right? Or you’re eating again. Or when I don’t hear no snoring in the house and I know you’re taking your turn. You want me to come along? She could take us both at once; she’s old meat but wiry as hell. Be something to do. How about it, Bird, want me to ask her? Or do we keep pretending you’re not fucking her? You think I’d be jealous or what? How long we gonna sit here, Bird? You think I act crazy, shit, this is what makes me. Like being in the hole only there’s TV and little stuffed animals with you, a half-breed Indian hit man and a female corrections officer, queen of the cons. Shit, I may as well be in stir. How long, Bird?”

“Okay,” Armand had said finally, “we stick our heads out, see what’s going on.”

Now they were riding along in the black car past open fields in the night, the radio and heater on, the blower going, Richie driving with the seat pushed way back, stiff-arming the wheel, raising his voice over the rock music coming out of the speakers, saying to his Indian buddy in the dark, “The first time? The first time was a guy name Kevin, suppose to be a friend of mine.”

Armand hunched over to turn the radio down a notch. “He snitch on you or what?”

“No, I was clean, right out of the joint with this new identity they gave me ...Wait a minute. Shit, this is weird. You ask me what was my first time and right away I think of this guy Kevin I knew from before. But there was the guy at Terre Haute, my cellmate. Some guys wanted him taken out, so they slip me a knife and say if I don’t kill him they’re gonna kill me. So I did. But then when I was brought up I laid it on those guys, testified in court I saw the one guy cut my cellmate’s throat. He got like ninety-nine years added on to the ninety-nine he was doing and I got transferred out. Maybe by testifying I talked myself into believing it wasn’t me that cut the guy. You know what I’m saying? So I don’t remember it as my first one. Or it was ’cause I used a knife, I don’t know. Then when I got my release it was this guy Kevin I knew hired me to repossess cars and shit. This one time—listen to this—I had to go in a nursing home and repossess a wheelchair, this battery-run tricart, they cost just under twenty-five hundred. I have to lift this cripple woman out of it, put her in bed, she’s going ‘Oh, please, I have multiple scarosis, I can’t get around without my wheelchair.’ Man, I hated to do it, but she was three months behind. What was I suppose to do? I had car payments, rent—see, I was back with Laurie, that’s my wife, I’d hardly seen her in four years. She said it broke her heart to visit me in the joint, so she didn’t come too much.”

Armand turned the radio off, getting rid of that irritating noise. Richie looked at him and Armand said, “What about this guy Kevin?”

“I was just getting to him. See, here’s Kevin, he finds out I’m being sent up he tells me he’ll look after Laurie, if she got sick or anything, as a friend.”

“I can see it coming,” Armand said.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t think nothing about it till one night me and Kevin are in this bar after work and right out of nowhere he goes, ‘I want you to know something. I never fucked Laurie while you were in prison, not once.’ I start to think, well, shit, what’d he tell me that for if he didn’t? It must mean he did.”

“Sure he did,” Armand said. “How you gonna stop him, you’re doing time.”

“I go home ask Laurie, ‘You ever go to bed with Kevin?’ Her eyes get big, she goes, no, she swears she never did. I hit her a few times, she still claims she never did, swears to it on her Bible. Okay, I’m thinking, maybe they didn’t. Couple of days later I come home, she’s gone, cleared out with all her stuff. What does that tell you?”

“We’re coming to the road where you turn, before you get to that little airport,” Armand said. “Sure, she’s scared you’re gonna find out the truth. She was betraying you.”

“And Kevin was fucking her, he musta been. I decide I’d get me a gun and settle the score with him.”

“So he was your first one,” Armand said, “as you like to see it.”

Richie didn’t say anything making the left turn onto a hard-packed gravel road, got the Daytona straightened out to head through country, past empty fields, and started to grin as he looked at Armand. “You aren’t gonna believe this. There was another one before Kevin. See, I quit my job, I didn’t want to have nothing to do with him till I got myself a gun and stuck it in his face. Man, it tore me up. Here I was working, I had a new name, I was James Dudley, I was clean. I think of it now, the only job I ever had in my life was in the repo business and what’s that but legal stealing. I said, shit, go on back to your trade, what’s the difference, you can’t trust nobody anyway. So I picked up a thirty-eight, not the one I got now, a cheap one—Detroit, you can get any kind of piece you want, buy it off a schoolkid. Okay, I’m ready to go see Kevin. I think I’m ready, but you know what? I never shot anybody before. I was gonna shoot that migrant, the one I picked up in Georgia, but I never got a chance to. I’m thinking, I want to be cool when I shoot Kevin, I want to know what’s gonna happen. See, I needed cash too, so what I did, I practiced on the guy in the grocery store I held up, little greaseball-looking guy, you seen ’em. Anyway I put three in him and I think, Hey, nothing to it. Aim and squeeze, right? I forgot what I scored, not a whole lot. So by the time I got to Kevin—I caught him in the office late, ‘Hi, Kev, how you doing?’ and put five in him to make sure—he was actually my third. Though I still think of him, I don’t know why, as my first. Weird, huh?”

Armand didn’t say anything.

This guy was crazy. Armand remembered his first one like it was yesterday, the Italian coming into the barbershop, offering them a job saying, “The Degas brothers, stick-up guys, ’ey? Think you’re tough . . .”

They came to an intersection, a stop sign showing in the Daytona’s headlights, the crossroad dark both ways. Richie went through it without slowing down.

Armand didn’t say anything.

He was watching now for the road ahead of them to begin curving to the left, remembering the last time they drove to the ironworker’s house and Richie wouldn’t do what he was told, drove past the house to take a look and when they made the U-turn and approached from this direction, Armand remembered, he’d had the same thoughts then as he did now. That he was going to end up shooting Richie before this was over or right after. Something would come up between them . . .

“The house is just around this curve.”

“I know it.”

He knew everything in that tone he thought was cool.

“Then slow down,” Armand said.

The headlights swept over a sod field and they were close now, the ironworker’s place coming up on the left, beyond that mass of trees. Armand looked for cars as Richie braked and let the Dodge coast toward the house, Richie saying it didn’t look like anybody was home, or else they were in the sack already. Armand sat hunched close to the smoked-glass windshield. There was something in the yard he didn’t remember from the other time. He hit Richie’s arm, telling him, “Pull over.”

“Where?”

“By the house. Aim the lights at it.”

Richie cut the wheel and came to a stop, headlights shining on dark windows, and there, in the front yard, a Nelson Davies for sale sign.

Armand sat back in the seat trying to think— telling himself it didn’t mean they were gone, you don’t move till you sell your house—but it was hard to think with Richie talking about the god-damn real estate man, saying there he was again, saying it was like starting all over, it was like this was where he came in, seeing that sign. Finally he shut up. It was quiet for a while in the car.

Till Richie said, “Well, shit, what do we do now, Bird?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, but they’re gone.”

“Listen to me,” Armand said. “You listening to me? Don’t worry about it.”

13

IN THE CAPE GIRARDEAU LITERATURE the Marshals Service gave them it said that “You can walk down a busy street with a smile on your face and people will speak to you, not necessarily because they know you; but, because you look like somebody they would like to know. And, if you give them the opportunity, they will take the time to know you.”

Carmen read that part and imagined a person stopping her on the street saying, “Hi, you look like a person I’d like to know. You’re new in town, aren’t you? Where are you from?” She answers, “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you. We’re in the Federal Witness Security Program, hiding from some people who want to kill us.” And the person says, “Oh, uh-huh. Yeah, well, have a nice day.” She read the part to Wayne the night before they left home and he said, “Jesus Christ, you sure you want to go?”

Seven hundred miles later they had their first look at Cape Girardeau separately, Carmen in the Cutlass following Wayne’s pickup across the bridge from the Illinois side. It looked nice from this view, a picture-postcard town with church steeples, a courthouse on the hill, lots of trees. But what was that wall for, along the river? A concrete wall about twenty feet high. The wall fascinated Carmen, adding a touch of drama to the postcard look.

They came off the bridge and into the business district, Wayne looking for a street, Carmen following, getting a feel of the place. It seemed kept up, there were new buildings and blocks of old ones that had been gentrified. The chamber of commerce literature said it was a friendly town of sixty thousand with a university campus and a big new shopping center called West Park Mall. Procter & Gamble was here, Florsheim Shoes, Lone Star Industries with a cement plant, Cape Barge Line & Drydock ...The tallest building was the KFVS-TV Tower—there, Carmen saw it rising about twelve stories above the downtown area, a sight that might give Wayne hope. They drove past a long climb of steps leading to the courthouse and down the hill to the concrete wall that ran along Water Street.

Carmen parked at the curb behind Wayne’s pickup, the bed loaded with household stuff and covered with a tarp. She got out of the car stiff and tired. They had left Algonac at four in the morning, still dark, sneaked out with U.S. marshals escorting them to the interstate and maybe beyond, Carmen wasn’t sure. Now they were to contact a Deputy Marshal J. D. Mayer, who would show them to their new home and help them get settled. Carmen walked over to Wayne, standing with his hands shoved into the back pockets of his jeans.

“What’re we doing now?”

“Did you happen to notice Broadway?”

“I think we passed it, one block over.”

“I must’ve been looking up at all the two-story high-rises and missed it,” Wayne said. “I’ll call him, but he’s probably gone home, it’s after five.”

Carmen took off her sweater. It was at least twenty degrees warmer here than in Michigan. Wayne hadn’t moved. He was looking up at the wall, just on the other side of railroad tracks and a line of young trees, the wall’s tan surface shaded by the storefronts across Water Street.

“You know what it’s for?”

Carmen said, “I guess to keep the river out.”

“Or keep people in. It looks like a prison.”

“Well, it’s different.”

“You get a good look at the river, coming over?”

“How could you miss it?”

“Did you notice a cape?”

“I’m not sure what one looks like.”

“I don’t see why they call it the mighty Mississippi. It’s muddy, yeah, but I wouldn’t call it mighty. The St. Clair River’s wider, and it’s blue. It’s a lot better-looking. I’m glad I didn’t bring the boat.”

“Are you gonna call the marshal?”

“Right now. There’s probably nothing but catfish in that river. You like catfish?”

“I’ve never had it.”

“It’s like carp. You ever had carp?”

“Go call him, will you?”

Carmen watched him cross the street toward a restaurant decked out with a green awning. It looked nice. So far she had a good feeling about being here, in a new place. Maybe they’d love it and want to stay. Three weeks didn’t seem like enough time, not to make a major decision that could change your life. Carmen walked to the corner, to an opening in the concrete wall that was almost as wide as the street that came into it from down the hill. It could be a town in a foreign country.

She stepped into the opening. A giant metal door was hinged to the outside of the wall, where pavement sloped gradually to beds of broken rock along the banks of the river. No, the river didn’t appear especially mighty, it looked old to Carmen, about a half mile across to cottonwoods on the Illinois side. A boat pushing flat barges was coming this way from the bridge, out there in the middle not making a sound: a stubby kind of boat that resembled a tug but was much taller. Carmen had never seen one like it before. Moving all those barges, about fifteen of them, tied together three abreast and extending way out in front of the boat.

Carmen turned, looking at the wall from the riverside now, at the massive door they would swing closed when that quiet river rose over its banks, thinking, They didn’t build a wall like this for show.

She said to Wayne, coming across the street from the restaurant, “You know what this is? A floodgate. It’s my first one. You want to see how high the river rises? They have marks up there by the opening, and dates, almost to the top. I’d call that a fairly mighty river.”

Wayne looked up, but didn’t appear interested.

“The girl says Deputy Marshal J. D. Mayer isn’t in the office. I ask her where I can get in touch with him. We go back and forth, it takes about ten minutes to find out Deputy Marshal J. D. Mayer isn’t in ’cause he’s on leave of absence and the man in charge now is Deputy Marshal F. R. Britton. I said, well, then tell F. R. Britton that W. M. Colson has just come seven hundred miles to have a word with him, if he isn’t too busy. She says, after all this, he isn’t there, he’s out to the house. I ask her, you mean his house? No, he’s out to our house and we can catch him if we hurry. You believe it? Instead of telling me right away. Nine-fifty Hillglade Drive. I ask her, just where is that, please, and she says, ‘Out toward Cape Rock off Riverview,’ like, where else could it be? Off Riverview, asshole, don’t you know nothing?”

Carmen said, “Are you gonna be a grouch? If you are, let’s go home.”

She thought 950 Hillglade Drive sounded nice.

On the way there Carmen caught glimpses of the river from high up through the trees, seeing it flat gray, desolate. That’s the Mississippi? Wayne had a point, it didn’t look important enough. Still nothing on the Illinois side but trees. Maybe Missouri looked the same from over there, except it was hilly.

Street names, Carmen knew, could be deceiving. When Hillglade turned out to be a humped narrow road with ditches on both sides she said, “Oh, well,” and followed Wayne’s pickup along the road past a lonesome row of two-bedroom subdivision homes with car ports, lights on in some of the houses, bikes in the driveways, suppertime, a development that for some reason hadn’t developed, no sidewalks, not much of the land cleared, signs of a builder who’d run out of money. They came to 950 near the end of the street, off by itself in the dusk, windows dark, a red-brick ranch with white trim badly in need of paint. Carmen followed the pickup into a gravel drive sprouting weeds, turned off the engine and sat there. In the Algonac–Port Huron area the house would list for sixty-nine-nine, fixed up, and go for about sixty-seven. Landscaping would help, a new lawn and a front walk. A narrow worn path led from the slab front stoop to where a paneled door, its knob in place, lay across the ditch. Carmen told herself to stay cool.

Wayne came along the side of the pickup as she made herself move, get out of the car.

“What’re we doing, starting over? Jesus, twenty years ago at least we had a front walk, and shrubs.”

Carmen didn’t say anything.

“You want to go to a motel?”

She said, “We’re here now,” and started across the scrubby yard, Wayne saying after her, yeah, they were here, that was the goddamn problem. Where was the woods? That wasn’t a woods, it was a thicket. Carmen looked back at him as she reached the front step.

“There’s a note on the door.”

A three-by-five card held in place by the metal cover over the mail slot. She pulled it free, began to read the handwritten note, looked up and glanced at Wayne coming across the yard.

“It says, ‘Hi, welcome to Cape—’ He seems friendly.”

“Who does?”

“F. R. Britton, Deputy Marshal. ‘I have gone to have supper. Will be back by six forty-five.’ ” Carmen glanced at Wayne again. “He seems to have an organized mind. Energetic but even-tempered. The way he connects his t and his h, with most of the words sort of printed, shows originality and intuition.”

Wayne said, “Then how come he didn’t know we’d be here? We suppose to stand around and wait?”

“It says, ‘The side door is open. Make yourselves at home. Signed F. R. Britton.’ ”

With big loops, Carmen noticed, showing a certain amount of ego.

Wayne walked back to the drive and into the carport at the side of the house. Carmen followed, looking at the note, half written, half printed in a strong right-hand slant. She stopped in the yard, not sure about that circle dotting the i in Hi. It could indicate he was creative, but not necessarily. Her mom drew circles for i dots. The deputy marshal’s slant, on second thought, might be a little too much. She’d have to measure it on her Emotional Expression Chart. Carmen looked up, aware of Wayne coming around from the side of the house, Wayne with his grim look.

“What’s wrong?”

“You mean outside of there’s no electricity?”

Carmen made a face. “Don’t tell me that, please.”

“That’s the good part,” Wayne said. “No lights, you can’t see the bad part. The place’s a goddamn mess.”

The young guy wearing a sport coat and tie came out of a cream-colored Plymouth four-door holding up a handful of candles. He jumped the ditch and crossed the yard toward them saying, “Hey, sorry about that. You go see Union Electric tomorrow, they’ll fix you up. Or I can take you if I don’t have to be in court. Hi, I’m Deputy Marshal F. R. Britton?”

Making it sound like a question. Was it his accent, Carmen wondered, that buttery drawl, or wasn’t he sure who he was?

Saying now, “I’d prefer it if you call me Ferris. I don’t want you to think of me as your parole officer or anything like that.”

And now that stopped Carmen, already surprised by his boyish good looks, her idea of a U.S. marshal being a middle-aged man in a business suit. This one had a full head of wavy brown hair and a muscular build, thick neck and shoulders that made his tan sport coat seem too small, something he’d outgrown.

Carmen said, “Ferris? Is that right?”

“Yes, ma’am, like the wheel, and this must be Wayne Colson,” offering his hand now, “and Ms. Colson? How you folks doing, all right?” Holding Carmen’s hand he said, “I had to deliver a prisoner up to Marion, Illinois, I come back—did you see my note?”

“Have it right here.”

He said, “Good,” giving her hand a squeeze before letting go, his eyes smiling at her. “I didn’t want you to think I’d forgot you. See, I missed working out this morning on account of going to Marion—I do push-ups and sit-ups, lift some weights, so when I come back I had to get that done—”

“And have your supper,” Carmen said.

“Yeah, I had to eat. I imagine you folks stopped on the way?”

“Not since lunch.”

“Well, you want to get something first? There’s a Shoney’s on Route K out toward the mall, not too far.”

“We’re trying to decide,” Carmen said, “whether we want to stay here or go to a motel.”

“Or turn around and go home,” Wayne said. “Have you been inside that house lately?”

Wayne stood with his arms folded. Next to him, Carmen noticed, F. R. Ferris Britton was about the same height but wider through the shoulders in that tight sport coat. At the moment he seemed confused, frowning as he looked at the house.

“I know the ’lectricity’s off, that’s why I brought these candles. But it’s only temporary, just tonight till you get it turned back on. No, that’s a nice little house, I got one just like it not too far from here.”

“We did too,” Wayne said. “Our first house was this same idea, two-bedroom ranch.”

“Up in De-troit?”

“That’s right, Ferris, near De-troit.”

Carmen thinking, Here we go . . .

As Wayne said, “The only difference is, Ferris, we didn’t keep goats in our house, or pigs or whatever they had living in this one, ’cause it’s a god-damn mess, inside and out.”

“Gee, I didn’t think it was that bad. I know it might need a little work,” the young marshal still frowning, showing concern. “Come on, let’s us take a look.”

It was dusk outside, dark in the house. They went in through the side door, Carmen and Wayne following the deputy marshal, each holding a lighted candle. In the kitchen he turned to them saying, “We could use cups as holders, so we don’t drip wax all over.”

Carmen, already looking in a cupboard, heard Wayne say, “You think it matters? You can feel the dirt and grit on the floor.” There were dishes on the shelves, but not many. Most of them were piled in the sink, soiled, some crusted with bits of food. Carmen opened the refrigerator and closed it quick against the awful rancid odor. There were dirty pans on the range.

“The couple lived here before,” Ferris said, “I suspect she wasn’t much of a housekeeper. All the woman did was complain. She ran out on him, oh, a few months ago. Then he left, was only last week, right before we found out you all were being relocated here and J. D. Mayer told me I’d be acting-inspector in charge, see to your needs.”

“Come here, Ferris, I want to show you something,” Wayne said. “I want you to look at the carpeting in the living room. I can’t even tell what color it is.”

Following Wayne, the deputy marshal said, “I think it’s kind of a green.”

Carmen watched their candles moving away in the dark. She stepped into the hall to look at the bedrooms, both tiny, twin beds crowded into what would be the front bedroom, the other one empty, cardboard boxes stacked against a wall. Wayne would have a few words to say about the twin beds. She could hear him in the living room telling the marshal to look at the stains and here, look at the drapes, like some animal had been chewing on them, the front of the sofa, the same thing.

The bathroom didn’t seem too bad, for a bathroom. Scrub it with a disinfectant, get rid of the shower curtain full of mildew stains. Do something with the window. The windows in the bedrooms, too, all the windows, clean the whole place good ...if they were going to stay here. Right now it was someone else’s house. Carmen followed her candle into the living room. The upholstered furniture, modern-looking, appeared white, the carpeting more gray than green. The walls seemed to be white or off-white.

Ferris was telling Wayne the couple that’d lived here had had a little puppy must not have been housebroken, left its little messes wherever it wanted, little black-and-white shorthaired pup. Looking at Carmen he said, “I know it would try to chew on my shoelace if I wasn’t wearing my boots, which I generally do. These here are Tony Lamas I sent away for. I’d give the puppy a little kick, not to hurt it none, you understand, but the woman’d have a fit. She took the pup when she left. Her name was Roseanne—I mean the woman, I forgot the puppy’s name.” Ferris paused. “It’ll come to me. Roseanne, the woman, had real blond hair but was older than you folks. Both of ’em were, her and the guy, her husband.”

“These people,” Wayne said, “were in the witness program?”

“We call it WitSec,” Ferris said, “short for Witness Security. Yeah, they were here when I got assigned last winter, after I finished my thirteen weeks training at the academy. See, I was a police officer in West Memphis, Arkansas, that’s my home, before I joined the Marshals Service and was sent to this district.”

“You like it?” Carmen said. “I mean Cape Girardeau.”

“Yeah, I like it, it’s nice. See, I’ll work security in the federal court when it’s in session, or I’ll get a call from the local Bureau office, there two resident agents here, back them up when they make an arrest and then take charge of the prisoner or seize his assets if he’s got any, like his car, and arrange for its disposition, you know, sell it at auction or we might use it in surveillance work. Like this house was seized, it was owned by a guy was running dope on the interstate, St. Louis to Memphis, and was using this house as a place to stash it if he wanted, or sell some of it. You know the See-Mo campus is here, Southeast Missouri State? I’m thinking of taking some business courses, maybe computer programming, something like that. I can get home when I want, it’s not too far to West Memphis, and there’s good deer hunting right over here in Bollinger County.”

Carmen watched Wayne. He said, “Is that right?” trying to sound only mildly interested. “Whitetail or mule deer?”

“Whitetail and plenty of him. But getting back to your question,” Ferris said, “the one here before you was a guy name Ernie Molina, little guy, had this little mustache. He was a loan shark from over in New Jersey. Ernie and his wife I mentioned, Roseanne.”

Carmen was about to speak, but Wayne beat her to it. “That’s the guy’s real name, Ernie Molina, or the one he made up?”

“His real one. What he changed it to—this’s funny—was Edward Mallon, see, E.M., using the same initials on account of he had, what do you call it, his monogram on all his shirts, on the pocket here. Guy had more shirts’n I ever saw in my life, like he musta had a good twenty shirts or more hanging in his closet, I’m not kidding you. The thing was, it was funny, he’s going by this name Edward Mallon, but you could tell by looking at him he was a greaser. Excuse me, I mean a Latin. I have to watch that. I come here, Ernie’s not doing nothing, living offa Uncle Sam, I took him over to Procter and Gamble’s and got him a job, but he didn’t care for it, so he quit and got himself one tending bar. Ernie was a nervous type, I think drank a lot.”

“We were told,” Carmen said, glancing at Wayne in the candle glow, “you aren’t supposed to talk about people in the program, reveal their identity. Isn’t that right?”

Ferris seemed surprised. “Well, you’re not gonna tell anybody, are you?” He started to grin.

“Being in the same club, so to speak, as him. No, I take that back. Ernie’s gone, so he’s not in WitSec no more. Now my responsibility, as far as the program goes, is to protect you folks, keep you out of harm. I know there a couple guys looking for you, they have detainers out on them and you’re gonna testify at their trial if and when, but that’s about all. See, Marshal J. D. Mayer was given the information and told me you were coming and would be in my care. He’s on sick leave, his pump acting up on him, and I doubt will be back. He’s funny, I ask him things and he says, ‘Look, Ferris, I tell you what you need to know and what you don’t won’t hurt you.’ So all I got is a file with not much in it. I don’t know if you’re actually married or common-law or even what your real names are.”

Carmen said, amazed, “Are you serious?”

“Well, nobody’s told me.”

“We’re Mr. and Mrs. Colson. We’re actually married, in church, and that’s our name.”

“What I have in the report, then—that’s your Christian name, Carmen?”

She said, “I don’t believe this. Yes, it is.”

“That’s a nice name,” Ferris said. “I like it.” He looked at Wayne. “And you’re Wayne Morris Col-son? That’s the name on your original birth certificate?”

Wayne took a moment, staring back at him in the candle glow. “What’s your problem?”

“Hey, there’s no problem. It was my understanding that to be in WitSec you have to take on a new identity. Anybody I’ve ever heard of in it, that’s what they did. I’ll study out that file again, satisfy my curiosity. It’s possible I could’ve missed something.”

“But you sound like you don’t believe us,” Carmen said.

“No, I believe you, you tell me your real name’s Carmen, that’s fine with me. I just want to get it straight in my own mind what you have to do and what you don’t. As I told you, I wasn’t given much information.”

“And you haven’t been a marshal very long,” Wayne said.

“Be a year come January. I might not be up on all the procedures, or you might say the fine print as to what you agreed to. But let me tell you, I know what I have to do. I’m armed at all times, got a three-fifty-seven Smith and Wesson on me, and I’m sworn to protect your lives to the death.”

Wayne said, “You do some deer hunting, uh?”

“Yeah, I go over to Bollinger County along the Castor River track, it’s only about fifty miles, full of whitetail in there.”

Carmen went outside. She got her sweater from the car and put it on. It was quiet. She held her arms to her body and rubbed them for warmth.

Trees against the night sky could be trees anywhere, but she could feel a difference knowing she was in a strange place. There were people a block or so down the street in the homes where lights showed, but she didn’t know them and couldn’t see the town now, out here, with its postcard look from the bridge, the church steeple, the courthouse, the friendly town where people might stop you on the street wanting to know you. ...She thought, How did we get here? How did it happen so fast?

Wayne and Ferris came out of the house and across the yard, Ferris saying, “If you haven’t seen one then you wouldn’t believe a swamp rabbit. I mean the size of him. He’s different’n a cottontail and two or three times bigger. I got me one, was on Coon Island in Butler County, weighed eighteen pounds.”

Wayne asked if they were good eating.

“Good,” Ferris said, “swamp rabbit’s so good to eat people have just about killed him out.”

He shook their hands, ready to leave, then spoke for several minutes about motels and places to eat out on the highway, recommending the ones he said wouldn’t cost them an arm and a leg, then telling Carmen about West Park Mall, knowing, he said, how women loved to shop whether they needed anything or not. “Hey, Wayne? Isn’t that the truth?” He told them he’d be by tomorrow and drove off with a couple of toots from his car horn.

Wayne turned to Carmen. “The guy’s a moron.”

“But a deer hunter,” Carmen said. “Doesn’t that make a difference?”

“Ferris does push-ups and lifts weights. I’ll bet he likes to arm-wrestle, too.”

“Why did he say he doesn’t want us to think of him as a parole officer? Did you hear him? Why should we?”

“I don’t know. He probably meant as far as we don’t have to report to him.”

Carmen was silent looking at the sky, picking out faint stars. After a moment she said, “I think he meant something else.”

After another moment Wayne said, “The whitetail season here’s only seven days, the week before Thanksgiving.”

14

“ALL I COULD THINK OF,” Lenore said, “you were in a terrible accident. I’ve been worried sick.”

“Mom, you know we got here okay. I called you from the motel, soon as we walked in the door.”

“I mean since then I’ve been worried.”

“And I called the other night. Didn’t I?”

“Once, since you got there. Don’t your neighbors have phones you could use?”

“We don’t have neighbors. We’re sort of off by ourselves. I haven’t met anyone yet. Anyway, Mom . . .”

“You’ve been gone six days, almost a week counting today. I have it marked on the calendar. You didn’t even come see me before you left.”

“I told you, it happened all of a sudden,” Carmen said. “Anyway, we have our phone now. Southwestern Bell came this morning—I had them put it in the kitchen, well, actually in the breakfast nook. It’s like a little booth, you know, with benches built in? You can look out the window . . .

The washer and dryer are in the utility room, right off the kitchen, having the phone here it’ll be handy.” Carmen letting her mom know she could be seven hundred miles away but was still the happy homemaker, out here baking pies, washing Wayne’s coveralls, fixing dinner off recipe cards. “There’s a woods behind the house, not like the one we have at home, Wayne says it isn’t a woods it’s a thicket, but it’s nice, you hear birds out there.” That might sound as though she was having a good time, so Carmen said, “We’ve been working since we got here. We had to shampoo the carpeting, the sofa and two chairs in the living room, rent one of those machines, scrub the kitchen floor, do the cupboards, the refrigerator and my least favorite of all jobs, clean the oven. Wayne helped a lot, he didn’t report to his job till this morning so, you know, we could get settled. We may do some painting, we’re trying to decide, depending on how long we’ll be here.” Carmen paused to think of what else she wanted to say.... Yeah, remind her not to tell anyone where they were. She said, “Mom . . .”

Too late.

“You said a few weeks.”

“That’s what Wayne thinks.”

“I don’t see why he has to go all the way to Missouri to get work. Like there isn’t any around here.”

“It’s a change,” Carmen said. “He’ll know more in a few days. It’s not a real big job.” He did go see about one this morning, that much was true, though it wasn’t structural work. Wayne said he didn’t care, he had to be doing something; threw his coveralls in the pickup and took off to meet Ferris Britton at Cape Barge Line & Drydock.

“What’s your weather like?”

Her mom would ask that daily, when they were living only thirty miles apart. “It’s around seventy,” Carmen said, “sort of cloudy, but it’s been nice all week.”

“It’s raining here, and cold. It’s suppose to go down to forty tonight. I hate this weather.”

“You could move to Florida, nothing’s stopping you.”

“I don’t know anybody in Florida. What if something happened to me? Like one of my back seizures and I can’t move, I have to lie perfectly still. There is nothing like that pain when you try to move. I felt one coming on the other day, I called the doctor . . .” Lenore stopped. “I may have to change my number again. Either that or have the Annoyance Call Bureau put a trap on my line, find out where he’s calling from and get him.”

“You had an obscene phone call?”

“I had two hang-ups the same day. The kind where you know the party is on the line but they don’t say anything.”

“Didn’t even breathe hard?”

“It happens to you, you won’t think it’s so funny. I thought it was the doctor, I was waiting for him to call me back. You can wait all day, they don’t care.”

“When was this, Mom?”

“Soon as I started to feel the pain. When do you think? You know they call to find out if you’re home, that’s how they work it. Call and hang up.”

“Or it’s someone who got the wrong number,” Carmen said. “Have any of our friends called?”

“Why would they call here?”

“I doubt if they will, but if you do get a call . . . See, we didn’t tell anyone we were going. Wayne doesn’t want the guys in the local to know he’s working out of state. I don’t understand it myself, but if anyone calls just say we’re driving down to Florida and you haven’t heard from us yet. Okay? So Wayne won’t have to worry about it.”

“You don’t know when you’re coming home?”

Getting an old-lady quiver in her voice. Lenore was sixty-seven years old, she could be tough as nails, dance on a table after a few vodkas with grapefruit juice, or she could sound utterly helpless, real whiny, when she wanted something.

“Wayne says he’ll know pretty soon. He just started today, but as soon as we find out ...We’re gonna be talking anyway.”

Lenore said, “If I get one of my seizures . . .”

“Try not to think about it.”

“I don’t know what I’d do, being all alone. I don’t even have your number. What’s that area code, three-one-five?”

“Three-one-four.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s right on the phone,” Carmen said, looking at it.

“All right, give me the number.” After a moment her mom said, “Carmen, where are you? What’re you doing?”

She was looking across the kitchen, through the open doorway to the hall. She said, “Just a second, Mom,” raised her voice and called out, “Wayne.” She waited.

Lenore was saying, “What? I didn’t hear what you said. Area code three-one-four, then what?”

“I thought I heard Wayne come in,” Carmen said. She paused before giving her mom the number, listened to her repeat it, said, “That’s right.” And in that moment looked up again. Sure of the sound this time. Someone closing the side door.

“For all the good it will do me,” Lenore said, “if I’m flat on my back and you’re down in Missouri somewhere.”

Ferris Britton appeared in the hall, looking into the kitchen, looking right at Carmen.

“You remember the last time?” Lenore said. “I was in bed two weeks, I couldn’t move and you came every day? You took care of me, you took care of the house . . .”

Ferris Britton, wearing that tight sport coat, thumbs hooked in his belt, grinning at her.

“I don’t know what I would have done without you. I couldn’t even go to the bathroom alone, remember?”

“Mom, I have to go. Somebody’s here.”

“Who is it?”

“It’s work we’re having done.”

Ferris was grinning and shaking his head now, showing some kind of appreciation, enjoying himself.

“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“Tell me what time, in case I go out.”

“The same time, around eleven.”

“I could call you. No, if Wayne’s making good money down there, at least I hope he is, you call me.”

“I will, don’t worry.”

“What’re you fixing for dinner?”

“Mom, I have to go. Bye.”

Carmen hung up, Ferris still grinning at her.

He said, “That was your mom, huh? I don’t know if it’s a good idea giving her your phone number.”

Carmen took a moment. “You walk right in someone else’s house?”

Ferris was looking at the electric coffeemaker, over on the counter by the sink. He moved toward it saying, “Excuse me, but this isn’t exactly someone else’s house. It belongs to the Justice Department through seizure by the U. S. Marshals Service and is in our care. I thought I told you that.” He raised his hand as Carmen started to get up from the table. “Stay where you are, I’ll help myself.” Ferris took a cup from the dish drainer, filled it with coffee and came over to the table. “Smells good and strong. I don’t use sugar or cream, nothing that isn’t good for me.” Still grinning at her.

Maybe always grinning, Carmen remembering his boyish expression in candlelight, wavy brown hair down on his forehead, country-western entertainer or television evangelist. She said, “Are you gonna walk in anytime you want? If you are, I think we’ll find another place.” She had to look almost straight up at him standing close to the table and it made her mad. “Maybe we will anyway. I didn’t come here to be a cleaning woman for the Justice Department.”

Ferris stopped grinning. Carmen watched him squint at her now, squeezing lines into his forehead, another one of his expressions. Carmen believed he had three or four: deadpan, mouth open, this one and his gee-whiz grin.

He said, “You mean you aren’t a cleaning lady?”

She watched him set his cup on the table, turn and inspect the kitchen in a studied way, nodding,

before looking at her again.

“Well, you sure could do my house anytime.”

There was the grin back again and now he was taking off his sport coat, folding it inside out, making himself right at home.

“Hey, I’m kidding with you. Don’t you know when I’m kidding?”

She watched him slide into the breakfast-nook booth, bringing the sport coat across his lap. His wavy hair, his weight lifter neck and shoulders in a short-sleeve white shirt, red-print tie hanging in front of him, seemed to fill the space on the other side of the table. He brought his cup to him and hunched over to rest his arms on the table edge.

“I knocked. You must not’ve heard me.”

“You didn’t knock or ring the bell,” Carmen said, “you walked right in.”

“I hear you talking to somebody I want to know who the person is, or if you’re in some kind of trouble, need my help. That’s what I’m for.”

She watched him pick up his cup and hold it in two hands as he took a sip. He held it in front of him, looking over the rim of the cup at her.

“Mmmmm, that’s good. I was in court all week was why I haven’t come by. I take that back, I mean during the day. I come by two different nights like around eight, but you weren’t home either time. The pickup was here—I looked in the window, saw how you’d cleaned the place up.

Man, I thought I musta had the wrong house.”

Carmen said, “You looked in our windows?”

“Just the living room. No, I went around to the kitchen too. Where were you?”

“If we weren’t home then we were out.”

“Well, I know that. Where’d you go?”

Carmen took her time, wanting to tell him it was none of his business, but wanting to excuse him, too, because he was dumb, because he was overprotective, took his job very seriously and didn’t realize he was blundering into their privacy. She wanted that to be the only reason he was here, sitting close across the table with those huge arms and shoulders, staring at her.

“Let’s see,” Carmen said, “we shopped, bought a new shower curtain, some dish towels. I called my mother....Oh, Wayne bought a pair of work gloves.” She paused, staring at the marshal’s innocent irritating expression, and said, “We thought about going to a show, but didn’t know if we were allowed to.”

Ferris said, “Sure, that’s okay, you can go to the show. But call me and let me know which one. See, I have to know where you are, you know, in case something comes up. I think I got your old man a job over to Cape Barge, if he don’t mind getting filthy dirty crawling underneath towboats. A drydock’s the last place I’d ever want to get hired. He told me he was an ironworker before. I didn’t ask him, but is Wayne an Indian?”

Carmen said, “An Indian—why would you think that?”

“I heard one time they could only get Indians to go up on those high buildings, either ’cause they’re crazy enough to do it, not afraid of heights, or ’cause they’re surefooted—I don’t know, maybe they wear moccasins and aren’t as likely to fall.”

“I’m told they fall like anyone else,” Carmen said. “I’ll bet you also heard you’re not supposed to look down when you’re up pretty high.”

“Yeah, you get the urge to jump.”

“If you do, you’re not an ironworker. It’s looking up that can get you in trouble, if you start watching the clouds moving.”

“I imagine it takes getting used to,” Ferris said. “What’d your old man do before he was an ironworker?”

“He’s not my old man, he’s my husband.”

“I know he’s older’n you are, I saw it in the file. He’s forty-one and you’re thirty-eight, only he looks it and you don’t. You look more my age. I turned thirty-one this past July, but I keep in shape. I work with weights I got at home in my exercise room. I can do those one-hand push-ups, I can do nine-hundred and sixty-five sit-ups at one time without stopping. I’ll run now and then but I don’t care for it too much, I do leg exercises instead. You ought to see my workout room. It was the den before I got divorced. My ex-wife went back to Hughes, Arkansas, that’s near Horseshoe Lake, not too far from West Memphis, where I was born and raised.”

“I have a nineteen-year-old son,” Carmen said, “in the navy. Right now he’s on a nuclear carrier in the Pacific Ocean.”

“Yeah, I saw in the file you had a boy in the service I expected you’d look like an old woman, but you sure don’t. I can tell you take care of yourself, like I do. I respect my body. Watch this.” Ferris raised his right arm, cocked his fist and his bicep jumped out of the short white sleeve. “See? Does a little dance for you.” He looked from his arm to Carmen. “You like to dance? Get out there on the floor and shake it?”

“At times,” Carmen said. “Why don’t you put your arm down?”

“You want to feel it?”

“That’s okay.”

Ferris straightened the arm, raised the other one and stretched, saying, “Oh, man,” before laying them on the edge of the table again, hunching those huge shoulders at her.

“You have a stereo?”

“We didn’t bring it.”

“How about a radio?”

Carmen gave him a weary look. She said, “You’re too much,” and instantly wished she hadn’t.

He liked it—grinning at her again.

“My ex used to say that. I’d turn on the stereo and we’d dance right there in the house, the two of us. It’s what I miss the most since getting divorced. Well, it and something else. We weren’t married but a year. I think we did it more when we were going together’n when we were married, and I’m not talking about dancing now. What I think happens, when it’s right there all the time waiting you get so you take it for granted. And I mean just in a year’s time. I ’magine after something like twenty years you don’t do it near as much, or least not with the same person you’re married to. Am I right about that?”

Carmen felt herself boxed in by the table and his big shoulders filling the space in front of her, his shoulders, his wavy hair, his grin ... She tried staring at him calmly, with no expression—practiced from staring at Wayne, good at it—let this guy know she didn’t think he was cute or funny or was afraid of him. She wasn’t. She was irritated, but didn’t want to show him that either. Irritated by that goddamn grin and now by the thought—all of a sudden popping into her head—that she had missed something in his handwriting, or hadn’t paid enough attention to signs of ego. How could a person as dumb as this guy be so confident? That was not only irritating, it was a little scary.

She was wondering if maybe he could grin forever when it began to fade and he said to her, “Oh, well, you think on it and let me know.”

He slid out of the booth with his sport coat. When he turned, Carmen saw the revolver holstered on his right hip. She wanted to say something to him, but was more anxious for him to go, get out of here. He started to, he reached the doorway to the hall and Carmen got up to follow, make sure he left. When he turned she stood still, her hand on the edge of the table.

“See, you look to me like a nice person, the kind I’d like to get to know.”

“Thanks,” Carmen said.

“That’s why I know it isn’t all rosy between you and your old man, considering what he’s into, the kind of people he associates with. I can’t say I know what the deal is . . .”

It took Carmen a moment to realize what he was saying. “Wait a minute—Wayne isn’t into anything.”

“I suspect it might be something like labor racketeering, the kind of work he does, and the Bureau’s got him up against the wall.”

“No—believe me. You’ve got the wrong idea.”

“Am I close?”

“He hasn’t done anything is what I’m trying to tell you.” She watched Ferris put on his frown and pose with his head cocked.

“That’s funny, I thought your old man was in the Witness Security Program.”

Carmen felt an urge to go over and kick him in the balls, hard. “You don’t have to be a criminal, do you? Isn’t that right?”

“I think it helps,” Ferris said, “since I never heard of anybody in the program that wasn’t dirty—outside of relatives, wives, like yourself. See, that’s why I know you and him have your problems, ’cause as a law-enforcement officer I’ve dealt with plenty of guys like your old man. I’m sworn to protect his life, but that don’t mean I have to show him any respect.”

“I don’t believe this,” Carmen said with nervous energy, too many things in her mind to say at once. She saw Ferris turn to go and then look back at her again.

He said, “I don’t have to show you any respect either, if I don’t want to.”

Carmen took one look at Wayne and said, “Oh, my Lord,” not so much at the way he weaved and bumped against the refrigerator, but seeing his coveralls filthy with grease and soot, bunched under his arm.

“I stopped off. I’m not late, am I?”

“For what? We’re sure not going anywhere,” Carmen said. “Give me those.” She took his coveralls and threw them into the dark utility room. “Where’re you working, in a coal mine?”

“Close to it. I spent this morning in a coal barge welding in steel plates.” Wayne had the refrigerator open now. “The drydock foreman says, ‘So you’re a welder, huh?’ I told him, ‘You bet I am, AWS certified.’ He says, ‘Yeah, but can you weld plates watertight?’ I said, ‘Hey, I can weld a god-damn building so it won’t fall down. Is that good enough?’ He liked that, he said, ‘We’ll try you out.’ ”

Carmen watched him bump the refrigerator door closed with his hip, a can of beer in each hand, wound up because he was working again and had stopped off with the guys, back into a routine. Carmen was still tense from the deputy marshal’s visit, anxious to tell Wayne about it, but saw she would have to wait her turn. He was seated now in the breakfast nook, popping open the beer cans.

“I worked on the coal barge and then this big triple-screw towboat, the Robert R. Nally, comes in sideways from out in the river—that’s called walking the boat, when they do that. The chief engineer, this guy I got to know pretty well, was madder’n hell at the trip pilot. ...See, there’s a pilot they hire for trips, he and the captain take turns navigating, driving the boat. But this one they had caused the Robert R. Nally to run aground up here at a place they call the Backbone, Mile Ninety-four. It was pushing sixteen barges and the chief engineer said they splattered, broke the tow all apart. He said what happened, the dummy trip pilot was trying to steer the Backbone when he should’ve flanked it.” Wayne was grinning.

Carmen saw him wrapped up in his riverboat story, into a new trade and sounding like Matthew in his letters full of new words and references. At another time she might be interested. Right now it was beginning to irritate her.

“The trip pilot doesn’t work for the company, he’s like an independent contractor. He gets two-fifty a day and good ones are in demand. Even taking time off, you know what you could make a year, steering a boat down the river?”

Wayne paused, raising his eyebrows and his can of beer, and Carmen said, “Ferris was here.”

“When, today?”

“This morning. He thinks you’re a crook, involved in some kind of racketeering.”

“Guy’s an idiot. He introduces me to the dry-dock foreman and tells him I’m in the Witness Security Program. The foreman goes, ‘Oh, is that right?’ I had to tell him after Ferris left, ‘You want to check on me? Call Detroit, call my local.’ He says, ‘Well, if you can do the job ...’ ”

“I did call Detroit,” Carmen said. “I called the Marshals Service and spoke to John McAllen. I told him what happened . . .”

“We finally got a phone. Right there and I didn’t even notice it.”

“McAllen said he’ll look into it.”

“Good, straighten the guy out.”

“Wayne, I was on the phone talking to Mom— he walked right in the house.”

“Who did, Ferris?”

“He didn’t knock or ring the bell, he just walked in.”

“Was the door locked?”

“I don’t know, you went out. Did you lock it? He probably has a key anyway.”

“I was with a guy after that mentioned him. We stopped off, the chief engineer and the captain of the boat we’re working on—both of these guys’ve been on the river over forty years. The captain, he wears a regular suit and tie, took me up to the pilothouse, showed me all the controls. But the way I got chummy with him was through the chief engineer. I was underneath the stern of the boat, in the drydock now, they got the old wheel off that was bent ... The wheel’s the propeller, only it’s a great big goddamn thing, taller’n I am, they cost ten to fifteen thousand each. I’m welding a plate over the piece that holds the wheel to the shaft, the chief engineer says, ‘I got a job you might want to look at.’ ”

Carmen turned and opened the oven. With hot pads she brought out a casserole of pork chops and escalloped potatoes, placed it on top of the stove and didn’t move, standing with her back to Wayne.

“He takes me aboard and down to the engine room, three diesels in there, twelve-hundred horsepower each, and shows me this busted exhaust flex joint.”

Carmen got a head of lettuce from the refrigerator, brought it to the counter next to the sink, still with her back to Wayne, and began tearing it apart to make a salad.

“It’s a waffle-type joint made of stainless steel, the kind of job ordinarily they’d take out the whole section and send it to the shop. Anyway, I put a weld in there, the chief engineer looks at it, he says, ‘We go ashore after work I’m gonna buy you a drink.’ I don’t care that much about welding, but you know what’s the most interesting thing about that operation, seeing how the drydock works. You ever see it?”

Carmen had a chunk of lettuce in her hand. She threw it down on the counter, came over to the table and picked up the can of beer Wayne had opened for her.

“What they do, they fill it with water and the entire dock sinks down in the river. They work the towboat in there between the two sides, pump the water out and the whole thing raises back up with the boat. They took a barge out and put a big goddamn towboat in there in less than an hour.”

Carmen slammed the beer can down on the table.

“The guy walked into our house!”

Wayne looked up at her, startled.

Carmen said, “Am I getting through to you?”

Wayne touched her arm. “Why don’t you sit down, okay?”

“I don’t want to sit down. The guy walked into our house, uninvited. Without knocking or ringing the bell. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah, I understand.”

“I could have been undressed, I could have been taking a shower. Did you ask anything about that? What I was doing, what I felt, was I afraid? No, you tell me about this wonderful welding job you did and how the fucking drydock works.”

“I was gonna discuss it with you.”

“When?”

“Right now. I was about to tell you about this guy that joined us after.”

“In the bar?”

“Yeah, a place they go.”

“Great. Tell me about the guy you met in a bar.”

“Why don’t you sit down, okay? Take it easy.”

“You want to know something else? The guy who came to our house, Armand Degas?”

“Yeah, the Indian.”

“Not once have you asked me what it was like, what I felt, what was going through my mind. You put your gun by the door, just in case—there, you’ve done your part. Did you think—I’m talking about before now—did you think I might actually have to use it?”

“You did,” Wayne said. “You handled it, you ran the guy off.”

“How do you know? Did you ask me about it?”

“You told me what happened.”

“You know what I mean. Did you think about how scared I must’ve been? You didn’t hold me or say anything. ...I couldn’t sleep after—do you remember that? The FBI man, Scallen, he understood. I told him I hope I never have to do that again and you said—do you know what you said?”

“You mean when Scallen was there?”

“You said, ‘My wife’s a winner. That’s why I married her.’ ”

“Yeah? What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s like you’re taking credit, because you picked me.”

“I was complimenting you, for Christ sake.”

“No, you weren’t. It’s always what you’re doing that’s important, your job, working on a project— what am I doing, the ironing, I wash your dirty coveralls.”

“You want me to do it,” Wayne said, “when I come home? Tell me what you want. You don’t tell me, how’m I suppose to know? You start crying, I don’t even know most of the time if you’re happy or somebody died or you got a pain, it doesn’t seem to make any fucking difference. What I need is something like your Emotional Expression Chart, a big one I can lay over you and find out what’s going on.”

Carmen picked up her can of beer and started out of the kitchen.

“Wait a minute . . . okay?”

She stopped in the hall doorway.

“You want me to talk to this moron, this asshole marshal? I will, I plan to, don’t worry. He ever walks in this house again I’ll wrap a sleever bar around his head. How’s that?”

Carmen stood there long enough to say, “That’s what you’ll do for him. What will you do for me?”

Every once in a while—like getting ice water thrown in your face—she’d get mad when he didn’t know what she was thinking or how she felt. Then he’d get mad because he didn’t see why he was expected to be able to read her goddamn mind. He had wondered if maybe it had to do with her period, mentioned it one time only and got a can of beer thrown at him. He wiped it up from the kitchen floor after she walked out of the house and across the field all the way to the far edge of woods and stood there till it was dark. They made love that night, saying they would love each other forever and everything was fine after. This evening, Wayne had another beer before going to look for his wife and get things back to normal.

She was in the bedroom. The twin beds had been pushed together and Carmen was sitting on the edge of hers, bent over close to the lamp and her can of beer on the night table. She was leafing through the chamber of commerce booklet on her lap. Or going through the motions. Wayne stood in the doorway. He asked her what she was doing.

“I’m reading.”

He kept quiet, giving her time.

“I’m finding out,” Carmen said, “what a wonderful place this is to live. The Centerre Bank is serving us with three convenient locations. Or we can see Colonial Federal for all our financial needs.”

“Are we gonna have supper?”

“If you want.”

“Carmen, I’ll talk to the guy, okay?”

She didn’t say anything. Wayne took a step into the room. “Listen, I mentioned—I started to tell you about meeting a guy when I was with the captain and the chief engineer?” He paused. If she nodded or said almost anything at all it would mean they were friends again.

She didn’t.

“Anyway, this guy, his name’s Bob Brown, he’s a detective with the Cape Girardeau Police. We’re talking, I tell him why we’re here, he says, ‘Oh, so you know Ferris Britton. What do you think of him?’ I said, ‘You want my honest opinion? I think he’s a moron.’ And Bob Brown, the cop, says, ‘You’re being polite. You want anything fucked up, Ferris is the guy you call.’ ”

Wayne stood there waiting.

Carmen didn’t say anything.

“They know the guy, what he’s like. He ever walks in here again, call Bob Brown. That’s an easy name to remember.”

She still didn’t say anything.

There wasn’t a sound in the house. Wayne shook his head, still waiting. He said, “All right, tell me what you want. Will you, please? So I’ll know?”

Carmen looked up at him. “How long are we staying here?”

“Till they get the two guys—I don’t know.”

“You told me three weeks,” Carmen said. “No more than that. But now you have a job you’re all wrapped up in, you have your whitetail, so you can go hunting. ...I guess you’re all set, huh? But what do I have? Outside of somebody else’s house to clean.”

Wayne said, “What do you have?” getting some amazement in his tone. “Honey, you have me, don’t you?”

The way she got up and grabbed the beer can from the night table, he knew she was going to throw it at him.

15

DONNA STARTED TALKING about Elvis. She said, “If Elvis was Jesus, you know who I think some of his apostles would be? I think Engelbert would be one. I think Tom Jones would be one. And I think, going way back, the Jordanaires and the Blackwood Brothers. Who do you think?”

Armand said he’d never thought about it before.

This was while Donna was clearing the table, setting the dishes in the sink to wash later on, and Armand was waiting the forty-five minutes it took for another chicken pie to heat. They’d had one each for supper and he was still hungry. Richie was in the living room watching TV. Donna moved on from Elvis and his apostles to Elvis’s greatest hits to how she had tried one time to get a job in corrections down there to be near Elvis’s home. The West Tennessee Reception Center was her first choice because it was right in Memphis. When they turned her down she waited a year and tried again, requesting Brushy Mountain, DeBerry Correctional, Fort Pillow, any one of those, even the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville would have been better than nothing. “And you don’t think there wasn’t some kind of conspiracy to keep me out?”

Armand never said there was. He was waiting for that Swanson’s chicken pie to hurry up and get done.

Donna told him the memory of Elvis was like a giant magnet drawing her to Memphis, that if she lived there she’d visit Graceland every day, the way people visit a church and light candles to get their burdens lifted or find a boyfriend. She’d do it knowing peace of mind didn’t come cheap. “But you don’t think it wouldn’t be worth the seven bucks’ admission to have some in my life for a change, after what it’s been?”

Armand said, “I believe you,” because he could see she believed it herself. She had a look in her strange eyes behind those glasses, like she was drugged or had been hit over the head.

Donna served him the chicken pie, left the kitchen and returned with a stack of color photos taken at Graceland Mansion. She had bought the prints off a girlfriend of hers for two bucks each and kept them in that velvety box a fifth of Amaretto comes in. Armand, mopping up chicken gravy with slices of bread he’d fold over, could look at the pictures as Donna held them up but not touch them.

“This is Elvis Presley Boulevard on a rainy day. This is the Heartbreak Hotel Restaurant, it’s not too far. I hear him sing that, I get goose bumps head to toe. I mean still. Okay, this is his famous pink Caddy. This is his lavish jetliner, the Lisa Marie. This is inside it. ...No, this is inside his tour bus. Elvis would bring some of his closer friends along on tours. They’d play cards, Yahtzee, listen to music. They’d cook right in there.”

“What’s the name of it?” Armand said, wanting to show he was interested.

“The tour bus? It don’t have a name. This is the front room of Graceland. That couch seats fourteen people.”

“How come his airplane has a name but not his tour bus?”

“If people knew he was in that bus, like if there was anything on it to identify him? There’d be a riot every time it stopped.”

“He could’ve called it some other girl’s name, like the jetliner.”

“Bird, that isn’t just some old girl’s name. Lisa Marie’s his daughter. Her and I have the same birthday.”

“Yeah, is that right?”

“I’ll tell you something else,” Donna said. “My life number is eight.”

“What’s that mean, your life number?”

“You add up your date of birth, like February is the second month, that’s two. I was born on the first, two and one is three, then nineteen, one and nine is ten, so that’s like one. You add that to the three you got from February first, then add up the next numbers—I’m not gonna tell you the year— and it comes to eight.”

“Is that right?”

“Okay, now add up 3797 Elvis Presley Boulevard, P. O. Box 16508, Memphis, Tennessee, 38186, and you know what it comes to?”

“Eight,” Armand said.

“And you wonder why I’m drawn to there?” Donna said. “Think about it. Okay, this is some of his personal jewelry, his gold Rolex watch, his Maltese cross and solid-gold I. D. bracelet. Here’s his famous American Eagle jumpsuit . . .”

“His famous queer outfit,” Richie said, coming into the kitchen. “Jesus Christ, Bird, you eating again? I’d take the Rolex and the pink Caddy, the guy did have a certain amount of class.” Richie was getting a bottle of beer from the refrigerator now. “But that fucking jumpsuit ...Would you wear it, Bird? You’d have to get the one he wore after he swole up like a pig.”

“You’re jealous,” Donna said. “You can’t look at these without making remarks.”

“Jealous of what? You know what the difference is between me and him?”

“Yeah, you’re ignorant,” Donna said.

“I’m alive and he’s dead and that’s the only thing counts.”

You’re alive, Armand thought, watching Richie take a swig of beer, his fist wrapped around the neck of the bottle. But you don’t have to be. He noticed Richie was chewing gum with his beer.

“I got news for you,” Donna was saying. “After you die, you think anybody’s gonna visit your grave? Even if you had a mother I doubt she would. But a hundred years from now, even longer’n that, people will still be going to visit Graceland.” She looked at Armand and nodded. “It’s true.”

“Is that right?” Armand said, feeling a little sorry for her.

Richie was grinning, chewing his gum and shaking his head. “Donna, you’re so goddamn stupid. . . . Lemme ask you a question. Which would you rather have, Elvis sing to you or fuck you?” He looked at Armand and winked.

Armand stared back at him. He didn’t think Richie was funny, now or anytime before. He watched Donna squinting at Richie, showing him she was being serious.

“I know what you think I’m gonna say,” Donna said, “and you’d call me a liar. Well, I can’t help that, ’cause it’s true. I’d rather have him sing to me.”

Armand believed her. He was surprised that Richie did too, Richie looking at him saying, “You know why, Bird? ’Cause he wasn’t a con. Elvis wouldn’t have been rough or smelly enough for Donna.”

“I don’t think of him that way,” Donna said. “He was a kind, generous person who helped people out, gave them cars, whatever they needed. He believed people ought’n to suffer more than they don’t have to. He read books—they say he was ever in search of the answers to life’s mysteries.”

“I heard he was in search of pussy,” Richie said. “Had girls brought to him and he’d take his pick.”

It might be true, Armand didn’t know or care, but decided that was enough. He was tired of Richie. So when Richie looked at him, fun in his eyes, wanting to be appreciated, Armand said, “Leave her alone.”

Richie said, “Who, Donna?”

Maybe a little surprised but still having fun, enjoying himself. Armand decided to push him. He said, “See if you can keep your mouth shut for a while,” and the fun was over. He watched Richie’s eyes become serious and then dull, sleepy, covering what he was feeling, no longer chewing his gum.

Wanting to hit me with that bottle, Armand thought. Smash it across my face. Now he gave Richie a frown, curious, not a bad look, and said, “What’s the matter?”

Richie said, “You ever talk to me like that again . . .”

Armand said, “Yeah, what?” because he wanted to hear how this punk would say it.

“It’ll be the last time you do.”

Nothing original about that, the guy remained a punk.

They stared at each other, Armand wanting to tell him, Okay, now go watch your TV. But there would have to be more staring if he did and he was tired of it. So he didn’t say anything and Richie walked out of the kitchen with his bottle of beer. For a few moments there was silence.

Donna cleared her throat.

“This is Elvis’s billiard room,” Donna said. “There seven hundred and fifty yards of material, all pleated, covering the walls and ceiling.”

The next couple of days the Bird got her to make phone calls for them, seeing if they could locate the ironworker and his wife. Donna would say, “What on earth are you boys up to now?” acting innocent and cute for her age. The Bird wouldn’t say anything, but Richie got a kick out of Donna’s act and would give her a wink.

When she called the real estate company for them and asked about the house for sale, she was told it was no longer on the market. That was when the Bird finally said, “Let’s go.” But when they drove past the house—wearing their hunting outfits now, the Bird with that stupid cap on— there was the for sale sign still in the front yard.

What was it doing there? Did they sell the house or not? What in the hell was going on here? The ironworker’s car and the pickup were gone, but could he and the wife still be in the house?

Richie fired one question after another, but might just as well have been talking to the fucking steering wheel. The Bird either wouldn’t answer or would grunt something like, “Unh,” and Richie was supposed to know what that meant.

So he had steam building in him by the time they got the car hidden and approached the house roundabout through the woods, the Bird leading, tramping through dead leaves and making all kinds of noise for a guy who was supposed to be an Indian. An idea began to ease Richie’s mind, that all he had to do was raise the barrel of his shotgun, squeeze the trigger and have something to tell his kids, if he ever had any, watching a cowboy movie, one of those good ones they used to have where you’d see redskins blown off their pinto ponies. “Yeah, I’ve done that. There was this time I was out in the woods . . .” And stopped the picture in his head realizing he’d already shot an Indian, the duck guide. Weird, losing count—like he’d thought of Kevin being his first when Kevin was actually his third. Which would make the last one, the duck guide, number seven. Right? . . . No, there was the 7-Eleven girl with the greasy hair. If she was Indian it would make the Blackbird his third...Except if he was a half-breed ... Shit, it got too confusing. He’d be number nine. Let it go at that. Richie wondered if smoking weed all his life except for the past month or so had fucked up his head. Then wondered if it made any difference.

When they stood at the edge of the woods about a half hour staring at the house, the Indian playing Indian, Richie was antsy as hell but didn’t say a word. Why argue? This partnership would end the minute he couldn’t take any more of it. Or the ideal situation, gun down the Bird the same time they did the ironworker and his wife and make it look like they shot each other. That’d be neat, work something like that out. Read about it in the paper and see old Donna giving him her innocent look. What on earth happened to Bird. And he’d wink or else give her an innocent look back, it depended. Then she’d want to fool with his hair, do some goddamn thing. Take him out and buy him some new clothes . . .

The Bird said, “You ready?”

Richie said, “I was born ready,” feeling pretty good about everything for a change.

They were a couple of hunters strolling out of the woods, looking around, nothing important in mind; went up on the side porch, looked around again and became burglars. Let’s see what we have here. Richie’s idea, punch out a pane of glass in the door, reach in, nothing to it. But the Bird stopped him, saying he didn’t like that way, saying cops would come by and see the door. So Richie went around back and broke in through a bathroom window, on the first floor but high up in this old place and he had to climb a tree to reach the window. What was the Bird’s game? Outside of making him do all the work as usual, worried about leaving his fingerprints, the fucking Bird playing it safe. As soon as Richie was inside he could feel nobody else was in the house. He went through to the kitchen and opened the door.

“Well, hi there. Nice to see you.”

The Bird came in, his face set beneath that dumb hunting cap.

Richie left him again to make a quick appraisal tour of the house, see if there was anything of value lying around. What hit him right away, it didn’t look anything like a house the people had moved out of. All their furniture was here. There wasn’t anything packed in boxes ready to go. Richie went upstairs. He found all kinds of men’s and ladies’ clothes hanging in the hall closets, a silver jacket with ironworkers build america written on it. He remembered the guy wearing a blue one, the same words on it, when he shot at him in the store. There were clothes in the two big dressers in their bedroom, shirts and things the guy had left, couple of good-looking sport shirts Richie thought he wouldn’t mind having, hey, and a T-shirt from Henry’s seafood restaurant, it’s nice to be nice. Look at that. It seemed like just yesterday or the day before he was sitting there eyeing the Bird eating his pickerel. Was that what started this whole thing, seeing the Bird? It was weird how one thing could lead to another. You didn’t have to plan your life, shit, just go with the flow. Richie went downstairs and stuck his head in the living room again before going out to the kitchen.

The Bird stood by a drawer pulled open, reading a letter.

“Shame on you,” Richie said, “reading other people’s mail.” It was funny the way the Bird folded the letter right away and dropped it on the counter.

“They have a boy in the U. S. Navy.”

“I know it, the duck guide told us.” He saw the Bird giving him the old Indian stare. “You don’t remember it, do you? When we was in the boat. Then me and you got out and I put him away. You remember that part, don’t you?”

The Bird didn’t answer.

“Lemme ask you a harder one,” Richie said. “How come if they moved they left their furniture?”

“They left in a hurry . . .”

“Didn’t pack anything.”

“Maybe the movers do that.”

“The movers,” Richie said. “They pack the clothes too? I don’t think these people left all their clothes, but enough to make you wonder. Upstairs in their bedroom. The bed’s made—they could come home and hop right in.”

The Bird said, “Clothes, ’ey?”

That seemed to catch his interest.

“There’s a TV in the living room we could use. Better’n the one at Donna’s.”

“You want to steal the TV,” the Bird said, “lug it through the woods all the way to the car?”

“I was thinking, save us getting a hernia, we bring the car around and pick it up.”

The Bird didn’t like that, being shown how dumb he was. He turned to the drawer, pulled out a Detroit telephone directory and laid it on the counter.

“Look up Colson.”

“Donna already tried that.”

“Her book’s old. Look in this one.”

Still giving him orders. Yes sir. Telling him last night to keep his mouth shut. Richie opened the book and took his time flipping through pages. Donna had called about a dozen different Colsons; not one of them ever heard of a Wayne Colson. She called the ironworkers’ local; they said try him at home, they didn’t have him down as working anywhere. Richie found the listing of Colsons and counted them.

“Same ones exactly Donna called. If he’s got relatives they’re someplace else.” Richie closed the book.

He watched the Bird going through mail these people had saved. Now he was looking through a note pad that had loose sheets folded and stuck in it. Something in there seemed to interest him and he took it over to the window by the sink to see the writing better.

Richie looked around. “They got the fridge turned off, nothing in it. That must’ve broke your heart.” It didn’t get a rise. Richie thought of something else.

“Bird?”

“What?”

“You gonna kill Donna?”

That got him to look up.

“Why?”

“I just wondered.”

“You worried about her?”

“I told you, not as long as she trusts me.”

“That don’t make sense.”

“You don’t know her like I do. I’m her boy.”

The Bird looked at the note pad for a moment, Richie waiting for him. The Bird looked up and said, “What does that make me, her man?”

“I don’t know,” Richie said. “I get what I want, I don’t have to look at her Elvis pictures. I don’t even have to listen to her if I don’t want to.”

Richie felt good, giving the Bird little jabs, playing with him. Then felt himself jump and said, “Jesus Christ!”

The phone was ringing.

Loud and close to them in that little kitchen on the wall behind the Bird, Richie seeing the Bird looking back at him. Richie jumped but the Bird didn’t. He didn’t move, not even his eyes under that dumb hunting cap, while the phone rang seven times before it stopped.

It seemed quieter than before.

The Bird said, “ ’Ey, was that the phone?”

The son of a bitch, giving it back to him now because he had seen him jump. Richie thought fast and said, “Well, why in the hell didn’t you answer it? You want to talk to somebody knows them— why didn’t you pick up the goddamn phone?”

“Anybody that calls, if they don’t know they’re gone,” the Bird said, “they don’t know where they went. That’s why. But how about somebody that moves and they don’t have the phone disconnected?”

“What’ve I been trying to tell you?” Richie said. “All the furniture, for Christ sake, the clothes upstairs.”

The Bird wasn’t listening to him. “They put that sign up, we suppose to think they moved. They didn’t move, they coming back.”

“You finally figured that out? Christ, look at all the stuff right here they left.”

The Bird still wasn’t listening, he was studying that note pad again, looking at some of the loose pages that had been stuck inside.

“There some phone numbers here they wrote down, but no names or anything.”

“Then what good are they?”

“Like you look up a number and write it down. Or somebody gives you a number over the phone, it isn’t in the book, so you make a note of it.”

“Bird, they’re coming back. We know that.”

“I’m tired waiting.”

“It can’t be too long, all their stuff here.”

“And I’m tired hearing you talk,” the Bird said, not sounding mad or with any effort, the same way he had said last night to shut up. He turned to the wall phone with the note pad and began punching numbers. Each time he got an answer the Bird would listen and then push the button to disconnect, not saying a word.

After watching him do this a few times Richie had to ask him, “Who was that?”

“Plumbing and heating company.”

After each call then Richie asked him who it was and the Bird told him, That was the Amoco station. That was a Chinese restaurant. That was a number no longer in service. That was a place does hair. Now the Bird was looking at a note, holding it up to the window. “Here’s one that says ‘New,’ underlined three times and the number.”

“You aren’t doing nothing but wasting our time,” Richie said. “We’re gonna have to wait, that’s all. You don’t like it, go back to Canada. I don’t give a shit.”

The Bird was holding up his hand, listening to a phone ring, then shaking his head, about to hang up the receiver, when a woman’s voice came on even Richie could hear, ten feet away.

“Who is this?”

“Yeah, I’m looking for Wayne Colson,” the Bird said.

There was a pause.

“He isn’t here.”

Both Richie and the Bird straightened and didn’t move.

“You know where he is?”

“Who gave you my number?”

Richie could hear her voice clearly. She sounded like a mean old broad. The Bird was already stumbling, not knowing how to talk to women of any age, telling her, “I have it written down here.” Yeah, where? What did she care it was written down someplace. The Bird telling her, “See, I’m looking for Wayne Colson.” Dumb fucking Indian. Richie walked over holding out his hand. The Bird let him take the phone, no problem, relieved.

The woman was saying, “Who is this?”

“Ma’am? Excuse me,” Richie said, getting a little smile on his face. “That was a fella works here was just on I asked to call you. See, we been trying to get hold of Wayne. ... He gave us this number before he left—”

“He gave you my number?”

“Well, actually he gave it to the boss and the boss gave it to me, only he’s not here now. He said you’d know where he was, Wayne.”

“I don’t understand this at all.”

She sounded like an older woman. Richie took a shot and said, “Ma’am, you aren’t by any chance Wayne’s mom, are you?”

“No, I’m not.” The woman hesitated. “I’m Carmen’s mother. But I don’t know where they are, outside of she said they were driving to Florida.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Wayne said something about going down there. You don’t happen to have a number where I can reach him, do you?”

There was a silence on the line. Richie looked at the Bird’s serious face, waiting.

“See, I have this check I want to send him.”

“Oh, you’re from work?”

“Yes, ma’am. I guess he was in a hurry to take off.” Richie paused to see if that would get him anything. It didn’t, so he said, “The boss told me, see, if I could get this check to him. I imagine him and your daughter would like to have it, down in Florida on a vacation.”

Richie and the Bird waited, staring at each other.

“You don’t have an address, huh?”

“No, she hasn’t given it to me.”

“I was thinking, if you’ve talked to them . . .”

He waited and there was a silence. He waited a little more and said, “Hey, I got an idea. How about if you give me your address? I can mail you the check or drop it off. See, then when you find out where they’re at you can send it.” Richie paused again, giving her a little time. “I know if it was my check I’d want to have it.”

Carmen’s mom said, “Well, I guess that would be all right. I live on Gratiot Beach, if you know where that is. You have a pencil?”

16

CARMEN HAD LOCKED the bathroom door. She stood under the shower facing the spray, eyes closed, trying not to think. She had read somewhere that enlightenment through meditation only worked if you could clear your mind of pictures and things swarming around in it and concentrate on nothing. Which seemed impossible to do, things just came. So she tried concentrating on the water, feeling it, saying to herself, “Mmmmmmmm,” and thought of Jack Nicholson about to take a shower telling the black guy who worked in the hotel there wasn’t any soap and the black guy saying yes, or that was true.

It was the Jack Nicholson movie that starts out in North Africa, in the hotel in a desert village, bugs on the wall, where Nicholson switches identities with the man in the next room who dies of a heart attack. Carmen remembered the name of the movie now, it was The Passenger. Nicholson, what he’s doing in the movie, is running away from his own life. He steps into the dead man’s life and lets it take him on a trip to different places, England, Germany, Spain, where he meets the girl in Barcelona and it’s fascinating, sort of dreamlike, not knowing what’s going to happen next, Carmen thinking that if it’s fascinating to watch it would be fascinating to do it, become someone else, at least for a while. But something funny is happening in this movie. Nicholson remembers seeing the girl in London, before, yet doesn’t think it’s strange when she shows up in Barcelona. He doesn’t even mention it till much later. He knows, with his new identity, he’s in a dangerous business and there are men after him. But he doesn’t seem to care, he’s only concerned with escaping his past. So he lets his new life happen. He lets it carry him along as a passenger to the end and the end is fascinating. At least it was fascinating to watch, the way it was filmed, not like any other movie Carmen had ever seen, it was so real in a way that she could feel what was happening without actually seeing it. Even now she could feel sorry for Nicholson. Poor guy, a passenger all the way. Not knowing when to get off.

Carmen put on a terry-cloth robe and patiently wrapped ten electric curlers in her hair, head down, eyes raised, staring at herself in the mirror, thinking that if she were Jack Nicholson she would have gotten out of there somehow, run like hell or explained who she was. The whole thing a big misunderstanding. Go back to the other life and face it, work it out. Nicholson’s wife seemed okay, she did look for him. But even if she hadn’t and even if bad guys weren’t after you and you were free to go anywhere you wanted, how long could you hang out in Barcelona or drive around Spain in that convertible? ...Or past real estate offices in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, in her Cutlass or walk through West Park Mall. It was okay, it was a very nice mall as malls go, nice people, though no one had stopped her to say she looked like a person they would like to know. Come home and look out the windows hoping a cream-colored Plymouth didn’t turn into the drive. Fix supper, wait for Wayne to walk in full of his new job and listen to him speak in a new language as he turned from ironworker to riverman, amazed to hear it. No more spud wrenches and beaters. Now it was cowtails and hula hoops, chain slings, ratchets, the jewelry they used to tie barges up for a tow—three wide and five long on the Upper Miss on account of they have to pass through locks. But did she know what the record was on the Lower Miss? No, what? Seventy-two barges, a world-record tow the Miss Kae-D hauled from Mile 304 near Baton Rouge to Hickman, Kentucky, in May of ’81. A fleet more than a quarter of a mile long, with a load capacity of 113,400 net tons. How did he remember that?

Moved by rail it would’ve taken 1,152 boxcars, a freight train 13 miles long. By truck, shit, it would’ve taken 4,300 18-wheelers in a convoy, legally spaced, that would stretch 173 miles on the interstate. He remembered it because he was a man who could look up at a high-rise he’d helped build and tell you how many tons of structural steel were inside its skin. He was reading a book on Mississippi River navigation and the Rules of the Road, showing her maps. Did she know the Mississippi started way up here by Minneapolis–St. Paul? Yeah, she knew that. It was called the Upper Miss down to Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio came in, and the Lower Miss down to New Orleans. He told her, by the way, the Miss Kae-D was a triple-screw tow, same as the Robert R. Nally that had run aground on the Backbone, up by Mile 94, that tow he was working on and wouldn’t mind going out in sometime, take a little cruise on her. Carmen asked him how come if it was a her, it was named the Robert R. Nally?

She walked out of the bathroom in her robe and curlers, glanced down the hall and stopped dead.

A man she had never seen before was standing near the doorway to the kitchen. It was his yellow sport coat that stopped her, made her look and held her rigid. She saw the yellow coat—the man in it beefy, with short legs and arms. She saw his arms raise, saw the palms of his hands extended toward her.

He said, “Take it easy, okay? I’m not gonna hurt you.” As if to reassure her, keep her from screaming or running out of the house. “I rang the bell— listen, I didn’t mean to walk in on you like this, I’m sorry.”

“I’m getting used to it,” Carmen said, more irritated than afraid, even though she was fairly certain this guy must be the previous tenant, the Mafia witness from somewhere in the East, New Jersey. He was in his upper fifties, about five-seven, with a little gigolo mustache and hair that was too dark and thick, too perfect, to be his own. Carmen was good at spotting rugs.

So this was what a loan shark looked like.

“You’re Mr. Molina, aren’t you?”

His expression changed just a little.

“Yeah, I used to live here.”

“Well, you don’t anymore. What do you want?”

It startled him; he seemed more surprised now than when she said his name.

“I stopped by—my wife thinks maybe she left one of her rings here she can’t find.”

Carmen said, “You want to search my house?”

“No, it’s okay. I won’t disturb you.”

“I’ll tell you something, I cleaned this place from top to bottom and didn’t find anything but dirt.”

She was at ease, confident, standing up to this guy. Then began to lose it—Oh, my God—as she nodded toward the spare bedroom and felt the curlers in her hair and felt Mr. Molina staring at them.

“Unless it might be in there. I didn’t touch those boxes.”

“No, that’s nothing, some junk. Old clothes I was gonna throw away or give to somebody. Listen, I’m sorry the way the place was.”

Carmen looked at him again. He did seem sorry.

“My wife was already gone and when I left . . . Well, I left, that’s all. I decided and that was it.”

“How long did you live here?”

“Almost five years.”

“That seems like a long time.”

“You kidding? It was five years too long, if you know what I’m talking about, the kind of situation I’m in. I think you do, since you know my name, probably where I’m from, my life history.” He came toward her taking cautious steps, as if testing the floor.

Carmen didn’t move. She could tell now, absolutely, he was wearing a rug, a good one, a style popular with a number of movie stars, but still a rug. She decided if he didn’t feel funny wearing it there was no reason to be self-conscious about her curlers. She was even beginning to feel comfortable with this man.

When he said, “It was that deputy marshal that told you, uh? That kid Britton?”

Carmen said, “We call him Ferris, so we won’t think of him as a parole officer,” and saw the man’s expression change, his eyes open with obvious surprise. Carmen put out her hand. “Mr. Molina, we’re both in the same club.”

The last time they drove up the river to Port Huron they crossed the Blue Water Bridge to Sarnia and got Richie’s chin stitched up at the hospital and Armand had waited in the blue Cadillac to think of what they would do next. When was that, last year? It seemed like it. This time they came to visit the ironworker’s mother-in-law, and Armand was still thinking of what they would do next on this trip that didn’t look like it would ever end.

They had stopped at Donna’s house while she was off driving her school bus to change from the hunting outfits to regular clothes. Now Armand had on his suit and Richie, driving the car because he was the driver now, had on his nice-to-be-nice T-shirt under a silver jacket he had taken from the guy’s closet. “Show the woman,” Richie said, “look, I’m an ironworker and a really nice guy.” The jacket was an old one, too big for him, but that was okay. The idea would be for Richie to do the talking, continue to play the company guy he was on the phone with her. He said, “You may as

well wait in the car, Bird. It won’t take both of us.”

That was the punk talking.

Armand didn’t like to hear it. There were things he wanted to tell Richie, to try to keep him under control, but didn’t say anything about it driving along the river. If he told him too soon it would be in and out of the punk’s head. So he let Richie play the radio and slap the steering wheel in time to the rock music until they had driven through Port Huron and now were catching glimpses of Lake Huron, gray and overcast, between the homes spaced along the shore. Armand turned off the radio and said, “Let’s think about what the woman knows and what she doesn’t.”

It got a mean look from the punk.

“That’s what I’m gonna find out. Get her to tell what we want to know.”

“Yeah, but first of all, I don’t think she knows where they are.”

“You mean she says she don’t.”

“No, what I mean—yeah, she could know where they are, like they’re in Florida, but not know their address for some reason, like they’re not gonna be in one place too long, so she don’t need it to write them letters or anything. See, when she wouldn’t say nothing to you, that was when she knew something but didn’t want to tell you. Like when you asked did she have their phone number. She didn’t answer. But when you asked her if she had their address, she said no, she didn’t.”

“She could be lying, couldn’t she?”

“I don’t think so. She didn’t expect that phone call, anybody asking about them, so the woman didn’t have any lies ready. When she didn’t want to tell you something, she didn’t say nothing, she kept quiet. You understand what I mean?”

“Hey, Bird, I don’t give a fuck what she said or didn’t. If she knows where they are I’m gonna find it out. That’s what we’re here for.”

This guy continued to be a punk and would never change.

“That’s what we want to do,” Armand said, “but when you talk to her you got to be cool, ’ey? Like when you talk to her on the phone. See, what I’m thinking, if she’ll tell us their phone number, then we can find out from it where they are. Call the operator and say where is this anyway, this number?”

“If she’ll tell me?” Richie said. “She’s gonna be dying to tell me.”

“Yeah, but you have to take it easy,” Armand said, wanting to punch this guy in the mouth as hard as he could. “You don’t want to get rough with her.”

Richie said, “I don’t?” slowing down and hunching over the wheel. They were getting close now, the road lined with a wall of wooden garages and fences, one after another on deep, narrow lots along here. Richie was looking at the house numbers that were nailed over the garage doors or painted on. Some of the places bore names, “Lazy Daze,” “E-Z Rest” . . .

“No, we want to keep her friendly,” Armand said. “Maybe she can’t tell us something today, but then she finds out tomorrow they gonna be someplace for a few days, yeah, we can send the check there. See, you get rough then we can’t use her no more, she calls the cops. What’s this? All this time they think we took off, we’re gone. Oh, those guys are still around, ’ey? They put up roadblocks and we can’t go nowhere, we can’t fucking move or we get caught and you go back to prison. You don’t want nothing like that, do you? ... Hey, you hear what I’m saying?”

“There it is,” Richie said. The house number was painted on the gate in the board fence. He pulled up close to it and opened his door. “You don’t want to come watch? Or you don’t want her seeing what you look like? Shit, I know your game.”

“Remember that it’s nice to be nice,” Armand said.

He got a look at the house, a quick one—three stories counting the windows in the attic, narrow, straight up and down, white frame with green trim—as Richie went through the gate and it swung closed again.

Armand sat back thinking, You let him go in there with a gun.

So what difference does it make he has a gun or he doesn’t have a gun, a guy like that?

So you don’t care, do you?

He thought some more and decided, yeah, but not much. He had come this far, now he was along for the ride.

Carmen and Mr. Molina were in the living room, facing each other from opposite ends of the white sofa: Carmen dressed in a shirt and jeans, curlers gone from her hair, Molina smoking cigarettes, stubbing another one into the ashtray on the coffee table.

“All this stuff I was dealing in,” Molina said, “the bonds, the stock certificates, were either stolen or counterfeit. I was the middleman, you might say. I’d go up to Toronto every couple months and lay it off on the family there. They knew what it was, they were only using it as collateral, buying up property downtown. So I got to know those people. What was the guy’s name again?”

“Armand Degas,” Carmen said.

“No, I never heard that name. He could be connected, but I can tell you he’s not family. This’s going back, what I’m talking about, eight nine years. He could’ve come along since then. I still can’t see an Indian in any kind of position with those guys.”

“He kills people,” Carmen said.

“Yeah, well, whatever he was doing in Algonac, Michigan, doesn’t sound to me like a family operation. I was in a different position, one phone call I could find out for you, but from what you told me”—Molina shook his head—“they’re not gonna go after a real estate company for any ten grand. They’d want a piece of it, steady income off the top. Same way it happened to me. I’m in the printing business, it’s slow, my accounts receivable are fulla deadbeats, like I owe a paper house fifteen hundred past due a hundred and twenty days. So I borrow it from a shylock. By the end of the year— listen to this—I’ve paid them twenty-seven thousand and they’re into my business. I can run off phony bonds or end up in the Susquehanna, that’s my choice.”

He paused to light a cigarette and Carmen stared at his hairpiece, its abrupt line across his forehead, the part, the wave in front, permanently combed.

“Ferris told us you were a loan shark, from New Jersey.”

“Ferris doesn’t have the right state even,” Molina said. “I don’t know how he got out of school, if he ever went. Seven years I’ve been in the government witness program. Started out, went to Washington, D.C., for orientation. I’ve met I don’t know how many U.S. marshals and every one of them was a decent guy except this asshole. There was one other one wasn’t too bright I can tell you about. But this guy Ferris, he comes on like he’s running for office—am I right? Next thing you know he turns into a fucking Nazi. I’m sorry, but there’s no other way to say it. Listen, at the time my wife had enough of this and left, I went back to Scranton for a week, talked to the FBI and the marshal there, the people that got me into this. They took me before a Senate committee and I told them my experiences as a protected witness.”

Carmen said, “You’ve been in it seven years?”

“That’s right, but it isn’t just the time spent. My first wife I was married to for twenty-six years divorced me. I haven’t seen my kids—I got three grandchildren I probably won’t ever see.”

“So you didn’t start out here.”

“No, the first place I was relocated ... Remember them telling you they’re gonna, quote, provide suitable documents to enable the person to establish a new identity?”

Carmen nodded. “I remember, but we didn’t change our names.”

“I had to,” Molina said. “And you know how long it took to get suitable documents? Four months for a driver’s license. Almost a year for a social security card. I still don’t have a birth certificate. Try and get credit when you don’t have a history. Try and get any kind of a job on your own. The kid marshal takes me out to Procter and Gamble, they put me on the Pampers line. I’m fifty-nine years old with this white smock on making diapers. You know how long I lasted? I tell all this to the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. They’re sympathetic, up to a point. The chairman says, ‘Well, our survey shows that seventy-three percent of the people in the program want to stay in it.’ I said to him, of course, they want to stay in. You leave it, you’re dead. I could’ve done ten at Allenwood instead of this shit and I’d be out by now, good behavior.”

“You didn’t like the first place they sent you,” Carmen said, “so you left? Can you do that?”

“The only thing that was good about it, I met my present wife, Roseanne. If we get along half the time it’s better than nothing. But that’s when they were bringing me back to Scranton to testify and the marshal—this’s the other one that wasn’t too bright—puts me on a direct flight.” Molina paused. “You understand what I’m saying? You land at Avoca, the airport there, anybody watching for you knows where you came from. That’s not bad enough, we’re leaving the courtroom after the trial, people all around, the guy, the marshal, tells another marshal where we’re going. I mean he says it right out loud, anybody could’ve heard it. There people still in the courtroom, friends of the guy I just got done testifying against. I said to the marshal, ‘You crazy? I’m not going back there.’ They had to drag me on the plane. But then I bitched enough after that . . .” Molina paused, his head raised. “You hear a car door slam?”

“It could be Wayne,” Carmen said. She watched Molina stub out his cigarette and get up.

Walking over to the window he said, “I’ve been doing this for nine years. I hear something, I jump.”

“Is it a light-tan pickup?”

The man didn’t answer and Carmen started to get up.

By the time he said, “I hate to tell you this, it’s that fucking Nazi . . .”

Carmen was out of the sofa. “We won’t let him in. I’ll put the chain on.”

“Don’t,” Molina said. “I did that one time, he busted the door.”

Carmen’s mother’s home had a sun porch across the front with a wide-open view of Lake Huron, gray as the sky, nothing to see. Richie stood there, giving the woman a look at his ironworkers-build-America jacket before turning to the living room again: dark in here, full of old furniture and pictures of birds all over the dark-paneled walls, color prints of birds and some that looked like a little kid had drawn them with crayons. Richie figured there were about thirty bird pictures in here, all different sizes and all framed. It was warm in here, too. He could hear a radiator hissing steam.

Richie said, “You like birds, huh? I notice you have feeders out’n the yard.”

“I’ve always loved birds,” Lenore said. “My mother named me from a poem about a bird. I guess I just love nature.” She gave a girlish shrug, but then looked at him hard through her glasses and said, “Don’t you?”

Like she was testing him. Richie felt he’d better say yes if they were going to get along. He said, “You bet. I even have a friend named Bird,” and gave the woman a smile, though loving nature made no sense to him. What was there to love about it? Nature was just there, outside, wherever there wasn’t something else.

Lenore gestured toward the crayon drawings and said, “Matthew did those when he was little. I’ve kept them.”

Like he was supposed to know who Matthew was. “They’re nice,” Richie said.

“He’s in the United States Navy, aboard an aircraft carrier.”

Richie nodded along, wondering about a kid who liked to draw birds and ended up joining the navy, the kid sounding like a fucking re-tard. So it caught him by surprise when the woman said:

“What job are you working on?”

“Oh, well, we been on different ones.”

He’d better be careful, stay alert.

This woman’s eyes reminded him of Donna’s the way they seemed magnified by her glasses, her eyes hard and dark in silver frames. She was all red and grayish, red lips and rouge on her cheeks and grayish-blond hair to the shoulders of her flowery blouse. Another one trying to look girlish, but in a different way than Donna worked it. This one was a lot older and heavier, more like a foster mom he’d had named Jackie, who worked hard with six of her own kids in the house and was always sweating. Had little beads of perspiration on her upper lip like this one. Jackie could look you in the eye and tell if you were lying.

“I was wondering if you might be working on that Cobo Hall expansion.”

This woman seemed to know the business.

“As a matter of fact we were,” Richie said, hoping she wasn’t setting him up, trying to trip him. She didn’t appear suspicious. He’d still better cut the chitchat before he got in trouble. It was funny how he had the feeling of being back in a foster home.

“Anyway, what I started to tell you, I don’t see what difference it makes who mails the check, you or us. But the boss says we have to do it. I guess since it’s up to the company. You understand it’s not the boss doesn’t trust you. I told him you were a nice lady to offer in the first place.”

“And I told you,” Lenore said, “I don’t have their address. She never gave it to me. The only thing I have’s their phone number.”

Richie felt an urge to slap this old woman across the face and tell her to, goddammit, wake up. Why didn’t she say so on the phone and save them a trip? He had to wait till he could act natural and sound surprised before saying to her, “You didn’t mention that, did you, you have their number?”

“Not on the phone I didn’t,” Lenore said. “I wasn’t absolutely positive whom I was speaking to. I’ve had some problems with the wrong kind of people calling me, if you know what I mean.”

“I understand,” Richie said, forgiving the woman now that it seemed so easy. “You can’t be too careful.”

“Anything the least bit suspicious I report to the Annoyance Call Bureau. That’s what they’re for.”

“I don’t blame you,” Richie said, not knowing what she was talking about, but wanting to get this deal moving. “Well, I don’t see any problem now. You know we’re like family. Ironworkers build America and they look out for each other. Let’s call and get that address so we can send Wayne his check.”

“Ironworkers drink more than anybody in America, too,” Lenore said. “You give him that check, you know where he’ll cash it, don’t you? The nearest bar.”

“You’re saying Wayne drinks?”

“You know an ironworker doesn’t?”

“I barely touch it myself,” Richie said, thinking, Wait a minute. Jesus, is that all ...And said it, “Is that all you’re worried about, he’ll spend it on liquor?”

“The way I look at it,” Lenore said, “if he doesn’t have extra money to spend, he won’t be tempted beyond what little willpower he might have. I don’t see why I should make my little girl’s life any harder than it is, with all she has to put up with.”

Man, here was a woman who could ruin your life knowing what was best for you.

Richie felt himself on the verge of causing her pain. Ask her to tell him the number. If she wouldn’t, bend her old-woman arm behind her back till she did. Or grab a handful of that skin hanging from her throat and give it a twist. He wouldn’t hit her. He had never hit a woman with his fist. Well, maybe once or twice. He’d punched Laurie that time, trying to find out if Kevin had been fucking her; but that was different, they were married. He was thinking of what he might do here, like start tearing her clothes off . . .

When Lenore said, “There’s only one way I’d consider making the call.”

It stopped Richie, just as he saw himself about to rip open her flowery blouse.

“And that’s if I leave it up to Carmen. If she says send the check, she can use it, then all right, it’s okay with me. But I won’t tell Wayne about it if he answers and I won’t let you talk to him, either.”

“That’s fine with me,” Richie said, experiencing a relief and then a tender feeling as they went to the phone sitting on a table and the woman bent over to look in her address book. Richie laid his hand on the warm, moist material covering her back and gave it a few gentle pats.

Lenore said, “Have you ever had back trouble? Mine is just killing me.”

Richie moved his hand down her old-woman spine, exploring. “Where? Right there?”

Ferris stood in the doorway to the hall: hands on his hips, no sport coat today, wearing a white shirt with the three top buttons undone, the short sleeves turned up to show more arm and muscle, and a big revolver snubbed high on his right hip.

The pose, Carmen thought. Saying, Look at me, Ferris Britton, Deputy Marshal. Dumb enough to be a TV star, he had the hair, the build, the fake

boyish grin. ... The only trouble was he was real.

“I rang the bell.”

Carmen waited.

“You heard it, didn’t you? You can’t say I just walked in on you.”

“What do you call it?” Carmen said. “I didn’t notice anybody opened the door for you.” She stood between the window and the sofa only half-turned to him, arms folded in her own kind of pose.

“I bet you even saw me drive up. Ernie, you heard me ring the bell, didn’t you?”

Molina, seated again, said, “Yeah, I heard it.”

“Then why didn’t you come to the door?”

“I don’t live here no more.”

“I guess that’s true enough, Ernie, but you could’ve answered the door, couldn’t you?”

Ferris serious was annoying as Ferris grinning. “The reason we didn’t open the door,” Carmen said, “was because we didn’t want you to come in. It’s that simple.”

“Why not?”

“Jesus, what difference does it make? Just leave, okay? Take your shoulders and your wavy hair and leave, will you, please?”

Ferris raised one hand to his head, frowning. “My hair? Man, I’d like to know what is going on here. I already got a bone to pick with you, lady, calling Detroit on me. I like to got in trouble. I said, well, why didn’t somebody tell me the guy wasn’t up on charges?” Ferris looked at Molina. “Her old man. You ever hear of a government witness wasn’t dirty? I haven’t.”

The phone rang in the kitchen, the sound coming from behind him. Ferris held up his hand.

“I got it—don’t nobody move. It’s prob’ly for me.” The phone rang again. “If it isn’t, I bet it’s a wrong number.” The phone rang again. “How much you want to bet?” He waited for another ring before turning and crossing the hall to the kitchen.

Carmen started after him and Molina said, “Don’t bother.” She hesitated and came around slowly.

“It’s my house.”

“Yeah, and he walks in, he answers the phone. He’ll look in the icebox, complain if you don’t have fresh orange juice . . .”

They heard the phone ring again, once.

Carmen stood still, listening, then needed to move, do something, and looked at Molina, at his perfect hair as he brought out his cigarettes. He seemed at ease lighting one, used to having a U.S. marshal in the house, blowing the smoke out in a slow stream.

“You don’t need this,” Molina said.

“I know that, for God’s sake.”

“Take it easy. You got to stay cool, but you got to watch him, too. What I mean by you don’t need this, you don’t need government protection. So you got two guys looking for you—go someplace else, wherever you want, you don’t have to stay here. Just don’t tell nobody.”

Carmen stepped around the coffee table and sat down thinking, Why not? Sell the pickup, get in the car and go. She said, “My husband has a job. He likes it here.”

“So what? You don’t. Tell him you’ve had enough of this shit, you want to leave. Go where you want, California, someplace out there. You know what the kid marshal wants, don’t you? What he’s gonna get around to before long,” Molina’s voice fading as he said, “if he hasn’t already.”

“Well, I was right,” Ferris said, coming in from the hall. “Wrong number. They called twice. The second time—you hear me? I go, ‘Hey, I just gone done telling you there’s nobody here by that name.’ ” He came over to the coffee table. “So what’re you talking about now?” Looking from Carmen to Molina. “Ernie, you telling stories about me? Man, I thought I was rid of you. Here you turn up again.”

“Mr. Molina’s wife left something,” Carmen said. “He came to get it.”

“Oh, that’s right, it’s Mr. Mo-leen-ah,” Ferris said, winking at Carmen. “I keep forgetting how important he is, big Mafia witness, and call him Ernie. Hey, Ernie? What’d Roseanne forget, her diaphragm?”

Carmen watched Molina. He didn’t bother to answer.

Ferris moved around the end of the coffee table to get closer and look down at him.

“You and her back together?”

“Everything’s fine.”

“Gee, I’m surprised,” Ferris said. “From the way she acted I thought, well, she either had enough of you or she wasn’t getting enough from you, one.” He looked at Carmen. “Roseanne liked company. Old Ernie’d go to work tending bar, Roseanne’d call me up. ‘Hi, watcha doing? Why don’t you come over and have a drink? Me and Bitsy are all alone here.’ Her and that goddarn dog. You still have Bits, Ernie? Nobody’s kicked her little teeth in?”

“We still have her, yeah.”

Molina drew on his cigarette, blew the smoke out in a sigh and Ferris began waving his hand at it.

“Ernie, what’re you doing?” Sounding disappointed, glancing at Carmen as he said, “I’ve been trying to get him to quit ever since I got assigned here. Ernie, you know what smoking does to you.”

Carmen watched him take hold of Molina’s hairpiece, grab a handful and lift it from his head. Molina didn’t move.

“It makes your hair fall out. This here,” Ferris said, inspecting the rug closely, feeling it now, a small animal in his hand, “is from a lifetime of smoking.”

Molina’s eyes raised to Ferris for a moment, Carmen watching him. He looked at her then and seemed to shrug. Carmen pushed up from the sofa.

She heard Ferris say, “Where you going?” as she walked out of the living room, crossed the hall to the kitchen and could feel him behind her by the time she reached the table and picked up the phone. “Who you calling?”

“The police.”

“Hey, come on. Who you think I am?”

“The biggest asshole I’ve ever met in my life,” Carmen said, dialing the operator.

He reached past her and took hold of the cord. “I’ll yank it right out of the wall.”

Carmen put the phone down. She stood against the end of the breakfast table, her back to Ferris. She could smell his after-shave, feel his hands slide up on her shoulders.

“That’s not nice, talking like that,” Ferris said, his voice low, close to her. “You want me to wash your little mouth out with soap? I will, I’ll wash your little ears, too, and your little neck. I’ll wash any parts you want. How’s that sound to you?”

“You’re sure,” Richie said, “you didn’t dial it wrong.”

“I was a telephone operator twenty-five years. I don’t dial wrong numbers.”

“And you’re positive when you wrote it down—”

“Listen to me, will you? I know numbers. I hear a seven-digit number it registers in my head till I jot it down. And there it is, right there.”

He looked past her shoulder where she was bent over the desk, hands flat on the surface, staring at the number.

She’d said they were in Missouri someplace. St. Louis? No, that wasn’t it. Richie said he’d never been to Missouri. He’d been to East St. Louis, but that was over in Illinois. East St. Louis, shit, you had to stand in line to commit a crime, but didn’t tell her that.

This woman was pretty smart. She knew something was wrong and even said it, though more to herself than to him. “There’s something wrong somewhere.”

“You mentioned you had trouble with your phone.”

“I had trouble with callers, not the instrument. I told you, I referred the matter to the Annoyance Call Bureau and they put a trap on my line.”

“They listen in?”

“No, a trap records what number is calling this number. That’s how you catch obscene callers.”

“You had any?”

“Yes, I did, I’m sorry to say.”

“What’d he do, talk dirty to you?”

“I would never ever in my life repeat one word of what that man said.”

“You have to wonder about people like that,” Richie said, “what gets in their head and makes them become perverts. Here, let me help you.” Lenore was groaning as she tried to straighten up from the desk. Richie got under one of her arms and lifted.

“I should never bend over that far from the waist,” Lenore said. “It’s like somebody stuck a knife in me.”

“That’s your sacroiliac. I mentioned I could give you a back rub. I learned how from a foster mom I had one time named Jackie. She was some kind of therapist before that, worked with cripples. Let’s get you on the couch. ... No, let’s get you down right here on the floor, over here on the carpet. I’ll get a pillow for your head, so you’ll be comfortable.”

Lenore eased down to her hands and knees on the living-room floor. Now she looked up at Richie

taking off his ironworker’s jacket. “You sure you know what you’re doing?” “Yes, ma’am.” “You aren’t gonna hurt me, are you?”

17

CARMEN OPENED HER EYES to see the lamp turned on, Wayne kneeling next to the bed looking at her, waiting.

“You awake?”

“I am now. What time is it?”

“Quarter after two.”

“You must’ve closed the bar.”

“We barely made last call. I’ve been working since I left here this morning till just a while ago. Had supper on the towboat, it wasn’t bad either.”

Carmen could smell the strong soap Wayne used. She stared at his face, for a moment wanting to touch it, the tough weathered skin shiny clean but drawn. He looked worn out.

“Why didn’t you call?”

“I tried to. I forgot the number and the operator wouldn’t tell me ’cause it’s unlisted. I said, it’s my house. Didn’t do any good.”

“I called the drydock when you didn’t come home,” Carmen said. “Whoever it was said you hadn’t been there all day.”

“The foreman knew where I was.” Wayne smiled. “That’s why we sound a little cool, huh? I’ll show you my coveralls, you’ll see I wasn’t out chasing women. You know where I was? On the Curtis Moore, the harbor tug. We brought some barges up from Westlake, putting together a tow. They’re gonna leave first thing in the morning, like in four hours. That boat I helped repair.”

“Your new life,” Carmen said.

“Well, I’m looking it over. You get out there, talk to guys who’ve been on the river a while, they wouldn’t think of doing anything else.”

“Maybe it’s all they know.”

“It’s more than that. I think the river gets to you.”

Carmen rolled her eyes at him.

“Well, it’s what you said, it’s a life, it’s not just the river. It’s places, it’s...like they’re talking about running the Lower Memphis bridge southbound, how you come along Interstate-Forty, stay close to Mud Island and point at the High-Rise Motel. Like you’re driving along the highway, only you have a quarter of a mile of barges out in front of you.”

Carmen said, “Not like walking on high steel.”

“It’s different, yeah, but you get the same kind of feeling that, you know, you’re doing something. It’s not just a job where you get paid, you go home and put hamburgers on the grill and sit there thinking, Shit, I gotta go to work tomorrow.”

“When did you put hamburgers on the grill?”

“You know what I mean.”

“It’s big stuff,” Carmen said.

“That’s right. It’s not a building you can look at after, but you know you’ve done something.”

“Like today?”

“Yeah, putting that tow together, getting ready . . .” He stopped and said, “What’d you do today?”

Remembering her. He did it sometimes when she least expected and it made her feel comfortable, nothing to worry about. She said, “You first.”

“Well, this morning I’m on the drydock, a company boat arrives with a tow. They come down from Burlington, Iowa, with hopper barges loaded with grain they have to get to New Orleans by a certain day, a ship’s waiting at the dock, so it’s what they call a hot tow. But they also have eight coal barges they’re supposed to drop off at Cairo, Illinois, a thousand ton of coal in each one, you talk about big stuff. But if they stop at Cairo they won’t get to New Orleans on time ...You listening?”

“A thousand tons of coal in each one.”

“You feel all right? You look tired.”

“I am. I just got to sleep before you came home.”

“What were you doing?”

“Lying here trying to sleep . . . thinking.”

“You want to leave, don’t you?”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“You know what I hear is a good place? St. Louis. A hundred and ten miles north of here. Burlington, where they picked up the grain, is another couple hundred miles. Anyway, they have to get to New Orleans, so they leave the eight coal barges here for the Robert R. Nally, the boat I worked on. It’s repaired now, ready to go. We used the Curtis Moore to bring up eight barges of crushed rock from the quarry at Westlake and now we’ve got a sixteen-barge tow. What they’ll do is drop the coal off at Cairo and haul the rock down to Louisiana to use as building revetments. See, the federal government won’t let contractors use shell anymore, you know, seashells, to mix their concrete. So they use this crushed rock from up here.”

Wayne paused and Carmen waited, knowing he wasn’t finished. Finally she said, “Yeah ...?”

“They asked me if I want to go.”

“Are you?”

“It’s okay with the drydock foreman. I could get off just about anywhere I want and catch a northbound tow to come back.”

“Is that river talk?”

“What?”

“Catch a tow?”

“I don’t know—I’d only be gone a few days.”

“Then why don’t you go?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Well, if they’re leaving this morning . . .”

“In about four hours.”

“You’d better get some sleep.”

“I thought maybe I’d get in with you. It’s been a while, and if I’m gonna be gone . . .”

“We made love last night,” Carmen said. “You don’t remember?”

Wayne stared at her thinking about it. He said, “Was that last night? Uh-unh, it was the night before, after you threw the beer can at me.” He said, “Well, I can wait if you can.” He gave her a kiss good-night, got in his own bed and said to her in the dark, “We could check it off on the calendar each time and keep score. The way your mom used to do it.”

He thought that was funny. He’d say, well, it is. You take things too seriously.

Lying awake listening to him snore. Trying not to resent the way he could fall asleep almost at will.

She could say something that was really funny and he wouldn’t get it, but she was the one who took things too seriously or was too sensitive. He’d say, if that’s the word. Sensitive. He didn’t trust it. When she used to have problems at work, someone in the real estate office stealing her leads, she’d be afraid to tell him. He’d say, well, you settle it or forget it, don’t piss and moan. Now she had Ferris making the moves, touching her, telling her he’d be back, he’d look for her car in the drive and stop in when she was home, telling her he was a patient man and once she got to know him ... But if she told Wayne she was afraid he would go after Ferris and get in trouble, threatening or assaulting a federal officer. Or was she afraid he might not and say she was imagining it? Why would the guy make the moves on a woman ten years older than he was? Seven years. All right, seven years. Good-looking guy, he wouldn’t have any trouble getting girls. Wayne would say that being a moron had nothing to do with it. But being smarter didn’t solve the problem either. Getting straight A’s twenty years ago. If she mentioned Ferris tonight, Wayne might decide it was a problem to be settled now, not put off or forgotten, and he’d miss his boat ride. So maybe you’re playing the martyr, Carmen thought.

And then thought of her mother. She’d better call her tomorrow.

That business about keeping score, marking a calendar each time you made love, was something her dad had told Wayne. Her mother never said a word about it. The way Wayne had told it to Carmen:

“Your dad says, ‘You understand, all those years of marriage we’re using the rhythm method of birth control. It gives you about a week a month when it’s safe to do it. So it became known as Love Week with us and among some of our friends, all the micks. The problem was, the wife could hold it over your head. Say you’re at a party and she wants to go home and you don’t, you’re having a good time. She whispers in your ear, “We go home right now, buddy, or you don’t get any.” You have to decide quick. You want to get smashed, have a good time? You do, you’re gonna have to wait a month to get laid. This goes on for years of marriage. One night I’m not feeling so good, I’m constipated, sitting in the bathroom trying to get something going. Lenore says to me through the door, “If you want to have sexual intercourse”— that’s what she called it, sexual intercourse—“you have to come right this minute.” I sat there thinking about it and decided, that’s it for Love Week. No more. I left the house the next morning and we got a divorce.’ He tells me all this, I say, ‘Yeah, but there’s one thing you didn’t mention. Did you have sexual intercourse that night?’ And your dad says, ‘Why not?’ ”

Maybe it was funny.

***

Wayne rolled out of bed saying, “Jesus, I’m late. I’ll never make it.”

“That clock’s fast,” Carmen said. She stood in her robe watching him. “The coffee’s made. What else do you want, a sandwich?”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I did, twice. I thought, well, if he wants to go he’ll get up. If he doesn’t, he won’t. Isn’t that the way you’d look at it?”

Less than ten minutes later he was in the kitchen, clean coveralls over his shoulder. Carmen sat at the breakfast table with toast and coffee, looking out at the backyard in a mist of rain.

“I can’t find my goddamn keys. I bought new gloves, I can’t find them either.”

“The gloves are on the refrigerator.”

“I know I didn’t leave them in the pickup. I used my house key to come in.” He stood looking about the kitchen saying, “Shit, I don’t know where they are.”

“I made you a meat-loaf sandwich,” Carmen said. “Sit down, have some coffee.”

“No, I gotta run. Listen, I’ll have to take the Olds. You mind?”

“Didn’t you park behind it, in the drive?”

“I can get around the pickup. I’m not worried about ruining that goddamn lawn.”

“What if I have to go somewhere?”

“Well, the keys’re here someplace, you’ll find them, you’re good at finding things.” He came over to the table, picked up the sandwich, took a bite and gave Carmen a kiss. “I’ll call you when we get to Cairo. It should be early this afternoon.”

“I wish I knew what time,” Carmen said.

“I think early, by two anyway.”

Wayne walked out of the kitchen, was gone only a few moments and came back in.

“You have the keys for the Olds?”

Carmen was positive Ferris would stop by sometime today. She had made up her mind, the moment she saw that cream-colored Plymouth coming up Hillglade she’d call the Cape Girardeau Police, 555–6621, she had the number memorized. Or, she’d run out back and hide in the woods. The only problem was she had to find Wayne’s keys and call her mother, and she didn’t want to be down on the floor looking under the dresser or in the kitchen talking to her mom and hear Ferris walk in. Not again. It was not ever going to happen again. She could leave here, call her mom from the mall or somewhere once she found the god-damn keys. But it was hard to stop and think where they might be when she had to keep running into the living room to look out the window. She decided, finally, to make the call. Get it over with.

Carmen sat at the breakfast table, dialed the number, cleared her throat and waited. She listened to it ring several times, thinking, Come on, will you? She got up from the table with the phone and brought it across the kitchen as far as the cord would reach, the phone ringing several more times. From here she could look straight into the living room and see the big picture window and its view: the back end of a failed subdivision where cars seldom went by. She saw the road directly in front of the house and trees beyond in this morning’s mist of rain. The phone continued to ring, Carmen listening, thinking, One more. But let it ring twice again, staring at the front window, and was startled to hear her mother saying, “Who is this?”

“Mom? It’s me.”

“Well, where are you?”

“The same place. Did I call at the wrong time?”

“I was lying down on the floor with my legs on a chair. It’s the only way I can get any relief, if I lie perfectly still and not move.”

“What’s wrong, your back?”

“I had to crawl to the phone. My back has never been this bad in my entire life.”

“I’m awfully sorry, really. Did you call yesterday?”

“I called twice. You gave me the wrong number. I’ve been in terrible pain ever since that man was here and gave me the back rub. Oh, my Lord, when I try to move. I have to crawl to the bathroom to go the toilet. I didn’t sleep all night with the pain, I couldn’t.”

Carmen stared at the front window in the living room.

“What man? Who was it gave you the back rub?”

“From the company Wayne was working for, when you left. They want to send him his check.”

“He picked it up,” Carmen said. “I’m pretty sure.”

Her mother groaned saying, “I’ve never felt pain like this. I imagine you can tell from my voice. It’s just something terrible when I try to move.”

“Mom, you let a man give you a back rub you don’t even know. What’s his name?”

“He seemed nice, he said he learned from a therapist how to do it. Now I can’t walk, I can’t dress myself or take a bath. I should’ve known better than to let an ironworker touch me. I’m not going to the hospital, the way they treat you. If I lie here on the floor and try not to move ... It’s so cold in the house, I’m gonna have to see if I can reach the thermostat and turn the heat up. But I raise my arms, it just about kills me.”

“Mom, if I was home you know I’d come. I’m seven hundred miles away.”

A car appeared in the front window. There for a moment creeping past the house. A light-colored car.

“How long would it take you?”

Carmen stared at the window, empty now.

“Not more than a day, would it? ... Carmen?”

“I can’t just drop everything and come. Wayne’s off on a job.”

“I don’t need Wayne. You drove your car, didn’t you?”

“There must be someone you can call, one of your friends.”

“Like who? They work or baby-sit or have husbands they have to take care of. Doctors don’t make house calls, they don’t do you any good anyway. Sit and wait hours to see them, they give you a prescription . . .”

The car appeared again and Carmen was ready. A cream-colored Plymouth, Ferris’s car, no doubt about it, creeping by, going the other way now. She couldn’t see the driveway in the window. The car passed from view but might have turned in.

“They give you so-called pain pills that don’t come near reaching the pain I have now. If you ever suffered from it you’d know what I mean. Well, I’m gonna try to get up those stairs and go to bed. I have that extra-firm mattress with a board

under it . . .”

“Mom, I’ll have to call you back.”

“Not that it did me any good last night, and I can’t stay up there, but I just don’t know what else to do.”

“Mom!”

“What?”

“Someone’s here. I’ll call you back, okay?”

“Who is it?”

Carmen said, “I’ll call you as soon as I can,” placed the phone on the floor and ran into the living room.

Wayne’s pickup stood in the drive. There was no sign of a cream-colored Plymouth.

Carmen stood by the window knowing Ferris would be back, wanting to be ready but thinking about the keys for the pickup too, wanting to get out of here.

She had looked everywhere in the house Wayne might have dropped or left a ring holding a half dozen keys and a St. Christopher medal. She had looked in the pockets of his dirty coveralls, the pants and shirt he’d worn yesterday, on top the refrigerator, where his new work gloves were lying and he’d forgotten them, even inside the refrigerator and behind it. She pictured him entering the house last night, turning the light off in the kitchen, he might’ve gotten a beer but she didn’t think so, coming in the bedroom then. She tried it again, pictured him entering the house and stopped, almost certain where the keys were.

She found them, the house key still in the side door, the rest of the keys hanging from the ring, the door open a few inches, like that since Wayne had run out of the house this morning.

Carmen changed her clothes, from jeans to a pair of good beige slacks. She stood in the bedroom in her cotton bra trying to decide what to wear on top, a blouse, a turtleneck, wanting to hurry, get dressed and get out of here. But couldn’t make up her mind and ran into the living room in the bra and slacks and felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

Ferris’s Plymouth was coming up Hillglade Drive.

She watched it slow down, coasting, and creep past the house, its windshield wipers sweeping back and forth, side windows streaked with rain, a figure inside that had to be Ferris. The car disappeared up the road, past a stand of trees.

Carmen moved closer to the window and stood watching for several minutes, wondering why Ferris hadn’t stopped. The only reason she could think of, he saw the pickup in the drive and thought Wayne was home.

It could be safer to stay than leave. She turned a chair to face the window and sat down. About ten minutes later the phone rang. Carmen remained in the chair.

By noon it had stopped raining.

At twelve-thirty the cream-colored Plymouth came up Hillglade Drive again and crept past the house. The car’s side window was down and this time she saw Ferris behind the wheel, his face, sunglasses on, looking at the house.

Fifteen minutes later the phone rang. Carmen didn’t answer it.

Ferris drove by again at one-thirty. Carmen was sure he was going to stop this time. The car seemed to pause at the driveway before continuing up the road. She waited for the phone to ring, but no sound came from the kitchen.

At two o’clock she changed back to her jeans, took off her bra, put on a tank top and a clean white Oxford-cloth shirt and returned to the window to watch and think some more, though she was almost certain now what she was going to do, tired of watching, tired of being here.

As dumb as Ferris was he could find out Wayne was off somewhere on a towboat. Or even if he thought Wayne was home he could ring the bell to find out, or he could walk in—why would he be afraid of Wayne? And if she saw him coming up Hillglade again, called the Cape Girardeau Police and told them he was driving past the house . . . Oh, is that right? They could find him in the house, so what? It was his. They would have to catch him ripping her clothes off . . .

Carmen went into the kitchen, stood at the breakfast table, dialed a number and waited.

“Who is this?”

“Mom? I’m coming home.”

“Well, it’s about time. Are you watching Phil Donahue?”

“No, I’m not.” Carmen brought the phone away from the table to stare through the living room at the front window, bright sunlight outside.

“He’s interviewing couples who live together and engaged couples who say they aren’t going to, you know, have relations till they get married. They show one of the girls real close and the word virgin comes on the screen telling that’s what she is, a virgin, like she’s some kind of rare bird. Can you imagine? It’s like they’re saying, ‘Look at this virgin, everybody.’ You didn’t see it?”

“Mom, I’m leaving as soon as I hear from Wayne.”

18

THE CAPTAIN OF the Robert R. Nally said to Wayne up in the pilothouse, “Put your hand on your chest halfway between your neck and your belly button. Now look over there at your elbow. That’s the kind of bend I’m coming to at Gray’s Point and have to get around without stubbing my tow on a sandbar. If I do, this whole shebang will come apart on me and I won’t look too good, will I?”

In the rain and mist, fog shutting them down as they approached the Thebes railroad bridge and the captain told Wayne Thebes was where the rivermen sued the railroad for building these obstructions, Abe Lincoln represented the railroad and the scudders won. Wayne said, well, you have to have bridges, don’t you? “Nineteen and forty-eight,” the captain said, “I was a deckhand on the Natchez when she hit the Greenville bridge and went down in ninety feet of water, twelve drowned. Abe Lincoln might’ve freed the slaves, but he didn’t help rivermen none.” The captain in his suit and tie stood there working his chrome-plated controls staring straight ahead, his three football fields of barges hidden in the mist. He had radar and two deckhands on the front of the tow with Handie-Talkies, but still couldn’t run a bridge in fog, so an eight-hour trip was going to take about ten.

Wayne drank coffee with the captain in the pilothouse, with the chief engineer down in the racket of diesel engines, with the mate and the two off-duty deckhands at the long table in the lounge. Coffee with noon dinner and pie for dessert, the woman cook asking Wayne if he wanted her to a-la-mode that for him. The table reminded him at first of a steel-company trailer at noon hour, except here they talked about Cardinals and Cubs instead of Tigers and Jays and the deckhands were young guys, they were loud and laughed at stupid remarks.

The mate, on the river twenty years, sat hunched over his coffee, holding it on the table with two hands. When he stood up he was still hunched over, one of those skinny guys with high bony shoulders and slicked-back dark hair Wayne saw in cheap downtown bars after he came off the steel. The mate said the work suited him, he liked the thirty days on and thirty off. He was leaving the boat at Cairo to go visit his girlfriend in Marysville, she was doing a stay at the Ohio Women’s Reformatory. Wayne asked him if he wanted to be a pilot. The mate said he knew the river and the Rules of the Road backward, but the chickenshit government people wouldn’t let him have a license on account of he only had one eye, this one here was glass. Once of the deckhands said the mate had as much chance of getting up to the pilothouse as growing hair on his tongue. The other deckhand thought that was pretty funny and the mate got up and walked out of the lounge. The deckhands told Wayne the mate had been fired and was being put ashore for getting caught drinking on the boat. It wasn’t allowed, unless you went overboard and if you came up they might give you a shot.

They talked about barge lines they’d worked for, about captains and pilots that were pricks, about guys falling overboard, some popping up astern, some not and getting carried downstream to be found on a sandbar or lying cold on the riprap, the crushed rocks you saw along a revetment. It was slippery out on the barges from all the grease and shit, or you could trip on a ratchet, and if you went over at night you better have a flashlight on you. It sounded like they wanted him to understand this was no place for sissies. Wayne could have recited the book to them on falling from all kinds of places, buildings, bridges, factories, but didn’t; or tell them his trade or where he was from and the deckhands didn’t ask.

He began to think you had to start young in this river business. As in any other.

He was alert the first few hours of the trip, then felt it becoming tiresome. Even if you were working there wasn’t that much to do when the boat was under way, and with all those barges it only went about eight or ten miles an hour. They’d be moving south making headway, flank around a bend and be going in the opposite direction for the next hour or so. There was nothing to see but mist and rain most of the trip and you had to wear a life preserver when you went on deck. When he tried to forget it on purpose, the mate caught him, asked Wayne if he thought he had special privileges. Once in a while that morning there’d be a glimpse of shore or an island. There’s Counterfeit Rock. There’s Burnham. Over there’s Commerce, Missouri. The sky cleared by the time they got to Dogtooth Bend, a name to store away and tell Carmen. After that the points of interest were Greenleaf Bend, the I-57 highway bridge, Eliza’s Point on the Illinois side, some more bridges and finally Cairo.

To the mate: “Is it a nice town?”

“What, Cairo? No, it ain’t.”

“I’m thinking of getting off with you.”

“Do what you want,” the mate said.

With the end of the trip in sight Wayne returned to the pilothouse. He could actually see a line where the two rivers met, the muddy Mississippi running past hard, the beautiful Ohio settling in a pool to keep out of its way. Rounding Cairo Point the captain said, “Now I’m gonna stick my head over into the Ohio, leave my stern in the Mississippi and just kinda flip her around, like the catch on an outhouse door.”

“It’s been a trip,” Wayne said, “but if you don’t mind, I’m getting off here.”

“We have better days than this, when you can see the countryside. We have worse ones too.”

Wayne said, “There’s all that engine noise and vibration,” and was surprised he thought that; ironworking was way noisier. “Or else I’m too old to learn a new trade.”

“Ride down to New Orleans with me,” the captain said. “That town will make you feel young again.”

By the time they tied up at Waterfront Services, Wayne was out of his coveralls and had on his ironworker’s jacket. He picked up his overnight bag and followed the mate carrying his suitcase across barges to get ashore. They walked past the floodwall and through a decaying area where bums hung out, sat in discarded chairs and car seats around a fire that became a cloud of smudge rising in the damp air. Wayne said it looked like more rain was coming. The mate didn’t say or care. They walked a long block to the Skipper Lounge—Beer, Wine, Liquors & Pizza—that was maybe one notch above a skid-row bar. No cars in front, full of guys off boats.

They ordered bourbon and shells of beer, the mate looking around at the rivermen in here, nodding to some, Wayne looking at his watch. Ten to five. He’d have one and call his honey, tell her the good news, that he’d be home in the morning if not before. They tossed down the shots and ordered another one each.

“I have to see about a ride back,” Wayne said. “I was told it can be arranged. Here or down at Waterfront Services.”

The mate stood hunched, leaning on the bar. He looked past his shoulder at Wayne. “You had enough, huh?”

Wayne shrugged, sipped his beer.

“I could’ve told you.”

Wayne watched him straighten to drink his shot.

“You could’ve told me what?”

“You weren’t ever gonna cut it.”

The mate looked at the bartender for another shot, pointing a finger at his glass. Wayne looked at his watch. It was still ten to five.

“How’d you know that?”

“What?”

“You don’t think I can cut it.”

“You remind me of these college boys come along in the summer, looking for a trip on the river. They last about two days. But that’s longer’n you did—up there Mr. Big Shot in the pilothouse.” The mate tossed off his bourbon and got back down on the bar before he said to Wayne, peeking past his shoulder at him, “What I wondered was if the captain let you suck him off.”

Wayne’s overnight bag was sitting on the bar. He pushed it aside and leaned on his arms to get down closer. “You don’t know who I am, anything about me. Why would you say something like that?”

“Well, you’re a queer, aren’t you? Isn’t that what queers do?”

Wayne studied the man’s one-eyed face, his dumb mean expression, one of those nasty drunks Wayne could never understand, why booze turned them bitter, made them want to fight or tear up a place or drive their car into a tree. It had an opposite effect on Wayne, it made him feel warm and witty, able to abide even assholes and mime the tune “My Girl” the way the Temptations did it, with all the moves. But he wasn’t drunk now or anywhere near to feeling good. He said to the mate, “Which one’d you tell me was your glass eye?”

It caused the mate to stare, hesitate, but only a moment. “You don’t know shit, do you? Can’t tell a towboat from a coal hopper, a real eye from one that ain’t.”

“The clear one,” Wayne said, “that isn’t all bloodshot. You lose it in a bar?”

“Boy hit me with a bottle.”

“I can believe it, the kind of mouth you have. I’m surprised you aren’t dead by now.”

“We’re getting to it,” the mate said, “aren’t we?”

Wayne said, “No, we’re there.” He straightened and put his hand on the man’s bony shoulder. “And I’ll tell you where we’re at. You’re gonna quit mouthing off, okay? You don’t, I’ll pound that glass eye into you so hard you’ll be using it to peek out your asshole.” Wayne got a grip on the man’s coat, pulled him straight up and held him there one-handed looking into his good eye. “Is that what you want? Nod or shake your head, but be careful you don’t speak.”

The poor dumb one-eyed drunk seemed to shake his head. Or was that a nod? It didn’t matter— what was the question? The guy’s breath was so bad Wayne had to put him down. He saw the bartender coming over with a stern look.

“I’m okay, but give him one. Where’s your phone?”

The bartender was a big bald-headed guy in a plaid wool shirt. He hooked his thumb toward the back of the room.

Moving along the bar Wayne looked at his watch. Not yet five. He had hoped to call earlier and was anxious now, getting a quarter out of his pocket as he reached the phone booth, stepped inside and closed the door. He’d reverse the charge, no problem, Carmen would be home. He raised the quarter to drop it in the slot and an awful feeling came over him. It caused him to say out loud in the quiet confinement of the booth, “SHIT!”

He didn’t know the goddamn number.

It was in his mind last night when he was talking to Carmen, telling her how the operator wouldn’t help him—Write it down before you go to bed. He could remember telling himself that. And forgot to do it.

Wayne looked in his wallet. He had the number of Cape Barge Line. But they didn’t have his. He didn’t have a phone when he had filled out the job application. What he did have was the office number of the U.S. Marshals Service. They’d have his—if that moron Ferris wrote it down. It was almost five. Wayne could see the moron and his secretary leaving for the day, the door swings closed and the phone starts ringing. He had about five minutes. But first he’d have to get change at the bar. He couldn’t imagine Ferris accepting a collect call.

Carmen packed all the clothes her big canvas suitcase would hold and put it inside the pickup on the seat. She would have to come back sometime for the rest of her things, but wasn’t going to worry about that now. Her plan was to leave at five. If Wayne didn’t call by then she’d write a note and tape it to the refrigerator. Ferris could walk in and read it if he wanted, it wouldn’t matter, she’d be gone. She felt less edgy with the keys in her hand and her bag in the truck. She had enough money for gas. What else? She got her navy wool coat out of the closet, and a sweater she hadn’t packed and took them out to the pickup. Coming back into the house she heard the phone ringing and thought of Ferris.

“How’re you doing, honey?”

“Wayne?”

“I’m gone one day and you don’t know who I am. We were late getting in on account of fog. You run a bridge you have to see where you’re going.”

Carmen stood in the middle of the kitchen with the phone, looking into the living room.

“Where are you?”

“Cairo, but I’m coming home soon as I can catch a tow. Probably get back tomorrow morning, early.”

It surprised her and she was curious—even as she continued to stare at the front window.

“You said you’d be gone three days.”

“Well . . . I’ll tell you about it when I get back, but you know what the thing was that turned me off. Don’t laugh, but you have to wear a life preserver. I never wore a safety line on the job—you know I’m not gonna work someplace you have to wear a life preserver. These guys talk about falling overboard, shit, they don’t know what a fall is. It was okay, I had a pretty good time. Now I’m gonna go look for a ride.”

“Wayne, I won’t be here when you get back.” She said it fast. “Mom’s sick, I have to go take care of her.”

“Your mom? Your mom’s always sick. Jesus, what’s the matter now?”

“Her back, she can’t move.”

“That woman snaps her finger, you jump. Jesus Christ, don’t you know she’s using you?”

“Wayne, I’m going.”

There was a silence.

“All right, listen, I’ll leave right this minute. You can wait till tomorrow morning, can’t you?”

“I want to get out of here,” Carmen said, staring at that front window. “I waited all afternoon for you to call. I’m packed now, ready to go.”

“I forgot to write down the number. I had to call Ferris.”

“Oh, shit, you didn’t. I’m leaving, right now.”

“Wait a minute, will you? Did he come in the house again?”

“He’s been driving by all day, sneaking around. If he knows I’m alone—he could be on his way right now.”

“His girl said he was out on the job.”

“Wayne, I have trouble telling you things you don’t want to hear or you don’t believe. This guy, this creep, is after me. He walks in the house and thinks he can do anything he wants. Do you understand that? He has told me he’s coming by when you’re not home. Now do you want me to stay and wait for him?”

“I’ll call him up.”

“Wayne, I’m walking out of the house. I’m leaving right this minute.”

There was a silence.

“All right, then I’ll see you at home. I mean our real home. Yeah, that’s fine with me, I’m ready. I’ll see you tomorrow. It’ll be later, but I’ll see you. . . . You found the keys, huh?”

“Yeah, I found them.”

“I knew you would.”

“Wayne, I’ll most likely be at Mother’s.”

There was a silence again.

“Well, if you are, I’ll see you at your mom’s,” Wayne said. “That’s how much I miss you.”

This was a low-life place but comfortable, a workingman’s bar; the only thing different about it was the pizza smell. The guys, though, could be in any trade. Wayne looked around, but didn’t see the mate anywhere. The bartender brought him a shell of beer and Wayne said, “You know of anybody in here’s on a boat going north?”

The bartender said, “I look like a travel agent? Ask around.”

He started to move away, the size of him making a slow turn, and Wayne said, “Wait a minute. Where’s the bag was sitting here?”

The bartender looked over his shoulder at him. “Your buddy took it.”

“That was my bag,” Wayne said. “That wasn’t his.”

The bartender came around to face him. “He’s into you for the drinks too. Four dollars and eighty cents.”

“I went to make a phone call, I said give him one.”

The bartender said, “Are you gonna be trouble?”

***

Carmen made a sandwich, fast, to take with her. She put the meat loaf back in the refrigerator and stood there with the door open looking in at the milk that would sour, the food that would spoil, grow a furry white mold and smell awful, remembering the odor when she opened the refrigerator that first night in the dark, in candlelight, Ferris saying the woman wasn’t much of a housekeeper . . .

She slammed the door closed, amazed at herself, worrying about food spoiling, leaving a mess, when she had to get out of here right now. She’d let Wayne take care of it, but would have to remind him, leave a note. Going to the breakfast table she began composing it in her mind. Unplug the fridge, throw everything out, leave the door open ...Be careful with my nice car, I’ll try not to wreck the truck. See you late tomorrow. Love ...No, I love you . . .

The phone rang.

Carmen jumped and stood rigid, because she knew it was Ferris. It could be Wayne, but it wasn’t, it was Ferris. She said, Yeah, it has to be. And began to relax then, wanting it to be Ferris, Ferris somewhere else, not here or on the way. She did, thinking about it as the phone rang, she wanted it to be Ferris and felt so sure it was, and so confident about herself at the same time, that she picked up the receiver and said, “Ferris?”

“Hey, how’d you know?”

“Where are you?”

“You sound different, real calm for a change. I mean not all, you know, up in the air.”

“Are you at your office?” All she wanted to know was where he was, how near.

“Yeah, I came in, I see a note here says your old man’s out of town. I wish I’d known. Listen, don’t look for me tonight, I have to run down to New Mad-rid, pick up some confiscated items, like guns. But I can make it tomorrow, no problem. How’s that sound?”

“I won’t be here,” Carmen said, still calm, about to tell him she was taking off and what he could do with his house, wanting to rip into him; but stopped, aware that maybe she was overconfident.

“You going out?” Ferris said. “I could come by early, catch you in your jammies.”

Or he could come right now if he thought for a moment she was leaving. She had to be careful. Say too much, even if it would make her feel better, and that cream-colored Plymouth would be cutting her off at the bridge.

Carmen said, “Do what you want,” and hung up, proud of her restraint. That was cool. Do what you want. Just right.

The phone was ringing again as she left the house, slammed the door. It wasn’t until she was driving away that she realized, if Ferris did come tomorrow, he could walk in the house and find Wayne there.

19

DONNA SAID TO ARMAND, the two of them sitting in the living room this evening among the stuffed animals, the TV off so they could talk, “I’m gonna tell you something I never mentioned before.”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“There’s people that believe it and there’s your skeptics who don’t. There’s people won’t believe nothing even if they’re looking at it. Take my word.”

“That’s right.” Armand nodded, thinking he wouldn’t mind pushing this woman over on the sofa.

“People make up their minds something is true or isn’t and there’s no way you can get them not to be convinced of it. Well, I’m not one of those persons. You know why?”

Armand shook his head. “Why?”

“Because I think you have to believe what you see, sure, but also things beyond what you see, when something tells you it’s true, if you know

what I mean.”

Jesus Christ, Armand thought.

This woman could put you to sleep. If she wasn’t sitting in her pink robe showing him that dark place in there the way she had one leg raised, her foot on the sofa, he might have trouble keeping his eyes open. He was thinking of saying to her, “Why don’t you tell me whatever it is in the bedroom, we get comfortable.” Take hold of that dark place down there and she’d forget in a second, this one going off like a gun when you touched her hair trigger. He’d do it right now, except Richie would be home pretty soon and make remarks through the door. “What you two doing in there? You want me to get in with you?” That kind of shit. He had gone out to call the woman who had a trap on her phone. Richie, if he was here now, would tell Donna to shut up. “Jesus Christ, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” And she would, she would shut up. Armand wanted to ask her what she thought of Richie, but felt he had to listen to her first. She was still talking, saying something else, and then she said:

“That’s why I know Elvis is still alive.”

Armand said, “You believe that?”

“I don’t believe it, I know it.”

“You showed me a picture of his grave.”

“I didn’t mention it at the time,” Donna said, “but did you notice the name on it? Elvis Aaron Presley. Aaron with a double a?”

“Yeah.”

Donna leaned toward him against her raised knee. “It so happens that Elvis spelled his middle name with one a.”

“The person in the grave then,” Armand said, “is a guy that spelled it with two?”

“I don’t think there’s necessarily a body in there. What they’re saying is, hey, Elvis isn’t in here. Don’t you think we’d have spelled his name right? Come on.” Donna squirmed her butt on the sofa cushion. “Listen, I saw a man, it was on Kelly and Company, who has actually seen Elvis since his death. They also had on a girl who recorded a song with him and I heard the record.”

“Maybe it was somebody imitating him.”

“You mean impersonating? There some that try to. But, see, I know Elvis’s voice and it was Elvis. There’s not a doubt in my mind.”

Armand wished she would sit back, she was too close for him to see anything.

“Why would he want to pretend he’s dead?”

“That’s something we’ll have to wait and see. I believe it will be revealed before too long, there too many people love him and miss him. And I believe it will happen at Graceland. Which is the main reason I want to go down there.”

“Why don’t you get Richie to take you?” “Richie doesn’t even like Elvis. He’s jealous of him. I don’t suppose you do either.” “What, like Elvis? Sure. I like that ‘Hound Dog’

song.” “ ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ is the one tears me up.” “That’s a nice one too.” Donna hummed some of it, moving her shoul

ders in the robe, her eyes half closed. She stopped, her eyes in the glasses open now, and said, “Bird, can I tell you something? I don’t know if I should but I want to.”

“Yeah, but don’t call me Bird.” “I’m sorry, I hear Richie . . .” “You want, you can call me Armand.” She said, “Armand,” in a soft voice. “That’s a

real nice name.” Then livened up her tone saying, “Hey, I’m not being very polite. Can I get you something, a snack?”

“No, I don’t think so.” “I got a can of cocktail weenies I could fix.” “Maybe later.” “I enjoy watching a man likes to eat.” She said,

“That Richie eats like a bird,” and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.” There was something wrong with this woman’s

brain. Maybe the weight of all that hair on it. Armand said, “What is it you want to tell me?” Now she had those magnified eyes staring at him, wanting to trust him, or wanting to hold him

so he’d keep looking at her and believe her.

“I’m scared to death of Richie,” Donna said.

“Is that right? You let him stay here...”

“What choice do I have?”

Now she twisted her shoulders back and forth a couple of times like she was trapped in that robe and didn’t know what to do. She picked up one of the stuffed animals, Mr. Froggy, and held it against her raised knee so that it was looking at Armand.

He said, “It’s a nice place. I’m getting to like it.” He said, “It wouldn’t be too hard to get Richie out of here. Have you thought of that? What you’re doing? They could arrest you too, for harboring, ’ey? Unless you turn him in first.”

“I’d never do that.”

“It’s something to think about.”

“I got news for you, he’d find out I did.”

“Yeah, but if they put him away, so what?”

“They’d have to catch him first, and he’s slick. Even if they did, he’d get out. I don’t mean escape. He’d do a few years and then come looking for me.” Donna shook her head. “I would never snitch on him. I’m not that kind of person.”

“They got some pretty heavy stuff on him,” Armand said, “what sounds to me would get him life or worse. I don’t think you’d ever see him again.”

Donna was shaking her head. “I wouldn’t do it.

He said to me one time, if I ever even thought of calling the police on him he’d know it.”

Armand said, “You believe that?” And thought, Well, if she believes Elvis Presley is alive . . .

Of course she did. Cocking her head to the side as if thinking about it, then nodding with that dreamy look on her face, the one that was supposed to mean she knew things he didn’t. Believing in something—how did she say it?—beyond what you can know. He could see the inside curve of one of her breasts hanging there in the robe. It was elderly but not bad. The way she was sitting, he couldn’t see the dark place. Maybe if he moved back a little and tried it, getting a stuffed animal out from behind him. He glanced down. Ah, there it was.

She said, “You seem to have doubts.”

Armand shrugged. “I don’t see how he could know what you’re thinking.”

“He just would.”

“You mean ’cause of how you’re acting then, nervous?”

“I guess partly.”

“Listen, you don’t have to be afraid of him.”

Donna was still holding on to him with her eyes in the shining glasses. She said, “You’re not afraid of him, are you?”

He pushed against the back of the sofa to sit up, reached over and very gently lifted off her glasses to see her eyes naked. Donna didn’t move. She blinked. Now she was looking at him again, or seemed to be. She looked like a sister of the Donna before. Now she turned her head slightly and touched her pile of hair. Armand believed it was a gesture that meant she wouldn’t mind getting laid.

“No, I’m not afraid of him,” Armand said. “You know why?”

She was trying to give him a soft look with those cockeyed eyes. He didn’t know why seeing Donna without her glasses made him more aware of her being naked beneath the robe, but it did.

She said, “You’re bigger than he is,” lowered her head just enough and smiled, becoming a little imp now, this fifty-year-old woman and her Mr. Froggy, both looking at him.

He said, “You know who I am?”

“Who you are? Sure.”

“You know what I mean. Richie told you, didn’t he?”

“He said you’re from Toronto.”

“What else?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why can’t you say it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“The kind of thing I do for a living.”

“It isn’t none of my business.”

“Yeah, but Richie told you. Don’t he tell you everything he’s doing?”

“He brags a lot. You know Richie.”

“But he did tell you about me.”

“It really doesn’t matter,” Donna said. “I’ve enjoyed your company, I think you’re a nice person and, well, I wish you all the best.” She looked off at the room. “I don’t know—I hope you didn’t mind my cooking too much. It isn’t the easiest thing in the world, trying to please two different men.”

Armand said, “You think I’m leaving?”

“Well, I guess you will sometime.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Nothing, really. I just, you know, have a feeling.”

“He told you what we’re doing?”

“No, uh-unh, he’s never said a word.” Donna shook her big hairdo back and forth, brushed Mr. Froggy from her knee and stared at him, those poor eyes of hers saying, Please believe me. She said, “I don’t know anything about your business and I don’t want to. I made those phone calls. . . . Richie says things, you never know if he’s giving you a bunch of bull or what, so I just let it go in one ear and out the other. I would never, ever,repeat anything that was said to me, whether I was told not to or I wasn’t. It’s just none of my business.”

“Are you nervous?”

“Not the least.”

“You seem nervous.”

“Well, I’m not. I have no reason to be.”

“So, you think Elvis is still alive.”

“I’m pretty sure of it.”

“Maybe he is. Who knows, ’ey?”

“Even if he wasn’t, I’d still like to go down there.”

“What else? Would you like it if I killed Richie?”

“Oh, my Lord,” Donna said. “Would I.”

“What will you give me?”

They heard the back door open and slam closed.

Richie came in through the kitchen, saw them on the couch with the TV off, Donna’s glasses off, what’s this? They weren’t playing Yahtzee or looking at Elvis pictures. Richie stopped chewing his bubble gum. What’s going on here? In some kind of serious conversation that could be about him. Or else the Indian was getting ready to dive into her muff. Either way, Richie didn’t like the looks of it. But lightened up his manner saying, “Goddamn it, Bird, I do all the work and you have all the fun. Did I mention that before? I don’t like to repeat myself. Donna, go take a leak or something, the Bird and I want to be alone.”

Look at that. Now she was staring at the Bird, like it was up to him, or he’d give her permission, those big bald eyes of hers trying like hell to focus.

“Donna, you hear me?”

“He don’t like to repeat himself,” the Bird said to her and motioned with his head, go on.

She still took her sweet time getting up, straightening her robe, walking out, head of gold held high, retired queen of the cons—never had it so good and never would again. Richie stepped over to give Donna a pat on the behind. He looked at the Bird, who looked back at him, but waited, chewing his gum, till he heard a door close.

“You ready?”

“For what?”

“I call the woman, okay? She starts in bitching at me, her back’s killing her and it’s my fault.”

“Am I ready for what?”

The Bird trying to act cool.

“I ask her,” Richie said, “did she ever get hold of her daughter and Wayne. She goes, ‘Yeah, and you don’t have to send the check now, they’re coming home.’ ”

That hooked the Bird.

“You kidding me. When?”

“They already left. She says her daughter’s coming to take care of her, on account of she’s in terrible pain and can’t move.” Richie watched the Indian, waiting for him to catch on. “They’re coming ’cause I gave the woman a treatment. You hear what I’m saying? I did it, man, rubbing her old bones. I got them to come home, you understand? Saved us a trip.”

The Bird looked like he was still trying to figure it out. “She’s going to her mother’s house.”

“That’s right.”

“What about the guy?”

“The guy, he’ll go with her, or he’ll stay home. Or they’ll both stop home first, I bet you anything, ’cause it’s on the way. We go to their house right now, tonight, and wait. They don’t come by, we go to the mom’s house.”

“Maybe,” the Bird said. “I’ll think about it.”

Fucking Indian.

Ten feet away. Take one step, hop on the other foot and kick him right in the face. Uh, what did you say, Bird? There’s nothing to think about, man. You want to know everything’s gonna happen? There’s no way in the fucking world you can know everything. You don’t even want to know everything, not have any surprises in your life?

No more partners, man, that was for sure. He should never have brought the Indian into this deal. That caused his mind to pause and think, Wait a minute. What deal? There wasn’t a dime to be made off it, unless he called up that real estate man sometime. Just then the Bird said, “Okay, we go to their house.”

And they were back together again, Richie grinning at him, anxious to tell more, but blew a bubble, popped it and was chewing again before saying, “Bird? Guess what? I even got us provisions. We spend the night there we’re gonna be hungry. I got us some pizza you put in the oven, I got us a bunch of different kinds of like frozen din-dins, I got us some potato chips, candy bars . . . Hey, I picked up a magazine at the checkout, I’m waiting there? Bird, it shows a picture of a guy weighs twelve hundred pounds. You ever hear of anybody that big in your life?”

“Twelve hundred pounds?” the Bird was squinting at him. “Three horses don’t weigh twelve hundred pounds.”

“I got the magazine out’n the car.”

“What’s the guy eat?”

“You won’t believe it,” Richie said.

Armand, holding a bottle of Canadian whiskey in a paper bag, looked into Donna’s bedroom. He said, “We’re leaving now. See you tomorrow.”

She was over by her dresser, still wearing the robe. It hung open and she left it that way turning to look at him, one hand on her hip, showing him everything she owned. Donna didn’t say anything. What could she?

So Armand said, “I don’t know what time I’ll be back.” She was scared but still didn’t say anything. He took another look at her, that white body with the dark place showing, and closed the door. He waited in the hall for Richie to come out of the bathroom.

“You ready?”

Richie looked surprised to see him standing there. He said, “Yeah, let’s go.”

They went through the kitchen and out the back to the Dodge parked in the narrow drive. Armand had to edge past a tangle of bushes to open the door and get in his side. Richie was already behind the wheel starting the car. He got it going and sat there a moment.

Armand thinking, He forgot something.

Richie looked at him, giving him a glance, no more than that, and opened the door.

“I forgot something.”

“What?”

“I want to bring some booze.”

“I got it right here.”

“Not what I drink, you don’t.”

Armand didn’t say anything else. He waited as Richie got out of the car and went back into the house. Armand turned off the engine and sat listening. He saw Donna the way he had looked in the bedroom at her naked beneath her robe. He sat listening, thinking that Richie would use his gun if he was going to do it. He sat listening not wanting to hear that sound or have Richie come out and tell him he did it some other way, if that’s what he was doing. He sat listening until Richie opened the door and got in, handed him the bottle of Southern Comfort and started the car. They backed out and drove away from the house, lights showing in the living room. Armand didn’t say anything and neither did Richie.

20

ELEVEN-THIRTY THAT EVENING Carmen stopped at a Kountry Kitchen south of Gary, Indiana, tired and hungry, halfway home.

The hardest part of the trip was getting out of Cape Girardeau, crossing the river and following county roads east to find I-57. After that there was nothing to it. Turn left and drive straight up through almost the entire state of Illinois. Turn right on I-94 and cut across a corner of Indiana, where she was now. She’d have something to eat, get back on 94 and it would take her all the way across southern Michigan, through Detroit and to within twenty miles or so of home. Mom could wait.

Carmen was anxious to walk into her own house again, that drafty old barn with its cramped kitchen, its foyer bigger than the living room, its creaks and groans, the steam pipes making a racket in the winter. The house would be cold, it didn’t matter. She wanted to see it, make sure it was still there after more than eighty years, look out the kitchen window at the woods and the brush field and Wayne’s Chickenshit Inn. She’d call him when she got home, which would be about six-thirty in the morning if she could stay awake and drive straight through. Find out what time he was leaving. Check to see if Mom was okay and maybe wait for him. Mom could be all better now, knowing her little girl was coming home. Wayne could have already left by the time she called. But if he was there, she’d tell him not to be surprised if Ferris drops in, and if he does, be nice, okay? Just say good-bye. And Wayne would say, yeah, uh-huh, what else you want me to do? How about if I give him a hug? ...Or not mention Ferris at all. He was three hundred and fifty miles behind her, back in southeast Missouri with his muscles and wavy hair, Carmen thinking of him now as a clown who used to walk into her house, an annoying jerk rather than a serious threat. She should have spoken up to him more. Got mad and told him to get the hell out, goddamn it. And got mad thinking about it, cleaning up her plate of bacon and eggs, cottage fries, rye-bread toast and coffee, Kountry Kitchen No. 3.

She should’ve thrown something at him. Something heavy. She threw beer cans at Wayne, but beer cans were for show. Or she should’ve hit him with something. Keep a sleever bar handy for creeps who walk in the house uninvited.

Carmen finished, got the check and went to the counter to pay. A guy in a John Deere cap reached it at the same time. He touched the bill of the cap funneled over his eyes and said, “After you.” Carmen nodded, glanced at the guy, saw his eyes and the sly grin and thought, Oh shit, another one. He said, “I imagine there’s all kinds of boys after you,” and Carmen got out of there.

The pickup stood close, angle-parked in the lights of the Kountry Kitchen. She unlocked it, climbed in, reached for the door to swing it closed and the guy in the John Deere cap caught it, held it open.

“Excuse me. I just want to ask, if you got time . . .”

Carmen started the engine, revved it.

“Wait a sec now, I thought we might have a drink. There’s a spot up here before you get to the Michigan line, the Hoosier Inn off Exit Thirty-nine? You ever been there?”

Carmen took time to look at him, his face raised, hopeful now. She said, “Do you really think I want to go to a place called the Hoosier Inn off Exit Thirty-nine? For a drink or any reason at all? Are you serious?”

Carmen put the pickup in reverse and backed away from the Kountry Kitchen, the open door bringing the guy along against his will, the guy yelling now, “Hey, for Christ sake!” Scrambling to stay on his feet. Carmen braked, shifted, took off in low gear and left him. The door swung closed as she drove away.

Hit them with a truck if you don’t have a sleever bar.

Twenty years married to Wayne.

She followed her headlights along the nighttime freeway, not as tired as before, thinking about Wayne now, seeing them together. They’re in the kitchen having a beer and she’s describing the guy in the John Deere cap, oh, about thirty-five, not bad-looking. She tells what the guy said, word for word, memorized, beginning with “After you,” and then what she said, very calmly, after he invites her to have a drink. “You really think I want to go to a place called the Hoosier Inn, off Exit Thirty-nine?” Wayne would be grinning by then. “Are you serious?” He’d love it. It was the kind of thing Wayne would say. Or he’d ask the guy if he was out of his fucking mind, but “Are you serious?” still wasn’t bad. She wanted to hurry up and get home, call Wayne, and if he was still there tell him to get on his horse.

They told Wayne at Waterfront Services there were northbound tows leaving but none that had to stop at Cape. A guy who worked for the Corps of Engineers, a civilian employee, was in the office. He said Wayne could ride with him as far as Thebes, where he lived, and it was only another nine miles to the Cape bridge, but he first needed to see a man over at the Skipper Lounge. Wayne thought he meant ride in a boat, but it was a Ford pickup they drove to the pizza-smelling saloon and the man the guy from the Corps of Engineers had to see was the bartender. He had to see him keep pouring Jim Beam into a glass until the fifth was used up. By this time it was eleven-thirty at night.

Carmen, Wayne believed, would be somewhere around Chicago, while he was stuck down at the ass end of the state. The bartender kept watching him to see he didn’t lift the guy from the Corps of Engineers off the floor and threaten or shake him.

The guy kept telling Wayne to take her easy, have another, he’d still get home quicker than by towboat. Wayne, who only had every other drink with the guy, said, “Okay, if you let me drive.” Sure, hell, they’d both go to Cape and have one and the guy, smashed out of his mind by now, would drive himself home from there. Which was okay with Wayne, as long as he wasn’t riding with him.

They got to Thebes and Wayne said, “Which way now?” The guy said turn here, turn there, okay stop. They were at the guy’s house. Wayne said, “I thought we were going to Cape.” The guy from the fucking Corps of Engineers said, “You’re going to Cape, I’m going to bed.” Wayne almost stole his truck. It took him three hours and forty minutes to hike it half in the bag, from Thebes to the bridge, not seeing one goddamn car on the road. He picked up the Olds at Cape Barge Line, got home feeling like shit and there weren’t any aspirin in the medicine cabinet. Carmen had taken them with her. Thanks a lot. There was a note on the refrigerator and his new work gloves he’d forgotten lying on the breakfast table. Wayne set the alarm and went to bed.

He woke up at seven wearing his Jockey shorts and the yellow cowhide work gloves, hung over, feeling mean and craving ice cream. For about fifteen minutes he lay there thinking about a chocolate milk shake. He had downed many of them in a hung-over state while other guys drank cold beer or hard stuff as a pick-me-up. Wayne believed drinking before noon could get you in trouble and ice cream was better than sweating out the clock. Carmen had bought some, he was pretty sure, the other day, a half-gallon of butterscotch ripple. He jumped out of bed to check and there it was, Thank you, Jesus, in the freezer part of the fridge. But hard as a rock. He took it out to soften while he showered and got dressed.

But then in the shower with water streaming over him, hair lathered with shampoo, he thought, Hell, bring the ice cream in here and it would soften enough to drink, just like a thick milk shake.

Wayne left the shower on and closed the curtain so the floor wouldn’t get wet. He walked out of the steamy bathroom naked and wet, tiptoed along the hall to the kitchen, on the right, and stopped, catching a glimpse of something to his left. Through the living room and out the window. A cream-colored Plymouth pulling into the drive to park behind the Olds. Deputy Marshal Ferris Britton getting out of the car, coming to the side door.

What would he want this early in the morning?

If the doorbell rings, Wayne was thinking, yell at him to go away. But the doorbell didn’t ring. He heard a key turn the lock and knew what Ferris wanted.

Wayne slipped back along the hall to the bedroom, closed the door partway and stood listening. He heard the side door close.

Ferris was in the house.

Wayne got a clean pair of Jockeys from the dresser and put them on. He was still wet, hair creamed and swirled with shampoo. He looked at his new work gloves, never used, lying on the bed.

Ferris was in the hall, looking in the kitchen. He came to the bathroom and for a moment stood in the doorway. He stepped inside.

Wayne came only a few moments later, into the steam and sound of the shower going behind the flowered plastic curtain. He stood looking at Ferris’s back, close enough to reach out and touch the big grip of the revolver on his belt, the shirt stretched across those solid shoulders, short sleeves rolled up, the muscles in his arms tightening as he raised his hands to his hips. Wayne was going to tap him on the shoulder and say ... whatever you said to a guy who thinks he’s about to surprise your wife in the shower. He hesitated, watching Ferris’s right hand reach up to take hold of the curtain. Maybe you don’t say anything.

Ferris did. He said, “Surprise!” Yelled it out as he tore the shower curtain aside, ripping part of it off the rod ...and stood looking at wet tile, the shower streaming into an empty tub. He stood like that for several moments, as though thinking, well, she must be in there somewhere. Wayne got ready.

He waited for Ferris to turn, saw his face, all eyes, and hit him. Hit him with his right hand in that yellow cowhide work glove, hit him as hard as he had ever swung a ten-pound beater, hit him one time with everything he had and Ferris went into the shower, bounced against the tile and slid down to lie cramped in there, legs sticking up over the edge of the tub. His eyes opened to stare dazed through the stream of water.

Wayne bent over, hands on his bare knees, to look at him. He said, “Oh, it’s you. Shit, I thought it was somebody broke in the house.”

The phone rang in the kitchen.

It rang five times before Wayne got to it, taking off his gloves, and answered.

Carmen’s voice said, “Wayne? I’m home.”

21