The Collection

THE

COLLECTION

Bentley Little

A SIGNET BOOK

Published by New American Library, a division of

Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

ISBN 0-7394-2761-X

Copyright © Bentley Little, 2002 All rights reserved

Contents

The Sanctuary

The Woods Be Dark

The Phonebook Man

Estoppel

The Washingtonians

Life with Father

Bob

Bumblebee

Lethe Dreams

Paperwork

The Idol

Skin

The Man in the Passenger Seat

Comes the Bad Time

Against the Pale Sand

The Pond

Roommates

Llama

Full Moon on Death Row

The Show

The Mailman

Monteith

Pillow Talk

Maya's Mother

Colony

Confessions of a Corporate Man

Blood

And I Am Here, Fighting with Ghosts

The Baby

Coming Home Again

The Potato

The Murmurous Haunt of Flies

The Sanctuary

Religious fanatics have always seemed scary to me, and when I hear them espousing some wacky eschato-logical theory or promoting their perverse interpreta­tions of the Bible, I always wonder what their home lives are like. What kind of furniture do they have? What kind of food do they eat? How do they treat their neighbors and their pets?

"The Sanctuary" is my version of what life would be like for a child growing up in such a household.

* * *

The drapes were all closed, Cal noticed as he came home after school, and he knew even before walking up the porch steps that something terrible had happened. The drapes hadn't been closed in the daytime since ... since Father had had to pay.

He shifted the schoolbooks under his arms, licking his dry lips before opening the front door. Inside, the living room was dark, the heavy brown drapes effectively keeping out all but the most diffused light. He almost didn't see his mother curled up in a corner of the couch. "Mother?" he said nervously.

She didn't answer, and he walked over to where she was sitting, placing his books on the coffee table. This close, he could see the wetness of tears on her cheeks. "Mother?"

She leaped up and grabbed him by his shoulders, holding him close, pressing him against her bulk. He could smell on her housedress an unfamiliar odor he did not like. "Oh, Cal," she sobbed. "I didn't mean to do it! I didn't mean to!"

Cal suddenly noticed that the house was silent. There were no noises coming from the back of the house, and he had a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Where's Chrissie?" he asked.

Her hands clutched tighter, hugging him. "I couldn't help myself," she wailed. Tears were rolling down her puffy cheeks. "I had to kill him."

"Kill who?" Cal asked, fighting back his fear. "Who did you kill?"

"I was walking home from the store, and I saw this man walking his dog, and The Rage came over me. I couldn't help myself."

"What happened?"

"I-I told him my car wouldn't start, and I had him come into the garage with me to see if he could figure out what was wrong. Then I closed the door, and I used the ax. I-I couldn't help myself. I didn't think I'd do it again, I didn't want to do it again, but The Rage came over me." She ran a hand through Cal's hair, and her voice was suddenly free of emotion. "I sinned," she said. "But it was not my fault."

"Where's Chrissie?" Cal demanded.

"Chrissie had to die for my sins."

Cal pulled away from his mother and ran down the hall­way, through the back bedroom, to The Sanctuary. There, next to Father's cross, was the crucified form of his sister. She was naked, spread-eagled, her hands and feet nailed to the wood, her head hanging down limply.

"Chrissie?" he said.

She did not move, did not reply, but when he hesitantly touched her foot the skin was still warm.

Behind him, he heard the door to The Sanctuary close. The only light in the windowless room came from the can­dles flickering in front of the altar. As Cal stared at the un-moving form of his sister, at the small streams of blood which flowed from her impaled hands and feet, his mother's strong hands grasped his shoulders. "She will be resur­rected," his mother said, and when he turned he saw the tears in her eyes. "She will be resurrected and will sit at the throne of God and we will pray to her and worship her as we do your father."

She dropped to her knees beside him and gestured for him to join her. He saw faint red traces in the lines which crisscrossed her palm. Her life line, he noticed, was totally obscured with a thin smear of blood. "Pray," she begged. She folded her hands in a gesture of supplication.

Cal knelt down before his father's cross and folded his hands in prayer.

"Dear Jim," his mother began. "Hallowed be your name. We thank you for protecting and providing for this, your household. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. We beseech thee, O Jim, to keep us safe from harm. You are great, you are good, and we thank you for our food. Amen."

Cal knew his mother's prayers were not exactly right. He remembered some of what he had learned in Sunday school, when they used to go to church, and he could tell that her en­treaties were a little off. But he said nothing. If he did speak up, she would only scourge him until he repented of his blasphemy and then make him kneel for hours praying to his father, so he kept his mouth shut.

His mother was muttering next to him, reciting a private prayer, and though he knew he was expected to do the same, he glanced around The Sanctuary instead. Below Chrissie's hands and feet were the sacred bowls used to catch her mar­tyred blood. They would drink it later for Communion, and Cal grimaced at the thought. Already he could taste the sick­ening salty herbal flavor of the blood, and it made him want to vomit. In the corner of the room, bathed in a swath of shadow not penetrated by the candlelight, he could see the outline of the bloody ax leaning against the wall. On the floor in front of the ax was the hammer she had used to cru­cify Chrissie, and next to the hammer were scattered extra nails.

His mother stood. "You may leave," she said. "I want to be alone right now."

He nodded silently and left The Sanctuary. He wanted to cry, but could not; instead he sat at the kitchen table and stared into space blankly. Bocephus scratched on the door, and he let the dog inside, feeding him on the kitchen floor. The shadows lengthened, the sun set, and still his mother did not come out. He made himself a sandwich, drank some milk, and after watching a sitcom on TV, went into his bed­room. He was tired but found himself unable to fall asleep. He turned on the small black-and-white television on the dresser. He needed company.

Sometime later, he heard his mother's footsteps and the rustle of her clothes as she emerged from The Sanctuary and went directly to her bedroom. Through the thin wall, he heard her praying, her hoarse voice rising and falling in rhythmic oratorical cadences.

Bocephus came into his room and jumped on the bed, tail wagging, tongue hanging happily out. Cal pulled the dog close and buried his face in the clean golden fur, hugging the pet to him. Hot tears spilled from his eyes and he wiped them on the dog's soft hair. "Chrissie," he said. "Chrissie."

The house was silent. Sometime after he had fallen asleep, his mother had come in and turned off the TV, and now it was so quiet that he could hear his mother's deep, even breathing in the next room, punctuated by an occa­sional snore. He stared up into the blackness, thinking about his mother, about The Rage, about Chrissie, and about what he should do. He stared up into the blackness-

and heard Chrissie's soft whisper.

"Cal."

A wash of goose bumps arose on his skin as a wave of coldness swept over him. He closed his eyes, pulling the blanket up over his head. His heart was hammering in his chest. He was imagining it. He had to be.

"Cal."

The whisper was clear, only slightly louder than his mother's sleep-breathing.

"Cal."

He wanted to scream, but his mouth was suddenly dry. He plugged his ears with his fingers and shut his eyes tightly, but though he could not hear Chrissie's whisper, his mind filled the sound in for him and he knew that if he lifted the fingers from his ears he would hear the voice again.

"Cal."

What did she want? He thought of Chrissie's crucified body, nails driven through hands and feet, her head hanging down limply, an expression of lonely terror frozen on her face, and suddenly he was no longer afraid. Or not as afraid. He was still a little scared, but the fear was tempered with sadness and sympathy. She was his sister; she had been killed to pay for their mother's sins, and now she was alone, all alone in The Sanctuary with Father.

She had always been afraid of The Sanctuary.

She had always been afraid of Father.

He unplugged his ears and pulled the blanket from his head.

"Cal."

The whisper was not malevolently beckoning to him as he had originally thought. It sounded more like a plea, a plea for help. He slipped out of bed, careful not to make any noise. He walked slowly down the hall, past his mother's room, through the back bedroom to The Sanctuary.

He looked around the darkened room. Only one candle was still flickering, and like the others it was almost worn down. He could see, however, that the pewter bowls at the foot of the cross were full again, and the man Mother had murdered was now shards of bone, blackened and unrecog­nizable. A faint haze of smoke still hung over the room.

"Cal," Chrissie whispered.

He looked up.

"Kill her," Chrissie said. "Kill the bitch."

He went to school the next day as if nothing had hap­pened, but reading and spelling went in one ear and out the other, and he could concentrate neither on history nor on math. His mind was on his mother. Part of him knew that he should tell someone what had happened, but part of him did not want to tell. Besides, who would he talk to? Miss Price did not particularly like him and he wouldn't feel comfort­able telling her what had happened, and he would feel even more awkward talking to the principal, whom he had only seen a few times striding across the playground toward his office. He should go to the police, he knew. That was who would really want to know. But then they would take his mother away, and they would take Father and Chrissie away, and he would be all alone.

Besides, he was afraid of what his father might do. Fa­ther's wrath was great, and he had the power of God on his side. And what could policemen do against the power of God?

At lunch, on the playground, Cal stood alone, sometimes wanting to tell someone about his mother, sometimes not.

He did not even consider Chrissie's option.

He walked home slowly after school, taking his time, thinking. His mother would be praying in The Sanctuary- that was what she had done the last time The Rage came over her and Father had had to pay-and he didn't want to join her. He still wasn't sure what he wanted. His muscles were tense, he had a bad headache, and he felt trapped.

He walked down the street toward his house and stopped in surprise. His mother was not in The Sanctuary. Instead, she stood on the front lawn, hose in hand, watering the green lawn and the bed of flowers which grew beneath the kitchen window. The street was filled with the noise of out-of-school kids playing games in their yards, riding up and down the sidewalks on bikes and Big Wheels. Farther up the street, Mr. Johnson was mowing his lawn, the gas-powered engine a constant buzz underneath the more random noises of the kids.

Cal walked slowly forward, watching his mother. She glanced over at him and smiled, and then a change came over her face. Her eyes widened as if in fear, and the corners of her mouth flattened out. Her entire body took on a rigid robotic stance.

The Rage, he thought, panicking.

And then she dropped the hose and was running down the sidewalk. He ran after her, but she was already talking to a boy he didn't know, a kid from some other street. The boy nodded, then pushed his bike alongside as both of them headed back up the sidewalk. Cal stood lamely in front of them, not knowing what to do.

His mother shot him an unreadable look as she passed, a look filled simultaneously with tortured agony and mali­cious glee.

"Mother!" he cried, running behind her.

She turned, smiling, and slapped him hard across the face.

As he fell to the ground, he saw his mother lead the boy into the garage.

He jumped to his feet and followed them through the small garage door. The boy was standing in the middle of the room, looking around, confused. "Where is it?" he asked.

Cal heard the boy's chin hit the cement as his mother pushed him to the floor.

"No!" Cal yelled.

The boy was too stunned to cry, and he merely looked up in blank confusion as the shovel slammed into his back. He flopped around on the concrete floor like a fish, blood streaming from the long slice where the shovel dug into his back.

Cal staggered out of the garage, but he could hear the sickening, squelching sound of the shovel chopping into flesh with short quick bites.

And then his mother ran out, her hands bloody, a look of abject terror on her face.

Cal cringed, but she dashed past him, rushing around the side of the garage. He saw her take from the side yard two long eight-by-fours. She dragged the boards to the back of the house, and he heard the slow regular sound of wood being sawed. He stood there unmoving. The sawing stopped a few minutes later, and he heard the irregular whipcrack of hammer against nail.

She was constructing a cross.

He wanted to leave, to run, but something held him back. He stood, then sat alone in the front of the house listening to the sound of the hammer, as around him neighborhood life went on as normal. He was still sitting there when he heard the back door slam and saw through the front windows of the house his mother carrying the cross down the hall to The Sanctuary.

It hit him then, what was going to happen to him, and he quickly jumped to his feet. He was not going to let her have him. He would run if necessary, fight if he had to.

Bocephus barked once, loudly, a short harsh yelp that was immediately cut off.

Then there was silence.

"Bocephus!" Cal yelled. He ran into the house, down the hall.

The dog was already splayed on the cross, all four legs stretched in a pose of crucifixion, long nails protruding from his paws.

His mother dropped the hammer, and fell to her knees. There were tears rolling down her cheeks, but she was not sobbing. She began to pray. "Bless this house, bless our feet, good food, good meat, good God, let's eat. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the peacemakers. In the name of the Fa­ther, the Daughter, and the Holy Dog, Amen." She genu­flected first toward Father, then toward Chrissie, then toward Bocephus.

Cal remained standing. She was gone, far gone, crazy, and he realized now that the only option open to him was to contact the authorities and turn her in. His insides felt stiff and sore and he had a pounding headache. Father might think his decision blasphemous, but Chrissie probably would not, and she sat at God's side as well.

His mother left The Sanctuary and returned a few mo­ments later, dragging the boy's mutilated body. She threw it into the pit and set it afire. Though the fan was on, The Sanc­tuary was filled with a black foul-smelling smoke, and Cal staggered into the bedroom, taking huge gulps of the fresh air. In his head he could hear the maddening drip drip drip of the blood into the altar bowl.

Maybe he should kill her.

"Cal."

Chrissie's voice, still little more than a whisper, sounded clear and smooth through the smoke and din. He wanted to go back into The Sanctuary and talk to her but could not bring himself to do it.

"No," Chrissie whispered, and she said the word again. "Nooooo."

No? What did that mean?

But he knew what it meant. Chrissie had changed her mind. Maybe she had talked to Father, maybe she had talked to God, but she no longer wanted him to kill their mother, and she obviously did not want him to turn their mother in.

But what could he do?

"No," Chrissie whispered.

He ran out of the house and dropped onto the grass of the lawn outside, the cool wet grass which felt so fresh and new beneath his hot cheek.

Todd Mac Vicar from down the street rolled by on his Big Wheel. "What's the matter with you?" he asked. His voice was filled with disgust.

And Cal felt The Rage come over him. He knew it was happening, and he didn't want it to happen, but an unbridled hatred of Todd filled him from within, and he knew that nothing would abate this anger and hate save the boy's death. Thoughts of Todd's head, bloodied and smashed on the sidewalk, brought to his voice the coolness he needed. "Come here," he said. "I want to show you something in the garage."

He hoped his mother had not disposed of the shovel.

Cal stood in the center of The Sanctuary. He was crying, filled with a sadness and remorse he hadn't known he could experience. Behind him, Todd Mac Vicar's body burned in the pit, and he thought the smoke smelled clean, pure.

He looked down at his mother.

"You have no choice," she sobbed. "I must pay. I must die for your sins." She stretched a trembling hand against the crossbeam, palm outward. Her fingers twitched nerv­ously.

Cal pressed the point of the nail against the lined skin, drawing back the hammer.

The voices in his head offered encouragement:

"You have no choice." His father.

"You must." Chrissie.

He swung the hammer hard and flinched as his mother screamed, the nail impaling her palm to the wood. Warm red blood streamed downward.

This was crazy, he thought. This was wrong. This wasn't what he was supposed to do. But as he looked up, he thought he saw approval in Chrissie's running, clouded eyes, in his father's dry, empty sockets.

He swung the hammer again.

And again.

By the time he finished the last foot and propped the cross up next to Bocephus, he was already feeling better, pu­rified, cleansed, as if he was an innocent newborn, free from all guilt.

He sank gratefully to his knees.

"Our Mother," he said, "who art in heaven ..."

The Woods Be Dark

"The Woods Be Dark" was written in the mid-1980s for a creative writing class. At the time, I was under the spell of William Faulkner and turning out a slew of interconnected Southern Gothic stories all set in the same rural county. I lived in California, had never been anywhere near the South, didn't even know any­one from the South-but, arrogant and self-important jerk that I was, I didn't let that stop me.

Momma let the dishes set after supper instead of washing them and came out on the porch with us. She kicked Junior off of the rocker and took it for herself, just sitting there rocking and staring out at Old Man Crawford's trawler out there on the lake. It was one of them humid July nights and the dragonflies and the bloodsuckers was all hanging around the porchlight looking for a good arm to land on. Petey was up with a magazine, running around trying to kill all the bugs he could.

Momma was out on the porch with us because Robert hadn't come home before dark like he'd promised and she was waiting up for him. She pretended it wasn't no big deal. She sat there and talked to us, laughing and joking and telling stories about when she was our age, but I could tell from the expression on her face that she was thinking about Daddy.

I was standing off by the side of the railing, away from the door, by myself, trying to loosen my dress from where it'd caught on a nail. I was listening to Momma tell about the time the brakes went out on her at Cook's Trail and she had to swerve into the river to keep from smashing into a tree when I heard a low kind of rustling sound coming from the path on the side of the house. I scooted next to Momma on the rocker. "What is it, Beth?" she asked.

I didn't say nothing. Then I heard the sound again, only this time all of them heard it. Momma stood up. Her face was white. She walked to the railing where I'd been stand­ing and looked off toward the path. We stood around her, holding on to parts of her skirt.

Petey saw it first. "It's Robert!" he called. He pointed off to where the path met the woods.

Sure enough, Robert was coming out of the woods across the clearing carrying a whole lineful of fish. I heard Momma's breath start to relax when she saw it was Robert, but then she pulled it all in like someone'd hit her. Robert was kind of staggering across the clearing, weaving like he was drunk or something.

But we all knew he wasn't drunk.

"Get the shotgun," Momma said quietly.

I ran into the house and grabbed the gun out of Daddy's closet. I ran back out and gave it to Momma. She loaded it up and pointed it at Robert without no hesitation.

We could see him pretty clear now. He was halfway across the clearing and the lights from the house sort of lit up his face. He was still staggering around and walking like he was drunk and he was still carrying his line of fish. His face looked real white, like Daddy's face, and he didn't seem to even see us standing there on the porch. Petey was calling out to him-Petey was too young, he didn't really know what was going on-and Junior was holding him back.

Robert stopped about ten yards away from the house and waved. His wave was real slow, real strange. "Hey, Momma!" he said, and his voice was strange, too. "Look what I got."

Momma kept the gun trained on him. "Don't you come any closer," she said.

He shook his head. "Momma ..."

"If I'm still your momma you'll wait there for me 'til dawn. If you're still there come morning you'll be welcome back. But until then you just stop and wait right there."

He took a step forward. "Aw, Momma-"

The gunshot blew his head clean off. His face just ex­ploded in on itself and little pieces of blood and bone and eye went flying every which way. Petey started screaming and the rest of us watched while Robert fell onto the meadow grass. His hand was still holding onto the fish line. Momma reloaded the gun and aimed it at the center of his body just in case, but he didn't move. His body just lay there, the mash of skin that used to be his head bleeding into the grass.

We stayed on the porch all night. Petey, Junior, and Sissy fell asleep a little while later and I fell asleep about halfway through the night, but Momma stayed awake the whole time.

After the sun came up, we all went out in the clearing to look.

There was nothing there. His body was gone.

Momma spent that morning explaining things to Petey.

We waited on the porch again that night, eating supper f early and standing out there before it started to get dark. Sure enough, he started staggering up the path about the | same time he had last night. There was nothing we could do this time, so we just stood there huddled together and watched.

"Robert Paul's come home," he said, and his voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well. "Robert Paul's come home again." We could see his grin even from this far away.

When he got to the spot where Momma'd shot him, he stopped.

And his head exploded.

He fell onto the ground just like before, and in the morn­ing he was gone.

We went out to the spot. The grass was trampled and brown and looked like it'd been burned. "That's all," Momma said, kicking the spot with her shoe. "It's over now."

But I knew it wasn't. I could tell. I could feel it in my bones. I knew that we'd have to do the same thing we did for Daddy. And I was scared.

Scared bad.

That was one of them weird days when everything was backwards and all the directions was wrong. Our house was suddenly facing south when it'd always faced west, and I stayed close to home. I knew that if I lost sight of the house I wouldn't never get back to it.

It was overcast the whole day, and in the kitchen things broke for no reason. Momma'd walk out to the living room for a minute to talk to one of us kids and when she'd go back into the kitchen all the silverware would be poured out on the floor or one of her good dishes would be smashed or

something. She tried to ignore all this, but one time I caught her saying the Prayer to herself when she thought no one was looking.

I said the Prayer, too. I knew what was happening.

After supper we all just sat around and waited for night to fall. We didn't sit on the porch this time. We stayed inside. Sissy closed all the windows and drapes and Junior turned on all the lights.

I was almost asleep when something huge crashed against the north wall of the house. I jerked awake. It sounded like a cannon. Everyone else was wide awake too and Petey was crying. Momma held us all tight. "Stay here," she said. "Don't go near the windows." She didn't say noth­ing after that and I looked up at her. Her eyes was shut and it looked like she was praying to herself.

Something crashed hard against the wall again, making the whole house shake.

Outside, I could hear voices. It sounded like there was at least six or seven of them out there. Their words was all run­ning together and I couldn't understand what they were say­ing. I plugged my ears and closed my eyes but I could still hear the voices talking inside my head.

And I could feel it when the thing crashed against the wall again.

I fell asleep plugging my ears.

I dreamed about Daddy.

We went to see Mrs. Caffrey the next day. All of us. We went into her little trailer out there by the edge of the lake and waited in the tiny waiting room out front. When she came out she was all dressed up. Momma told her what hap­pened and Mrs. Caffrey prayed over her small bag of bones and threw a handful of sticks onto the table. When she was through she nodded. She held her head in her hands, closed her eyes, and sort of hummed to herself. When she looked up she was staring at me.

I tried to look away but I couldn't.

Mrs. Caffrey reached over and grabbed my arm and I could feel her sharp nails digging into my skin. "You must go to the bad place," she said. "You must go through the rit­ual." Her voice got real low. "But be careful. There are many dangers. The woods be dark."

She let go of me and I ran out of the trailer. I was crying bad. I knew this would happen and I didn't know if I could go through the ritual again.

Mrs. Caffrey came outside a few minutes later and put her arm around me. She opened up her Bible, closed her eyes, put her finger down, and made me read. "Walk while you have the light," I read, "lest the darkness overtake you."

She closed the Bible, smiled at me, and patted my head. "It'll be all right, child," she said. She went back inside to talk to Momma.

No one said nothing on the way home.

It was noon by the time we got back to the house and Momma said there wasn't enough time to do it today, I would have to wait 'til tomorrow.

I was glad.

They came back that night, pounding on the walls and talking in our heads. All us kids sat on the couch together, holding on to each other. Momma pretended like she didn't hear a thing, and she worked on a big sack for me to carry the next day.

I fell asleep listening to the pounding and the voices.

Momma woke me up before it was even light and told me I had to take a bath before I went out. "You must cleanse yourself," she said. I took my bath real quietly, but everyone was up by the time I got out of the tub. It was already start­ing to get light out.

Momma gave me the sack and told me to be careful, and I said goodbye to everyone just in case. I didn't spend too long on goodbyes, though, because I couldn't afford to waste no time. I had to get back before dark.

It was overcast again and the sky was covered with solid gray clouds and I couldn't see the sun. I walked down the path through the clearing, past the spot where Momma'd shot Robert, into the woods. Momma packed me a flashlight in my sack and I got it out. I needed it. The woods was dark, real dark, darker even than when I went in for Daddy, and it was completely silent. Usually you can hear the sounds of the lake or someone's car or people talking out by the boat launch, but I couldn't hear nothing. Even the birds was quiet. My footsteps sounded real loud, and I had a headache from my heart pounding and thumping the blood in my head.

I was scared.

It took me about a half an hour to get to the shack. I could feel it before I saw it and I looked in the other direction as I ran past. I didn't want to see them open windows and that black doorway. I didn't want to know what was inside. I made that mistake the last time and I almost didn't get no farther than that, so this time I just looked the other way and ran by.

There was something inside the shack, though.

I could feel it.

And I thought I heard it when I ran by.

I slowed down when I was out of breath, a good ways from the shack. It was hidden way back behind the trees now, so I didn't have nothing to worry about. The shack was about halfway to the bad place, I knew, maybe a little less, but the second half of the trip was a lot tougher and took a lot longer. The path ended a little ways up ahead, I remem­bered, and I'd have to find the rest of the way myself.

No path led to the bad place.

Sure enough, the path just sort of petered out. It got smaller and smaller and harder to see and after a while I re­alized it had ended some ways back and I hadn't noticed.

I was on my own.

It was real dark here and it kept getting darker the deeper I went into the woods. I saw shadows of things moving through the trees out of the corners of my eyes, but I ignored them and pretended they wasn't there. I said the Prayer to myself.

I didn't really know where I was going but I knew I was headed in the right direction. Tons of moss was hanging from the tops of the trees and it kept brushing my face and my blouse as I went past. I climbed over old dead logs and through thickets of sticker bushes. I started getting hungry, and I pulled out one of the sandwiches Momma made for me. I didn't sit down and eat, though. I kept walking.

Finally, I came to the ruins and I knew I was getting close.

I remember Momma used to scare us when we was little by telling us that she'd take us out to the ruins and leave us there if we didn't behave, but I'm the only person I know that's actually seen them. They used to be part of an old stone fort during the war. A bunch of soldiers was stationed there to protect the county, but something happened to all the soldiers. All kinds of government people came down to check on the fort afterwards, but none of them could figure out what happened.

The people around here knew what happened, though.

They built the fort too close to the bad place.

Now the ruins was just old piles of stone block and pieces of wall with plants and ivy growing all over them. A few buildings were still left, but I got the same feeling from them that I got from the shack and I just ran by.

After the ruins, the trees started to grow weird and the di­rections got all lost again. I was going south, then all of a sudden I was going west and I hadn't even changed my course. The trees became all gnarly and twisted, and the moss started to grow into shapes, strange shapes that I knew what they were but I didn't want to admit it.

It got even darker.

And then I was there.

The bad place looked just like I remembered it. The leaves of the trees was all black and brown and they twisted together to make a roof over the clearing and completely block out the sky. It was always night there. On the sides, small trees grew in between the big trees and made a solid wall except for the entrance where I was coming in. The middle of the clearing was covered with bones and skulls and the teeth of rats, all lain out in little rows, like crops. Dead possum skeletons hung from frayed old ropes in the trees, and they was swinging but there wasn't no breeze.

Nothing grew in the center of the clearing. It was all dust. Even the plants was afraid to grow there.

In the very center was the open grave.

I swallowed hard and took Momma's Bible out of my sack. I was scared, even more scared than I'd been with Daddy, and all of a sudden I wanted to run, to run back home to Momma. The noises at night, the voices and pounding, didn't seem so bad now. Not compared to this. I could live with them.

But I couldn't run. I had to go through the ritual.

I walked slowly into the middle of the clearing toward the open grave, holding tight to my Bible. The little white wood cross at the head of the grave was tilted and almost falling over. I kept my eyes on that and didn't look into the hole. Finally, I reached the grave and stood at its foot, trying to calm down. My heart was pounding a mile a minute and I couldn't hardly get no breath.

I stood like that for a few minutes, staring at the cross, trying to be brave. And then I looked into the hole.

Robert lay on the bottom. His skin was pure white and glowing and his face was smooth and perfect and I couldn't tell where Momma'd shot him. He was holding his hands up in the air toward me and they was moving a little, twirling in strange little circles.

Then his eyes jerked open and he smiled. His eyes was pure red and evil and I started to shake. "Robert Paul's come home," he said. "Robert Paul's come home again." It was all he said. It was all he could say.

His voice was just a whisper.

I reached around to my sack and took out the page with the Words written on it. The grave was deep, I was thinking. It was deeper than last time. The sides went down maybe ten feet to Robert at the bottom. I put the Words on the Bible. "Lord pro­tect me in this ritual," I read. "Keep me safe from harm. See my motives not my actions. Keep me safe from harm. Give this tortured soul his rest. Keep me safe from harm. Guide me through this and preserve me. Keep me safe from harm. Amen."

I folded the paper and put the Words into the Bible.

At the bottom of the grave Robert was moving even more now. His head was rolling from side to side and his arms was still twirling in the air and he was grinning even worse. I could see all of his teeth. They was glowing.

I took a deep breath, said the Prayer, held the Bible to my chest, and jumped into the open grave.

I fell, fell and landed with a soft thud on Robert's body. His grin got bigger and his eyes got redder and I could see them right next to my face.

He started laughing and his voice changed.

He was no longer Robert.

And he took me.

I woke up by the ruins. My sack was gone and the Bible was gone and my clothes was all torn up and half hanging off me. I still felt kind of dopey or sleepy or whatever it was, but I knew I had to get out of the woods before dark. I didn't know what time it was so I just started running. I ran past the ruins and somehow found the path again.

Something was standing in the doorway of the shack when I ran by but I didn't look at it. I kept running.

It was broad daylight when I came out of the woods. The clouds had all burnt off and the sun was shining. Everything was okay. Momma was waiting for me and she ran up and hugged me as I came down the path. I could see she was cry­ing. "You went through the ritual?" she asked.

I nodded and told her I did.

She led me back to the house where I slept for two full days.

Two weeks later my belly started growing.

It was just a little bit at first. But a month later it was ob­vious.

People didn't bother me none about it though. Folks around here understand about the bad place. A lot of women around here've got pregnant the same way when they was my age. No one talked to me about it or paid me no never mind.

Two months later I was ready to give birth.

Momma took me to Mrs. Caffrey's. She didn't tell none of the other kids about it, she just said that we was going into town for the day and for Junior to keep an eye on every­one else and not let them leave the house.

It was just like before. The thing was all slimy and pink and wormy. It made horrible squawking noises and tried to claw up Mrs. Caffrey as she held it.

It had Robert's face.

"Do you want to see it first?" Mrs. Caffrey asked me.

I shook my head. I could see it good enough as it was, and I didn't want to see no more of it. I sure didn't want to touch it.

"I'll take it outside then."

"No," I said. "Wait a minute. Let me do it."

Momma shook her head. "No. You're too weak."

"It's all right," Mrs. Caffrey said.

Momma helped me out of the bed, and Mrs. Caffrey took the baby outside. She put it on the ground by the trailer and it started squawking and twirling its arms in circles.

I searched the ground and picked up a boulder. I held it up as high as I could and the creature looked up at me and spat.

I smashed its head.

It lay there twitching for a minute, a small trickle of black blood flowing out from beneath the boulder, then it was still.

I watched as Mrs. Caffrey took the dead thing into her trailer. She cut it up and burned it and put the ashes into a stew. I ate a bite of the stew and said the Prayer.

Momma drove me home.

That night, Momma was inside washing the dishes and all us kids was out on the porch. Petey was trying to kill bugs, and Junior and Sissy was fighting on the rocker, and I was standing by the railing looking out at the woods when all of a sudden I heard a rustling sound coming from the meadow. I looked back quickly at the other kids but none of them'd heard it. I held my breath and looked closer, leaning over the rail to see better, saying the Prayer to myself. But it was just a scared little jackrabbit, and it stopped and stared at me and then ran across the path and disappeared into the bushes and meadow grass at the side of the house.

The Phonebook Man

For a while, I worked as a phonebook deliveryman. The job allowed me to walk into every business in the city from legal offices to liquor stores, strip clubs to mortuaries. One day while I was striding down the street, stacks of phonebooks under my arm, I started to think about what a supernatural being could do with such a position, particularly if he was irrationally and obsessively devoted to the cause of phonebook deliv­ery. "The Phonebook Man" was born from that.

Nina was reading the morning paper and slowly sipping her coffee when she heard the knock at the door. She was barely awake, her eyes still not fully open, her senses still not fully alert, and she thought at first that she had made a mistake. Jim had gone to work sometime ago and Erin had long since left for school with Mrs. Bloomenstein, so it could not be ei­ther one of them trying to get back in, and she did not know anyone who would be over this early in the morning. But then the knock came again, and she stood up quickly, almost knocking over her coffee, and moved to answer the door.

She was about to open the dead bolt when she suddenly thought the better of it. After all, who knew what kind of crazies were out there these days? Instead, she stood on her tiptoes and tried to peek through the glass window situated near the top of the solid oak door. She could see only the crown of a brown-haired head. "Who is it?" she called.

"Phonebook man."

Phonebook man? She pulled back the dead bolt and opened the door a crack. Standing on the stoop was a non­descript young man in his early twenties with a load of phonebooks under each arm. He smiled at her as she opened the door. "Good morning, ma'am. I'm delivering your neighborhood phonebooks. How many would you like?"

Nina pulled her robe tighter around her chest to make sure nothing was showing and held out her other hand. "Just one will be fine."

"One it is." The man pulled a book from under his arm with a theatrical flourish and handed it to her.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome, ma'am." He turned and was about to leave when he stopped, as though he had just thought of something. "Ma'am?" he asked.

Nina stood in the doorway, still clutching her robe with one hand. "Yes?"

"I'm sorry to bother you." He looked sheepish. "But could I use your bathroom?"

She was acutely aware that she was alone in the house, that both Jim and Erin were gone, and she hesitated for a second. He noticed the hesitation and started to back away. "It's okay," he said. "Sorry to bother you. I understand."

Nina mentally kicked herself. What kind of person was she? "Of course you can use the bathroom." She stepped all the way inside the front alcove and held the door open. "It's down the hallway. Last door on the right."

The phonebook man walked past her, still carrying his books, and hurried down the hall. Nina closed the door and returned to her paper and her coffee. She turned on the TV- the Today show-for some background noise.

Three articles later, she realized that the phonebook man had not left. Her heart gave a short trip-hammer of fear. She should have known better. She should never have let a stranger in the house. She put the paper down and stood up, moving toward the hall. She peeked around the corner. The bathroom door was closed. He was still in there.

And he was taking a shower.

She could hear, below the surface noise of the television, the familiar sound of the water pipes and the running shower. Her first instinct was anger-how dare he?-but that was replaced instantly by fear, and she crept back to the kitchen and took the phone off the hook, dialing 911.

The phone was dead.

She heard the shower shut off.

She hurried into the bedroom, grabbed a pair of jeans and a blouse, and ran back out. She put the clothes on in the kitchen as fast as she could.

He walked in just as she was buttoning the top button of her blouse.

His hair was black. He had a beard. He had gained at least sixty pounds.

Nina gasped. "Who are you?"

He held up the load of phonebooks under his arms and smiled. "Phonebook man." He looked around the kitchen admiringly. "Nice kitchen. What's for breakfast?"

"D-don't hurt me." She knew her voice was trembling obviously with her fear, but she could not help it. Her legs felt weak, as though they would not support her. "I'll d-do anything you want."

The phonebook man looked puzzled. "What are you talk­ing about?"

She stared at him, trying to keep her voice steady. "You cut the phone lines. So I couldn't call anybody."

He chuckled. "You're crazy."

"I let you use the bathroom and you used it to take a shower and now your hair's different and you have a beard and you're ... you're ..." She shook her head in disbelief. "You're not the same person."

He looked at her, uncomprehending. "I'm the phonebook man." His eyes moved down her body as he noticed her changed apparel, and he smiled. "Nice clothes."

"What do you want from me?"

He looked surprised, caught off guard by her outburst, and he held up the phonebooks under his arms. "I'm here to deliver your local phonebooks."

"You delivered them! Now get the hell out of here!"

He nodded. "Okay, lady, okay. Sorry I was born." He started to walk out of the kitchen, then turned around. "But if I could just have a piece of toast. I didn't have anything to eat this morning-"

Nina ran past him and out the front door, leaving the screen swinging behind her. She couldn't take this anymore. She couldn't handle this, couldn't cope. She realized she was screaming by the time she reached the McFarlands' house next door, and she forced herself to quiet down. Breathing heavily, she pounded on the door and rang the bell.

A minute passed. No answer.

She realized that both of the McFarlands must have al­ready gone to work, and she looked fearfully back toward her house. From the McFarlands' doorstep she could see into her own kitchen window.

The phonebook man was making himself some eggs.

She ran back down the sidewalk to the Adams' house, on the other side of hers. She pounded on the door and rang the bell, but again there was no answer. The Adams must have gone someplace.

Nina looked around the neighborhood. They had only moved in a couple of months ago, and hadn't met many of the neighbors. She didn't feel comfortable walking up to some stranger's door. Especially not with this wild tale.

But this was an emergency....

The car!

The car. She didn't know why she hadn't thought of it earlier. There was an extra set of keys in the little magnetic box attached to the wheel well. She could get the keys and take off. Moving slowly, quietly, she pushed through the wall of bushes which separated the Adams' house from her own. Ducking low, she ran along the side of the house to the garage.

The phonebook man was sitting in the driver's seat of the car.

He smiled at her as she ran up. "We have to go to the store," he said. She could see his phonebooks piled on the seat next to him.

Anger broke through her fear and shock. "That's my car! Get out of there!"

He looked at her, confused. "If you don't want me to drive, that's all right. You can drive."

Nina sat down on the floor of the garage, her buttocks landing hard on the cement. Tears-tears of anger, hurt, frustration, fear-ran down her face. Snot flowed freely from her nose. She sobbed.

Vaguely, through her tears, through her cries, she heard the sound of a car door being slammed, of feet walking across cement. She felt a light hand on her shoulder. "Would you like a phonebook?"

She looked up. The phonebook man was bending over her, concern on his face. She shook her head, still crying, and wiped the tears from her cheeks. "Just go away," she said. "Please."

He nodded. "You sure you don't need another phone-book?"

She shook her head. "Just go."

He shifted the load of books under his arms, looked at her and started to say something, then thought the better of it and walked silently down the driveway toward the sidewalk. He walked up the street toward the McFarlands'.

The tears came again-tears of relief this time-and Nina felt her whole body relax, tension leaving her muscles. When the crying stopped of its own accord, she stood up and walked into the house through the side door. The kitchen was a mess. He had spilled milk and coffee all over the countertops and had left the eggs, shell and all, in the pan on the stove. Salt and sugar were everywhere.

She started to clean up.

She was washing out the sink when the phone rang. She jumped, startled. She recalled that the phone had been dead, and she approached it with something like dread, afraid to pick up the receiver. The rings continued-five, six, seven times-and slowly, hesitantly, she picked up the receiver.

"Phonebook man." The voice was low and insinuating.

She dropped the receiver, screaming.

It was then that she noticed the note. It was taped to the broom closet next to the refrigerator. The note was attached low to the door, below her line of vision, and it was scrawled in a childish hand.

"Gone to pick up Erin. Be back for lunch."

It was unsigned, but she knew who it was from. She ran to the bedroom, grabbed her keys, and sped out to the car. The car bumped over the curb on the way out into the street, but Nina didn't care. She threw the car into drive and took off toward the school.

She should have known better. She should have known he wouldn't leave her alone. The car sped through a yellow light at the intersection. She would pick up Erin and go straight to the police station. He was still around some­where, between home and school; they should be able to catch him.

But where had he called from?

Someone else's house, probably. He was now torturing some other poor soul.

She swung the car into the school parking lot just as the kindergarten classes were letting out. Hordes of small chil­dren streamed out of the school doors. She left the keys in the car and dashed across the asphalt toward the kids. She scanned the stream of faces, looking for Erin (what was she wearing today? red?), and finally saw her, chatting happily to a friend.

She ran over and picked up her daughter, ecstatic with re­lief.

Erin dropped the phonebook she'd been holding.

Nina stared at her in disbelief. "Where did you get that?" she demanded.

"The phonebook man gave it to me." Erin looked at her innocently.

"Where is he now?"

Erin pointed up the street, where the children were start­ing to walk home. Nina could see nothing, only a sea of heads and colored shirts, bobbing, skipping, running, walk­ing.

"He said for you to stop bugging him about the phone-books. He can only give you two." Erin pointed to the book on the ground. "That's your second one. He said he's not coming by anymore. That's it."

That's it.

Nina held her daughter tight and looked up the street, her eyes searching. She thought she saw, over the children's heads, a shock of brown hair above a clean-shaven non­descript face. But it disappeared almost immediately, and she could not find it again.

The children moved forward in a tide, walking in groups of two or three or more, talking, laughing, giggling.

Somewhere up ahead, the phonebook man walked alone.

Estoppel

"Estoppel" is a legal term that means "it is what it says it is." It applies primarily to pornography, allowing prosecutors to more easily prove in court that a maga­zine is "obscene" or "pornographic" if it is specifi­cally advertised as such. I learned about estoppel in a Communications Law course, and since I was bored in class that day, I thought up this story instead of pay­ing attention to the lecture.

Side note: There's a reference in here to the Chico Hamilton Quintet. Known to mainstream audiences primarily for appearing in and scoring the Burt Lan­caster/Tony Curtis film The Sweet Smell of Success, the quintet featured a cellist named Fred Katz who, in addition to being a truly spectacular jazz musician, went on to write the music for Ken Nordine's ac­claimed Word Jazz albums, the music for the Oscar-winning cartoon "Gerald McBoing Boing," and music for the Roger Gorman cult classic Little Shop of Hor­rors. At the time I wrote this story, Fred Katz was my anthropology professor at Gal State Fullerton.

Most people assume I am mute without asking. I never tell them otherwise. If anyone does ask, I simply hand them one of the "mute cards" I had printed up for just such a reason and which I always carry with me. "Peace!" the cards say. "Smile. I am a Deaf Mute."

Most people also assume I am a derelict. I dress in old, filthy, raggedy clothes, I seldom bathe, and I never cut my hair or trim my beard. I have noticed, over a period of years, that people do not ordinarily talk to derelicts, and I became one for that reason.

I have done everything possible to minimize my human contacts and to keep people from speaking to me or ad­dressing me in any way.

I have not uttered a single intelligible word since 1960.

I know that, for all intents and purposes, lama mute, but I have never been able or willing to make it official. I have refrained from saying the words. I should have proclaimed, "I am mute," years ago. But that would be permanent. It would be irreversible.

I guess I've been afraid.

To be honest, there is very little of which I am not afraid. I have spent half of my life being afraid. For nearly a decade, I was afraid to write anything down. I would neither speak nor write. What if, I thought, it happened with writing as well as speaking?

But those years, those ten long years of almost total iso­lation, were sheer and utter hell. I did not realize how im­portant communication was to me until it was denied. And after a decade of such isolation, I literally could not take it anymore. It was driving me mad. So one night, my blood running high with adrenaline and bottled courage, I decided to take the chance. I locked the door of my motel room, shut the curtains, sat down in front of the desk, and wrote on a blank sheet of paper: "I am black."

My hand did not change color as I finished the last arm of the k. Neither did my other hand. I rushed to the mirror: neither had my face. God, the joy, the sheer exquisite rapture with which that simple sentence filled me! I danced around the room like a madman. I wrote all night.

I still write prolifically to this day and have actually had several fiction pieces published in assorted literary maga­zines under various pseudonyms. I have six unpublished novels sitting in my desk drawer.

But I am not a snob. I write anything and to anyone. Once a day, I make it a point to write to a business and complain about one of their products. You'd be surprised at the re­sponses I get. I've received free movie passes, free ham­burger coupons, several rebate checks, and a huge amount of apologetic letters.

And of course I have several pen pals. They are the clos­est thing I have to friends. My best friend, Phil, is a convict in San Quentin. He murdered his brother-in-law and was sentenced to life imprisonment. I would never want to meet the man on the street, but I have found through his letters that he can be a deeply sensitive individual. Out of all my pen pals, he best understands what it is like to be isolated, alienated, alone. I also write to a middle-aged woman named Joan, in France; a young single girl named Nikol, in Belgium; and a small boy named Rufus, in Washington, D.C.

I have not told any of them the truth.

But how can I? I do not really know what "the truth" is myself.

The first experience occurred when I was twelve. At least, that's the first instance I remember. We were playing, my cousin Jobe and I, in the unplowed and untended field in back of my grandmother's farm. We had just finished a fu­rious game of freeze-ball tag and were running like crazy through what seemed like acres of grass, racing to the barn. The grass was tall, almost above my head, and I had to keep straining my neck and jumping up to see where I was going.

I did not see the rock I tripped over.

I must have blacked out for a few seconds, because I found myself lying on the ground, staring at an endless for­est of grass stalks. I stood up, stunned and hurt, and started walking toward the barn where I knew Jobe was waiting, a self-satisfied winner's smile on his face.

I must have hit my head harder than I thought, because I kept walking and walking, and still did not reach the clear­ing and the barn. Instead, the grass kept getting thicker and taller, and soon I was lost in it. I did not even know in which direction I was traveling.

With the bump on my head still throbbing and with my heart starting to pound at the prospect of being lost in the grass, I decided to call for help. "Jobe!" I cried loudly, cup­ping my hands to my mouth to amplify the sound. "I'm lost!"

I heard Jobe's older, mocking laughter from an indeter­minate direction.

"I mean it!" I called. "Help!"

Jobe giggled now. "Yeah," he called back, "the barn's a tough one to find."

By now I was ready to burst into tears. "Mom!"

"She can't hear you," Jobe said. He paused. "I'll come and get you, but you'll have to pay the price."

"I'll pay!" I cried.

"All right. Say, 'I'm a yellow belly, and I give up in womanly defeat.'"

I was desperate and, with only a moment's hesitation, I cast my pride away and shouted out the words. "I'm a yel­low belly, and I give up in womanly defeat!"

A minute later, I heard Jobe crashing through the weeds. He came through the wall of grass to my right. "Come on," he said, laughing. I followed him to the bam.

That night, as I undressed for my bath, I discovered that the skin on my stomach, instead of being its normal peach pink, had somehow turned a dark and rather bright yellow. I was baffled; I didn't know what had happened. Perhaps, I thought, I had accidentally touched some type of chemical dye. But the yellow color would not come off-even after a full ten minutes of hard scrubbing.

I did not tell my parents about this, however, and a few days later the color simply faded away.

I had no other experiences for almost ten years.

I was a history major in college. Midterms were over and, after nearly a full two weeks of nonstop studying, I decided to accompany some newfound friends and some recently ac­quired acquaintances to a club in Long Beach to hear the Chico Hamilton Quintet, the current musical sensation among the college crowd. I sat there in my shades, rep tie in place, smoking my skinny pipe and listening intently in the fashion of the day.

After the set, one of the others at our table, a student named Glen whom I barely knew, took a long, cool drag on his cigarette and looked up at the departing musicians. "Crap," he pronounced.

I could not believe what I'd just heard. "You're joking," I said.

He shook his head. "Highly overrated. The music was banal at best."

I was outraged! I could not believe we had heard the same group. "You know nothing about music," I said to him. "I refuse to discuss it with you."

Glen smiled a little. "And I suppose you're a music ex­pert?" he asked, addressing his cigarette.

"I'm a music major," I lied.

And I was a music major.

As simple as that.

My whole life shifted as I spoke those words. I remem­bered the myriad music courses I had taken and passed; I re­called names, faces, and even particular expressions of piano teachers I had studied under. I knew details about peo­ple I had not even known existed minutes before. I knew what the band had just played, and how and why.

I looked around at my companions. Doug, Don, and Justin, the three people at the table I knew best, were glar­ing at Glen. "That's right," they concurred. "He's a music major."

They were serious.

I did not know what was going on. I retained a full mem­ory of my "previous life," yet I knew that it was no longer true. Perhaps it never had been. And I knew that whereas a few minutes ago I could have recited the names of all the battles of the Revolutionary War and the outcome of each but could not have played the piano to save my life, now the opposite was true.

I slept fitfully that night. I woke up still a music major.

I decided to check my school transcripts to find out ex­actly what was going on. I went to the Office of Admissions and Records, got my files from the clerk, and took them over to a booth to study. I opened the folder and looked at the first page. The words typed there stunned me. I was officially en­rolled as a music major with an emphasis in piano composi­tion. I had never taken more than an introductory history course.

This can't be happening, I thought. But I knew it was, and something in the back of my mind made me push on. I looked up; the records clerk had turned her head for a mo­ment. "I am a history major," I said to the transcripts in front of me.

The music classes were gone.

And then I knew.

Of course, the first feeling was one of power. Incredible, uncontrollable, unlimited power. I could be anything. Any­one. And I could change at will.

But that disappeared almost immediately and was re­placed by the more penetrating feeling of fear. Could I con­trol this power? If so, how? If not, why not? Would it eventually fade? Or would it get stronger? Did this power or curse or miracle change only me, or did it change my im­mediate surroundings, or did it change the entire world in which I lived? Could I alter history? What exactly were the implications, ramifications, and all the other -cations of this? A million thoughts voiced themselves simultaneously in my mind.

A test, I thought. I need to test this out. I need to make sure this isn't some type of elaborate hoax or psychological mind game being played on me.'

First, I tried thinking of a command. I am a giraffe, I told myself.

Nothing happened.

Well, that proved something. To effect a change, the statement had to be said aloud. I was about to speak the phrase when I stopped myself. If I said, "I am a giraffe," and actually became one, it was quite possible that I would per­manently remain that way. A giraffe cannot speak. I would not be able to say, "I am a human being," and change my­self back.

The fear hit again; stronger, more potent. I began to sweat. I would have be very careful about this. I would have to think before I spoke. If I did not consider all the possibil­ities and potential side effects of each statement I made from now on, I could permanently alter my life. And not just for the better.

So instead of testing out my newfound proclivity then and there, I returned my transcripts to the clerk, mumbled a simple "Thank you," and hurriedly returned to my room. Once inside, I closed and locked the door and pulled all the | curtains. I left all the lights on. I wanted to see this.

I had a full-length mirror on the back of my closet door. 1 Being something of a clotheshorse, I had always considered I such a mirror a necessity and would never have been with- I out one. Now it really was a necessity. I opened the closet J door, took off all my clothes, and stood before the mirror. "I am fat," I said.

The change was not visible. That is to say, it did not occur in time. I was thin, then I was fat. I did not bloat up or sud­denly gain weight or anything of the sort. In fact, I did not physically change. I did not change at all. Rather, reality changed. One second, I weighed my typical 145 pounds. That was a fact. The next second, the facts changed. I weighed nearly 300 pounds. This too was a fact.

And it altered the world.

I retained a full memory of my "real life," but I also had a new and completely different life-my fat life. And the world corresponded to it. I knew that I had always had a bit of a weight problem, and that, after my girlfriend died from leukemia, eating had become a compulsion, a neurosis, a se­rious problem. I had tried several diets since then, but noth­ing worked. Eating was a need. And I loved pistachio ice cream.

I looked in the mirror at my triple chins and my over-flowing gut. I looked like nothing so much as a big ball of white dough. "I am thin," I said.

The world changed back. I was not fat. I had never had a girlfriend with leukemia. I hated pistachio ice cream.

This was a different reality.

That was as far as my "tests" or "experiments" went. I quit then and there. I did not understand this power; I did not know how to use it; I did not want to cope with it. And I was determined not to employ it for any reason. I vowed never to utter another sentence which contained the word.

But it is amazing how people adapt how human beings have this sort of innate ability to adjust themselves to change, no matter how radical. People living next to chemical dump sites soon stop noticing the stench; people living on the beach soon cease to hear the endless crashing of the waves.

All this is rationalization. For I got used to the power rather quickly, though I kept my vow and abstained from its usage. The power became an accepted part of me. It became comfortable.

And it happened.

One day, having failed miserably on a final in one of my more important classes, sitting in my room, feeling depressed and sorry for myself, I thought, Why not? Why not use the power? Why not use it to get something I want out of life?

I planned my speech carefully. I did not want to screw this up. Finally, I had worked out what seemed a perfect statement for my purposes and was ready to say it. Once again, I stood before the mirror. "I graduated from Harvard with a Ph.D. in political science, and I am now a presiden­tial consultant," I said.

And it was all true. The knowledge of my previous life as a financially and academically struggling history major at the University of Southern California during Eisenhower's administration was still there, but it was a memory of the past. I was a different person now-establishing myself as one of the more brilliant minds in the popular Stevenson White House.

There was no transition period. I knew my job and was good at it. Everyone knew and accepted me. The transfor­mation had gone perfectly.

The power was an annoyance in my everyday life, how­ever. I would greet people with the customary, "I'm glad to see you," and would suddenly find myself overjoyed that they had stopped by. Or I would say to people, "I'm sorry you have to go," and, by the time they had finally departed, I would be near tears. On particularly frustrating days, I would mutter to myself, "I'm sick of this job," then, feeling the effects immediately, I would have to blurt out, "I love this job, it makes me feel good!"

But I could function. The power caused me no major problems.

Until June 5.

A particularly nasty and involved crisis had come up in­volving both Germany and the Soviet Union, and we were at an emergency cabinet meeting in the president's office, arguing over our course of action. The secretary of defense had suggested that we "bluff" our way out of the possible confrontation with a first-strike threat. "Hell, they're already afraid of us," he said. "They knew we've dropped the bomb once, and they know we're not afraid to do it again."

A surprising number of cabinet members agreed with him.

"No," I argued. "A diplomatic solution is needed in this instance. Military threats would only aggravate the situa­tion."

The secretary smiled condescendingly. "Look," he said, "your theories may be fine in college classes, they may work in textbooks, but they don't work in real life. I've been around these matters for the past twenty-six years, most of my life, and I think I know something about them. You've been here a little over a year. I hardly think you're in a po­sition to decide these things."

I was furious. "I may not have been here as long as you have, but I do possess something which you seem to lack- common sense. Do you honestly think threats of a nuclear war are going to put an end to this crisis? Of course they won't. I know that and you know that. Furthermore, I be­lieve that such actions would lead to a full-scale military confrontation. And none of us want that. We have to talk this out peacefully."

The arguments soon wound down and the president, looking tired and a little strained, thanked us for our contri­butions and went off to make his decision.

I was in my office when word came that the Soviets had launched an all-out nuclear attack. "Please file into the fall­out shelter," a voice said through the speaker above my door. "Do not panic. Please file into the fallout shelter. This is not a test."

The realization hit me immediately. "I believe," I had said. "I know." The fate of the secretary's plan, the country, and, possibly, the entire world had been in my hands, and I had not known it. I had botched it horribly. The attack was a direct result of my statements.

I panicked. I was not sure that I could think fast enough to stop the impending death and destruction, and prevent the holocaust. But I knew that I had to save myself. That much was instinctive. "I'm a history major at USC trying to get fi­nancial aid from the Eisenhower administration," I screamed.

And I was on a couch in the financial aid office. A woman was staring at me, as if waiting for the answer to a question. I was sweating like a pig and shaking as if palsied. I am not even sure I was coherent as I ran out the door and to my room.

But it was not my room. The same Expressionistic prints were on the walls and the same furniture was arranged in the same way, but the room was different. I was in room 212 in­stead of room 215.

This was not quite the same reality I'd started from.

Thus I learned that my statements could have delayed ac­tions and unforeseen consequences. If I did not study in de­tail all the possible meanings of all my words and/or did not phrase my sentences carefully, things could change beyond | all reason. And once again, I grew afraid. Only this time the fear was deeper. This time it did not go away.

I made the decision. I would speak no more. I could not afford to gamble with the lives of other people, nor could I j bear the responsibility of changing reality or even particular circumstances. Even the most innocent comments, devoid of f all malevolent intent or meaning, could, I realized, wreak havoc I could not envision. I could not take the chance of speaking ever again.

I had to leave school. That was my first move. It was im­possible to live in a college environment without uttering a word, and I knew that the temptation would be too great for me. My friends would talk to me, teachers would ask me questions, acquaintances would stop and engage me in casual conversation. I had to leave.

I quickly gathered all my belongings together and packed what I needed. I took all my money. I left.

Once on the street, however, I realized that I had no idea of what to do next. I did not even know where to start. Time, I thought. I need time to think, time to sort things out, time to formulate at least some semblance of apian. I felt in my pockets and counted out all the money. One hundred dollars. That would buy me some time.

I did it all without saying a word. It's amazing, really, how well one can function without even the slightest form of verbal communication. I rented a small shack on the beach for a week and bought enough groceries to last me for that time without saying so much as a "yes" or a "no" to anyone. I got by with noncommittal grunts, quizzical looks, nods, and various gestures.

And then I was ready.

I had already decided never to utter another word again. Now, I knew, I must enforce that vow. I had to wean myself from the world of people. I had to cut off all ties with hu­manity. I had to isolate myself from everything-go cold turkey, as it were. And I had to do it in a week. In seven days, I had to reject and unlearn a lifetime of thought pat­terns, habits, and behavior. I had to de-acculturate myself.

It was hard at first. With the absence of human contact, I found myself wanting to think out loud. I felt, like the he­roes in radio dramas, compelled to talk to myself.

But I overcame that compulsion. Soon, the urge disap­peared altogether. I spent my days walking along the empty beach, occasionally swimming and reading good books. I grew used to my solitude.

Nights, however, were a different matter.

The first night, I decided to turn in early. I drank a cup of espresso, marked my place in the book I was reading, and settled down in the double bed.

I awoke in what had once been a shopping mall, now abandoned and inhabited by poor people, most of whom were wandering down the once-carpeted aisles of stores try­ing to hawk pieces of scrap metal they'd scavenged. A woman walked up to me and held out a rusted gear. "Want to buy it?" she whined pitifully. "Only a dollar."

I was completely baffled, trapped in that dazed and foggy netherworld between sleep and wakefulness. I did not know what was going on. I looked down at my body and got an­other rude shock. I was female.

Then it came to me. I remembered my warm comfortable bed in my rented beach shack. "I am back in my cabin on the beach," I blurted out. "I am the same person I was when I went to sleep last night."

And I was.

I must have been talking in my sleep. It was the only plausible explanation. No one had ever mentioned it to me-not my parents, my brother, not any of my friends or roommates-and perhaps it wasn't even audible, but appar­ently I was a sleeptalker. That was a problem. I could con­trol my waking actions and my conscious thoughts, but sleep, dreams, and my subconscious were beyond my reach.

The sleeptalking continued, and I was never sure whether I'd wake up in my own bed, wake up on some alien planet, or even if I would wake up at all. Sometimes, I would awaken in the middle of the night only to find myself in some surrealistic nightmare, in a world with no recognizable features and with the bizarre juxtaposition of unrelated ob­jects so characteristic of dreamscapes. Once, I remember, I awoke in a Wild West fort on a huge bed of ostrich feathers nearly twenty feet high. I was surrounded by soldiers. To my right, a storm was brewing over a barren plain. To my left, bright and shining, stood an ultra-modern supermarket.

Although I never broke my vow of silence during the day, I constantly talked in my sleep, and then again when I awoke-in order to return to the "real world."

Eventually, the problem did go away. Whether I willed myself to stop talking in my sleep or whether it disappeared of its own accord I don't know. All I know is that it took a long, long time.

I refuse to let myself think about the possible reverberat­ing effects my nighttime mumblings may have had.

When the week was up, I left my rented cabin. I traveled. At first, I wanted to get as far away from people and civi­lization as I could. So I headed north, to the wilds of Canada and then on to Alaska, doing odd jobs here and there for my room and board, pretending to be mute. But I'm a city per­son. And I found that I missed the throngs of people and the hustle and bustle of city life. I wanted to be near the crowds, even if I could not be part of them. And, truth be told, it's just as easy to remain isolated and alone in crowded cities as it is in deserted countrysides. Cities are so impersonal and cold, and the people in them so alienated from each other, that I fit right in. I mean, / notice my lack of communication; I have to live with it, it is an unending constant in my life and it is torture to me. But to everyone else, I'm just another person. No one notices that I don't speak.

But this is all beside the point. This is all background in­formation. This is all a preface to what I want to say.

I have given it a lot of thought. Over twenty years of thought. And I have decided to use the power one last time. I do this not out of selfishness or greed. I do this not for my­self at all. And I do not enter into this rashly or without rea­son. I do this after careful consideration and deliberation, and with a definite goal in mind. I do this purposefully and with a clear conscience.

For over these past decades, I have come to realize the full implications of this ability. I understand the tremendous, almost supreme and absolute power which I wield in my fal­lible and mortal body. It is a terrible thing to live with day in and day out, a terrible burden and responsibility. I cannot and should not be entrusted with such capabilities. Nor should any person.

I do not know if there are others with this power. Perhaps, even as I write, whole realities are coming and going, shift­ing and changing all around me. But no more. I intend to put a stop to it. I intend to make sure that no human being shall ever have to live through the hell which I have experienced.

Tonight I will speak. And the power will cease to exist.

I have thought this through, as I've said, for many years, and I believe I have honed down, defined, and clarified my statement to such an exact degree that it will have no effect other than the one which I intend. I have even written it down, to make sure I make no mistakes.

Of course, it is impossible to know exactly what all the consequences of my words may be. The laws of nature and science may crack and break; the world itself may change ut­terly. But I am willing to take that risk. I must take that risk.

In the process I, too, along with my power and along with any other individuals who have this ability, will cease to exist. It is for the best. My senile ravings, once I grow old, will now never be able to affect anyone; the cries of my death will not cause chaos. Instead, I will simply de-exist. I will probably never have existed at all. The people I once knew will not retain even a faint memory of me.

This, then, is my record, my proof. I have written down the events as they have transpired and have attempted to ex­plain, somewhat, the full implications of my power. If I am successful in what I intend, the power will disappear forever and will never trouble humankind again. If I am not suc­cessful ... who knows? I can only try. And I am willing to chance it.

Wish me luck.

The Washingtonians

During the Gulf War, I was amazed at the public's mass acceptance of the government's view of events. Something like 120,000 Iraqis were killed, not all of them soldiers or Husseins-in-training, many of them ordinary men, women, and children who happened to be living in the same geographical area in which we were dropping bombs. But the news was controlled, information filtered through official government press conferences, and on TV we saw no bodies, no blood. So people believed what they were told. I got to think­ing about what it would be like if all our history was like that, if what we learned in school was simply the party line, not the actual truth. "The Washingtonians" grew from there.

I will Skin your Children and Eat Them.

Upon Finishing, I will Fashion Utensils of Their Bones.

"It's authentic," Davis admitted. "It was written by George Washington." He flipped off the light and, with gloved fin­gers, removed the parchment manuscript from underneath the magnifier. He shook his head. "Where did you get this? I've never come across anything like it in all my years in the business."

Mike shook his head. "I told you. It was in a trunk of my great-grandmother's stuff that we found hidden in her barn."

"May I ask what you intend to do with it?"

"Well, if it was authentic, we were thinking we'd donate it to the Smithsonian or something. Or sell it to the Smith­sonian, if we could. What's the appraisal value of something like this?"

Davis spread his hands in an expansive gesture. "It's in­valuable."

"A ballpark figure."

He leaned forward, across the counter. "I'm not sure you realize what you have here, Mr. Franks. With this one sheet of paper, you can entirely rewrite the history of our coun­try." He paused, letting his words sink in. "History is myth, Mr. Franks. It's not just a collection of names and dates and facts. It's a belief system that ultimately tells more about the people buying into it than it does about the historical partic­ipants. What do we retain from our school lessons about George Washington? About Abraham Lincoln? Impressions. Washington was the father of our country. Lincoln freed the slaves. We are who we are as a nation because of what we believe they were. This letter will shatter that belief system and will forever change the image we have of Washington and perhaps all our Founding Fathers. That's a huge respon­sibility, and I think you should think about it."

"Think about it?"

"Decide if you want to make this knowledge known."

Mike stared at him. "Cover it up? Why? If it's true, then people should know."

"People don't want truth. They want image."

"Yeah, right. How much do I owe you?"

"The appraisal fee is fifty dollars." Davis started to write out a receipt, then paused, looked up. "I know a collector," he said. "He's had feelers out for something of this nature for a very long time. Would you mind if I gave him a ring? He's very discreet, very powerful, and, I have reason to be­lieve, very generous."

"No thanks."

"I'd call him for you, set up all the-"

"Not interested," Mike said.

"Very well." Davis returned to the receipt. He finished writing, tore the perforated edge of the paper, and handed Mike a copy. "But if I may, Mr. Franks, I'd like to suggest you do something."

"What's that?" Mike asked as he took the receipt.

"Sleep on it."

He thought about Washington's letter all the way home. It was lying on the passenger seat beside him, in a protective plastic sleeve that Davis had given him, and he could see it in his peripheral vision, dully reflecting the sun each time he turned north. It felt strange owning something so valuable. He had never had anything this rare in his car before, and it carried with it a lot of responsibility. It made him nervous. He probably should've had it insured before taking it any­where. What if the car crashed? What if the parchment burned? His hands on the wheel were sweaty.

But that wasn't why his hands were sweaty. That wasn't really why he was nervous. No. That was part of it, but the real reason was the note itself.

I will Skin your Children and Eat Them.

The fact that the words had been written by a real person and not a character in a novel would have automatically made him uneasy. But the fact that they had been written by George Washington ... Well, that was just too hard to take. There was something creepy about that, something that 1 made a ripple of gooseflesh crawl up the back of his neck f each time he looked at the plastic-wrapped brown parch­ment. He should have felt excited, proud, but instead he felt J dirty, oily. He suddenly wished he'd never seen the note.

Ahead of him on a billboard above a liquor store, a caricature of George Washington-green, the way he appeared on the dollar bill-was winking at him, promoting the high T-bill rate at the Bank of New York.

He looked away from the sign, turned down Lincoln Av­enue toward home.

Mike paced up and down the length of the kitchen. "He implied that rather than give it to the Smithsonian or some­thing, I should sell it to a private collector who would keep it a secret."

Pam looked up from the dishes, shook her head. "That's crazy."

"That's what I said."

"Well, don't get too stressed out over it-"

"I'm not getting stressed out."

"Will you let me finish my sentence? I was just going to say, there are a lot of other document appraisers, a lot of museum curators, a lot of university professors. There are a lot of people you can take this to who will know what to do with it."

He nodded, touched her arm. "You're right. I'm sorry. I'm just... I don't know. This whole thing has me a little freaked."

"Me too. This afternoon I was helping Amy with her homework. They're studying Johnny Appleseed and George Washington and the cherry tree."

"Two myths."

"There's a picture of Washington in her book...." She shivered, dipped her hands back into the soap suds. "You ought to look at it. It'll give you the willies."

He smiled at her. "I could give you my willy."

"Later."

"Really creepy, huh?"

"Check it out for yourself."

"I will. You need me in here?"

"No."

He patted the seat of her jeans, gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. "I'll be out front then."

"All right. I'll be through here in a minute. Go over Amy's math homework, too. Double-check."

"Okay." He walked into the living room. Amy was lying on the floor watching a rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond. Her schoolbook and homework were on the coffee table. He sat down on the couch and was about to pick up the book, when he saw the cover: mountains and clouds and a clipper ship and the Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Bell. The cover was drawn simply, in bright grade school colors, but there was something about the smile on the Statue of Lib­erty's face that made him realize he did not want to open up the book to see the picture of George Washington.

A commercial came on, and Amy turned around to look at him. "Are you going to check my homework?" she asked. He nodded. "Yes," he said. "Do it quick, then. I'm watching TV." He smiled at her. "Yes, boss."

The pounding woke them up.

It must have been going on for some time, because Amy was standing in the doorway of their bedroom clutching her teddy bear, though she'd supposedly given up the teddy bear two years ago.

Pam gave him a look that let him know how frightened she was, that told him to go out to the living room and find out who the hell was beating on their front door at this time of night, then she was no longer Wife but Mom, and she was out of bed and striding purposefully toward their daughter, telling her in a calm, reasonable, adult voice to go back to bed, that there was nothing the matter.

Mike quickly reached down for the jeans he'd abandoned on the floor next to the bed and put them on. The pounding continued unabated, and he felt more than a little frightened himself. But he was Husband and Dad and this was one of those things Husbands and Dads had to do, and he strode quickly out to the living room with a walk and an attitude that made him seem much braver than he actually felt.

He slowed down as he walked across the dark living room toward the entryway. Out here, the pounding seemed much louder and much ... scarier. There was a strength and will behind the pounding that had not translated across the rooms to the rear of the house and he found himself think­ing absurdly that whatever was knocking on the door was not human. It was a stupid thought, an irrational thought, but he stopped at the edge of the entryway nevertheless. The door was solid, there was no window in it, not even a peep­hole, and he did not want to just open it without knowing who-

what-was on the other side.

He moved quickly over to the front window. He didn't want to pull the drapes open and draw attention to himself, but he wanted to get a peek at the pounder. There was a small slit where the two halves of the drapes met in the middle of the window, and he bent over to peer through the opening.

Outside on the porch, facing the door, were four men wearing white powdered wigs and satin colonial garb.

He thought for a second that he was dreaming. The sur­realistic irrationality of this seemed more nightmarish than real. But he saw one of the men pound loudly on the door with his bunched fist, and from the back of the house he heard the muffled sound of Pam's voice as she comforted Amy, and he knew that this was really happening.

He should open the door, he knew. He should confront these people. But something about that bunched fist and the look of angry determination on the pounder's face made him hesitate. He was frightened, he realized. More frightened than he had been before he'd peeked through the curtains, when he'd still half thought there might be a monster out­side.

I will Skin your Children and Eat Them.

These weirdos were connected somehow to Washing­ton's note. He knew that instinctively. And that was what scared him.

He heard Pam hurrying across the living room toward him, obviously alarmed by the fact that the pounding had not yet stopped. She moved quickly next to him. "Who is it?" she whispered.

He shook his head. "I don't know."

He peeked again through the split in the curtains, study­ing the strangers more carefully. She pressed her face next to his. He heard her gasp, felt her pull away. "Jesus," she whispered. There was fear in her voice. "Look at their teeth."

Their teeth? He focused his attention on the men's mouths. Pam was right. There was something strange about their teeth. He squinted, looked closer.

Their teeth were uniformly yellow.

Their teeth were false.

George Washington had false teeth.

He backed away from the window. "Call the police," he told Pam. "Now."

"We want the letter!" The voice was strong, filled with an anger and hatred he had not expected. The pounding stopped. "We know you have it, Franks! Give it to us and we will not harm you!"

Mike looked again through the parted curtains. All four of the men were facing the window, staring at him. In the porchlight their skin looked pale, almost corpselike, their I eyes brightly fanatic. The man who had been pounding on f the door pointed at him. Rage twisted the features of his face. "Give us the letter!"

He wanted to move away, to hide, but Mike forced him­self to hold his ground. He was not sure if the men could ac­tually see him through that small slit, but he assumed they could. "I called the police!" he bluffed. "They'll be here any minute!"

The pounder was about to say something but at that second, fate stepped in and there was the sound of a siren com­ing from somewhere to the east. The men looked confusedly at each other, spoke quietly and quickly between themselves, then began hurrying off the porch. On their arms, Mike saw round silk patches with stylized insignias.

A hatchet and a cherry tree.

"We will be back for you!" one of the men said. "You can't escape!"

"Mom!" Amy called from her bedroom.

"Go get her," Mike said.

"You call the police then."

He nodded as she moved off, but even as he headed to­ward the phone, he knew with a strange fatalistic certainty that the police would not be able to track down these people, that when these people came back-and they would come back-the police would not be able to protect him and his family.

He heard a car engine roar to life, heard tires squealing on the street.

He picked up the phone and dialed 911.

He left Pam and Amy home alone the next morning, told them not to answer the door or the telephone and to call the police if they saw any strangers hanging around the neigh­borhood. He had formulated a plan during the long sleepless hours between the cops' departure and dawn, and he drove to New York University, asking a fresh-faced clerk in ad­ministration where the history department was located. Fol­lowing the kid's directions across campus, he read the posted signs until he found the correct building.

The secretary of the history department informed him that Dr. Hartkinson had his office hours from eight to ten-thirty and was available to speak with him, and he followed her down the hallway to the professor's office.

Hartkinson stood upon introduction and shook his hand. He was an elderly man in his mid- to late sixties, with the short stature, spectacles, and whiskers of a Disney movie college professor. "Have a seat," the old man said, clearing a stack of papers from an old straight-backed chair. He thanked the secretary, who retreated down the hall, then moved back behind his oversized desk and sat down him­self. "What can I do for you?"

Mike cleared his throat nervously. "I don't really know how to bring this up. It may sound kind of stupid to you, but last night my wife and I were... well, we were sleeping, and we were woken up by this pounding on our front door. I went out to investigate, and there were these four men on my porch, calling out my name and threatening me. They were wearing powdered wigs and what looked like Revolu­tionary War clothes-"

The old man's eyes widened. "Washingtonians!"

"Washingtonians?"

"Shh!" The professor quickly stood and closed his office door. His relaxed, easygoing manner no longer seemed so relaxed and easygoing. There was a tenseness in his move­ments, an urgency in his walk. He immediately sat back down, took the phone off the hook, and pulled closed his lone window. He leaned conspiratorially across the desk, and when he spoke his voice was low and frightened. "You're lucky you came to me," he said. "They have spies everywhere."

"What?"

"Dr. Gluck and Dr. Cannon, in our history department here, are Washingtonians. Most of the other professors are sympathizers. It's pure luck you talked to me first. What do you have?"

"What?"

"Come on now. They wouldn't have come after you un­less you had something they wanted. What is it? A letter?"

Mike nodded dumbly.

"I thought so. What did this letter say?"

Mike reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the piece of parchment.

The professor took the note out of the plastic. He nodded when he'd finished reading. "The truth. That's what's in this letter."

Mike nodded.

"George Washington was a cannibal. He was a fiend and a murderer and a child eater. But he was also chosen to be the father of our country, and that image is more important than the actuality."

"Someone else told me that."

"He was right." The professor shifted in his seat. "Let me tell you something about historians. Historians, for the most part, are not interested in truth. They are not interested in learning facts and teaching people what really happened. They want to perpetuate the lies they are sworn to defend. It's an exclusive club, the people who know why our wars were really fought, what really happened behind the closed doors of our world's leaders, and most of them want to keep it that way. There are a few of us altruists, people like my­self who got into this business to learn and share our learn­ing. But the majority of historians are PR people for the past." He thought for a moment. "Benjamin Franklin did not exist. Did you know that? He never lived. He was a com­posite character created for mass consumption. It was felt by the historians that a character was needed who would em­body America's scientific curiosity, boldness of vision, and farsighted determination, who would inspire people to reach for greatness in intellectual endeavors. So they came up with Franklin, an avuncular American Renaissance man. Ameri­cans wanted to believe in Franklin, wanted to believe that his qualities were their qualities, and they bought into the concept lock, stock, and barrel, even falling for that absurd kite story.

"It was the same with Washington. Americans wanted him to be the father of our country, needed him to be the fa­ther of our country, and they were only too happy to believe what we historians told them."

Mike stared at Hartkinson, then looked away toward the rows of history books on the professor's shelves. These were the men who had really determined our country's course, he realized. The historians. They had altered the past i and affected the future. It was not the great men who shaped' the world, it was the men who told of the great men who j shaped the world.

"You've stumbled upon something here," Hartkinson said. "And that's why they're after you. That note's like a; leak from Nixon's White House, and the President's going to do everything in his power to make damn sure it goes no further than you. Like I said, the history biz isn't anything like it appears on the outside. It's a weird world in here, weird and secretive. And the Washingtonians ..." He shook his head, "They're the fringe of the fringe. And they are a very dangerous group indeed."

"They all had wooden teeth, the ones who came to my house-"

"Ivory, not wood. That's one of those little pieces of trivia they're very adamant about getting out to the public. The original core group of Washingtonians screwed up on that one, and subsequent generations have felt that the im­pression that was created made Washington out to be a weak buffoon. They've had a hard time erasing that 'wooden teeth' image, though."

"Is that how you can spot them? Their teeth?"

"No. They wear modern dentures when they're not in uniform. They're like the Klan in that respect."

"Only in that respect?"

The professor met his eyes. "No."

"What..." He cleared his throat. "What will they try to do to me?"

"Kill you. And eat you."

Mike stood. "Jesus fucking Christ. I'm going to the po­lice with this. I'm not going to let them terrorize my fam­ily-"

"Now just hold your horses there. That's what they'll try to do to you. If you listen to me, and if you do exactly what I say, they won't succeed." He looked at Mike, tried unsuc­cessfully to smile. "I'm going to help you. But you'll have to tell me a few things first. Do you have any children? Any daughters?"

"Yes. Amy."

"This is kind of awkward. Is she ... a virgin?"

"She's ten years old!"

The professor frowned. "That's not good."

"Why isn't it good?"

"Have you see the insignia they wear on their arms?"

"The hatchet and the cherry tree?"

"Yes."

"What about it?"

"That was Professor Summerlin's contribution. The Washingtonians have always interpreted the cherry tree story as a cannibal allegory, a metaphoric retelling of Wash­ington's discovery of the joys of killing people and eating their flesh. To take it a step further, Washington's fondness for the meat of virgins is well documented, and that's what made Professor Summerlin think of the patch. He simply updated the symbol to include the modern colloquial defini­tion of 'cherry.'"

Mike understood what Hartkinson meant, and he felt sick to his stomach.

"They all like virgin meat," the professor said.

"I'm going to the police. Thanks for your help and all, but I don't think you can-"

The door to the office was suddenly thrown open, and there they stood: four men and one woman dressed in Rev­olutionary garb. Mike saw yellowish teeth in smiling mouths.

"You should have known better, Julius," the tallest man said, pushing his way into the room.

"Run!" Hartkinson yelled.

Mike tried to, making a full-bore, straight-ahead dash toward the door, but he was stopped by the line of unmoving Washingtonians. He'd thought he'd be able to break through, to knock a few of them over and take off down the hall, but evidently they had expected that and were prepared.

Two of the men grabbed Mike and held him.

"My wife'll call the police if I'm not back in time."

"Who cares?" the tall man said.

"They'll publish it!" Mike yelled in desperation. "I gave orders for them to publish the letter if anything happened to me! If I was even later

The woman looked at him calmly. "No, you didn't."

"Yes, I did. My wife'll-"

"We have your wife," she said.

A stab of terror flashed through him.

She smiled at him, nodding. "And your daughter."

He was not sure where they were taking him, but wher­ever it was, it was far. Although he was struggling as they hustled him out of the building and into their van, no one tried to help him or tried to stop them. A few onlookers smiled indulgently, as though they were witnessing the re­hearsal of a play or a staged publicity stunt, but that was the extent of the attention they received.

If only they hadn't been wearing those damn costumes,

Mike thought. His abduction wouldn't have looked so com­ical if they'd been dressed in terrorist attire.

He was thrown into the rear of the van, the door was slammed shut, and a few seconds later the engine roared to life and they were off.

They drove for hours. There were no windows in the back of the van, and he could not tell in which direction they were traveling, but after a series of initial stops and starts and turns, the route straightened out, the speed became con­stant, and he assumed they were moving along a highway.

When the van finally stopped and the back door was opened and he was dragged out, it was in the country, in a wooded, meadowed area that was unfamiliar to him. Through the trees he saw a building, a white, green-trimmed colonial structure that he almost but not quite recognized. The Washingtonians led him away from the building to a small shed. The shed door was opened, and he saw a dark tunnel and a series of steps leading down. Two of the Wash­ingtonians went before him, the other three remained behind him, and in a group they descended the stairway.

Mt. Vernon, Mike suddenly realized. The building was Mt. Vernon, George Washington's home.

The steps ended at a tunnel, which wound back in the di­rection of the building and ended in a large warehouse-sized basement that looked as if it had been converted into a mu­seum of the Inquisition. They were underneath Mt. Vernon, he assumed, in what must have been Washington's secret lair.

"Where's Pam?" he demanded. "Where's Amy?"

"You'll see them," the woman said.

The tall man walked over to a cabinet, pointed at the dull ivory objects inside. "These are spoons carved entirely from the femurs of the First Continental Congress." He gestured toward an expensively framed painting hanging above the cabinet. The painting, obviously done by one of early America's finer artists, depicted a blood-spattered George Washington, flanked by two naked and equally blood-spattered women, devouring a screaming man. "Washington commis­sioned this while he was president."

The man seemed eager to show off the room's posses­sions, and Mike wondered if he could use that somehow to get an edge, to aid in an escape attempt. He was still being held tightly by two of the Washingtonians, and though he had not tried breaking out of their grip since entering the basement, he knew he would not be able to do so.

The tall man continued to stare reverently at the painting. "He acquired the taste during the winter when he and his men were starving and without supplies or reinforcements. The army began to eat its dead, and Washington found that he liked the taste. During the long days, he carved eating utensils and small good luck fetishes from the bones of the devoured men. Even after supplies began arriving, he con­tinued to kill a man a day for his meals."

"He began to realize that with the army in his control, he was in a position to call the shots," the woman explained from behind him. "He could create a country of cannibals. A nation celebrating and dedicated to the eating of human flesh!"

Mike turned his head, looked at her. "He didn't do it, though, did he?" He shook his head. "You people are so full of crap."

"You won't think so when we eat your daughter's kid­neys."

Anger coursed through him and Mike tried to jerk out of his captors' grasps. The men's grips tightened, and he soon gave up, slumping back in defeat. The tall man ran a hand lovingly over the top of a strange tablelike contraption in the middle of the room. "This is where John Hancock was flayed alive," he said. "His blood anointed this wood. His screams sang in these chambers."

"You're full of shit."

"Am I?" He looked dreamily around the room. "Jefferson gave his life for us, you know. Sacrificed himself right here, allowed Washingtonians to rip him apart with their teeth. Franklin donated his body to us after death-"

"There was no Benjamin Franklin."

The man smiled, showing overly white teeth. "So you know."

"Shouldn't you be wearing your wooden choppers?"

The man punched him in the stomach, and Mike doubled over, pain flaring in his abdomen, his lungs suddenly unable to draw in enough breath.

"You are not a guest," the man said. "You are a prisoner. Our prisoner. For now." He smiled. "Later you may be sup­per."

Mike closed his eyes, tried not to vomit. When he could again breathe normally, he looked up at the man. "Why this James Bond shit? You going to give me your whole fucking history before you kill me? You going to explain all of your toys to me and hope I admire them? Fuck you! Eat me, you sick assholes!"

The woman grinned. "Don't worry. We will."

A door opened at the opposite end of the room, and Pam and Amy were herded in by three new Washingtonians. His daughter and wife looked white and frightened. Amy was crying, and she cried even harder when she saw him. "Daddy!" she screamed.

"Lunch," the tall man said. "Start up the barbecue."

The Washingtonians laughed.

The woman turned to Mike. "Give us the letter," she said.

"And you'll let me go? Yeah. Right."

Where was the letter? he wondered. Hartkinson had had it last. Had he destroyed it or ditched it somewhere, like a junkie flushing drugs down the toilet after the arrival of the cops?

And where was Hartkinson? Why hadn't they kidnapped him, too?

He was about to ask just that very question when there was the sound of scuffling from the door through which Pam and Amy had entered. All of the Washingtonians turned to face that direction.

And there was Hartkinson.

He was dressed in a red British Revolutionary War uniform, and behind him stood a group of other redcoats clutching bayonets. A confused and frightened youth, who looked like a tour guide, peered into the room from behind them.

"Unhand those civilians!" Hartkinson demanded in an affected British accent.

He and his friends looked comical in their shabby mis-matched British uniforms, but they also looked heroic, and Mike's adrenaline started pumping as they burst through the doorway. There were a lot of them, he saw, fifteen or twenty, and they outnumbered the Washingtonians more than two to one.

Two of the Washingtonians drew knives and ran toward Pam and Amy.

"No!" Mike yelled.

Musket balls cut the men down in midstride.

Mike took a chance and tried his escape tactic again. Either the men holding him were distracted or their grip had simply weakened after all this time, but he successfully jerked out of their hands, broke away, and turned and kicked one of the men hard in the groin. The other man moved quickly out of his way, but Mike didn't care. He ran across the room, past arcane torture devices, to Pam and Amy.

"Attack!" someone yelled.

The fight began.

It was mercifully short. Mike heard gunfire, heard rico­chets, heard screams, saw frenzied movement, but he kept his head low and knew nothing of the specifics of what was happening. All he knew was that by the time he reached Pam and Amy they were free. He stood up from his crouch, looked around the room, and saw instantly that most of the Washingtonians were dead or captured. The tall man was lying on the floor with a dark crimson stain spreading across his powder blue uniform, and that made Mike feel good. Served the bastard right.

Both Pam and Amy were hugging each other and crying, and he hugged them too and found that he was crying as well. He felt a light tap on his shoulder and instinctively whirled around, fists clenched, but it was only Hartkinson.

Mike stared at him for a moment, blinked. "Thank you," he said, and he began crying anew, tears of relief. "Thank you."

The professor nodded, smiled. There were flecks of blood in his white Disney beard. "Leave," he said. "You don't want to see what comes next."

"But-"

His voice was gentle. "The Washingtonians aren't the only ones with ... different traditions."

"You're not cannibals, too?"

"No, but..." He shook his head. "You'd better go."

Mike looked at Pam and Amy, and nodded.

From inside his red coat, Hartkinson withdrew a piece of parchment wrapped in plastic.

The letter.

"Take it to the Smithsonian. Tell the world." His voice was low and filled with reverence. "It's history."

"Are you going to be okay here?"

"We've done this before." He gestured toward the tour guide, who was still standing in the corner. "He'll show you the way out." He shook his head, smiling ruefully. "The history biz is not like it appears from the outside."

"I guess not." Mike put his arm around Pam, who in turn pulled Amy toward the door. The tour guide, white-faced, started slowly up the steps.

"Don't look back," Hartkinson advised.

Mike waved his acquiesence and began walking up the stairs, clutching Washington's letter. Behind them, he heard screams-cries of terror, cries of pain-and though he didn't want to, though he knew he shouldn't, he smiled as he led his family out of the basement and into Washington's home above.

Life with Father

I wrote "Life with Father" and "The Pond" for an eco­logical horror anthology titled The Earth Strikes Back. Both were rejected. Judging by the title of the book, I figured that most if not all of the stories would deal with the negative effects of pollution, overpopulation, deforestation, etc.

So I thought I'd do something a little different.

My wife is a hard-core recycler. Cans, bottles, newspapers, grocery bags-she saves them all. Even on trips, she brings along plastic bags in which to col­lect our soda cans.

I exaggerated her compulsion for this story.

Anything can be taken to extremes.

________________________

Shari has never seen a working toilet. She will-she goes to nursery school next year and I know they have toilets there-but right now she's only seen our toilets. Or what used to be our toilets before Father turned them into station­ary storage containers for soybean chicken.

I don't know why I thought of that. I guess it's because Shari's squatting now over the biodegradable waste recepta­cle that Father makes us pee in. There are two receptacles for our waste. The blue one for urine. The red one for excrement.

I don't know how Shari'll do in school. She's slow, I think. Father's never said anything about it, but I know that he's noticed, too. Shari doesn't catch on to things the way she's supposed to, the way I did. She was three before she could even figure out the difference between the red and blue receptacles. She was four before she said her first word.

Sometimes I want to tell Father that maybe his seed shouldn't be recycled, that there's something wrong with it. Look at Shari, I want to say, look at The Pets. But I love Shari, and I even love The Pets in a way, and I don't want to hurt any of their feelings.

I don't want to get Father mad, either.

So I say nothing.

My period ended a few days ago, and I know I was sup­posed to wash out my maxi pads in this week's bathwater and then use the water on the outside plants and hang the maxi pads out to dry, but the thought of my blood makes me sick, and I just haven't been able to do it.

I've been saving the maxi pads beneath my mattress, and tomorrow I'm going to stuff them in my underwear and take them to school. I will throw them away in the girl's bath­room, just like everyone else.

I feel wicked and nasty.

I hope Father doesn't find out.

But I know he will when he takes Inventory.

I try to tell Father that we can donate my old clothes to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, that they will recycle my f clothes and give them to other people. I hint that I can buy pants and blouses that have been worn by others at those same thrift stores and that this will contribute to the recy­cling process and allow me to have some new clothes, but he will not hear of it. The clothes we have are the clothes we will always have, he tells me, and only after death will they be passed on to someone else.

So he cuts up the material, takes out old stitches, and re­fashions the cloth into new blouses and pants.

I attend school dressed as a clown, laughed at by my classmates.

When I come home, I feed The Pets. They are kept in an enclosure in the center of the back yard, the low fence surrounding their habitat made from refashioned cans and cardboard. I feed them the crumbs and leftovers from yesterday's meal, mixed in with the compost of our own waste. I think this is wrong, but Father says that our bodies are not as efficient as they should be and that both our solid and liquid waste contain unused nutrients that can be fully utilized by The Pets.

I stand outside their enclosure and I watch them eat and I watch them play. When I am sure that Father is not around, I pick them up and hold them. Their bodies are cold, their skin slimy, their wings rough. I gave them names at one time, and sometimes I can still call out those names, but I'm ashamed to admit that I no longer know to whom they be­long. Like everyone else, I can't tell The Pets apart.

I do not know why Father keeps The Pets and why he in­sists that they be fed, and that frightens me. Father never does anything without a reason or a purpose.

Every so often, when I'm standing there feeding them, I think to myself that their habitat looks like a pen.

Sometimes I try to tell the kids in my class the horrors of recycling, but I can never seem to find the words to describe what I mean, and they always tell me that they enjoy ac­companying their parents to the recycling center on Satur­day and dropping off their cans, bottles, and newspapers.

Cans, bottles, and newspapers.

Once, during ecology week, I told my teacher that any­thing can be carried too far, even recycling. She tried to explain to me that recycling is important, that it will help us preserve the planet for future generations. I said that instead of recycling everything, maybe it would be better if we used I things that didn't have to be recycled. She said that I didn't understand the concept of environmentalism but that at the end of the week, after I had completed my worksheet and seen all the videotapes, she was certain that I would.

That night I went home and urinated into the blue bucket and defecated into the red.

It is Thursday again, and I know what that means.

I sit quietly on the couch, tearing the sections of today's newspaper into the strips that we will wash and screen and turn into my homework paper. I say nothing as Father enters the living room, but out of the corner of my eye I can see his dark bulk blocking the light from the kitchen.

He walks toward me.

"I feel The Need," he says.

My stomach knots up and I can't hardly breathe, but I force myself to smile because I know that if he can't have me he'll start in on Shari. His seed can't really be recycle (although he tried it once with frozen jars and the micro­wave, using his semen first as a skin lotion and then as a toothpaste), but he does not want it to go to waste, so when he feels The Need he makes sure that he finds a receptacle where it might do some good. In his mind, impregnating me is better than letting his seed go unused.

That's how we got The Pets.

I take down my pants and panties and bend over the back of the couch, and I try not to cry as he positions himself be­hind me and shoves it in.

"Oh God," I say, recycling the words he taught me. "You're so good!"

And he moans.

It has been four days since Shari last spoke and I am wor­ried. Father is not worried, but he is unhappy with me. He felt The Need yesterday, and I let him have me, but I could not pretend that I enjoyed it, the way I usually do. He got angry at me because my unhappiness meant that his emotion was not recycled. He does not want anything to go unrecycled. He feels that, in sex, the pleasure that he feels should be transmitted to me. I am supposed to be happy after he takes me and to utilize that transmitted pleasure, to stay happy for at least a day afterward (although usually I'm mis­erable and sore and feel dirty), and to do something nice for Shari. Shari is supposed to recycle that pleasure again and do something nice for one of The Pets.

But I don't feel happy, and I can't fake it this time.

I tell Shari to lock her door when she goes to bed.

When I come home from school, Shari is crying and strapped to a chair at the dinner table and Father is in the kitchen preparing our meal. I know something is not right, but I say nothing and I wash my hands in last week's dish­water and sit down at the table next to my sister. Already I can smell the food. It is meat of some sort, and I hope Father has not decided to recycle a cat or dog that's passed away.

No matter what type of animal it is, I know that I will have to clean and carve the bones afterward and make them into forks and knives and toothpicks.

I try not to look at Shari, but I notice that her crying ha not stopped or slowed even a little bit and that worries me.

Father comes in with our meal, carrying it on the single large plate that we share in order not to waste water, and is some kind of casserole. He is grinning, and I know that grin: he is proud of himself. I take a close look at the ingredients of the casserole, at the meat. The piece I poke with my fork is strangely white and rubbery. I turn it over and see on its underside a darkened piece of skin.

Slimy, lizard skin.

I throw down my fork and glare at him and Shari is crying even harder.

"You killed one of The Pets!" I scream.

He nods enthusiastically. "In the future, it may be possible for us to be entirely self-sufficient. We may never have to go outside the family for a source of food. We can create our own meat, nurturing it with our own waste. We'll be the prototype of the family of the future." He grins, gesturing toward the casserole. "Try it. It's good." He picks up a fork; spears a chunk of meat, and puts it in his mouth, chewing, swallowing, smiling. "Tasty and nutritious."

I stare at the food and I realize that it has come from my body and will be going back into my body and will come out of my body again, and I suddenly feel sick. I start to gag, and I run out of the room.

"The yellow container!" Father calls. "Yellow is for vomit!"

I can hear Shari crying louder, the legs of her chair making a clacking noise as she rocks back and forth and tries to get away.

As I throw up into the yellow bucket, I wonder if our din­ner is one of The Pets that I had named.

Father is rougher now. He seems crueler than before, and I wonder if it is because I disobeyed him.

I would run away if it wasn't for Shari.

In school we are learning about taking responsibility for our own actions and how we should clean up our own messes without Mommy or Daddy telling us to do so.

It is hard for me not to laugh.

Father says that I have caused him a lot of pain and emo­tional distress, and he beats me as he prepares to mount me from behind. My pants and panties are down and I am bent over the couch as he pulls out chunks of my hair and slaps my back and buttocks with the hard side of his hand. He is making Shari watch and she starts to cry as he shoves it in and begins thrusting.

I scream for him to stop it, that it hurts, not even pre­tending to enjoy it this time, but that seems to satisfy him and I know that he thinks he is recycling his negative emo­tions by imparting them to me.

When he is finished, he hits my face until I am bloody and then leaves the room.

Shari approaches me after he is gone. She stares at me with wide eyes and white face, frightened by what she has seen, and I try to smile at her but it hurts too much.

"Father hurled you," she says. She frowns, thinking for a moment, and she hunkers down next to me. "Is he a vam­pire?" she whispers.

"Yes," I say. "He's a vampire." I don't know why I'm saying this, I don't know what thought process made Shari even think of it, but it sounds good to me.

Her eyes get even bigger. "Then we better kill him," she says.

Kill him.

I smile at her and I force myself to sit up. "Yes," I say nodding at her, wiping the blood from my nose and mouth, "We better kill him."

I make a stake from a recycled piece of broken broomhandle that I find in the tool cupboard next to the wash-bucket. Father has been saving that piece of broom handle for some time now, knowing that it has an untapped usage but not knowing what that usage is.

I have found a use for it, and I feel good as I stand next;' to The Pets' habitat and sharpen the end of the stick.

We kill him while he is sleeping. Shari asks why he sleeps at night if he is a vampire, but I tell her that he is doing it to fool us and she believes me.

Because I am stronger, I hold the pillow over his face while Shari drives the stake through his heart. There is more blood than I expected. A lot more. It spurts everywhere as he screams and his arms and legs thrash wildly around. Both Shari and I are covered with it, but we've both seen blood before, and I think to myself that it's not as bad as seeing my own.

I continue holding the pillow until he is still, until he has stopped moving, until the blood has stopped pumping.

He is smaller in death, and he suddenly looks harmless to me. I remember all of the good things he's done and all of the fun we've had together and I think maybe we made a mistake.

Shari blinks slowly, staring at the stake. "He really was a vampire, wasn't he?"

I nod.

"What we do now?"

I tell her to take our clothes and the sheets and the pillow­cases and wash them in the plant water. We strip and roll up the linens. Naked, I drag Father's body into the processing portion of the garage.

I place the biodegradable bags next to the butcher block, and as I take the knife from the drawer, I plan out where and what I'm going to cut, what I'm going to do with his skin, his blood, his hair. I try to think of the best way to utilize his bones.

Old habits die hard.

Bob

There don't seem to be many traveling salesmen any­more. The Avon Lady and the Fuller Brush Man be­long to an older generation, a different time. But a couple of years ago, a traveling salesman actually came to my door. Only I didn't know he was a sales­man. He was delivering an order for a customer on the next street over and had accidentally gone to the wrong house. I thought he was giving me free stuff. It took several minutes to straighten out the mix-up, and by the time I finally closed the door, I had the idea for "Bob."

"I'm so glad we found you at home!"

The aggressively overweight woman standing on his doorstep shifted a small black purse from her right hand to her left and fixed Brandon with an exuberant smile. He was still holding on to the half-opened door, but she grabbed his free hand and shook it. "I'm Ida Kimball."

"I'm sorry-" he started to say.

"These are all friends of Libby's." Ida motioned toward the group of women behind her. They smiled at him encour­agingly.

Adjusting the small matronly hat on her head, Ida leaned forward, lowered her voice. "May I use your rest room?" she asked.

He was about to direct her to the Shell station over on Lincoln, but he saw the look of almost desperate pleading in her eyes. "Uh ... sure." Brandon opened the door wider, stepped awkwardly aside.

Ida fixed him with another blinding smile as she pushed, past him. "Thank you so much."

"Make yourselves at home, girls!" she called out to the women behind her. "I'm sure Bob won't mind. I'll be back in a jiffy!"

Bob?

"My name's Brandon," he said, but Ida was already strid­ing through the living room, headed for the hallway. "First door on the left!" he told her. She waved a wiggling-fingered hand in acknowledgment.

"There's been some mistake," he said to the other women filing past him.

A thin older lady smiled, nodded. "Of course," she said.

"I don't know who you think I am-"

"It's okay. We're all good friends of Libby's."

"I don't know Libby."

"Of course not," the old lady said.

He counted them as they walked past him into his living room. There were six of them altogether, seven including Ida. He stood there numbly, feeling strangely disassociated from what was happening. It was as though he was watching what was going on, viewing it from a distance as he would a movie or an event happening to someone else.

He didn't want to close the door, wanted to make it clear that there had been some mistake and that after Ida finished going to the bathroom they would have to leave, but it was hot outside, humid, and he didn't want to let flies in, so he closed the door and walked into the living room.

Two women, the older lady with whom he'd spoken and a mousy-looking woman with pinkish cat glasses, were snooping around his bookcase, trying to read the titles on the shelves. The others had all sat down on either the couch or the love seat and were quietly, politely, patiently waiting.

There was a roar of water and a rattle of pipes from under­neath the house as the toilet flushed, and a few seconds later, Ida emerged into the living room.

She didn't wash her hands, he thought, and for some rea­son that made him suddenly much more eager to get her out of his house.

"Well, Bob-" Ida began.

"My name's not Bob," he interrupted. "It's Brandon."

"Why, of course it is. But the reason we dropped by today is because of Libby-"

"I don't know Libby."

"Of course you don't. But Libby is -how shall we say it?-going through some tough times. She hasn't exactly been herself, as you might imagine, and, well, we just wanted to meet you first. You know how it is. We just wanted to make sure she was doing the right thing, that she wasn't mak­ing a big mistake." She looked around the room, blinked, brightened. "I'm sorry! I forgot to introduce everybody! Where are my manners?"

"That's okay. I think-"

"Girls!" Ida said. "Best faces forward!"

The women straightened and smiled, facing him, acting in unison as though they were in some suburban version of the military and Ida their commanding officer.

"This is Shirley," Ida said, motioning toward the mousy woman with cat glasses still standing next to the bookcase.

"Pleased to meet you," Shirley said, offering an awkward f curtsy.

"That's Francine next to her."

The older lady smiled, nodded, and put back the book she'd been examining.

"Alicia and Barbara," Ida said, nodding to the two nondescript women on the love seat. "Elaine and Natalie." The women seated on the couch stared at him, unsmiling.

"I guess that's everyone."

They remained staring at him, apparently waiting for him to speak, and he quickly sorted through a variety of responses in his mind: Thank you for coming, but I think it's time you go. I enjoyed meeting you, but I'm really bus today. I have a dental appointment and I have to get going. Who are you? Get the hell out of my house.

But, of course, it was Ida who began talking first. She laid a dry powdery hand on his. "Now, Bob, we don't want to intrude. I know you're probably a very busy man and have a lot of preparations to make, so we'll only take up few seconds of your time."

He looked from Ida to the other women. They reminded him, for some reason, of his mother and her friends, though; he was not quite sure why. There were no outward similarities, and his mother certainly wasn't as pushy as Ida, but something about the dynamic rang a bell.

Ida was smiling. "As I said, we're Libby's friends, so, naturally, we're concerned about her."

"-don't know Libby," she finished for him. "I know how these things work." "How what things work?" "Libby's told us everything." She mimed locking her lips and throwing away the key. "Don't worry. We won't tell a soul."

He was getting not only frustrated but angry. The intru­sion was bad enough, but these constant references to a re­lationship he was supposed to have with this Libby were really starting to irritate him.

Ida leaned toward him confidingly. "It wasn't always this way, you know. When she and Edward first got married, they were the happiest couple in the world. Libby adored Edward. He really was her dream husband. She probably told you they honeymooned in Paris. After that, after they returned, they were still blissfully happy, and it was only as time wore on that they began to ... you know."

"What?"

"Drift apart, get on each others' nerves, whatever you want to call it. That was when he started mistreating her."

Shirley shook her head. "I've told her a million times she should leave him, get a divorce. It's not as if they have kids." She looked around the room. "I think we've all told her that." Corroborating nods. "But she just couldn't see it. She was always making excuses for him, pretending like it was her fault, saying that if she hadn't screwed up and made chicken for Sunday dinner instead of turkey, or forgotten to fold his underwear properly, nothing would have hap­pened."

Brandon couldn't help himself. "What did he do to her? Did he beat her?"

"You mean she hasn't told you?" Ida clucked disapprov­ingly. "She should have at least mentioned why she wanted you."

Shirley leaned forward. "I guess you don't like to know too many of the details about it, huh?"

Elaine seemed outraged. "You mean you don't even ask questions? You just do it for the money? It doesn't matter to you why someone would-" She grimaced distastefully. "- need your services?"

Ida shushed them. "We're not here to judge you," she told him. "We're here to support Libby."

"I told you-"

"Yes, we know. This is all becoming very tiresome."

"Then maybe you'd better leave."

"Don't get me wrong," Ida said quickly. "I have nothing but the utmost respect for you. We all do. And I don't think any of us intended to suggest otherwise."

Elaine remained silent.

"She needs you. Libby. She really does."

The other women were nodding.

"And we're on her side completely. We totally under­stand. We're just concerned, that's all."

"Edward's a monster," Barbara said.

Next to her, Alicia nodded. "You can't believe what he does to that poor woman, how much she's had to put up with, and for so long."

Ida agreed. "Oh, he's horrible to her. He makes her do ... nasty things ... rude things." She waved her hankied hand at him. "You know what I mean."

He wasn't sure he did, but there were images in his mind of which he was sure these ladies would not approve.

"He'd be better off dead," Ida said matter-of-factly.

He suddenly realized what they'd been getting at, what they thought he did, and his mouth went dry. He looked around the room, at each of them in turn. All eyes were fo­cused on him, the gazes of the women flat, unreadable.

He stood up, shaking his head. "No," he said. And, not knowing what else to say, he repeated it. "No."

" 'No' what?" Shirley asked.

He glanced over at the older lady, saw only open curios­ity on her face.

"It's my fault," Ida said quickly. "I'm the one who wanted to come over and ... check you out. Not that I don't trust Libby's judgment, mind you, but... well, that's just the kind of person I am."

"He's a monster," Barbara repeated. "I saw the burn marks on her arms one time, when she was wearing a blouse with real floppy sleeves. She thought I didn't see, but I saw."

"I saw them on her legs," Natalie confided in a whisper. "In the changing room at Mervyns."

Elaine took a deep breath. "We took my kids to the pool last summer and I saw a bloodstain on the back of her bathing suit bottom. She was bleeding back there. She was wearing purple, and I guess she thought it was dark enough, but I could see the stain. It was leaking through."

"He is a monster," Ida said.

"Maybe she should just divorce him," Brandon offered.

Shirley shook her head. "No, she won't do that."

"And it's gone far beyond that stage," Elaine said.

Ida nodded. "She knows what she has to do. She's known it for a while, but she just hasn't wanted to admit it to herself."

"Remember the blood in her kitchen, when we went over there that time?" Barbara looked around at her friends. "How it was still dripping down her legs and we pretended like we couldn't see it, and she kept wiping up the bloody footprints but every time she'd walk to the sink to rinse out her washcloth she'd make even more?"

"We remember," Elaine said softly.

Ida closed her eyes, nodded, then opened them again. "Like I said, she's known what she has to do for a while now. She just hasn't known how to go about it. She realized, of course, that she couldn't do it herself. She wouldn't know how, for one thing. And of course she would immediately be put under a microscope. So it had to be someone else, some­one new, someone entirely unconnected to her, who couldn't be traced back and who could be counted on to keep quiet." She smiled. "I don't know how Libby came up with you, Bob, but I must say I think she made the right choice."

Brandon sat down, not sure of what to say.

"I heard her say that next time he's going to cut it out of her." Shirley's voice was hushed.

"Next time he's going to kill her," Barbara said.

"Torture her, then kill her," Elaine corrected.

They were all nodding.

"There was a lot of blood in that kitchen." Natalie closed her eyes. "Way too much blood."

"Well, the real reason we came today," Ida said, once again taking control, "is because we couldn't let Libby pay for this herself. She needs all the money she can get, espe­cially afterward, and since we're her friends .. . well, we just didn't think it was right. So we're going to pay for your services, Bob." She glanced at the other women. "Could you leave Bob and me alone for a minute? I'll meet you back out at the van."

The other women stood, said goodbye, and waved, and he nodded as they passed by him and walked out of the liv­ing room and through the entryway.

"I didn't want to say anything in front of the girls, be­cause they don't know how much a service like this costs, and some of them are barely making ends meet as it is. So I collected fifty dollars apiece from them and let them think that was enough to cover it. I made up the rest."

She withdrew from her purse a folded check. He un­folded it and looked at the amount.

Fifty thousand dollars.

He tried to press it back into her hand.

"What's the matter? Not enough?" She looked at him. "Sixty? Seventy-five? A hundred? Name the amount." She reached into her purse.

"No," he said. "It's ... it's too much."

She placed a cold hand on his. "It's worth it."

"I can't-"

"She'll never be right internally, not after what he did. I mean, last time he put her in the hospital. She was in inten­sive care for two days. I'm afraid that next time he'll do more than that."

"Ida-"

"Bob..."

He looked into Ida's eyes, and he had the feeling that she'd known all along he wasn't who they'd kept insisting he was. He looked back at the check.

"I... I seem to have misplaced her address," he said.

"That's all right." Ida reached into her purse, withdrew a folded piece of paper on which she'd already written Libby's name and address.

He cleared his throat. "And when was it she wanted me to ... do it? I seem to have forgotten that as well."

"Tomorrow night. After eleven."

He nodded, found a pen, wrote it down on the paper.

She stood, closing the clasp on her purse, and he fol­lowed her silently out of the living room. In the entryway, she turned to face him. She stared at him meaningfully. "Thank you, Bob."

He nodded. "You're welcome," he said.

She smiled at him, then turned and waved to her friends as she walked down the front walkway toward the blue minivan parked on the street.

He closed the door behind her.

Bumblebee

This was one of my first attempts to write for a "theme" anthology. Generally speaking, I don't like to write stories following specific guidelines. I find it difficult to work within constraints, and invariably the stories turn out to be stilted and inferior. "Bumblebee" came quickly, however, and turned out pretty well.

Bumblebee, by the way, is a real place, a ghost town off Black Canyon Highway between Phoenix and Prescott. When I was a kid, the buildings still had furniture, but it's been looted over the years and has become something of a tourist spot. There's even a sign for it on the highway. I restored it to its former ghost town glory and moved it to the southwest corner of the state for the purposes of this story.

Trinidad was still alive when I found him. Barely. Julio had called and told me that he'd seen the redneck's pickup heading through the desert north of Cave Creek, hell-bent for leather on the old dirt road that led to Bloody Basin, and while Julio wasn't exactly the world's most reliable songbird, I believed him this time, and I decided to follow up on it.

I found Trinidad lying facedown in a low drainage ditch. He was easy to spot. The ditch ran right next to the road, and the coyote's red flannel shirt stood out like a beacon against the pale desert sand. I jumped out of the Jeep without both­ering to turn off the ignition and slid down the side of the ditch. The redneck hadn't made much of an effort to either cover his tracks or hide the body, which made me think he hadn't intended to kill the coyote, only scare him, but Trinidad was still badly hurt. His face was a swollen demon­stration of various bruise types, blood leaked from his nose, mouth, and both ears, and it was clear from the awkward an­gles at which he held his arms and legs that there'd been a lot of bones broken.

I knelt down next to the coyote. His eyes were closed, and he did not open them even when I called his name. I touched my hand to his bloody cheek, and he moaned, try­ing to pull away. "You okay?" I asked.

"Bumblebee," he whispered, eyes still closed.

He was obviously far gone, delirious, and I cursed myself for not having fixed the CB in the Jeep. It was a ten-minute drive back to Cave Creek, and nearly an hour's drive back to the nearest hospital in Scottsdale. Phoenix Memorial had a chopper and theoretically could fly over and pick him up, but there was no way to get ahold of them.

I was afraid to move Trinidad, but more afraid to leave him, so I quickly ran up the side of the ditch, opened the Jeep's back gate, spread out a blanket, and slid back down to where the coyote lay. Trinidad was heavier than I thought-it's never as easy to carry a man in real life as it seems to be in the movies-but adrenaline strength let me lift him up the incline. Carefully, I placed him down on the blankets, my arms soaked with the warm wetness of his blood. I closed the gate. "Don't worry," I told him. "I'll get you home safely."

He moaned in agony. "Bumblebee," he repeated.

By the time we reached Cave Creek he was dead.

The sun rose precisely at five forty-five. By six thirty, the temperature was already well into the nineties. The television weatherman on the morning news told me while I was drink­ing my wake-up coffee that it was going to be "another gor­geous day," and I flipped him off. To him it might be "another gorgeous day," but to those of us with no air conditioners in our cars, who had to work outside of climate-controlled offices, it was going to be another sentence in hell.

I finished my coffee and quickly scanned the newspaper to see if Trinidad's death had made the back pages or the obituary column. Nothing. Nada. Zip. I wasn't surprised. Print space in Arizona newspapers was generally reserved for those with Anglo ancestry. Even Latinos who had crossed over into mainstream success got short shrift, and the pass­ing of people like Trinidad, who were successful only in the immigrant underground, weren't acknowledged at all.

Some days I was ashamed to be white.

Last night, I'd told everything I knew to the police. They dutifully took it down, but the case against the redneck was weak at best, the evidence based solely on hearsay accounts by notoriously unreliable witnesses, and I knew the investi­gation into Trinidad's death would get the "Phoenix Spe­cial"-a two-day open file with no accompanying legwork, and an UNSOLVED stamp on top of the folder. The situation might have been different if Trinidad had been white, if he'd been respectable, but then again it might not. Heat seemed to make a lot of people lazy, especially cops.

Bumblebee.

I'd been puzzling over that all night, unsure if it was supposed to mean something or if it was merely a word dragged I from the depths of Trinidad's dying, hallucinating brain was going to assume that it was meaningful, that the coyote was trying to tell me something. I owed him at least that much. Besides, death lent weight to mysteriously muttered phrases whether they deserved it or not.

I finished my coffee, finished my paper.

Just before eight, I called up Hog Santucci, a friend of mine who worked downtown in Records, and ran the name; by him. It didn't seem to ring any bells, but then it had been a shot in the dark anyway. Even if Trinidad had been trying to tell me something, I still didn't know whether "Bumble­bee" was the name of a man, the code word for a booked passage, or the identification of an item or process known only to him.

I figured I'd check with Julio next, see if he knew what the name meant, see if he knew any more about Trinidad's rendezvous with the redneck at the same time.

The redneck.

That son of a bitch was really starting to get to me. Usually, when I take a case or get involved in an investigation, it's easy for me to keep my distance, to maintain my professionalism. I don't make moral judgments, I simply do what I am hired to do, and I only take a job if its parameters are I well within the boundaries of legality. This Raymond Chandler crap about straddling the line, or those Bogart and Mitchum movies where the detective always falls for a pretty face and battles for her honor with the villain, that's all bullshit. Pure fiction. But the redneck really was like one of those movie villains, and I hated the son of a bitch. Espe­cially since I couldn't seem to get a single scrap of evidence on him.

What made it even worse was that the redneck seemed to be almost a folk hero to some of the pin-striped pinheads who passed for human in the downtown offices of the INS. It was well known in certain circles that he'd had a hand in the fire that had destroyed one of the big Sanctuary safe houses down in Casa Grande, and that he'd had something to do with those fourteen illegals who'd roasted to death in that abandoned semi outside of Tucson. But while the feds and the locals were making a big show out of fighting it out over jurisdictional rights, both were making only token ef­forts to dredge up evidence. As they saw it, the redneck was doing their work for them, in his own crudely violent fash­ion. As a criminal, he was not subject to the same restric­tions they were, and in a warped and twisted way they seemed to admire his racist ingenuity.

Strangely enough, I'd been hired by Father Lopez, a priest involved in the Sanctuary movement, to look into the matter. Tired of dealing with the intransigence of the blue uniforms, the gray suits, and the red tape, afraid for the safety of the dozen or so Salvadoran refugees he was hiding in the basement of his church, he'd asked me to see if I could dig up anything on the redneck which could put him away for good. Father Lopez had been threatened more than once, and he knew it was only a matter of time before those threats were carried through.

So far, I'd come up snake eyes, but I was getting close and the redneck knew it. That's why he'd roughed up Trinidad. And that's why the deal had gone wrong. I don't think he'd intended to kill the coyote, but he had. He'd pan­icked, gone too far, and now the noose was starting to tighten. It was only a matter of time before he slipped up, made a mistake, and I pulled that sucker taut. The law might not be willing to work to bring down the redneck, but they couldn't and wouldn't turn him out if he was dropped, case closed, into their fat blue laps.

Julio was gone when I stopped by his apartment, and his old lady didn't seem to know where he'd gone to. Or at least wasn't willing to inform a cowboy-booted gringo of his whereabouts, so I decided to drop by and see Father Lopez.

At the church it was pandemonium. Father Lopez had made the mistake of telling his guests that Trinidad was walking with God, hoping they'd help him pray for the coy­ote, but the result had been to panic the refugees. Trinidad had brought most of them over, was their sole symbol of strength and stability in this country, and his killing fright­ened them badly. They naturally thought that his murder was the result of a death squad bent on tracking them down. When I arrived, Father Lopez was trying to explain that the coyote had been killed by an American, an American acting on his own and not in the employ of their government, but it was clear even to me that few if any of them were buying it. They seemed to want to leave the church now, strike out on their own, and take their chances scattered on the street.

"Father," I said. "I need to talk to you for a minute."

"Hold on." He spoke rapidly in Spanish to the agitated people in the basement, trying to assuage their fears.

My Spanish was nowhere near fluent, but I moved next to the priest, motioned for him to be quiet, and gave the refugees my own version of the story. Since I was white and obviously American, my words carried a little more weight than those of the priest, though they were spoken haltingly. I guess to them I represented some sort of authority.

Father Lopez looked at me gratefully, then expanded on what I'd said, speaking quickly and reassuringly. It seemed to work. I went back upstairs to wait.

After the situation had settled down and Father Lopez had emerged from the basement, I spoke to the priest alone. We were in his office off the vestibule, and I was seated in a low comfortable chair. I leaned forward. "Does the name Bumblebee mean anything to you?" I asked.

He had been casually reclining in his chair, and suddenly he sat up very straight. His face was pale. "Who told you about Bumblebee?"

"Trinidad," I said. "Although he didn't really tell me. It was the last thing he said before he died."

The priest crossed himself. "No," he said.

"Yes." I stood up. I put my hands in my back pockets and began pacing. "Look," I said. "If there's something I should know, you'd better tell me. When I work for a client, I ex­pect that client to be straight with me, to lay all of his cards on the table. I don't care if you are a priest, I expect you to tell me everything. I'm on your side. And I can't look out for your interests if I don't have all the facts."

Father Lopez seemed to have regained his composure. He nodded slowly. "All right," he said.

"Good." I sat down again. "So what exactly is Bumble­bee?"

"It's a town. An old ghost town in the Sonora desert past Tucson. I'm surprised you haven't heard of it. There was a big battle there in the late 1800s between United States troops and a small group of Mexican renegades. The rene­gades weren't affiliated with the Mexican government, but they were basically fighting the same fight. Only the men at Bumblebee didn't lose their battle, though Mexico eventu­ally lost the war. Seventeen untrained fighters successfully held off and killed over a hundred American troops. The Americans just kept coming, and they just kept getting killed. Finally they gave up, decided to avoid the town and fight elsewhere. I guess they wrote it off as a loss. When the fighting was over and the boundaries were redrawn, how­ever, Bumblebee became part of Arizona. Politics destroyed f what war couldn't."

"That's a nice story," I said. "But what does it have to do with Trinidad?"

"I don't know," the priest told me, meeting my gaze.

He was lying. I knew he was lying, and he knew I knew he was lying. I sat unmoving. Father Lopez was neither a stupid nor a cowardly man, and he wouldn't have played albino and crossed himself if there hadn't been something heavy on his mind. Bumblebee and whatever that implied had scared the holy shit out of him, but I knew if I pressed him any further he was going to Pismo up on me, so I de­cided to drop back. I felt I had enough to work with.

It was time to take a trip.

Bookbinder Baker lived in the desert outside Tonopah amidst the bones and bodies of the cars he'd bought and scavenged over the past forty years. Traded Torinos, aban­doned Audis, and roadkilled Ramblers lay bleached and rusted, sinking into the sand surrounding his three-room shack. His property covered nearly twenty acres of the most godawful terrain known to man. Tonopah itself was a town in name only, an all-night gas station and burger stand halfway between Phoenix and the California border which catered almost exclusively to long-distance truckers, and Baker's place was some fifteen miles down a dirt road be-yond that, flat in the middle of the sagebrush-infested flat-lands. He liked it there, though. Always had.

Baker didn't appear to be around when I arrived, didn't answer either my honks or my call, but I knew he'd be back eventually, and I went inside to make myself at home. As al­ways, his front door was open, screen unlocked, and I simply walked into his living room and sat down on the sagging couch. He'd put a few new hubcaps up on the wall since the last time I'd seen him, and I examined those while I waited. At one time in the dim and distant past, Baker'd been a teacher of some sort, a historian. He still knew more about the history of the Southwest, major and minute, than anyone I'd ever met. One whole wall of his bedroom was lined with books and magazines on various historical subjects. It was just that now his job and his hobby had been switched. In­stead of being a teacher who tinkered with cars on the week­end, he owned an auto yard and studied history on the side, although where he got customers for his auto salvaging service I never could figure out.

I heard the sputtering cough of Baker's engine about five minutes later, and I walked outside to meet him. The tow truck pulled up, empty, in front of the shack. "Hey!" he said. "Long time no care!"

I held up my middle finger, and he laughed. After the pleasantries, after he'd broken out the beer, we got down to business. I asked him if he'd ever heard of a town called Bumblebee. I repeated Father Lopez's story.

He chuckled. "Hell yes, I remember Bumblebee. That's not its real name, though. That's the American name, given 'cause that's where we got stung. The Spanish name is longer. It means 'magic sands,' or something like that." He took a swig of his beer. "Yeah, I been down there many times, taking pictures, checking the place out. It's kind of like our Alamo, you know? Only it never got as much pub­licity because there weren't nobody famous died there, and because, well, I guess Texans are just better at talking them­selves up than we are."

"But why do you think the priest was so scared?" "Well, Bumblebee was some type of, I don't know, not sacred land exactly, but something like that. I wish I had it documented so I could look it up, but it's not anything that's been written about. I just know that the area was supposed to have some sort of significance for the Mexicans, was sup­posed to have some sort of magic powers. In the treaty, you know, the original boundaries of our state were different. Mexico wanted to keep Bumblebee, give us Nogales. But we wanted a nice square border, and of course they were in no position to argue." He chuckled. "The legend is that it was the magic which let the Mexicans hold off the troops, that even though they got shot they didn't die."

I looked at him, and I suddenly felt cold.

They didn't die?

"Like I said, I been there before," Baker said. "And I'm not saying I believe all that hocus pocus. But I sure as hell don't disbelieve it either."

When I got back to Phoenix it was nearly dark, and I decided to go straight home.

The police were waiting for me when I arrived.

Lieutenant Armstrong was leaning against the hood of a patrol car, and he stood straight as I got out of the Jeep. He had a wad of chaw in his mouth, and he spit at the ground before me as I walked toward him.

"How long've you been here?" I asked.

"Not long. Five, ten minutes." He smiled at me with his mouth, but his piggy eyes remained hard.

"What do you want me for?"

"Want you to take a little ride." He nodded his head, and a uniformed officer opened the car door. He spit.

I stepped over the brown spot on the sidewalk and got into the backseat.

I stood at the edge of the county cemetery and looked where Armstrong pointed. Ten or fifteen graves scattered throughout the cemetery had been dug up, caskets and all, leaving only holes and piles of dirt. One of the graves, he had told me in the car, was that of Trinidad.

They waste no time burying "indigents" in Arizona.

"You know anything about this?" the lieutenant asked.

I shook my head.

"Come on, they're your people."

"My people?"

He spit. "You know. Chili eaters. Mesikens. Gonzalez and all them other boys. I know you know what's going on."

"I don't," I said. "I really don't."

Armstrong looked at me. I saw the hate in his eyes. "You want to play it that way?"

"I'm not playing."

He poked me in the chest with a strong fat finger. "You know what you are? You're a traitor. You're ..." He trailed off, glared at me, unable to think of the word. "What's white on the outside, brown on the inside? The opposite of a co­conut?"

"I don't know," I told him. "But I know that you're round on the outside, brown on the inside."

"What?"

"You're an asshole."

He hit me then, and I went down. The punch had not been that hard, but I was unprepared for it, and it went straight to the stomach. I tried to breathe, tried to gulp air, but my lungs seemed to have atrophied.

Armstrong stared at me, watched me clutching my gut on the ground. His face was impassive, but inside I knew he was smiling. "You can walk home," he said, turning away.

After I stood, after I caught my breath, after I called him a crooked sack of rancid racist pigshit, I did walk home.

The lieutenant spit at me as, halfway down the block, his car drove past.

I woke up the next morning sweating. The fan had! crapped out on me sometime during the night, depriving my bedroom of what little air circulation I could afford, and the sheet I'd used to cover myself was sticking to my soaked skin. I was still tired, but not tired enough to remain in bed and brave the heat. I got up and walked to the bathroom to take a cool shower.

Father Lopez's murder was the top story on the morn­ing's newscast.

I stood in the kitchen, still dripping from the shower, the empty coffeepot in my hand, staring dumbly into the living room at the TV. The scene was live. A blond female reporter was standing in the midst of a group of people in front of the church, while in the background, clearly framed by the cameraman, Father Lopez's body lay facedown on the wide front stairs. Even on television, I could see dark blood trick­ling down the steps in tiny waterfalls.

I heard the name Lopez, the words murdered and Sanc­tuary movement, but I was not listening to the reporter. I was already moving, throwing the metal coffeepot into the sink, grabbing my keys, and running out the door.

White-uniformed flunkies from the coroner's office were loading the priest's bagged body into the back of an ambulance when I arrived. Armstrong and another officer were talking closely in hushed tones to a police photographer. The television news crew was packing up and readying to go.

I hadn't known Father Lopez well enough to really feel sad, that deep emotion reserved for people whose loss will affect the rest of our lives, but I felt hurt, disgusted, and deeply angry. I strode up to Armstrong. "What happened?" I asked.

He looked at me, said nothing, turned away, and contin­ued his conversation with the photographer.

"Who did it?" I demanded.

The lieutenant did not even glance in my direction. "Drive-by," he said.

I started up the church steps. I knew the refugees were long gone, had probably fled at the first sound of gunfire, but I wanted to see for myself.

"Get out of there!" Armstrong said. He was looking at me now. His voice was as loud and ugly as his expression. His pointing finger punctuated each word. "This is a crime scene, and you are not allowed on it. I want no evidence dis­turbed."

I could have fought him on that, should have fought him-I was a licensed detective whose client had just been murdered-but I didn't feel up to it. Besides, I knew there was probably nothing I could find that the police hadn't al­ready noted. I scanned the crowd, looking for familiar faces. I saw Julio and walked up to him.

The songbird looked sick to me, but when I got closer I saw that it was anger which had distorted his features. Anger mixed with a trace of fear. I stepped up to him. "What hap­pened?" I asked.

He looked up at me, and for a second it was as though he didn't know who I was, then his vision focused. He saw me, recognized me. "It was the redneck," he said.

I nodded. I'd guessed as much.

Julio glanced around, to make sure others in the crowd weren't listening to our conversation. "We got him," he said.

"What?"

He stepped closer to me, until his mouth was next to my ear. I could smell his stale breath. "He's in a safe house."

"What are you talking about? The redneck?"

Julio nodded. "They caught him at a stoplight, called in; reinforcements, surrounded him."

"And you didn't-?"

"No cops," he said, answering my unfinished question.

"You know I can't-"

"We're taking him to Bumblebee."

I stood there, staring at him, my next words, my next thought, stuck in my throat. Bumblebee. I didn't know why the songbird was telling me this. I didn't know how he knew about my knowledge of Bumblebee. I suddenly felt cold, chilled, though the morning sun was fiery.

"I'll pick you up," he said. "Tonight."

I wasn't sure I wanted to be picked up. I wasn't sure I was willing to keep this from the police. I wasn't sure about any­thing.

But then I thought of Trinidad, thought of Father Lopez, thought of those illegals in the semi, thought of the refugees.

"Okay," I agreed.

Julio nodded, and was gone, losing himself in the crowd.

I saw Armstrong staring at me, and I turned away.

The songbird didn't show up at my apartment until after eight, almost dark. He pulled next to the curb, honked, and I stepped up to the open passenger window. Julio grinned. There was something about that grin which I didn't like. "Going stag," he said, motioning his head toward the back­seat. "Got some extra baggage."

I peered through the back window.

Father Lopez was lying across the rear cushion in his body bag.

"Time's wasting," Julio said, chuckling. "You follow me."

I don't know why I didn't argue, why I didn't say any­thing, why I didn't ask anything, but I didn't. I simply nod­ded dumbly, went down to the carport, got in the Jeep, and followed Julio's car down the street toward the freeway. I don't remember what I felt, what I was thinking.

The trip was long. There were a lot of cars on the high­way at first, but the farther we drove from the valley, the less crowded the road became, until soon Julio's Chevy taillights were the only ones before me on the road.

It was nearly midnight and we were well past Tucson when I saw Julio pull off the highway onto an unmarked dirt road. For the first time in a long while, I thought of Father Lopez's body lying across the backseat of the car. I thought of the redneck.

We got him.

The words seemed so much more sinister in the darkened moonlit desert. I realized I had no idea what was going on, what had been planned by Julio and his friends, whoever they were. I could have turned back then; I thought about it, but I did not. I had gone too far already. I had to see this through.

The road twisted and turned, snaking down unseen ravines, crossing dry washes and gulches, until my sense of direction was thoroughly confused.

And then we were there.

Bumblebee was not as big as I'd thought it would be, and did not look nearly so much like a fort. I'd imagined some­thing like the Alamo, I suppose because of Baker's story, but the sight that greeted me was far different. Twin rows of parallel buildings ran along both sides of the dirt road, ending at what looked like a church at the far end. The buildings were old, abandoned, like those of any ghost town, but they I were primarily adobe. Although there were a few dilapidated wooden structures-a one-room barbershop with a painted pole faded in front of it, a saloon with a long porch''] and collapsed roof-most of the buildings were a pale, weathered extract of hardened mortared desert sand.

It was then that I noticed that the town wasn't empty. In front of the church at the far end, I saw a large crowd of people, maybe sixty or seventy of them. Looking around, I saw the shadows of their vehicles blending with the surrounding saguaro and cottonwood.

Julio got out of his car.

Father Lopez emerged from the backseat.

I can't say I was surprised. It was something I'd been half expecting ever since Julio had told me this morning that they were taking the redneck to Bumblebee. But I was frightened. Far more frightened than I would have expected. I had dealt with death before, had seen more than my share of bodies, and no amount of blood or gore had ever really bothered me. But the unnaturalness of this, seeing the priest's body lurch out of the back of the car, peeling off the open plastic body bag, scared me. It seemed wrong to me, evil.

I got out of my own car. The town was dark, there were no lights, but the moon was bright enough to see by. Father Lopez walked slowly, awkwardly, like Frankenstein, but his steps grew quicker, stronger, more assured, as he followed Julio down the empty dirt street toward the church. The songbird seemed to have forgotten me, or else he had more important things on his mind than guest etiquette, so I invited myself to pursue the two of them, instinct overriding fear.

We moved down the dirt street. The buildings to my left and right loomed in my peripheral vision like hulking crea­tures, but I concentrated on the creature before me, the re­animated corpse of Father Lopez. Magic powers.

Baker had said that he'd felt something here, something supernatural. Maybe it was my imagination, but I seemed to feel something, too. A kind of tingling in the air, a vibration which spread upward through the soles of my shoes as I walked and which grew stronger as I approached the crowd in front of the church. This close, I could see that most of the gathered people were women, Mexican women dressed in traditional funereal peasant garb, black dresses, and lacy mantillas.

With them, held by two or three women at a time, were dead men, men who had obviously died violently. Dead men whose eyes were blinking, limbs were moving, mouths were working. I saw bloodless bullet holes, cleaned knife wounds in pasty flesh.

They all turned to look at us as we approached. I saw similarities in the features of the dead and the living. They were related.

Now Julio acknowledged my presence. As Father Lopez continued on and two older women moved forward to take the dead priest's arms, the songbird backed up and turned to me. "Don't say anything," he warned. "No matter what hap­pens, just watch."

"But-"

"It's up to the women," he said. "They have the faith. They make the rules."

I may not be the smartest guy in the world, but I know when to shut my trap and go with the flow. And standing in a ghost town in the middle of the desert at midnight, surrounded by walking dead guys and their wives and mothers and daughters, I figured this was one of those times.

Led by the women, the crowd moved into the doorless church.

I followed.

Inside, the building was lit by a double row of candles which lined indented shelves along both side walls. The trappings of Catholicism which I'd expected to see were absent. Indeed, aside from the candles, the church was devoid of any sort of adornment or religious decoration. The crumbling mud walls were bare. There were no pews. I looked to­ward the front of the elongated room. On the raised dais, where a pulpit would ordinarily be, the redneck stood naked, tied to a post.

I wish I could say that I felt justice was being served, that in some mysteriously primitive way the natural order of things was being put to right, but, God help me, I felt sorry for the redneck. He was crying, tears of terror rolling down his blubbery face, urine drying on his legs. I knew he was crying only for himself, was sorry for his actions only be­cause of the circumstances surrounding his capture, but I suddenly wished that I had told everything to that fat bastard Armstrong and that the redneck was sitting safely in a cell in South Phoenix. He deserved to be punished, but he did not deserve this.

No one deserved this.

But a wish and a nickel will get you a piece of gum. The redneck was not in jail in South Phoenix. He was tied to a porch at the front of this empty church.

And the dead men and their women advanced on him.

The redneck screamed, a high girlish sound which should have been gratifying but somehow was not. At the front of the room the living and the dead separated, women filing to the left, dead men moving to the right. As I watched, the women fell to their knees and began praying. The sound of their mumbling filled the room. I was chilled, but I was sweating. I stood unmoving next to Julio.

The women sang a hymn, a minor key hymn I did not recognize in a dialect of Spanish which was unfamiliar to me.

In single file, as if part of a ritual, they left the church through a side door in back of the dais. As one, the dead men stood.

The church was silent now save for the pitiful whimper­ing of the bound murderer and the amplified beating of my terrified heart. One of the dead men stood apart from the crowd, stepped out of the line, moved forward. I recognized the familiar profile of Trinidad. The blood on the coyote's head had been cleaned off, but his skin was gray, his body anorexically thin. He moved easily, normally, as though still alive, and stepped up to the redneck.

He unfastened the ropes tying the murderer's hands and feet to the post.

Another dead man moved forward, handed Trinidad a pistol, and the coyote put the gun into the redneck's hand.

There was not even a pause. "Die fuckers!" The redneck began shooting the second his fingers touched the trigger, arms twitching in panicked terror, laughing hysterically. Bullets hit the walls, slammed into the dead men. But the re­animated corpses did not fall. The pistol ran out of bullets almost immediately, and the redneck jumped off the dais, trying to escape, using the gun like a blackjack and beating on the heads of the men he had killed. They did not die again, however, and the murderer found himself unable toll penetrate the corpses' defensive line.

I heard a scream, the bullwhip sound of a bone cracking, I heard the wet, sickening sound of flesh being ripped.

The dead men were tearing their killer apart.

I left the building. The sight was too much for me; I could not watch. Julio, and two other men I did not know who were standing at the rear of the church, remained watching not flinching.

I caught my breath outside. I could still hear the screams, but the other, more gruesome and personal sounds of death were mercifully inaudible. The warm night air felt fresh and good after the dank closeness inside the church.

The women waited in front of the building with me. We did not speak. There was nothing to say.

Julio and the two other men emerged ten minutes later. Ten minutes after that, the dead men filed silently out. I had no desire to peek inside the church and see what was left of the redneck.

Julio stepped next to me. The songbird seemed happier than he had earlier, less tense, more confident. "It is done," he said. "We can go."

I looked at him. "That's it?"

He grinned. "What more did you want?"

I turned toward the dead men, now reunited with their loved ones. Women were hugging their departed husbands, kissing their late lovers, taking the corpses into their arms. I saw Trinidad, saw Father Lopez. The priest looked at me, nodded. A young woman I did not know grasped his hand, held it tightly.

I turned away.

What would happen now? I wondered. Where would they go? What would they do? The redneck's victims were still alive, even after their murderer's death, so they had not been resurrected merely for revenge. Would they wander off into the desert, eventually die? Or would they live here -no, exist here- in Bumblebee, set up some sort of dead com­munity, pretend nothing had happened, as though they had not kicked the bucket, as though they were still alive?

I was going to ask Julio, see if he could tell me, but I sud­denly realized that I didn't really want to know.

"Let's go," the songbird said. The other two men were al­ready walking back toward the cars. "This part is for the women."

I didn't know what he meant. I didn't ask. I followed Julio down the empty dirt street. I would talk this over later with Baker. We would sit around his shack, down some beers, and I would tell him what went down. We would get drunker, he would explain to me what this all meant, why the women ran this show, what parallels there were with the past; we would talk it all out, and everything wouldn't seem so goddamn scary, so evil and fucking horri­fying as it did right now. Distance would soften this. Time would turn this into history. I hoped. I prayed.

I got into my car, started the ignition, looked out the win­dow. I saw the women take the hands of their husbands, lovers, sons, lead them across the street away from the church. Through a crack between the two adobe buildings between which they were walking, I thought I could see a monstrous pile of dried manzanita and sagebrush.

I started my car, passed Julio without waving, and drove back the way I had come.

I turned on the radio. I could get nothing but a Mexican voices. I floored the gas pedal.

It was a half hour later when I reached the highway. I looked once in my rearview mirror, and in the middle of the 1 vast black expanse behind me, in the approximate spot 1 where Bumblebee was located, I thought I saw the low glow f of a faraway fire.

I turned onto the pavement. I didn't want to think about it. I turned up the radio.

The next glow I saw was the light from Phoenix as I ap­proached the city perpendicular to the dawn.

Lethe Dreams

"Lethe Dreams" was my first major sale. My fiction had been published for years in small press magazines (most notably in David Silva's groundbreaking The Horror Show, which published the early work of so many current writers), but I'd never made it to the big time: The Twilight Zone. I kept trying, though, and fi­nally, in 1987, "Lethe Dreams" was accepted for Twi­light Zone's digest-sized sister publication Night Cry. It was a turning point in my career.

According to Greek mythology, Lethe is the river of forgetfulness in the underworld. I came up with the title of this piece first and then built the story around it.

"Babies need their sleep," Cindy said. "Whoever heard of letting an infant stay up as late as her parents?" But that meant she was awake and crying only two hours after they'd gone to bed themselves, Marc argued. That meant they had to get up and feed her and comfort her and then try to fall back asleep before getting up again for her early morning feeding. "Why don't we put her to bed the same time we go to bed ourselves?" he asked. "That way she wouldn't wake up until four or five in the morning. It's a hell of a lot easier to get up at five than one."

"She is a baby," Cindy said slowly, shaking her head at?

him as if he were either too dense or too myopic to see her!

point. "Babies need their sleep."

"So do adults. Don't you ever get tired of waking up in the middle of the night to feed her? Every night?"

"That's one of the responsibilities of being a parent," she replied, lips tight. "Try, for once, to think of someone other than yourself."

"Look, she sleeps all day anyway. What does it matter whether she sleeps during the night or during the day? What harm can it do to move her schedule up a few hours?"

Cindy turned away from him. "I don't even want to dis­cuss it anymore." She walked into the kitchen and he heard her banging around in the cupboards, loudly letting him know that she was preparing the baby's formula.

Marc slunk back into his chair, gently massaging his temples with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. His headache had come back, amplified beyond all reasonable measure. The Tylenols he'd taken less than a half hour ago had already worn off. Either they were getting weaker, his headaches were getting stronger, or he was becoming im­mune to the medicine's effect.

"It's your turn, but I'll take care of her tonight," Cindy called from the kitchen. "How's that?" He did not even bother to answer. Jesus, the head ...

He was sure the headaches were connected somehow to the unnatural hours he'd been keeping for the past two months. His body simply wasn't used to having its rest inter­rupted each night. His mind, too, was having a difficult time adjusting. For the past week the baby's cries had broken his dreams off in midstream, leaving his waking mind with the vestigial images of a strangely askew reality. He never remembered these dreams in the morning, but in the half-awake feeding interim they played hell with his sensibilities. Squinting, in the vain hope that it would help relieve his pain, he stood up and walked slowly into the kitchen. He crept past Cindy, stirring the Similac in a pot on the stove, and took the bottle of Tylenol from its place in the round condiment holder in the spice cupboard. He popped off the red childproof cap with the ease of an expert and shoved two of the acidic pills into his mouth, swallowing them without the aid of water.

"You have another headache?" All traces of argument had vanished from Cindy's voice; her tone was gentle and concerned.

He waved her away as though it were nothing, even as the blood pounded agonizingly in his temples. "I'm all right."

She stopped stirring the Similac and turned off the stove burner, placing the formula-filled pot on another, colder, section of the stove. She took his arm. "Come on. Let's go to bed."

"Let's?"

"You know what I mean." She led him firmly down the hall to the bedroom. "You have to make an appointment. This has gone far enough. You've gone through half a bottle of aspirin in one week."

"Tylenol," he said.

"Whatever." She let go of his arm and pointed to the quilt-covered brass bed. "Lie down."

He grinned. "Now you're talking."

Her expression remained serious. "I mean it. You have to go to the doctor and find out what this is."

"I know what it is."

She was shaking her head before he even finished the sentence. "I'm tired of hearing that. Just go to the doctor. Be practical for once."

He let it drop. She fussed around the room for a few moments more, regurgitating her mother's sickbed advice, and went back out to the kitchen to finish preparing the formula. He sat up against the headboard after she'd gone. The headache was better already. The Tylenol worked fast.

He stared at the wall opposite the bed, at the cluster of Impressionist prints Cindy had mounted and framed last winter in a frenzy of decorating madness. She had (or they had, under her direction) also repainted the living room, converting the sterile white-white to a warmer off-white, and had drilled holes into the ceilings of each room in order to accommodate her new menagerie of hanging plants. The entire house had virtually been transformed over the space of a single weekend.

He heard Cindy's quick step clicking down the hardwood floor of the hall from the kitchen to the nursery, where Anne was busily crawling around her playpen, waiting for her dinner. Or her first dinner, to be more precise. There were two more to come.

Marc smiled. Babies were a pain. They cut into sleep time and recreation time. But they were worth it. He closed his eyes for a second ...... and opened them in blackness. Cindy was sleeping soundly beside him, her bare back pressed against his chest. She had taken his clothes off somehow, while he was asleep, and they were carefully folded over the back of an antique chair. His headache was gone, but his brain was not still. The demon phantasms of a particularly vivid nightmare were imprinted onto the backs of his pupils. He saw them wildly reeling around the room even as he noted the firm substance of reality about him. There was a woman, not un­like Cindy but with torn ragged hair and misshapen grinning teeth, who was somehow, in some way, trying to kill a low-slung scuttling monster.

The images frightened him, made him afraid to get out of bed, made him want to fall back asleep, made him unable to fall back asleep. He could see them, or feel them, sneaking around the edges of the room, hiding in shadows just out of range of his peripheral vision. He wanted to wake Cindy up, to have her comfort his nightmare fears the way his sister used to, but something held him back. Instead, he reached over and ran his fingers through the thin part in her silken brown hair, the part which remained perfectly straight and untouched even through the dishevelment of sleep. She stirred under his touch, her back snuggling even closer against him, and he ran his hand down the soft flesh of her thin arm. Deja vu.

He pulled his arm back quickly; so quickly that Cindy shifted from her side to her stomach, uttering some incom­prehensible moan, before settling back down into deep sleep. He lay there staring at her. The feeling had been so strong, so powerful, so instantaneous, that he had experi­enced a moment of panic, of intuitive fear. He had done this before. He had lain there on this night, in this position, and had stroked her bare arm in exactly the same way. A certain amount of deja vu was inevitable in a married relationship, he knew. There are only a finite number of things two peo­ple can do within the limited space of a bed. But this had been different. This had been ... frightening. But why? What had-? He had dreamed it. The answer came immediately and incontrovertibly. He could feel the beginnings of a headache stirring in the back 1 of his skull. He closed his eyes, thought of nothing, thought of blackness, thought of emptiness. He tried to fall asleep.

He knew he would remember none of this in the morning.

Marc awoke with the alarm clock. But the clock did notsay six thirty; it said eight o'clock. Cindy was standing over him smiling, a glass of orange juice in one hand and a half eaten slice of toast in the other. "I decided to let you sleep in," she said. "How's your head?"

He shook it, to test for pain. There was none. "Fine," he said.

She sat down next to him on the bed. "She was so good last night, you never would've believed it was her. Didn't I cry or anything. I fed her her food and she went instantly to sleep. Just like a little angel."

Marc smiled. "Figures. Now that it's my turn, she'll probably be up all night screaming."

Cindy laughed. "Probably." She leaned over to kiss him; her lips tasted faintly of orange juice and peanut butter. "You going to work today?"

"Hell no." He leaned back on the pillow, stretching. "It's another 'staff development' day. Last thing I need is to put up with that crap."

"Good. We'll go on a picnic then. Me, you, and Anne. Our first family outing."

"We've been to the doctor. We've been to the store."

"Those aren't family outings."

"What are they?"

She socked him playfully on the arm. "Just get dressed."

They spent the day at the zoo, and although his headache came back around noon, Marc didn't say anything. He kept smiling, ignored it, and in another hour it had almost completely disappeared. There was one bad moment in the rep­tile house-a momentary flashback to a nonexistent dream-time that caused the peach fuzz hairs on the back of his neck to bristle-but it passed as soon as they moved on to the next exhibit.

They got back in time for Anne's midafternoon feeding. The baby had slept through three-fourths of the zoo trip, had slept in the car on the way there and on the way back, and she fell asleep again almost immediately after her bottle. Cindy put her into the crib in their bedroom, and they made love on the living room floor, with the drapes open, the way they used to.

After dinner, Marc announced that he was going to go to bed. Cindy asked if he was still sick, if his headache had come back, but he smiled and said no, he just wanted to get enough rest to go to work tomorrow. He did not mention that he wanted to get in at least four or five hours of sleep before waking up to take care of the baby. He did not mention Anne's sleeping schedule at all. He did not want to jeopard­ize the peace they had made.

Cindy said she would stay up a while longer; there was an old James Bond movie she wanted to see, one of the Connery Bonds. She would wake him when it was time to feed the baby.

He walked down the hall to the bedroom, left his clothes in a discarded pile on the floor, and crawled into bed. He could hear Anne's thin breathing from the crib at the foot of the bed, whistling low beneath the rhythmic babble from Cindy's TV. He switched off the lamp on the walnut night-stand next to his head and closed his eyes, letting the baby's breath and the TV's talking lull him to sleep.

The dream was strange. Something to do with a small dark closeted room and a wide expanse of unbroken plain.

The room was filled with furtive shadows, its blackness bro­ken periodically by flashing red and blue lights. The plain was completely devoid of all life, and its sandy floor was al­ternately yellow and white. The two were connected some' how, intertwined with the movements and actions of a terrifyingly evil clown.

Cindy woke him up, as promised, in time for the baby's feeding. Feeling her hands roughly shake him awake, he rolled onto his side and looked at her with half-shut eyes. "You're up already," he said. "You feed her."

Her voice was as sleepy as his. "I'm not up. And it's your turn."

"But you woke me up."

"And the alarm woke me up. It's an even trade."

His sleep-numbed brain could not grasp the logic, but he got out of bed anyway, slipping into his robe and lurching down the hallway to the kitchen. Once there, he took a baby bottle from the purifier, a nipple from the drawer, and heated the formula over the stove. The simple act of movement, the sheer effort of standing for several minutes on his feet while he stirred the Similac on the stove, caused him to wake up somewhat. And he was conscious, if not fully alert, as he made his way back down the hall to the bedroom.

Cindy, of course, was fast asleep by the time he returned, and he left the bedroom lights off so as not to disturb her. She had moved the crib from the foot of the bed to a spot right next to her, and he walked around to her side of the bed, holding the warm bottle tightly. He placed the bottle on top of the nightstand and reached into the crib for Anne. He hugged his daughter to him.

The slatted shafts of moonlight which fell through the partially open curtains illuminated the baby's face, and Marc saw the red mouth painted garishly onto her cheesecloth head. One of her eyes was missing, but the other eye-a sewed-on black button-stared knowingly into his. The baby's rag-stuffed arms hung limply at her sides, and her cotton doll legs swung loosely in the air.

Marc held the baby lovingly in his arms. He picked up the bottle from the nightstand and pressed it to her painted lips. The formula dripped down her face, some of it falling onto the floor, the rest being absorbed by the material of her body. When the bottle was empty, he put it aside and rocked the baby slowly in his arms, humming.

"Honey?"

He looked over toward the bed. Cindy was sitting up, smiling, holding her arms out to him. "Let me have her," she said gently.

Marc handed the baby to his wife. She expertly held the small rag doll to her shoulder. Only a single slice of moon­light reached the bed, but it cut across the baby's cheese­cloth face, and Marc saw the corners of her red gash mouth creep slowly upward. "Look," he said. "Anne's smiling."

Cindy nodded. "She's happy," she said.

And the baby's legs slowly started to kick.

Paperwork

It has always seemed to me that small towns on the so-called blue highways, those dying communities on old state routes that were bypassed when the interstates were built, have more than their share of windblown trash. Even in towns that are virtually deserted, there are always newspapers and notebook paper and candy wrappers and receipts caught on barbed wire fences, bunched against curbs, plastered on the lower edges of abandoned buildings.

Where do all these papers come from?

And what if their presence isn't as innocent as we travelers think it is?

Wind buffeted the car as they drove through the desert. Josh could feel it as he held tightly to the steering wheel, though it was not visible in the unmoving branches of the desert plants. There were no other cars on the highway, and he was not sure whether he should pull over and wait out the wind or try to continue on. He was not good at this automotive kind of crap and he usually relied on others around him to determine his behavior in these situations. The car swerved a little to the left as an especially obnoxious gust of wind pushed against the Blazer, and his grip tightened on the I wheel. He didn't want to end up overturned on the side off the road-particularly not on this desolate stretch of highway-but he didn't want to stop either. They were late as it was and wouldn't get to Tucson until well after the hotel's check-in time.

As if reading his thoughts, Lydia turned down the cassette player and turned toward him. "Shouldn't we pull over?" she asked. "That wind's kind of strong out there."

He shook his head. "It's not that bad."

They drove for a few moments in silence. There had been a lot of silence on the trip; not relaxed, comfortable silence but tense, awkward silence. Josh had wanted many times to talk to Lydia, to really talk, to recapture that close cama­raderie they had once shared, but he had not known how to do it, had not known what to say. He felt that same need to communicate now, but once again his desires and words did not match. "We have to get gas at the next town," he said lamely. "We're almost out."

Lydia said nothing but turned up the cassette player again, as if in answer, and stared out the side window away from him.

Fifteen minutes later they reached a town. The tiny green and white sign read: Clark. Population 1298. Founded 1943.

Like most of the small desert communities they'd passed through since leaving California, Clark was dirty and run-down, little more than a collection of cafes, gas stations, and storefronts stretching along the sides of the highway, with a few shabby homes and trailers behind them to give the town depth.

Josh pulled into the first gas station he saw, a Texaco. The station looked abandoned. Where the paint on the building wasn't peeling, there were large spots of blackened soot or rot. The windows of the office were so covered with dust and grime that it was impossible to see inside, and small dunes of paper trash had collected on the windward side of the old pumps, but the prices on the swinging metal sign were current, and the open garage door indicated that the station was still in operation.

There were no full- or self-service islands, just two lone pumps, and Josh drove across the length of rubber cable which activated the station's bell, pulling to a stop in front of the unleaded pump.

The wind was blowing strong. Josh looked toward the buildmg. The man who emerged from the office peered first around the edge of the opaque window before stepping nervously outside. He was wearing an old Texaco uniform, with pocket patches that carried the promises of two slogans ago, and he wiped his hands compulsively on a greasy red rag. His face was thin and dark, topped by a gray crew cut, and though his features were unreadable from a distance, as he drew closer Josh could see that the man was terrified.

Such naked fear triggered some sympathetic reaction, within Josh, and his first instinct was to take off and get the hell out of there. The man would not be frightened for no reason; there was probably a gunman in the office holding hostages, or a bomb planted near one of the pumps. But Josh knew that his reaction was stupid, and he got out of the car and stretched, bending his knees and raising his arms after the long drive, before moving forward. He nodded politely at the attendant. "Hi."

The man said nothing, but his eyes shifted back and forth across the length of the highway, on constant surveillance. He grabbed the nozzle of the pump before Josh could reach it, and with trembling hands lifted the catch.

"I'll get that," Josh said.

"No, I'll get it." The man's voice was old and cracked, whispery with age, and there was a tremor in it.

Josh unscrewed the gas cap, and the attendant inserted the nozzle.

"Get out of here fast," the old man whispered. "While you can. While they let you."

Josh frowned. He glanced instinctively back at Lydia in f the front seat. "What?"

The attendant's eyes widened as he looked over Josh's shoulder. "Here comes one now!"

Josh turned to look but saw only the empty street, dust, and gum wrappers blowing across the sidewalk, propelled by the wind. He turned back. A stray scrap of Kleenex blew against the attendant's leg, the wadded piece of white tissue clinging to his sock, and the man suddenly leaped backward, screaming. The nozzle dropped from his hand, falling to the cement, and a trickle of gas spilled out before stopping.

The Kleenex was dislodged from the man's foot as he leaped about, and it went skittering along the ground to­ward the open garage door, but the attendant did not stop screaming. He continued to jump up and down in a panic dance, arms flailing wildly, scuffed workboots scraping hard against the ground.

Josh backed up slowly until he was at the door of the car, and he quickly got in, locking the door.

"Let's get out of here," Lydia said. She was staring out the window at the gas station attendant, her face pale.

Josh nodded, putting the key in the ignition. The atten­dant pounded on the window. "I'll send you the money we owe!" Josh yelled through the closed glass.

"The papers!" the man screamed.

Josh turned the key in the ignition, pumped the gas pedal, and the engine caught. The attendant was still pounding crazily on the window, and Josh pulled away slowly, afraid of running over the old man's feet. The attendant did not fol­low them across the asphalt as he'd expected, however. In­stead, he ran immediately back toward the office, where he slammed shut the door.

Josh looked over at Lydia. "What the hell was that all about?"

"Let's just get out of here."

He nodded. "It's a Texaco station. I'll write to Texaco, tell them what happened, send them the money. It's only a buck or so. We'll find another gas station."

They headed slowly down the highway through town, past a closed movie theater, past an empty store. The wind, which until now had been constant, suddenly increased in power, and the heavy cloud of dust which accompanied it obscured the road like brown fog. They could hear the tiny static scratching of dirt granules on the glass of the wind­shield. Josh turned on the headlights and dropped his speed from thirty to twenty and then to ten. "I hope it's not going to scratch up the paint job," he said.