

Not Far From Golgotha

RICHARD FUTCH

Not Far From Golgotha

Published by Richard Futch at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Richard Futch

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From scrap found in trunk

When the wailing drained out

in the evening, where the

cobblestones still held the sound

of thumping hoofbeats,

there remained a trace of

unseen blood, darkly

staining in one corner of

the temple

not far from Golgotha.

Crosses and moans were

no peculiarity here, no more

than bread and water

for the soul,

to be broken, absorbed

like the Son

as his faithful drifted away

leaving the Hill of Skulls

where His blood darkly thickened,

painting the vicious ground,

leaving the blood in the temple

another wasted essence

it seems,

another ended purpose.

As the old tom licked his lips

in satisfaction, mutely

beneath the pews...

not far from Golgotha.

Ebenezer Holgren

May 11, 1957

October 27, 1991

Chapter 1

The wind whipped around the corners of the buildings, leaving behind rippled beads of light reflecting the downpour. A fine patina of humidity tossed its bloated, ghostly form from wall to wall. Billy kept his head tucked into his shoulders, his eyes studying the path his shoes cut in the sluice on the sidewalk. The storm had been growing since early in the afternoon and its throaty howl warned only of increasing fury.

Even so, he hardly felt the stinging drops. He kept remembering the telephone call from his mother. "Elizabeth's tests came in today," she'd said, her voice hardly above a whisper but maintaining its standard, forceful control. And she'd continued, although her voice had been lost to him. In its place a maddened, unsolicited wandering had blocked his thoughts, phased away his mother's endless litany. He'd hung up at some point.

And now, block after block later in the murky, steaming French Quarter he'd drained completely. For more than an hour he'd simply sat on a covered stoop halfway down Royal Street, watching as the rain blossomed from its first fatty drops into the gale that had him now.

It'd been the better part of three hours since he left the Personnel Director's office at the hospital. Mr. Wallace had approached concern when Billy requested the rest of the day off and that was bothersome, uncomfortable: this feigned sentiment spewing from the iceberg. The man knew nothing of Billy's family. In truth, Wallace had spoken to him on no more than five occasions since Billy's initial interview, and by this date Billy didn't want or need sentiment.

He fully realized how the Robert Wallace's of the world perceived him: an unexplainable waste, an underachiever. In short, a loser finally getting what he deserved from lack of initiative. Billy tried hard not to sniff too far along this trail. As far as he was concerned, the sonofabitch could choke himself to death on hospital politics until he was a time bomb of clogged arteries and Bermuda shorts. Just as long as he kept his goddamn distance. Disdain was something Billy was perfectly capable of handling as long as it came silently, and from a distance.

But Elizabeth, Jesus Christ, Elizabeth. Her weight loss had been dramatic, but weren't there a hell of a lot of other possibilities like stress, maybe, or some gland simply being out of whack? My God, he thought, shaking his wet head as he shuffled down the sidewalk. She was only twenty-one, four years his junior.

Low, ominous rumblings wafted down the street. The bilious fog thickened, carting fat, oily drops of rainwater and filth to its breast as the wind calmed to catch its breath. A bolt of lightning burned fleetingly in the windows fronting the street, gone before its roaring gnash of thunder exploded seconds later. Billy's rain-proofed trench coat was close to surrender by the time he saw through the melee a wildly flapping canopy beating away in the shadows of an exhausted building's facade. Set into the wall behind it peered a neon sign, blinking like a murky eye through a great swirl of muddy water. Its neon article was broken, hanging in pieces. It coughed simply and weakly: "Ripcord...Ripcord...Ripcord," as if barely possessing the strength to whisper its existence.

He ducked underneath the canopy (finally free of the sharp stinging rain on his face) the same moment another closer boom roared overhead, shaking the souls of the very buildings around him. There was no telling how long it would last, but he took no further notice as he grabbed the brass handles and pulled. Nothing ever closed in New Orleans.

Stepping inside, he paused for his eyes to adjust. Though he'd become accustomed to the swirling gloom outside, there was a bruise of a different sort here. Grainy purple and red bulbs threw off thin, spreading shades to the walls, every corner and nook melting back into the thick, bare wood. The place fairly burst with the pleasant scent of cypress and oak, mixed with a grand dash of whiskey, malt, and barroom philosophy. It immediately reminded Billy of his grandfather's private parlor years back, that mysterious and wonderful cove the old man had used to escape the hard glare of his harried wife or any one of a dozen screaming kids set loose by their parents in his home. Soft but lively jazz pulsed from the Wurlitzer in the corner.

Billy saw no one near his age, even a good twenty years distanced him from the barmaid. He sized up the place as each of the old barhounds took a studied moment to size him up before turning back to their worn-out tales. Then he crossed to the bar and chose a stool that squeaked loudly when he sat down. "Yes?" the barmaid asked in a roughly courteous voice filed down by years of cigarettes.

"Turkey and water," he told her.

"Got plenty of both," she replied and turned away. When she brought the drink back he paid her without another word. Then he threw back his head and drank deeply, oblivious to both the noises inside and out.

In a relatively short time he poured his way through that and another, musing over Elizabeth and feeling sicker with every passing moment. And as these torturous thoughts rang freely through his head the door suddenly blew open, the wind violently tearing a small stack of napkins lying next to him into a fluttering dance across the bar.

Billy turned around with a wet collar blown against his chin.

An old man barreled inside shaking himself like a dog. Silver, frazzled hair threw water in every direction while he deftly detached and flipped his overcoat from his shoulders to a previously invisible coat rack stuffed into a nearby spider-webbed corner. "Jesus Christ!" the old man bellowed. "It's blowing like Camille out there, boys!"

As he stomped into the purple and red gloom several of 'the boys' acknowledged his presence but didn't go to the trouble of stopping whatever they were doing to come over and engage him. The newcomer paid no mind. He simply waddled over to the bar several seats away from Billy and sat down with a thump. His seat, too, gave a squeak. He glanced over at Billy, carefully offering a brisk nod and a wink. "Wasn't me," he assured the boy before turning back to the woman. "Maggie, let's hurry, my dear. This old man's freezin." Maggie, without question, quickly brought over a shot glass of Wild Turkey and Billy watched from the corner of his eye as its contents vanished instantaneously. "Thank ya, my love," the old man growled. "A thousand golden crowns await ya beautiful head in Heaven." The old man placed the shot glass softly on the bar, and pushed it away with one bent, arthritic finger. "Let's have another," he whispered. He happened another glance at Billy and saw the nearly empty glass sitting before him. "And how 'bout one for the young man here?" he proposed.

He swiveled toward Billy and extended his hand. "Ebenezer Holgren," he snapped. "Glad ta meet ya son," even though he hadn't. Billy nodded his head and let it slide. It was pouring outside and the old man's handshake felt genuine enough. Billy squeezed back and found the gumption somewhere inside to smile.

Chapter 2

As the storm ranted between spurts of ominous pants and pauses the two proceeded on their mutual pilgrimage to drunkenness. They gradually washed off their perches at the bar, coming to rest at a decrepit table farther back near the Wurlitzer. Billy finally relegated his dripping coat to the back of an empty chair at Ebenezer's urging. What must have been at least a Bing Crosby-era, red, Christmas light hung naked above the table, and although flecks of white shone through, the shading effect was soothing even if a little garish.

Billy could feel his tongue knotting up, his mind suddenly full of things that needed to be said. The rub was in the telling, however, because he continued staring into his drink, struck silent, as the old man rambled. After a while Ebenezer stopped his steady flow and looked hard at the young man. "Somethin on ya mind?" he inquired, neither exasperated nor irritated, just mellow and inviting.

"I found out today my sister's probably gonna die." The words came out flat and dead, as a matching set to his mood. Billy saw himself suddenly in a larger light, a piece to a puzzle slotting into place: an average person faced with a loved one's oblivion. It seemed to Billy a huge, unrecognized slice of human history revolved around this single circumstance: ambition and happiness dashed upon the shore of singular desolation. The finished puzzle was not a heartening one. "The reports came in today," he finished, both the statement and his drink. What remained of the ice settled wetly.

Ebenezer turned from the table, raised a finger to Maggie in a silent request for another round to sort amongst them before swiveling back. He had no problem looking Billy in the eye. "A kid like you, huh?" he asked.

Feeling the last harsh grasp of whiskey knotting his stomach, Billy croaked, "Yeah." Then silence.

Maggie appeared, ghostlike, with the drinks and vanished with the same stealth. Ebenezer brought the drink to his lips and initially Billy thought the old man would start on a new topic, disregarding the last. Outside a bitter smash rattled the broken shutters, kicked against the door as if entreating entry. "That, my friend, is a goddamn shame," Ebenezer replied. His face grew hard, but somehow paradoxically passive as he set the drink back down.

"I know," Billy answered. "I know."

Later, it came to a simple question, one that would form the foundation for the peculiar friendship that followed.

Chapter 3

"Ya like stories?" Ebenezer asked, his voice maintaining a craggy dignity despite the copious amount of whiskey he'd put away. Billy folded weakly against the back of his chair. He knew standing would be an embarrassment.

"Yeah," he answered with dragging tongue.

"Well son...Sorry, Billy," Ebenezer drunkenly corrected himself. "I got a good one. Plenty as a matter a fact." He looked off, gazing into the past to recall old memories. "If ya want I'll tell ya what happened ta me during WWII, the Big One. A little tour I did in the godforsaken jungles outside Cape Town, South Africa 'fore I flew in the European stage a that magnificent killing field. Nasty place, South Africa, regardless what the National Geographic says 'bout it," he amended before drinking a quick sip as primer.

Billy rubbed a hand across his forehead, trailed it down his face. Already a thick stubble raked at his fingertips. The glass sat on a foggy, lonesome island waiting for his stomach to catch up.

"—ta hear?" Billy blinked his eyes.

"What's that?" he asked.

"The story. Care ta hear it?"

"Yeah, okay." From the continuing roar outside Billy knew he wasn't going anywhere soon, and a story touched him the right way: simply. He nodded his head to match his reply.

"Good, good!" Ebenezer exclaimed, the response germinating toward Billy like a seeking root, wrapping its tendrils lightly around the audience of one. Oddly enough, Ebenezer's enthusiasm seemed to ease the torturous grind manifest in Billy's stomach and head. He relaxed and slid deeper into the chair.

Nonetheless, he let the glass maintain a respectable distance.

"Well," Ebenezer began, and the rest of the night slipped away.

Chapter 4

"Was seventeen in 1943. Too young ta be in the army but in all the same. There was ways back in the days. Seemed like every man went if he could piss a straight line and didn't have a habit a droppin soap in the shower. Didn't have all the hippy bullshit like in Vietnam. Besides, I wasn't gonna miss out on all the fun." Ebenezer laughed dryly, sardonically recalling ideas that had lost their novelty. He nodded his head as if checking a bearing before continuing. "I'as an orderly, kinda similar ta what you do, I suppose." Billy didn't, but what did it matter? "Patchin up soldiers at this make-shift med unit set in a piece a hollad-out jungle.

"Place sat on a big hill surrounded on three sides by some a the thickest goddamn jungle ya ever saw. The fourth side," and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, indicating what Billy could not see, "faced the ocean. One road led ta our supply base," and he held up one finger. He took another quick sip. "Mostly, we was just plain cut off. When it rained, and Sweet Jesus it rained, the road and trails become somethin looked like a huge snail laid down. Thick as potata soup. Sometimes took weeks ta dry.

"The only other road ran down the backside through a lil depression, away from the med post, finishin up at a dock we built on the beachhead. We used the dock road ta jockey supplies back and forth from the ships if the weather was right. When it was we'd drive the Jeeps right down ta the water's edge. Didn't happen often but when it did saved a helluva lotta time. Mostly though, it was pretty near slick as owl shit, so we also built this sorta descendin staircase parallelin the road outta the dock. Used cement for all the posts ta keep the fucker from washin out in the deluges. Took longer ta hump supplies and the wounded when ya had ta, but it was the only way. Gotta make do, ya know?" Billy nodded that he did.

"Sometimes men died on the ships because we couldn't even get 'em ta the base. Send medics and supplies out, probably as good a facility as we had, but hell, Death was everwhere those days. Seemed ta fly in front a our faces, snickerin like a bratty child. And all ya cud do was watch 'er go." He took a long swallow, finishing the high-ball. He raised a finger for Maggie's attention. "Another please, my dear," he mouthed. She came over to fetch the glass and Ebenezer turned to Billy. "You?" he asked.

"How about a glass of water."

"Sure, sure," Ebenezer replied. "Ain't lost ya, 'ave I?" A quick scrutiny of Billy's face followed as the old man searched for flaws.

"No," Billy assured him.

"Don't worry son," he told him. "I'll get ta the point. They called me 'private-first class,' but I called myself 'gopher'. Did everthin anybody above me didn't wanta do. And one a the worst things was pickin up those goddamn supplies from the military base almos twenty miles up that long, shitty road. It was closer ta eight or nine as the crow flew, but a gopher ain't got no wings. We did have a Jeep though, all beefed-up, and it could really get it even when the weather wasn't so good. Other times it was like wallowin with a pig through a sty. On average, I made it there and back in a rough three hours," he said, holding up three fingers this time.

"This thing I'm gonna tell ya happened when I was comin back one day. And the weather was nice then. Goes ta show ya never can tell, huh?" Ebenezer cleared his throat. "I saw a man lyin in the middle a the road right where he hadn't been when I came through hour, hour-n-half earlier. His head was layin in a mudpuddle and he was out. Looked dead ta me and God knows where he come from. But he'as one a ours, no doubt. An there I was an I want ya ta try an picture it." He held up his hands and framed an area above the table with his fingers. "Middle a Fuckin Nowhere, lit'rally, and this guy layin in the middle a the road like he just came off a bender on Bourbon Street." Billy could see the old man meant every word. His eyes told the same story his lips did.

"Well, see Billy. I just pulled the Jeep over ta the side and sat there a moment, tryin ta get everthin straight in my head. 'Jesus Christ,' I says ta myself. 'What the hell is this?' I 'member havin my hand on the butt a my revolver as I walked up like I was fixin ta spook a goddamn snake." He ran a rough hand over his lips and sucked in his breath.

"I was fuckin scared," Ebenezer whispered, so low it seemed an unintentional afterthought. His eyes radiated wild light and a nerve ticked above his right eye. "I walked over sorta hunched over. Nudged him with the toe a my boot and that's when he groaned." Ebenezer stared across the table at Billy, his face drawn in harsh lines. "But real quiet, almos like a baby wakin up from a nap. Not exactly a groan, not exactly cryin. That's when it hit me ta get my ass in gear and I bent down like somebody cracked a fuckin whip and rolled him out the mud. And it was like everthin around me sorta loosened up somehow 'cause there wasn't no ghost there no more. Only a kid younger than you are now, sick and dyin."

Maggie returned with their drinks and, oddly enough, Billy saw aside from Ebnezer's drink she had both a glass of water and another beer for him. And at that moment he realized the woman had read his mind, or perhaps she merely already knew the story. It definitely called for something stronger than water. Billy found himself hanging on every word. The storm added perfect vitality to Ebenezer's spell, one that grew more immense despite its owner's vast consumption of alcohol. Strangely, the old man didn't look any drunker; just a little louder, more emphatic.

"—up on my back, see?" Ebenezer was saying, replete with gestures and movements performed long years ago and dragged once again into the light. Maggie finished arranging their drinks and Billy nodded his appreciation. She was gone in a flash. "I threw him in back the Jeep, but just the few seconds I held 'im I could feel the poor bastard burnin with fever. Heat just pourin off im." Ebenezer reached past his drink and touched Billy with a knuckled finger on the shirtsleeve. "Light fella, no 'parent wounds, jus a burnin fever boilin inside like he'd jus popped outta a oven...or hell."

Ebenezer quieted down, looked at his drink thoughtfully a moment while he spun it around in a wet circle. "The whole way back he mumbled strange shit I couldn't figure at all." Another slug of whiskey went the way of the last and Ebenezer grimaced, nodding his head.

He slapped his hands together sharply, locking in on Billy. "So I pulled inta the base 'round three-thirty or so, ran inside ta get a crew ta see what I brung 'em. Got 'im on a stretcher and carried 'im inside, and I 'member bein real scared then, like a pallbearer at a funeral I had no business attendin." He shook his head, seemingly more mystified than frightened by the memory now. His fingers drummed lightly, once.

"Well, at first everbody's real int'rested. He's a fuckin novelty; like a weird story ya'd hear 'round a campfire suddenly come ta life. Only one thing...shortly after we got 'im tucked away the Grey Boy, that's what we called 'er, come bustin up. Full a dead and dyin. Over the course a the next few hours that sick soldier got lost in the shuffle. Priority shifted. By the time I managed ta bug out it was way late but he was still alive. Burnin to death with fever but alive. Just mostly forgotten til the next day.

"An what a helluva day that turned out ta be," he added, putting a finish to his drink. He caught Maggie's immediate approach out of the corner of his eye and put out a hand to stop her. "Enough for me, darlin," he said in his loud, brusque manner. "Maybe the kid here?" Billy shook his head and Ebenezer waved her back to the bar.

"It was stillness that woke me," he continued, his bloodshot eyes finding Billy as he fumbled around in his breast pocket. He fished out a filter-less cigarette and lit it with a lighter he pulled from the pack. Suddenly, oddly, he appeared lost, fighting to find the thread of his story behind some invisible obstacle. After several disconcerting moments Billy reached over and nudged him. Expression ebbed back as the old man blew out a thin fan of smoke. Then he found the thread.

"In the jungle there ain't never abs'lute quiet, but that partic'lar mornin there wasn't a goddamn jump in the breeze. Even the leaves on the trees looked like they was holdin their breath." He paused, considering the effectiveness of his metaphor. "Not a damn leaf blowin, and the sky---" He broke off.

Billy hung back until he could wait no longer. "Go on," he urged, in conspiracy now.

Ebenezer still stared away, but continued. "The sky had a black tint like a net been cast through it, even though ta the horizon the sun was comin up. The air was suffocatin, like Time was squeezin by so slowly She was myth...or a dream. Somethin lost that shouldn't never come back.

"That's when we heard it. A loud, wailin howl. Like I said, even though we could see the sun, everythin was real murky. Couldn't see much a nothin in detail. A coupla us pulled out binoc'lars, strainin for all we'as worth ta find out what the fuck was makin that noise. And then one a the guys--b'lieve his name was Garvey--says, 'Holy Jesus, will ya look at that!?' And he's pointin towards the Boy in the harbor, anchored out in deep water past the bouys."

The past exploded on the old man, startling the ghost of his youth into his features for a fleeting, mesmerizing instant. Ebenezer pointed across the room, speaking low now. "And there i'tis! The ship leanin hard ta port through the murk!" Ebenezer wiped his mouth and belched. His face wrinkled, twisting as if his nose itched. "It drifts up maybe fifty yards from the dock and I swear a guy bails over the side! And this ain't no fuckin swimmin weather, boy! And by God that's when the rain started, burstin sheets of it full a hail the size a golf balls! I couldn't fuckin believe it, heat like the Devil's own nuts, and now sleet! Unfuckinbelievable!

"But I could still see the guy who bailed. I almost recognized 'im!

"I wiped my hands over my face," and he demonstrated, "tryin ta see better and it'as the weirdest thin..." He paused, breathed deeply and went on. "I asked several a the other guys later if they seen the same'as I did, an ya know what?" Ebenezer peered at Billy, a shadow from the ceiling lying half across his chin. "Every goddamn one had!" he said, punctuating each word with a firm knock on the table.

He pointed again. "There he was in the water. Christ, he must've been 2-3 hundert yards away. Everthin around him was clear even though ya couldn't make out nothin anywhere else. Like a spotlight focused on the main attraction.

"Because out there," he said, seeing it. Billy saw that he could. "Out there the fuckin water's boilin and rockin. Behind him and kinda beginnin ta circle out was this huge shadow seated underneath the water.

"It started gettin closer and I knew he was finished.

"Funny, the only thin I remember is this hoarse, ghostly-thin voice waverin in the background, whisperin, 'What the fuck's swimmin behind the Boy?''' Ebenezer's shoulder flinched and he continued looking away. Billy gripped the table's edge.

"Then," Ebenezer's voice clicked like a breaking bone. "He suddenly made it inta the waves out there 'bout waist deep, stumblin through em, tryin ta reach the beach." He nodded at Billy coldly. "I knew he wasn't gonna make it," the old man intoned.

"The wooden staircase begins vibratin," his hand unmindfully mimicking the long ago sight. "Real gentle at first til it starts really hummin from all the water tearin down the side. But I'm still seein 'im through the torrent, his face, eyes, everythin. Details. Horrible, bulgin eyes fit ta bust and his face pumped up like a sausage. Especially the eyes, though, those eyes that kept on drillin right through me." His body tremored faintly.

"He made it ta the staircase even though the thing was history, concrete footings or not. And he saw it too. He managed ta hang onta the bottom stair longer'n I expected. Every vein standin out'n his arms, his mouth all twisted and hitchin, his hands strainin on the soaked wood. Nothin takes it away," he added in a whisper.

Then unexpectedly, Ebenezer seemed to hunt Billy from the foggy depths of his memories. "Right before the water took 'im I could no longer deny the face a the guy I'd picked outta the mud!" An icy glow of insanity melted behind Ebenezer's eyes, coalescing lightly into the shadowed corners beneath his lashes.

"I looked past 'im inta the dark shapelessness behind the ship and that's when I saw the--." He faltered, laying a finger aside his mouth. He looked much drunker than he sounded. "A huge whirlpool was pickin up a spin. I could just see the shadow underneath it...suckin...

"And after that everythin wobbled, like a wormhole in space opened up. The porch where I was standin disappeared and the rest a the real world went with it. I didn't feel the rain anymore; I couldn't hear any wind or thunder. There was just a vast void a emptiness, like darkness so thick ya could tear off a chunk with your hands.

"When he did get ripped off," and Ebenezer skimmed his hands rapidly across one another, "he didn't sink below the choppy surface. He never did, not through the whole goddamn thing. He just sorta bobbed out like a cork, cuttin a straight path t'ward the whirlpool.

"And that's when he started screamin."

Billy could hear their own storm heaving for breath, as if declaring reprieve, but he was going nowhere. He had to know the rest.

Ebenezer continued, "I watched as he got pulled closer and closer. Then I fixed on his eyes again and it was like the whole ocean was inside em. Somethin real primitive, hard. Evil. That was the first time I really seen it. Ain't no other way ta explain; that's when I recognized the fact a its existence. Then the nightmare started." Ebenezer shook his finger and Billy noticed (also for the first time) the man's nails were bitten to the quick. "Like an apocalypse outta the Book a Revelation. Monster waves crashin, tearin the surface ta ribbons; the sky a ripplin black and gapin open; thunder roarin; a ravin wind screamin murder way back in my ears. But through it all, somehow I stayed fixed on the man in the water," and Ebenezer buried his finger emphatically on the table. He screwed it back and forth momentarily and looked at Billy.

"I thought 'bout this for years. Rolled it over here and there tryin ta make sense a it. And I'll tell ya what I come up with. Me...the old drunk," he said quietly, the edge of a tired smile turning up the corners of his mouth. "Ya can believe it or not; I don't give a damn." Ebenezer held his hands up in front of his face, curled as if grasping an invisible ball. Putting shape to the ideas encompassed there. "I b'lieve everthin served the sole purpose a settin a mood." He opened his hands to let the idea escape and his next utterance was low and fragile, leaving Billy unsure if he'd heard correctly. Or even if the old man had been aware himself, the exhalation having been more incantation than comment. "What scares a man more'n the wildness loose in his own soul, the empty little, jitterin spaces that don't live for peace?" This unexpected, philosophic glimpse into the old man caused Billy deep disquiet. Such soliloquies appeared outside the character of the story, prying deeper than it had any right. Billy filed it away (along with many other things Holgren had touched tonight) for later thought.

A dry, monotone followed; a startling departure from Ebenezer's earlier excitement. "When he reached the perimeter he spun 'round sev'ral times. Musta been 'most a mile across but I never lost sight a him. Not one goddamn time.

"Then he was gone, and when he went so went the whirlpool. The filtered, tinted air loosened up; the rain pulled back like a horse after a long run. The peals a thunder grumbled off across the dyin waves...

"I looked 'round slowly, feelin like somebody had run a wire brush across my brain. I could only see forms: people sprawled everywhere. But no real features. And," his hands pawed at the air, "I could tell somethin was still happenin out there. Wasn't over. One a the figures off ta the side started pointin, and I heard deep, gutt'ral growls comin outta the jungle like it was tired a being quiet and had a few threats a its own.

"I looked out the screen door and saw the spot in the ocean (the one where he'd gone down) startin ta bulge. It looked like a huge cyst buildin up pressure, growin and spreadin 'til it suddenly couldn't no more and bust wide, throwin a gigantic sheet a water inta the air. But I didn't miss the man shootin outta the center."

Ebenezer caught Billy with a deadly, serious stare. "He looked like a champagne cork comin out a bottle. His body was stripped clean a flesh 'cept for long, ragged tangles hangin down from his neck! His bones was glitterin like they just been waxed, and I saw deeper and deeper and the shadow was nothin but madness and teeth!!" Ebenezer practically yelled, and Billy spotted a fellow late-nighter peering at their table in a drunken effigy of concern. Billy waved his hand to ward off the old drunk. He would not allow interruption, not now. But this concern proved foundless as the drunk lost interest and his chin gradually slid back to his chest.

"Everthin went out," Ebenezer dead-panned. "Complete grave-silence black 'cept for one lil spot a light." He held his hand up, and Billy saw the thumb and forefinger nearly touched. "It was like seein outta a tunnel from miles inside. Then this small, wrigglin dot appeared, slowly taking on shape as it got closer. Comin like a streak with no disguises. His face was still intact and it was howlin insanity; the eyes bustin outta his head, the hair peelin back from the forehead as the mouth unhinged! I heard what sounded like a board crackin inside my head and the next thin I knew I was sprawled on the floor!"

He slowed down, almost panting. "I 'member rubbin my hand along the rough floorboards, decidin if I was still sane. I 'member the fear right then a being lost forever in some bizarre limbo, strung out and soulless as Time.

"I was afraid ta open my eyes so I laid there musterin up the courage ta sit. But before I did I turned an looked along the floor. There was bed pans and overturned tables and people layin all over the fuckin place! Looked like a helluva brawl had just ended, and everbody was just now gettin around ta checkin' if their parts was in the right places. That's when I realized one voice was still screamin.

"I got ta my feet, along with a few others, and started lookin around," he said, imitating the action in furious retrospect. "Then I saw the dyin soldier, all cast off and stuffed inta his corner bed where we'd left 'im.

"His eyes was open and horrified, glazed over. The air 'round his head kinda danced like it does above a hot car hood. His mouth was open and ringed with puke and blood run down his neck, all over the blanket. He mighta bit his tongue; I never took the time ta check... But he was mumblin somethin...kinda kickin out with his legs, his eyes rollin back ta whites...murmurin somethin 'bout a 'whirlpool.'" Ebenezer's eyebrows raised and he slapped the table top.

"It was real quiet, and I realized I wasn't the only swingin dick who had a few questions. The others saw it too. We all stood around for another second, starin at each other like baboons. And somewhere right about then he died just as dead as dead can be.

"I 'member one a the guys askin, 'Zit over, zit over?' But nobody answered.

"Well, we let 'im lay, nobody sayin much. Nobody wantin ta touch him. The whole lotta us cleanin up and clammin up, tryin ta stay busy doin anythin. Anythin ta put off facin that dead man in the corner.

"Near 'bout dark two a the fellas worked up their nerves 'round a bottle a rotgut and wrapped 'im up in a sheet. Carried him out back and buried him at the jungle's edge.

"No cross, no nothin. Nothin ta mark the fact he ever existed. I always felt a little ashamed I didn't do somethin, but I was a lot younger then." He smiled. "Easier ta scare."

Billy nodded.

"But ya see," Ebenezer said slowly, finally beginning to unwind. "No one ever knew what the hell killed 'im. Oh hell, sure, the fever, that was what his papers said but really? Really? Talked ta a lotta people over the years, doctors, nurses, other grunts been in worse shit than me," he held up his hands as if denying an unspoken allegation. "Don't laugh, ain't always been a drunk," he said wryly. Billy made no comment and Ebenezer went on. "There was plenty a fevers that caused insanity and delirium, but only in the one who had it! And no doubt delirium, exhaustion, any number a things will make a man crazy, make 'im do things he wouldn't otherwise do. I actually saw a German prisoner cut off three a 'is fingers with a broken mirror—bones an fuckin' all—after a screamin fit in solitary! Ya imagine that? Definitely a hard thing ta understand, or even begin ta...but even with somethin that bad I wasn't involved. I was strictly a spectator, another random seat in the audience. With this guy it was all different.

"Fever was partly responsible for killin the poor bastard, but it was fear that finished the job as far as I'm concerned." He paused and leaned closer. "Fear pure and simple; a fuckin nightmare. One so horrible everbody in the room gotta lil taste.

"Over the years I tried ta imagine how somethin so huge and evil could be inside someone, seethin like it would explode ages before, but not. Just contentin itself all hunkered down in the darkness gettin stronger. I wonder what kinda fear or damnation, or whatever other violent hell ya can imagine it would take ta burst outta one man and claim the minds a others in one, short...colossal...moment." Ebenezer snapped his fingers. "Then, in my mind's eye I still see 'im sittin there, stuffed inta that corner, his legs drawn up, and his eyes...his eyes always the worst; the thing that becomes mythic instead a rotten.

"That pain is somethin ya never forget, how it poured out and infected everbody else. I can remember, and I know the piece I got was tiny, dilute...fadin even as it come on. What he got, the meat and bones, cooked his brains. Erased him. Now..." he said, slumping back in his chair. "I never been a religious man, but over the years I feel comfortable enough sayin 'if there is a devil and he does care ta fuck in our business time ta time, ya can find him," and Ebenezer pointed to a place far away over his shoulder, beyond the walls of the bar, "in the jungles off'n the tip a Africa."

He stared at Billy in pale lucidity. Exhausted, he let out his breath and his clothes compressed around him, riding the contours of his body. His mouth curled as if in deep thought, parted for a moment pondering something more to say, then sealed again tightly as he let it go. He kicked back his chair and with a double thump Billy heard both feet plant solidly on the chair next to him. Ebenezer leaned ponderously far back: a giant turtle wriggling itself deep into the sand.

Obviously, he didn't plan on leaving.

Billy turned to the clock, aslant above the Wurlitzer, so dusty the hands were mere shadows behind the accumulated grime. Just after three in the morning. He didn't feel drunk anymore, just incredibly tired. He looked for Maggie, didn't see her. The lights in the bar had been dimmed, and the only other person beside Billy and Ebenezer (the guy who'd looked up from his chest when Ebenezer got loud) was crashed out too.

Inexplicably, the Wurlitzer, silent for the better part of an hour, now began softly moaning some rarified oldie by the Righteous Brothers. Billy suddenly felt claustrophobic. The story was over; nothing would follow. He stood up slowly and quietly from the now-sleeping old man and as if in response, Ebenezer began snoring with a steady, rising cadence.

It was no longer raining. Now the humidity would boil into an ever-thickening fog which hunched on the other side of the door. Billy wanted to thank or congratulate Ebenezer for the story but didn't consider that enough reason to wake the old man. After all, it could spur him on to new heights and Billy was not prepared for that now.

No, he told himself. The man was done.

He took ten dollars out of his thin wallet (a monumental sum from the pocket of a pauper), folded it against his railing conscious, and slipped it gently underneath the sleeping man's palm. And even though Ebenezer never stirred, his hand clutched instinctively at the money. Then Billy turned and walked out the door, trying to beat the morning home.

Chapter 5

Billy went to his mother's house the next day. It was the first time he'd graced her entrance in over four months. Their relationship had always been stormy and when Bill Sr. died five years ago, Billy had found it increasingly hard to be alone in the house with her. It brought back too many memories: the smell of his father's pipe when he was a kid, before Nora had steadfastly beaten the man of the habit; the warm cordiality his father had shown both family and friend, regardless of his mood or an earlier tongue-lashing dealt out for some supposed lapse of judgement. And, of course, there was always the last memory: standing at the foot of his father's bed, scarcely believing the enormity of the moment, staring at the calm, dead face before him as Nora continued with her endless chatter. Dead of a heart attack while napping during a college football game. He had been fifty-six years old.

But Billy had not gone to see Nora; Elizabeth was the reason for the visit. She'd checked herself out of the hospital the day before and paid for a cab to bring her home; their mother continuing to follow her usual course in hard times by professing some undisclosed 'illness'. Over the phone that morning, Nora had tried to explain to Billy how the shock had simply been unbearable, and surely no one would expect her to risk an accident with Elizabeth. "'I called your apartment,'" he recalled her saying, a faint brisk callousness weaving through the phone line to his ears, "'but you weren't in. Where were you?'"

Billy had avoided the question with silence. It was just another attempt by Nora at righteousness, but now, especially now, her quota had been used up. Billy knew it and he felt Elizabeth did too. And Billy felt somewhere deep inside, Nora knew it also because she'd sufficed to let the silence stand torture enough, no longer willing to pursue the forbidding trail with her former dogged persistence.

But the seeds she'd planted and tended carefully over the years proved nonetheless persistent. Their poisonous insinuation of his own neglect brought to his mind an image of himself sitting in the bar, drinking with the old man until the small hours of the morning, and even upon reaching home how he'd unplugged the damned phone because he hadn't wanted to be disturbed. Again and in familiar form, the guilt eased forward, taking the old, ingrained steps. He'd been trained well, but what he'd accomplished in his silence after his mother's barbed question was a savage, logical counter-attack. He just could not give his mother the satisfaction she'd sought.

As he'd made his way over, he placated his guilt by reminding himself each person dealt with grief in purely individual ways. And there was still the reassuring fact that Elizabeth knew him; she would hold nothing against him as their mother would. This line of thought suddenly brought back the memory he'd experienced when Nora told him of Elizabeth's prognosis; she'd called him 'Billy.' With his mother it had always been and would always be 'William' in any situation. Never 'Billy.' The way she used his formal name was intended to snap his backbone straight, to outright deny any attempt at rebuttal or opinion he might have or form. When she'd called him 'Billy' it threw him off. Suddenly her voice had been as devoid of power as a fading corn husk left to dry in the sun. And with this knowledge came the well-known accusatory finger pointing rakishly at his bare soul, asking in a voice oddly akin to the one that had raked him through all manner of coals with unfounded opinions over the years, why at the moment when his sister's illness had been revealed had he instead come immediately, full-circle, back to himself and his own concerns? He had no answer.

He snuck into the house, using the key he'd carried since childhood, careful not to disturb his sleeping mother (he'd made a point to come at her prescribed and ritualized nap hour) as he crept down the hallway. He stood before the familiar closed door for several minutes before turning the knob and quietly slipping inside. He found Elizabeth asleep too, and oddly, Billy noticed how immaculate she looked. Almost like a child again, an unfinished script. Even in their early years together it had always been mystifying (perhaps something in her skin or the way her muscles relaxed) how much more pronounced her beauty was while she slept. Now in her twenties it was impossible to deny.

He stood at the foot of the bed, staring silently as her eyes flitted in dream behind closed lids. Then they parted and slowly focused on the room. It took a moment for her to compose herself, and then she stretched broadly, her clenched fists drawn up to her chin. She yawned a smile in his direction. With this simple gesture Billy knew everything was all right between them, regardless of Nora. "Billy," Elizabeth said. With her it was always 'Billy'.

He walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed. Then he reached over and touched her leg beneath the covers. There were no reasons to skirt the issue; they had never been much on mincing words.

"Mom told me yesterday afternoon. I just left work and started walking. Ended up in this dive drinking all night and listening to an old man telling stories..." he said monotonously, looking her straight in the eyes while he said it. She smiled and scooted up in bed, reaching for his hand. It was warm from the covers and Billy squeezed back. "Hope you're not mad I didn't—" he started, stopping abruptly when her scared, imploring eyes dug deeper. Masks would never work. Billy leaned forward and hugged her close, his vision swimming. "I really can't believe this..." he whispered. She put her head on his shoulder and he felt tears soaking through his shirt as he rocked her back and forth. Moments later his own tears began to flow as they held each other tightly and passed through the moment together.

Chapter 6

Later that night Billy sat alone in his apartment, but not because he hadn't tried. Elizabeth had declined his invitation, saying she wanted to stay put. He'd played the conversation over many times since.

*

"But why here?"

"Because this is my room, Billy. I just want to think for a while, remember things that happened before I went off to school. I told the Dean at Phillip's I won't be back. I've missed too many classes, anyway, since I got sick. They're shipping my stuff here next week.'" She held up her hand when she saw his pained expression. "I'm not giving up, Billy. I just don't need that now."

His voice very low, he said, "I don't want you giving up, Liz. It's not like you."

"I know, Billy, and I'm not. I just want to stay here awhile. Everything'll be fine. Anyway, Mom's cooking tonight and I told her I'd eat." The dramatic change of subject cut short their previous route. "Why don't you stay too?" she asked anyway, fully expecting him to turn down the invitation which he did. Hours later, he still kicked himself for not meeting her eyes when he'd given his own lame excuse.

"No, not tonight, Liz...work and everything tomorrow, you know..." he'd said lamely.

"Okay."

*

Now he sat on the couch thinking. Granted, she'd looked sick but she hadn't looked like she was dying. That was the worst. She sounded like she had no more than a head cold, only...

Only if...

...he hadn't known what he knew. The chemo treatments would begin soon, and Billy knew what those did to people, even strong people: people like Elizabeth. He gazed through the gloomy light at the white walls, seeing through them to a future when this new-found knowledge would cement itself into reality. Many pictures, some from the past but many more from the possible future, rained into his mind as he sat and stared. And as he unwillingly made his way through this dark realm of disquiet, the hours continued their ceaseless roll.

Chapter 7

Elizabeth lay in her old, familiar bed watching the ceiling fan whirl in its lazy circle. Around and around. Just like our lives, she reflected. Her throat hurt a little when she swallowed so she massaged it gently, trying not to give voice to the agonizing question circling, also, in her head. How will it be? For the better part of three hours she'd been contemplating these four words, amid bouts of forcing her eyes closed and pleading for peaceful dreams to take the overwhelming sense of emptiness away.

Because emptiness was really all she felt. All through dinner Nora and she had hardly spoken, her mother hiding behind another improvised malady and the fried chicken. They'd not spoken of Billy who'd left shortly after Nora woke from her nap. Elizabeth had been surprised she'd not hounded him to remain; Nora had simply asked and let it go with his declination.

And now, with the oppressive full night cloaking the room, Elizabeth again felt fear: the old specter come to prey, dressed in different regalia than the unseen boogyman underneath the bed from her childhood. The only difference this time was the fear was real, not something that feinted in the corner, or under the bed, disappearing when you worked up nerve enough to investigate. Now she knew it was real. All the aches and unexplained lumps and weaknesses, the nights sweating alone in the dorm bunk trying to convince herself it was only nerves or hypochondria. But no, the manifestations had been real. Echoing her worst fears, magnifying them.

The fan continued its ceaseless whirling.

She brought her hand from beneath the covers and held it in front of her face. She clinched it into a fist, loosened it and wiggled her fingers. This is me, she told herself. I am real. Lying here, taking up space and time, occupying myself with thoughts. My memories holding childhood, and school; dates, and sex, and misunderstandings. Triumphs and losses.

Don't these things matter?

What will happen to me? Am I here one moment and a figment the next? Any meaning I might have pulled from this fabric snuffed out and forgotten?

How can this be when I feel so alive inside? I'm only ready to experience more and more. Because if not, what the hell's the use of learning in the first place? If a blank slate greets you again in the end what's the use? What's the point being born unknowing and unaware, to progress through life attempting to rectify that initial ignorance; soaking up knowledge, experiences, love and hate, only to have them equal nothing in the end?

Elizabeth had always been a contemplator: a steadfast pursuer of things she didn't understand. Always full of questions and always so short on answers. She remembered once when she must have been no more than ten years old. The memory concerned one of the few field trips she could still recall; they had usually been such trivial matters: a trip to the zoo, a walk through a library. But this one had been different. Her school group had taken a bus ride out to the farm of a classmate's uncle for a day of horse riding. Up until that day the only horses Elizabeth had ever seen were the ones in books or on TV. The first surprise had been the fear she felt at the pure immensity of the creatures, but this was quickly replaced by the wonder of the eerie docility they also possessed.

Some strange intimation had suddenly caused her to slap her hands together sharply while standing near one, and the horse's subsequent, startled reaction had been one of those seemingly mundane but nonetheless telling impressions that Life visited at unexpected times during the run of years. The picture was as clear now as if it had happened only yesterday: the instantaneous jerk, a sudden elevation from dull stupidity to instinctive action, a sudden rearing head and surprisingly wild, reactive eyes. Then, immediately following (as if nothing had ever happened) an immediate readjustment back to its former condition: standing, silent, dull.

For some reason this previously unknown quality had disturbed her. Because even as a child she had suddenly known that horses held no conception of themselves. Her rudimentary, unplanned experiment had proved it. Their huge stature gave them no rank or privilege because they possessed no recognition of it. And somehow the horse's lack of recognition had set off some trigger within her own mind. Their dullness had somehow created the spark which led to her own inquisitiveness.

How could we be, she thought, apparently, so far removed from these simple natures, yet doomed to suffer the same uncompromising fate? Why a grinding urge to learn and pursue ultimate questions if there were, in fact, no satisfactory answers?

Lying in bed, the moonlight filtering its influence upon the walls, Elizabeth's body began to shake in a peculiar claustrophobic reaction brought about by another voice in her head (one that was neither abusive nor callous; only curious and quiet) which had asked:

Does there really have to be an answer for anything?

Chapter 8

Billy's apartment was uncomfortably warm when he awoke later that night. This was because frugality was his unwritten rule, more by paranoia than necessity. He obsessed over the impossibility of knowing when an emergency would require extra cash, so he squirreled it away like a dirty mountain redneck—some hairy recluse who hid money in Mason jars and dug it up to gloat over beneath every full moon. There was something like that in an old song he'd heard, and even though Billy recognized the analogies' negativity he felt it more important to acknowledge somewhat eccentric caution than to go unchecked. One never knew when a giant scroll would suddenly unfurl with a bottom line demanding immediate payment.

The humidity wrapped him in sweat, not overtly oppressive, just an annoyance. He considered turning down the thermostat, but was stymied by the possibility that the temporary pleasure might prove to be unworthy of the bill. Therefore, he lay awake, sweating, witness to a picture of Liz passing through his muddled mind, an increasingly taunting image that had begun surfacing lately during any intermingling thought about his own, tawdry problems. Christ, it was always on his mind now: Liz lying alone in her bed. Literally and figuratively.

He guessed trivial inconvenience like sweating through a sheet held little importance for his sister now. Her worries would be more inclusive, more devastating. Suddenly and probably soon, the life she'd known would cease. And here he lay, fussing over whether or not he should turn down the goddamn A/C.

The heat isn't what woke you, a voice suggested.

Billy tried to blink the pest away. Not tonight, he pleaded. He was too scared now. On some basic, primitive level he was somehow afraid of her, wanting to help of course, but also powerfully distanced by what he saw and feared. He had to admit to himself, at least, that never in conscious thought could he imagine a world without himself in it. History seemed like vague movies and folklore made up to entertain the living, mere meaningless board games worked out by scholars who simply had nothing better to do with their time. He didn't believe people could conceive of their own deaths, or at least not many. And even those few who did could hardly sound objective in his own ear. Most seemed possessed of some agenda. Being faced with such an impasse shook him deeply.

He loved Elizabeth like a part of his own being, had always known her because what the hell was four years difference when lifetimes were concerned? Many of the things that encompassed her life encompassed his also: shared memories, clandestine experiences, a few old cars, and scattered discussions of boyfriends and girlfriends, their gifts and idiosyncrasies. The only other person whom he'd had honest knowledge of beside her was his father. Their father, he corrected himself mindlessly. He attempted to count the months since he'd moved out of the family home. God, almost four years now, almost forty-eight months scratching around. His father had been dead for five in April. How many times had Billy thought about him? He couldn't honestly recall, but it didn't seem enough. Time had a way of clouding things, leaving just odd assorted reels of time gone by, things forgotten. Or, of course and wrongly (it seemed) leaving behind great chunks of dissention or conversations you wished you had back.

But his father's memories... Is that all that existed of the man now? Only the residue of whatever he had been encapsulated within the daughter and son who'd loved him. And now Elizabeth. This distance, this gulf. His perspectives folded upon themselves, turning darker.

He'd never entertained any real serious conviction of spiritual reality (his mother's fanaticism had killed that possibility), but this situation put a new, unwanted plate before him. And the taste was bitter indeed, like powdered aspirin. How do you lose someone like yourself? it asked from its place there. A person of moralities and expectations that echo your own being? How do you do that? Because in so doing, wouldn't the other die a little also, and hear the approaching footsteps all the rest of his life of his on approaching death? Dogma had never sufficed to placate this.

So as Billy lay in bed, his sweating grew heavier to match his thoughts, and eventually he did get up to turn the thermostat down.

Chapter 9

Ebenezer Holgren walked Corondolet Street reminiscent of a sage poet, barely threading the line between street urchin and tired old age. It really surprised him sometimes, getting old, even though his mind felt no change. Or at least none he was willing to admit. Already sixty-seven, sort of a twilight zone for those wanting to hang on tenuously to 'middle age' but a sure beginning of the short side of life. Of course (he liked to admit, if only to himself) he still had a twinkle in his eye that could draw fifty-plus-year-old widows, and even a matching vitality which sustained him through such infrequent carnal encounters. Even if in the last few years such meetings had dwindled appreciably.

His clothing was such that, if he happened to doze off in Jackson Square after a small meal or feeding the scavenger pigeons, he might awake to find several dollars in loose change scattered about his lap. This had disconcerted him the first few times, but after reflection (oftentimes taking place while gazing off his balcony as the sun dipped behind the CBD) he figured that he still had purpose. People paid off their small sins on him; with their paltry gifts they wished themselves absolved somehow, and in turn their money served a dual purpose. For Ebenezer gave it away to the young, black, tap-dancers on Bourbon Street. But never to the filthy derelicts who infested dark hovels within city doorways, letting themselves rot away in either contempt or sullied failure to sustain or cope with society. Ironically, he detested the very group many mistook him a member of, but oddly enough, because of this he became a sort of ghost, a fly on the wall of the city. Nobody seemed to pay him much mind, but he did everything else.

He didn't kid himself that he gave the money to the dancers for redemption. He owned-up to the failures and sins of his life, for now and forever. Not vocally so others could look at him and say 'ahh, a martyr,' but inside where the truth lived. Even the contempt he felt for the derelicts he tried to study objectively, hoping to find the source, the well-spring of this demon.

Analogies beckoned. Didn't some ancient Indian tribes feel self-compelled (of course through social conditioning, he cautioned himself) to cast themselves away from society when they became a burden upon it? For some groups it had been common practice for the old and infirm to wander away from villages in search of a spot to quietly succumb. Some majestic idea from their society printed it upon their psyches. Ebenezer laughed considering these so-called 'primitives.' How could that be said of a people bowing honorably away from their worlds, sustained in their knowledge life would go on for those that followed. Their blood would continue. Regardless of what happened to their bodies after death. But somehow, modern, formalized religion (despite its exquisite tapestries to the contrary) still clung to life at all cost. Ebenezer pondered this insecurity. In most cases survival instincts ruled over all else, but wasn't reason the very thing that separated man from beasts and fish? Wasn't that also what the sooth-sayers preached?

He imagined this line of reasoning pointed to the root of why he gave money to the tap-dancers. Even immersed in such populace poverty, with handfuls of dancers competing for scraps at every corner and gutter, they still held onto their vitality. That was the triumph of the human spirit, and he hoped his found money helped contribute to the continuance of the dance in some small way.

*

It would take fifteen minutes to meander his way to the Ripcord, and that was just fine because the day was smooth and pleasant. The sun burned high, breaking off clouds into streaming tendrils, and only minutes before he'd craned his neck to watch a group of brown pelicans cut their angle across the pale heavens. Almost a quarter to four and time to sink a couple of shooters before heading over to the Square to watch the night come on.

Afterward he'd traipse to his place on Ursulines Street, a little two-and-a-half room flat on the second story of a French-Colonial style building erected by a disgraced architect at the turn of the century. The buildings surrounding it were much older (the fact being, the one that'd stood where his flat now stood, had gone up in a torrent of flames in an 1847 blaze), but the newer masonry had cracked and filled with scraggly fern and ghostly white lichen, lending an air of brotherhood and congruity with the neighboring architecture. There was a communal patio situated in an open-air courtyard which he seldom used, preferring instead the solitude of his iron-railed balcony. True masculine economy spoke of his furnishings, seemingly taking a back seat to the profusion of movie posters and actor's photographs which covered the walls. Ebenezer had put his collection of war-time memorabilia in his bedroom several years before. He got no satisfaction in memories staring him constantly in the face. At least not his own. Some men did but Ebenezer tried to live in the present, he told himself, mindful of the past but not a prisoner of it. Again, a question of objectivity surfaced in his mind. His United States' military pension was fully capable of caring for his needs, so he used his time now to ramble. To ponder and think. His sight being too tenuous for driving, he'd sold his Chrysler last year around Christmas (only now fully aware how bad his timing had been; who the hell had extra money then, especially for an old clunker?), and the cab drivers knew him well.

Several nights before when Maggie had shaken him awake in the wee hours of the morning, he'd found a crumpled ten dollar bill in his hand. He remembered getting drunk and telling a story (which one, he had no idea). Some kid his lone audience. It was hard to remember everything, but getting paid to do what he loved didn't sit well. The money seemed to undermine his intentions. He rubbed his head, finding all that remained of the kid was a sense of sadness and foreboding. Ebenezer seemed to recall talk of a dying sister. There was not much else to go on.

And still, the kid had given him ten bucks. Mystifying.

Ebenezer still had the lone bill. It would not go to the black dancers this time. He'd made up his mind to search out the kid if he could, and if so to give the money back. Maybe even tell another story in the process. Of course, they sometimes stretched a fair piece of the imagination, but there were times (times that were not so infrequent these days) when even Ebenezer couldn't absolutely be sure himself.

Chapter 10

The following Thursday afternoon and Billy's shift was almost over. He burned the last few minutes tidying up the supply closet on the third floor. The nightshift Housekeeping supervisor was always bitching behind Billy's back, and Billy felt (at least for the time being) that attention to detail was more beneficial than confrontation. He'd straighten up both the closet and the stuffed-shirt asshole in his own good time. Besides, time went by faster when spent busy.

As he replaced an already opened box of staples at eye level he checked his watch, knowing to the second how long it took to reach the basement time clock. He shoved the rest of the things he held in his hand as far back on the shelf as he could manage and turned out the light. Then he meandered over to the bank of elevators and punched the Down button. He was wary because he'd seen the Material's Management superintendent sniffing around an hour earlier, and hoped to avoid the man. That ass-sniffer had actually taken time one day to roast Billy's ass for squeezing two minutes. Two fucking minutes! Billy hoped a clean getaway was in the works today. The familiar metallic ding announced the elevator and when the doors opened Billy jumped inside, thankfully alone.

When the elevator reached the Basement the double doors slid back on quietly greased tracks. Billy stepped out, cautiously scanning the area. The time clock on the wall near the janitor's closet clicked dryly of its own incessant boredom. Dammit! Three minutes to go. The elevator usually stopped on at least one floor on the way down, so perhaps that's what had thrown his timing off. Regardless, he ripped the time card loose and slotted it into the machine, not willing to stand in the open as a sacrifice. The mechanism snapped, tattooing a blue impression for the people in Payroll. Keep the three minutes, Billy thought to himself as he replaced the card. Today it was not worth it; he had to get outside. Adeui, Hotel Dieu, he thought comically. Recently, some brilliantly creative mind had worked the proper channels to rename the old building University Hospital, but to Billy it'd never be anything but the Hotel Dieu. For God's sake, it was the only thing that had had any charm in the whole damn place! Now, even the name was a memory left to grow smoky and yellow.

He didn't bother with the elevator back to the lobby. Standing in the stairwell he hurriedly flung the blue Maintenance uniform shirt (with its slipshod, stenciled William scrawled across the left breast), off his back and between his knees. Just as quickly he donned the colorful, yellow Tommy Hilfiger shirt he'd been carrying over his shoulder and stuffed the tail into his jeans. He felt a job should not necessarily a man make, and every day, upon leaving the heavy doors behind, he actually felt his 'true' self emerge. A self that simply bided its time resting and thinking while the body concerned itself with making a living, however scant and sometimes precarious that living proved to be. And in this emerging state of mind Billy reached the Employee's Exit, the day's drudgery already fading like a ripple on a smooth, glassy lake. Tomorrow was payday! He'd call Elizabeth later in the evening, try to set up something for the both of them for Saturday or Sunday.

Stepping outside he cursed the weatherman. The sun sat heavy and fat above the Huey P. Long Bridge off to the west, and the heat it sent (wrapped in thick sheets of perpetual humidity) seemed capable of breaking down an iron ball in due time. Clouds were no more than whispered thoughts today. Billy spat on the concrete. Funny, he thought. The weather idiot had guaranteed rain! That's why he'd left the motorcycle at home, leaving early to catch the fucking bus! When was he ever gonna learn?

The Bus Stop was little less than a quarter mile's walk, so it wasn't that. But the humidity...and the route; that was a different story. It wasn't so bad in the morning, before the sun came up. But the afternoon was different. The prison yard was harder then.

Having no choice, he began to walk.

Shortly afterward, he rounded the curve in the One Way section of Toulouse, and saw the twenty-foot high fence ringed at the top by hundreds of yards of glistening, stainless steel concertina wire. Farther back was another fence, sizably smaller and considerably less forbidding. However, it also carried a sharpened, steel crown and a sufficient electrical charge.

There were usually three guards positioned at points along the block-long expanse of razor-wire fence, and Billy knew one or two of them by name, some of the others only by a noncommittal nod as he walked by. "What'cha say, Danny?" he prompted, passing the one who always smiled, seemingly oblivious to the situation on his side of the fences. The black man's face broke in a broad grin as he sliced one hand across the air at thigh level, dapping across the distance. The walk along the fence line took about a minute, but that minute always had a way of stretching and sticking, never satisfied to subjugate itself to one of the multitude of other useless instances which missed out on the chance for becoming real memories.

This was because Billy always watched the prisoner's faces as he walked.

Most were tightly sealed, breathing, sullied vaults with keys long since broken, misplaced, thrown out. But on occasion he would spy one that intrigued him, someone in possession of what Billy regarded as an 'innocent' face. And when this happened it would leave him wondering (off and on as the day passed) what such a man had done to usher himself down.

Billy walked, squinting through his glasses (trying not to appear obvious) at the faces. Although the group assembled outside today did not inspire any new contemplations (their numbers were few considering the heat), they did collectively happen to shake loose a memory, long dusted and junked, which used a morbidly seductive energy to reinvigorate and bloom. The memory was almost seven months old, involving a middle-aged Hispanic man. Billy guessed it had happened on a week-end because the memory was ringed with a tinge of pleasantness, an initial light-hearted air. And then the beating.

As Billy recalled, the only reason he'd first locked eyes with the convict was out of a very vague tilt of the man's hand in Billy's passing direction. Not much different from the one the guard had just given him. It had struck Billy as odd because none of the cons had ever taken the time to acknowledge his presence except when an occasional angry expletive searched him out as a passing scape-goat.

The man's face had been resigned, as if he'd just let out a breath and was pausing before taking another. His docile eyes were sad but also mesmerizingly intense, hardly surprised even, when the four other Mexicans had run upon him, inflicting brutal injuries with a stack of five-pound free weights before the guards came to a somewhat belated rescue. As Billy watched in disgust, the prisoner had twitched spasmodically until he was spirited away on a gurney, by which time he'd been completely still. Billy had noticed ever since the incident there was an absence of free weights in the yard.

The power in the memory came not from the attack but from a tiny, throw-away article he'd noticed embedded in the sprawl of The Times Picayune two days later. "Prisoner Dies in N.O. Penitentiary Infirmary" summed up in lines barely surpassing the title. The name of the dead had been Hispanic, but nothing else in the way of clues. Just another no-good, no-name, down. Pruning complete. Because Billy had known, without ever having to see a picture or reading any garish details of the assault; he had known entirely.

Since that day he'd unconsciously found himself frequently involved in the game of finding the person behind the eyes. Not just on the prisoners, but also people he passed on the street, strangers he came into contact with every day. He searched for personal mysteries, perhaps in the attempt to explain the tenacity of one certain circumstance in a person's life to serve as a point upon which all subsequent ones hinged. What had been the quality that commanded his attention that day? Had it been a conscious endeavor on the condemned prisoner's part? Billy still had no answer. Now, passing along the chain-linked expanse for the hundredth time since, Billy found himself searching out that face on the impossible chance that he would be proved wrong.

But he wouldn't because the man was gone. Though it did little to stop the wonder.

What had been the man's crime? Billy's memory pegged him as small, slightly built. Maybe even a touch effeminate; the flick of the hand; Billy's double-take. And he'd lived out his final days behind bars housed with killers, rapists, and countless other fiends. Had he been capable of that too?

Perhaps, but that was hardly important. The brutality of his death had not formed the sore in Billy's head. That sore sprang from the feeling that something had been stolen from him that day by the prisoner. And however selfish it seemed, it did not matter. The unexpected feminine movement of the hand had caught Billy off guard. And therefore he'd gotten the full strength of the Look the man had manacled upon him, a look of coming disaster; but underlying the general chaos there had also been a calmness expressed across the blistering concrete. For just a moment their individual and strange lives had entwined (perhaps as the prisoner wished them to), and in that moment the doomed inmate had gained something for himself at a great cost to Billy.

The old man's story had ushered back this feeling anew. Billy knew the price unsuspecting circumstances could exact.

And even though Billy couldn't honestly blame the dead convict, he did consider himself slightly cursed because of him. Billy trembled at the thought of a complete stranger gaining some weird solace from him (simply from the act of eye contact), seconds before his life ended. And for some unknown reason, the con had chosen Billy to furnish this last spark. This memory brought the void of death very close and personal. He bore the new weight of his sister's illness like a yoke choking him with every step.

Chapter 11

Elizabeth sat by herself in the park, watching the many worrisome, complaining squirrels pester one another into mild frenzies, tearing frantically around the trees as their tiny claws shredded bark. Their tails vibrated both agitation and playfulness as one or another would stop momentarily before suddenly making another mad scramble around the trunk. Then, perhaps a dusty tumble before resting again. Their simplicity was a marvel, sweetly comforting as Elizabeth sat in the shade of the mossy live oaks. Theirs was a peculiar, innocent, and free place in time. Not the 'freedom' of civilization and its conventions, but real freedom: simplistic purpose. At least it felt somehow more pure than her own, she mused.

But how long were their lifetimes? She didn't know, but felt safe to hazard a guess. Say, between five to ten years; it couldn't be much more or less. And in that time, no history; their generations simply rolling one onto another: an endless, unshakable cycle. Ancient and useless to ponder, simply living with no need for futile explanations. She smiled as her inner philosopher painted these unknown lineages.

She leaned back and weaved her fingers together behind her head. The voice was right. No sense not living for the day! Every brooding second was one more lost to Time, a soundless slap in the face left to sink in the void.

She reached into her purse and extracted a small, crumpled paper bag filled with roasted peanuts. She turned it around in her hand, keeping one eye on the increased activity in the trees around her. Keen ears made full stomachs. And she did have time, dammit! How long would it take her to earn their trust?

She held out a peanut, pinched gingerly between thumb and forefinger. One of the dust-wrestling pair called off the exercise and stood up, immediately sizing up this new turn of events with his now equally interested partner. But nothing further, just four inquisitive eyes and two twitching noses. Elizabeth tossed the nut and it landed near a clump of sawgrass near the indistinct bank. Both heads twitched in unison as four eyes sought out the now-hidden treasure. They began the search at once.

She pulled out another peanut. How long would it take her to win their trust?

It really didn't matter.

Chapter 12

On the boulevard side of the same park, Ebenezer lounged upon one of the wrought iron benches. He usually haunted the paved, brick sidewalks on and around Jackson Square, but earlier in the morning he'd hailed a cab at the corner of Corondolet.

He loved the drive down St. Charles, easily the most beautiful avenue in the South; adorned with stately, centuries' old live oaks rooting among million dollar mansions. Neighborhood-flavored corner stores and moldering shops wafting out such tantalizing smells that any run-down exterior seemed all the more mighty and uplifting to the spirit because of its nose-pleasing envelope. And down the way, along with the slow traffic filtering through, Audubon Park nestled snuggly off to the side; and just adjacent, Audubon Zoo. Ebenezer figured if the sun remained as passive and majestic for another hour, he'd mosey down and see the animals. He loved them all, even the filthy-ugly condor vulture which had caught his attention one visit by repeatedly rubbing its scraggy bald head across its dinner: a dead and bloated assortment of guineas pigs. Its very grotesquerie proved fascinating.

His throat itched maddeningly for a drink, even something as mild as beer. But he worked hard to stave off the urge. He knew he'd give in soon enough anyway, but it would do what was left of his life no good whatsoever if he always proved such a push-over for his vices. It was no easy task, however. Since his retirement time had piled up endlessly, constantly nagging at him for some lack of responsibility, for no action; all his thoughts added up worthless amid his inability to make some difference.

He didn't want to end up a noted drunk, but Time passed much faster now. He remembered his grandfather once saying that a person's age signified how fast they were moving. Of course he'd rather his epithet read something besides 'Drunk,' but sometimes the alternatives seemed even worse. Joining the throng, becoming a disciple to the Television God. He could just see himself comfortably drugged in the tedious, broad-audience sitcoms. He could imagine himself all drippy-sweet in that clumsy, unassuming way. Or if that didn't prove enough there was always plenty enough violence to go around, or how about a spin on the money-wheel or the 700 Club? Anything to keep the sheep munching away safely in their pins. One could forget the real things in life; the escalations of economic and social tensions; the candid nonchalance of the rich; and the agonies of the poor. All these could be put on a back burner while the networks plied their trade to soften both body and mind, giving the sheep false comforts to cling to instead of substance. Meanwhile, Time passed by in its smoky, disappearing trail, a thief pausing at an interesting window before continuing along. And the droves contented themselves with antiseptic living and the promise of week-ends. No, Ebenezer thought, I'll take the booze any day. It seemed safer somehow.

In the midst of this contemplation he suddenly laughed at himself. Thinkin too damn much again! he reprimanded. His mind always rolled along recklessly, and there weren't many people left to talk to. Many of his old friends were gone for the most part. Either dead or too tired to care. Granted, there was still Thomas Henders, but the incessant noise of the man's live-in grandchildren, and the vile looks Ebenezer often caught out of the corner of his eyes from Hender's wife, Greta, served to spoil the increasingly infrequent visits. But what the hell, he reasoned. You're just another old fart with a head full of shit nobody much cares to hear. Even so, the stories clamored inside him like restless, stomping poltergeists. Only at the Ripcord could he sometimes drum up an audience (however slim), one that usually turned out either bombed or otherwise so entangled in the lethal grip of alcoholism that its sole concern centered on getting to the bottom of another bottle. But he understood; he knew how things worked.

Anyway, another course of thought. What about the kid? Jesus...what was that name? Bobby? Billy? The name was unclear but the image was better now. A little bit had come back, and maybe that was because the kid had been different, even interested in the story, if Ebenezer's thin recollection did him any justice. As the sun played upon the old man's silvered hair, he did his best to conjure the face. Not much there. But the nature he remembered: quiet, attentive. He felt it would come. Given time.

Ebenezer wrinkled his face and breathed in, clearing his stuffy nasal passages. The year-round demented weather rained hell upon his sinuses but he could not imagine living anywhere else. New Orleans brimmed with activity, contained a blossoming myriad of possibilities inherent in each waking moment. Even if at his age, most were only seen from a distance, tasted second-hand. Again, the fly on the wall.

So, as he did most days when he sat, he theorized upon the lives he observed. He'd take a simple, indiscrete glance and then go about fashioning a life to fit this initial feeling. Many times he wondered how close he'd come; many more times, though, how far off the mark he'd struck.

Why, the girl over there. Ebenezer leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. A pretty thing, with the bag of peanuts on her lap, attempting to coax the bandit squirrels into her confidence. She had long auburn hair and he liked that; the sun did it beauty, blending it with the background into breathtaking flashes of brilliance. Her face was small and far away, but even from the distance Ebenezer could tell a fierce light burned in her eyes. And this strange, inner light, this unquantifiable quality (though oftentimes missed by the multitude) was often marked by animals. Perhaps they had no egos to cloud their inner vision? Ebenezer patted his hands together and smiled. No, it would not take her long to win over the little thieves.

He stood up and stretched broadly, glad to feel the protestations in his back and shoulders. What a wonderful day, he thought in good hope, as he began ambling in the general direction of Audubon Zoo.

Chapter 13

Thursday evening, just after nine. Friday off, like a warm sigh in comfortable sheets. As Billy closed the door to his apartment he felt the oppressive stillness snuggle close against him. The lack of light didn't help; he'd been meaning to change the damn bulb above the combination kitchen/dining room, but the urge had never metastasized to action. Now, the shadows advancing quickly into the hallway colored his mood to the same darkened shades. Staying home was not an option.

Elizabeth had gone to visit friends in Baton Rouge. She'd not seen them since coming home and when Tonya called Elizabeth had taken up their surprise invitation. Billy doubted her friends knew the truth because Elizabeth would never tell them; she would not abide the sympathy that would cloud the occasion. She'd be gone through the week-end. So much for Saturday or Sunday. He also knew the friends she was going to see, but had shied away from her invitation behind the shield of a false schedule.

What he'd told her had been a lie. Completely. Billy didn't have to work tomorrow and he was bored as hell today. Regardless...he couldn't question himself well. He was twisted around, baseless, his motives as mysterious as ancient Drudic ceremonies he'd read about in a history course. He'd finally satisfied her by assuring a late lunch or dinner on Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week.

She'd seemed cheerful.

Billy sat down in front of the empty television screen. Only then did he see the remote resting, tauntingly, on top of the Wal-Mart Magnavox. He made no move to retrieve it, immersed instead in the enigma of Elizabeth and himself. Why hadn't he wanted to go? Jesus, he thought, where has everybody gone? In retrospect, it was probably Tom Snelling who'd been the last of the lot to cease coming around. But that had been long before Elizabeth, had absolutely nothing to do with her at all. Only with him. It seemed his friends and contacts had begun draining away slowly without him being fully aware of it. Until now, now when it was solid, a fact. His friends had been as raindrops, the memory of some grown to the magnitude of storm clouds while the majority of others passed away in thin showers, left to swirl down city drains. The metaphor nursed uneasiness.

He kicked his leg up on the footrest and fumbled in his back pocket for his wallet. Used to be there were important numbers in there: girls, friends whose familiarity had not been left to rot. But now all that was past tense; all his fingers found were a tattered milieu of sales rep's and contractor's business cards. Only that and...he paused. Cynthia's picture peered from behind the dirty plastic. Happy days, bright moments; he'd always loved her in that black mini-skirt, those sexy red pumps. The picture; her smile; the haughty way her hands rested on her hips. Christ. He remembered how passionate and reckless their lovemaking had been as his mindless dick hardened. Quickly, he slipped the laminator back into its slot, and put the wallet away.

There was a lot in there all right. A lot of nothing.

However, there were also a few twenties. Rent was due in two weeks, but he'd already checked the duty register and knew the hours'd be sufficient. "Shit," he whispered for no particular reason. He pulled himself to his feet and shuffled into the kitchen. Only one night's worth of piled dishes festered in the sink, and he'd even emptied the waste basket before leaving yesterday morning. It was cause for passive surprise.

Pulling the refrigerator door open proved his hunch correct. Right in front, amid sprawling emptiness and the drifting tangles of disjointed smells sat the Budweiser. Only a slim 10-ouncer but hell, in a pinch something was better than nothing. Billy grabbed it and punched out the tab. Staring out his kitchen window, he could just make out the sharp, sliver-tipped moon, surrounded by a celestial murk of muddied depths. Without thinking, he cocked his wrist to peer at his watch once more, finding it only ten minutes further along.

He paused a moment, seemed to make a determination, and chugged down the remainder of the beer. Then he walked hurriedly to the hall closet and pulled out his lightest sweater. Moments later (as he shut the door behind him), he caught himself wondering if the old man would be back at the Ripcord.

Chapter 14

The familiar sign blinked with the resolve of a rising tide, even though there were scarcely enough working lights to give pattern to the display; the storm had certainly done its damage. The canopy beneath, though, was calm, no snapping of fabric tonight. It hung, fray-edged and limp from the iron struts, only ruffling itself occasionally in the faint breeze which laced in between the buildings' corridors.

The night was stiff as a bad back, the streets back here oddly quiet, the only company a pair of homosexuals tight-assing their way along. So far Billy had only been offered the wares of a single drug dealer. The burn-out hadn't had the salesman's sense for any sort of close, just bad breath reeking out among the tombstones of twisted and yellowed bone he had left for teeth. Billy hadn't missed a step. Most times that was enough. Most times. Others, you could still be fucked.

Life was like that.

He walked up, grabbed the sculpted brass knob which jutted from the thick wood, and peeled the door back to the sidewalk. Instantly, a tired, lilting chorus from the Wurlitzer drifted out to his ears. He stepped inside.

The barmaid was different this time; a little younger; tough-looking in a brutal, masculine way. She was a shade over five feet tall, pushing the scale close to three hundred pounds. What remained of an angry scar crisscrossed from her brow to cheek. But her eyes sparkled girlishly in her hardened face.

There was the same brief lull in conversation while the regular stool-huggers gazed passively in his direction, like dogs now, pricking their ears for a proffered biscuit treat. And then in seeing no potential in Billy (or at least none worth the time nor effort to coax), they settled back to the subjects of their interest. That being usually an ounce to a mug's worth.

Billy walked across the worn, gritty planks to an empty spot at the corner of the bar. As she watched him come over, the girl threw her dripping towel into an ice-filled stainless steel sink and sauntered over. Billy wondered how long it had taken her to perfect that walk. He wanted to congratulate her, but knew how callous and false it would seem. Her seemingly defiant courage did give him hope though.

From up close it was plain to see her smile was genuine.

Billy fished in his back pocket, never losing eye contact. "Believe I'll have a Coors...draft if you got it."

She shook her head loosely, holding on to the close congeniality. "No Coors, baby, just Bud and Miller Lite on tap."

"Miller Lite then," he declared, lying three dollars on the coated, veneer countertop.

"You got it," and she turned away.

With one foot on the bar-runner, Billy gently surveyed the gloomy room. Stark, wooden struts stood at set intervals and some of the tired, drunken faces were hidden behind them. But in no face did he see the animation that had been inherent in Ebenezer's.

He heard the mug set down, turned a curious eye to the barmaid. The three dollars he'd laid down were already old news. "Yes?" she asked expectantly to his questioning look. A silent understanding of personality wandered in her eyes, defiant and aloof, but readily perceived. This evident depth perception caught him momentarily off guard, and he attempted to hide his tilted balance by downing a large swallow of the beer. Immediately he coughed into his hand and pushed the glass away.

"I'm looking for someone," he said when he could manage.

As a cloud of distance pushed between them, Billy stabbed at the truth of his search. "Look," he said, hands out, placating. "I'm not a cop. He hasn't done anything as far as I know, and if he has I don't care. It's just that I was in here several nights back and there was this guy telling stories...said his name was Ebenezer." He paused. "I was just wondering if he'd be in tonight." He finished with a smile.

Her darkness had already passed away, replaced with a warming smile. "Our Ebenezer," she said as if speaking of her own grandfather.

"Yes," Billy acknowledged. He took another sip to seem less anxious, then smiled again as a compliment. "But like I said, I was with him the other night and he told this fantastic story...I just wanted to know if he'd be here tonight. There was a different woman behind the bar..." and he snapped his fingers, grasping for her name.

"Maggie," the girl prompted.

"Exactly," he replied. "Acted like he was a regular."

The girl threw back her hair as if scoffing at this fledgling's audacity. "Everybody here knows Ebenezer Holgren. He's always tellin stories and drinkin the house dry. Most everybody," and she swung her hand around to include the house of drunks, "has heard those creepy stories he's so full of." She paused to brush a lank strand of hair from her eye. "I've had a hard time sleepin a coupla times after one of his drunk nights, I'll tell ya. Makes ya wonder why he never wrote books or anything like that, ya know? You need a warm body next to ya after a night listenin to him," and she almost imperceptibly winked before finishing. "Know what I mean?" and she continued staring hard into Billy's eyes, alert for any smirk or derogatory look. Billy saw in her a person who had to constantly fight an inner battle to keep any self-esteem she could muster afloat. He wasn't interested in her miniscule push of offered libido, but he hoped his face didn't echo his thoughts. The last thing on his mind was offense to this person who was, at the very least, genuine. And he didn't want to contribute to any ragged edges; from her almost pleading appeal Billy could tell she'd had her share of disappointments.

He attempted to blush, hoping he could pull it off. Then he tried for an end-around. "I know, I know. The one he told the other night spooked me pretty good." He stopped, finding her fixed stare disconcerting. When she finally spoke it was with the words of one person of good faith to another.

"He's fascinating, isn't he?" she whispered in awe.

Billy bowed his head and whirled a napkin in circles on the counter with his forefinger. "He's surely got a power," he answered. After a moments delay and no reply, he led on. "Well, have you seen him?"

"Today?" she asked, hiding behind her game. Billy remained non-pulsed.

"No, tonight," he replied, showing no sign of agitation. He drained off the mug and slid the glass back. He pulled a five out of his pocket and placed it in her hand. The bribe was unmistakable. "Another," he said for cover.

She started away silently, but turned by the ice machine. As she pulled on the tap she said, "Not tonight, but that don't mean he's not comin. He usually shows. Why don't ya stick around," and she waddled over, trying hard to move suggestively in her cushioned way. He saw this, appreciating her resilience and if not for anything else, for the thought, the animal urge, that went with it.

"Yeah," he said. "Think I'll hang around for a while."

Chapter 15

Ebenezer Holgren didn't feel especially well. His eyes were swollen with congestion brewing high in his nasal passages, and when he breathed out it was thick and ragged, like a train whistle fighting through fog. The antihistamine he'd taken forty minutes before now seemed intent on draining what little energy he had left, but nonetheless he was still somehow restless, a sick old horse kicking vainly against the stable door, the smell of a mare in its nostrils. Try as he might, he simply could not get comfortable in the well-worn recliner.

"Ahh, the hell with it," he murmured, working the lever so the footrest dropped away. The muted TV played on, serving a private, sadistic joy he got in placing his own comment and dialogue to the thin characters and dull plots that passed before him as entertainment. Usually. Tonight it wasn't working; tonight was a brick wall. He could feel his joints tightening, knew if he didn't get up now they'd scream bloody-murder tomorrow. Tired or not he needed to stand up and 'walk it off'. After all, that's what the sports guys said, right? How the hell could they be wrong?

He shoved himself away from the chair, adjusting to the disorienting change of altitude by placing his right hand on the wall close by. Goddamn antihistamine; he'd never been good with drugs, even the light stuff. Alcohol, okay, he could handle it, most of the time. Mustn't forget the other times though...

He checked his watch, wrinkling his stopped-up nose at 9:30. They'd probably suspect he wasn't coming in tonight. Goddamn cold! He ran a sleeve across his nose, already hearing the clear, sweet voice of his long-dead mother admonishing him for unhealthy behaviors and the prices one should expect if they were pursued. He accepted the haunting advice with bowed head for what must have been the millionth time, pausing in a respectful, almost religious contemplation, affording his mother's memory the moment it wished before passing away again so he could move on with his intentions.

He snapped his back right and left several short bursts, falling back upon his heels until his thighs bumped the end table. He grunted loudly, turned to grab the threadbare coat from its hook by the door. The long, beggar's coat, he called it. Wearing it brought instant anonymity when that was what he desired, even if the subsequent, occasional insulting remark it freely elicited had to be endured in furtive silence. He shook himself into its gentle folds and then kicked his way through several piles of discarded newspaper fanned along his path, his swollen eyes catching upon the dirty plates sitting at random spots around the room. Luckily, he was a pretty thorough eater. However, the air was by no means sweet apple dumplings. The many famous faces which peered out from the eclectic blend of posters pressed light accusation his way, disbelieving his persistence as a slob in front of them. He drowned out their ghostly admonitions with a resounding blow into a handkerchief he pulled from one deep pocket.

He shuffled a couple of steps, his ring-less left hand coming up and flipping two switches in simultaneous and opposite directions. The bookshelves (fairly wilting under the weight of the books they held) and the posters were instantly rolled up in a cover of darkness. Next, came the distinct clunk of a deadbolt releasing, after which a knifing edge of light raced inside as if searching for a particular someone. Light illuminated the narrow, staircase/hallway leading out to the street. Naked plumbing and PVC connections served as make-shift railings. Building maintenance had hastily spread a cheap blue paint above them with an unexplained and somehow demented artistic flair several months back. The job was depressingly careless though. Some long-ago tenant had also hung a STOP sign directly in front of Ebenezer's door, and even though he had lived in the building for the better part of twenty-one years he'd never taken it down. Instead he used it as a warning, a subtle reminder to consider each step as he descended. And he always did, walking slowly down the creaking, yielding staircase, one hand tightly on the rail while the other trailed along the roughly-textured surface of the opposite wall. The third step toward the bottom was an accident waiting to happen. For the last six months he'd been meaning to bring it up to the maintenance man, but no opportunity had afforded itself. If ghosts existed in the flesh, surely that man was their kin.

Ebenezer paused at the landing, and pulled his keys out, shuffling through them until he found the right one. Then he walked the few paces left to the irongate. The paint was dirty and scarred with the memories of a multitude of now-defunct locks, even the newest one at the bottom of the stack of rusted holes showing the inevitable signs of wear. Weather was hard. Even so, he tricked his key inside, his hand finding the right rhythm as he coaxed it left and right, and then, quickly, pulled back. He stepped around and out to the sidewalk shining faintly in the feeble light from the pole, pulling the irongate closed behind him.

He paused to blow his nose again before walking to the corner of the building. When he got there he turned right at Versailles for the modest walk to the Ripcord. And if anyone had been there to ask he'd have said his head already felt clearer.

Chapter 16

The entrance was much different, less theatrical, this time. No wind heralded Ebenezer's presence like some returning, renegade prophet from a self-imposed desert sojourn. Rather, he came in humbled, a bent old man stepping quietly, taking a quick, cursory glance around as he made his way to the bar. And because of this incomplete inspection he seemed to miss Billy, hunkered down at an irritatingly lopsided table watching the door.

Billy studied him, surprised how different the old man looked. But that was not the whole truth, he immediately recognized; not different really, just lacking in the animation that had painted the memory of the old man in his head. When the quick glance seemed to skip just slightly over Billy's head, Billy'd felt an unwarranted, sinking neglect. However, he quickly dispelled such childishness. For God's sake, he thought. His eyesight's probably not very good. He'll remember me. Still...

Billy watched the barmaid draw up some Dinkel Acker draft and push it Ebenezer's way with a smooth sweep of her arm and a wink. It didn't appear she remembered the earlier conversation but Billy couldn't be sure. He couldn't hear anything the two said. The old man faced away from him as the barmaid busied herself with an incoming group of five boisterous souls. Ebenezer waved a bill in her receding direction and placed it near the tap. Then he moved away. Billy decided to watch and see if the man would acknowledge his presence, if he still had any idea who the hell he was in the first place.

Ebenezer came closer, staring off absently in the opposite direction as he neared the wooden column concealing Billy from the openness of the room. Billy poised on the verge of saying something when Ebenezer stopped in the murky light and pitched something deftly onto Billy's table. The voice that came next hadn't changed. "That's yours ain't it, William? Or is it Billy? My mind ain't what it used ta be, I suppose." It was impossible, even in the dim light, to miss the smile painted on the old man's features.

On the table in front of Billy lay a crisp, ten dollar bill.

"It's 'Billy'," he answered in surprise, then, "and I guess it is if you say so," awkwardly pinching the bill between thumb and forefinger. He made it disappear with clumsy embarrassment as the old man chose to look away that very moment. He said something to someone across the room and laughed heartily.

Then he looked back, smiled, and sat down. Before he spoke he put the frothy mug he held to his lips and took a long pull. Setting it down he regarded Billy with heavy-lidded eyes. There was an unmistakable fatigue anchored there but Billy ventured no sentiments. Ebenezer's look and carriage proposed a man ill-suited to sympathy.

"One minute," Billy said, standing up to get two Dinkel Acker drafts at the bar. He'd never had the dark, foreign brew but he figured what's there to lose? Perhaps even, a new taste to acquire. Once there he turned to view the old figure at his table as the drafts were drawn. All he could see was the long, white hair and hunched shoulders, but it appeared the man was settling down, readying himself for something. "I see you found him," came the husky voice as the beers slid across the bar.

Billy turned back and smiled. "No, not really. He found me." He winked as if they shared a secret. The girl grinned as she changed the ten. He thanked her and walked back to the table, setting Ebenezer's draft next to its half-full predecessor. The old man's thick fingers were wrapped around it like slow ivy. Billy sat down.

"Thank ya, son." Ebenezer pecked lightly at the new arrival as if testing the vintage, his manner that of a true connoisseur. Then it was his turn to wink. "I see ya got fine taste in hops and barley."

"Not exactly. I saw what you ordered when you walked in."

"Well, nonetheless."

Billy could hold his tongue no longer. "I didn't want the money back."

Ebenezer waved this off like a pestering fly. "I know that, but it's been a long time since I worked for money. Call it unexpected. Old people like me try ta maintain equilibrium; any little thing can throw us over the edge," he said just half-jokingly. Then an immediate seriousness made granite of his features. "I don't tell 'em for money anyway. I do fine, I assure ya. No sense in a young fella like you passin out hard-earned money ta a worn-out somebitch like me when there's plenty young ladies who'd be more'n happy ta help ya part with it." He waved his hand in a broad, sweeping gesture.

Billy attempted to acquiesce to the serious note by holding up his glass. He didn't want to get on that track. "Cheers then...and forgiveness," he said, trying to steer clear of any coming diatribe.

Ebenezer's face surrendered to another grin that'd been waiting. "That's right, lad, cheers," he affirmed as they clinked their glasses together. "Ta the night then," Ebenezer offered and Billy nodded with the intensity of an apprentice to an old master.

Chapter 17

By one a.m. Billy had made up his mind to call in sick the following day. He'd found a new friend in the Acker, and their relationship would suffer no immediate separation. His older compatriot seemed revived and much better now, as if the beer responded medicinally somehow for his toughened constitution. The earlier nasal whine was now completely masked by alcohol and budding enthusiasm. "Why'd ya come back?" Ebenezer asked. "This ain't no place for a sprout." He looked around as if in confirmation. "Shit, son, nobody's close ta your age in here 'cept for Shelly and she's kinda...awkward. Needs the money, though," he quickly added in her defense. "Tries ta act tougher than she is." He put up his hands to fend off any unintentional transgression to her honor. "Now I don't mean a goddamn thing by that, nothin derogatory. 'S jus the truth. She's a damn fine girl."

Billy nodded and laughed lightly, wishing for a cigarette. He considered asking Ebenezer for one but wasn't hip to the idea of a hand-roll. A little grass was all right but he preferred his cigarettes (on the seldom occasions when he smoked them) to be of the store-bought variety. The only bit of snobbery he could rightly own. Anyway, since Ebenezer had walked in the old man had not smoked, and thinking back, Billy remembered the old storyteller had only smoked one that first night; and then only after the tale was told. This memory turned Billy to thinking about the story again, but he didn't know how to approach it. Should he just blurt out that he wanted another?

But once decided the approach was direct and simple enough. He said, "I liked the story the other night. It's stuck with me ever since." He stopped and looked Ebenezer in the eye since the storyteller maintained a rigid silence. "It was just a story, wasn't it? I don't know a lot about South Africa and World War II."

Ebenezer's eyes never left Billy's. "Everythin's just a story when ya get right down to it, son. Everythin we know; everythin we read. Whether we see it or hear it, it's all really just a story, ain't it?" He leaned forward at a severe angle across the table, shoveling his mug off to the side with a forearm. The moment held in silence.

"Yeah, I guess you're right...somehow, I guess that's how it is."

Ebenezer broke the tension with a quick straightening and a double slap to his knees. He laughed loudly, the loudest Billy had yet heard. "Ya're Goddamn Right Boy!" the old man roared into his mug, sloshing some of the precious Acker over the edge. It took another moment to gather control of himself. When he did he asked, "So ya liked it?" choosing his bait like a fisherman with a secret, startling lure.

"Yeah I did. Like I said, it's stayed with me since...like...I don't know, something I can't put a finger on. I know it sounds stupid, but I'm really not that great at expressing myself. Not in words at least. Pretty sad for an English major, ain't it?" Billy shuffled in his seat, grasping at whatever it was he was trying to say. "It's like your story sparked some sorta ancient memory that gets lost as people get older. Least that's how it is with me. I seem to remember a feeling like it when I was a kid, but the older I get the less it seems real. I don't know..."

The mood slowed, like a pond on a still day.

"So ya came ta pilfer another one, huh?" Ebenezer said, smiling greatly. "I see that plain enough, and I'll probably drum one up ta suit ya. The thing is my throat gets terrible dry when I go windin on."

Billy held out his hand, standing up again. "Say no more," he advised, heading toward the bar. Ebenezer turned his head to follow the younger man's progress. He smiled broadly.

"So the kid wants another one," the old man congratulated himself.

Chapter 18

Moments later Ebenezer coughed into his fist and shook his head briefly to clear any stray cobwebs that lingered. The move had all the flamboyance of a boxer warming up for a bruising night. Having done so, he then took a smaller sip than Billy was accustomed to seeing and actually grimaced as the dark brew slid home. He was far removed from the frantic pace he'd set out with the first time they'd met.

Billy noticed the jagged tiredness lurking behind the old man's eyes but could not bring himself to propose the story wait for another night. Besides, if the old man was ready and thought himself capable, who was Billy to deny him the opportunity? He relegated himself to silence and a vast susceptible anxiousness.

*

There was no lead-in; no mysterious preamble. "This thing happened in Norco. Ever heard a the place? Refinery town outside a New Orleans. Leavin the city it's just off ta the left; at night it's the only light shinin in the swamp. Jus sittin out there glowin like a lamp in the middle a nowhere. The name's an acronym for New Orleans Refin'ry Company." He paused for a sip before adding sarcastically, "Great place ta take the kids fa vacation..."

Billy smiled back, nodding. He had seen the glowing refinery from a distance several times during late night jaunts to Baton Rouge, but thinking back he'd never considered real people out there. It had only been another light in the darkness.

"Well," Ebenezer continued, fresh from wiping a frothy rim from his moustache. "I knew this fella born and raised there. Black fella by the name a Buster Wells. Tall, skinny bastard strong as a goddamn ox. When I was younger in my strappin' 20s, 'round the summer a '59 or there'bouts, this fella musta already been close ta sixty or so. Hard ta tell though; for me it's always been hard guessin a colored's age. They seem ta go different than whites. Don't know what it is.

"Anyway, this somebitch Wells used ta arm wrestle anybody for anythin. If ya was offerin a dollar he'd take it; if it was a penny, he'd take that too. He didn't much care. I remember one or two a the younger bruisers takin him but that was somethin didn't happen very often. Buster had arms like cables. Fuckin ship cables. And now I wasn't no slouch either back then but Buster musta peeled five-six dollars off'n me that summer.

"Comes a day after work I met up with him at one a the local dives. Had three watering holes in town them days; one for the whites, one for the blacks, and one a little brackish, workin fellas mostly who was use'ta one another. Now there weren't a hell of a lotta whites in that place then, but I was tanned pretty good and with all the Cajuns and mulattos and a million other shades a yellow, one person looked damn near like another if they spent any time in the sun." He looked Billy in the eyes with an irreverent smile on his face. "The sun has a way of evenin things up. Just like death does."

He waved his hand around in a circle. "I used ta frequent this partic'lar place once or twice every coupla weeks, the brackish one. I'd pick up a beer and look around; see if Wells was there. If he was I'd stay a bit and if he wasn't I'd duck out. On days he was, we'd have contests ta see who could outdo the other; lying contests he called 'em. I just said they was stories. And goddammit, I never did win.

"Wells was from Des Allemands, southwest a here on Highway 90 t'ward Houma. Been down that way?"

"No," Billy answered. "Baton Rouge and Lafayette's it. I've never had much reason to go south of here. No family or anything." He eyed Ebenezer for a razor remark about his lack of geographical wandering but found none forthcoming. The old man's grizzled face never even hinted that way.

"All right. Well, if ya been ta Lafayette ya kinda know what I'm talkin about. It's like time stopped around there for somethin ta catch up that never did. 'A course it's been years since I been Lafayette way and things has probably changed, but the memory in my head ain't. The people seem older somehow, not individually but as a unit; tightly woven; more attached ta their place somehow. Shit, when I was there it was sometimes hard findin a person who spoke understandable English. And I don't mean all that movie bullshit Paris-French talk either." He shook his head and snapped his lips, tipping his mug as he looked to Billy for approval.

"There's a lotta strange goin's-on among the folks in the lower areas, and with the blacks it goes even deeper. Maybe it's because they mostly keep ta themselves with their superstitions and religion. Most times it's hard ta find the line separatin one from the other as far as I can tell. Black cats, evil eyes, things howlin in the swamps, spilled salt; everythin has a meaning. A portent, if ya will. They don't rely on money for power the way whites tend ta, and if we laugh at what we see as superstitions, well, that seems to suit 'em just dandy 'cause they don't have ta worry 'bout that being run off with too.

"Now I'm back around ta where I wanta get started," he said, twirling his fingers in circles in the dim light. "How ya doin?"

"Fine. This is what I came for," Billy replied. "Another?" and he raised his empty mug in persuasion.

"You bet'cha," Ebenezer shot back, and then grabbed Billy's sleeve as he started to get up. "No, let Shelly bring it over," he said, and yelled over his shoulder holding two fingers up. "I don't need my rhythm gettin broken here." Billy nodded his head. "Now, on one a those days just sittin around shootin the shit with Buster over a coupla cold ones, the conversation got around ta voodoo, magic, all that shit. When he starts goin on I kinda backed off a bit with this incredulous look on my face and told him what a load a bullshit I thought the whole racket was. But right then I could see that wasn't the right thing because his already dark face darkened even m---"

"Here it is fella's," Shelley broke in and the old man's eyes bugged out of his skull.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Shelley! That was fast," he said, turning to the girl and touching her arm at the elbow. "Ya know I can't be cut off in the middle of my—"

"And you already know, old man, I don't like being yelled at from across the room. Besides I was already fixin to bring ya'll another round. I know how long it takes you, you old goat!" There was a playfulness in her tone but her eyes told the truth. Ebenezer capitulated. "My darlin, pardon my sins," he said before turning to Billy with, "Pay the nice girl." Billy was already reaching for his wallet. When he paid she smiled and patted Ebenezer on the head before leaving. "God love her," he said, watching her back to the bar. He turned back and took down some brew. "So where the hell was I?"

"At the bar. You'd just told Buster you thought magic was crap," Billy prompted.

"Right, right. Well Buster leans over ta me and kinda whispers real low, like he don't want anyone else hornin' in, 'Oh, voodoo's real all right.'" And Ebenezer's voice took on a different, lower rasp; perhaps meant as a dialectical illustration of sincerity and truth as it had come from the old black man's mouth years before. The effect was uncanny. Ebenezer continued.

"It was then that he started tellin me about George Williams and a rich, white fella named Jim Franklin. 'Seems George had been one a Buster's friends even before he come ta live and work in Norco; met em doin offshore work with the McDermit Company outta Morgan City in the thirties. Over the four or five years they worked together they got tight 'til Williams made off and got married, drug up the offshore work. Told Buster he and the Missus'd be settlin in Destrehan since an auntie a his had passed and left 'em a twenty year lease ta a small place owned by the Franklin family outta Opelousas.

"Now the old man, Paul Franklin, owned a helicopter shuttle outfit, a coupla sugar cane refineries, and a shitload of blue-chip stock in sev'ral offshore oil companies. He was the kinda guy poor guys like us imagine wipin their asses with hunert dollar bills, even back in them days. Just so happens, the place Williams and his new wife came into was set off Highway 18 on a twenty-seven acre sugar cane field which was just great if ya could stomach the smell. Sticky, sweet, trails running right inta ya clothes and not lettin go. A rail line ran right along the back coupla acres."

Ebenezer stopped momentarily, taking his obligatory draught of brew. When he took the mug away foam again clung to his moustache. He wiped a forearm roughly across his mouth and the foam disappeared. "Buster tole me he never saw his friend alive again, never read 'bout his death or nothin, but said he got such a goddamn chill the time he went out ta Williams' grave near St. Rose he never went back.

"Ya see, Williams' wife was a voodoo priestess; straight outta Haiti as the story goes. And accordin ta Buster her thing was just as real as religion. Powerful. And it's not such a far stretch when ya get ta considerin what religion is anyway. Simply a system of beliefs and codes givin direction and comfort. Because when ya get right down ta the core a any matter, ain't that what really makes things real? Beliefs, pure and simple. Don't have ta be anythin close ta scientific fact because most folks don't cotton ta things that can't be divided up inta little pieces and finished off with simple solutions.Ya follow what I'm sayin...?"

Billy nodded, thinking of the Marie Laveau Voodoo Shop in the French Quarter, a place full of peculiar and interesting artifacts, skins, and trinkets supposed to impart mystical powers or insights. The creepiest thing was the monolithic, stuffed snake that practically encircled the ceiling as if in pursuit of its tail. Billy doubted the owner had much trouble with shoplifting even though most of the trinkets were small enough to slip into a pocket when no one was looking. At least when you hoped no one was. A shrine to the voodoo priestess sat in one corner of the shop, and although the idea of 'voodoo' itself conjured up images of wild dances, incomprehensible chants, and bloody sacrifices, most of the white people Billy'd seen in the store had looked ominously silent and respectful. Careful not to offend, even if they'd deny it if asked later. Jokes were better company outside the shop's perpetually open doors. Yeah, Billy figured he had a good idea what Ebenezer was talking about. Seeing wasn't always believing; sometimes being was.

Because the storyteller was off again. "So years after Buster stopped workin offshore, I have ta guess close ta ten-fifteen years before I met him workin shop-duty in Norco, he ran into Williams' wife at a Negro funeral in Boutte. The friend uva friend uva friend, and not real surprisin after all with the way those people know each other, Buster happened to get in on a conversation with his old friend's widow.

"Turns out she didn't live on the sugar cane plot anymore, and both a the men I introduced ya ta earlier, Williams and the younger Franklin, were long dead." Ebenezer took a long pull from his mug and smacked his lips. "This is the story the widow tole Buster."

Chapter 19

"Buster asked about his George ta the Missus standin in a group a three or four women, and he said it was all he could do ta stand there straight when all those eyes locked on im. He figured he done fucked up good; maybe George had turned drunk or taken ta beatin the old lady, and when he began sorta easin outta the group with his tongue trippin and skippin like a car runnin on fumes, George's wife reached out and grabbed him by the arm. The other women melted away ta another table, and there he stood, shakin in his boots for no good goddamn reason he had any mind of. Said when she touched him it was like being grabbed by an alligator.

"Well, this lady, b'lieve her name was Doris, or maybe Doreen, whatever, had a black veil over her face but she lifted it so she could get a good look at Buster. He said her face was soft except for sev'ral deep wrinkles, and it left him wonderin why her touch played on im so.

"'A course, he didn't let on; he just asked again where George was and how they was gettin along since Buster'd seen em last.

"'George is dead,' she told him then, as they stood there in the lingerin smell a new death.

"'What?' he whispered.

"'I gotta tell ya what happened ta George, but this ain't the time,' she said and then, as if by more magic, Buster had a scrap of paper in his hand as he watched the widow walk off. An address in St. Rose and that was all. No phone number or nothin else. So he put it in his pocket, paid his respects, and mustered up nerve enough ta head over sev'ral days later. Tole me ya never ignore an invitation from a Hoo-Doo Woman." Ebenezer leaned forward for emphasis. "Now we get ta the meat a this matter because when he told me, he sure enough b'lieved ever word."

Ebenezer took a long pull, emptying his mug. Before Billy could hold up his hand the old man stopped him. "I believe that's enough for me," he said in a voice so low it was almost inaudible. Billy stopped abruptly, staring across the table.

Ebenezer's face underwent a subtle transformation, though in what way Billy could not fathom. His eyes got watery like the bottom of a wet glass, and when he next spoke his voice had changed into a husky, weirdly feminine charade of itself. It sent a chill up Billy's spine and he suddenly fought through a panic of standing up and leaving. Ebenezer never took any notice because by the beginning of the second sentence Billy was as entranced as a cobra staring into the invisible melody of a flute.

"When Geo'ge come home that day I already knowed they was trouble," he began in that odd voice, staring at or through Billy; it was hard to tell which. "The fust thing he tole me was the 'little bastard' said our lease was out. The second thing was Geo'ge was too.

"I sat there looking at Geo'ge while he tried talkin 'round what he couldn't change, fightin with his dignity, talkin 'bout the lease agreement this and the lease agreement that! All bullshit! He been tryin, he said, to think of a way a breakin the news. That what he said, 'Breakin the news'. And I saw 'im strugglin like a drownin man being drug to the bottom of a lake. So I sits there quiet, silent, thinkin my own thoughts. Geo'ge knowed what I'as capable of, but I had to let 'im be a man.

"He tole me he was gonna talk to the 'little bastard' in the mo'nin, but his eyes tole me diff'rent. Somethin broke inside a both a us right then that couldn't never be fixed." With that a tear actually slid from Ebenezer's eye as he continued his unorthodox litany. Billy felt a shock as of electricity course through him. His half-full beer sat far away on the table.

"When he left the next mo'nin I pulled out some a my books. I knowed Geo'ge didn't like em, but he never come home to complain. The bone-cracker from town said it musta been a heart attack that put the truck in the ditch, but I knowed when I saw him on that cold steel table with the tag done up 'round his toe what really killed him.

"Even turned out I didn't have ta go to the 'little bastard's" office in Westwego. Somebitch showed up two days later with a big batch of flowers, wearing his nice suit and new sports car like his skin sprouted that shit while he was sleeping. But weren't no regret nor remorse showin in his eyes when he stood there by my damn po'ch! P'raps things woulda gone diff'rent if he had, but I doubt it. My ways are set.

"It was hot as piss on a tin roof that day and he comes waltzing up on my po'ch like I was one of his house-maids! Shit! Lemme tell ya, the second he put one foot on that goddamn po'ch, holdin out those flowas, I tow outta that chair and slapped that shit back in his pretty-boy face!

"And then I walked down those goddamn steps! He was backing up by then, his mouth one big O. I put my heel ta each one a those damn things, waggin my finger in his face and yellin as I went. I tole him ta get the hell out of there, what he could do with those goddamn flowas. Jus walkin up closer ta him the whole time, lovin the sweat breakin through his rich little jacket.

"I saw what I was lookin for the second it come outta his pocket.

"He be so off guard, stamm'rin and sputt'rin, tryin ta make it back to that fancy car a his; musta been enough to embarrass 'im and then 'im realize it 'cause he fin'lly worked up courage enough once he got over there ta holla back 'bout how things still ain't changed in the fack I had two months ta get out.

"Well, that be the last straw. I bent down, picked up a rock layin dere in the dirt, and throwed it hard's I could at that pin-striped prick. Even surprised me how close it come, and he ducked and jumped inta the car, givin me the finger as he high-tailed it off up that road. I din't even watch im go. My eyes was on the white handkerchief layin in the dust where he done dropped it.

"The white handkerchief soaked wit his sweat.

"I walked over and fetched it up, folded it neatly as I walked back to the steps, makin sure I kicked every last one a them goddamn flowas outta way. Then I opened the screen door and goed inside, layin the handkerchief right down on the kitchen table 'fore I went to brung what I taken from Geo'ge. You see, I always been the one what cut his hair. It don't take much ta keep somebody's head in shape, and I always done it, careful so Geo'ge din't know I had a small jar with some a his leavings. I never was one ta miss a chance at playin it safe." A cracked, whimsical smile broadened out Ebenezer's face, enhancing the illusion in the thin light that the old man was not completely present. The voice had long since taken over.

"I put 'em all togetha: the hair, the handkerchief, the sweat," he continued in the voice that was increasingly not his own, "into a shoebox and said my piece. That night, on the stroke a midnight, I took the box outside and buried it just ta the side of the largest oak ova by the outhouse. Not too deep, and just close enough for the live oak ta find it. Then I stood still in the dark and watched as the shapes comed together and played through the sugarcane stalks. And I listened to the words...the whispers...

"Towowd mo'nin I come to hearin Geo'ge's muffled laughter minglin in the shadows to, floatin around and findin itself." Ebenezer stopped only to catch his breath. "By the noon I come near enough gettin runned off the road cause I'd left late mo'nin to haunt the highway for a revelation. 'Cause I knowed where that boy lived!

"And did it come! Hah! He tow down on me from one a the side roads like a devil was drivin!. Made the co'na and barreled past what musta been eighty-ninety miles an hour. But I strained hard to catch his face in the rear view mirra as he was headin off.

"And I be lucky 'nough ta catch 'is face.

"I neva seen befo ah since a man closer ta steppin ova the Side. His hair standin up like a bristle bush; his eyes huge and buggin. His mouth was even movin like he be talkin ta somebody. And then he'as gone and I pulled ova ta the side a the road 'cause there weren't no sense in chasin 'im. I already knowed where he be headin. And it damn show weren't his office." Ebenezer leaned way back, although he kept both hands on the table, his knuckles showing white as he gazed off in raptured silence. His face remained unearthly.

"Fust, I swung the car 'round. Then I drived back ta the house and waited for the call. It'as almost dark when the phone rang and when I picked it up Sheriff Dumaine started talkin fast. I knowed his voice 'cause Geo'ge had a fit with the bottle a coupla times down at the Mill Bar. This weren't 'bout none a that shit though.The sheriff was real quiet, tellin me he was sorry to call but he couldn't hep it. Seemed the 'little bastard's' car had turned up at the cemete'y where I put Geo'ge down. There was a bunch of gravestones plowed up by the car, and Dumaine tole me it was his duty 'to inform the relatives of the disturbed graves'. Jus like that he said it. He also said the 'little basta'd's' car was found idlin with a red hot engine close ta Geo'ge's grave, but there was nobody around. Sheriff also said they'd tried to reach Franklin on the phone but nobody was answerin. Not at the house, not at 'is office.

"I tole him I'd handle any damage done ta the stone and thanked him for callin. Tole 'im ta keep me posted but that was for 'pearances sake. Because I already knowed." A low chuckle drifted between Ebenezer's teeth. The eyes became glassier still, rolling back almost to the whites. The uncanny voice continued, "I can pi'ture all them things he saw that night and on 'til he got to St. Rose cemetery. Snakes, snails, bodies all torn and wet, the smell of garbage and death so ripe it liked to choke 'im.

"Because Geo'ge had him by then. I set it up, I know. I could almost make out his ghost in the car as they blew by. Oh, I had dreams too...the call in the middle of the night, before things got to the point where they couldn't be ignored, where the 'little basta'd' picks up and the darkness becomes real. And then the voice floatin up from some deep well, bearing its greetin, 'It's dark in here, Jim...'" and Ebenezer coughed lightly into his cupped hand. "There would be retribution and peace in that," he said, almost in his own voice.

Then the old man turned to Billy once more and said in that same strikingly deadly tone, "The 'little bastard' ain't never turned up, and the family din't hold no burial. But that was all just grief and denial, 'cause he's dead all right. Right now there be two sets a bones in Geo're's coffin; stacked one on top a the other jus as pretty as firewood." And with that Ebenezer grinned and the phantasmal face slid away.

Chapter 20

A quick laugh across the table broke Billy from his mesmerism. He shook his head because surely hypnotism had to be a ludicrous assumption. Didn't people who'd been hypnotized profess to have no recollection of the experience afterward? He was sure he'd read as much. So it couldn't have been, because he did remember, every nuance of voice, every inflection and turn of phrase. Eerie. As if Ebenezer had been no more than a ventriloquist's dummy, wooden and dull, animated brilliantly by tricks performed by someone, or something, behind his back. "Jesus..." Billy whispered, looking away from the man.

A microsecond later Ebenezer said quietly, "I showed ya one a the ghosts, didn't I?" His words were colored in a cross of expectation and sadness.

"Uh...I'm not sure." Billy fumbled around his own words, aware, beneath the table, his legs trembling nervously. "I guess you did," he admitted finally.

"That's because the world is full a ghosts, Billy. All the many people who've lived and died. People a strong or weak convictions, awesome passions, joy, anger. All the experiences, trials, all the losses and triumphs stored up in that tiny vessel a flesh with no outlet for expression after death. All that stored energy just waitin ta get out. Makes ya think, don't it?" Ebenezer scratched the curly hair above his right ear and stood up. "I'm way past due for a pit stop, chum," discarding the curl of the last comment. "Care for another since I'm headed that way?"

Billy's answer came in the form of a mute nod.

"Good, my boy. Humor the old bastard; it's good for the soul." And Ebenezer went sauntering off to the restroom.

Billy watched him go, studying the stooped expanse of worn muscle beneath the loose shirt. Also, the way the pant legs floated and danced around what Billy pictured to be skinny, white shanks. Altogether unimpressive, but the power the man possessed! Billy shuddered. When Ebenezer spoke the world around vanished to a background blur, completely subdued by the verbal dances he choreographed. He was the only person Billy knew possessed of oration skills capable of capturing colors, moods, sounds, even essences.

So what about the ghosts, then? an uninivited voice asked.

Billy shivered again, trying to avoid this unwelcome thought. A protective barrier raised in his mind: skewing the fear in reality: there were no ghosts, nothing but a rambling old man full of piss and vinegar turning people to putty in his hands. You're simply gullible, Billy, the voice said. Gullible and more than a little drunk. An old man tells some meaningless stories and you're backward enough to stamp them as genius. Christ! The spontaneity of this barrage struck him with the cold force of a physical blow. A deep-seated sarcastic din in his mind laughed and prodded him with revealing evidence of the low self-esteem he constantly held tenuously at bay. A sagging, unrestful corpse that refused to have dirt flung upon it. Ghosts? the old man had ventured. Yeah, Billy knew ghosts.

His knees began to shake more violently and suddenly he could no longer sit. He lurched to his feet, driving the heavy oak table back several screeching feet and scattering the montage of empty mugs across its wet surface. A claustrophobic enveloped coalesced simultaneously, seeming to squeeze the entire environs of the room tightly around him. Suddenly, unavoidably, all he wanted was the fresh air outside. He stumbled, trying his best to foot-after-foot-it to the door, despite the fact that he now felt very drunk and very disoriented. He had to get out, and hopefully, unnoticed as he went.

But (though he did not know) his exit was noted.

Ebenezer stood just inside the cracked doorway of the Men's Room, not wanting to face an unexpected departure without considering first its cause, and perhaps later, a solution. But the catch ly in the fact that the escape was very obviously a leave of desperation. Ebenezer had nothing to combat that. So he stayed in the shadows of the smelly hallway, listening until he heard the familiar massive door swinging shut on its untended hinges. Only then did he venture out with a new-born guilt tearing itself from its chrysalis. He was an old-hat himself at desperation, and knew even if he was responsible (partly or otherwise) for its workings on the boy, it was in the end, however, a solitary endeavor. Even so, he feared as he stood silently inside the confines of the dirty, restroom hallway. To follow and embarrass the lad would only lead to further, perhaps irreparable, damage. Ebenezer breathed deeply several times and marched straight to the bar as if he'd been witness to nothing. When he spoke the cold was back, readily audible. "An Abita, please dear," he said nasally.

Shelly hesitated as if she knew a dirty secret she didn't want to tell him, but then leaned close. "The young guy you were drinking with just left, Eb." There was a hint of barely concealed anger riding back in her throat, confusion as to why the boy had just up and walked out on the old man. Ebenezer quieted it with a soft, patting at the bar with his crooked forefinger.

"No harm done, Shelly. The boy's gotta lot on his mind...as we all do."

"Yeah, sure, but..." She stopped. "He just looked so strange, barging out like that. You didn't say something, did---" and she cut herself off when Ebenezer jerked his eyes away and set his jaw, trying to ignore the question. "Will he be back?" she ventured after a full minute.

"I really don't know," the old man replied earnestly, staring toward the closed door.

Chapter 21

At near 3:15 that morning Ebenezer pushed wearily away from his stool at the bar and dragged a hand across his running nose. The cold was seated and angry in his chest, cranky after being draped across a bar stool for all hours of the night. The back of his throat was wretched. He coughed once, weakly, and checked his watch again to make certain he'd not been mistaken moments before. From the resigned look on Shelly's pale face he felt he had not. The 'one beer for the road' had turned into numerous others and his already weakened condition demanded immediate payment. He snorted into a napkin, crumpled it, then threw it over the bar to the wastebasket near the ice machine. It nicked the edge and skittered underneath the bin, now and forever invisible as it began to soak up the funk there.

Shelly eyed him sadly as he stood up, but knew better than to propose a ride home. She'd already had that lecture. Several times. He'd made it very plain in a very drunken way that 'one's age did not necessitate a handicap.' She'd have to put him in God's hands and hope like hell the Man Upstairs hadn't gotten tired of escorting the poor sonofabitch home.

At least he didn't live far, less than three blocks if he'd been truthful one drunken night. He sneezed once more as he lifted his coat from the hook and pulled the door open, waving above his head as he tossed a 'goodbye' over his shoulder. Well, Shelly thought as she wiped the spot where his cluster of beers had set, Sleep well tonight, Eb. Then she checked her own watch again, disgusted to find she still had better than a hour and a half left. The damn city never slept; it slumbered sometimes, albeit very nervously and always on the edge of wakefulness. But goddammit, it never fully slept!

Chapter 22

The three black thugs came upon him scarcely a block from the Ripcord. They poured out of the darkness like slow contagion, spreading out in a fan to reel in their victim. Perhaps if Ebenezer's ears had not been so clogged from his cold, or if he'd only had the one beer instead of six, the attackers would have had less chance or would have missed him completely. But they knew (even if he did not) how to pick their targets well. Even though Ebenezer had a dose of Mace attached to his key ring, it rested deeply in the bottom of one pocket, jostled about by quarters, dimes, and pennies, and might as well have been high atop a mountain atoll in Tibet.

From the depths of his dark, congested thoughts he was suddenly wrenched across the muddied pavement and slammed into a sweating brick wall. He'd been mugged once before, years ago, but that memory did not touch him now. His first fleeting thought was that he'd been struck by a vehicle and the worst was probably over, but he soon realized the error in that.

The hand on his shoulder forced him around while another persistent force crammed him deeper into the darkness. "Hey ya ole muthafucka! Be cool or I'll cut ya fuckin face off!" a voice full of gnashing teeth and cheap wine commanded. A sharp blade pressed dangerously at Ebenezer's belly; a multitude of flashing hands ransacked his clothing in search of money.

"Please," he muttered faintly, gasping for breath amidst the jostling. Adrenaline attempted to surge, but he fought to keep it in check. He knew he was no match for his assailants; hopefully acquiescence would be the ticket allowing him to see his bed again. His head was snapped back by the one holding the knife to his belly. Ebenezer considered letting his legs go but a louder warning in his brain advised staying upright. At least for the time being.

The answer that came to his coughed plea for mercy was not what he'd hoped for. "Muthafucka, don't you beg to me. I got no fuckin mercy." A fist slammed into his jaw, cracking a twenty-year-old crown and rupturing his nose from the force. His ears screamed. A bolt of light blinded his vision and this time he did go down.

A boot forced him over on his back and he glared skyward, pouring hatred and the promise of revenge in metaphysical gouts. However, there was little effect. A kind of bubbling laughter spilled out of the one who'd denied him mercy, even though seconds later he did motion for his cohorts to curb further abuse. Then he stepped closer, locking eyes with his captive as he went up high with a knee before bringing the heel of his boot down on Ebenezer's left shoulder, breaking the clavicle with such impact one of the ragged bone edges tore through Ebenezer's ripped flesh. "Oh...Jesus..." Ebenezer implored to the darkness.

Then the same voice was close at his ear. "Go on and pray, you old muthafucka. Ain't nobody goan hear shit. I make the muthafuckin rules! I say what goes!" and the alien voice lifted away amid a laugh of poison and unfathomable cruelty. Ebenezer attempted to crawl away from the once-again-approaching boots of the others.

"God damn you," he managed, louder than before.

The boots stopped when the specter leaped back to Ebenezer. "We see 'bout that, muthafucka." The attacker slid cold steel into the old man's chest, just below the broken collar bone. It ripped away clean, leaving behind a growing, agonizing hole filled with pain. Ebenezer moaned and dragged himself into a fetal position because he could do nothing else. Soon, in the dim recesses of a tunnel he suddenly felt the urge to explore, distantly listening to the slap of running footsteps. Ebenezer wanted to run too, but something held him back and there was a deep sadness upon him, reducing his dream-double to forlorn crying.

Chapter 23

Elizabeth was alone again in her room, lights off, the television cooling in sporadic ticks from the corner. Only a few stray chords of light breached the solitude of her sanctuary, though even these had to squeeze between the barest rent in the louver blinds to make such passage. Thoughts bombarded her every hour of the day now. There seemed to be so much to do, or at least, to contemplate; her mind knew what was approaching and seemed to be pushing years of ordinary impulses into the short time left. More and more she found herself forced to the darkness to lie quietly pondering such stillness. As if in preparation.

She rolled over and the pain was not so bad. Today the armpits, yesterday in the spaces behind her eyes; deep little pockets of pain that bred and festered the growing poison. Just a little reminder, a voice much like her own piped in and the paradox of familiarity did not go unnoticed.

She'd not seen Billy in almost two weeks. Her rapidly-filling journal proved this testimony, and many times when she looked back over what she'd written, it seemed a large portion of these expositions were, if not to Billy, then because of him.

Brooding, she thought and shook her head. On this fine day I've closed myself off to consider, and dread, things I have no power over. Yes, that was probably true, but the power to do this seemed to lend her a little strength. Strange. Why all this feeling sorry for myself? she asked. An idea inspired by Steinbeck's novel, East of Eden, occurred to her.

She'd been forced to read the massive tome her senior year in high school. But actually that wasn't right. She'd been assigned it by one of the newer teachers, putting him off as an immediate candidate for the dog-house by nearly every one not familiar with Cliff's Notes. Feeling that such shortcuts were somehow intellectually damning, Elizabeth had resigned herself to the scaling of the monstrous novel out of nothing more than base pride. But after the first few chapters found her tearing ahead at a pace few books (regardless of size) could sustain, she'd relished its length. An acute and irritating kernel of truth still mystified her to this day. She recalled Steinbeck's statement that ecstasy's closest kin was grief. How odd and disturbing that had seemed at the first reading. But with the experience of several years she'd begun prying at the heavy lid of this thesis again. Some men died at the onslaught of orgasm, and some, peculiarly psychotic mothers brought their children time and again to the point of death for only a chance to foster sympathy and pity for themselves. Was our fascination with the horrible only a counteracting device for the good and pleasurable we feasted upon?

Is that what I'm doing? she asked herself. Am I reveling in this sickness in an attempt to balance myself somehow? Am I by enclosing myself within the safety net of my mind, somehow attempting to protect myself? She wondered if Steinbeck had felt the same, if he'd been aware of the same tendril his work touched for her? This indefinable truth of humanity. He had tried to find logic in the duality of soul and flesh, those two lovers and enemies constantly torturing and pleasing the other in uncomfortable alliance. She shook her head and wondered.

Endless circles.

Her first car had been a heap from the start, always complaining in a throaty, coughing grind of metal, every mile coming only after prodigious protest and rebellious threat. Billy must have worked on the old junker at least fifteen times, and every one of those times Elizabeth had dutifully stood outside with him to hand tools or whatever else was required; ice water, words of encouragement, sometimes a particularly tasteless secret.

He'd never complained but she'd seen exasperation enough to know it. Billy had known the car for what it was but he'd also had the courtesy to hold his tongue. Money had never been an easy commodity for their family.

The hood had stayed up on the late model Impala like a hungry mouth that could never be satiated. An alternator here, always a number of blackened spark plugs and shredded belts, a blown radiator. Elizabeth had become peculiarly familiar (for a girl anyway, she thought) with the workings of engines, and it proved to set her mind on the course of circles and life.

In the physical world everything from the micro to the macro worked on the principles of circular motion, one system leading and causing and being caused by a similar working of infinite variety, but always these systems revolving endlessly around all others. In fact, beginnings and endings were intangibles, man-made descriptions, wholly inadequate. No matter how complex a manual seemed, the mechanisms within the engine revolved upon themselves.

Wheels within wheels.

As she lay in bed she pondered other workings of the same fashion, if for no more reason than to give her wild pursuit some sort of feeble guidance. Good revolved around or within evil, inspiring reverse offspring as endless products. Case in point: the dutiful father of three kissing his children goodbye one morning before killing a score of other children at a McDonald's hours later. Explanations? Excuses? Please. And any and all philosophies which attempted getting to the bedrock of human experience only expounded deeper and deeper until the wheels they'd set in motion eventually spun out of control. Why? Like the circular complexities of an engine, the more a person delved into himself to find some sort of comprehensible truth, the more avalanches occurred to dust the vision. Until the dust cleared, and you found yourself standing in previous footsteps that were now were only bigger and harder to define. Or in Billy's case (on those long, hot afternoons spent deep in the belly of her car), you were left staring angrily into the same pile of shit you knew you'd be looking at again, very soon. And why? Because it just was.

And, fearfully, Billy had been an easier person then—on those afternoons with the pieces of the car in order before him. Meticulous, less moody. When she saw him now she felt a dangerous chaos surrounding him. He was a quiet person who longed for a comfort it appeared no one could give. Elizabeth saw this because his blood ran in her veins also, and she could feel the particular tugs and nudges from within where her own soul lived. Although she was kin in genetics, she differed, she felt, in dynamics; she tried to seek out the dangerous root of discontent to separate it into its' constituent parts, and even after much searching she still had control enough to shelve the many primitive, dark broodings and turn to brighter subjects. Until just lately that is, when bright thoughts had become progressively harder to secure and breed. Feeling this way only made her more aware and sensitive to the dilemma she perceived in her brother. But at least she could put distance between herself and the darkness, even if it was more taxing these days.

She didn't believe Billy could. His waters ran as deeply as hers, but Billy seemed powerless against the steady pull of the current. He could find no dry bank to rest upon while gathering needed strength. The preceding two, empty, lost weeks surfaced again and again in her mind as she thought. He simply couldn't bear her now, she knew, and while his purposeful aloofness challenged her on that exiled afternoon her cancer slowly burned away beneath the skin.

Chapter 24

Billy fumed and bit his lip to keep from cursing. He'd just heard the news: the pretty receptionist at the octagon-shaped information booth in the lobby had quit. And goddammit! it had to be Gerda Miles to tell the tale, not even trying to hide her sarcastic tone as she made sure to break the story like a glass vase over his head. Billy didn't hate the obnoxious woman; in fact he had always admired Gerda in a way (so smug and assertive in her understanding of her heritage), but she did thrive on putting the point of the spike to the nerve when the circumstance afforded itself.

He was indeed highly pissed off. One goddamn comment and she'd hooked into it ever since. No way she'd ever let him forget or revoke the fact that he'd been intensely interested in the beautiful, chocolate-skinned receptionist who it now looked like he'd never see again. And to compound matters, he'd never even worked up the balls to say anything meaningful. Nothing more than a seldom and furtive 'hi' and 'bye' as he'd passed the desk either coming or going. Because some damnable reason (he'd tried to convince himself, he saw now in sudden retrospect) presumed he had no business with her. Though that was surely a security net he'd utilized to cloak his own insecurity. Because inside, where the truth always waited for a bloody acknowledgement, he found she'd really intimidated him. That was part of the reason he was so pissed at Gerda; she could see through his bullshit; she could pin him to his thoughts like a long-dead butterfly in a dusty science case. Jesus, what would his friends think?

What friends?

Yeah, right. He finished urinating and tucked himself away, careful not to catch it as he zipped up. "Shit," he said, pushing the handle down and listening to the mad rush of suction. He turned, pausing to study his reflection in the lavatory mirror. A normal guy. The kind of guy who should have everything going for him, but who chose instead to hobble himself at every opportunity. What is it about you? he wondered.

Many nights he recalled lying in bed, whipping his dick furiously as he imagined and developed the many erotic scenarios the beautiful black girl and he could perform. And then, afterward, lying in that same bed tense and quivering in the full knowledge that it would never go any further. Not if left up to him.

"You're a hopeless fuck-up," he said conversationally to his mocking, silent image. Another potentially good thing had slipped beyond his grasp. Easy come, easy go, and he'd never even asked her name. Of course he wouldn't ask Gerda. Better to let hell freeze first. He found it disconcerting that he'd let Gerda get this far underneath his skin anyway, but the fact remained. Hopefully not as apparently obvious as it felt right now.

Then, from somewhere in the blown wastes, he remembered the message his mother had relayed to him the previous evening in a muttered, brief telephone exchange. Elizabeth wanted to see him tonight. She wanted to go out, and Billy bit his lip thinking back on his mother's tone and implication. Always looking for a handhold to lord over.

Without thinking he began to hum the opening bass riff from Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust," and immediately stopped when he realized what was coming out. He left the restroom very quickly.

Chapter 25

Billy and Elizabeth sat at one of the rough, wooden picnic tables at Cooter Brown's, a magnificent oasis of imported beer and delicious seafood po-boys by the levee. While Billy chewed ravenously at his shrimp sandwich Elizabeth took sips from her Dixie and studied his face. Always the concentration, even over something as harmless and unassuming as eating. He continued munching away, his own cold draft motionless beside the plate.

There was no sandwich in front of Elizabeth; the order of fries on the table was scarcely picked at. "So how are things going, Billy?" she asked innocently. They hadn't been there long, and she'd waited until the first beers were gone.

He looked up, a piece of lettuce hanging out the corner of his mouth. He snapped it back and chewed, signaling with his eyes that he'd be right with her. She smiled back. "Don't choke," she warned.

Billy nodded and continued chewing.

"They're good," he finally replied.

She leaned forward. "What? The food? Beer? Life in general?" Her smile turned coy, and this brought its own reflection to Billy's face.

"All the above," he answered as if filling in a quiz.

"Good. I've been wondering. Haven't seen you in almost three weeks." She clicked her tongue behind her teeth. "You must never answer your phone."

She immediately saw the nervous tick of his forefinger against the sweating side of the mug. The ground was very soft here; she'd have to be careful. "Anyway, I'm glad we got together," she finished innocently, and then without warning reached over and took his hand. She hoped he didn't know she felt it tremble. As gently as possible she let it go, but left her hand resting near his. Billy cleared his throat and looked away before saying anything.

"I've been real busy, Liz. Extra duty at the Hospital...you know what kinda dumbasses I've got to deal with..." and Elizabeth smiled and nodded to make it appear she didn't notice how his voice trailed off. She also knew not to tread on the minefield of these 'extra duties' Billy mentioned. He went on, striving hard for elaboration. "You know, the damn answering machine screwed up three months ago and I still haven't gotten around to fixing it. Besides," and he did turn to look her in the eye this time. "You know I don't like talking to Mom." He could not hold her gaze for long and stared quickly down into the depths of his beer. "All that and, you know..." he faded off into more faltering drivel.

"Yes, Billy. We all know how Mom is." She paused, ruminating on how far she should take the line. "Anyway, she's gone a lot of the time now."

"What?" Billy's surprise was genuine, and he suddenly looked like the little boy she'd known fumbling over some toy in the sandbox. "What the hell's going on around there? I haven't known her to leave that house for more than a couple hours since before Dad died. Jesus, I thought she was scared to go anywhere."

Elizabeth's reply came quick, and unexpectedly crisp. "She is scared, Billy, but it's not of leaving the house." It was her turn to look down and wipe her hands absently on the crumpled napkin by the fries. "She's going to church now. All Sunday long, and most other nights too."

"Scared?" Billy said, before shutting his mouth instantly, realizing the mistake. He looked into her eyes, suddenly stricken.

Unintentionally, she drummed her fingers on the table. Billy set down what remained of the sandwich and leaned back. Elizabeth saw the pain in his eyes and leaned forward, reaching for his hands again, unafraid and tired of this game they played behind curtains. When she did get hold of them he didn't try to pull away, but his eyes remained fixed on something far away as his lips moved in the effigy of either a plea or a prayer. "Billy," she said, and squeezed his hands harder, trying to retrieve her runaway. "I don't want you to stay away from me...I love you and I don't want you to be afraid."

He pulled himself together enough to make a perfunctory stab at denial. "Liz, really. It's been work...nothing else...you're gonna be okay, Liz. It's just that—"

She didn't even let him finish. "It's just that's not the truth, and you know it, Billy. What I have is real; I hurt all over most of the time, but I'm not really afraid. I don't want you to be either. I just don't want what I have to be taken away..." and it was her turn to fade out.

Billy leaned closer, his throat constricting, but failing to hold back the words. "What is it?" he whispered, his eyes filling with tears as he tried hard to blink them away.

Even softer, she answered him. "Memories, Billy. I want to keep every one of them. And I want you to know that I'm not finished making them yet." She made to loosen her grip but he squeezed back fiercely.

"Let's take a walk," he said.

Chapter 26

Ebenezer was in the midst of a cloudy, fretful sleep. Since the sudden attack his consciousness had retreated like a fox to its den, perhaps attempting a brief sanctuary from the hounds that'd attempted to tear him to pieces. He had no grasp of circumstances, no firm ground on which to plant his feet. He swirled in a ghostly abyss, alone as a soul doomed to hell.

But somewhere in the cacophonous vortex, unnoticed in the world of reality, Ebenezer's eyes squinted as his nostrils detected the acrid scent of smoke. A monstrous humming filled the air and he rubbed his now wrinkle-less hands harshly across his eyes. When finally able to clear them, he was back in 1943 and the B-17 roared like a metal-throated demolition factory over Germany. Tracers and whining bullets ripped the sky as Glen Billings and Henry Watlick took the 'Flying Fortress' to the wall. Ebenezer heard the strain of bolts in the fuselage. He pivoted in the ball-turret chair, sizing up the mosquito-like nemesis following them through the holy cross-hairs. Its enveloping halo danced madly about and around the target, now cutting and diving, the enemy inside hunched and incorporated like a piece of machinery himself.

Below Ebenezer's feet the cargo of bombs fell away, trailing like a hideously lethal snake to their random destinations. He thought it paradoxical that the traces of blue sky piercing irregularly through the smoke and clouds could be present in such a din as this. The dull streamer of bombs only served to bring the brighter, infrequent glimpses into sharper contrast, and Ebenezer Holgren (gunnery sergeant) continued squeezing the moon-slivered slip of metal at his fingers, sending hails of screaming lead to blister and bruise the sky. He remembered wondering where these errant bullets fell, the ones that missed the mark and went on unheeded. His mind's eye provided a suitable answer: an old peasant woman (strained face and ragged clothing) hiding vainly beneath a spindly-legged dining table while pieces of the roof rained down, punched loose by a slew of scalding bullets. Slipping and exploding through, perhaps one piercing her constricted old throat in a grisly spray of bone and blood. Leaving her crumpled over the already silent body of a small grandchild she'd tried to protect.

Where was redemption after that?

He squeezed his eyes closed and let another hail fly, fiery chips of metal breaking away from the Luftwaffe fighter. Did smoke pour from the tail section? Surety was impossible; the whole sky was blistered with huge banks of maddened clouds and tumors of smoke that held off in separate, ragged bruises. With the added ground assault, vision was nil.

The B-17 suddenly banked hard, or as hard as it could, Ebenezer catching sight of the Luftwaffe again. He was unable to maintain any balance, flung about like a doll inside the turret. The surreal and nauseous panorama he felt trapped within was only overcome (for scant seconds only) by bullets ripping past at supersonic speeds and the multitude of darting shadows which drew testament to the acidic taste of adrenaline lining his throat. Of course, there was also the steady tinging of bullets ripping their own shell.

He remembered sitting in the seat, pivoting madly about, his balls so pinched and tight it caused physical pain. But at least the pain was insurance that his heart still beat in his chest.

A brief flash near the tail section caused him to spin on instinct, his forearms tightening to cables as his fists clapped closed on full release. His eyes, frantic and straining, seemed to pilot the multitude of screaming finger-sized projectiles toward the tail section of his enemy. Suddenly the Luftwaffe was close enough for him to distinguish the colors of Germany, so close in fact that the pilot had no time to react to Ebenezer's demonic, frenzied accuracy. The tide of lead bore into his fuselage and peeled a glass-melting path through the cockpit. The German's face disintegrated inside his helmet as his arms flew away from the console. But to Ebenezer it seemed that the man was flung back in slow-motion, just before the riddled plane went wildly, radically left, gaining G's as it spun through the smoky sky and out of sight.

And in a paroxysm of hysteria, through unexplainable laughing tears, Ebenezer went on squeezing the trigger, pumping endless rounds into the burnt sky, as the B-17, the Flying Fortress of World War II, continued on its unerring course over Anklam and Flensburg, chased and hunted continuously as it spread destruction below.

For in the instant (the frozen and sluggish instant) when the German pilot had erupted in spray, Ebenezer got a glimpse of the man's life; a hurried collection of snapshots, inexplicable and thoroughly disconcerting. And the last was the worst, the most damning: a tiny baby (the hair not even yet evident on its head) in the arms of a mutilated, uniformed corpse; the baby reaching up into the empty space where its father's head should have been.....

Chapter 27

"AH!...no, NOOOO!" Ebenezer screamed in terror, suddenly coming alive again to a strangely antiseptic room. For just a moment he imagined himself in hell, a very different hell than the preachers of his youth had promised, but worse somehow in this very difference. Then the sounds of gunfire and straining engines faded to memory only even as a growing pain crept into his sense of being. He jerked his head around, trying to get a fix on his surroundings. Definitely not his room, and probably not hell either, he decided. His head split to burst and there was a terrible ripping pain across his chest.

At that moment Nurse Sandy Albritton threw open his door, summoned by the commotion coming from the both the intercom and behind the partially cracked door. Up until now the floor had been benevolently calm, and if not acted upon quickly such bellowing was sure to add to her work detail; God only knew it would get much worse if the others all woke up with their own complaints. Trouble at 3:00 in the morning was something to quell at all costs.

She stood in the chilly, hospital doorway, sizing things up before going any further. She could tell from the tangled I.V. line her patient had been thrashing about on top of yelling, but now he was thankfully sedate. There was clear questioning in his eyes but he was quiet. His hands trembled noticeably. She quickly went to his bedside and put one hand to his clammy forehead, readjusting the oxygen mask which dangled uselessly below his chin with the other. She tried pressing his stiffened body into the softness of the mattress to little effect. His confusion only became more apparent. "Mr. Holgren," she said softly. "Everything is all right now. You are in the hospital, but everything is all right."

With these few, simple words life dawned again in the frightened man's eyes, a far cry from the stark stare of discomfiture and fright she'd seen upon entering. Watching his face gave her the strangest impression of seeing a wave pull away from shore, leaving the sandy surface sparkling and freshly marbled with foam and bubbles. In short, a dawning personality against the landscape of skin and bone she'd only known him for before.

"Oh my God," the old man moaned, fighting to keep his body from flailing away again. "What's goin on? I still smell the smoke...the bodies..." and he rammed his fists to his ears, crying out in pain until tears spilled from his eyes.

"You were assaulted, Mr. Holgren, but everything will be okay," Albritton tried to persuade him, pulling his fists away from his ears. "You were woken by nightmares, I'm su—"

"Nightmares!?" he spat incredulously, but paused to consider the possibility. He closed his eyes and breathed out in a rush, wincing as the vice of pain gripped his chest. His face flushed red. As he tried to slow his breathing the nurse straightened the rest of the equipment Ebenezer had disturbed in his terror. Suddenly he reached out to grab her hand. Pleading ruled his face.

"What happened?" he implored. The words came out hoarse and cracked. She patted his hand as she continued her survey, working a kink out of the I.V. line so the needle stayed at a safe angle. She reached in her pocket and pulled out a roll of tape, carefully ripping off an adequate amount while she considered her answer. Simple, direct, she thought best.

"Mr. Holgren. This is University Hospital. You've been with us for two days. You were brought in on Thursday night, beaten severely and stabbed. You've also got a compound fracture of your collar bone." And again, she pushed him back into the mattress, gently but firmly, consigning him silently to rest.

At Ebenezer's odd silence which followed her explanation, she stepped away and with added courtesy repeated, "You're going to be all right now, Mr. Holgren. Trust me, you'll be all right." But by this time the blank look curtained his gaze again, even though he nodded his head as if in complete understanding. He was alone again, regardless of her presence in the room. "If you need anything just ring," she said as she backed out of the doorway, leaving the old man to the smell of the burning and the awful stink in the ball-turret.

Chapter 28

Without warning and for no apparent reason a swirling, almost clairvoyant surge slowed and then stopped Billy in the sparkling corridor. He had a voltage meter in one hand and gently tapped a flashlight against his thigh with the other on the way to remove acoustical ceiling tiles at the end of the hallway. Seems there was a phantom short in the Oxygen delivery system for Rooms 421-45, though thankfully none of the patients down there were in immediate need. However...

He turned slowly around, in search of the ghost that'd slipped past just then, as acutely drawn to Room 417 as he'd been to the sensation that someone or something had brushed him. The door was slightly ajar and Billy heard Oprah's confident voice begging its displeasure to murmured audience approval. He rubbed his chin and ambled back for curiosities' sake. A swift, passing glance inside offered little help; all he saw was the patient's prominent bottom half, naked from the knee down, a tray spread with a Spartan lunch and a flash of silverware. Maybe if he just pushed the door a bit further for investigation...and in so doing immediately recognized the shock of frazzled hair, the fork poised at the bearded mouth a second before Ebenezer's eyes locked on his own.

Billy froze, arms at his side, his mind inventing failing explanations even as he stood in the doorway.

The old face wrinkled good-naturedly along familiar lines around his sparkling eyes while Billy stood there dumb, the unkempt beard finally parting for the smile. "Billy, my boy," Ebenezer welcomed in his wonderful voice. "I was wonderin if I had the right place. Thought ya worked here..." and he set down his fork, forgetting about the uneaten bite it impaled.

Billy pushed the door wider. Ebenezer moved the mobile tray aside, waving as he did so for Billy to come inside. Stumbling guilt denied Billy's attempt at suitable greetings, so he remained glued to the floor, stuttering silently with his eyes.

"My God, boy, come on in! I don't want ever Tom, Dick, and Fuzzywink starin at my balls in this fuckin gown," the old man grumbled humorously. Best to break the ice, Ebenezer thought. Somethin really eatin this kid. He could feel the tension building and decided the best defense was diplomacy. "Seems I got myself into a bita a rumble the other night," he began as Billy walked to the foot of the bed. "Don't remember much, but what I do ain't good. A bunch a punks threw me up against an alley wall; I do remember that. That and this one black fella in my face." Ebenezer tapped his temple. "I got that sonofabitch's face clear right here, I tell ya." Sighing, he fingered the recline control and shuffled deeper into the folds of the pillows and thin sheets. "They rolled me for sure, pad'na, but goddammit they didn't kill me! Too tough an old bastard for that, I guess." He nodded but Billy was still quiet, question and concern commanding equal parts of his features. Ebenezer went on, "Beat the hell outta me and then decided ta stab me in the fuckin shoulder. And this was after they got my money! Ungrateful bastards, I tell ya," he said, only half-jokingly.

In a drenched, dead-pan delivery Billy asked: "How many were there?" A memory he'd tried to cast off fought its way back through the bushes.

Ebenezer looked away, trying to remember, but also trying not to level his attention on Billy's face. The look there frightened him. "Not real sure. I was gettin the shit kicked outta me most a the time, but I b'lieve there was three or four. Bastards jumped me like a fuckin bad dog."

It took Billy a few more moments. "You're going to be all right?"

Ebenezer exhaled and held out his hands. The smile stayed put but the fatigue was clearly etched on his face. "I b'lieve the old man's gonna make it," he assured. Then with a sweeping motion of his good arm he bid Billy sit down in the adjacent hospital recliner. Billy obliged him although Ebenezer still perceived it hard for the young man to meet his gaze.

Perhaps it was this look alone that subconsciously caused Ebenezer to trip in the suspected minefield. His next statement came completely unannounced, even to himself. A sudden razor blade extended, cloaked superbly as innocence, its detrimental effects not apparent until the question escaped his lips. When he actually heard it himself he shriveled inside with shame and exasperation, not at all sure of his own intentions anymore. What he said was: "I must've been in the Head too long last time, huh Billy?"

Billy flinched involuntarily and swallowed hard. His Adam's apple jerked quickly, up and down, once. "I really don't know why I left. The story was good, but there was just something...probably too much booze, I don't know..."

Immediately Ebenezer jumped in to save his faux pas, praying his skill as a cut-man would come in handy, in retaliation to the hay-maker he'd uncharacteristically thrown unawares and landed mightily. "Hey, hey, fuck it Billy! I ain't comin down on you. It really don't make no difference. Whether it was booze or anythin else. Ya do what ya want, I do what I want. Hell, it was late. I wasn't far behind ya." And even as he finished the sentence Ebenezer saw the frightful expectation in Billy's face.

"That was the night wasn't it?" Billy asked.

"Yeah, it was," Ebenezer admitted, and this time he was the one to look away, making a vain attempt to steer his voice clear of misplaced accusation. He realized he was the Lonely Old Man here, and now was no time to start leading others down the same trail of bullshit he'd trod for so many years. He'd seen the pain and confusion in the boy's eyes before; it was an undeniable stamp on a person's soul.

Ebenezer brought his gaze back to Billy. Truth was the major ingredient of Life as far as he was concerned; if steered around it tended to cause wounds that festered and corrupted around the foul malingering dregs of lies.

"Goddamn," Billy whispered. He shook his head in somber enlightenment, only then turning to meet Ebenezer's stare. The old man kept his mouth shut; Billy continued, "I never should have left, running out like that....whatever the hell it was I—" and his mouth continued moving even though no sound came forth.

Ebenezer held up his hand as if requesting this quiet a moment too late. Even though a grimace tightened his face his voice was strong and reassuring. "Let's not bullshit ourselves here, Billy. You leavin didn't have a goddamn thing ta do with me gettin mugged. Hell, if you'da stayed we'd prob'bly both be laid up here, or worse. Don't kid ya'self, kid. Ya ain't responsible for what happens ta me. I don't need people holdin my hand. Never have and if I start now they can lay me six feet under, cause I don't like the idea. That's my bar, Billy. Been goin there way before ya was born, and as soon as I can get outta here I'll be headin back." He wagged a finger in Billy's direction. "Let's not forget somethin, son. I'm just the guy who tells a story or two, I didn't hire ya on as a goddamn bodyguard!"

"I know, I know," Billy sputtered. "But I just feel like a shouldn't've cut outta there like I did. It was an asshole thing to do..."

And Ebenezer shook the hand back and forth to stop the drivel. "No, no, no! I mean it! We're friends, and friends don't owe!" He stopped to catch his breath and get ahead of the pain in his chest. "Ya got me son?"

Although Billy's eyes were heavy he managed a thin smile. "Yeah...okay..." he affirmed.

"You're goddamn right!"

Billy closed his eyes for a moment and then snapped them open suddenly. It appeared he was close to voicing something that didn't need to be said, and Ebenezer jumped in to stop any untimely confession. "Let's just get it straight for once and all, Billy. Ain't nothin ya coulda done woulda changed anythin. Here I am, alive. No sweat. Been better but I coulda sure as hell been worse. What's done is done," and in so saying he felt a mild satisfaction, seeing the hint of relief in Billy's stare. And ten minutes later, after a little more talk, Billy did reach over to clasp Ebenezer's hand in his own before he excused himself to the ceiling tiles down the hall.

Chapter 29

Billy had his dinner alone that night, in the half darkness of his apartment. Comedy Central aired a several hour string of Saturday Night Live reruns, but even that had tired him a short time ago. There were some casts he liked and some he couldn't stand. He'd switched over to a black-and-white movie, turning down the volume until only a dim electronic wheeze issued from the tinny speakers, he all the while sitting languidly at the card table which served as his dining room. The Mexican T.V. dinner had been everything the bargain price suggested: horrible. He wondered how the contents in the tray could so completely and quickly transform itself into something a dog wouldn't piss on. Freshly removed from the microwave, steam piping away from the congealing sauces and suspicious desserts, the aroma was at least vaguely palatable. However, once finished and left to sit and cool for several careless minutes, the picked-through remains hardly seemed fit for the garbage. Much less dinner. Hard to believe he still ate this shit.

Expectations always seem to exceed realities, he reminded himself, shoveling the carcass of his dinner into the wastebasket. He then hurried to the bathroom to brush his teeth of the perversion he'd placed into his stomach.

Shortly, he returned to the combination dining room/den and sat down on the rug in front of the television. He switched back to the reruns and once again tried vainly to embrace their skits, but the cast was truly lame (Dana Carvey being the only redemption, but unfortunately with his eye to the door), before losing interest again.

His conversation with Ebenezer kept running through his mind. He was extremely glad the old man was all right because there was something he hadn't said.

Billy had seen the men who'd mugged him. He knew that just as clearly as he knew his own reflection in a bathroom mirror. On the way down the street that night, trying to clear his head of the morose images that had forced him from the Ripcord, he'd seen them hunched in the darkness like a burgeoning nest full of venomous wasps. Even though Ebenezer said he wasn't sure, Billy was. There had been only three.

Forgetting the T.V., he studied the floor, running his hand roughly through his hair. Leaving it a rumpled mess, he rested his chin in his hands. The muse came down; the memory rushing like a turbid stream.

\--His footsteps clicked rapidly on the sidewalk as he hurried along, his hands thrust deeply into his jeans' pockets. Head down as he wrestled with the demons the storyteller had uncaged in his mind, cursing Ebenezer silently for bringing on the assault, intentional or not. Then in the darkness hearing the dry rasp of a cigarette lighter, and him halting momentarily like a rabbit in moon-shrouded headlights. He could see the teeth of the largest one, shining hard against the glow sweating off the buildings. A preternatural evil cooked slowly in the darkness, now smiling his way. Two others shadows hunched near their malevolent leader like rats close to a garbage can. And then came the voice behind the teeth: "Hey Bro, you gotta light?" as the flickering flame suddenly disappeared. And the thicker shadows of the approaching assailants began to slide ominously, pulsing from the alley like grease from a drain. Unintentionally, Billy had stepped off the sidewalk and soaked his foot above the rim of his shoe in a ragged pothole. He looked down, shaking it, while the one with the teeth swaggered over slowly, his bald head gleaming in the streetlights. It seemed the thing had been polished and put away to be used only at night, and then only to inspire fear. "How 'bout a quata, muthafucka," Teeth said while firing up a joint. The acrid smell touched Billy as he recognized the three were gaining uncomfortable positioning. The bastard on his left had almost rounded off enough of a corner to make a go at him, and with this terrifying revelation Billy broke from his trance. He glanced once more at Teeth, the man's face curled into an infectious snarl. The hatred it contained spurred Billy to action, and he cut sharply across the steamy street, using what remained of his high school speed to make his getaway. "Yeah Fuck You! Run Muthafucka!" rebounded off the walls and pavement behind him as he steadily pounded out a frantic escape from the predators. But they took no cue to follow; they were after easier game. Game less fleet of foot.—

The memory flowed in fluid sequence to this point. But then the guilt shut the procession short. Billy raised his head, staring gape-mouthed at the television image that could not overcome nor even water-down the memory. "Oh man," he whispered, his voice holding a rusty, shaken edge. He'd gotten away from those bastards that night, oh yeah, run a good three or four blocks before slowing down even. And when he'd had to stop, when the air had finally refused to fill his lungs if he didn't, he'd collapsed on an empty stoop sweating and shivering simultaneously. The whole time, nervously, looking down the street to make sure Hell didn't follow.

You made it all right that night, he told himself, the nagging side of the same coin reminding him of the squad car that had driven slowly down the street as he sat there panting on the stoop. He'd only waved unenthusiastically as the black-and-white rolled slowly by, and the policemen inside hadn't taken the time to stop. Typical junky, they must have figured.

How the hell was I supposed to know they'd attack Ebenezer? asked one side.

Why the hell wouldn't they? chimed in another. But I didn't know which way he took to get home, and there was the chance someone would drive him.

So, six-one, half-dozen of the other, huh? That makes it right?

"Fuck it," he said, feeling the tide of disdain rising. "Like he said, 'It's not my goddamn fault,'" and Billy stood up trying to convince himself of this fact as he bumped his way groggily to the bedroom.

Chapter 30

On Tuesday morning, a few minutes before eleven Elizabeth boarded the Esplanade Bus and rode the several blocks to City Park. The bus stop was located right across from a traffic triangle at the entrance to the park where a coated, copper effigy of General P.G.T. Beauregard sat atop an equally stoic, but pigeon-beshitted mount. Passing by in the striped pedestrian crosswalk, she wondered not for the first time why the plaque didn't bear the 'P' of the Civil War hero's name. And who the hell cares too, huh? she thought humorously, coming now to the long stretch of sidewalk that lined City Park Blvd. The trees swayed gently, ushering visitors and lovers on to the New Orleans' Art Museum. Names like St Gaudens, Whistler, Richardson, and La Farge stared down from the stone façade, but Elizabeth was not concerned with the wealth and creativity contained within the stone walls.

Today, as usual, she veered right at the traffic circle surrounding the museum, crossing the same tiny bridge, making her way past the garish piece of avant garde 'art' work. She sought out the small pond, scarcely fifty yards across at its widest but seeming to encompass a much vaster area if one knew where to sit.

There was the park bench. Situated just far enough away from the water's edge so as not to disturb the social climate of the many crossed and distinguished varieties of water fowl, and of course, the ever-present city pigeons, some of foul and loathsome stock while others sparkled iridescently. The brilliant red eyes became very eerie at times while the brilliant bloated necks of the amorous, strutting males provided a complimentary, otherworldly contrast. Just to the right of the bench an oak tree that had broken its' seed at the turn of the last century and even now yearned to meet the next, sprawled its heavy branches effortlessly into the air around it, guarding the dusty ground beneath like a jealous but warm husband, its power demanding peacefulness. Even the sunlight was softer here.

Elizabeth sat down, ignoring the pin-pricks of discomfort pushing out from the hollow spaces in her body. These fatalistic reminders would be denied power here, she determined. Placing her back-pack on the bench, she unzipped it. It contained only bird seed, and she reached inside, grabbing a handful to fling in a spray toward the smooth water. The shower fell into invisible places in the dust around the old tree while the larger pellets actually made it to the pond's surface. She sat back, breathing relief into her body. The ducks huddling around the gnarled trunk cracked their sleepy eyes to mild slits, and looked around in wary but drowsy disinterest. One nuzzled her beak deeper into the soft down of her underwing. Another stood upon one leg and simply remained, statuesque.

A flock of pigeons were camped on the far side of the pond, stiff-necking around like wind-up toys, until (as if according to some secret agenda) they arose as one and came screaming across the glass surface of the pond to the old oak. They ripped into its branches like commandos; a cacophony of sharply flashing winds made momentarily softer by the chorus of mellow coos which quickly followed. Elizabeth always thought it amazing what they brought to the scene; an addition of breathing parts that increased the lividity of their chosen host until it seemed like strange hands or perhaps a face should suddenly materialize at the ends of the many moss-covered branches. Some of the birds immediately dropped to the ground to kick and peck at the tiny grains Elizabeth had sown. And between the spontaneous feeding which the more subdued ducks took well in stride, there was the constant pursuit of sexual desire, the males stuffy and intent while the females made pretended pains not to notice. Or did, oblivious to their company.

Elizabeth suddenly realized she hadn't been breathing or moving, although oddly enough, she still felt incredibly alive. Every sensation seemed to soak inside like a sponge. Maybe this is what it is, she wondered and not for the first time. This very moment, the ticket to other worlds. The moment, supported by all agreement in the universe, transported her.

Her memories gained footholds, ascending through time-encapsulated layers timidly at first, but then finally gaining prominence. Amid the cooing rapport and skittering, clawed feet around the sprawling oak, similarities attained breath and came to life; things forgotten achieved a bittersweet second birth.

The scratched-at and worn circle around the oak, devoid of all but sparse tufts of grass here and there like hair poking out of an old man's ear, bore witness to an earlier, seemingly happier time. A time when her father had been living, and Billy and she had been pre-teens living in Baton Rouge. That was before her father had been transferred and thoughts stemming from the house they'd lived in had ever sense possessed a tenderness that seemed almost sacrilegious to deem 'nostalgic.' Even though they'd moved to New Orleans when Elizabeth was four she still remembered. Children (she knew this now) had no conceptualization of the meaning of years, just a growing wonder at the possibility of each budding day. She wanted that feeling back, not just in fragments, but whole.

And there, staring at the foot of the oak, Elizabeth recalled a similar, dusty circle around the friendly oak from that other yard, the one now lost in Time, the one she should be able to fetch back at moments like this. It had been the focal point of their days, her's and Billy's. He'd built a tree house in the sturdy, lower branches (denied to go as high as he wished due to their father's daily inspections), just high enough to give the needed rush of triumph, of surpassing reality somehow. Even at her young age the memories had been formed and embedded, forever concrete.

Forever.

The dusty area had come about gradually, slowly succumbing to the constant presence of industrious young feet and rubber tires. What a great race track it'd been; many infamous races now sewn into the awesome tapestry of Time, excitement weaved forever into the willing, aloof fabric. It'd seemed huge. My God, huge.

Even now, as she sat beneath the shade of the oak so many years removed from her childhood, she remembered the time Billy had attempted to jump fifteen football helmets using only an overturned flower pot, a short length of pine wood, and a flimsy bicycle that always threatened to lose its chain upon the slightest provocation. He'd made fourteen, landing in a dusty, rolling heap of bicycle and boy, lucky enough for him to receive a lone skinned knee and not a broken back. Billy, she thought, always the radical in his youth, now so eerily reduced and quieted in his manhood.

What had happened to that risk-taking, industrious boy she remembered? How had his happiness and drive been sucked away to the dry husk she saw so seldom now?

She bit her lip, considering her ignorance of many important, but intangible circumstances. What were 'answers' anyway? She thought them, paradoxically, mysterious, perplexing metaphysics. In fact, she doubted she'd ever really heard one that she'd accepted without question since childhood. And just lately it was harder and harder to accept anything.

Elizabeth momentarily regained her place in reality on the park bench, pulled from her meandering in the Void by the wild exit of the cloud of pigeons. They blurred through the branches, into the open, back across the lake. Something must look tempting over there, she mused, though she could perceive no change. She glanced back to the base of the oak, among the lone fronds where the ducks napped. Some now stirred uneasily, shuffling from foot to foot with open, blinking, dumb eyes. Was it the departure of the pigeons that had caused this disquiet?

Elizabeth thought not. As far as she could tell, all eyes were on her, an obvious attempt at questioning lurking in their pea eyes. She watched them silently, wondering somehow if they could feel other worlds around themselves also.

Chapter 31

Ebenezer brought the bed up into a sitting position. The change began a grinding protest in his shoulder, and he winced, taking his finger off the button. As seemed to be the rule of hospitals, he had on no clothes (the hospital gown was bunched around his waist for modesties' sake), and where the fresh hospital dressing didn't cover, a dark black bruise spilled across his chest, almost to the nape of his neck and down close to his nipple. A large bandage covered the gash his collar bone had ripped. When he let the arm rest (as he'd done all day) any new movement caused fresh pain.

He'd been in the hospital five days, and even though he'd not been cognitive for the first bit, the time since had dragged on endlessly, day to night. The antiseptic room was fast driving him crazy; he wanted to be home where the clutter and jumble was predictable, comforting.

A soap opera droned on mindlessly above his head; he didn't know which and didn't care, finding these inane dramas disconcertingly disturbing. Surely the sign of a society in decline. Why else would so many waste their own muted existences, preferring instead the watching of fantasy lives as thick with substance as gruel? These endless parades of impossible (or at the very least, highly improbable) scenarios somehow enthralling enough for people to sacrifice their own potentials, convinced their lives, by comparison, were indeed dull. A nation of drones, munching away as their asses thickened and the couches weakened.

His mood darkened yet. That's the problem now, he thought. Most people doin just enough ta get by, if that much. At every perplexing crossroad simply peering hard to the horizon, straining to pinpoint the easiest direction. Goals were set over plates of bacon in the morning and satisfied in front of televisions late at night. This was a world where kids were killed over athletic shoes and whatever-the-hell Starter jackets were, a world where old men got mugged on the way home from their favorite pubs for a few scraps of paper they held in their pockets. Christ, what a place.

"You're just outta date, ole man," he said, clearing his throat gently so as not to disturb his shoulder. My God, it was sore. And of course that was not the extent of it; his whole body hurt; ached deep down, even to the roots of his hair.

He had to get out. A vision of his living room floated up like a prophecy of well-being. Within its familiar embrace he felt sure the healing would truly begin. Even the perpetual dust would serve to nurture and mend his aching wounds.

The doctor ('Hebert'? 'Howell'? Ebenezer really couldn't recall) had given him a tentative departure date for the weekend, but only after excessive prodding by Ebenezer. Not good. It was only Wednesday and cabin fever was getting strong. He kept hoping Billy would stop in. There was something about him. What a strange young man, he thought for the hundredth time. Ebenezer detected huge tracts of want, goodness, and need hidden somewhere behind the childish eyes, but access to these places was uncertain, perhaps impossible. He'd seen such people before, long ago in the war. Living fortresses, sealed up and as tightly packed as sticks of dynamite. Potentially as volatile. Ebenezer knew from experience these people had a tendency to explode with only the faintest of warnings.

So what are your demons, boy?

He let this thought escape into the cosmos. Perhaps, drifting out, it would find its mark, and then come back to him with sufficient answer. Ebenezer readily believed the truth of reality hid itself well within the tapestries of dreams and impulses, making the only true impossibility lack of imagination.

He hoped Billy would come back before he left. Ebenezer wanted to take a more studied stab at the boy; he wanted to see if he could shake loose some dirt and find what lived (albeit extremely uneasily) behind those young eyes. He became so deeply involved in this wandering state that to anyone passing by, it would appear as if the old man slept with his eyes open.

Chapter 32

Billy held the phone cradled to his ear. Even though well past the point of expecting anyone to pick up, he still held out that Elizabeth would come in and answer. "Shit!" he spat violently, finally clunking the receiver back. He checked his watch.

8:32 p.m., Thursday night. Nothing to do, nobody to see. Jesus, was he out of touch? But so slowly he'd not completely realized until lately, when he'd also realized the irreversible damage as its aftermath. He didn't have to work tomorrow, but so what? He sure as hell didn't feel like sitting at home, but now that he'd found Elizabeth was unavailable...(yeah, but how many nights lately you left her in the same position? the goddamn voice prodded.)

"No, no, no," he said loudly, angrily. Not that shit again. Not tonight. Billy stood up and looked around, setting his chin for action. He would not sit and be tortured by his conscious, endlessly questioning this move and that. It just wasn't gonna happen. "Fuck it," he said strongly.

He kicked the footrest of the old recliner back into place (it had a tendency to sneak out after you'd stood up, perhaps hoping to catch a shin in the dark) pleased to see it stuck this time. Fine, he'd take good omens anyway he got them. He swept the beer can from the side table and slugged back what remained. Tepid, but not bad yet. He backed up and his foot crunched into a Pringles' can, spilling the crumbs into the carpet. He bent down and picked up the can but left the chips to make their way into the sizeable, practically microscopic sub-structure embedded in the depths of the pile. He tossed both the beer can and the crushed Pringles' cylinder toward the garbage, going for the bank off the wall, surprising himself when both found the mark. Two for two on the omens!

He cracked his knuckles, turning to the old Akai receiver, vastly out of date in the fashion department but still admirable in terms of efficiency. It was the goddamn CD player that gave him fits lately, and that thing wasn't quite a year old. Some days, no problem; others, it refused any bribe, just as cantankerous as an oyster fisherman with a hole in his boat. Or especially aggravating on the infrequent days when the laser danced around aimlessly on whatever disc it chose, turning the music into a garble of incomprehensible bullshit. Billy inserted R.E.M.'s Monster and hoped for the best, nudging the cabinet at just the right moment because that sometimes seemed to help.

His good luck continued and he turned up the volume several clicks, starting for the bedroom, picking up forlorn articles of clothing along the way. One shirt possessed a particularly rancid halo, and the over-turned glass close by still held the vague reminder of milk from a late-night double feature last week. Probably the night TNT had played those two 1930's horror flicks. Not many people still knew (and Billy suspected far less cared) but Lon Chaney, Jr. was the best film monster, ever. Period. Billy snapped his fingers, trying to remember...yes, House of Frankenstein; that was the one with Bela Lugosi, the first Dracula, instead playing Mary Shelly's awesome creation. Billy'd read somewhere or heard on the TV Lugosi had been buried in full vampiric garb. Now how was that for morbid?

But the House of Frankenstein. Billy'd never forget the end of the movie: the castle caving in from its own weight and the weight of the snow while the monsters continue their fight to the death, heedless of the destruction raining down around them. My God, that had fascinated him as a child. As Billy stripped off his shirt he tried in a voice fairly cracking with age, "When the wolfbane blooms, and the moon is full and bright." The old gypsy fortune teller had seen Larry Talbot's fate in the depths of her crystal ball inside the roving trailer, and what she'd seen had come true. Talbot had been a cursed man; all the powers of the universe suddenly set against him for some unknown reason. But despite this he'd maintained nobility. That was most important.

Billy whistled lightly, and threw the handful of clothing onto his unmade bed. He tossed the shirt with the milk stain into the corner, and dropped his pants and underwear where he stood before crossing to the bathroom to run a hot tub of water. It was hard to hear the music over the pouring faucets, but he eased back and waited for the tub to fill.

He would definitely hit the town, by God.

*

Fifteen minutes later he stood naked in front of the sink, carefully combing his hair as he dried it. He liked his bodies' trim, muscled ripple, and figured it had to hold some attraction for women he didn't yet know but would like to. When's the last time you got laid? a taunting voice questioned. He thought back, his brow furrowing. Bethany, he knew, but when? End of March? Hell, here it was late October. Too damn long for the hand dance. Summoned, his dick stirred with the fleeting image of Bethany's full, naked breasts moving in the darkness, and he unconsciously reached down and grabbed it. However, after a few brief, and half-hearted tugs he let it go again; the image had faded and the harsh bathroom light did nothing to sustain anything else. Not tonight; tonight it would take the real thing.

Or nothing.

He hurried into his room, picked through his stuffed closet for the least wrinkled shirt and pants, finally satisfying himself after a long search. He put them on and studied himself in the mirror. Not too bad; he'd walk the wrinkles out by the time he reached the Quarter, he hoped. Because ironing was out of the question. He did have a steamer that worked with a little bit of salt but any shirt over a microgram thick was a complete waste of time.

Thirty minutes later, after once more trying to get in touch with Elizabeth after praying his mother wouldn't answer, he left, closing the door and double-checking it with a crisp tug. Then he started off into the night.

Chapter 33

Elizabeth was not home because she'd been called to a party in Slidell by an old friend, Mary McNamara. She'd decided to go because the thought of another lonely night cramped up in her bedroom, waiting for tell-tale signs of nausea or wrenching aches did not sound good. Besides, she'd done well this day, no episodes of vomiting or dizziness, and from her experience (although short) with these matters she'd grown to expect the rest of the day would be all right. Besides, getting out of the house would help to clear her head of the disquieting figures and phantoms that persisted in their continual hauntings. She remembered what she told Billy a few days before, on the levee outside Cooter Brown's, and how she'd been determined then to make a mighty show of confidence. There were memories to be made, she'd said. Only thing is, the hard part proved believing it.

She'd taken several hits from a joint she'd gotten off the guy at the corner drugstore (an acquaintance from high school who'd apparently never chosen to stretch himself too thin. But at least he was manning a cash register and appeared, at least outwardly, happy), carefully blowing the foul-smelling smoke into the alleyway outside her bedroom window as the queasiness evaporated in her stomach. Of course she had a strong and confident will, stronger than most she presumed, but there were times when will power folded under pressure, and pure animal instinct begged satisfaction.

She wanted a man.

It'd been the dreams the night before. Who was that? His face remained unclear; perhaps a mishmash of previous lovers all rolled into one, but that prick! No one she knew, that much was clear! When the fiery images had finally driven her into wakefulness (face flushed and nipples as hard as tiny diamonds), she could still practically feel his tremendous size inside her, his hair in her face as she'd moaned in pleasure.

She'd come too, gasping for air, chest heaving. Her panties soaked. At first confusion had thrown her off guard but gradually the intensity of the dream pulled back, allowing her to collect herself. The dream-man was gone but the memory was not. And although wakefulness had made her heir to an uncomfortable guilt (as if someone had been secretly watching), the itch remained.

Closing her eyes she'd vainly sought him, succeeding only in a mild approximation. However, that had been enough for the moment. Shedding her nightshirt and pulling away the panties in a frenzy, she'd begun massaging her breasts, panting lightly as the tension (which had abated somewhat), began building again. With her other hand she'd worked herself, fingers glistening beneath the cover until her hips bucked and shook. She'd finished in a rush, her legs straightened like cables, had even in fact, finally rubbed her own juice across her reddened breasts in rapture, not wanting the feeling to end. To hold on to as long as possible.

But it hadn't been enough.

As she laid there, breathing the musky, alluring scent of her sex, she'd known what she had to do. She'd almost forgotten how powerful subtle needs could grow when left untended by distraction, and was in sudden awe of her bodies' demand. Suddenly there were no pains in the armpits and groin, no dull throbbing behind her eyes. Only a deep, utter peace.

A deep, utter, momentary peace.

Because as the orgasm's initial elevation threaded, the old phantoms began stirring restlessly, as if aggravated by this damning interruption. They had crept at her slowly but the sweet essence of the fantasy had clung steadfast, she realizing this small triumph wrested free as she'd clutched back desperately. Later, when she got the call from Mary, it'd seemed like Providence.

*

As Elizabeth fixed her hair the pain surfaced again for air, but she turned the suddenly-induced grimace into a seductive pout without too much worry. She even cursed it out loud. Even though she wasn't much on profanity, she had to admit she felt better afterward. In fact, her smile broadened, eventually giving birth to full-bodied laughter remembering a female comic she'd seen on HBO. Something about guys hoping to get laid when they went out versus the fact that girls already knew. It would hold true tonight if she had any honor to uphold.

By the time Billy rang on the first of several attempts, Elizabeth had already been gone twenty minutes, speeding across the Causeway to Lake Ponchartrain's north shore with Mary.

Chapter 34

Billy decided to try the Funky Pirate first. It had a good central location on Bourbon Street, and the blues which floated through the perpetually-open doorway were a gentle blend of both smooth and compelling textures; every note crisp, the steady rhythm of the drummer tapping a strong heartbeat against the backbone bass, so charged and alive it went straight to the stomach. And the wailing guitars! My God, there were actual wizards made flesh!

Though it was still early, hardly a quarter of eleven, the Pirate was on. People spilled out all over the street, crowding the door, stumbling into the gutter. Billy sandwiched through the crowd, finding it easier to breathe once past the door. Then he threaded his way to the rectangular bar just to the right and up a short three steps, put there Billy guessed to sprawl drunks on less crowded nights. He shouldered his way up close, managing to get an arm strategically placed with the five-spot in plain view. The buccaneered waitress quickly got him a Dixie, and he faded into the melee to soak in the soul-cleansing remedy he so direly needed.

Two hours later he pushed his way to the street. The growing throng inside had become too much, and the air in the Quarter was a cool blessing. Claustrophobia was not his bag. He walked to the corner and leaned against a building, feeling the rough-edged bricks take on his weight grudgingly. It'd probably leave some dirt on his clothes as a reminder. He slammed the rest of his beer back in a swallow, and pushed away. It was almost two o'clock in the morning. Almost.

There was one more place he wanted to hit before calling it a night. About a ten minute walk, off Bourbon, but still deep in the Vieux Carre'. Billy hurried along stopping to get a 16-ouncer on the way.

Chapter 35

About the same time Billy was leaving the Funky Pirate, Elizabeth danced the ancient rhythm in the strange bed of her new-found lover. She'd been right about knowing. He was a fine, lightly tanned boy of nineteen with a sparkling smile, prodigious strength between his legs, and control beyond his years.

They coupled at his parent's house, or more accurately, around back in a converted garage that served as his apartment. Their own bag of potato chips had already been knocked to the floor in their abandon. Elizabeth had told Mary earlier she wouldn't need a ride home, and Mary had only been slightly surprised but understandably lusty too. She'd had her own guy, a husky stud with an affinity for boisterous talk followed by a lot of booze. Elizabeth wouldn't have been able to get past that, but Mary hadn't seemed to mind.

"I'll call you tomorrow," Elizabeth had told her, holding Thomas' hand and winking slyly. The returned wink was knowing, even though a glaring edge of intrigue shone through because in all the years Mary had known Elizabeth, Elizabeth had never been one to run off with a guy she'd just met. There were many other friends Mary would never even think twice about, but with Elizabeth it was different. She'd wondered until a hand searched across the small of her back, squeezing gently as it worked its way down. Soon thereafter Elizabeth's actions had no longer been of Mary's paramount concern.

*

Now, several hours later, their frenzy was still not spent. Yet. Somewhere in the moonlit darkness coming through the blinds (throwing slants across his face and body), Elizabeth saw Thomas' orgasm building. As he tensed a moment before his hips bucked, an animal cry issued through his clenched teeth, and before Elizabeth had the chance to tell him any different, he pulled out of her. Caught in the middle of her own orgasm, Elizabeth grabbed him with both hands and pumped savagely, keenly aware of her own juices speeding the rhythm. His back arched savagely as he shot wild and hot across her belly and breasts. Some even made it to her chin and rested there like warm honey.

She continued squeezing him as he collapsed upon her, trembling. Finally she released and wrapped her arms around his broad back. "You didn't have to do that," she whispered in his ear. "It's safe." A manly, musky scent radiated from his sweating skin.

"I wasn't sure," he gasped. "I didn't wanta do something I shouldn't." He looked into her face and even in the darkness it was hard to miss the kindness set deeply in his cheeks. Elizabeth stretched to kiss him. "I'll make it up to you," he promised and she smiled silently, not wanting to tell him she'd come too. Not with the surprised stirring she could already feel against her thigh.

"Already?" she asked.

A satisfying grin spread across his face. "Soon," he answered. They kissed and whispered into the others' ear for a few minutes more, after which he raised himself above her. It would be slower this time. Elizabeth pushed her head deeper into the pillow, feeling her nipples harden pleasurably. "Yes," she whispered as he began the slow dance with her again. "So alive," she whispered, not sure her mouth had found the words or her body made them.

Chapter 36

Billy heard the raucous music well before he reached the deceptively bland light-blue door. Stenciled in a cryptic scrawl at eye level were the words: The Blue Crystal. A vibratory uneasiness slithered past this doorway, lingering malevolently in the street like a bad dog sick with hunger. Billy paid the door fee and the punk-rocker (his face a mirage of intricate tattoos) accepted the money emotionlessly as he marked Billy's hand with the light-sensitive stamp. Tonight it read very simply, in a smear of faded red: Kill.

Billy registered the invitation and slipped his wallet into a front pocket.

He made his way into the loud club, squeezing past a log-jam in the doorway to find a multitude of others huddled and bunched along the crawling walls lining the bar, the air buzzing as if from a hive of bees. Wild hair, pink, red, white, partied side-by-side with other seemingly more sensible souls in Hilfiger shirts and dirty Oxford loafers. Any mixture of sickness and depravity abided well here, which was why many came to get it.

Billy, hyped by the alcohol racing through his blood, muscled his way to a seam near the bar and waited until a harried barkeep could bring him the Wild Turkey. On the occasions he came (which was seldom), he always had the same. Straight up; no mix. The drink was handed across, miraculously without spilling a drop, and Billy left the change from the five, half out of the hassle of waiting any longer for change, and half in hopes the drink-pusher would remember for the next one. Taking a large swallow Billy continued pushing toward the dance floor.

The Misfits always intrigued him. The strange of the strange.

He anchored himself in a corner, out of the main flow of traffic, but eye-on to the happenings on the littered dance floor. The heavy whiskey was a poultice against the techno rage blasting from the speakers, but the rush of noise still fucked with his equilibrium. The night disciples were in abundance: the beyond-description, the lost, the diseased, the beaten, the tired; all manner gathered together to writhe like snakes. Take the girl near the stack-amp: draped in gothic black replete with lace and kick-boots, gyrating in semi-consciousness; or the male face streaked in tears and black mascara, railing, conjuring demons only he would see in his private corner. Billy understood. He knew these demons because he could feel them also, moving in the air. This cornucopia of temptation and abandon drew them like flies.

However, tonight it was two girls affected him most. Wild and hardly four feet away near the edge of the floor, they stood locked together in a scorching embrace, their tongues down each other's throat. Billy watched hungrily as they ran their hands along the many curves each one offered. Both dark-haired and young, separate from all those around them.

And watching them, he began to grow hard.

I'm part of this, two sides echoed, one not wanting to accept the fact while the other basked in the thrill of the two girls. But Billy had to accept it (regardless what the two voices bickered over in his head), unable to disavow any longer the hard-on straining at his zipper. He shuffled from foot to foot, trying to position his jeans for accommodation. Finding only limited success he took a long, hard shot of whiskey and closed his eyes, grimacing as the liquid raced a fiery path to his stomach.

He limped from his voyeur's post, making slow passage to the restroom. In the long, seedy, dimly-lit hallway the Men's Room was last, and he hoped to have himself under control by then. But as he passed the open door of the Ladies' Room he could not resist a peek inside. A girl stood not three feet away, in the dank recesses of an open stall, a key to another girl's nose making short work of cocaine. Neither of them paid him any attention. His sexual urge continued sinking as he turned away, running smack into an incredibly drunk man who fell, stiffly, back to the wall. The drunk mumbled something incoherently, stinking of a mixture of cologne, alcohol, and puke; his eyes mere pissholes.

He appeared harmless and Billy squeezed by to the Men's Room door, pushing it open slowly in case someone else was tipping the key here also. But no one was; in fact, the place was empty except for a urinal full of cigarette butts and a wet pile of puke trailing down the drain stuck in the middle of the floor. He went inside and set what little remained of his drink atop the urinal, proceeding about his business with his free hand. And as he pissed he read the brilliant work of the shit-house poets. Assorted 'fuck you's' and 'suck my dicks' warned, threatened. Mothers and homosexuals were invited to perform mighty perversions and sex for hire. Phone numbers rampant with pornographic instructions. Despite (and sometimes because of) their vulgarity, Billy had to admit a handful were original enough to warrant a half-hearted laugh. However, the one that topped them all was in fact a simple line, starting off miniscule in one lower corner by the toilets (leaving Billy to wonder just how and why someone had gone to that much trouble) that grew stupendously, lapping to the ceiling where it grew and hung like a weight of snakes ready to let go. A simple phrase repeated with a steady, rising hysteria: 'The Blue Hell' over and over again as if the true immensity of this point could never be entirely conveyed. Like finding tangible evidence of a sin.

Billy closed his eyes and stopped pissing. He zipped and turned to check himself in the remaining smashed mirror-shards stuck to the wall. Not great; in fact, not even good. A rowdy group was filing down the narrow hallway and he thankfully squeezed by without provoking the inebriated angst of any of them. When he made it to the end of the passage he noticed he no longer held his drink; it was still sitting on top of the urinal. Fuck it, he thought. If it was there it was lost, and suddenly he only wanted to be home, pulling the sheets up to his chin for the night to complete its cycle.

He left The Blue Crystal as fast as the crowd allowed.

Chapter 37

With a crazy sense of foreboding Billy ran up the chilly three flights of stairs. It was just past 11:30 Friday morning, and even though he had one hell of a headache, he didn't let it slow him. A startling bolt of imperative had awakened him hardly an hour before: a firm finger in the chest warning him to go see the old man again.

Jesus Christ, the power had been astonishing.

The only thing helping to stave off the debilitating effects of his hangover was fear he might've missed the old man. Of course this fear had been initiated with the shocking dream which awoke him, the one that now hung like a dripping towel in his thoughts as he raced up the stairs. In it, on a cold drizzling half-dark day, a coterie of grim-faced, old men had strained against wet ropes as they lowered into the muddy ground what Billy had known to be Ebenezer's casket. Bouquets of red and yellow roses, bent and preyed upon by the steady rain had ringed the yawning hole awaiting its cargo. And in the weird surrealism of dreams Billy had seen himself, set apart from the other older men, hands clasped in a fig leaf pose far off to the right, eyes closed while what could have been rain or tears dripped from the tip of his nose.

As the dream-Billy had been closed off from the sight of the casket's descent, the omniscient Billy had occupied a floating position above, watching the box go down, mind-numbed and unbelieving that he'd denied the man's company out of simple, irrational fear. The dream painted flesh to these fears because as the casket began its descent, things he'd fled to avoid thinking of began their slow crawl. Billy could feel them moving through the sludge of his oppressed memories. Shapes clamored, images collapsed; a rickety bookcase of disquiet went screaming over; a bar full of unease spewed its contents mindlessly. And in the dream the intensity had continued building until the dream-Billy suddenly broke and flung himself down into the hole, vainly attempting to hold back the shovel fulls of mud that now rained down. Trying to scream but finding no voice with which to avert the disaster, recognizing the symbol of his own defeat with every muddy clump that landed.

Now, Billy took the stairs two, sometimes three at a time. Even as he went his mind played with the current paradox of racing to this place he only raced from. It was impossible to deny, since every moment he spent here another little drip of his life slid down the drain, pooling with the multitude of other destroyed lives that had slid down before. But this time, this one time...

He felt he raced to retrieve a bit of that life, stealing it back from the impenetrable darkness by sheer force of will. He remembered Ebenezer asking him to return (the pleading evident in the old man's eyes), and his skin burned with the embarrassment and pain of his continuing inadequacy and cowardliness.

Redemption.

Billy rushed up the final piece like a madman. Ebenezer's mysterious power held the key to his redemption; if anything did, that was it. He did not know how or why he suddenly possessed this inspiration, but the knowledge was concrete. That in itself was reason enough to tear after the old man. Perhaps this was the only sort of hope an exile could expect.

He burst through the stairwell door, unmindful of the sign that reminded anyone approaching to "Open Door Slowly." Fuck it, he had no more time to spare, he'd wasted enough. He hoped the Head Prick had the day off, but it really didn't matter at this point. If he were spotted and reported for running through the hospital like a hunted terrorist, then so be it. Perhaps by grace he'd be hidden in shadows.

Just down the hallway to the left, not much more to go. Billy saw the door still cracked ever so slightly, just as it had been several days back when he'd first seen the old man. Billy ran to it like a nomad to an oasis, his hair wild, in a greasy ring upon his head. Emptiness greeted him when he thrust the door wide, a stark room lit only because the sheet changer had been careless upon leaving.

He slumped, fairly collapsed into the hard visitor's chair beneath the ceiling-mounted television. "Goddammit," he breathed, blossoming spasms of pain behind his eyes, bringing tears only half from the hangover. His heart pounded. "Missed him," he said, the benediction coming quietly, simply.

He sat there for some time before shakily gaining his feet and walking like a zombie through the door and then down the hall. At the bank of humming elevators he stared vacantly at the 'DOWN' arrow, absently mulling over its implications, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He slowly turned around, uninterested in who he found there. It was Gerda, her black, sarcastic face now melded into an expression approaching concern. Billy's eyebrows raised.

"Billy?" she asked curiously, as if she didn't fully recognize him.

He gave her a semblance of a nod.

"Ain't you off today?"

Another nod.

"Well, what you doin' 'ere?"

"Raising the dead, Gerda. But it looks like I was too late."

His answer caused any semblance of courtesy to drain from both her expression and voice, challenged in his ridiculous reply. "Yeah, show you did," she curtly returned. As the elevator beeped, preparing to open, she continued, "You smart-ass-muthafucka. I ain't even should give you this..." and she shook her head while digging through the front pocket of her Housekeeping coat. She withdrew a small piece of paper as she went on describing him in expletives, all the while, Billy trying to put meaning to the fragment he'd heard. "Give me what?!" he spouted excitedly, so much that Gerda was thrown off balance and obliged quicker than she'd intended.

"This," she shot back, slapping the scrap into his hand. And without another word she was off to fight another day.

Billy looked down and unfolded what looked to be a note. There, in barely legible scrawl was the name 'Ebenezer Holgren' and below it an address. Nothing else. The elevator closed again as Billy's mind registered the information he'd been given, and he stood in front of the silent bank of elevators, staring. "Just like the fucking story," he said to no one at all.

Chapter 38

Not long after Billy had made his frantic assault of the hospital's back staircase, Elizabeth and Thomas passed a rather subdued drive across the Causeway Bridge. Elizabeth stared out the passenger side window, trying to focus on the wisps of clouds trailing overhead in hopes she could take her mind off the escalating pain proclaiming itself with every heartbeat. It was clear; fantasy night was over.

In the seat beside her, Thomas kept his eyes on the road, sneaking an occasional glance at the girl with whom he'd been so intimate the night before, now silent and miles away with the coming of day. She seemed unable to inhabit the same skin he'd known, so quiet and withdrawn was she now. She'd not said a word since they'd gained the Causeway.

He didn't know what to think; she hadn't come on like she was bombed. Sure, she'd had a few drinks, that'd been obvious, but not enough to warrant this change in attitude. The girl in the dark had been laughing and articulate, eager to please; she'd asked to be taken in perfectly lucid, and explicit, terms. The one sitting next to him now was a sealed vault.

Maybe you were the one reading the wrong signals, his sub-conscious piped in, leaving him to consider these abstractions as he listened to the road and the quiet pulse of the radio.

Somehow it just didn't ring true. No, but... what about venereal disease? He gripped the wheel tighter, trying to chase that unwelcome specter away. Even though his stomach tensed and a crease crept across his brow as he squinted into the morning sky, this much more disconcerting thought didn't seem to hold water. They had gone to bed with each other last night, but so what? Thomas figured he'd been with enough females to catch vibes off them. Doubtless, he'd been with a few sluts (caught a case of the crabs that'd been damn near impossible to shake), but this girl didn't fit the type. She was different. Somehow...he couldn't be sure how he knew. She was more cute than a consecrated beauty, way above the line in smarts (not that he was such a great judge of that), and in the few hours he'd known her had maintained her lusty and ebullient attitude with little effort. Or so it had seemed.

Maybe she's not a morning person? he pondered. He tried on that idea to see if it fit. He chanced another quick peek, saw a sharp grimace of pain flash above her cheek. A hangover, perhaps? Hard to say because she'd not spoken a word. And for one of the strange, mystical reasons that go forever unexplained, the look he'd witnessed shook loose a terrible pity, ranging back through the mists of his early memories and bringing one particular, lost moment to the forefront.

He was suddenly in mind of the time he'd seen his brother clutching his stuffed monkey. The expression had been the same somehow. Thomas had punched it in the face and then laughed and mocked the younger boy in the afternoon; however, standing in the shadowed doorway that night had shamed him. He could still remember that moment, years past now but just as real as if it'd happened yesterday, his dignity so low that he'd cried silently and thought about it time and again ever since. All this, even though his brother probably didn't even remember the episode at all. It was a private sin, a lesson that sunk to the softest part of one's soul. A sin paid for in memory.

He also remembered quietly kissing his brother's forehead that night, and then making a mad dash to the door when Stephen began to stir. His brother was away in military school in Alabama now, paying his dues for a horrible, anti-social personality and a careless disregard for everyone except himself. Of course, Thomas did not believe that one mean act as a child had set his brother on his darkened course thereafter, but he had felt determined ever since to attempt righting any obvious wrong he inflicted on another person. Regardless of whether they felt the same or not towards him. He reached across and switched radio stations. "You feel okay?" he asked.

Elizabeth flinched and drew back in her seat. A thin line of sweat beaded below her nose and Thomas saw her drag it away with the back of her hand. Then she turned to face him bearing a mighty stamp of dignity, immediately confirming what he'd already suspected. She was no tramp.

Just very deep. Like ocean depths.

Almost imperceptibly she nodded her head, and on a whim he reached over and touched her knee, relieved when she let his hand remain. Then she answered in a quiet reserved manner, "I'm fine."

"Good. I was just wondering. You're just real quiet, you know...and I wanted to make...uh, I don't want to upset you about last night..."

She covered his hand with her own, looking down at them as she answered. "Upset about what, Thomas?" and he noticed how carefully she pronounced his name. "It was wonderful and I think you're wonderful too. Nothing's wrong; I just don't feel terrific."

"Headache?"

She hesitated, then nodded her head in agreement. "Yes," she said in a tiny fraction of her own voice. "Just a headache..."

Without consideration Thomas stumbled on, "I know things went fast, but I want you to know—"

She put her hand quickly to his mouth. "Shh," she warned, leaning close. "You didn't take advantage of me; if anything, it was the other way around. You gave me exactly what I wanted." She took her hand away from his mouth, boring deeply into his eyes with her own. "Exactly what I needed..." she finished quietly.

Thomas' eyes widened as the staccato thumping coming from outside warned him he'd drifted too far to the left. He looked away to get his bead on the road. "Ho! Look out!" he said excitedly. "Keep it between the lines!"

When he looked back she was smiling. "Watch where you're going, Mister," she scolded. "You're gonna kill us both."

"Yes, ma'am," he replied, throwing her a brief salute with his free hand. "I'll do m'best." His face had visibly brightened under her attention.

"Appreciated." Elizabeth kept her hand on his knee. "If you're wondering where this wild goose chase will end, I live on Severn in Metarie. Close to Rummel High. You know where that is?"

"Sure. Used to play 'em in football, twice, their stadium. No problem at all." Then he veered back to the previous course. "I'm glad you came home with me last night...it was really great." He looked to see how she took it, and saw as before, her screwed brow. The tell-tale sign of pain clearly evident. He also felt her nails digging unconsciously into his leg through the jeans. Better to let further discussion cease. They spent the remainder of the ride coasting in silence, Elizabeth resting her head, eyes closed. Her hand stayed on his leg and every once in a while it jolted with a savage urgency. Each time he would peer over and find her brow furrowed as if in intense concentration. It was then he dared not move his leg for fear he'd disturb her; from the looks of it, the headache was a doozy. Twice, he turned the radio down a single click.

As he passed the glass-fronted, sharply-cut Galleria staring like a cut diamond at the rush of cars on I-10, he cut to the far right lane and began watching for Old Metairie Road. He didn't like the idea of rousing her, but he felt it necessary that Elizabeth at least possess consciousness when he pulled into her drive. "Elizabeth," he prodded gently, just loud enough for her to hear, he hoped. "We're almost there. You're going to have to tell me where to turn."

She opened her bloodshot eyes, shading them with her palm to cut off the fierce morning sunlight. She took a moment and said, "Take a right at the next 4-Way, and another right after the circle." She'd forgotten the pain killer the doctor had prescribed, and every passing minute stoked any of the number of burning fires building within her body. She tried not to let on.

Five minutes later they pulled into the short driveway Elizabeth pointed out, and Thomas sized it up unconsciously for later. Typical, late-fifties neighborhood, probably alone on the outskirts of the swamp when first built, now showing the inevitable scars of time and neglect. And it was readily obvious, many of these scars came not from choice but from the meager incomes most of these families had to live on. He wondered whether or not to shut off the engine. He decided not to, not now.

He watched as Elizabeth turned the door handle and pushed out, aware the moment was fast escaping. It was almost gone when he reached over and pressed her arm. "Last night was great, I wanna tell you," he fumbled lamely, "and, uh, I would like to see you again." His swallowed hard. "That okay?"

Elizabeth rifled through her purse, her eyesight swimming, finally, thankfully finding a pen and scrap of paper. She quickly scrawled her number on it and leaned over to kiss him quickly. "I loved it too, Thomas," and she managed a smile that, along with the words and the number, produced a satisfying calm in the young man. He clutched the paper in his fist.

"I hope you feel better," he offered.

"I will, don't worry. Thanks for everything, Thomas. Call me..." and she moved away.

Before he backed to the street, he watched her carefully measured steps to the door and the tediousness with which she opened it. He wanted to tap the horn once just to acknowledge their parting, but wisely thought better of it. Shaking his head and wondering if the number crumpled in his hand was legitimate, he drove away.

Chapter 39

Billy walked briskly down Dumaine, away from the river, just on the outskirts of the cobblestone courtyard that anchored the St. Louis Cathedral. The usual street performers and artists were scattered about as if they'd been shaken loose from the very sky itself, even though all did their best not to infringe on another's space. Their effort was spent making their own appear the most fascinating. These performers held a strange, strong appeal to Billy, and he'd often come and watch. Give what he could as he tried to fathom their natures. Here were people willingly brave or foolish enough to scratch out a living practically from the very brick lining the walkways and porticos. Seeing them somehow usually made him feel better about himself, but not so today. Even the rapid-fire rhythms of the young, black dancers with beer-capped tap shoes only sounded like artless clatter.

He held the scrap of paper Gerda had given him tightly in hand. Pointless, really since the information it held (scant as it was) had been committed immediately to memory when she'd handed it to him. 267 Ursulines Street, not far from here. Billy took a right on Chartress, one block down from the river. Two more blocks and then a left.

He moved at a fast trot, glancing at the address once more, continually assuring himself the number he'd memorized was the correct one. And after finding himself right each time he refolded the scrap and stuffed it back into his pocket. Out it would come again seconds later. Now he could just see the black street sign he was in search of, mounted high atop the green, antique lamp pole in hopes no one would steal it.

He walked beneath the lamp and checked the addresses across the street. The first one read 189 Ursulines in bold Gothic script. Not far then, just about as expected. He jaywalked across the intersection to the odd-numbered side, the first address in the second block, 201. Now his walk slowed because many of the fronts bore no addresses whatsoever, while others only barely managed to state their tenants' names with vague, yellowed tags set next to intercoms beside wrought-iron fences.

He didn't find the address as written; found instead a sudden fluttering upon a second story balcony. The wind soon fleshed out the material into a raincoat as Billy stood watching below.

There was no doubt as to who it belonged to as Billy recalled the night Ebenezer had burst in from the storm, railing like King Lear on the stormy moor. Billy quickly jogged ahead, straining his eyes to see if there was anyone on the balcony. He saw two French, double-doors hanging open, their curtains dancing the same steps with the raincoat, but there was only darkness farther back. Perhaps the erratic flicker he saw inside was the light from a television.

He came out of the street where he'd drifted for this vantage point, and stepped quickly to the thick, wooden set of three steps which ascended behind an iron fence to a dim alcove. He squinted into the murky shadows crouched in and against the side of the building, searching with his finger through the fence for a name or number. There, right there; his finger stopped. 267, Ebenezer Holgren. He pushed the button on the intercom, fearing it no longer worked. It had surely seen happier times. In fact the whole building appeared, at least from the outside, fairly uncared for. However, you could never tell; the cover of a book was oftentimes misleading. He considering walking back out to the street and hailing Ebenezer from there, but before he committed himself to this action, he pushed lightly at the irongate stuck on thick poles embedded in the concrete sidewalk. He laughed quietly when it rocked back easily on surprisingly quiet hinges. He peered at the lock as he passed within. Not much use.

Perfect, Billy thought. A veil of mystery (deception?) surrounds everything about him. He made the skinny, creaking stairway and started up, with each step the knot of apprehension tightening in his belly.

He held onto the piping to the top of the landing where the beaten STOP sign held up the wall. He pursed his lips, his hand hovering in the air, and knocked. Once. He caught his hand before he could do it again, and crazily entertained the idea of taking off. At that very second the unseen, overhead bulb jolted to life, filling the area with light. Billy jumped, bumping the wall, challenging the authority of the STOP sign as it thumped against the wall. A second later the familiar, gruff voice barked out.

"Who da hell is it?"

Billy paused, wondering if this was a good idea. He swallowed hard, then, "It's Billy."

Nothing for two beats. "Billy, huh. Well, I'll be good goddamned," and a familiar laugh passed like smoke from underneath the door. Billy heard shuffling footsteps and then the rasp of a dead bolt. The door remained closed. "Come on in, boy!," Ebenezer said a little louder, so that Billy could practically picture the old man even if he could not actually see him. Eyes crystal-clear as he made his way back into the living room, tossing the greeting over his shoulder like a handful of salt for good luck.

Billy reached down, grasped the door knob, and opened the door. Pushing inside revealed a small, tiled foyer which branched off quickly to the right. Inside was almost as dim as the stairwell had been, seemingly illuminated only by the last, faint rays of sunshine spilling in through the French doors. Billy heard the old man settle heavily into a chair, the springs shooting off like pellet guns in the echo-filled room. Billy stepped inside and shut the door quietly, not yet used to the odd acoustics. Around the corner he heard low, incoherent mumblings from a television. He walked the few short steps across the foyer, eyeing the many old movie posters glowering from the shadowed walls all around. Both familiar and unfamiliar faces regarded him with an unnerving silence.

When he rounded the edge of the wall he saw Ebenezer's slipper-clad feet perched on the footrest of his easy chair. The old man was dressed in a robe and his hair was wild as usual. He clicked the television into silence when Billy entered, and his smile served to break the nervousness Billy had prominently carried with him into the room.

"Well, well," Ebenezer said, gesturing for the boy to sit upon the richly-lumped couch pushed against the opposite wall. Billy went to it, noticing all the furniture in the room was situated close to the walls; everything that is, except the old man's chair. It seemed to serve as a pulpit of sorts, a pivotal axis around which everything else revolved. The other décor, besides the array of interesting and brooding posters, was Spartan but comfortable. Billy tried to imagine how many times the couch had borne a passed-out drunk. From its condition, countless. He sat down and leaned back in a pose of relaxation.

"Hello, Ebenezer," he began, now searching for the right words as to why he'd come. There were some he'd entertained on the way over, and knowing Ebenezer, he chose the bluntest. "I didn't make it back, but I'm glad you left the address with Gerda." He picked up speed in case Ebenezer tried to cut in. "I just about kicked myself in the ass when I didn't, and I didn't know if you'd be pissed---"

Ebenezer fanned off this attempt with a wave. "Please, no excuses. I owe none and expect none. I'm glad ya decided ta stop by. Damn shoulder's been pitchin a bitch all morning so I been holed up. I really hate layin around on my ass all day, and hell, with them damn pain-killers I ain't even had a drink. Tried a couple days back and almost puked."

"But you are feelin better, I hope?" Billy tried restively.

"Oh, yeah. Damn good. Just like ta bitch, is all." Ebenezer snapped the footrest back into the chair and tottered to a standing position. "Let's move out ta the veranda, m' boy. I love ta feel the City breathe." He made his way to the French doors, fingering his chin before deciding the request. "Why don't ya grab us two cold ones from the box. Ain't gonna let my company go dry; what kinda gentleman would I be? A beer can't kill ya." Billy nodded and went to the box as Ebenezer stepped gingerly through the French doors.

Chapter 40

On the balcony, Ebenezer positioned the thinly-cast wrought iron chairs so they faced down Ursulines Street toward the river. "The angle's a little better this way," he assured Billy, pointing. "I love ta watch the sun reflectin off the windows, really showin off the brickwork. Some days it's magic; ya'd half expect a genie ta dance a two-step down there by the shop front," he said, now nodding.

Billy sipped the beer, then set it between his legs. The wind made a difference up here, much more so than down on the street, and it gave him a feeling of privilege, as if suddenly privy to a long-kept secret. He peered over the railing, watching the usual miasma of people strolling through the Quarter. Some with packages, others with cameras, some just walking.

Ebenezer gazed at the brick facades across the street, squinting at the way vines and other curious plant life sprouted directly from the cracks in the brick itself. Despite their location some were practically the size of window shrubs, hanging over the buildings' ramparts, refusing to give an inch as their roots dug deeper into the mortar. Tiny cracks were filled and forced larger in their steady advance, and it was a marvel, the utter resilience of these once wind-blown seeds.

"Damndest thing, ain't it?" Ebenezer commented, catching Billy looking too. A miniscule smile crept at his features.

Billy was taken unawares. "What's that?"

"The plants growin all over the sides a them buildins. Hardly a bare strip a ground for blocks, but somehow they still manage ta make somethin a theirselves."

"I know what you mean," Billy acknowledged. He snapped his fingers. "Reminds me, there's this building on Esplanade, close to where the Interstate comes across. One whole side is completely covered. It almost looks like the side of a hill, really, like the building was rolling backward in Time somehow."

"Yes sir, I seen it," Ebenezer said, nodding his head, gazing down the street. "Kinda makes ya wonder, don't it? Where's the separation line? We're all fightin for every square inch be ya bug or tycoon." The sarcasm in his voice was almost surprising. Billy took another sip into the face of the breeze.

They sat in silence for several more minutes, each quietly digesting their impressions. When it felt appropriate Billy said, "I'm glad you left the address. I kinda get the feeling I've made a habit of running out on you whenever we meet." Even though it took a fair amount of will power to get this out, Billy could not miss the concerned, mystified expression deep in Ebenezer's eyes as the old man turned to face him.

"Christ, boy," Ebenezer said, his tone just a step from reprimand. "'Ow many times I gotta tell ya? Ya don't owe me nothin. Ya hear? Ya ain't bound ta me, for Christ's sake. I just tell a few stories and drink beer. Hell, everthin's therapy, each ever-livin day. We all got our ways." Surprisingly, he reached out and slapped Billy on the knee. "We just pass a coupla beers between business." Then he quickly looked away, hurrying the mug to his mouth. After taking a mighty heave he wrinkled his nose and snorted violently. Shaking his empty can, he cracked a smile. "That weren't too bad. How bout one more?"

"You got it," Billy replied.

"Well what the hell ya waitin for!? Get in there and get 'em so we can close those doors! Goddamn mosquitoes'll carry me off tonight if I leave 'em open much longer. Like the jungle around here, the way them damn things come on all goddamn year!"

Billy nodded both approval and affirmation, standing up. When he turned his back on Ebenezer to go inside the old man spoke again. "Come for another story, did'ya?" he asked bluntly.

Billy didn't even turn around. "You bet I did," he said, disappearing into the darkened room.

Chapter 41

"Sit down," Ebenezer said, halfway down himself already in the worn recliner. Billy walked over and set the cold beer on the tray resting nearby, and then attempted his former place on the couch. "WHOA, don't sit down yet!" Ebenezer contradicted and Billy stopped, for what he did not know. Ebenezer pointed toward the French doors. "Sorry ta be a pain in the ass, kid, but the damn door didn't set when I closed it. Just saw another one a those damn mosquitoes fly in. Could ya get it for me? Makes a little dry rasp when it catches."

Billy went to do it, listening as Ebenezer cursed furiously, swatting at one of the long-legged mosquitos bobbing idiotically around the room. "Goddamn bugs!" he shouted. Billy pushed the door and sure enough, a faint little rasp issued when the groove was met. He turned and went to his seat, increasingly aware (as he took a good look around within the glow of the kitchen light) of the enormous number of posters hanging from the old man's walls. It was a virtual history of Hollywood crammed into five hundred square feet. There were Hepburn and Cagney, Durante and Stallone, DeNiro and Taylor; Brando brooded from a corner while Bogey smoked silently near a bookcase. Burton, Dean, Monroe, Pacino, Portier, both Fondas, Davis, Crawford, and on and on; everyone accounted for; everyone in silent respect of all others. And somehow, at the center, this strange old man holding forth for his private audience.

"Got a ton a 'em, don't I?" Ebenezer said proudly, catching Billy's interest. He took a healthy swallow of brew and bent to the side, pilfering with something Billy could not see.

In fact, Billy was just about to voice his interest in James Dean when Ebenezer stopped the unspoken comment by sliding the chest into view. Billy had only seen trunks like it before in movies, movies like the ones lurking on the walls around him. The trunk was obviously constructed from old cedar, rusty iron bands strapping it together. Billy immediately forgot Dean as Ebenezer began speaking, withdrawing a key from his pocket and placing it into the lock.

"Had a friend a mine; Italian fella, used ta work down in the Warehouse District. Met 'im at a Mardi Gras parade 'bout a century ago." He gently pried the lid back and rummaged within, grunting until he found whatever it was he searched for. "Hah!" he spouted, withdrawing a small journal before closing the lid again carefully. Ebenezer held up the small book with one hand as he pushed the chest out of view again with the other. "Guy's name was Calandro, ten years younger'n me but that don't mean much when ya're dead, does it?" He fought a pinched smile that touched the corners of his mouth. "Poor guy ditched thirteen years ago this comin May. On a Friday as I remember, emphysema. Damn cigarettes'll kill ya," he said and took another pull from the mug.

The light floating in from the kitchen didn't appear substantial enough to read by, if that was in fact what Ebenezer planned to do. And as if in answer the old man reached over and pulled a completely concealed lamp chord hanging from the ceiling. A gentle, gloomy glow absorbed into the room, providing perfect ambience for reading, the mood suddenly created akin to something out of the Brothers Grimm. The effect was a trivial majesty that Ebenezer appeared ignorant of, but the old man was wily; Billy thought that much was so and it would be well to remember. It was ever harder to tell what was staged and what wasn't. Ebenezer patted the cover of the book with one finger.

"This journal came outta one a them warehouses. Got no name or address, but plenty a clues, nonetheless. A diary a sorts. A diary uva profession and a man." He rubbed a hand through his thick beard. "When I finish ya'll see," and Ebenezer waved the book in front of his face, "the author was completely mad. Perhaps even...possessed."

Billy leaned over, finding it hard to distinguish where this mysterious introduction would lead. "What is it?" he asked dumbly. Ebenezer pulled off the rubber band that held the covers tight and tossed the journal over. Billy caught it easily, noticing the cover was completely blank; no title; there were also no markings on the spine or back. But it was obviously very old. A musty smell of mildew and yellowed pages drifted out reminding him (for some unknown reason) of coffee. Or the basement darkness of a museum, something else whispered; the smell of decomposing secrets, came from yet another. When he opened the tome Billy found a tight cryptic scrawl overwhelmed every page front to back.

"Hmm," was all he managed. Then he closed the volume and stood up to hand it back to Ebenezer. The old man set it down in his lap. "So tell me about it," Billy prodded.

Ebenezer snapped the small journal up in his craggy hand. "Calandro used ta work in one a the warehouses by the river," he said. "I tole ya that already. Years ago, way back, he assured me anythin and everthin in the world was stored somewhere in one a them warehouses, everthin from delinquent estate property taxes ta the bones a slaves from botched escape attempts before the Civil War. Ever been inside one?" He crooked his eyebrow at Billy.

"Never have."

"Yeah, no matter. But believe me, I been in a few and it don't take long ta believe what 'e said. Some a the older buildins're straight outta the Twilight Zone." He waved a hand in the air. "Anyway, back ta how I got the book. Calandro give me a call one weekend. Middle a the summer, and Jesus H. Christ, the heat!. Even the rats, damn near as big as beagles, just layin there in the spaces between boxes pantin as we went by. Ya didn't dare step on one a them damn things either, lemme tell ya."

He took a pull from his mug to lose the rasp from his voice. "Anyway in this partic'lar place, a whole back wall—and this was one hell uva wall lemme tell ya—was used for storin private articles like furniture, antiques, the works. Everthin was packed inta these huge, wooden crates with numbers in the corner, and then they was stacked one on top uv another ta the ceilin. And keep in mind, that ceiling was about fifty feet above our heads! Musta been about a twelve thousand foot section square, piled full." Ebenezer popped out the footrest and Billy likewise leaned back on the couch to hear what followed.

"Calandro'd somethin ta show me that godawful hot day," Ebenezer continued. "Somethin long lost among all the piles a this privately owned bullshit people had stashed, and for one reason or the other, forgotten. Calandro tole me he'd seen billing manifests listin some a the stuff as old as the '70s. Not the 19's, the 18's. Plantation goods boxed after the Civil War for one, a box discovered in a shuffle one day turnin out ta contain what was left a two very old, very chained bodies. Years ago, accordin ta Calandro.

"We went there for this," Ebenezer said, holding up the journal again. "He had it layin way back in one a the caverns a the buildin, back where no one would find it. He said it was fittin, callin me out in the stifflin heat ta lay claim ta the hellish thing." Ebenezer set the journal in his lap and pressed his forefinger hard into its black, dusty surface. "He'd been movin a bunch a crates around. Mentioned somethin 'bout ventilation purposes, switchin boxes from the floor ta the top, other stuff it never paid ta remember. The gist of it being: after several years in those warehouses the heat and humidity will start ta twist and weaken the boxes. It can get dangerous if left unchecked. Ya just might find yaself underneath an antique trash pile if attention ain't paid.

"So the load shifts while 'e's workin and one a the forks punches a hole in the bottom box. He said it musta missed a coupla rotations cause the bottom was rotten as hell, and with the hole punched in the side, 'e almost didn't get the others off the top before the box collapsed, spillin out the contents.

"This came outta that box. Oddly enough, Calandro said this was the only thing mildly interestin in there. I always liked how he said that, 'mildly interestin'. Nothin else but old newspapers, pamphlets, shredded paper and clothes...moth-eaten men's clothing. All the same size but way outta date. The newspapers were all mid-to-late 1940's and the warehouse number was so old it had 'most faded away. Weird, since many of the boxes in the warehouse dated back much later and were still in fairly good shape. Anyway, while he's diggin around in search a its code tag, this journal comes slidin out.

"He figured 'what the hell,' pocketed the book and went ta the office with the number in 'is head ta run a check on the owner. Went through all the packin, receivin, and storin lists, and come up with nothin. Concentrated in the 40's but nothin, zero. Went all the way up the ladder, nothin. Eventually, the box was trashed since nobody could figure why a person would store paper and old clothes in a six foot by eight foot box for countless years, obviously. And worst a all, as far as management could tell, nobody had ever paid a goddamn cent for storage. Just sittin there like a ghost for decades..."

Ebenezer halted his diatribe, pausing so as to secure the moment, to let the shadows wrap themselves tighter around the furniture, settling quietly into every seductive corner. He even reached up and clicked the cord once more, reducing the light further to a mere vague presence. Then he opened the journal with what looked like trepidation mixed with a good dose of determination.

"This is what's inside," he said quietly. "You and I're in a private club now, Billy. Never showed this ta nobody and the only other person on the face a the earth who knew it existed's been dead for damn near thirteen years." Ebenezer wiped his mouth, bent to the book. Billy noticed the old man's hands were shaking. He watched as Ebenezer turned to a previously undisclosed marker three-quarters deep in the small journal.

Chapter 42

Ebenezer read in monotone, a striking departure from his previous stories. This is what he said, again, in a voice that was eerily not his own:

"As I stated earlier, I write this to please myself only. But on the chance someone gets this far, the spells and incantations earlier on have either missed completely or bide their time in the shadows. It really makes no difference to me. By that theoretical time I will have long since ceased. In fact, I doubt that one bone will ly within scorching distance of another. Such are my transgressions against mankind. Such also are my transgressions against gods and demons. Perhaps they will lead me to the very Gates of Hell Itself, but I fear no torture. I fear no damnation.

"Assuredly I am twisted, demented, evil. I bear these things, wear them among the living although they know not. If they did my purpose would end. One can seldom choose what will make them great, what will serve as legacy, so I scratch out my own accolades, my own acclaim. My bounds are becoming ever more limitless; ever more grotesque. A deep, dreadful smell follows me now, every hour, forcing me to layer upon layer of clothing so as to not call attention. Soon, it will not matter.

"I am unsure what dread consequences I have set in motion, but I will abide here with quill and candle, waiting. The storm has been blasting since late this afternoon and as the Devil's Hour approaches I can fathom no sign of easement. This room wafts with the scent of the charnel house. But enough...there are other things to set down.

"From the moment of birth I had purpose. My earliest memories revolve around images of animal vivisection and exercises in formaldehyde. How many animals? How many species? Purely beyond my comprehension.

"But nothing compares to the Speechless.

"They are surely the upper echelon in my field of depravity, the pinnacle to which I aspired. The pinnacle to which I reached. First, as the lowly apprentice to the sick Mr.---, an institution in the profession, though none would have believed the sickness that diseased his mind. I was very proud to do him The Honors myself when his time came around. As all do. As mine will. Dead, he was very different, unrealized difference, laid out quietly in the silk shirt, the severely starched trousers; his hands impassive and cold upon his chest. But I did for him, and he, in turn, did for me. The torch was passed. The torch of secrecy now known only to myself, and the Speechless, if they can now hear too.

"In public I keep to myself, careful not to betray my sinister insight, these bizarre compulsions. Only a true genius can raise himself above the level of subjectivity to the true realm of invisibility, but that is what I did, what I have done. That is why I like these rooms; the darkness comes on so easily. Even the occasional vermin which happens to find its way inside, shrieks at my shadow, my very shadow! I know I'm very close, even closer than the old man had supposed. It was inevitable; I was too soon in synch with the embedded chill of the stainless steel tables and laboratory sinks. I embraced endless emptiness so very soon.

"Of course, I am seldom disturbed on the street, even less so in practice. Despite my invisibility I am still viewed with equal parts superstition and revulsion, but that is understandable. People don't understand the practice; they don't want to; they don't choose to. And most assuredly they wouldn't abide my need, it being too...discordant to weakened palates. Because, naturally, mine is a morbid profession, and I've found typical fools shrink from my handshake on nothing more than pure animal instinct. It is most assuredly not my hands that are cold; my disguise is too complete for such silliness.

"But it does give me a thrill, though, their trepidation, that mad skittering fear behind their eyes. Even the City Fathers, these leaders of men and business become very small in my presence. Especially when they come to do business. Then they are quiet, insecure little mice, here, where insecurity flourishes. Doling out whatever I ask for services they don't choose to contemplate, for procedures they pretend do not exist, just for the comfort of escape back to their world. But for that one moment they do recognize their end, for just one second they track the clock's hand and tremble. I am the magnet of their fallibility.

"So? I laugh because this unpardonable fear holds nothing for me. I understand it and welcome its permanence.

"Of course, I'm not well. To state anything to the contrary would be in defeat of my purpose. I shun the daylight and commit unspeakable acts on the dead in the sanctity of these inner rooms. I realize my deviance; I foster it. Because the dead tell no tales. This is my progression, my onward march. I see no meaningful distinction between the living and the dead, and here, where I am the worst, no one speaks out to defame me. I've found this tolerable for a while. But my boredom has grown.

"I peer through the gloom, pouring this poison to the page. I listen to the rain pattering on the windowsills. Just beyond the lesser shadows I can see water gathering in a growing puddle by the door. My heart races with every ripping peal of thunder, with every stroke of lightning. It is surely the beginning of the cacophony of demons I have summoned! The countless minions who've waited impatiently on the Other Side, licking their slavering lips to get at me. It is a long-awaited Feast they hunger for. And in the face of this knowledge, I laugh.

"I do not seek safe passage.

"I welcome the Time of Flowing Blood, rending what I can even as I am rended. My rebellion will be legend!

"Because the last things have been done. There are three Speechless lying silently on the steel tables in the back rooms, not far down the drafty hallway from the room where their clotting entrails trail down the stainless drains and their blood congeals on the concrete. The inscriptions warned against cleanliness, against any hint of such. Even so, I've reached much further than the Books warrant; I've picked my brain for every conceivable avenue.

"For I am the only true monster in the world. I have festered and bred this madness with the care of a wet-nurse, gloating over it like a rat stuffed to fill. Fear holds no sway, provides no barriers. I have become Fear.

"The bite of sulfur hangs in the air yet. My knives and splitters are racked in place, although fouled and crusted with blood and yellow fats. Candles melt everywhere. How the Speechless lived is of no concern, for it is only now that they can achieve full potential. What I propose is only hinted at in most texts, but I have turned back the envelope on those amateurs.

"As I raise my pen there is a sound. Very faint, cloying, but a sound nonetheless. I know it: the dry spin of rollers scratching at their poorly-oiled drawers. I am keenly aware of the hallucination now; in what I formerly cast off as a drift of light ascant I see the boy I once was (although ghostly and tendrilled in these dank confines) crouching in the shadows, frightfully staring at the megalith I've become. Perhaps, then...it will be tonight. The storm, if anything, has only increased in pitch and I don't think I'm wrong to suggest the conditions are impeccable.

"For what, my imprisoned soul wails? For the hope of stepping into the mire of Hell, naked against the demons that infest it.

"I've attempted to form the abomination. Only time binds me now.

"Yes. The whispering has started in the air; it is both choking and reptilian, as prophesized. The knives are within easy reach. Soon I will have enough of this; words are meaningless. I prepare myself to close and tuck away this volume, and I will go to Them. Accordingly, Their restless, snarling sleep must loosen and I will go forward. I will disrobe and join the Throng--

"---if They are powerful enough to best me. I don't know what to wish for so I wish for nothing. I only anticipate how deep the knives will cut this night."

*

A long silence followed the end of the reading. Ebenezer closed the tome and looked at Billy. "That is the end," he said, placing it upon the closed chest. He rubbed his hands together as if cleansing them. "What d'ya think?"

Darkness gave the room an eerie pall, like the essence of a visitor left to wander a museum long after closing. The posters dug black holes and other irregularities into the walls. Billy realized his feet were asleep as he brought them to the floor, and bent to squeeze his toes. Light from the street filtered inside through the thin curtains at the windows and French doors. He found he'd been holding his breath for some time and exhaled loudly. Then he sat up and shook his head. "Is that some kind of joke?" he asked weakly. Ebenezer didn't reply; he just shook his head. "No one has seen that except you?" Billy questioned; it was hard to get a focus on his thoughts.

Ebenezer glanced over at the slender volume and shook his head again. "Just you, me, and Calandro. A club a two, reduced years back ta one, and now regained ta two once more."

In the darkness Billy asked, "You believe it?"

Ebenezer paused before giving a reply. "I b'lieve things in this world get damn strange, Billy. Life and death's got many tricks we don't know 'bout yet. Too young. Everthin we can consider or contemplate has already been considered or contemplated hundrets a times before. Things happen. Little traces a horror or ecstacy, cast away off hand, sprout and grow back ta the surface. And I b'lieve in the end there's no horror but what we make for ourselves. Heroic or damning, dependant upon our character. Look what this maniac made of his..." and he touched the book again lying on the partially-hidden chest. Then he took a moment to disengage himself from the chair and stood. He pressed his shirt flat against his belly. "I don't know the truth, Billy. All I know right this minute is my arm's gone ta throbbin and I'm shit-tired. It's probably that goddamn story workin me up, but I just couldn't resist firin it through ya." And with that Ebenezer began making his way toward the back rooms. "Looks like it's my time ta run, kid. Twist the lock when ya leave, and" (looking over his shoulder) "please put that thing away."

Billy sat still on the sofa until he heard the click of the door to Ebenezer's bedroom. The dull drone of the toilet hissed quietly through the apartment soon afterward, and Billy noticed he'd been biting his fingernails. Within the circle of light by the recliner he saw the thin volume, so seemingly innocent now that it was tucked between closed covers.

He stood up and walked over, lifting it carefully as if it might rip at his hand like a rabid dog. He found his lips very dry when he rubbed his hand across them. "Is this for real?" he mouthed, hardly noticing the fact only two words carried enough strength for sound.

Ebenezer had been reading from somewhere near the back of the book. Billy opened it to the first leaf. The cryptic, precise scrawl marched like tiny, faded ants, the letters engulfing and choking off the space around each letter. It took a moment to get used to it but when Billy did, he didn't like what he saw. The book promised a dire and bloody curse, drawing an even darker pall upon Billy in the dim room. He shuddered and turned his face away, keenly aware of the fine, crystalline chill in his body, as if his soul had been exposed to a deep recess that hungered for souls.

He no longer wished to touch the book. It was like coddling a blasted animal scooped from the side of the roadway. He fumbled the chest open, holding the book away from his body as if it stunk savagely. In the dim glow within all he could see were what appeared to be old newspapers and a few articles of folded clothing. Ebenezer's revelation of how the book was found was not lost to him and Billy quickly pitched the book onto the pile, shutting the lid quickly without slamming it outright.

The feeble kitchen light was not enough to steel his nerve. He made his way across the room and down the short hall to the door. The famous faces from the past and present watched in muted tones from the shadows as he, fumbling, turned the lock.

He was to the street before he caught his breath again.

Chapter 43

Just before Billy entered his empty apartment less than an hour after he'd hurried away, Ebenezer snorted loudly in his sleep and twisted over to his side. The sheets were balled up by his feet where he'd kicked them. Sleep had practically ripped him down the shoot, surprising enough after his reading, since that particular one usually rode him for days afterward. Touching the soiled surface of that journal was akin to touching a dead body, a body that refused to lay quiet. Its ability to drain him was appalling.

It was a thing to set off repercussions.

Tonight would hold the nightmares, he'd known. Crowding around his bed in the darkness, all the vague slitherings from childhood, and the more concrete but darker yet shades from his adult life. Perhaps that had been the very thing to send him to such speedy oblivion: there was such a lot of it, and every piece demanded a stage. A stage that sleep provided.

He tossed in the solitary room and wrestled with beings that plagued him. His sleeping, unseen face was locked in grim determination. The closets in his mind opened, expelling their heavy burdens into the many rooms and corridors, some spilling into view, while others bent, concealed in corners. Maybe, one: an old insult forced upon him once in a schoolyard, cowering and timid; another, the thought of his wife's fierce grip on his hand on her deathbed, though it'd not been for comfort; and last and longest, the background litany of screaming planes. Endless screams.

He could hear the whistling of the engines in a place far deeper than his ears, and always the pale blue sky floated with soft swirls to provide fitting paradox. Transfixed in the dream, he knelt once again on his knees, dripping water in the boat, his eyes wretchedly pinned on the shimmering bank. Scarcely breathing himself as he continuously pumped, staring into the tree line. The many odd shapes dancing within the depths of the woods, warning ripples racing out until they lapped at the hull with the soft, persistent slap of water riding a lip.

Then, more pressure and bright lights in his face, a humming of well-oiled machinery beneath his feet, feeding the inch-long bullets into the magazine. The crunch of pebbles and rubble beneath the knobby tires in one of many burned-out areas. Smoking houses with snaking tendrils lifting out to catch the wind. A particular blasted house, its door disintegrated, revealing splattered blood and the poor wreckage of twisted bodies.

And in this montage of dreams and memories, this place where the many closets opened and coughed out their irritable wares, a lone symbol rolled slowly across the dusty floor, and squinting harder into the gloom of this nether world, Ebenezer saw it was, finally, an apple. Bruised but whole, and then the image was no more than a pile of rubble. More smoke and bodies, but somehow, that one intact apple sitting alone among all other destruction.

This private theater played on until the first fretful stab of morning chased it away.

Chapter 44

Nora Stockton entered St. Paul's Cathedral like a worrisome mouse, her mouth twitching at the corners as if to heighten the image. She only maintained her dignity being minus the whiskers and tail. She was early as was her habit. Mass didn't start for another half hour, but she wanted time alone first. Just her and the Lord. She realized now resistance was useless; her tyrannical torch had dwindled in a deluge she'd not foreseen. And now she was plagued by the revelations Elizabeth's illness had triggered. The trick was too cruel, the thorn too ragged and damaging.

Sin lingered to take each one down in time. But just perhaps, some things could be changed; some pleading bargain might still be within her grasp. To this thin hope she pledged her waking hours.

She tip-toed down the red-carpeted aisle, her fingers lightly playing across the arched side of each pew. Effigies of Christ, Peter, Paul, and the Old Testament patriarch Moses, peered down from their stained-glass perches. She tried to bear up, but she was shamed. In her one sworn duty before God she'd failed, in what she was now beginning to see as barrier-erecting behavior against her own flesh and blood. Now, yes, she wished for Phillip, her dead husband, gone from her as completely as if he'd never lived at all. Billy, her renegade son with his soul (she feared) so hopelessly lost. And now Elizabeth. Her most beloved paying this staggering price for all of them. Unless...and Nora stopped, beginning to tremble. For the second time the blasphemous thought threatened to break irretrievably free. The Lord God could not be bought or persuaded and she knew it. Fearfully well. She quickly crossed herself, eyes downcast to the floor.

She paused, pulling nervously at the rosary beads hanging around her neck. She couldn't hear her footfalls on the carpet as she advanced and prayed her obvious subservience was adequate in His presence.

She came to the foot of the altar, lined on either side by the minute organ pipes regimented above the choir gallery which grew to triumphant proportions along the back wall. They alone were enough to inspire both awe and fear, but they were such a small part in themselves. God's glory or retribution would prove much greater, she knew. Echos of this were plainly evident in the stained-glass windows where Christ both healed the blind man and loosed his anger on the moneylenders in the temple. Mere yards separated the two actions. As Nora knelt carefully where she would receive the Host, she quietly opened her purse, and reaching inside, withdrew the single red rose. She laid it down in supplication, and backed away from it with her forefinger pressed firmly to her lips.

A massive silence pushed up close against her.

Hear my plea, Oh Lord, she silently implored. If You see to it, please don't take her. If my sin is one of selfishness let me pay, but please not with the blood of my children! I don't offer this as bribe; I have nothing to offer You. I only ask it as a mother. She cast this up to Heaven, through the shafts of sunlight, past the manmade ceiling. There was no need for a priest; she wanted no mediator. Perhaps (and this thought sometimes haunted her) that was why she always came early: to try to get her wishes one more time on her own terms. And as if to stifle such thoughts before they grew, she always fought this thorny demon away into the far reaches of her soul and always stayed for Mass.

She sat then, quietly bargaining with the accountable Host against her sins and the sins of her family. Against the sins of the world if need be. Loneliness was a steady poison; it thrived easily. Nonetheless, her sheer determination pitted her against the impenetrable silence, and the building seemed to regard her with a deference that was not all-together unjustified.

Chapter 45

Thomas sat in his garage apartment, watching the rising thump of lights ride across the Sony amplifier. He had the remote in his hand, occasionally bumping it up a notch though he'd ceased paying attention to anything but the riding curves of light. Even so, Axl Rose's cracked, banshee-inspired voice railed against the room, tearing and wailing away until Tomas killed it abruptly by the press of his finger to the Mute button. Then, nothing. Just a fading away of the LED lights until they disappeared below the base.

He bit his lip, appeared to question himself one last time about some misgiving before snatching the phone from his lap. He hit Redial, the same number he'd hung up on twice before after the first, short volley of rings. The high-pitch pin-ball pulse rebounded quickly back and forth through his head, further disturbing his already peaked nervousness. It began to ring. His eyes flitted around the room while he waited (just now past the deadly one volley barrier), falling at last upon the powder-blue Gibson guitar propped accusingly in the corner. It'd been almost two weeks since—

"Hello?" a tired voice asked.

He almost dropped the phone, failing suddenly at the cusp. He'd almost convinced himself that the number was false, at the same moment mindful that he'd only tried it (at the most) four, maybe five times.

"Hello?" the voice asked again; this time agitation was beginning to creep to the edge.

"Oh," he began, stumbling. "Yes, hello. It's Tom, I mean, uh, is this Elizabeth?" He sat up stiffly in bed, tossed the remote onto his rumpled sheets and ran his free hand through his hair.

Then the voice turned unmistakably crisp. "Who is this, please?"

"Tom...Thomas Wheatley," he answered, and when he heard only silence as the seconds stretched to years, he added, "The guy from the party."

"I don't know of any party, Mr...Wheatley."

Then it was suddenly clear; the panic had screwed him. This was not Elizabeth. Thomas changed tact, hoping he'd not already revealed something this person should not know. "Oh, yes ma'am," he said politely. "I'm a friend of hers and I was just trying to get in touch. She's not home?" Sweat ran into his left eye and he slapped it closed.

"She is not available, Mr. Wheatley. Elizabeth, my daughter, is not here right now. She's at the hospital getting blood work..." and with this the eerie, hollow voice snarling in his ear simply wound itself out like the end reel of a movie.

"I, uh, didn't know." Blood work? For what? He didn't know her that well, for Christ's sake. He felt he'd just dropped a crucial third down pass. The cooler voice on the other end of the line increased his anxiety.

"I don't know when she'll be back," it said.

"Well, this is the number to reach her, right?" Hospital tests? He felt a sinking in his gut.

"She lives here, if that's what you mean, Mr. Wheatley. Most of her friends know that full well." The iciness and agitation were unmasked now completely. There was no mistaking. "However, she's not here, and if you don't mind I'm very busy right now, so..."

He held out his hand as if actually imploring someone in the room with him. "Okay, I understand. Okay." Then, weakly, because he could think of nothing with which to redeem himself. "I'm sorry for taking up your time...if you'll just tell her I called..."

"I'll give her the message," came the reply, gaining distance as if the woman on the other end was already steering the receiver toward its cradle.

Thomas leaned forward, intently, legs tightly drawn up Indian-style. "I hope that it's nothing serious," he tried but only a harsh droning buzz answered his reply as the connection was disengaged. "Sonofabitch!" he threw the phone away as if the very plastic repulsed him and snatched up the remote. His face was red and hot; he felt disgraced. The same sort of feeling he assumed he'd have if discovered beating off by his grandmother. Shamed completely. He punched the Mute button a second time and Axl Rose lept back in mid scream to tear at the air some more.

Chapter 46

As Elizabeth left Touro Infirmary that day her racing thoughts eclipsed the warmth of the noonday sun outside. She was nauseous; her stomach flipped like a fish on the cleaning table, serving to grow in scope until she became that fish, floundering in desperate futility, gasping for each searing breath in an alien landscape. The only thing that separated her was mind, her solitary contemplation against the void. The image grew in proportion, her mind's eye zeroing in on a scene at a long-ago hunting camp as the bearded man scaled with a spoon the bream he'd scooped from the sink. She, younger and wide-eyed, breathless, as the fish's curious, marbled eyes never changed, remaining fixed, lidless and unblinking, as its body warped in agony. This was the True Fear. The unknown horror that appeared so mundane: a fish-cleaning from the other end of the knife. And now she was the one up against it; she could scarce feel the icy blade skating along her flesh.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the revolving door as it spun her to the street, and in those eyes she recognized a shade of the same blank, glazed look. Things were not getting any easier. The taped cotton patch at her elbow pulled at her skin, and she unconsciously placed a hand over the crook of her arm, trying vainly to make it go away.

Some days were harder than others. Some days there was no light.

Even so, she straightened her back and breathed in deeply as she walked on.

She caught the Metairie/Kenner bus at the corner of Louisiana Ave and St. Charles, and sat quietly in one of the handful of empty seats. The bus tooled down Louisiana, Elizabeth staring out the dirty windows at the myriad goings-on in the city. Black men of all ages hanging out on porches with large bottles of beer and malt liquor in their hands, gesturing and laughing, trying desperately to beat back the poverty around them. Children, both black and white, carelessly riding their bicycles in the street, dodging traffic, dangerously alive in their brief immortality. Also derelict cars left randomly along the curb, some with windshields smashed and tires stolen, others doorless and stripped. All dead and waiting for the Yard. These scenes did nothing to lighten her mood.

A harsh reflection ricocheted off a store-front window and happened to hit her full in the face. Even with her glasses on the effect was near blinding, and jerked her thoughts away to different things. This time it was an old favorite of her mother's, a story told time and again in Elizabeth's childhood so much so it'd taken on a life of its own: the blinding light that struck the evil Saul on his way to Damascus, and the changes that overtook him thereafter.

She leaned back in her seat as a peculiar thought of staring into the very eyes of God passed through her mind. There were too many parallels, every little thing leading on to a stream of ever-increasing possibilities. Everything seemed circular these days, revolving always upon itself like a dog chasing its tail. It didn't used to be like that. Religion and fables, stories and wives' tales; they all carried the inherent theme of startling brilliance as the forerunner or apostasy of some coming wondrous, sentient power. A brilliance mirrored in its opposite: symbolized in darkness and the blanket of ill deeds and intentions that moved fluidly, also, in the depths. The bus bumped along the heat-and-root-rumpled street, moving slowly to avoid the parked cars on either side, or the errant jaywalker with his head elsewhere.

Elizabeth remembered the talk she'd had with Billy a short while back at Cooter Brown's, the day he'd insisted they take a walk. She surveyed the other silent passengers with a minute swivel of her head, trying to see inside them. But of course it was no good. Every mind was a veritable capsule, a prison of isolation, alone with its odd jumble of confusion or peace. Her confession had seemed to brighten Billy's confusion that afternoon, and she'd not forgotten the details. Her ability to articulate what she'd been digging around had been invigorating. It had been powerful and strengthening, that session, but now as the hours milled and scratched away at its foundations, true sanctuary was difficult to find, hard to grasp, and torturous to hold. She could feel her metaphysical fingertips beginning to slip, even as she struggled to hold tighter still. Philosophy became ragged at its seam, and nothing on the other side seemed capable of offering protection.

She remembered they'd walked across the odd connection of roads that rounded off the end of St. Charles Street, crossed over the railroad tracks, and stepped up the gradual incline of the levee. For a while all they did was walk, Billy slightly ahead, both hands shoved into his jeans' pockets. "The river's nice," she'd said as they reached the top. And still no word from Billy. She'd said it more to halt their mindless wandering than anything else, and Billy had stopped. Stopped and turned to face the bank down below, lined in a scraggy, unregimented border of cypress and chinaberry trees.

"I've been avoiding you, haven't I?" he'd offered almost pleading, never taking his eyes from the lapping bank. His gaze cowed from the strain of the words and his eyes had drawn to slits.

Elizabeth walked over and took his left hand. "No, it's not like that, Billy. I know how you are, I understand and—" She stopped when he pulled his hand away, the move sudden enough for them both to take notice as Billy quickly attempted to salvage the already desperate moment.

"No, Liz. I don't know that you understand me...I find it hard understanding myself. I look at you and something inside me feels like it's gonna boil over if I don't do something. But there's nothing to do. That's the worst. It's anger and sadness and fear all rolled up into one, but the worst part," and here Billy faltered, "the worst part is I don't know who it's for. I want it to be for you, but my mind tricks me, lies that this torment is because of you!" His face tensed with the pressure and this spilling of a torrent of focused emotion. For a moment Elizabeth was afraid he would fall to his knees, and she pulled hard at herself not to jump forward too quickly, but slowly, so that he had no real urge to move away, instead slumping and resting his head on her shoulder. A sob hitched in his chest, but only one. Elizabeth steered him away from the gravel service road atop the levee to a modest clump of clovers by the side facing the river. He sank down like a water-soaked towel, Elizabeth by his bent knee.

"Don't be afraid of me, Billy. Don't use this for fear. I don't believe anything ever really ends...." Billy turned to her with an ancient expression of wonder, confusion flooding his features.

"So we're telling the truth now," he said.

Elizabeth nodded, but kept her mouth closed.

"I'm different than most, I guess..." he began, struggling for the words to fit his emotion. "I don't believe there is anything else. I just see an emptiness, a vast, seamless void that everything drains into. It makes me afraid for you, but there's this thing..." and he trailed off, scratching his fingers at the grass as if to implore the Earth to speak his mind. He shook his head. Then he licked his drying lips before going on. "There's this thing that makes thinking about you dying terrifying for me, and Jesus Christ, I know how selfish that sounds, but there's nothing I can do! I'm a prisoner; everything seems to be slipping away, like nothing's really important at all. Like everything's for nothing!"

"That's not true, Billy," Elizabeth had said very quietly but with a force in her voice that could not be taken lightly.

He found it hard to meet her gaze, but when he got it, he held on despite the rush of blood to his face and his racing heart. The cards were finally on the table. "What part's not true?" he asked.

"The part about everything slipping away; the part about nothing being important. It's not so, Billy. If anything, everything's more important!" She stood up and walked a few paces away from him. She became still, composing her thoughts before turning to face him. She found him courageous enough to meet her eyes without downcasting and a bright spark in her mind caused her to smile. She hoped it would paint her reply. "We are important. We are. Our lives are meaningful and worthwhile. I've had a lot of time to think lately and I really believe this; I've been sorting through my memories, examining everything I can get my hands on.

"And here's a weird thing: I don't think I'm afraid of dying. I don't know what's the worst part, going out quick and alone which is inevitable, or going on a long while with doubt and uncertainty. I'm new at this but I think the doubt is worse.

"Everyone wants to believe, wants to know, their one life is important enough to matter. We have family and friends and we make ourselves such an integral part of the lives that surround us, even if it's only in the way we see it, ultimately, that we can't imagine a world without us. Then something like this fucking cancer pops out of nowhere and it makes everyone pause considering their own mortality. Then, like you, the ancient question shows its primitive, knowing head. And the question remains: Don't I count?"

She walked back and sat beside Billy. There was insatiable hunger in his eyes. "Don't kill yourself with guilt, Billy. We can't help the way we're programmed. The survival instinct is the most powerful, and even though it does its best to hide thoughts like these from our minds, sometimes they get through anyway. And when they do they have to be reckoned with. Don't let it hide you from me, Billy! We're only human and have only a certain, few tools to work with. Everything else is throwing our hands in the air in desperation.

"Usually religion is the first thing people cling to when something like this comes up. We both know how much deeper Mom got after Dad died. It's understandable to a certain extent. But I'm not going to stand here and tell you I'm going to make my Rock or Foundation out of something like that because it doesn't feel right to me. I'm not going to turn into a raging zealot just because this got shoved in my face. Hypocrisy is not my bag.

"But I do believe in God. I just don't think He wants me blubbering around like an imbecile this late in the game." Her eyes grew to a startling fierceness. "I want to be me when the time's done. I want strength and clear vision. I want to understand what's right for me. I can't appreciate the After Life as an eternal church function because that's not what I am. Maybe for an older generation, raised on Lawrence Welk and Protestant warnings, but I'm a realist. My mind is where I am. All my dreams and aspirations, all my dark fantasies and longings, everything that makes me human, everything that makes me 'me' is already here.

"In honesty, I don't know what to expect, whether a great light or merely shadows or even a winged St. Peter come to greet me himself at the Pearly Gates. Or nothing. I just don't know. After all, who's to say for sure?"

She looked at Billy and her eyes held all the brooding intensity of a ragged prophet atop his pole. "But what I'm really for is a little insurance." A suggestion of a smile creased the corners of her mouth.

"Insurance?" Billy couldn't hide the puzzlement showing on his face.

"Yes. A little guarantee, a token of comfort if nothing else."

"I don't understand..."

"I know. It's hard. But it's something I see like this. Even if nothing actually happens when we die, I believe we have the power to stave off the awful loneliness waiting."

"How?" The question was less than a whisper.

"Dreams, Billy." The smile broadened out her features, showing less weight loss now in her animation. "Be honest, how many times have you woken up with the taste of a dream on your tongue? You seem to come from somewhere very far away, electrified with emotion until, suddenly, you're flying awake in bed. Already the dream racing away. On the other hand, nightmares go slowly sometimes, but eventually they're gone too. I believe they're the terrors borne of the Earth, and the dreams, the nice ones that race away at top speed, leaving just bare traces behind, like a scent almost, these are the promises, traces of something altogether different. Things that have nothing to do with this world at all, far older and more wondrous. I believe this."

Billy nodded his head, but remained silent. There was too much here to speak and destroy without further thought.

"I'm using that as my Trump Card, Billy. It makes it easier."

"I'm not sure I understand what you're saying..." he began but she stopped him with a touch to his knee.

"You don't have to," she said. "It's not easy, even for me. It may appear outlandish at first, but what belief in this world holds any better advantage? None, because this is mine. It's what I'm taking. It's what's gonna work for me."

"What is?"

Elizabeth lifted her head and she really did appear healthier than several minutes before. "I'm going out with a dream of forever in my head, Billy. It's something that I'm still working out the details, but I plan on taking everything I need." And she smiled, a touch mischievously. "I'm not saying this is my only line of defense against this Monster, but it ain't bad. Hell, even if there really is nothing at all after we die, I mean nothing but a wall, a great blackness, a lasting silence; at least this can attempt to breach it. Carrying the soul down that long corridor, the one that always spirited away when the light of morning came. It wouldn't have to end, then. Nothing would. Why would a dream die if it were unleashed, finally from the body which constricted it?

"I know it's hard to picture, but its my personal escape route. It puts me in control, where I want to be at the end." She laughed then, fleshing out her smile, although she kept her eyes fixed on a place Billy dared not turn to find. "In the dream I'll still be alive and kicking," she said and laughed.

There was a long silence that followed.

Chapter 47

His mother had given him the Christian name Joshua Quincy Naples almost 34 years before, but it had already been long since anyone, including his mother, had called him by it. On the street he was known only as 'Midnight'. It was a name he'd come by honestly; he'd forced it on no one. And he liked it, knew it was the only name rightfully his. Because he was black in deed and action; the name a natural reflection of his character. Although he wasn't exceptionally forbidding in stature, he carried his average height plainly encased in a wiry musculature that twitched constantly on the brink of violence. His head was a gleaming bald dome bespeaking the deepest color of his moniker, made immeasurably more menacing when he smiled. For here was the predator revealed; his teeth already legend in the poor neighborhood he'd grown through; sparkling white and gold, as resplendent as a king's crown. His posse believed he could speak with the Devil and this was immensely pleasing to him, although he took no pains with such ridiculousness. His evil was of truer stuff than the phantoms the old women screamed against. If he was an agent, he was one of free will and he carried himself with the confidence this line of thinking bred. His I.Q., though never tested, would have surprised any caseworker unlucky enough to have fallen in line for him, but no one ever had. He'd stayed on the fringes. A businessman, just like any other, and power was the only necessary ingredient. Everything else: worthless. Let the old bats wail and moan for his soul; he saw no need for such trivialities.

He generally worked the Quarter. He'd always been good in crowds (he believed himself stronger surrounded by so much energy), and he was always careful. He was not a hot-head by nature. Crazy as a loon, but cool to the point of ice-edged terror. He peddled drugs but took nothing stronger than cigarettes, refusing to be scrambled like so many of the brothers he saw on stoops, withered under the white glare of prejudice. He, for one, basked in his color, surrounding himself in its powerful magic, slinking from shadow to shadow at night as if a scorpion on task.

Right now, he leaned against the lamppost at Union and Dryades, snapping flame from the match with his fingernail. The sky held promise: the clouds continuing to pile up although nothing worse than a scattered shower was predicted. Unseasonably hot, yes, but he could deal with that. The sun would be gone soon enough. He smiled. Winter was his favorite time of the year; he didn't care much for the spotty, chilling rain and wind, but he loved the sweet shortness of the days, the prolonged nights, the touristy-drunken holiday season. Easier, unsuspecting marks fell like ripe fruit from the trees.

He didn't remember how many people he'd killed so far. He generally didn't hang around to see how things ended up, and there had been the disastrous period several years back when he'd been into drugs for a while. But he'd recognized the danger and moved on accordingly. He also felt if there really was a Devil, or any such being bearing resemblance in deed and action, then this Thing undoubtedly kept him under charm. His continuing freedom could hardly be explained in any other way, regardless how good he thought he was. But he did have a code of honor; he never attacked blacks nor foreigners. Not because whites were symbolic of slavery, atrocities, and other humiliations, but simply from the fact of their smugness and sheer numbers. These very qualities afforded Midnight a lucrative livelihood: the wealth of targets, the many addictions, the transactions that only spiraled skyward as years went by.

When he hunted he usually brought Gnat and Nut, the first so named because of his build and the second for his mentality. They worshipped him as loyally as two boys from the Ninth Ward could. Never gave him any shit and never bitched about their purses. Midnight was the Boss. Years back he'd had a bad experience fronting and running drugs himself for a creepy white dude named Aldo Sautin, and had thankfully wrestled free with a valuable lesson taught him concerning the risks of business. He'd learned other things too, but he tried to distance himself from those memories. Luckily, the sonofabitch was long dead, forgotten by most. Midnight didn't forget. Now if drugs were to be sold, he did it alone.

He checked his watch and spit on the pavement. Fuckin Speed, fuckin slimeball, he thought acidly. The fucker was horrible to look upon, no more than six teeth left in his rotten head; he was worse to smell. To make things worse, he ran some of the worst-looking pussy in the French Quarter. Heroin and crack addicts for the most part, stinking of AIDS and hepatitis, but somehow the skinny, junky pimp always seemed to have money and at least one or two of the monsters he called girls close by. The world ran on every kind of broken machinery, there was no doubt of that.

Speed had no more than a handful of cards left. The Horse had wrecked everything; he had a crazy, scatter-brained visage that disconcerted and kept most people away and that was fine as far as Midnight was concerned. The junkies' pitted arms bore the history of the needle, and his ragged fingers were a testament of approaching death and lifelong squalor. All in all, a good customer, steady. Always waiting and wanting, and always with cash. The city contained so many of these sick fuckers.

As Midnight made his way over to the Cathedral for the drop, he catalogued the previous week, filing the things he'd done away in particular places. He didn't like to forget details. When you got old, if you got old, they were the only things that stayed around, he'd heard. Well, he planned on getting very old. File one: the young couple several days back. A good score, and that had been the only thing (in retrospect) that allowed them to walk the planet today. California tourists lucky to be sent home with their own Deep South story. File two: the old lady; a weak punch to the face had been enough. He still remembered what she'd looked like lying unconscious. Hadn't had shit.

He never read newspapers because he didn't want to know how things turned out. It made him feel more ghostly if he didn't know, if he simply let his imagination loose. Of course there were exceptions, like the chick he sold to last night. She hadn't fit the picture. A very nervous type, a novice. So why start with the Hard Stuff? Or how about the old man in the alley. They'd fucked him up plenty good (Midnight recalled the thrill of the knife sliding home), but the old bastard had never cried for mercy. Even there on the very edge of his life...

Midnight rounded the corner, immediately spying the familiar slouching form crammed into one of the alcoves feeding from the church to Pirate's Alley. The cockroach never looked up until you were right on top of him, and even then you couldn't be sure he really saw you. Brain-dead muthafucka, Midnight reminded himself as he walked over to the figure under the ratty, straw-brimmed hat. He'd savor the day he pulled the plug on this fucker.

Chapter 48

Thomas had just left the Wal-Mart near Elysian Fields. He had bought materials for an in-ground aquarium-system pond complete with pump and several boxes of faux granite, and he knew he'd spend the majority of the next couple of days digging, pouring, and planting. He really didn't mind; he liked working with his hands. The thought of donning a business suit and stepping up to the plate at his father's firm filled him with spooky trepidation. He feared paperwork would be a slow crucifixion, a long string of excruciating torture, but that seemed to be where his life was heading. The dam was crumbling but until it gave way completely he would keep refortifying. When the inevitable came, of course, he would answer because the smell of money was undeniably sweet. He'd just have to string the old man along...

Then, without warning, Elizabeth's number had exploded in his head; a brilliant flash of light; a sudden stroke of lightning warning of an approaching storm. He slowed at the intersection, whipping between two cars amid a rain of horns into a Texaco station across the street. Two of the three phones hung unattended and he got out of his vehicle shocked by the urgency of his feeling. He'd been trying to forget about the girl ever since he'd spoken with her mother. What a goddamn battle-ax. And that shit about the hospital? What the fuck was that? He really didn't know anything about her and that had kept him up later than usual several nights lately, he had to admit. She'd told him there was no need to pull out, but still there was a worry that refused to sink. More than once he'd feared his dick had plowed trouble.

He dropped the quarter into the slot and typed out the digits rapidly. He stood, sweating, expecting to hear the monotonous, familiar ring or her mother's exasperated tone. What he got was neither.

"Hello?" The low, sweetly-textured voice was instantly recognizable. Suddenly his tongue corkscrewed into a knot. How the hell could he have thought that was her before? Then it came again, "Hello?"

He coughed and cleared his throat, his tongue finally coming unwrapped. "Elizabeth," he tried.

"Yes...who is this?"

"It's Thomas, the guy from the party..." He wished he didn't sound like this. He switched the phone to his other ear, trying for anything. Luck.

A prolonged silence followed and then Elizabeth said, "Of course, Thomas. You didn't think I forgot you?" The sun was unbearable and he felt sweat running down the cleft of his back. He wiped a hand across his forehead, then down his cheeks.

"I've been trying to get in touch with you since...I don't know. I believe I talked to your mother a few days back and she told me you were at the hospital. That was it. I thought about stopping by, but I didn't know if you'd be home. And I didn't think your mother'd much like that." He slammed the brakes on his rambling, fearing every second that passed she'd hang up the phone.

"Don't worry about the hospital, Thomas. It's got nothing to do with you." Her voice was so delicate Thomas had to press the receiver tightly to his head to hear, jabbing his forefinger into his other ear to stave off the noise of passing traffic shooting up and down the road. "I like to see you," he thought he heard, miraculously.

"Now?" he asked.

"Yes, as a matter of fact. Can you come?"

"You're sure it's all right?"

"Yes, I am. Come on over." And then, perhaps more as nerve-soother than anything else, Elizabeth added, "There's nobody here but me."

"I'll be right there," he said.

Chapter 49

Nora was sitting, again, miserably in St. Paul's. She occupied a tiny space in the last pew and ruminated in seclusion on things that were proving consistently beyond her. Part of it was Elizabeth, another part Billy, but another, more vicious part was herself: her life, her accomplishments, her beliefs. There was a growing ache in her old bones and it was nothing physical; she would not be let off the hook that easily she feared. It seemed the harder she prayed, the more revelations she gradually received, like a cataract slowly dissolving under the laser, lending her inner eye startling, vivid clarity. She became more aware of her hypocritical tendencies as each day passed. The storms these revelations brought pitched and raged in her mind and she became increasingly helpless to shrug them off, to dismiss them as ridiculous. Things long in the darkness, squelched down as to be practically invisible, now stood out tenaciously. They pitched and railed, breeding all sorts and manner of perceptions. She thought herself too old to learn, but was finding out different.

It had begun with Elizabeth's illness. Cautiously at first, just like her own timid footsteps outside the house that had become a veritable fortress for her over the years since Phillip passed, she began leaving. Her husband and children had ventured forth into the unholy Outside while for years she had contentedly (or so she had believed) shored up her own convictions, reveled in her own fixed assumptions of what was right and proper. Her views had always been very rigid, she knew, as inflexible as the God from the Old Testament. She principled herself as she believed the ancient prophets had, subjecting herself to all manner of private subservience in the belief of furthering God's glory. She had taken to heart the story of the seer perched atop his high platform for years, cut off from the world and its many comforts in hopes of seeking the Hand of God. There were also many other tales: Job, Moses, the repentant criminals who shared Christ's agony. But now she wondered to what avail had she used these lessons? Strange new thoughts plagued her.

A voice asked (and was it the voice of God finally?) What have you done? What good have your actions brought? With this multitude of rules what kingdom have you served? Sitting there quietly with the contingent of stained-glass saints and apostles looking on, she questioned her intent. She'd always believed her attitude had been carved from religious fervor, even though now (looking back) she questioned this, since she'd never been active or vocally strident in any congregation. None except her family had ever borne the whip of her philosophy. Her sternness had always been a mainstay with them, but never truly revealed for what she had presumed it to be. Now, frightfully, perhaps it had never been truly religious at all. Perhaps (and she shuddered in the empty church) it had only been a hardened smugness that had grown on her personality like a malignant growth, carefully tended and nurtured over the years with all the care of a devoted gardener. Perhaps it had only been used as both ammunition and backdrop in a perceived religious tapestry that she'd used to hide everything else behind. She trembled from this developing thought, this new malignancy that refused to go away.

She no longer felt comfortable in St. Paul's. The stained-glass stares seemed sad now as they peered across the distance, fixing on her in her relegated spot. Before Elizabeth's illness she'd not been in any church for over twenty-five years, preferring instead the sanctity of her home as sole tabernacle. She'd been safe in its privacy, the isolation it afforded. Had it been out of belief or conviction that she hid away, or had she offered up these feeble excuses to armor her cowardice? By the time Phillip died they'd hardly spoken two words to one another for weeks on end and she'd felt unwarranted contempt for him continually, for no pinpointed reason. Then there were the kids; she hardly knew them. One was gone completely and the other fading. And then, of course, the worst thought of all: Had she ever really known herself? Her convictions now appeared loose and slippery. She felt as if she'd run blindly, headlong, to retrieve some vital something only to stand agape wondering what that thing was and how to get back where she'd started before her strength ran out.

And now, to her, it seemed she'd traded one isolation for another. How many hours had she spent alone in St. Paul's lately, praying for souls, situations? She didn't dare guess. Even so, after these many hours her own soul felt merely unresponsive, and it was frightening. Not to mention the fact that her conscious was infringing too. Here she was fretting and praying at a safe distance while Elizabeth bided alone. Nora shuddered. Did death hold such terror for her that she unconsciously forced herself from her flesh and blood out of irrational fear for herself?

St. Paul's pressed closer. A seemingly alien and remorseless finger pointed accusingly at her soul. She squirmed in the pew, the collar of her shirt constricting her breath.

Then, the old-standard defense mechanism grumbled into gear, powered by the iron will that had ruled her for years. Even amid this shower of disturbance, even among this brilliantly truthful glimpse of insight, her fortifications still proved nigh impregnable. She dabbed at her forehead, reminding herself to get thoughts moving through her head: Didn't leaving the house itself and venturing into alien territory bespeak a strong and unyielding love for her daughter? Surely these disturbing images were nothing more than haunting falsehoods set loose by the Tempter even here in the House of God. She'd always been good woman; how was a stern will and righteous character wrong? And if she wasn't perfect at times, well, didn't that only go to prove her humanity as God had chosen to give?

These were trying times, times when the Lord sought to prove a person's mettle. She breathed out and muttered a short, incomprehensible prayer. Now, now...perhaps she'd spend less time at St. Paul's, now that she'd examined things in some detail. She needed to get back home and try to stabilize the foundation there. She did love her children, she knew that, and even if it was in silence, did that make it any less real? One couldn't change the course of a river, or make a forest out of a parking lot. That was God's sole domain. It didn't matter what kind of grievance or insight might appear later, one wore the face he was given.

Nora knew her chapter in the Great Book had been written long ago, and a desire to change certain chapters now would make no perceptible change in the outcome awaiting. She was too old for new attributes, too tired for new tricks. She'd have to satisfy herself with the determination to make the ones she knew more accessible to her children. Her place was home, not wrestling with torturous demons in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Making up her mind she quickly stood, straightening out her skirt and genuflecting at the altar. A calm descended as she turned and walked down the aisle toward the door. She would do everything allowed of her. Of that she was determined.

Chapter 50

Thomas left shortly before Nora arrived home from St. Paul's. By the time she turned the corner in her lighter-than-air Festiva, Elizabeth was already sitting alone in one of the two rocking chairs on the porch. She seemed so deep in concentration that she scarcely nodded as Nora jerked to a stop, pulling the emergency brake and opening the door in one surprisingly fluid motion. Only then, in the flurry of movement, did Elizabeth finally gesture her way, acknowledging her mother's presence but not much else as her face remained fixed on something in the distance, far out past the railing and down the street.

Nora straightened out, bumping the door closed with her hip. Curiosity would allow her silence no longer. "Elizabeth!" she called. "Are you all right?" She held up her hands to shade her eyes from the sunlight reflecting off the pavement.

Elizabeth turned slowly, resting both hands on the arms of the rocking chair. Nora could tell she was still miles away, but didn't know the boy had been here; she could not fathom the conversation that had just taken place, nor the disconcerting confusion that had spelled its end. These things were just sinking in good with Elizabeth and Nora could neither pierce the moment nor remotely understand it for the vulnerability it had revealed. Elizabeth, retreating from her trance, thought quickly to distract any unnecessary concern and subsequent questioning, which could eventually derail the train of her thoughts. She wanted to chew on them awhile longer. "I'm fine, Mother," she said, much louder than she preferred.

Nora stood still for a moment and then nodded her head as if suddenly understanding some minute point. She turned back to the car, bent through the open window (the damnable A/C had gone on the fritz several months back) and retrieved her Bible, vainly attempting to hold back all the multitude of harrowing thoughts that had followed her home. Because of this she was also a bit lost as she walked up the drive, across the porch to the front door. Elizabeth scarcely noticed her as she made her way by, and although Nora paused at the closed door momentarily, she eventually pushed it open and walked inside without saying another word. The unrest a pronounced but quiet fixture on her face as she pondered her new boundaries.

Elizabeth remained aloof to these fears; she had Thomas on her mind. He'd stayed for less than an hour but she couldn't fault him for leaving. They'd both known Nora's return was eminent, and Elizabeth had supplied the prompt, telling him she was tired. As it turned out, the ploy had been as much escape route for her as it had been for him. She had pulled no punches, she'd laid her tale bare in all its terrible brilliance. Of course it would take time to digest, but she already felt better, emptied of an appalling burden. She'd scrubbed herself clean to the articulate and caring young man she'd given her body to only a short time before. She'd told him she didn't want a relationship. It would complicate matters too much. Besides, she felt it would be more or less pointless.

Since he'd felt strongly enough about calling she'd granted him the honor of the truth. Her time was limited, she'd told him plainly; many decisions were out of her hands. There was no time for beating bushes.

Thomas had taken the news quietly and carefully, studying his hands as if expecting to find something marvelous there, sitting beside her in the matching chair. When she was through he'd put a hand on her knee and said he was sorry, that he knew how useless that sounded but that he meant it anyway. Thankfully, he'd not regressed into blubbery, meaningless chatter or imaginary solutions. He'd simply expressed remorse and was then silent, quietly accepting things as they were. But he'd also done something unexpected too. He'd said he wanted to continue their friendship, that he wanted to help.

He also said he wanted to take her out again.

She accepted and they'd sat for a moment until Thomas checked his watch and, seeing the hour, soon left.

Chapter 51

Billy made his familiar rounds, stopping in The Blacksmith Shop for a beer after leaving the hospital. He had the night shift tomorrow so the early afternoon hours off provided an outstanding window of opportunity. As he walked the Quarter he found it hard to suppress a smile, and then after becoming conscious that he'd actually been doing so, let it come on in full flower. The day was beautiful. The light pulling back in the sky trapped long shadows in the streets and alleyways, spurring the breeze within the tight gauntlet of old buildings. He stepped off the curb to the cobblestone pavement, looking back at the old bar as he pulled another draught from his beer. The walls were the best; bent toward the middle bearing the weight from above, as if the roof had been forced upon a building too big for it.

He tossed his empty cup into a large, cluttered box alongside the curb, and dropped into a package liquor store a short walk down for a six-pack. The Vietnamese shopkeeper carefully placed the beer in a bag and gingerly folded the sides down so it was perfectly rectangular. Then he nodded his head in curt acknowledgement that their transaction was done, and turned to get on with his other business which consisted of squatting before an ancient typewriter (sitting on a box underneath the cabinet) and pecking away. Only the bell above the door (which tinkled when someone came inside) was enough to halt his frantic tapping. Billy tucked the package underneath his arm and whistled as he left the store. Oddly, he felt new, revitalized. A touch excited, actually. All in all, the strange result of a much stranger circumstance. He really hoped Ebenezer was home today. If not, he'd hot-foot it over to the Ripcord and try to snag the old man there. Today it was his turn.

Because over the last couple of nights the nightmare had achieved singular perfection. Never before had he remembered a phantom so vividly. What had initially frightened him to the point of disorientation and frantic breath had now resigned and refined itself through meditation and curiosity. For days, either working or not, he'd separated different elements in his mind and fashioned them (albeit crudely, he thought) into an interesting story. Like Elizabeth had said, nightmares and most dreams had a way of slipping away, but every once in a while.... She knew this; she'd helped him to recognize it. This one hadn't. Lying in bed, alone in the cavern-like darkness with every fragmented shadow shielding, possessing, containing some untold form of wickedness, he'd begun thinking about the nightmare objectively as soon as the shaking subsided, calming himself with the slow construction of elements he could use to fashion his own story. A rite of passage, if nothing more.

Out of the sheer coincidence of his association with Ebenezer, Billy had begun a discriminating examination of what he thought useful in the nightmare, how to make something surreal actual enough to invoke a fragment of the intensity it had visited upon his sleeping mind. And with this effort he had begun to calm. The shadows hadn't seemed so sharp-edged and menacing, the darkened room no longer filled to capacity with every sort of homicidal maniac or dripping thing from sewer depths. More tool than apparition; his own tale. This initial spark of originality and excitement had managed to hold the basic elements together amid the steady drift of the truly horrifying ones. He'd slept very little the rest of the night.

Reaching the corner of Ursulines, he picked up the pace as he neared the old man's apartment. For the first time in a long time he felt the sense of achievement that strolled with success. He felt taller, like he moved with an uncanny purpose, a guided instinct. He felt the exhilaration that money gave some, what power and sex gave others. The exhilaration that many never felt at all. Ebenezer's ass better be there. The story bubbled inside like a scalding pot.

He didn't even pause at the courtyard gate; he simply reached out as he neared it and pushed it away as he came through. The sun relinquished its ward to the night as he made his way across the cobbled walk to the staircase. However, the sodium lights were on and he saw the inside courtyard, illuminated, for the first time. The fountain in the center throwing up a fine spray which managed to mist the entire area in humidity. Water hung on the walls like transparent pearls. An elderly couple sat in wicker chairs at the periphery, only looking up for a second as the gate opened. Oddly enough (with the cloud of mist locked between the sweaty walls), the courtyard seemed spacious and comfortable amid a sprawl of ferns and low palms bulging from every niche. The archway on the far side was completely inundated with smaller versions of the building-clinging vines street side. Before the stairwell Billy paused, offering a small nod to the couple who reciprocated briefly before going back to their coffee and conversation.

Billy went up two steps at a time, balancing carefully so he landed softly, but firmly, on each one so as not to sound like a rutting elephant assaulting the building. He saw the entrance light was off but thought he remembered no difference the first time. Reaching the top of the stairs, he knocked on the door a few loud raps. His hand was hardly to his side when Ebenezer's muffled voice invited, "Com'on in, Billy. Door's open."

Billy reached for the knob, wrinkling his forehead as he did so. "How the hell he know it was me?" he wondered under his breath. He turned the knob and pushed the door open, finding a flood of light waiting inside this time. Stepping across the threshold, he shut the door and walked through the foyer. The television was off and Ebenezer lay sprawled on the well-worn sofa. "How'r'ya doin son? Had ta get off ole Bertha over there," he said pointing toward the easy chair. "Just diggin a little siesta. Damn shoulder's a bitch today.... too damn ole for bullets, by God." He stopped and looked from Billy to his chair. The boy seemed uncomfortable, as if a lot of space around him needed filling. "'Ave a seat," Ebenezer said, his hand proffering the recliner. He immediately caught Billy's hesitation. "Go on, boy! It's a chair, not a goddamn china cabinet! Sit down!"

Billy went and sat down, placing the carefully wrapped six pack in his lap. Ebenezer once again changed the course of their conversation with the skill and timing of a trained psychologist. "Off early?"

Billy nodded, still musing over the unexplained identification at the closed door, the offer of the old man's chair. Surely he couldn't...but his timing was uncanny...

"Well, I'm glad ya could make it. 'S been damn borin. Haven't felt up ta peckin with this shoulder, so I ain't made it out much this week. Don't know if it's them damn pills or what, but I been slow." Ebenezer stopped just long enough to gesture toward the paper bag. "Wha'cha got there?" he asked.

"A six-pack getting hotter by the minute. Thought we could do something about that."

"Thinkin only wastes time. Get 'em out here so we can give 'em a little air."

Billy tore the bag away from the six-pack, holding up a finger as if for additional quiet. "Coming up, but there's something else besides..."

Ebenezer smiled curiously and inched himself up into a sitting position. "Go on," he challenged.

"This time, I've got the story," Billy said.

Chapter 52

He sat down in the storyteller's chair again, after returning from the refrigerator where he'd left the remaining four beers, trying to disguise his nervousness with a nonchalant toss to Ebenezer. The old man caught the beer in his lap and had the pop-top open before Billy managed his own. Then he casually leaned back, letting the couch suck up around him. Billy tilted his head back and studied the ceiling momentarily as if pondering how to start, and hoping, maybe, the directions were up there. He decided to let dramatics come as they may. "This thing came to me a few nights back," he began. He peered down at his hands and rubbed them together. His eye caught on the strip of sunlight jutting across the floor through the French doors. "Mind if I close those?" he asked.

"By all means," the old man replied. "Whatever it takes ta tell," and he motioned for Billy to proceed. Billy stood up and walked over, finally deciding to begin in motion. "A family on vacation: a man, a woman, their child. A boy, four years old and his name's Allan." He shut the doors, listening for the familiar rasp, and paced back to the chair, pausing at the lamp to readjust it in case he might want to kick out the footrest. "Doesn't matter where they're going. They're just out, maybe making groceries not far from the house, maybe just out cruising on a weekend afternoon." He adjusted the lamp to his satisfaction, nodded and sat down. The initial nervousness was gone, urgently replaced by the need to to get on with the telling. He stared across the room, much more confident (in Ebenezer's estimation) than he'd been upon entering, and began the story in earnest.

"They pull off the highway into the dusty parking lot of an ancient Acadian-style country store. Dust hanging in the air even after dark here. A neglected, paint-blistered porch wraps around the building, giving off a faint, nefarious suggestion of strangulation. At the far right hitching post, stuck beside a crooked stoop near the front door, a glue-factory-bound old nag munches on a busted bag of peanuts spilled about her hooves. The mare seems intent on memorizing the dullness of the sun-scorched walls as it eats. To the left of the cock-eyed door, several heaps of metal ripe with peeling bumper-stickers and bald tires rest in (what appear to be) permanent positions. The air's humid, choking, and the car's A/C has problems even on mild days. Not a nice place to be.

"Suppose they're due at a relative's wedding rehearsal, or a birthday party for their son's friend, and suddenly, without warning or recognition, nothing is familiar. Maybe they'd been there once before when Allan was only an infant; maybe they'd never been there at all. Neither of them prove fabulous with directions. Though these directions have, in all probability, been hastily scrawled on the back of a credit card envelope and then just as hastily thrown into a roadside garbage bin after stopping for a restroom break. But now they're hot and a damn sight disgusted. Sam decides, finally, no more mindless cruising; he actually intends to ask directions inside the store. Meanwhile, Donna waits in the car with Allan. No problem."

Billy reclines in the chair, feeling more at ease now, only slightly nagged by doubt and nervousness. Suddenly the story is brilliantly clear. He pauses in surprise, amazed how the loose ends have suddenly been stitched into the weave, how every rough angle seems to have rounded well and true. Then he is up and running.

"Donna watches him step up the porch," he goes on, "and then turns to situate Allan in the back seat. Appeasement doesn't help and after several more minutes of kicking and screaming, she releases him from the car seat to come up front until Daddy gets back. She checks her watch after several more minutes and taps her knee in irritation. 'What's keeping him?' she wonders. The better part of ten minutes and still no Daddy. How the hell hard can directions be? Just before getting set to pack the kid on her hip and go inside herself, she looks off to the side and lets out a very low, 'How the hell'd he get down there?' Because, almost to the curve in the road, there he stands on the shoulder. In fact, she would not have noticed at all had he not been waving both arms in the air above his head like a madman. She chances a look back at the store. Might as well be several minutes before; still closed tight. When she looks back, the figure is even more animated.

"She turns the ignition over, kicking the tired old engine to life. The parking lot grows suddenly dustier in a freak wind rolling in through the trees. However, (unknown to her) the kid picks up a hell of a different scene. As his mother backs out, Allan notices with the acute sensibilities of a child, the lights suddenly dim in the store. The windows flash black. Ripe cracks run and split deeply into the now ancient walls and the porch suddenly turns on itself and crumples rottenly. Farther down, the old horse collapses to its side, spewing long strands of mucus from its head and a great gaseous cloud from its side as it splits open like a waterlogged paper bag. He considers telling his Momma this, but from her tone of voice she sounds like she sometimes did after he'd done something Bad. That was never a good time to bother her, especially with things that were not much different than what he saw on T.V.

"The dust storm continues building in the parking lot as Donna backs away from the store. By the time she shifts into Drive, the frantically gesturing figure is more obscure than visible in the swirling dust, and seemingly, farther down the highway. She begins to be truthfully frightened and spins the car's tires, speeding toward the figure she'd been so sure is Sam, but now, getting closer, is not. Whoever he is (she will see it is obviously a man) has stopped gesturing and seems suddenly much taller....lankier. No more than thirty yards away she gasps, instinctively reaching for Allan, at the same time she eases off the gas pedal in astonishment.

"Because immediately ahead, undoubtedly stands a man; a naked man with one foot on the asphalt, one on the shoulder. His face is slightly turned away, obscuring his features but not the large, dangling meat hook hanging between his legs. Wet, red and dripping, festooned with shiny, sharp objects running its length, it hangs savagely, and the face, now turning toward her is in no way that of her husband's. It can scarcely, in fact, even be called human. The bones and tissues are grotesquely mutated and scarred as if from the effects of extreme temperature and pressure. And the eyes give absolute, demonic proof she's stepped over some invisible line, for they are alive and raging within the pin-slashed slits ripped through the rubbery face. Then, as the car steadily slows due to her surprise and indecision, the huge, mushroom-shaped head explodes in a mess of grayish/red spray and bone fragments that plaster the front and passenger-side windows of the car.

"Momentarily blinded, flinging the wheel in desperation as Allan screams and is ripped away, the road is suddenly lost beneath them as the car tears over a slight incline and then violently down through a nest of small pine trees, reducing them to pulp as it goes. Donna slams down hard on the brake pedal, riding out the sickening slide as the tires bite uselessly at the grass. When the car finally comes to a stop she fights desperately with the Washer/Wiper switch, trying to clear the smeared windshield. At first the gore simply smears like runny eggs, creating little visibility through and around the many squirming, twisting things embedded in the matter which only moments before was inside the abomination's head. Only a long, sustained spray of cleaner fluid succeeds in breaking the gore, and during this time she tends her son. Allan is still on the seat next to her, his frail body ticking with tremors as his eyes stare sightlessly at the ceiling. His skin is so pale as to be almost transparent. Time has stopped for her also even though the squeaking wipers assuredly calls her back. Because now, she can see through.

"Directly ahead, down a smooth chute of green much like a golf course fairway, stand several monstrosities. Most are clothed in the semblance of normal attire; the frilled dress of a young school girl; a man in green, greasy overalls; a nurse replete in scrub garb; but, far more disturbing, the prone, naked body of a woman writhing in the grass, masturbating frantically. The only sound is the idling engine in the cool, surreal grove.

"The closest, the little school girl, steps viciously forward, the top of her head rolling back to an impossible razor-wire sprawl of gnashing metal which grows from her previously small mouth. Throwing her arms above her head, they unhinge and unfold insect-like, clicking meticulously wider and higher. The fingers at the ends are flimsy, wet lumps at first, before quickly gaining tubular proportion as if from air blowing them from within. Allan, now sitting, stares through the gore on the windshield, saying nothing. The moment the 'thump' comes at the rear of the vehicle, Donna punches down on the accelerator, fish-tailing down the rectangular clearing, the old car's tires peeling away at the grass as she desperately tries to put distance between them and the headless, naked body rolling away from the trunk.

"She flings the steering wheel left and right, trying to avoid the others. Even so, the nurse-thing in her path spins deftly around, vibrating madly in staccato laughter as she tosses a red, biological waste bag their direction. It strikes the driver's side door, splitting open and losing something vaguely human that sticks only momentarily before falling away. The mechanic hulks down on them from the right, windmilling a long length of heavy-gauge chain over his head. There is no room to maneuver; they have to go through. Donna barely misses the man but his chain blows out the windshield, showering glass everywhere and catching Allan a glancing blow as it uncoils through the backseat and out the window amid an equally loud explosion of glass and sound. The car dove-tails left, momentarily out of control. Donna, helpless, watches as they bear down on the masturbator, now sitting bolt upright, her legs spread impossibly wide. Her head wrenches back in agony or ecstasy as both hands work frantically at her gaping vagina. With mere yards to spare she reaches inside, pulling free a bloody, reptilian embryo. There appears no end to the beast. Then the car is upon and past them, snapping through a curtain of several small poplar trees before gunning through a shallow ditch and coming upon another smooth, highway grade. Smoke rises lightly off the roadway.

"The engine squeals in misery. Smoke billows from the exhaust. Donna mechanically presses down on the accelerator and the engine cries loudly, shuddering as it creeps from ten to twenty, finally, grindingly, to thirty-five miles an hour after which the needle refuses to breech. Allan's fingernails raise trails of blood through Donna's white shirt.

"Then a backfire, and nothing.

"The car squats heavy on the pavement as if the wheels have gone out from underneath. A cloud of thick, black smoke blankets the road behind them as they roll to a rusty-sounding stop near the shoulder. A branch from an overhanging tree runs a bony edge along the hood, cutting an angry crisscross through the gore and filth. Donna screams nakedly, once, surprised by the sound before realizing it is really Allan she is screaming to. The bitter rank of urine hangs pelt-like in the air. She manages to pull her arm free of his superhuman grip.

"And then another loud, hysterical scream rips along the asphalt, independent of anyone in the car. Allan's eyes roll back in his head and Donna lets him curl down to the seat as she looks into the rear-view mirror, scanning the dirty, smoke-filled shadows behind them, all the while frantically twisting the key in the ignition. The car suddenly, miraculously, coughs, then comes to slow resurrection. But amid the groaning, repetitive knocks she hears the steady slap of meat hitting pavement. Getting faster, closer. When her eyes catch upon the figure breaking through the wall of swirling, black, parting smoke, she knows her ears weren't wrong.

"Running down from behind is a long, lanky shadow of a man, stretched to ghastly limits with his lunatic strides. His arms dangle wildly in their sockets, as if defying their owner rightful privilege. But their erratic movement does not affect the pounding legs as he comes on unerringly toward them. His ragged wardrobe flies in strips around and behind him, rippling and bestially alive with wild shapes, dazzling colors. It leaves a wet, luminescent trail on the sweating road.

"Donna slams down hard on the accelerator, smoke belching from the exhaust to cloud the view behind. However, she can now hear laughter, the slapping of running feet closing distance. The car coughs again, the whole frame seeming to shake loose as it settles into a lopsided, oil-dripping crouch. Pumping the accelerator gently at first and then with a mindless hysteria, Donna gets the car straightened out along the road and moving. First to ten, then twenty, finally twenty-five as the car lurches and burps. The dreaded attack doesn't come. Their speed continues climbing; the grinding gears within finally reaching some sort of workable configuration

"Soon they're weaving a semi-sober line down the middle stripe at close to 45 miles an hour. No mad, running figure has assaulted the trunk. There is a pall of quiet hysteria inside the car, broken only by the irregular whistle of air through Allan's nose. And at that moment, at the very second that Donna has allowed herself to breathe again, the daylight curls to black as quickly and completely as a heavy blind being drawn. Donna tries to click the lights on, managing only to break the lever in the process. And at her speed, in the utter blackness, when the cone of light reaches her from somewhere in the distance, she can do nothing except make for it like a moth.

"Allan emerges from shock for a last, brutal moment as they head toward the light. His fingernails are streaked with his mother's blood. He screams into her stony face but she's past the point of hearing. She stares straight ahead, her eyes opaque, long rivulets of drool dancing from her chin to the beat of the disintegrating car. Alan sees a whisper of movement in the rear-view mirror (still dangling there precariously) the instant he feels the many small fingers at his back.

"Turning, he finds the rear seat filled with children, a deformed and monstrous assembly fighting and rolling on itself like fish caught in a tide pool. A noxious stench of mud and feces rises off just shy of physical form. All are naked, their skins blackened and diseased. Pus and yellow bile seem to provide the necessary lubricant needed for their exertions. But horribly, some have separated themselves from the writhing mass. One has a gnarled hand twisting through his mother's long hair. Another has found the meat of Allan's tiny left shoulder. The mass in the backseat shifts and when the bodies go over the seat it is as a wave.

"The car hauls to a creaking stop in the General Store parking lot. There is no wind, no sound. And there are no witnesses when the back door of the General Store bursts open, smashing itself against the tired, whitewashed wall with enough force to shake the side of the building. No one is there to see the mess that had been Allan's father brutally spewed in a soup of bone, tissue, and blood through the door, in the general direction of a dumpster a few feet away. It paints the whole area in gore.

"The next morning there are three derelict cars resting in the swirl of dust outside the General Store as the old, cursed building pops and cracks, grumbling uneasily from the night's feast."

*

By the time Billy finished his voice was filed to a rasp. His throat was sandpaper. He found the beer between his legs, luke warm now, but enough. He slugged it down, feeling the fierce beat in his chest of adrenaline and nerves. Silently he stood up to open the blinds.

"Wait!" Ebenezer practically yelled. Billy stopped quickly, his hand freezing six inches from the French doors as he looked over his shoulder, half-expecting to find the old man apoplectic on the couch. He was not. Ebenezer sat bolt upright, both feet on the floor, one hand out as if attempting to stop traffic. His eyes were glazed and distant. Billy began to be afraid.

"What is it?" he asked.

The frantic, wavering hand began a gradual descent. "No light now, Billy. Not right now. I can see it, boy. Don't do nothin yet..." and even as he said this his eyes never found the younger man standing scant feet away. Billy turned back to the chair and sat down again. He rocked once, the hinges squeaked loudly, and he quit.

He didn't know how long they sat there in their fraternity of silence. The old man's eyes found a spot in the distance and no amount of returning glances from Billy could bring him from it. When the darkness and silence became crushing, Billy could stand no more. "You didn't like it?" he asked.

Ebenezer ran a hand across his forehead and leaned back on the couch. In the soft, twilight glow Billy could not be sure if the old man's hand wasn't shaking as it came down. Ebenezer's face was partially obscured in the dark, behind the beard, but his voice was not when he finally broke his silence. "Fuckin' amazin. Really."

Billy glanced down at his watch, putting definition to the twilight. A large chunk of time had vanished. The daylight had receded to only a faint memory struggling weakly against the blinds. Billy reached over and clicked on the reading lamp, then pushed it back on its swivel so it came from behind the chair. Ebenezer's sage presence slowly returned as Billy watched the old man slick his hair back with a quick run-through of his fingers. "Damn good story, m'boy!" he said again, whistling through his teeth. "Goddamn! Gonna have ta go way back ta best that one....if I can, that is." He put an elbow on his knee and then his head in his hand. His eyes tried to speak what his mouth couldn't.

Again, an uncomfortable silence followed. Billy was suddenly restless and really needed to call Elizabeth, had intended to do it well before now. Only the time had slipped....Clearing his throat, he said, "I need to use your phone, Ebenezer. I gotta call Liz..."

Reality crept back into Ebenezer's haunted eyes. He waved a hand as if in response to a bothersome fly. "Yeah, yeah....by all means. Use the one in the kitchen. Call ya sister." Billy stood up, glad to leave the room to Ebenezer's privacy. Billy knew the effect of some moments, and he also understood the need to share them in silence, in solitude. While he dialed he considered how well he remembered the digits and how seldom he used them. The familiar voice that answered reminded him all too well of why the latter was true. Nora Stockton's 'hello' always sounded forced, like she was forever being pulled away from something infinitely more important.

Billy's grimace came involuntarily, bred from years of discomfort. "Hello, Mother. How are you?"

A second's hesitation followed his inquiry, and when she did speak his question was, of course, ignored. "Billy. Have you seen Elizabeth?"

He sat down at the kitchen table, dimly aware of the television clicking on in the next room. The voices remained muted in deference. "No," he said. "I'm calling to see if she wants to go somewhere tonight." His fingers toyed unconsciously with the loosely coiled phone cord.

"She's not here, Billy. I haven't seen her all day. She didn't leave a note or anything."

"Uh huh," he replied, letting go the cord. "I don't know. I haven't talked to her today. I'm out right now so I don't know if she's called my place," he finished, waiting for the expected challenge that, oddly, never came. He chewed his lip nervously.

"When I got home from church she wasn't here and I haven't heard anything since." Nora voice was unnaturally subdued, strangely inoffensive even to Billy's trained ear. Their fresh silence rooted immediately.

Billy broke it. "Well...I don't know? Strange of her not to leave a note."

"Yes, it is. I'm a little worried, and, uh..." the conversation ground to a stop like a rusty wheel. There seemed nowhere else to go and Time suddenly seemed very large.

Billy coughed and cleared his throat before speaking. He didn't want her to start again. "Uh, look Mother. I'm kinda in a hurry to get home. I need a shower and fresh clothes. When Elizabeth comes in, tell her to call me. I'll be at my place waiting."

"Okay, Billy." In the pause following the simple reply, Nora's mind spun dizzily, randomly negotiating how to revive the body of this conversation, how to devise some way to express her undoubted worry over Elizabeth's whereabouts. But the moment imploded in a squeeze of vague possibilities, all of them out of the realm of her character. She helplessly balled her left hand into a fist and witnessed the opportunity vanish. "I'll tell her when I see her," she managed lamely.

"Okay Mother. Goodbye." As Billy brought the phone away from his ear he heard the tell-tale buzz of a dead line on the other end. He stood up from the kitchen table, replaced the phone in its dirty cradle atop the monstrously outdated microwave, and walked back to the gloomy living room. Ebenezer had switched places. He rested with his bare feet kicked up on the footrest of the Teller's Chair, watching an old rerun of Sanford and Son.

"Got hold a ya sister?" he asked, clicking the Mute button to cancel out a Redd Foxx rant to Bubba about Lamont's choice of friends.

Billy paused by the couch and dug his hands deeply into his pockets. "No, not yet. She wasn't home. But I've gotta go anyway to get showered up. She'll call." He chose not to mention the disconcerting premonition-like disquiet that had crept up his spine during the telephone conversation. He didn't want to think about it; he'd had enough of the macabre for one afternoon. "She should be back any time so I guess I'd better bug out," he added in loo of something meaningful.

Ebenezer nodded his head vigorously 'yes'. "By all means. Don't leave the lady waitin!" Then he looked on quietly as Billy crossed to the foyer. "Billy," he said when the young man was almost to the door. "It was a damn fine story. Scared the hell outta me." Ebenezer put a finger to his lips as if pondering a secret that'd just come back to him. He smacked his lips and said, "I b'lieve ya got somethin, kid. Ya gotta knack. Prob'ly won't sleep much tonight thanks ta you."

"Aw, come on Ebenezer—"

"No goddammit, I'm tellin ya! That one really curled my hair." His smile broke behind the moustache and beard. "Ya gotta gift."

"Gift, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Well, some gift."

"We take what we get. And that's all we get, Billy."

"I appreciate that Ebenezer." Billy paused. "See you soon," he said.

"Make sure ya do," the old man called before Billy closed the door.

Chapter 53

At seven o'clock that evening, while Billy showered and Nora paced a nervous line back and forth in her kitchen, the phone rang in Thomas' bedroom. He'd just made it back from the corner QuickStop with a quart of Gatorade and a refrigerated sandwich. He quickly plunked down the bag containing chump change and the sandwich on his dresser, the old piece of furniture thickly laden with science fiction novels, clean underwear, a scattering of more loose change. He threw the UNO baseball cap that had been perched on the antenna of the upright portable across the room and snatched the receiver up before the answering machine kicked on. "Hello," he said, swallowing a mouthful of Gatorade. The voice on the other end was faint enough to issue from the bottom of a well or deep within the recesses of a tunnel. "Hello?" he repeated, not sure if he'd heard anything, actually. He sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Billy?" It was clearly a female's voice, although so heavy with either sleep or alcohol there was no pinning a name to it. An undertone of pure desperation painted the slurred inflection. "I gotta see you..."

He held the phone away from his ear and looked at it as if it would tell him itself. "Who is this?"

"Billy, come get me..."

Billy? Who the fuck was Billy?

"There's no Billy here. Can I help you?" His palms had begun to sweat, suddenly connected to an otherworldly being, this phantom.

"Thomas?" the voice asked. The speaker was hoarse, out of breath.

"Yeah..." He made a guess. "Elizabeth, is that you? Are you all right?" He tried to put a focus on his racing thoughts. Worry started a slow invasion.

"Yeah, it's me...it's me...come get me..." Her words got tangled in the phone lines. Thomas gripped the receiver and tried to remain calm.

"Okay, okay, Elizabeth. Where are you? Are you all right? Are you in trouble?" He quickly glanced at his watch. This was not good.

"It's gettin' dark, Billy. It's gettin' hard to see..."

Who in the hell was Billy?

"Elizabeth, listen to me." Thomas stared through the curtains. Darkness was still a distance away. "Tell me where you are and I'll come get you." He could hear heavy breathing. What in God's name was going on?

"...the...Gallaria...please come get me..."

"You're at the Gallaria?" She didn't answer. "Elizabeth! Listen to me! This is Thomas. I'm coming to get you. Don't move! Elizabeth, do you hear me? Don't go anywhere! I'll be there in a minute!" He didn't wait for a reply since he didn't expect one. He threw the phone on the bed and bolted out of the room and down the stairs. He was gone before anyone in the main house even knew he was back from the store.

*

Thomas parked his car on the first floor of the parking garage and ran to the mirrored main entrance. As he went he scanned the sidewalks visible from the enclosure. No Elizabeth. He flung open the door and hurried inside. As he remembered, the first floor was spacious and airy. Absolutely filled with doorways, halls, innumerable nooks and crannies where a person could squirrel away. He ran a hand through his hair, trying to decide where Elizabeth would be, where he would be if he was her. He only really knew her from porches and beds. Jesus....

His eyes caught on the escalators. Maybe. He took a deep breath and one more quick glance around as he walked toward them. He also knew from past experience there'd been a fairly major bar on the second floor. He couldn't remember the name, but that was not odd considering how wasted he'd been. And if memory served correct, the second floor was almost as spacious as the first. He could almost picture a large bank of telephones up there and this didn't seem to be a manufactured memory either. One thing was certain, he thought on the way up. Everything above the second floor plaza was nothing but floor after floor of offices. Small chance Elizabeth would be up there.

He came eye-level with the second floor and craned his neck. No sign of any phones. He made another cursory revolution as he timed his feet to leave the escalator track. Maybe you're mistaken, he began, then no, no, no. There they were. Straight ahead behind the palm tree in the bucket. At least twenty of them, ten on each side and back-to-back. He walked over, noticing a set of benches pushed off to the left near a closed deli and a fire exit. At the end of the bench nearest the door was a slumped figure. Thomas could dimly hear the thump of music from the bar across the plaza; so it was still in business. His heart beat faster. It was clearly Elizabeth hunched over on the bench, and there were two Rent-A-Cop's standing nearby, one with a walkie-talkie in his hand. The other just looking at her. Thomas decided to speak up.

"Elizabeth," he called from twenty-five feet away. Both guards snapped their eyes his way but Elizabeth did not. Thomas broke into a trot to erase the remaining distance, and pushed past both men as he went to one knee. He smelled alcohol immediately.

"Hey buddy? You know this girl?" said one of the security drones, the one who looked as if he would give birth before the week was out. With his hand resting on Elizabeth's shoulder, Thomas turned his attention to the two. The fat one was middle-aged, his partner appeared all of twelve with a wisp of moustache shadowing his upper lip. A mad thought raced into Thomas' head, Maybe television wasn't really so far off the mark. The belt around the kid's skinny Mayberry waist contained every essential of a Montana militia man. Both of them looked like they'd have trouble sacking a bag lady with one good eye. "I said, 'Do you know this person?'" asked the fat one again. His eyes sparkled with a dull interest usually relegated to sleepy housecats happening to be on the leading edge of a thirty minute consciousness binge. He did not look happy.

"Oh course I know her," Thomas said, trying to keep contempt out of his voice. "She's my girlfriend." He decided to make a play. "I think she's had another one of her attacks." The close-set eyes on Fatty squinted tighter.

"Now don't bullshit me, buddy," he challenged. "She's drunk as a goddamn skunk. I can smell her from here."

Thomas stood up, holding his hands out to diffuse the rent-a-cop's growing anger. "Yeah, that's right. She's been drinking. She's had problems lately, and she's not taking it well. She's sick."

"Drinkin don't help it," Toolbelt threw in.

Thomas bit his lip and nodded his head, trying to control his temper. "I know that and you know that, but she doesn't know that. It's just something she's gotta deal with. I'll just get her up and—"

"What she got?" Toolbelt asked. He hitched up his pants as he said it.

Thomas turned a deadly glare at the kid. "She's got cancer," he answered flatly.

"Kinda young to get cancer, ain't she?" came Fatty's clinical diagnosis from the side.

Thomas turned to the fat man and the new look in his eye caused the rent-a-cop to retreat a step. "I guess not," he spat, gearing himself now to go to the floor with both of these assholes if they gave him any more shit. The steel in his tone broke Fatty's confidence, and Toolbelt rolled into a tight ball beside him. Neither could meet Thomas' gaze any longer. He turned away from them and bent back to the bench. "She's sick for Christ's sake!" Toolbelt retreated to the bank of telephones, and this mutiny seemed to muddle Fatty's sense of control. Even so, Fatty's manhood, what little of it there actually was, necessitated that he give one more order. "All right then. You can take her out of here. Just make it quick, okay?"

Thomas didn't even look up or acknowledge. He whispered in Elizabeth's ear, trying to rouse her as he listened to the asshole's exit. When she appeared slightly coherent he got his hands underneath her arms and hoisted her to her feet. She was surprisingly light, but didn't seem any the worse for wear other than the fact she kept calling him 'Billy.'

He began steering her toward the elevator; he figured the escalator could prove disastrous. Over in the corner Thomas eyed the two security clowns watching them furtively. "It's me, Liz. You called me to come get you. You don't remember?" He saw the question in her face, and decided correctly to steer away from any interrogation. "Forget it," he decided. "Are you all right?" Finally in front of the elevators, Thomas pressed the Down button. The 1st Floor light above the elevator bank blinked off and Thomas thanked God they wouldn't be here much longer.

"I don't know what I'm doing..." Elizabeth muttered as the light blinked on for the 2nd Floor and the door slowly slid open. They got inside and Thomas pressed the button. Elizabeth sagged against him as they approached the Lobby. They got to his car, and as he helped her into the passenger seat, he carefully released the catch to let the seat back. Then he gently pressed her door closed and went around to the driver's side. By the time he got inside and closed his door Elizabeth was shaking her head back and forth. A faint hint of color showed in her cheeks and she seemed more cognizant now, as if grounded better in the close interior of the car than she'd been in the wide expanse of the building. The smell of alcohol filled the car. "Help me sit up," she panted. Thomas put one hand behind the seat and flipped the latch up, bringing the seat higher with his other. She leaned over with her head in her hands. Her voice was strained and slow. "I'm sorry I called you...I didn't mean to get you involved in this...."

"Elizabeth," he broke in, starting the car. "I don't want to hear that. I told you to call me if you need me and that's what you did. Hell, I'm glad you did. You could have gotten yourself into trouble up there if I hadn't shown up when I did." She swiveled her head to gaze tiredly at him. There was a single tear-track underneath her right eye and a spot on her gray shirt. Another quickly formed in her eye and raced down to land near the first. "Where do you want me to take you?" he asked because he could think of nothing else to say.

"Billy's," she replied, resting her head against the seat cushion again. A tear spilled from her other eye, but even this could not keep Thomas from laughing lightly as he turned to make sure nothing was behind them. Elizabeth turned to him with a wrinkle in her forehead. "What is it?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing," he said as he dropped the gear shift into Drive. "It's just that you've been calling me 'Billy' for the last two hours and I don't have the slightest idea who he is."

Chapter 54

Thomas was alone in Billy's living room. The television was off, and a college station drifted lightly from the stereo speakers. It was a group Thomas was unfamiliar with and he was no sorrier for that, he'd decided. He liked New Age jazz and backyard blues, an odd combination some told him, but perfectly logical as far as he was concerned. Anyway, the thought was unimportant, just another way to while the minutes until he had a better grasp on the situation.

He turned to stare into the hallway entrance upon hearing approaching footsteps. Billy appeared out of the darkness and leaned somewhat uncomfortably against the door jamb with his arms crossed. Thomas stood up and slapped both hands on his thighs. It was way late. "'She doing all right?" he asked.

Billy scratched his head. "Yeah, she's asleep. Drunk as hell. Gonna feel terrible in the morning." He attempted a thin smile that fooled neither of the men. No one felt like joking but the tension in the air was practically visible. Billy paused in thought before going on to new business. "Look...Thomas, right?" Thomas nodded. "I'm sorry you got wrapped up in this—" and Billy continued though Thomas wished he wouldn't, "it's just impossible to know what's going through her head. I wish I'd been here earlier since she probably called here first. I've been meaning to get a new fucking answering machine—"

Thomas jumped in to fill the space. "Billy," he said quietly. "I know you've never seen me before and don't know a damn thing about me but I do know your sister. Hasn't been for long but there's something about her. I know about the cancer. I told her if she needed me don't hesitate to call. And she did, so she called. It was no bother. Hell, I was glad to do it," and this time it was Thomas' turn to pause, considering. "Even if," he said with a genuine smile, "she did call me 'Billy'most of the time."

"What?" Billy asked, mystified.

"Yeah, most of the time that's what she said. I didn't know who she was talking about until we were in the car. Thought she was talking about her boyfriend. I gotta say I felt better when I found out you were her brother."

Billy nodded with a tired smile.

"Well," he admitted. "At least I know she's got a helluva friend. Not many people like handling drunks. Anyway, I'm glad you brought her here."

"It's what she wanted." Thomas looked at his watch. He had to work in the morning. "Okay, look. I need to get back to my place. She's gonna be all right, you figure?"

"I believe so. Just gotta sleep it off. It won't be a good morning from the looks of it, though."

"Yeah, well I know..."

"Uh huh. This whole fucking thing sucks."

"Exactly." Thomas stuck out his hand. "Billy, I'm glad to meet you, even if the circumstances were a little odd." Billy grabbed the hand and shook it.

"Seems like life gets more and more like that," he replied.

"Don't it, though." The handshake broke and Thomas started for the door. "She's got my number. Tell her I'll be home tomorrow night. Tell her to call me."

Billy pointed at him as Thomas opened the door. "Don't worry. I'll make sure she does." Then, before Thomas could get cleanly away, Billy added, "I really appreciate what you did tonight for my sister."

"It was no problem, really. She's great company," and Thomas closed the door.

Billy walked over to his chair and sat down heavily. He breathed out, long and slow, his shoulders sagging as he stared into space. A dangerous thought had plagued him since he'd tucked her into bed. It wasn't working; the novelty of her Trump card appeared merely that. And that was doubly bad because her revelation had helped him lately. The talk they'd had on the levee behind Cooter Brown's had pumped him up, had made things seem less bleak, and now....now, things had taken a turn. Of that there was no doubt.

And she'd come to him.

The room was suddenly hot, oppressive. He wanted to call the old man but for what reason? A few encouraging words, maybe? No, his conscious warned him. Handle it yourself, Bill. Knuckle down, help your sister. She needs you. This is no time for self-pity; this is the real world and there are no apologies or 'time outs' here.

His right eye ticked from a blossoming headache, and he rubbed it vigorously in hopes something good would come. Nothing did. His neck was also a tight band, humming electrically with tension. For a long while that night he sat and rocked, his eyes staring off as his mind turned ceaselessly. At 1:15 in the morning he phoned Nora to tell her Elizabeth was safe.

Chapter 55

Billy woke up the next morning, a shaft of sunlight stabbing him through a hole in the blinds. A massive crick gripped his neck and he groaned, circling his shoulders to get the rocks out of his joints. He tried the same with his neck, carefully rotating his head back and forth in hopes he could break the vice-grip before standing. His mouth was nasty and dry and he remembered talking a lot the day before. He'd never considered himself a big talker. He cleared his throat and scratched his cheek. My God, what time is it? he wondered. He twisted his wrist so he could make out the luminous dial. 7:23 a.m.. Well, at least he was up, crick or not. He had to be at work by 9:00. He pushed himself to his feet, stretching and popping his joints in the hope he could right the pain in his neck. He thought about Elizabeth as he shuffled into the kitchen.

Reaching above the range, he pilfered through the menagerie of spices until he found the aspirin. He'd never gotten around to establishing an official medicine cabinet, but this sense of disorder had shape in his mind. He poured three gel-coated tablets into the palm of his hand, considered this a moment, and then poured two more. He fished around for a moderately clean glass with his free hand, and filled it up with tap water as he placed two of the pills in his mouth. Then he swallowed everything in one sustained gulp. Setting the glass on the counter he left the kitchen.

He walked down the hall to the room where he'd left Elizabeth.

He opened the door quietly and peered inside. She was lying on her back, mouth open, snoring. A perfect picture of peacefulness. He stepped inside and walked to the bed, sitting down carefully on the edge when he got there. She wrinkled her forehead in her sleep and rolled away from him as if pursuing a fleeing dream. He waited a moment. Then, quietly he whispered, "Elizabeth." It took a few tries before her eyelids fluttered, but they did. When they finally found the strength to stay open they were filmy with sleep and scattered concentration. Billy leaned in close so she'd be sure it was him. "Hey Liz," he said. "It's me...didn't want you waking up later and wondering where the hell you were. You've never slept here before." She had the stoned, fuzzy look of someone viewed underwater, close to the surface but still separated by different planes of reality. Gradually she came to the top.

"Billy?" she questioned. Her brow knotted in confusion.

"Yeah, it's me, Liz. You're all right." Only an explanation would take the huge question mark from her eyes so he said, "You got hammered last night. A friend of yours named Thomas brought you here. And I put you to bed." He leaned forward, offering the remaining three aspirins. "Take these," he said. There was a glass of water from last night on the bedside table. Elizabeth made them both disappear. "Want more?" Billy asked.

Elizabeth held the glass out to him and nodded her head 'yes' as she faded back to the pillow. Billy took it to the kitchen, filled it and brought it back, not at all surprised to see its contents vanish as quickly as the one before. "Oh God, thanks, Billy," Elizabeth sputtered. "I was just chasing a dream about thirst...I couldn't catch--." She stopped short, her mouth drawn up into a tight line underneath her nose. "My head is splitting...."

"Thought it might be. Why don't you try to get back to sleep. I just wanted to get the aspirins in you for later. I've gotta go to work in a little while and I didn't want you to freak out when you woke up." He began to stand, but Elizabeth restrained him with a fierce grip. She squirmed into a sitting position against the headboard and stopped, closed her eyes and breathed heavily.

"Thomas brought me here?"

Billy nodded.

"Where is he now?"

"He left around ten-thirty or eleven last night. He wanted me to make sure you called him when you felt better." He saw the look and tried to stop it. "He wasn't mad, Elizabeth. Believe me, he wasn't. He was just concerned, worried. We both were." The crick in his neck was suddenly worse, the humming increasing as the conversation got more delicate. He'd not missed her comment about the dream.

"I don't remember where..." and Billy saw the seeds of confusion take root behind her eyes. She began rubbing away sleep from their corners as she attempted to clear her head.

"Don't worry, Liz," Billy said as confidently as he could. "Everybody gets drunk once in a while and forgets what they're doing. Hell, I couldn't count the times I've fucked up. But this is nothing like that...it doesn't mean anything. Don't worry about last night—" and she waved her hand to cut him off.

"That's not what I'm talking about, Billy," and it seemed all the air sucked out of the room. She turned her head so he would not see the tears building in her eyes. Her chest hitched and Billy knew she was crying anyway. "I'm not doin...it's not workin so good anymore..."

Even though Billy knew the answer, he found the courage to ask the question Elizabeth needed. "What are you talking about?" he whispered.

She looked him in the eye, seemingly oblivious now to the tears that freely coursed along her cheeks. "The talk we had outside Cooter Brown's...I was strong that day, like I had everything figured out and set before me. I felt like I could live, really live, if you can somehow imagine that. But I've been wearing thin, letting in all these...cold thoughts. The strength I was talking about that day, it's just..." and she held her hands out at a loss for words, revealing nonetheless a frightening loneliness that spoke volumes. Her eyes implored him to speak so she wouldn't have to.

Billy grabbed her hand with an attempt at the control she'd possessed that day on the levee. And when he spoke his voice didn't sound as strident as he'd hoped it would, but by God, it didn't sound that bad either. "Elizabeth," he said slowly, trying to weave through this planted minefield. "Please don't think like that. Every day's not gonna be a good one...there's always gonna be doubt lingering around, waiting to suck all the good out. But..." and he cleared his throat in an attempt to mask the quivering. Suddenly it was as if a vault door had slammed shut. Anything else he could have said swirled and disappeared. He swallowed. "Everything's gonna be all right," he finished lamely, hating himself even as the words left his mouth. He could not meet her gaze as his mind frantically searched for the inspiration that his tongue had mutinously failed to articulate. He felt her unspoken pity and his flesh tightened. He began chewing at his fingernails, noticed he was doing so, and stopped immediately. Fuck it, he told himself mentally. No sense in running any longer. "Tell me..." he said and reached for her hand again.

Elizabeth closed her eyes and breathed as if she'd just finished the final leg of a marathon. Billy could practically see her mind churning behind her closed lids. When they finally opened she began speaking immediately. "I just left Mother's house yesterday and got on a bus. Rode around the city for hours. Everything hurt; the painkillers didn't do shit." Her voice was steady, devoid of emotion. It was as if she read from cue cards. "I haven't taken the chemo in two weeks. I know I should but it makes me feel worse than I did before. Nothing's working.

"I called Dr. Mason last week and told him not to call the house wondering why I missed treatments. He tried giving me the old this-is-for-your-own-good crap, but I could tell he wasn't pushing too hard. He knows the truth as well as I do. They're not going to cure me. In fact, the radiation will probably kill me sooner than the goddamn cancer, and it's just all hollow talk now. I guess I'm just now starting to fully realize..." Billy sat motionless as her monologue changed directions. "Mother's been around the house more often the last few weeks. She hasn't been as regular over at St. Paul's like she was for a while. I guess she's getting used to the idea too. It's not new anymore. Every once in a while she'll poke her head into my room or ask me a question when I'm watching T.V., but she's a bad actor. All her lines are forced and she doesn't tell me what she's really thinking. I see fear plastered all over her like a neon sign, but I tell you, I can't bring myself to care. And if that sounds cruel..."

Billy managed to pull enough breath together to mumble, "You know how I feel about her."

Elizabeth acknowledged this with a curt nod of the head, assuring him that he'd said enough. "I know...I know how things are. It's tough to forget how people really are, even when it looks like they're making the effort to change, or at least bend a little. But it just doesn't matter to me, Billy," and she raked a hand through a tangle of hair. "I'm not fazed one bit, it's like I'm completely empty." She stopped but Billy didn't venture anything else. He wanted her to finish.

"So," she continued. "I've been riding around on the busses most days. On the days I'm supposed to go to the hospital I just ride around longer than usual. I can't stand to be around the house anymore. It's a prison, a depressing prison where time runs on and on but you never get anywhere." She held up her hands in perplexity.

"When I'm riding around I just sit there thinking...all this ton of crap reeling around in my head and I can't stop it. At night all I do is dream about things I don't want to think about even in the daylight, and all day long I think about them anyway! It's driving me crazy! I'm chasing things I can't catch!"

"Tell me, Liz," Billy said again, leaning closer and squeezing her shoulder.

Another tear slid free. "I don't want to die, Billy. I know all the stuff I said, but I don't feel so tough anymore. I'm afraid. When I wake up and the pain's there, dying is the only thing that's real. No matter how hard I try to think about something else, it doesn't work.

"I started a journal when I found out about the cancer. At first it was good, full of the ideas I told you about behind Cooter's. Now it's become much harder to write, if it even comes at all. And when it does I find myself writing things that don't help. Frightening things. There's nothing else there; I'm like a sieve that's draining out." She brought up her hand to brush away the tears that had collected at her lips, tears Billy could not see because of his own. He stared at the floor, but still kept a firm grip on his sister's hand. When she went on her voice was even quieter than when she'd begun.

"I don't want you to be frightened for me, Billy. I still believe in the things we talked about, it's just that there's a loneliness building inside, and it's not something that can be fixed. It feels like it's part of me, a silent thing that waits inside everyone...." Billy finally worked up the courage to look at her and she saw the tears tracking his face. He wiped them away quickly.

"I'm sorry, Elizabeth. I'd do anything to take this away...."

Elizabeth reached up and ran a hand along his face, proving that the tears were okay. "I know you would, Billy. No matter what happens, you'll always be with me. I know this. I don't want you to think I've given up hope because I haven't. It's just harder now...." and her voice trailed away again.

"Jesus," Billy whispered. "Why is this happening?" The question slipped out even though both knew there was no answer.

Several moments ticked by, and thankfully with them went some of the thick, damaging malaise that clogged the room. Billy slapped his knees and stood up, turning around to pull the covers up to Elizabeth's neck. "Try to get back to sleep, okay? You're pale. Don't worry about Mother, I called her last night and told her you were okay. I'm supposed to go to work today, but I can call in and tell them—"

Elizabeth held up her hand, cutting him off in mid stroke. "No, no, no," she said firmly. "If you've got to work, you work. I'll be fine right here. I've got a splitting headache and I'm going to try to sleep. No sense in you hanging around here for that. I'm not a baby and I'm not an invalid." Billy was glad to see a bit of color returning to her cheeks. "What time is it?" she asked.

Billy checked the Pulsar. "8:17," he said.

She attempted a smile that caused her to squint. "God, why'd you have to wake me up so early?" She pawed at him, but it was clear she had little energy. He reached over and rubbed her head, a vestige held over from their childhood. Some things were unchangeable after all. The smile that came to his lips (at the memory and the subsequent truth behind it) brought a soothing wave into the room. Elizabeth visibly relaxed and eased back farther in the bed.

"I brought you those aspirins so the whole day wouldn't be hell, little sister."

"Go to work," she moaned, feigning exasperation. "Turn the fan on high and leave me in peace."

"You got it." He walked to the doorway and paused. "I'll leave a key on the table by the T.V. if you need to take off before I get back." Her eyes were already closed as she nodded her head.

Chapter 56

An unusually chill breeze rifled Ebenezer's hair as he sat in the courtyard of Café du Monde. He was thankful for the hot cup of Espresso even if he was not particularly fond of the taste. Too sweet. The low hanging clouds would have made the area untenable had he forgotten to bring his jacket along, but he hadn't. He cinched it tighter around his chest, eyeing the four delicate beignets remaining, nestled in the drifts of powdered sugar on his plate. Drifts that got smaller with every gust of wind. He picked up one and put it to his lips. Long practice had taught him never breathe in when putting a beignet to your mouth because the powder would rush down your throat leaving you choking for the next five minutes. Only tourists and fools didn't know any better. He bit into the pastry, still amazed after the thousands he'd polished off how good they were. He sipped the Espresso and placed the cup on the table near his plate. His other hand went to investigate his errant moustache, a habit of his when sunk in deep thought.

He thought of his wife, Sarah, long lost these many years. The memories were a plague. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of the naked ring finger. He flexed his hand into a fist and slowly let it out again. So many years gone by. He remembered the dream he'd had in the hospital: the planes and smoke, the sky gone wild; then also of another he'd not had in a long while: the day with the boat on the chilling waterfront. The memories had hardened to inflexible dreams, forcing detail to every lost moment, never relinquishing the image of her small, white hand as the life ebbed out. Every detail.

They'd been married right before the War, him seventeen and her fifteen. At least that part of the story he'd told Billy was correct: how old he'd been. The rest was only...embellishment. But embellishment somehow gave things worth, he mused. They added color where the years tried to whitewash, sound where Time worked diligently to grind under. So many thoughts in his old head, so many drifting fragments left to wander and bump against his skull as he sat and thought, all of them now overpowered by the memory of her face. Absolutely gorgeous, petite; shiny black hair framed around an image, a goddess. He still recalled this idea sustaining him through many a dreadful day and night during the War, but even now its last vestiges were draining, finishing their diffusion across the Gulf of Years.

He thought about the multitude of letters he'd sent across the ocean, many of them written in times he felt he'd not survive, much less ever see her face again. Because in those letters he'd placed the only anchor to reality he'd had left.

*

Ebenezer began massaging his temple, trying to soothe the vague murmurings. There was no way to turn his thoughts away, however. He was too old, filled finally to the top with things no longer accessible except in dreams. It was suddenly, imperatively, time to make peace with the ghosts he'd long ago believed vanquished. They would be no help in the end unless faced now.

*

He'd come home from the Front. The first days and nights an endless celebration until they finally, almost thankfully, dragged slowly to an end, leaving them alone. There had been no disappointment, the angel he'd prayed to in letters actually existed, actually belonged to him.

They'd moved from Houma to Thibodaux shortly thereafter. One of Sarah's relatives died and her land and farmhouse had been in the family for generations. Sarah had been next in line. The land was black gold, having lain fallow for several years due to Sarah's uncle's illness. A rail line defined the back boundary, and a derelict mill was shoved into the short corner of the property no more than thirty yards from the house, used last during a booming logging operation forty years before. The road had been completely overrun even then. Live oaks filled the front yard, willows and elms in the back. In the past sugar cane yields had been wondrous. As Ebenezer recalled this he smiled again, thinking of Billy. He hadn't really been deceiving the boy, he told himself. It simply became hard to separate truth from fiction in storytelling.

Five years after his return they'd still been childless, though from no lack of effort. The only thing productive were the fields surrounding the house. Sarah began to withdraw and Ebenezer to doubt. Innocent questions escalated to occasional, and then increasingly frequent, arguments. The War receded to a bearable place in Ebenezer's mind only to be replaced by another conflict at home. An uneasy tension lay upon their house like a stifling disease. And in his ignorant youth, he had believed everything would be all right. Experience had since proven this theory only yearning: nothing more substantial than a whisper of memory. As an old man he chided himself for these youthful fantasies; the War should have taught him more than that. And if he really looked deep, inside he had, though he'd done his best to deny it.

The situation finally came to a head. The arguments escalated, tensions grew until cables threatened to snap. Two venomous strangers took to inhabiting the house. The crop money would not cure the wrong between them. Avoidance of the wedding bed became frequent. Of course it was plain enough something was being hidden.

And when he found out what that thing was, Ebenezer had wished that a bullet had found him on the European battlefields.

Alone with himself in the Café Du Monde courtyard, Ebenezer stared blindly ahead. The memory was so big, so terrible after these many years in the dark. She'd finally told him, her voice strained from the effort getting the words out. The tears had been many that afternoon. She'd suddenly seemed much smaller, already broken beyond repair. He'd not touched her once during her whole disclosure.

Ebenezer's unseeing eyes closed as he concentrated on the subtleties. The Espresso was cold, the wind had blown the remainder of the powdered sugar to the levee wall. One of the beignets had rolled off the plate and sat untouched on the iron table.

A man had seduced Sarah while he'd been away, a man turned down by the military because of a birth defect. A man who had plundered everything Ebenezer held sacred amid the many terrifying and mind-numbing days of the War. Only the sum total of her confession made it inside his head, the words he half-remembered vague and mumbled, a terrible indictment seemingly read in another language. But he'd gotten the point well enough; her eyes had told the truth.

She'd gotten pregnant. Of course, she could go to no doctor. The townspeople knew her, her family. The man had packed up and left. And she'd never loved him she pleaded to Ebenezer. She had no idea what had come over her. So she'd had it stopped. There was a person who know how, and so it had been done. But now, it seemed something had gone wrong...

How long had he sat there staring into his wringing hands? How long with his teeth grinding in his head as she continued talking, as if the act of starting had caused a force to awaken that refused quiet any longer. A dam of poisonous water broken free to flood what little remained. He'd watched, impassively as an observer, as his hand balled into a fist, watched with that same passive withdrawal as he'd smashed her in the face with it. Thank God it had only been one before he'd been able to control himself, any more than that and they'd have fried him in the electric chair for murder. He remembered his body humming and jumping as he looked at Sarah lying on the floor, blood dripping from the small gash on her cheekbone. He remembered as she'd dizzily brought herself into a sitting position. Her eyes had been dead then, he knew that too. He'd run from the house, practically tearing the door from the hinges in his rage and terror.

He'd ended up in the old mill, running amok amid the broken and rusting machinery. Smashing and throwing, kicking at anything that appeared breakable, some things that did not. Finally the howls broke free from his chest and echoed in the cracked and leaking confines of the mill like ghosts enraged by the living. How long had he sat there in a heap on the planked floor before the gunshot? There was no way to know. Time had ceased to be, only the sharp staccato report of the single shot served to pin any degree of reality to the veil of nightmare surrounding him.

Now, with the last of the powdered sugar blowing from the table, he remembered his mad tear back across the furrows, how he'd burst through the chest-high sugar cane, tripping over holes and going face down in the rows, the musty smell of dirt and manure in his nose and caking his lips. And then finally, frantically, taking the porch at a sprint and having unimpeded access to the house due to the screen door's lopsided yawn from the lone, crooked, bottom hinge.

On the floor in the kitchen, surrounded in a growing puddle of blood had been what was left of Sarah, feebly struggling in the mess. There was a neat dot of blood on her torn blouse, the place she'd always believed her heart to be. The pool of blood continued to grow. Her eyes were as dead now as they'd been when he tore away. The only difference was her body had followed. The .38 was still clutched limply in her right hand.

His madness had kept him going, only that. He'd gathered her up in his arms, the familiar smell of gunpowder and spilt blood filling the air. Her moans had diminished to ghostly whispers by the time he took her outside to the new Ford he'd bought for no more important reason than bringing cow manure to the fields.

The doctor's office had been twenty minutes away, but Sarah had been dead long before then. Undoubtedly before he'd left the house. Still, he'd screeched into the parking lot, his feet sliding in the skim of blood pooled on the floorboard. The truck had smelled like an abattoir as he'd pulled her from it. He'd kept going. He remembered how surprised the nurse had been when he stream-rolled into the office, the doctor's efficiency as he'd rushed them to the back. All for naught; Sarah was stone dead.

Or at least they had thought.

There was no hiding the suspicion in the doctor's eyes as he'd stood over her body, suspicions that were mysteriously quieted forever when Sarah took a mysterious last ghastly breath and opened her dead eyes. The words had been unmistakable, though filled with the grave. She had pointed her finger at him. "Innocent," she'd croaked. "It was me...I did it...my sin..." And after that, no more.

*

"Sir," the voice came at him gradually like a train whistle coming around a bend. "Sir," it repeated, "Do you need anything else? A new Espresso, maybe?"

Ebenezer shook his head to banish the memory. He blinked his eyes and looked up at the pretty, young face. "No dear," he responded quietly. "I b'lieve I'm finished." He looked around, suddenly uncomfortable, wondering what else he could say. The girl put out her hand.

"Oh, no sir. Don't get up, I didn't mean to disturb you. You've just been out her a long while, and I wanted to make sure you were warm enough." Her pleasant voice and cherubic face offered its own small proof of God's existence. Her attempt to reconcile what she viewed as an intrusion touched Ebenezer. It helped take his mind from its morose course. He reached over and patted her hand gently.

"Don't worry, m'dear," he assured her. "Ya're not runnin me off, I'm just lettin time get away. Some things I ain't thought about in a long time. Thank ya for savin me from 'em." He winked at her soft, blushing face. "The older ya get the more time ya tend ta waste. Don't forget that."

She laughed genuinely as she reached down and whisked the empty plate away. She plucked the fallen beignet from its groove in the iron table, and laughed again, asking him if he was sure he didn't need anything?

"No, no, my dear...I need ta be moseyin along.." He reached into his back pocket and withdrew his wallet, frayed almost to the point of collapse. Flipping it open, he fingered through a surprisingly thick wad of bills. He extracted a ten and handed it to the girl. "Thank's for ya concern. Not enough uv it goin around the world t'day...ain't been for a long time." She took the money as the blush grew.

"Thank you, sir," she replied, backing up slowly. At four paces she deftly spun around and disappeared inside the Café du Monde. Ebenezer's fingers drummed lightly on the table momentarily, and then he stood to leave.

Chapter 57

Nora gathered up the clothes' basket and carried it into the washroom even though it was not wash day. She'd been full of nervous energy since Billy's call the night before. He had very clearly balked when she'd suggested she come over, and she was largely unfamiliar with outright denial. She bit her lip and violently threw a handful of clothes into the washing machine. Her forehead seemed too tight for her skull. Though inside she knew the truth, finally: she was a pariah to her own children. Do I deserve it? she asked herself.

Then another question stole down to gently nip at her growing anger. Had Billy been as rude as she persisted in believing? She recalled his words: Elizabeth was fine; she'd been out with someone named Thomas; she wasn't feeling well; and she was asleep. Had there been much more than that? No. As another armful of clothes went inside the washer, she replayed the conversation through a haze of anger. He had warned her not to come, not explicitly spelled it out, but the hint had been adequate. More than adequate.

And Elizabeth was still not home.

Nora had prayed mightily for the remnants of her family to be drawn together, like threads repaired in an unraveling rug, but it seemed the runs were only getting longer and more ragged. Eventually there'd be nothing left to repair. The clock on the wall beside the cleaning cabinet silently stated 2:55. Still no word. Nora wanted to call Billy's apartment but something hard and knotted inside her refused. Twice she'd gone to the phone with the full intent of using it, and both times she had run into an impregnable, inchoate barrier which refused to budge. It left her heart rattling in her chest and the taste of steel in her mouth.

Elizabeth would call soon, either that or she'd show up at the front door. Nora knew it must happen. Nonetheless, her inner tumult bubbled like a foul concoction, succeeding to poison the rest of her thoughts. She collapsed in the plastic folding chair near the old sewing table and clasped her hands together. Then she closed her eyes and tried to find solace and better control of her senses under the dull consistency of the washing machine's purring motor.

Chapter 58

Hours later that same afternoon, Ebenezer stood like a ghost before the grave of his dead wife. It had been the better part of three decades since he'd had (what he now fully recognized) the courage to come face-to-face with...this. He rummaged around in his pocket until finding the thorny stem he sought. He'd stopped near one of the mobile Lucky Dog hot dog stands before leaving New Orleans and bought the single red rose from another vendor close by, tucking it gently into the folds of his coat as he meandered away.

Feeling its presence in his pocket, he glanced off, noticing how far the sun had sunk to the horizon. The cab he'd hired idled in a noxious, oily cloud within the long shadows near the back of the parking lot. It had to undoubtedly be one of the stranger fares the driver'd had in a while: the Eden Point Baptist Church on Highway 308 just east of Thibodaux. A long fare. But thankfully long, because the miles and uncharacteristic silence of his driver had given Ebenezer plenty of time to think, to plod through the tangle of misplaced memories like some solitary elephant wandering deeper toward its generation's old and secret place in the jungle.

This graveyard.

As Ebenezer stood and stared down at the crooked headstone, the decades' old accusation battered him afresh. He remembered the eyes of Sarah's relatives, those cold stares from across the room, suspicion hanging like Damocles' sword above his head. The doctor had been there, along with the sheriff who likewise remained very formal and extremely curt. The two men had been thick as thieves during the service, but even the doctor could not have denied what Sarah had miraculously spouted at the end. After the end actually...there was always that.

Nothing had ever been filed against him. But it had not set well with either the people in charge nor the townsfolk in general.

Ebenezer also recalled with a clearer, sharper vision (like an old windshield, years forgotten in the darkness of a shed, finally set upon with a little elbow grease and soap) the incredible anger, the crushing loss. She had made her escape complete, leaving him to suffer the arrows of condemnation that followed. Only once had he been able to look across the room at her invalid great grandfather, and Ebenezer had been consumed by the hatred dwelling there. But nothing had ever been said aloud (Christ! they must have known and wanted to avoid a scandal, dammit! they must have known!). So instead, he was to be haunted in seclusion.

He'd lived in the house until it became no more than a stifling tomb. The fields were neglected, a barren testament to the wrong that had ended there. The thick, red stain could not be completely removed from the kitchen floor, instead it sank deeper with every attempt at cleaning. Anger and guilt became his only companions. The house was unbearable, around every corner the ghosts flitted, and he awoke many times screaming. So many, in fact, that he'd taken to sleeping in the doorway of the old mill, stretched out on a threadbare quilt beneath the broken ceiling. Of course, even out there he sometimes jerked and moaned in his sleep among the dust and moldy wood shavings, wrestling with things he could not see and only vaguely remember in the morning.

Ebenezer turned away from the grave to look at the clapboard church with its two sentinel and skeletal elms protecting its entrance. He noticed the cab driver quickly look back to the unfolded paper leaning against the steering wheel as Ebenezer's glance tracked by. Heedless of the driver's interest, Ebenezer thought, Thirty years. My God, has it been thirty years? Amazing.

He remembered sitting alone in the first row of pulpits, eyes pinned directly ahead, his jaw so tightly clenched that his teeth had hurt for days afterward as did the muscles all the way to his forehead. He'd felt all those other eyes boring into his skull, dissecting him like some disemboweled animal in a high school biology class, but he'd also known they could never touch him. What they managed to squeeze out of him was no more than emptiness (he knew; he'd had it ever since), even though he knew they figured it for guilt alone. All fools. He remembered how the crazy nephew, the one named ironically enough, Francis, had slipped up behind him when the service was over and whispered, 'We all know you're behind this, you bastard,' before getting out of his range. Not only fools but cowards also. Ebenezer had said nothing, had never even turned to acknowledge the comment.

After ten straight days of sleeping within the old mill's doorway, he'd simply awoke one day, walked into the house, packed up what little he needed, and left. He'd not known he was bound to end in New Orleans until well after the water pump hose had blown and he'd worked at the garage for a week to pay off the repairs. He'd been meaning to leave after that, hell, could still vividly recall thinking that Pensacola or maybe Atlanta might be good places to make a run at a new life. But the long ago panic attack at the Chef Menteur Pass (one that had come on so severe and sudden that he'd damn near painted himself along the guardrails), had stopped all such fantasies. He'd never left New Orleans. He remembered driving around aimlessly after the attack had subsided with nothing left in his head. He'd felt scrubbed clean, at the verge of a new emptiness that would continue to grow for years. He'd ended up on the levee, staring for hours at the stars above his head until consciousness left him. When he woke up the next morning he was drenched with dew.

And the rest of the story?

Well, he didn't quite know the end of it yet.

Ebenezer took his eyes off the church, avoiding an urge to look at the cab driver again as he turned his attention once more to the grave. Such a forgotten and lonely place. The epithet was simple: Sarah May Holgren, Rest in the Lord's Peace. It was the first time he'd ever seen it; he had no idea who had put the thing down. A prominent crack had begun separating the tombstone into separate pieces. It had almost reached the 'H' in her name. Even after all these years, a divorce of sorts appeared eminent. One side was already beginning to recede from the other. Weeds choked a cluttered barricade around the stone, and Ebenezer bent to pull them away. He didn't worry about the back or sides but wanted the face of the stone clear. There was nothing he could do about the crack. When he was finished he fished in his pocket for the rose and extracted it as carefully as a thin glass ball. It was the only thing of color in the whole churchyard. He laid it down in the spot he'd cleared.

"This is all I got for ya, Sarah. It ain't much, but I got old and don't know much about things it seems I outta know a helluva lot about." His voice was no more than a tremulous breeze whispering above the grass. "I'm tryin ta set things straight and figured this'ld be a good place ta start. Too bad life takes the liberties it does..." and he brushed a hand across one eye. He sniffed hard and held his breath for a moment. "I'm ain't mad no more; I want'cha ta know that. I don't know if it matters, but it's the truth. I think I quit being mad a long time ago, but jus' never realized.

"Just proves ya never can tell, don't it?" He reached out and touched the stone briefly before standing up. He walked back to the cab slowly. As he neared it the driver dropped the newspaper and swiveled to open the back door. Ebenezer climbed inside and sat down heavily without saying a word.

"You done?" the cabbie asked, afraid for his tip to go further.

"Yep, that's it." Ebenezer's voice revealed nothing.

The cabbie turned back to fold the paper as he kicked the car to life. He whistled through his teeth as he grabbed the steering wheel. "Musta been somebody special."

"She was," Ebenezer said dryly, refusing the bait. "In another time."

The ride back was made in thankful silence.

Chapter 59

"Thomas?" Elizabeth asked, holding the phone nervously in her hand. Most of the nails were bitten to the quick on both.

"Elizabeth?" She heard a breath of relief, then, "Thank God you called! I was just going to cut out for a while; I'm setting up a pump and filter for an underground aquarium across town and there's no phone. My beeper had a little...accident," he said, recalling the bout of exasperation that had spelled its demise. "I was gonna call your mother's tonight if I didn't hear anything...regardless of the consequences," he added and laughed. "Forgot to get your brother's number last night."

"That's what I'm calling about. Thomas, I'm really embarrassed. I still can't believe I called you...I don't really remember much of anything. I left out in a bad mood and ended up at The Tank Station. Happy Hour."

"Hey, look, no sweat. What did I tell you at your mother's place? If you need me, call. No problem. That's what friends are for." He half expected a comment but when none came, he continued. "Haven't felt very good today, huh? 'S what happens when you get looped," he joked. She said nothing and the interminable silence carried on.

Then abruptly, she asked, "Can we go out tonight?"

Thomas hauled in a quick breath. "Uh, yeah...sure. Where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere, out walking, anything. Let's do the Quarter. I just want to be with you tonight." Her implication was plain enough. "I don't want to go home," she whispered. The urgency in her voice brought on an immediate heaviness in his groin.

He wiped his face with the towel lying on his bed and then chunked it into the dirty clothes hamper near the closet. "What the lady wants, the lady gets," he admitted. "Look, it won't take me long to get what I've got to do done. I'm just gonna make it look like I'm busy. I'll handle the big stuff tomorrow." He looked at his watch. "What time?"

"Seven, seven-thirty?"

"Seven's great. Gives me a few hours to get rolling and take a shower." He paused. "Oh yeah," he said. "Where at? Billy's, or your mother's?"

She thought for a moment. She had no fresh clothes here. "How about my mother's...that's okay, I hope?"

"Fabulous," he replied. "Seven sharp."

"Great. See you then, bye."

"Goodbye," he said, hanging up.

Chapter 60

Billy called his apartment right before his shift was up, letting the phone ring ten times before hanging up, convinced Elizabeth was gone. Back at Mother's, he figured. He considered calling her there but didn't feel like trying the skilled wraith of his mother. Not so often in so short a period. Best to let sleeping dogs lie. She'd had a whole night to mull over what Billy knew she perceived as a family mutiny, and he had learned the best policy was usually silence. Of course you think that, the damnable voice warned him. That's how you deal with shit. "Goddammit, that's not true," he said to himself, though the same voice was quick to remind him that it was, in fact, quite honestly true. "Fuck it," he said defiantly, grinding his teeth. The voice eventually quieted down, but the whispering accusations continued in much the same fashion as when he'd learned of Elizabeth's illness.

As he punched the time clock he considered the night before him, dreading the solitude of his apartment. Sitting in there alone held all the enjoyment of a prison sentence. He walked up the stairs to the lobby, deserting the building with a companion sense of relief and dismay; relief to be off, but still uneasy in his own company. He licked his lips, practically tasting the beer as his plan began to formulate. Nothing big really, just a quick stop by the Ripcord for a cold one. Maybe the old man would be there. If not, he'd try Ebenezer's place. Solitude did not fit the bill tonight.

A short time later (with the fog just starting to tendril out of manholes, amid the gutters carrying within them all the unpleasant and cloying smells of waste and run-off that collected in the bowl of New Orleans) he saw the familiar sign. Tonight was the best weather he'd experienced since running upon the Ripcord, and as he walked closer he noticed the canopy below the sign had a tear along one side, causing the two unraveling edges to wave lazily back and forth in the gentle breeze that wafted between the buildings. Billy walked underneath the canopy and went inside.

The first person he saw was Shelly, once again minding the bar alone. He sauntered up, catching the glance out of the corner of her eye as she raised a finger acknowledging his presence. A loud, burly man at the other end had her immediate attention, so Billy sat down on a stool near the taps and waited patiently. From the little Billy could make out (the man had obviously been drinking for hours) Loud Mouth didn't like the tab. Regardless, Shelly appeared in control. Billy turned his back to the bar, and placed one elbow on it as he looked around. There were few customers and it didn't take long to pick out Ebenezer's smiling, drunken face. A huge German beer stein sat on the table before him, and there was something about the gleam in the old man's eyes (even from across the room) that unnerved Billy immediately. Ebenezer waved hurriedly, biding Billy come join him. Billy waved back, on the verge of standing when a firm hand gripped his shoulder. For just a second he expected to come around to Loud Mouth's displeasure, but when he turned it was Shelly's face he saw. The drunk stumbled on past and out the door, grumbling under his breath. If he had a tail it was wrapped tightly around his balls.

"Well," she said, "Haven't seen you in a while." She flipped her head in Ebenezer's direction. "Ya buddy's a different story. He's been here all day; brought his own mug. It's one of those days," she finished, although Billy didn't quite know what she was talking about. There was just the unease he'd gotten from the first look.

"I know, I just saw him," he said, trying to sound nonchalant. "You been good?"

"No different really. Not bad considering." She didn't mention the confrontation with the drunk and Billy figured she was used to such behavior. "—can I get ya?" she was asking as Billy leaned forward to catch the rest of her sentence.

"Oh, ahh," he said, clearing his throat. "Bud, draft if you've got it."

"Always got it," she affirmed, snapping up a mug from beneath the bar with a sweep of her hand. She pulled the tap forward a split second before the mug went underneath, tilted at just the right angle. When she slid it his way the head was so thin as to be transparent. "Enjoy," she said, turning away to wait on another group who'd filtered in as they'd spoken. Billy peeled a five out of his wallet before starting over to Ebenezer's table and pushed it down in the tip jar.

As Billy approached Ebenezer patted the table gingerly. He was obviously well nigh inebriated. "Well, well, well, look what the cat drug in," the old man said. His eyes were almost as cloudy and red as Billy remembered them being the first night. And even though Ebenezer didn't seem happy, it was clear he was glad to see Billy. "Din't expect ya t'night."

Billy pulled back a chair and sat down. "Me either, but I didn't feel like going home. I figured you might be around."

"And ya're goddamn right, boy. I din't feel like goin home." Ebenezer's eyes did have some disturbing quality that was just out of reach of a suitable definition. His speech was slurred but coherent. A weird déjà vu passed over Billy and his skin crawled.

"What you been up to today?" he ventured.

Ebenezer waved his hand, quickly dismissing the question. "Shit and shinola," he returned. "But no need ta get inta that now. You jes gettin off work?"

"Uh, yeah." Billy couldn't hide the disquiet in his voice, and was glad the old man hadn't appeared to catch it. Ebenezer was staring at him or over him, Billy couldn't be quite sure which. "What's that you've got there, a stein?" he asked.

Ebenezer nodded his head vigorously. "Yep! 'Tis. Bought this bastard over in Germany years back. I brin it alon for the ride ever once in a while." He belched loudly and wiped his mouth.

"How's the shoulder?"

Ebenezer looked at it for a second before patting it gingerly. "Right as rain, boy. Right as rain." He bit his lip and looked away. Billy chose quiet, contenting himself to nurse his beer as he regarded the old man. Ebenezer nodded his head as if in agreement to something Billy hadn't heard, and pursed his lips. "I b'lieve I got one for ya, boy," he finally spit out.

"What's that?"

Ebenezer belched. "Story, Billy. I tole you I'd have'ta go way back, but I think I got one."

Billy leaned back in his chair, feeling the one short leg displace the weight unevenly. He believed he could live with it. "Let's have it," he said. Ebenezer was under some sort of strain; that much was obvious. The particulars were hidden; it was best to wait and see.

Ebenezer cleared his throat mightily and nodded again. He scratched at his neck as he began. "I doan 'member where this one's from. 'S got no histr'y. Maybe it'll stan on its own goddamn legs well enough." He bobbed his head slightly and with no further ado, began.

"Was a boy named John Delphia had a high school prom. Had a pretty little girlfrien named Mona. Couln't sleep most nights jus thinkin 'bout what was under 'er skirts. Beautiful girl..." he confirmed and hesitated. He flipped the lid on the stein and took a gulp.

"Was a problem though," Ebenezer continued. "Money. Johnny Boy had wheels, but the gas, tuxedo, pi'tures, dinner and ever other rotten thing was gonna run 'im over the edge. Asked the old man for a little extra cash, and even though 'e got some, things was still gonna be tight. They hain't been goin out long and 'e wanted ta impress 'er, ya know?" Billy nodded his head.

"Well, the Big Day comes, and 'e's left sittin diggin through the phone book, tryin ta find a suitable place, somethin tasteful, without a huge price tag ta match. Well, 'e did what'as right. Most times ya can get a pretty good idea 'bout a rest'rant by their ad in the Yellow Pages. Sure enough, all the classy joints was way outta range.

"Then 'e comes across an ad right near the bottom a the page, some medium-level spread with Chinese artwork spread 'round a catchy name. Way out on Buchanan road, pract'cally the rim a town, but the ad assures reas'nable prices. John thinks back a bit," and Ebenezer placed his hand on his brow as if remembering himself, "and recalls seein the place one night out cruisin and drinkin with his buddies." Ebenezer looked at Billy as if to satisfy himself that his audience was attentive. Billy nodded as the old man took another gulp of whatever bubbled in the depths of the stein.

Ebenezer smacked his lips before continuing.

"'E calls 'er, tells 'er 'e'll pick 'er up 'round 7:30. 'Perfect,' she says and 'e hangs up after a coupla minutes feeling like a dog with two dicks." Ebenezer caught Billy's quick bark of laughter and wagged his finger as if to drive home the metaphor.

"Leaves the house and works up the balls for the one stop 'forehan. A convience store down the way where 'e mills around aimless for a bit. Gotta fake I.D. 'e does. Well, finally 'e grabs a sixer and the clerk, who's from Afganistan or Lebanon or wherever the hell it is them comp'nies find 'em, don't even ask for the damn thin. Jus rings it up and throws it ina bag. Takes most a thirty seconds and John's off like a shot. Already has a woody 'bout as hard as this table top," Ebenezer said and knocked loudly several times. He talked faster now, and even though the narrative was slurred and rambling at times, his eyes held testiment he'd reached the Zone.

"Pulls up at 'er house, nice place on a nice street, the kinda place 'e dreams 'bout ever once in a while, a carrot held out in front a his face while he puffs along behin. 'E knocks on the door and Mona's dad lets 'im in. A course, she's not ready yet; wouln't be correc', so John's left sittin on the couch shootin the shit with 'er parents. Usual rigmarole; Where ya'll goin? When ya gonna be back? All the bullshit that goes alon with tryin ta get a lil tail. But it ain't so long when a shadow kinda falls across the livin room from the top a the stairs and there she is. Christ Almighty...fit ta kill. Pract'cally turns 'im ta stone; 'is whole body this time. Suddenly the room's real quiet and everbody jus lays back and waits as she flows down the stairs. Then there's the camera and 'bout a hundred flash bulbs afore they're allowed ta go." Ebenezer stopped and wrinkled his nose in his familiar way, seconds later clearing it like a bull elephant leading a charge. Another massive draught followed the others, and as he set the stein on the table he motioned for another fill-up. Billy quickly drained what little he had left. Ebenezer pushed the stein to the corner of the table, pinning Billy with a steely glare. Once again, seemingly by magic, the old man did not look as drunk as when he'd begun. Billy set his own empty mug close by.

"Pretty soon they're in 'is car, wavin goodbye ta 'er folks. Radio way down so's not ta cause a fuss, and jus outta the driveway Mona's got 'er hand restin high an pretty on John's thigh. And 'im, the whole time, jus grinnin like the Cheshire Cat and wavin, wavin. By the time they make the Stop sign at the end a the street the radio's up, blastin Top 40, and 'er hand 'as moved up further.

"She wants ta know where they're goin and 'e says it's secret. A true pillar of masculinity. 'E takes off and—" Ebenezer stopped, turning his full attention to Shelly who stood right over Billy's shoulder with a pitcher of beer in her hand. "Oh now, thank ya my dahlin," he drawled, reaching over to pat her closest hip, his attitude once more along the lines of a grandfather to his favorite grandchild. "Ya're the best a the best, my girl," he said with genuine honesty.

"Com'on, Eb. You say that shit to everybody," and she mocked him with a wink in Billy's direction.

"No, no, no," he countered. "Only m' favorites." She smiled back at the old man, offering his forehead a pat before filling Billy's mug.

"Thank you, Shelly," Billy said, hoisting it in salute.

"It's a living," she answered and walked back to the bar.

Ebenezer looked at Billy, his eyes slightly askew, disoriented. "Where was I?" he asked, peering self-consciously now into the depths of his stein as if searching for whatever he'd lost in there.

Billy stepped in. "They were on their way to the restaurant."

"Right...yeah. Okay." Ebenezer raised the stein and drank again, heavily. "They talk the whole way over, laughin...exited, happy ta be t'gether. Playful touchin goin on here and there...sa much so, in fact, that John drives straight past the place, only catchin it outta the corner a his eye as they fly by. 'E slows down at a farmhouse not far down the road and drives back, slower this time. The place is dark, and John feels Mona draw up jus a hint. This the right place? she wants ta know.

"The only light outside is trained from a pole near the street ta a small but 'laborate sign positioned d'rectly over the doorway. There's no other car in the parkin lot.

"'The Crimson Dragon?' Mona asks.

"'Uh huh,' John replies, kinda spooked 'imself. Not afraid a the place, mind ya; but a the potential for disaster 'e can already sense. R'members the place bein a lil better lit when 'e seen it b'fore. Lookin 'round at the deserted parkin lot forms a tight little knot a contention in his belly. Because the guy 'e'd talked ta asked for reservations. Well..." and Ebenezer eerily melted to the point of detachment, no longer part of the actually telling. Billy took another sip and said nothing. The Wurlitzer in the corner clicked, slapping down a 45 on the warped turntable, and moments later the slow, ghostly anthemic Wreak of the Edmund Fitzgerald slipped out of the long-suffering speakers.

Ebenezer coughed away a dryness that had developed in his voice. "John looked at Mona, 'fraid a the expression 'e feared findin. Luckily, 'e did not. She still looked radiant, happy. She even says, 'Looks like we're the first ones here,' and they both 'ave a laugh over that.

"When they walk through the front door John calms down. The inad'quate lightin in the parking lot is compensated fully here inta a peaceful, romantic atmosphere. Place's done up in a jungle Buddhist style, Birds a Paradise wreathin the arched entrance ta the dinin room, a magnif'cent fresh water 'quarium, brimmin ta bust with the biggest and brightest Koi an goldfish either one a 'em 'as ever seen. Soft, fluted music drifts on the scented air; a sensual drift risin up from lighted candles burnin on every table. An while they're takin it all in, a very regal Chinese fig're, festooned in formal wear an a toothy smile, steps outta the shadows in greetin. Needless ta say, John's nerves die down, and if 'e coulda managed it, woulda broke 'is arm pattin 'isself on the back. Lookin at Mona only confirms 'is good taste.

"As the waiter leads 'em ta a secluded booth in the back a the empty room, John squeezes 'er hand, feelin 'is class ring, somethin 'e'd offered and she'd accepted a month or so b'fore. Made everthin official. She was really 'is girl. They sit down, took the menus from the host, noddin 'yeah' they would be int'rested in a bottle a compl'mentry wine." Ebenezer slapped the table lightly, and he blinked his eyes trying to clear them. It was now plainly obvious how drunk he was. His speech was getting worse, and Billy wondered if he'd be able to finish the story at all. Ebenezer turned a bleary eye on him and a wan smile found its way out from behind the beard. "Well b' now," he went on, "John figures 'isself the King of Sheba." He paused, blinking his eyes. "Or is that Queen?...fuck it, doan matter..." He shook his head. "'E gets the free wine, no filly fuckin around with I.D.'s. A course, it's obvious ta see 'e's a real man, and lookin 'cross the table at Mona 'e knows she sees it too. Some nights the world really turns yer way, 'e thinks.

"After pourin 'em each a glass, the waiter dissappears ta the kitchen. John watches Mona drink, likin how the ring catches the light, likin the way it winks back at 'im. 'E reaches over and grabs 'er hand, tells 'er how much 'e loves 'er, all that clap-trap..." and for a moment Ebenezer comes completely unglued and stares out at nothing at all. Billy contents himself to wait. "They look like two pigeons trillin it up in a coop," Ebenezer finally says before taking another huge gulp and wiping sweat from his brow.

"Perty soon the bottle's half done, or" he paused, "half-full if ya're an optimist. I sit the fence m'self," he admitted as if only half aware of what he was saying. "By the time the waiter comes back they're both talkin and laughin, havin a helluva time. 'Ave hardly looked at the menu, and when the waiter asks 'em if they're ready ta order they both look at each other and damn near bust a gut. John asks the waiter what he suggests, and without a second's hes'tation Charlie Chan says the House Special. One order, two people; 's gotta lil everthin. John looks at Mona. Why not? he asks and she jus smiles and giggles." Ebenezer fanned his hand out and pointed. "So off goes Mr. Chan," he said.

"An when 'e leaves," he continued, the drag in his voice becoming more ponderous, "down goes the res a the wine. John drains what's left outta Mona's lipstick-stained glass and they go on, not carin, not even aware they're still the only customers. Jus as if they was the last one's on earth. Young love...young love," and in that second Billy saw Ebenezer's eyes glaze over again, although also at that very instant the old man turned to examine something on a months'-old poster hanging on a nearby wall. Billy shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"Mona fin'lly 'as ta go ta the can. As she stands John reaches over and pinches 'er ass. She slaps 'is 'and away, warnin 'im she's 'bout ta piss 'er pants. The only sound in the dinin room, aside their own clatter, is the feeble whiff a background music driftin through as if only half on its way a gettin somewhere. The wine's stronger than they expected. She laughs a lil loud and 'eads off through the arched entrance t'wad the bathroom. John sits still, watchin 'er go, tryin ta get a better focus by blinkin 'is eyes real fast, but it doan 'elp. So 'e shakes 'is 'ead, tryin ta loose the cobwebs. The alcohol's gettin 'im different, 'e knows that much; 'e'd only had one beer drivin over, and then two glasses here. Right? 'E squints, sizin up the dark, unmarked bottle. Still a lot left. 'E squints, tryin ta 'member, tryin ta focus. 'Ow much 'ad 'e 'ad? Draws a blank and shakes 'is 'ead tryin ta get 'is thinkin b'tween the lines. Even pushes 'is glass a wine away.

"Well, the longer 'e sits there, the tighter 'is pants seem ta get; the tighter 'is collar seems ta get. 'Is throat starts dryin up, 'is tongue gets all knotty an full a hair. Actually takes an effort ta swallow. And as if this ain't enough Mona still ain't back. Seems like she's been gone a long time too, though John cain't 'member exactly what direction she'd 'eaded. 'E tries checkin 'is watch, sweat breakin out on 'is fore'ead when he cain't read it. 'S'all jus fuzzy nonsense. 'Is eyes start buggin outta 'is head; 'is chest hurts. Then, grad'ally, at first, the room slowly begins swimmin aroun, all the colors meltin t'gether, the archway by the front door droopin like it was made a rubber and needed ta be pressed back inta place.

"By that time panic's got 'im, an the more frantic 'e becomes, the less control 'e 'as. The already dim lights begin dimmin more." Ebenezer halted to catch his breath. His eyes had a gloriously diabolical red hue; his head bobbed from left to right. If he knew this, he didn't appear to care. Billy swallowed. He didn't think Ebenezer had been drinking as much lately since he'd been on the pain medication, but tonight something had happened. Something, it appeared, the old man had been inexplicably unprepared for. Still, the story.... Billy watched as Ebenezer threw back his head for another gulp. He must have hit bottom because he set the stein down in a bizarre fury of defiance. Then he coughed loudly, once.

He held up a finger that jittered and danced under its own volition. "Couln't keep 'is 'ead off'n the table. Tryin 'is best, it jus kep goin down, not a damn thin 'e could do. When 'e could fin'ly fight it no longer 'e c'lapsed flat 'cross the tablecloth, knockin over what was left a the wine, 'earin it hit the floor and gurgle out the rest. 'E 'uz turned, facin the kitchen door, still conscious when it swung open. Still no Mona. Charlie Chan come back carryin a huge Sterlin silver platter, steam pourin out all 'roun the edges a the muthafucker. As 'e comes over John, laid out 'cross the table, reg'sters the huge, toothy grin stretchin 'cross the Chinaman's face. But everthin 'bout that grin is evil.

"'Poison,' John thinks. 'Fuckin bastard poisoned us.' But he cain't do nothin. Charlie Chan reaches the table and John's crumpled there, 'is ears ringin like crazy. The Chinaman bends down eye-level, still wearin the grin like a department store mannequin, an at first 'is words are only ghostly sounds issuin from a darkened tunnel. But slowly, slowly, meanin does form, the words attain some distinction. An it's the same thin over and over again. Jus two, simple words.

"'House Special, House Special...'

"John tries ta scream but his throat is closed, gettin tighter ever minute. The ringin in his ears is only canceled for a second by the sound a the platter bein set down. Then 'e feels 'is 'air bein pulled and 'is 'ead jerked back, twistin 'is neck. 'E's forced ta stare at the steamin platter as the lid comes off, straight through the cloud a steam at the almond-sprinkled meat. The smell is strangely, sickly, sweet. 'Is eyes try ta put form ta image.

"It's the glint off the ring that fin'ly does it, reflectin from the overhead lights. Still shinin jus as perty as ever, but the finger and hand it's attached ta is swollen from the heat a the oven, roasted clear up ta the elbow. The meat a Mona's forearm has cracked in sev'ral long lines and John can smell the aroma comin from the creases. An as 'e's lyin there, pair'lized from both the poison and the smell a his lover's flesh, the Chinaman draws out a long blade and begins the slow work a preparin dessert..." Ebenezer said, finishing the grisly tale with a cock-eyed look in Billy's general direction. He puffed out his cheeks and blew hard, wiping one bleary, red eye with his left hand.

"'S all right?" he mumbled right before his eyes shut.

Chapter 61

Billy checked his watch and saw that ten minutes had passed since Ebenezer finished the tale. He'd only intended on having a few beers with the old man, but several hours had passed by the wayside while they swilled beer and Ebenezer rambled. A dead, deep silence had followed since the story was told, and Billy sat musing over the old man's departure from his usual methods. The story hadn't had the 'meat' of the others he'd told; it had come across as stripped and fleshless as a desiccated corpse, but somehow more ghastly because of this rawness. Billy had never witnessed Ebenezer in such a state; never had the old man's speech been so slurred or unwieldy. And this time, he really hadn't seemed interested if Billy liked it or not. He'd simply poured the tale out and left it to fester in the open like an old, untreated wound. From the looks of it Ebenezer had consumed enough alcohol to make John Barrymore think twice.

Something was definitely wrong. The old man had been too quick to change the subject when Billy asked what he'd been doing earlier. There'd been the warning look not to go too far, and Billy hadn't, even though it had taken plenty of resolve. Of course he'd seen the old man drunk, but never incapacitated. Not like this; Ebenezer slumped head in hands, his forehead almost resting on the closed stein in front of him. Billy couldn't be completely sure (not with the hum of the other patrons in the bar and the scratchy sounds coming from the Wurlitzer), but it sounded like the old man was mumbling or singing lightly to himself. Perhaps he was praying.

Billy bit his lip, trying to decide what to do. There would be no repeat of last time. There was no more room in his soul to run again. He would see the old man home. So committed, he swallowed the last warm sip of beer, and stood up quietly before making his way to the bar. Shelly spotted him halfway between and met him at the corner, concern showing on her ruddy face. She wiped absently at an already dry spot on the bar in front of them. "Shelly," Billy said, scratching the back of his neck. "Could you do me a favor?"

She seemed not to acknowledge him at first, looking past his shoulder at Ebenezer who still had his head in his hands. Billy looked back too, thinking by now the old man was probably asleep, or if not, fast approaching it. "He's really tying one on tonight, ain't he?" Billy heard Shelly ask and he turned back to face her.

"No doubt. Can you call us a taxi? I'll go with him and make sure he gets home, especially after what happened last time. Never seen him like this. Drunk, yeah, but not like this."

"You got a point. He's been coming around long before me, but I never seen him so...used up." She shook her head as Billy considered her assessment. "I'll call the cab," he heard her say. "Shouldn't take 'em long. I'm telling you, he's really been pouring through 'em today. Hasn't been himself since he got mugged, seems like." She cast a concerned eye on Billy.

He nodded his head. "I know," he agreed. "Too many pain killers and not so much booze. Until tonight. Something must have happened today.

"Like what?" Shelly prompted.

Billy shrugged his shoulders. "Don't know. He wouldn't say." He thought for a moment. "When I tried he changed the subject."

Shelly held up her hands and shrugged her shoulders. "All right," she said, backing away from him. "I'll ring the cab. He'll poke his head in when he gets here. We do business all the time."

"'Preciate it," Billy told her before walking back to the table.

Ebenezer managed to turn his head and crack an eye when Billy sat back down. The old man's tongue leaked out and ran across his lips, his features a hostage of fatigue. "Oh, my boy," he fairly croaked. "I gotta get home..." His voice held the sum-total weight of the beer he'd consumed and the tale he'd told. He made as if to stand, but Billy reached over and pushed down gently on one shoulder. Ebenezer simply folded without protest.

"I've got a cab on the way, Eb. Neither one of us needs to walk home tonight after that bullshit last time." He included himself just in case the old man believed he was being coddled. There was no conceivable reason to add any potential gasoline to dying embers. Billy wanted a painless transportation.

"A cab?" Ebenezer mumbled, as if the word had no meaning.

"Yeah," Billy replied, making a stab at humor. "I left my two-seater at home and the subway hasn't gotten this far yet..."

Ebenezer didn't catch the joke. "Yeah, well, guess 'at's all right..." and he went back to cradling his head in his hands.

*

After the cab came, and Billy had helped the old man to the waiting Chevy idling within the cloud of carbon monoxide escaping through a crack in the worn-out muffler, Ebenezer continued his morose silence. He slumped against the window, occasionally staring out at the passing buildings (Billy knew because he watched him continuously), offering no comments and fielding no questions. Thankfully, (there was so much to be thankful for, after all, Billy thought sardonically), after a few vain attempts at mundane conversation the cabby had given up and drove them on to Ebenezer's apartment in a quiet disturbed only by the tortured engine's infrequent, but vocal, complaints.

By the time they pulled up to the curb on Ursulines Street the fog had built again, leaving the street milky and damp in the glow of the street lamps. Billy got out to help Ebenezer up the stairs to his place, signaling the cabby with a knock on his window to stay put until he returned. The cabby simply pointed at the meter and shrugged his shoulders in disinterest. Surprisingly, Ebenezer did not balk at the arm. In fact, by the time they got through the gate Ebenezer was leaning on Billy heavily.

After a precarious and stumbling accent, Ebenezer pulled away, pausing a moment to regain his balance as he fumbled for his keys. He made no comment when Billy finally took them from his thick fingers, and picked through himself until he found the right one. As he pushed the door open he asked if Ebenezer was all right. The old man was so lethargic Billy feared another hospital visit on the horizon.

Ebenezer looked at Billy and patted the young man's arm in a warm (if drunken), grandfatherly way. "God...yeah. I b'fine. 'Jus ova did it..." He shuffled through the open door into the gloom that waited, stopping in the foyer and turning around. Billy noticed he wasn't swaying quite so much as before. From the darkness Billy barely heard, "Was it love that kilt 'im, Billy?"

Billy wasn't sure he'd heard correctly. "What's that?"

"Did it kill 'im? Love, I mean..." Ebenezer began pushing the door closed.

"The guy in the story?"

The door stopped only long enough for the reply. "Yeah...the guy in the story," came the voice from the darkness.

"I'm not sure—" Billy attempted as the door started closing again.

"Well let's jus sleep on it tonight," Ebenezer said right before the door shut. Standing alone in the stairwell, Billy heard the deadbolts slotting into place. He considered the strange, parting question and how it related to the odd behavior he'd witnessed. He finally shook his head (after coming up with nothing tangible) before clunking back down the stairs, exasperated and more than a little drunk himself, for the ride home. And on the way it was his turn to stare silently out the window and watch the buildings pass silently and darkly by.

Chapter 62

"Make love to me again, Tommy," Elizabeth whispered in his ear. They were still entwined, their naked flesh slowly finding a normal pace after the first time. She kissed his chest and moved slowly up to his lips. Her hand found him and gently squeezed, implored. He squirmed under her need, tracing his tongue along her lips. Her breasts were hot, her nipples straining. "Take me..." she urged, flexing and finding progress.

They'd been home almost forty-five minutes from Gator's in Metairie. They'd danced until she got winded, then sat and talked on a couch emblazoned with gold trim near one end of the spacious dance floor. But after a short while the formalities had been nothing but a bore and she'd insisted he take her to his place. And once there, talking had ceased. She'd attacked his clothing like an animal, ripping them away, her face flushed discernibly even in the dimly-lit room, and he'd gone down on her immediately. She'd pulled his hair and begged for more until it became a sort of pagan ritual on some long forgotten primal beach, two forms combining with the force of creation. Even now his heart speeded its pace. She turned on her back and he covered her, not needing a guide this time, the need urgent enough. The first time now lost to memory.

Because this time it was slower. She clung to his back like a survivor to a life raft, both of their ears thrumming with the power of their bodies' actions. "Yes," she whispered, her very breath sensuous and wet. "Do me forever."

Thomas made no sound save a low groan so deep in his chest that it vibrated softly against her skin, awakening every cell. Her response was all consuming. The stars opened ancient, celestial secrets as her hands explored farther, down his back to his tightened buttocks. When they finally came together the room seemed to flash brilliantly.

Elizabeth was not convinced it hadn't.

Afterward they lay exhausted in each other's arms; Thomas' nose nuzzled into her hair. The smell of their sex clung sweetly and pungently to the covers, the only thing concealing them from the greater, surrounding darkness. "You are incredible," he panted, gently, flicking his tongue out to graze her ear. She tensed and nuzzled closer.

"Tell me we're the only ones...in the world, the only ones. Right now..."

"We're the only ones, baby," he assured her.

They lay for a long while not saying anything more, until Thomas realized her breath had become slow and rhythmic. He nudged her lightly. "Elizabeth," he plied. "Don't you want me to bring you home?"

"Hmmm?" she murmured, as if from behind a curtain. She wiped at her eyes as innocently as a child, and he pulled her closer. "Let's wait 'til morning. Can we?" Her eyes reflected the moonlight filling the room as she turned her head away to deeper sleep. Thomas checked the clock on the nightstand. It was five until three.

"What time?" he asked, knowing his parents wouldn't care. The back portion of their large home was his sole domain.

"Whenever," she breathed.

He kissed her softly on the cheek, and her resulting sigh faded off into the still corners of the darkened room.

Chapter 63

Ebenezer awoke with a groan. His shoulder felt like hell again, and he subconsciously knew it was because he'd slept on it all night. He'd dreamed but it was all fragments now, lost in the mesh of pain radiating in his head and shoulder. He stuck out his tongue and passed it along his parched lips. His mouth might as well have been chewing dirty socks for a month. "Oh God," he implored, easing himself into a sitting position. His heart pounded in his chest and lightheadedness reminded him his blood pressure was setting new records.

He found himself on top of the covers, fully clothed. He even had his shoes on, although one was untied; he didn't know if he'd done it or not. In fact, he didn't know much. He peeled himself to the edge of the rumpled bed, knocking his pillows to the floor as he scooted across. When he got his knees right, he stood up carefully, slowly so as to acclimatize himself in case his stomach optioned revolt. A few images drifted back and he looked atop his dresser, and finding nothing there, then around the room. Where was the goddamn stein? "Shit," he growled. Probably at the Tavern. He hoped Shelly had picked it up for him.

But what about Billy? He scratched his head, trying to piece together the lost parts of the puzzle. He half-remembered telling some story, though not which or how, and he was pretty sure they'd rode home in a cab. What a waste, he chided himself, stumbling into the bathroom to brush his teeth. The taste in his mouth was nearly debilitating. He gagged while violently scrubbing his teeth, tongue, and gums, and only barely managed not to vomit. The image he made in the mirror was equally suitable for either B-class horror movies or state mental institutions. "Ya ole fucker," he snarled menacingly at his reflection. "Ya'd think ya'd learn somethin once ina awhile."

Yeah, right. Absolutely right, if not for other factors involved. Like seeing Sarah's grave. He'd never gone, not in the thirty odd years it'd taken him to get to where he was; he'd never gone. And the proof of what it'd done to him reflected in the mirror. Well, whad'ya expect? Ya go dredgin up stuff been down that long and ya can't expect roses. Ya can't dig up dead bodies and not be affected. He squinted at his reflection. Now that was something he didn't want to consider. But it was true enough...

Where has your life gone? Where exactly has your life gone, you lonely old bastard?

"No Goddammit!" he snarled and punched the mirror, starring it and cutting his knuckles in the process. His bloodshot eyes peered back at him through the cracks and the blood from his fist ran down the porcelain to the drain. He gripped the edge of the sink, vice-like. You can't hide from the truth, his eyes told him. That's where the boy comes in, ain't it? You see yourself in him and it scares you, so you're trying to save yourself saving him.

Then, a sarcastic shadow-voice from further down in the recesses of his mind tried to apply a framework. Two options: one, out of selfishness which you know a good deal about, or two, genuine concern? The jury hedges its bets.

"Fuck It!" he bellowed into the emptiness of the bathroom. He took the drinking glass from the toothbrush rack and dashed it against the shower wall. A sharp, stray piece of glass ricocheted back and nicked his cheek, but he paid it no mind. He just wrapped his bleeding fist in toilet paper and walked from the bathroom, feeling like the dead.

He walked past the kitchen, continued across the living room straight to the chest in the corner by the French doors. He banged the top open, and thrusted his good hand inside (unmindful of the ache in his shoulder), slapped the journal to the side, and reached underneath the folded newspapers and clothing. On the bottom, sitting on top of a legal-size folder, he found the envelope. Of course it hadn't moved, but it had paled to the color of cedar, its edges gray and ragged. But in one corner of this envelope there was a small raised circle of a much darker shade. It stood out like a searchlight.

Ebenezer peeled it from the bowels of the chest, and turned back to the recliner, sitting down heavily, not noticing the sharp crack as the remote hit the floor. His hands trembled as he ripped the weakened envelope in half. He kept only the side with the circle imprint and let the other half fall to the floor at this feet. Then he blew into the remaining torn side and poured the contents into his waiting hand.

The wedding band rolled out, dull and tarnished.

He slipped it on his finger in a daze, unaware until much later that he was crying.

Chapter 64

Elizabeth stood in front of the Beauregard statue feeling the heat of deep exhaustion wedged deeply in her bones. When Thomas had dropped her off early that morning Nora had still been asleep. Very strange. Usually her mother was up by six, but not today. Her bedroom door had been shut, and as Elizabeth had stood quietly outside it, her ear pressed against it, she had heard nothing save the droning of the ceiling fan within.

The pain was back, spreading through her body like a slow moving tide. The plan was finally clear in her mind; there was no escaping it. A departure from the ideas she'd been raised to believe, but she was beyond such culture now. In fact, looking back, she knew she'd actually made her mind up days before. It had only made itself concrete the day she'd gotten drunk at the Tank Station and called Thomas. And now, strangely enough, her mind was at ease even though her body was not. It didn't help much. The pain was an insidious disturbance threatening to swallow her whole, threatening to destroy everything she had become. It would take her senses, her essence, if allowed.

She would not allow it.

The night before and the dreams would not allow that sacrilege. It was finally time.

So she'd crept into her room, stealthy quiet, retrieving her journal and the bottle of Valium. There were almost thirty pills left. And just as quietly she left, disappearing through the front door, leaving no note. Words would mean nothing to her mother. She would never understand because this was not a choice she would have ever considered. Pain and subjugation seemed to somehow accommodate her; they did not Elizabeth.

On the bus to City Park she'd written the letter to Billy. He, at least, needed some sort of explanation. She hoped he alone would understand. Regardless, it had grown beyond her; the stage was set, the principal due.

She passed along the sidewalk towards the Art Museum. The sealed, stamped envelope was heavy in her hand, as if with each step it took on weight like the ring Frodo had borne to the lip of Mount Doom. As she'd expected, the receptionist at the counter didn't see any harm in placing her letter with the rest of the museum's outgoing mail. Postage was paid and one more wasn't likely to cause the collapse of modern society. Elizabeth made sure the woman saw her drop the ten dollar bill in the 'Friends of the Art Museum' donation box before leaving. The receptionist called out a warm thanks for her patronage, and Elizabeth waved goodbye as the door crept shut.

She left the building and turned left, walked down several steps, and then across the grass instead of circling to the sidewalk. Once across the traffic circle which ringed the museum, she headed to her Spot, the one where she'd watched the pigeons among the thick branches of the enormous oak tree, where she'd fed the squirrels. She was in luck; no one was there.

Except the ducks.

They rested in typical, easy fashion underneath the tree; some standing unperturbed on one webbed foot, while others rested with their tiny heads tucked beneath a wing, as if hiding from a world that carried on too fast for their interests. For just a moment they shuffled nervously as Elizabeth sat down, but once convinced the intruder meant no harm, they continued their light dozing. With a careful, slitted eye trained in her direction. But their attention proved short, and soon, Elizabeth became merely another piece of the landscape of which they could close their eyes to safely.

She looked out at the placid, tranquil lake. Hardly a ripple disturbed the glassy surface except when, every now and again, a fish from the unpredictable depths darted to the surface after an insect. The subsequent disturbance would break the silence with only a meager splash followed by a succession of growing ripples rolling away in all directions. Elizabeth watched each one until it faded into the lake again as if bowing to perfection. But there was always that single, hidden moment when the ripple was there just at the brink of extinction, and then the moment, and afterward, nothing. A secret universal moment Elizabeth knew she'd soon explore.

She reached into the backpack she carried slung across her shoulder, withdrawing the journal. She'd ripped from it the pages of Billy's note. Other than that it was intact, and to a large part empty. She'd only filled a quarter of these pages with her thoughts and ideas, and most of them had been written during the First Days, when the doctors had still held (what had turned out to be false) hope against the cancer in her lymphatic system. These were the hopeful pages, the ones strong with bravado and resilience, something that had gradually disappeared, dwindled like her own entries had. Thumbing through the small volume helped define direction and lent weight to the course she'd chosen. It was finally time to leave old, familiar things, and strike out on whatever (if any) path lay ahead. She put the thin book down on the bench beside her and reached into the pack again.

She withdrew a large freezer bag and a smooth, heavy rock she'd retrieved on a whim from a gutter several days before.

She placed the journal in the freezer bag along with the rock, and smoothed it until producing a vacuum. Then she carefully ran her finger along the seam, sealing it away. This done she stood up and walked to the pond's edge. Her action caused an uneasy moment for the ducks scattered among the fronds growing around the base of the old oak. They became rapt with attention. Her only witnesses...and they would never tell. It was a fitting completion.

She lofted the journal out with all her strength, wincing but refusing to groan as it arched up and then curved sharply, slapping to the surface with a larger sound than the lake seemed capable of making. The journal stayed afloat only a moment before the rock inside dragged it out of view to the lake's bottom. It too, leaving only a ripple. Her underarm ached massively from the throw, but the power it held over her was done. She would allow no more.

Reaching into her breast pocket, she took out the Valium. Her face remained expressionless as she popped off the top and poured the contents into her hand. She looked out at the lake again, seeing the last ripple had faded away into the hidden moment. Then she closed her eyes and put half the handful of pills into her mouth, holding them there without swallowing, her breath suddenly heavy in her nostrils. She sat down and fished out the water bottle she'd placed in the back pack, chasing the pills down her throat with the cold water. She took the rest immediately afterward and swallowed hard, trying to concentrate on the tranquility of the lake. Even so, her hands trembled when she brought them to her lap. "Let me catch it..." she whispered.

After a few silent moments she turned back and pulled the bag of birdseed from the last pocket of the back pack. She threw several handfuls into the dust bordering the tree trunk, showering several bits onto the suddenly surprised and curious ducks. They began a quick scurrying, picking and scratching through the dust. Elizabeth sprinkled the seed around her feet in a large circle, and by the time the park began to gray with the exit of daylight, the ducks had come up very close to brush against her legs.

When the daylight faded entirely from her eyes a faint brush-stroked smile still painted the corners of her mouth.

Chapter 65

Just before the sun went down, the receptionist ( a woman named Leonore Benjamin who lived on the West Bank and had made the traffic-thick commute every day for the past seventeen years by way of the city buses, never having found the inclination to purchase her own vehicle) pulled her shawl over her shoulders, and locked the drawers behind the counter. She religiously secured them every day not because they contained anything of value (that is, besides stacks of brochures and Art Museum letterhead and other paraphernalia), but because regulations specified that it should be done, so she dutifully did it. Even though possessed of only a fifth grade education she was studiously meticulous in her observance of policies. Then she checked her desk to make sure everything was as she liked it and turned to leave. The mail had gone out almost three hours before.

The janitors handled locking the front doors, and she had just seen Avery tidying up the steps outside. She walked to the cloak room and retrieved her purse from the locker she'd kept since her first day on the job. Her name had long since faded and fallen away when the tape cracked and powered, and that was the one thing she'd never bothered fixing. She knew and no one else cared so she saw no need to waste energy.

On the way back through the lobby she waved goodbye to Avery who had come inside to finish his business, and left out of the Employees' Entrance at the back side of the building. She caught her bus near Esplanade, across the bridge Elizabeth frequented (though she did not know that), and a short walk to the bus stop. She hummed a song she'd heard her thirteen-year-old singing the night before, and pulled the shawl tighter across her stalwart shoulders. The air was indeed getting nippy.

As she walked the streetlights around the park began flickering to life, and depending upon where they stood, threw eerie cloud-shaped shadows over the grounds and through the trees. She could see the lake glowing faintly off to her left, punctuated by little sparklets upon its surface flashing every once in a while across its surface. She usually walked through the dirt path cut close to the bank because the water was always so soothing. She remembered the time Lou and—

She pulled up abruptly twenty feet shy of the park bench.

There was a huddled form sprawled across it, the legs twisted at an uncomfortable angle, one foot wrenched beneath the bench. The chill had begun creeping the length of her spine before the thought fully registered: People don't sleep like that. Even stew bums like the drunk who perched on the porch five houses down from hers every night didn't sleep like that. Fighting her slow rush of panic she stepped closer, peering over the back of the bench to get a better view of the figure lying there. It appeared to be a girl although in this day and age it was not always easy being certain. In the growing twilight she saw an upended back pack and what appeared to be the remnants of a lot of birdseed, all gone to shells and slivers now. Some ducks dawdled nearby. Everything else was quiet.

The person's face was obscured by long hair and the hands were relaxed, hanging motionless off to one side. The fingers of one curled into a loose fist. Leonore's long years in New Orleans (she was originally from Memphis but had moved when her first husband had been laid off from an ill-fated lumberyard) had taught her to mind her own business. Another warned her the bus would come and leave, the next one not arriving until well after an hour. But the stronger side of her Christian ethics kept her where she was. The picture was not right. This was no bum wasting the night away on a park bench. It didn't feel right. Leonore said a short prayer before leaning closer, afraid to speak and most assuredly afraid to touch.

"Hello?" she ventured. Her voice carried a tremulous edge which she wished less apparent. "Are you all right?" she tried again after the first entreaty went answered.

There was nothing from the figure on the bench. No movement, no sound. Leonore repeated both her address and question but to the same effect. Taking a deep breath and praying to Jesus in Heaven that she was doing the right thing (that it was indeed His hand reaching forward and not her own), she bent down and cleared the hair from the girl's face.

Because there was no mistaking; enough light remained to recognize the familiar set of the jaw, the curve of the forehead. The girl from this afternoon, the one with the letter. Leonore's eyes widened and her legs were suddenly very weak. Her mind rang a fearsome alarm but her muscles provided no avenue for retreat. "Honey?" she tried, her voice now only a squeak. "Are you all right? Should I get a doctor, the police...?" But she could very well see the blue tint to the shapely lips, the ashen grayness of the skin. The pallor of death come to speak its voiceless words again. The image of her dead mother came quickly to mind, racing away just as suddenly. The girl's eyes were slitted, the mouth open and slack. "Oh my God," Leonore whispered in both prayer and shock. She came around the side of the bench (empty now of her terror) and touched the pretty face with her hand. There was no hint of warmth. Leonore looked around for splashes of blood, signs of a struggle. She found none. Only the scratchings and shells. She checked the pulse at the neck. Nothing. Farther down, nothing.

"Oh Jesus," she tried.

Moments later she banged away on the back door of the Art Museum, finally calling Avery's name when she could get enough breath to spit out the syllables. When the door opened (a broom raised slightly at the janitor's shoulders and his eyes as big as hubcaps) she could barely find the energy to go inside. Avery soundlessly helped her to a chair and went to call the police before she even told him what the problem was.

It was the only time in seventeen years she missed her bus.

Chapter 66

"Oh Jesus, are you sure?"

Billy's eyes were wide, disbelief transforming his voice into a strangled scream. There had to be a mistake. "They're sure it's Elizabeth?" He felt his knees going and sat down before he collapsed. His hands shook uncontrollably, making it hard to keep the phone to his ear, twice as hard to hear his mother's broken sobs on the other end. Elizabeth was dead, she was telling him, over and over. Found on a park bench. Her identification and a picture taken at the scene confirmed it. The police were at her door; she was going down to make sure...

Could he--?

Billy hung up; his eyes dilated with shock. No! Not True! She had just been here! Right goddamn here! The bed hadn't even been made since she slept here. This was some bizarre joke, some hideous fucking mistake. He bit down hard into his cheek. His breath came fast and hard and spots danced before his eyes. His ears began a loud buzzing. His throat constricted; it was hard to breathe—

He suddenly burst to his feet, running to the door and madly flinging it open. Have to get to the street! There was no air; he was suffocating! Billy hit the street at a flat out sprint, tripping on a curb less than a block down, and spilling onto the asphalt. A cab swerved to miss him, denting its fender against a street lamp as the driver cursed him nine ways from Sunday. Of course, Billy heard the squeal of rubber and the hot air that slapped his face, but nothing registered. Even when he got to his feet and saw the growing crowd of spectators forming, the reality of danger was a mere figment of a dream. His knee burned and his pants were ripped from ankle to knee. His mind barely registered the red-faced cabby, screaming, hurling obscene gestures as he fought to free his bulk from the car. Billy turned, limping slightly, pushing his way wild-eyed through a group of onlookers. No one laid a hand on him. Another six steps and he ran again, not feeling the pain in his knee, not feeling anything. The world passed in a blur. Nothing was real, the nightmare inescapable.

He ran on and on, careening into people who either pushed back or yelled epithets at him; he saw none of them, heard nothing save the buzzing in his ears. That and lost voices knifing through the dim, voices from the past, insinuations, guilty, bloody ghosts made manifest and literate in his head. He tore down wet alleyways where his footsteps echoed off steaming walls and rats turned their bleary feral eyes in the direction of the madman in their midst. Cats slunk to the shadows until he passed. Dying sunlight played upon his fleeing figure where he rampaged from the shadows only to disappear again, throwing up muddy spume beneath his feet. His breath raked from his lungs in looping draws. Once, he slammed into a metal hitching post and went down in a skidding heap. Hands thrust down at him, but he couldn't make out human faces, only vague shapes that might have been demons in this inhabited hell come to take him deeper. He screamed and jerked away, ripping himself out of the half-formed crowd before tearing off into more contrasts of light and shadow down the way.

He returned to his senses only gradually, long after the sun had been replaced by a rogue, bloody slice of moon. The glow was minimal and disturbing, a cataract eye staring from the lost regions of space. He knew he still lived when he moaned. Then came the fire in his knee. Looking down, he saw his pants in tatters, blood scabbed the leg to the ankle. Pulling back what was left of his jeans, Billy found a mess of dripping blood and fluid covering the area around the mushroom that used to be his kneecap. He reached out for a step to hoist himself up and the knee flamed.

Elizabeth was dead.

That was that. There was nothing left to do. It finally boiled down to this, no horrible nightmare from which there'd be eventual escape. His all-encompassing pain proved this. The disorientation made it worse. His mouth tasted like the street, his back like a horse had been driven across it. "Jesus Christ," he pleaded, "what's happening?" He turned his head, scanning the street: a vaguely lit run that appeared deserted, an acid chill racing its length. He noticed one of his shoes missing and the sock on that foot worn through. What remained was filthy and ragged. "Elizabeth," he whispered and pulled himself the rest of the way up. Tears welled in his eyes when he put any weight on the bad leg. But pressing down helped level it out. He could take that.

Where the hell are you? What had he told Nora?

He wiped a dirty strand of hair from his eye, repulsed by the smell wafting from his sleeve. He needed Ebenezer. He knew of no solution in seeing the old man, but he knew there was nothing else that could save him.

At the corner stood a light, right beneath it a street sign. Billy hobbled over like an apparition from a black-and-white horror movie. He had a hard time focusing and his head split from a booming headache. He finally read N. Roman and St. Phillip. He was almost underneath the interstate and he hadn't even noticed. But that really wasn't so strange, considering he couldn't remember anything in the recent past except a phone call, the message it relayed, and endless running. The nightmare voices had filled up all other spaces in his mind. They'd run right along beside him.

He groaned and tried to shake off another bout of dizziness and nausea. When he flexed his back, his backbone machine-gunned from the top to bottom, almost causing him to go down. What time is it? he wondered. He bent to his watch and saw only a scraped wrist and bruised knuckles. Nothing left except a tan line. My God, what have I been doing?

He leaned momentarily against the street lamp, trying to pull his mind together. North Roman...Christ, he was ten or fifteen blocks from the river. He knew Ursulines was several blocks over but it was still a hell of a long way. Hell, the next step was a long way.

But what else can you do? a voice challenged, a faint shadow of the ones who'd railed in his head while he ran.

He thought of Elizabeth again and caught his breath. A threatening weight bore him down, not pressing but completely encasing his body. Walking was as difficult as swimming against a current. Even so, he pushed away from the street lamp and shuffled out to the edge of the sidewalk, near the rushing cars. His knee was agony, but there was nothing to be done about it. "It's finished," he croaked into the densely packed night. He lost himself at the corner, staring into the windows of the passing cars, seeing the people within who appeared no more than blurred ghosts occupying different worlds. A fisted quiet had squeezed into his head, dampening the effects of the voices and tumult that had filled it since the phone call. He was finally alone in the universe, cut off and drifting, his only anchor a thin thread leading to a man as cast-off as himself.

Billy put his head down and plodded down the cracked sidewalks, grinding his teeth against the pain. Occasionally he sniffed at the air as if following an invisible trail. His darkness was complete; there was no time here in the void, only interminable dispossession and ragged soul. He was ravaged, depleted, burnt.

He tried to concentrate on the clump and steady drag of his bad leg. He found this helped somewhat, or at least separated the agony to a realm where it was bearable. He could smell the river when the wind was right and didn't bother to read any of the street signs as he floated along.

He realized if Ebenezer was not home when he got there, he would skirt the gate and break down the door at the top of the stairwell. Collapsing on the couch was the sole object in his mind. No other place in the world would do. He was used up.

He continued lurching down the street, catching disparate glances and disgust from people who made a wide berth as he went past. The pain had become a vague throb although the scab had broken away and fresh rivulets of viscous blood painted a lighter pattern on the already black shadow that stretched from knee to ankle. His breath whistled in his nose.

Sometime later he came to the irongate, set as an illusionary guardian for those within. He forced it wearily back. He was drenched in sweat even though the night was cool; he had to constantly wipe it from his eyes. Shambling through the opening like an ogre to its underground labyrinth, he climbed the stairwell leading up to Ebenezer's loft.

A catacomb darkness filled the top of the stairwell, and Billy didn't know he'd reached the landing until he took a final step and stumbled finding none there. He flung out his hand for balance and banged clumsily against the old STOP sign. Luckily, it kept him from going down. After a few seconds rest, he reached out and knocked loudly on Ebenezer's door, only pausing a moment before starting the assault again. He quit abruptly when he heard a voice on the other side call out, "Hey, hey, hey! Who da hell is it!?"

"...Billy...," he called hoarsely. "Let me in...open the door..."

Light flashed in the landing and Billy shaded his eyes as the door opened and Ebenezer's wild eyes fixed upon him. The shock deepened when Ebenezer saw his condition. Billy was barely standing, supporting himself with his hands on the wall, his eyes mere phantoms recently visited by an unknown horror. "Jesus Christ, boy," Ebenezer managed in shaken awe. "What the hell's happened?" He flung the door wide.

"They found her today," Billy choked as Ebenezer grabbed and steered him inside. In the light filtering in from the living room Ebenezer immediately saw the mangled pants leg, the amount of blood underneath the ragged flaps. The boy was practically incoherent. Ebenezer helped him to the recliner and sat him down. Billy's face was ashen, as pale as a porcelain doll's. "She's dead," he said in a low monotone, his voice revealing nothing of the shock that was apparent in his expression.

"When?" It was all Ebenezer could think to say.

"Today...sometime today. My mother called, told me. Don't remember much...running I think. My knee...don't remember...killing me..." he mumbled on until the sound descended to a point beyond Ebenezer. The old man looked down at the nasty wound and began undoing Billy's belt buckle. The pants would have to go if he was to make an honest attempt at the wound. Billy made no movement to stop him as Ebenezer slid the ruined pants carefully away. One tight spot took his pocket knife. Billy's eyes were closed but his lips moved in a silent litany as Ebenezer hurried to the bathroom, picking through the medicine chest for hydrogen peroxide, Neosporin, and bandages, thanking God that his own wounds had necessitated him having such supplies on hand. He usually would not. As he gathered the medicines he wondered how on earth Billy had managed to get anywhere with a knee like that.

On the way back Ebenezer happened to glance at the clock hanging on the wall in the kitchen, the luminous dial barely visible in the weak light from the stove ventilator. 4:47 a.m.. Christ, how long had he been wandering around in this condition? It was a miracle he was still alive.

By the time he got to the recliner it was obvious Billy was fitfully asleep. His mouth hung open and slack, but his breathing had steadied. Still, the boy's eyes twitched and started behind the lids. Ebenezer swabbed some peroxide onto a cotton ball and began cleaning the wound, not overly surprised that his patient did not come to his feet in a frenzy. He hadn't figured Billy would.

In fact, during the entire time of the cleaning Billy never flinched once. His energy had simply trailed out, leaving his mind and body empty when it shut down. Ebenezer didn't try to move the boy when finished, hoping and only minutely satisfied he'd done all he could (save a trip to the hospital) to keep any infection at bay.

Then he went and pulled a blanket off his rumpled bed. He dug an afghan out of the corner by the French doors and chest, and covered Billy to the neck with it. Finally he eased himself down on the couch on top of the blanket. He covered himself with a thin sheet, wrapping it around his legs, as he worked himself into a comfortable sitting position.

He watched the boy all night, tired and distraught himself, but refusing to give over to the oblivion of sleep, half in fear of the dreams that would surely follow.

Chapter 67

The rocking chair squeaked every time Nora shifted her weight. It was late and she'd been glued to the chair for hours in the same pose: elbows stiff at the armrests, her head cradled in her hands as the tension in her body fueled the almost imperceptible motion of the rocking chair.

It had been Elizabeth in the morgue. The result of the tiny infant she'd borne of her womb, not a grown and lifeless stranger upon the cold steel table. Her child now gone to whatever fate awaited her. And looking at the lifeless body Nora hadn't been able not to feel that what had been substantial about her daughter was not trapped behind those cold, parted lips. That had given her faint solace. Nothing she'd dreamed or imagined had prepared her for the final act; it was altogether crushing, so deeply disastrous as to be nigh insurmountable.

Elizabeth was gone, her shell lay covered by a thin sheet.

Nora had wanted to touch her face but a terror within her body had forbade it. To touch the body would have been to recognize Elizabeth's presence there when she wanted so badly to believe the girl was gone. She could not disgrace her daughter's memory so.

And perhaps the men there had thought her insane, this mother incapable of tears though her own flesh and blood lay cold on the slab? She thought of this now because it had rolled around the perimeter of her mind for hours; every second, every agonizing memory had spoken its piece as the isolation and mourning grew.

There was no confirmation yet, but the doctor (eyes down-cast, unwilling to meet her eyes as his voice had droned on nasally) suspected a drug overdose. In the long hours since, this question had vexed her because if so, what then? Surely, Elizabeth would not...

The empty Valium bottle had been found near her body, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. A sob hitched in Nora's chest. Surely Elizabeth would never do such a thing? Such an abomination. The thought made her dizzy, feeble.

She had never been able to put herself in Elizabeth's shoes. No one could and this was no crime, surely.... Maybe her own unease had made her flee the house more frequently, leaving Elizabeth alone to wrestle with the demons that came. But (Nora protested bitterly against this possibility) it could not be so. Her intentions had been only to save her daughter through the intercession of the Lord. It had not been avoidance, just an attempt (she still tried to convince herself), a vain attempt to save her flesh and blood.

There, it was in the open, finally voiced, finally torn free of its thin cover. But the Pandora's Box was so wide with her new acquiescence. Had she gone against His will, deserting her child in the time of greatest need? Was she actually as weak as she felt at this very moment? At last the true questions were free and apparent.

She rocked on.

But one question remained. Had Elizabeth committed suicide?

Had she been capable of such a thing? How could she have even considered after her Catholic upbringing with its promise of vile retribution for those cheating their true destinies? Nora's hands trembled mightily as she contemplated these things. Her darling daughter, gone now for all time. What would she do? What could she feel safe believing if this plague of suicide was affirmed?

She'd tried Billy again, earlier in the evening, but (not surprisingly) there had been no answer. He had raced away, trying to beat this thing, leaving Nora with the knowledge that she could no more help her son in his time of need than she had been able to help her daughter.

Where had he gone? What was he capable of doing? Her mind screamed calamity. Her tears would no longer come and the handkerchief lay crumpled and stained, dried in her hand. Still, through the long night (the longest of her life), she sat and rocked and thought, trying to find solace in prayers that went around and around on themselves like a dog chasing its tail.

Chapter 68

The next morning Billy awoke to flaming agony. The knee was a raw wound so big it seemed to suck energy from the room itself. It was afire and unquenchable, though not surprising; damnation was prophesied to be hot. The only thing he knew for certain was that he had to get home. He wanted solitude when the break came. "Where are my pants?" he asked, his voice soaked in exhaustion. His throat was parched, his lips flayed.

Silently, Ebenezer rolled off the couch and started to his bedroom, waiting until the doorjamb to call over his shoulder because he knew Billy wanted privacy. The boy's look was unmistakable; Ebenezer had seen it many times reflected back from his own bathroom mirror. "I had ta throw 'em out, Billy. They was ripped all ta hell, but I b'lieve I got a pair 'at'll fit ya. Might be a little short but they'll get ya home." He returned several minutes later with a threadbare pair of jeans, the ends bell-bottomed and frayed as if they'd been lifted from a Flower Power van. Billy didn't even take the time to scrutinize them. He simply slid them on carefully, grimacing as he threaded his bad leg through, but not crying out. Meanwhile, Ebenezer had gone to the closet in the hallway and extracted an old pair of Walgreen's crutches. The tips were gone but they'd serve. Ebenezer offered them wordlessly to Billy, still fiddling with the zipper of the jeans. His eyes were on the floor.

"Thanks, Ebenezer," he finally whispered. Despair was thick but Ebenezer knew its course would have to run. There would be no succor in words, there never was. Sometimes the path was long and arduous, the lessons painful, but such lessons required studied attention. It was unavoidable. "I hope I didn't scare you last—"

"Don't even start that," Ebenezer said firmly. "Friens are for helpin; this world'd be even more fucked up if not. Ya needed me, ya came. Simple."

"Thanks, Eb." Billy looked at Ebenezer and squared his jaw. The old man nodded and said nothing. When Billy looked back at the floor he said, "I think I'll need a ride home. No way I'm gonna be able to walk it."

"No problem, boy. I'll give Mike a ring at City Cab and someone'll be over within the hour." Grave concern clouded Ebenezer's falsely optimistic tone. "Ya're sure ya're all right, son? I can go with ya if ya like..." although in his soul he already knew the answer.

Billy knotted his lip and shook his head. "No, Eb. Thanks anyway...I don't need company." A tear fell from his eye as he twisted his head away. Ebenezer walked to the phone and stood in the kitchen doorway until he was sure Billy had finished wiping his eyes. "I can't believe she's gone," he heard the boy say, so low Ebenezer dared not make a comment.

After he hung up with City Cab he walked back into the living room. "Sorry, son. I never met her, but I know if she was anythin like ya've said, and anythin like you, she musta been a helluva gal. 'Sa goddamn sad day when someone like her goes, boy. Seems the earth itself should scream..." Ebenezer's lip trembled and it was his turn to look away. But only for a second. "C'mon," he said, turning back. "Let's get ya ta the bottom a these goddamn stairs 'fore the cab gets here."

It was a long and painful descent. The chords in Billy's neck stood out as Ebenezer supported what weight he could safely manage, but it still took a major toll on Billy. Ebenezer grunted and puffed but never said a word. When they reached the bottom Ebenezer picked through the pocket of his jacket, withdrew a small clutch of bills which he placed in Billy's hand. "Be careful wit these," was all he said. Then they shuffled slowly through the gated entrance (closed once more either by the wind or another resident) as the sweat collected on Billy's lip and forehead. Ebenezer pulled a chair from the table on the patio and brought it out to the curb so Billy could sit until the cab arrived.

When it did the driver waved (a cigarette perched at a crooked angle in his sloppy mouth) but made no move to help. Ebenezer grabbed Billy under the armpits and got him to his feet. By this time the cabby'd finally managed the energy to open the back door. Billy pushed the crutches in first and paused at the curb. "Thanks for patching me up, Eb. I must've scared the shit out of you, banging on the door like that in the middle of the night."

"Don't worry 'bout that, I tole ya."

Billy bent to squeeze inside, but before he did he posed one more thing to Ebenezer. "Hey," he said, turning his face so he could look directly into the old man's eyes. "How'd you know it was me that first time at the door? You saw me coming up the street?" He pulled his leg into the cab with strain gripping his face and waited for the answer.

"No, I didn't see ya comin, Billy." Ebenezer stopped before closing the door "Ya're the only one it coulda been. Ain't nobody else comes 'round."

The old man pushed the door shut with a click. As the cab pulled away from the

Chapter 69

Billy lay on his bed with his leg propped on a pillow, thinking. He'd finally called his mother and she was devastated but holding up. Her voice had been as hollow as a tin drum when she told him what the coroner's office had concluded. They'd said Elizabeth committed suicide. Nora would not believe this. Someone must have forced her, Nora argued over the phone, though her tone told a different truth. She begged it off as a murder the New Orleans' police were letting go uninvestigated. Billy had said nothing. Nothing about his injury; there would be no good come of it.

He'd cut her off in the end, finally, simply, stating he needed to be alone. He needed to think. He would come by later, he vaguely promised, but now he needed no company. Elizabeth's memories were around him like a cloak, and Nora had made no attempt to change his mind; she simply let it go. The woman was finally vanquished, but there was no victory for Billy.

The mail had arrived no more than thirty minutes later, while he was still sunk in the new-found knowledge his mother had provided. If it had not been for the day he'd lent a hand to the mail lady (she'd spilled her bag and he'd helped her collect it) he would not have read the note that day. His knee was simply not up to the walk, even though the wall of postal boxes was just down one flight of stairs.

There was only one thing: a single envelope with the word URGENT scrawled across it in bold letters. She'd handed it to him, explaining she was ahead of schedule and thought maybe he'd need to see this as soon as possible. Billy thanked her for the extra effort (ignoring a suggestion in the offering) and steered off course with a counter-offer of cold water (which she'd gladly accepted). When she left he'd sat staring at the letter, not actually having the nerve to pick it up from the foyer table where he'd left it.

It was very clearly in Elizabeth's hand, the postmark a date Billy would never forget. And as he knew he must, he finally tore open the envelope and pulled out the pages within. They were obviously torn from her book, the journal she'd mentioned. His hands shook and he could almost hear her clear, proud voice as he began reading.

Dear Billy,

I'm sure you've heard what I've done and I know you're upset. I wish there was something I could write that would change the way you feel, but I can't. I'll just have to tell you why I did what I did and let it go at that. I'm tired of having the dreams weakened, Billy. The things we talked about that day, everything is starting to fade and there's nothing I can do to stop it. I just can't allow it to go any further. Please call Thomas (his number's on the inside of the envelope) and tell him I loved him. You, just please know I'm better. I know Mother won't understand. I can't help that.

I had the most beautiful dream last night. I can't let it go. Maybe it was some kind of sign. I want it to be at least. Maybe what I tell you will help, I don't know.

I dreamed I was standing out front of Grandmother's house again. Such an incredible day. A quiet, gentle breeze ruffled through the grass. There was the stoop with those three quaint little steps up to the porch. The first one was cracked in the middle, don't you remember? Grass was growing in the middle of the gravel drive between the tire ruts and the carport sagged a little, just like it always did. The house was still distinguished, just old, still achingly beautiful to me.

I walked down the drive, trying to peer into the empty, darkened windows, feeling the tears roll down my cheeks even though I really didn't feel sad. If anything, I felt tired. Just like now.

I wanted to go inside but something kept telling me Grandma had gone, that there was no need. The house had been vacuumed of her essence. It was all in the ones who remembered her now, somehow I remember that. And standing there these memories flew all around me. When I breathed in deeply I could smell her perfume. I thought I caught a whiff of it this morning when I woke up.

There was also something else. I turned and walked a few paces back, just enough to see around the corner of the house, where the large oak in the front yard used to stand. I'd missed it somehow, but now there it was, just like when we were kids, blooms bursting out of every crook and crease, the dark leaves folding and stretching for all they were worth to soak in the sunshine. The trunk seemed to throb with a hidden life.

The same tree that's been dead for years, Billy. The last time I drove by Grandma's house it had been cut, the rest rotting away, a fifteen-foot stump with enormous molds and fungus sprouting out all over. There were places where the bark had sloughed off showing traces of worm-tunnels...

But not now.

Now it was back to its glory. A beacon of coolness and shade. Billy, it was beautiful.

I turned around and walked back to the fence. The garage apartments were still there, but their shriveled and cracked surfaces had been covered with fresh paint. I remembered how we used to sneak into the monstrous first story garage, scavenging through piles of antiques and junk, searching for the alley cats forever being born there. A pure moment, one that never leaves or changes. A lasting moment. But even as I stood just outside the doorway I didn't want to enter because I didn't want the memory to end.

Do you remember the snowman we built that Christmas? There's a picture in one of Mother's books of us holding an icicle taller than both of us put together! Or how about that boy in the neighbor's back yard? The one who kept on eating spoonful after spoonful of dirt? We watched him from behind the bush until his mother came out and started yelling at him. You do remember Billy. Now that I've said it you must. It's part of who we are. The dream made all those things real again.

Then I heard Grandma's voice. She said something and I turned around, seeing her immediately in that faded, print dress she always wore. She told me life had made me a beautiful woman and she was proud of me. I started crying and told her I hurt, that I was getting so tired, but she told me not to fear. There's no need, she said. I asked her if this was the end and she smiled (Oh! It was just the same as I remembered!) and said it was only a beginning. One of many. Then I took her hand and we walked to the dirt road running along the back fence.

Billy, it was so real I'm crying now. She said it would only be a little while longer, to have patience, but I can't. I have to go. I believe now, and I have the strength. The dream was like a great, gentle whispering and I cannot let it go. Remember Billy, I love you forever, and I hope that Mother will understand some day.

Elizabeth

Billy finished the last word and put the page down on his stomach. His lips began trembling uncontrollably and tears burst in a stream from his eyes. When the sobs started he curled into a ball, alone in a deep wrap of grief and anguish, but thankfully comforted in the heart-wrenching fold of his sister's dying epistle.

Chapter 70

The funeral was held at Odd Fellow's Rest on Esplanade down the street from Delgado College. The normally busy boulevard was unusually bereft of traffic, partly because of the weekend and partly from the inclement weather. It was very cold; the wind racing off the river like a knife through the trees and people alike. The coming afternoon promised rain and a further drop in the mercury. To a Northern it was simply another day; to a Southern it was hell.

The ride from the funeral home to the cemetery took only fifteen minutes, and Billy managed to talk Ebenezer into riding in the Cadillac with his mother and him. Ebenezer balked quite understandably at first, though he'd finally acquiesced. Nora said nothing about the old man's presence. She merely peered out the window detached, lost, unseeing. They rode in uncomfortable silence.

Elizabeth was to be entombed in the family crypt near the back wall of the old cemetery. Nora's great-grandfather had been a wealthy man until just before his death and he'd built the tomb years earlier for his family and as many descendants as would fit. Even now it was sparsely populated; fifty-seven years after his death saw very few of his blood line. The tomb was a crumbling testament to the excess that had brought him down and the slide his genes had taken since. Nora had paid several hundred dollars two years before to have it painted but the thin whitewash and sloppy preparation were already beginning to show; the whole structure had a shadowy pall, emphasized further by large patches of mold regaining lost territory.

Nora walked ahead of Billy and Ebenezer when she got out of the car, her head down, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. She appeared to follow a taut line no one else could see. There were less than twenty people for the service, Thomas not among that number. Ebenezer brought up the rear of the thin procession, waiting on Billy's slow, limping pace. Most of the attendees were young, but even so not many said much to Billy. "You okay?" Ebenezer asked as he slowed to pull abreast. Billy answered with an almost imperceptible nod as he hobbled along on the crutches.

The mortuary staff had come in through the back gate and waited quietly while the elder watchman of Odd Fellow's unlocked the rusty padlock and swung the family tomb door wide. Then they wheeled the coffin into the musty gloom of its destination to lay in state until the service was done. The darkness inside seemed to Billy a greedy maw, its appetite insatiable. It was impossible not to think about the place in there for him also, biding its time as each day passed, secure in its eventual reward. He shivered in the cold air as he considered Time's erosive measures.

Even though the service was Catholic it was shorter than most. Words were hard to find when the deceased was a suicide, and the priest was noticeably aloof. The man had a strong, forbidding jaw in the cold morning air, and eyes that looked to hold little mercy. But he was old and a victim to his habits, so Billy did not fault him. In fact, he cared little what this man thought. He knew the truth. He felt Elizabeth's presence like a fist around his heart. And he did not fault Thomas either; he'd called and Billy readily identified the grief, the shock as Thomas fumbled through his excuse. Everyone handled things in their own way. Billy could begin to see this,that these lessons only came with time.

Nora stood alone until Ebenezer pushed Billy her direction. He hobbled over and stood beside her, staring silently into the tomb as if half-expecting Elizabeth to come walking out. But it was no day for Lazarus, the new dead would lie side by side with the old. Despair and hope wrestled like two invincible angels, their blows landing beyond the level of human understanding. When it was over no one would recall a word the priest had uttered. The entourage left as one, somberly filing by the pair whispering their words of leave, leaving behind their bouquets of flowers and empty promises to stay in touch.

Billy looked to Ebenezer as the crowd thinned, the question in his eyes plain. Ebenezer shook his head and thumbed over his shoulder, letting the boy know he wouldn't be riding back to the funeral home with them. It was time to take his leave. Billy nodded and turned back, starting down the sidewalk away from the old man with Nora close in tow. As they passed around the corner of another family crypt, Ebenezer saw Nora reach out and grasp Billy's arm. Billy continued looking straight ahead, but thankfully he did not pull away. The old man cringed when he heard the clanging iron door shut on Elizabeth.

He later found himself walking. Walking and crying for a girl he'd never met but seemed to know and understand nonetheless.

Chapter 71

A light rapping roused Ebenezer from the doze he'd fallen into in front of the television. He shook his head to make sure he wasn't dreaming, assured he was not when the noise came again. He hurried to his feet already knowing who he'd find. It'd been almost two weeks since the funeral and Ebenezer had made no attempt to get in touch, knowing instead Billy would appear when the time was right. The ragged edges of despair and mourning had to be filed away first. The soul had to be allowed to heal itself or go spiraling.

Because of his anticipation he'd left the door unlocked every night until late in the evening, finally throwing the bolt only before shuffling off to bed. Waiting on the visitor, biding silently until the time was right. "Com'on, Billy," he called, digging around in the jumble of clothes tossed around his recliner in search of the remote control. Finding it, he clicked off the mindless chatter just as he heard the front door open, and then a few seconds later, close. The sound of slow footsteps sounded in the foyer until Billy stood ghost-like under the archway to the living room. The dim light could not hide his unhealthy pallor.

"Knew it was me again..." he said, offering the attempt of a smile. His familiar warmth was almost completely obscured by grief.

"Was hopin so," Ebenezer admitted, walking over and grasping Billy's hand. "Ya'all right, son?" he asked. Billy nodded and moved around the old man to the couch. He still limped but the crutches were gone. Against his chest he carried a paper bag, obviously containing a bottle.

"All right," he answered. He smoothed out the seam of his pants and looked at Ebenezer. An unhealthy silence followed, one that Ebenezer found himself unable to break. "I quit my job," Billy said, easing back on the couch.

"Uh huh." Ebenezer walked back to the recliner and sat down heavily. "No good or bad in that, eh? Plenty for a young fella ta do." He smiled across the room as Billy ran a hand across his lips. A fleeting smile was not hidden by the gesture.

"Yeah, I guess you're right. How's the shoulder?"

"Right as rain," Ebenezer replied, giving it a brisk slap to prove the point.

"Doesn't hurt?" Billy's eyes were like stones.

"Naw, not much," the old man lied. "What 'cha got in the bag?"

Billy pulled out the bottle and held it up to the light. "Turkey, Eb. Thought you might like a drink."

"Ya thought right!" Ebenezer exclaimed, clapping his hands together. He made to get up but Billy motioned him to sit back down.

"I'll get the glasses and the ice. Take a load off. I haven't done shit all day." Ebenezer sunk back into the familiar depths of the chair and feinted martyrdom. "Me casa es su casa," he tried with a horrible accent.

Moments later, he heard ice rattling into two glasses. Billy came back and handed Ebenezer his and they both took a quick knock. "Angel in disguise," Ebenezer complimented as the boy sat down, placing the drink between his legs and the bottle on a side table next to the couch.

"First I've been out in days," Billy admitted. He licked his lips. "Haven't felt up to anything, just laying around in bed all the goddamn time." He brought the drink to his lips and drained away a good portion of it. "A sorry motherfucker..." he whispered, guilt filing his voice down sharper than any amount of whiskey could. "After a few days I ended up calling in and telling them I quit. Couldn't go back. Started seeming like every minute I was there a little more of my life slipped past without me catching hold of it."

Ebenezer nodded silently and drank.

"I think Mother's going to be all right. She fucked up, but she's still busy configuring some kind of plan, some justification I guess. Even ate dinner over there a couple of times last week and all she'd talk about were the divine theories she's hatched up. Crazy talk, it sounded to me." He paused, hunting for something on the walls. Then, almost offhand, "Her eyes don't tell the same story her lips do, Eb. They're dull and tricked, like the biggest joke in the world's suddenly been played on her and she's just starting to catch the punch line." He finished the drink in a gulp and refilled his glass. "Another?" he asked, holding the bottle out.

Ebenezer polished off what was left and took the bottle from Billy. He slowly poured himself another one, the whole time fixing his eyes on the young man sitting across the room from him. Then he put the cork back and gave Billy a hard stare. "Don't know if I like the sound a all this, Billy. All this shit's around the corner. I wanna know how you are," and he stopped himself, surprised at the bluntness and potential for confrontation of this statement.

Billy didn't flinch. A small, spreading, ironic grin twisted itself across his face. "Can't fool you, can I?" He paused. "You already know I'm fucked up."

"No, no, no I don't. I think the world tricks people inta believin that shit sometimes, but it ain't necessarily so, like the ole song says. I only know ya're hurtin, that ya're not sure what ta believe." A decision hung heavily in the air. Ebenezer set his drink down on the floor next to the chair and cleared his throat. "Lemme tell ya another story, Billy. This one's about a old man who thought he was supposed ta keep on payin for sins he took on years back. Only thing was, he saw after a while, wasn't nothin ever gonna be enough.

"Took a long time ta see what it actually was, but I guess in the end ya can teach a ole dog new tricks," he said, his eyes flashing like lightning in a troubled sky. "Ya know the ole man's me, and I'm here ta tell ya, what ya're thinkin ain't no goddamn good, all this guilt, all them coulda shoulda questions."

Billy leaned forward and met Ebenezer's eyes, realizing the potential of the moment. Ebenezer continued, "When I look at'cha I see m'self. Makes me afraid. Not for me, for you. You got the potential I pissed away! And now I'm old and see it don't matter no more! Look! Do ya think people give a flyin fuck 'bout a old man an his problems? Problems that're even hard for me ta get a fix on these days? It don't mean shit!" he exclaimed, gesturing wildly, a prophetic heat building in his eyes. He picked up the drink and swallowed the rest of the rich liquid down. Then he closed his eyes and his throat worked convulsively.

"Had this friend when I got back from the service," he said, suddenly back in his telling mode. "Flew sev'ral missions tagether over Germany. Like a brother ta me, 'e was. And then the War was over and we were back in the States. He invited me ta a relative's house one day; they lived on a river in Mississippi (forgot what the name was), and that's probably best.

"Well, we set off this afternoon; Christ, it was gorgeous. Blue skies, nice breeze, just gorgeous. Ended up anchorin in the shallows a this little inlet beach where it was real quiet, the water like glass. Ours was the only boat, and we had sev'ral women with us, see? It'd been a long, hard haul overseas and we'as ready for a little R & R. 'A course my wife didn't know we had any ladies with us, and in reality I only kissed one a em once, but it coulda gone further. Only didn't outta other circumstances; I'm just too goddamn old now ta try convincin myself otherwise. I didn't fuck nobody, but it don't mean I wasn't gonna. Sometimes I wonder if things woulda worked out different if I had, but ain't no sense wonderin them things." He paused, reflecting across the years. "It don't make one fuckin bit a difference anyhow.

"Three a us were in the water, leavin Johnny and Mike on the boat. Everbody drinkin and listenin ta music. Louie Armstrong was huge back then. Jus havin fun..." and Ebenezer wiped the sweat from his brow. "I don't know how long we'as out there but all uva sudden Mike started yellin at me, lookin for Johnny. Wanted ta know where he was. I said how the hell should I know? I'm in the fuckin water! Last time I saw 'im he was on the fuckin boat!" A fierce agony burned across Ebenezer's face. Billy said nothing.

"I saw Mike look around. He moved toward the back right as this little bell started goin off in my head. Swear ta God, it was the weirdest thing, like nothin else existed except the sound a that bell. I was treadin through the shallow water as fast as I could, not knowin why, or at least tellin myself that. But I did know. Death has a particular smell...and it carries. Once ya learn somethin like that it never leaves ya. Like ridin a bicycle.

"By the time I got onta the deck Mike was sloggin back through chest-deep water, draggin Johnny along like some water-logged sack. I'm tellin ya, Billy, ain't nothin touches a sight like that. I seen dead bodies, boys blown ta bits so small ya'd have a hard time spottin some, but there's somethin altogether different when ya know that person. He was the color a newspaper, all except for his feet and they was a deep black-blue.

"Mike threw him up ta me and we just went ta work on 'im, pumpin his chest and blowin air down his pipes. Water and mucus and other shit come bubbling out...there ain't no description. I was watchin through this dazed veil, a Zone. Weren't no comfort there. Only isolation and a bitter unadulterated knowledge that nothin was gonna be the same again. Somethin I never felt in the War. It was as if I suddenly peered into the deepest reaches a Hell and saw nothin except ancient, lost memories and an endless silence that wouldn't never end." Tears spilled out of Ebenezer's eyes but he paid them no mind. They caught in his beard and reflected the light coming in through the curtain as he moved his head back and forth.

"I still remember while we were pumpin on him, still ta this day as clear as it ever was. I remember lookin off ta the bank and seein things that seemed ta dance just outta sight, close ta the edge a the water but filtered by the trees and the dim sunlight that kept fightin to get through. A feelin a true evil. And that's when it hit me that one solid blow. No matter what the outcome would be, nothin was ever gonna be the same again... we'd passed over the Edge."

Ebenezer paused and put his chin in his hand. He searched out the words carefully, surprised at their sound after being buried for so long. Their meaning seemed to disintegrate when they were voiced, but with their speaking also came relief, a house cleaning. He could not stop. Not now.

"He did live," Ebenezer continued, "but paralyzed. A man who didn't breathe for almost thirty minutes, suddenly alive again! I thought we'd performed a miracle. He was my Lazarus, but even then I didn't feel real victory or defeat. It was all exhaustion and emptiness, somethin 'at made no sense at all.

"I'll tell ya why, Billy. He lived four miserable months unable ta do anythin except blink 'is eyes. Everythin else—gone. His breathing was shallow and it hurt ta watch him. These huge tears would roll outta his eyes and ya could see him screamin behind that prison. Trapped. After four months he simply slipped off one day. And that was it. Only that. It made me wonder what the hell's the point? Why would a merciful God allow somethin like that? He was already dead, for Christ's sake, why the extra sufferin? I'as always taught since I a young lad that everthin happened for the best; that there's purpose behind every tragedy. But I could never justify that." Ebenezer looked down at the floor and scratched his head.

"That's when I stopped believin in miracles," he said very low.

He grabbed the bottle and poured himself another drink in the large tumbler, this one so full that it breached the top and spilled onto his lap. He paid it no mind, knocking back a quarter of the drink with his first shot before offering the bottle back to Billy. Billy took it in the same dead-pan silence, and set his glass to the side. He chose to drink it straight from the neck.

"I don't know if any a this shit makes sense," Ebenezer continued. "But I had a wife once and she was a fine little thing. Whole time I's overseas I saw her face in my dreams and that was the one thing 'at kept me goin. She become my perfect postcard. A symbol in my mind a everthin good. I guess that day on the boat I still believed that about her, or at least, that's what I been tellin myself all these years.

"But she wasn't. She wasn't the blessed virgin I manufactured over the battlefields because while I was away she had an affair and turned up pregnant. She knew that wouldn't do so she had it fixed.

"Somethin went wrong and we couldn't have kids. I found out about it after a few years and went fuckin berserk. By the time I stopped rantin and ravin she was dead. Killed herself with a pistol I brung home from the War. One after another steady combination a fuck-ups." Ebenezer drained the drink and closed his eyes. He placed the glass at his crotch and brought both hands up to rest plaintively on the armrests. The thick smell of the whiskey hung in the air like an old curtain.

"That was over thirty years ago, boy. I never got remarried and I never had any kids. I just stopped tryin. Ya see, after she died all I did was think, every fuckin day, mullin over things that wasn't gonna change. And I started wonderin about the accident on the boat that day and how it never made any sense, and then Sarah's death and how it made just as little. I began thinkin 'bout purpose...I tole ya I didn't fuck any a those women on the boat that day, and for years I thought that made me a better person somehow. Better than Sarah.

"But it ain't true. Sure I didn't fuck anybody that day, but it don't mean I wouldn't've. I didn't handle my drink then the way I do now, and I probably woulda had a swing with one or two a em as the day got on. But Johnny's accident got in the way. It saved me from doin somethin I shouldn't have but that don't mean I was excused. I perverted whatever that thing was and used it as pride, me not doin what she couldn't resist. I built up a wall that grew so thick and tall I couldn't see over or around it.

"I had a look like the one ya got in your eyes now, Billy," Ebenezer told him, shaking his head slowly before stopping. His eyes were crystalline, as hard now as diamond.

"And it never did me a fuckin bit a good."

He gestured around at the darkened walls full of movie memorabilia. "Ya see all these posters, all this shit I got around here? I gave up whatever I coulda been and took this on. And let me tell ya, it ain't enough. It's just emptiness and memories, and most of em ain't even mine. I pictured myself livin the kinda life I wanted through characters in movies and books and for a long while it seemed like enough. Well it ain't. It's a kick in the ass ta realize somethin like that too late, but thank God I did. Wouldn't want ta go blind and kickin ta the grave. All them stories I tole you, Billy. Most of 'em's made-up. And not everythin by me. The trunk over there with the journal and newspapers, the old clothes; it's all there for effect. It's the only thin I'm good at.

"Ya see, all I turned out ta be is a half-rate storyteller.

"I make up shit 'cause I got nothin better ta do. Been too goddamned wrapped up beatin myself over the head for thins I couldn't change. When somethin's time goes by ya let it go. I know this. Ya gotta make room for the livin and let the dead lay." He wiped a hand across his face to clear the tears running from his eyes. His face held no shame. Now in fact, it looked stronger than ever before.

"But in you," he said, pointing his finger at Billy, "I see salvation. My salvation. Maybe there is a such thing as a miracle and ya've just gotta be perceptive enough ta recognize em when they look ya in the eye. Ain't no time for second guessin. Ya live long enough ya'll see what I mean."

Ebenezer shut his mouth and let time roll by.

"'Did his love kill him?'" Billy asked, only half aware of the thing he'd spoken.

"What's 'at?"

Billy shook his head and looked into Ebenezer's eyes. "That night we took the cab home. You asked me that. I didn't know what the hell you were talking about then, but now..." Billy took a quick sip and set the bottle down on the floor beside him. He felt it was time to give the old man back something, as little as it seemed to be.

"You're more than a storyteller, Eb."

Ebenezer shrugged his shoulders. "It takes a long time for some things, Billy. It was the night I got stabbed that finally woke me from the sleep. But only gradually. I don't think real insight ever comes quick."

Billy could no longer hold back. "Eb," he said quietly. "I saw those guys that night and ran! I should have tried to get back to warn you—"

"Goddammit! Billy! Ain't ya heard a word I said?!" His roar shocked the boy to silence. Ebenezer's nostrils flared and for a second Billy thought the old man might get up and strike him. But then the old man closed his eyes, and made a studied attempt to slow his breathing. He held his hands out in apology and peace. "I'm sorry, fuck. Don't mean ta lose my temper." His eyes were wounded now, as if Billy had been the one yelling. "Just please listen ta me.

"What ya think don't matter. Things had ta happen like they did. That's the night I had my epiphany. That's when this understandin began to form, finally, after all the years I let slide by. I made it back ta the Ripcord somehow. This thing didn't come when I first woke up, but I do remember it later, from dreams I had while I was there in the hospital. I saw smoke and fire and destruction that I helped rain down on Germany from the B-17's we flew over Europe.

"I never set foot in that country but I used ta picture what it looked like after we left, and I used ta worry 'bout the innocent women and children there that had no choice in the hell we brung with us. But there was nothin ta be done. Call it Fate or Destiny or Nothin At All. Whatever it was it had ta be lived or died with; it was that simple.

"While I was strugglin back ta the bar that night, my head spinnin while I bled out all over, I began ta see in clear, vivid detail the kinda destruction that had only been formless and vague in my mind for years. Clearer than any goddamn movie ever was. The smell and sense of doom surroundin me made it much more. Every ravaged chunk of shattered concrete, every little wisp a smoke that trailed outta the blasted hulks a houses and tanks...and bodies. Gray hung over everythin, even the faces a the livin, faces twisted tight in pain. Blood ran in black rivers from underneath piles a rubble, from smokin doorways. Everwhere was nothin but burnt earth.

"But inside one a the smashed houses, I could peer through what remained ova window. Shards a fingered glass ringed two sides a the frame, and the rest was just gone. A fire still burned within. And I looked inside, searchin for survivors or somethin I guess, (it really was more of a dream than vision) and on top a the only spot a remainin floor stood a table. An undamaged table. On this table sat a single red apple.

"Through the chokin smoke I could see it was bruised, sure, but it was still whole. It was the only thin that seemed outta place. I remember standin there puzzled, lookin at that apple with this incredible fascination, fascination that kept rollin over, compoundin. 'S been with me ever since." Ebenezer stopped and pointed a very steady finger at Billy before going on.

"You're that apple, Billy. Bruised, yes. Ain't no doubt a that, but still whole, managin ta shine through the circumstances that surround ya. So what was it? A miracle, a vision...just an hallucination? I don't know, not quite able yet. Maybe it's really some cock-eyed symbol a myself an for some God-forsaken reason it just chose ta come outta hidin. Doan matter; I know what I b'lieve it is and I'm lookin at 'im. I'm finished with my 'repentin in leisure' as the old folks used ta say when I was a lad. I'm not gonna pile on the bad anymore; it don't have no use. I hope you won't either. Life ain't worth it. I don't know how clear I been but I hope ya get the gist a what I'm sayin."

Billy looked directly into Ebenezer's eyes. "Maybe so," he replied. "Elizabeth wrote me a note the day she died. Talked about how a vision she'd had whispered it was almost over, all the pain. She said afterward, when she woke, she couldn't wait anymore..."

Ebenezer smiled. "Yeah, well. Who says miracles don't happen? Just maybe they don't always scream and yell for everybody ta watch. Sometimes, most times I'm startin ta believe, they just play aroun in the background, givin out lil clues for ya ta interpret as ya will. Maybe we should listen more ta the whispers..."and Ebenezer looked away. "Ya ever heard a Golgotha, Billy?"

"Yeah, that's where they crucified Christ and the two thieves."

"Right. Years back I wrote a poem. When I got finished I didn't really know what it was about and now it must be long gone. It was about the crucifixion and all the agony that was goin on there on the Hill, the history that was bein made. But then it cut ta a fat ole tom cat lickin his lips behind the pews of a synagogue not far away. There was blood on the floor spilled from the mouse it just killed. A seeminly small, insignificant piece a circumstance against that immense backdrop a history an influence. Wish I knew where that old poem was because it just now cleared itself up.

"We all got Golgotha's, Billy. They're never far away, even in the best a times, because we never can tell when the rugs gonna get pulled. The best we can do is deal with whatever comes and go on. The best we can do and hope for is all we should expect." Ebenezer laughed lightly. "A course, we should look out for miracles too."

Billy nodded his head and laughed too, louder than Ebenezer. After the sound passed away the smile stayed. "You're probably right, Eb. The stories don't lie about what's inside." He pushed the bottle to the side with his foot. "And hell, some of what you say's gotta be the truth."

Ebenezer matched Billy's smile with his own. "Let's hope so, boy. My God, let's hope so."

June 27, 2003

Chapter 72

"...so when the doors of the elevator rolled open and he saw the flames waiting on the other side, he suddenly knew Hell was a lot hotter than anyone ever expected," and Bill Stockton finished his story before stopping to wet his whistle. Talking always brought on a powerful thirst. He sat across from the young UNO philosophy major valiantly engaged (when he wasn't drinking in the many bars around town) in completing his dissertation.

Not much had changed at the Ripcord in the decade-plus since Billy'd discovered the place, except many familiar faces had gone, new ones appearing as if sent to replace them. The sign outside had been modernized in an attempt to bring in a younger clientele, but it had not been able to change the mood inside. It was still perpetually sedate, barring unspeakable drunkenness which only occasionally had a way of slipping inside. Bill's face was much the same at it'd always been although it was slightly marred around the eyes and corners of the mouth with faint wrinkles, and his long hair was now thinning and flecked with an early gray which made him look older than his years. It didn't bother him though; he'd been through the fires of Hell and no one came through unscathed. Scars were to be expected.

The old jukebox (miraculously still in service) had been revamped also; now it contained music from as far back as fifteen years before rather than thirty. Bill still loved it, both the place itself and the memories floating from the box. The Ripcord still had its pride, its grandfatherly appeal. Bill supposed in a way he was keeping up its tradition. "Care for another?" he prompted his listener, holding up the husk of his empty beer mug.

"Sure," Doug said. "Don't worry, I'll get it." Bill knew all that meant was the young guy'd go get the drinks but he wouldn't pay for them. Bill flipped a five onto the table (it was still the only place in town to get a draft for $2.50), and watched as the befuddled philosopher made his way to the bar. Even as Bill watched him go he reminded himself that Doug still possessed more self-confidence than Bill owned over a decade before. When the young philosopher got back with the mugs Bill set his back in the wet circle left by its predecessor.

"Good, good," Bill said, tipping a small salute as he downed a sip. Doug sat down and checked his watch.

"I gotta bug out soon. Plying through Hume looking for an angle. Not something you're terribly interested in, huh?" The smile was teasing but well intended.

"What? Work or Hume? Not much to the first and I prefer Decartes to your boy." He expounded no further, closing the subject by bringing the mug to his lips again.

Doug tilted his head back and drained off half his mug in a single gulp. He belched and patted his stomach, which (unlike Bill's) had grown noticeably in the last few months. "Damn good," he said and smacked his lips.

Bill nodded his head silently before cutting in with an off-center remark. "You remember me talking about Ebenezer."

"Sure, the old guy who died several years back."

"Yeah, heart attack."

"I remember." Doug eyed his beer, suddenly not so ready to leave for the grind. He knew Bill's style. "What about it?"

"Remember I told you about him getting stabbed one night when he left here?"

"Uh huh." Perhaps there was one more morsel to be tasted.

"I saw the one who did it right after Ebenezer died. Couldn't have been more than two or three days afterward."

"But I thought you said it was pitch black that night, that you ran, that you couldn't be sure..."

"It was pitch black that night, and I didn't get a real good look at him, but I knew all the same. An evil soul is almost impossible not to identify when you see it twice. You always remember." His conviction was very clear in both his steely eyes and steady tone.

"Go on..."

Bill shook his head, the knowing smile growing on his face. "Thought you had something you needed to work on."

"There'll be time for that. Go on," the philosopher pressed.

"Many things are every bit as hard to believe in as the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus, but that doesn't make them any less real. I didn't used to think so, but growing up, if that's really what it is, has changed my view. Growing older helps you see things you've been missing for years.

Doug acquiesced. "You really think it was him?"

"I know it was, like I said. I was on the side of St. Louis Cathedral, walking down Pirate's Alley. Does a Yankee like you know about Pirate's Alley?" He always kidded the philosopher about being from Philly.

"Hell yeah. It's the one in all the charcoal drawings, the famous one."

"Yeah, the famous one. You got it. Anyway, I'd just turned the corner and down on the right, stuffed up in an alcove with this shitty straw hat on his head, was a bum handing something to this bald-headed black guy. Had a head as slick as a baby's ass, just like the one I'd seen the night Eb got knifed. Of course, that didn't mean a whole lot, especially with as many bald-headed black guys running around, but the closer I got, the stranger I felt.

"I slowed down when I got close and the white guy, the guy with the straw hat, kinda ducks his head. That's when the black guy jerked around real quick to see what's up. This is the weird part. Usually I'm one to avoid trouble, and on any other day in any other circumstance I'd'a booked it outta there. But when this guy whirls around (and I really knew it was him) I just stopped in my tracks. Cold turkey.

"And stared right back at that sonofabitch.

"He was supremely disturbed, had the kinda face reserved for demons as masks, but it didn't work. I just stood staring straight back, suddenly aware of this intense anger growing in my gut. Then, inexplicably, I saw his eyes skitter away from my face as he lost confidence. That's when I took a step closer, and I swear to God he fell back against the wall. His lips were moving but nothing came out. Somehow I got the up the balls to say what I said. And to this day I don't know how." He paused to take a pull from his mug.

"What was it?" Doug entreated.

Bill laughed and set it down. "I asked him for a light. Just like he'd done that night to me. The most sarcastic thing I've ever said in my life, and when he heard it he started sliding away, down the wall trying to hold me off with this weakening glare. Utterly powerless. He stumbled on a crack in the pavement and almost went down. When he regained his balance he never looked back, practically running from the alley.

"I stood there watching him go, my heart really starting to make a go for it by then. And I heard a low whistle coming from behind me. I knew it was the bum in the doorway. When I turned to look, he was staring back with this toothless, eerie grin on his face. He bunched himself up tighter in the corner and told me he'd never seen the devil run before." Bill coughed into his closed fist.

"Come on?" Doug asked incredulously.

"I'm not kidding. When he said that I started laughing, probably as much to keep from crying or passing out as anything else. Then I mustered up what reserve I had left and walked out of that alley. Didn't feel like pressing my luck."

"I'll be damn. You ever see the guy again?"

"Not yet," Bill replied ominously.

"Well." Doug wrinkled his forehead before slapping the table top. "Interesting," he admitted before taking a peek at his watch. "Look Bill, I gotta run. You'll be here later in the week I'm sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Good. Well, see you then." He got up to leave, giving Bill a friendly pat on the shoulder as he walked past. Bill swiveled around to watch his friend go, acutely aware of the déjà vu enveloping him. The places had changed, the parts become intertwined, but the story was, ultimately, the same. Something came to him then. Elizabeth's talk of circles, life's endless circles. Oh, dear sister. And Ebenezer too, both gone now for years.

But not entirely. Sometimes when he entered the Ripcord he could almost see the old, frazzled shadow of his friend, his deliverer, slouched down in one of the chairs near a back wall. The very air still exuded his rich essence. And Bill was it, the last of Ebenezer's family; not bound by blood, but something stronger by far. The old man had pulled him from the Fire, as hard as it'd been for him he'd done it anyway. He'd left everything to Bill, the least of which his flat in the French Quarter. There were still many things Ebenezer had said that remained unclear but as time went on there was a gradual lifting of the veil. Light from surrounding darkness.

He looked down at his watch. Janice, his wife, would be working in the studio by now and it was almost time to pick up little Elizabeth. Bill finished off the beer, smiling. Sometimes when she smiled the resemblance was uncanny. Anyway...he shook his head. There were papers to grade and the final draft of the story was due by the end of the week.

He cleared his throat and stood up. "Many thanks old friend," he muttered quietly to the walls before making his way to the door.

The End
