

-1TRIGGER MAN

A novel by

Richard Futch
Trigger Man

Copyright (c) 2013 by Richard Futch

Image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti/Freedigitalphotos.net

Smashwords Edition (January 2013)

All rights reserved. This includes the right to reproduce any portion of this book in any form.

Fiction/Horror/Fantasy

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Trigger Man

Prologue

And it happened that a rich Jewish counselor from Arimathae learned of the fulfillment of prophesy recently demanded by Pilate. He'd not needed the news racing on the wind even, because the figures in the sky: the lamb devoured by the many-headed beast, the odd nest of locusts clustered around the serpent's thick trunk, had plagued him for hours. And so it had been, in his despair, Joseph, this counselor, sat enveloped in grief within the shadow of the small olive grove where he lived and prayed. Had sat, and considered what still had to be done.

When finally able he shuffled outside toward the temple to find Caiphas, the high priest. Joseph had done business with the man before and knew any exhortations to Pilate would best be served through one of his sooth-sayers.

He'd not traveled a furlough when he came upon Nicodemus. Trembling, shaken, the small man pushed his ragged cart down the path, heavy with jars of salve and rolls of linen. Joseph knew well the figure even before the man's features cut a clear profile in the darkness. The dreams had been many, and illustrative.

"So you've come to do this thing," Joseph whispered in the ancient tongue of the prophets.

Nicodemus nodded, his eyes cast down toward the ground.

"They've done it," the counselor intoned mournfully. "They have killed our Lord!"

Again, the other man remained speechless, mute to the workings of the world as his eyes danced to the vision, the proportions in his head. The counselor saw its otherworldliness and looked away, uncomfortable in the presence of such immensity.

"He will be delivered to my sepulcher in the garden," he said then. "I go to make it done," and he placed his hand on the trembling shoulder of the perfumist. The man seemed scarcely to notice and Joseph feared him incapable of the task. He leaned closer, until his lips fairly brushed the man's ear. "You can do this thing?" he begged, failing to cloak the insinuated threat threading his voice. When no reply was forthcoming and still in the ancient tongue, he continued, "Through the shaft to the chamber, man. I will bring Him to you," and he turned into the night.

And later, when the stone was rolled away by the wailing mob and the maligned Joseph made true his promise, Nicodemus was pressed to action. He, too, had been present at many speeches made by this One, but the lifeless body before him made the inspirational admonitions of hope He'd championed small and incomprehensibly distant now.

But he worked nonetheless, helpless to stop, fighting through the pain of enlightenment and confusion as he prepared the mixtures and herbs, transfixed as his fingers flew about their business: each step in the process unfolding with sparkling clarity, as if with him since childhood and only now accepting to loose the Secret.

The smell and consistency of the concoction were unlike anything he'd prepared before or would ever prepare again. Soon the salves were worked deeply into the linen, which was in turn swaddled about the bruised and lacerated body in intricate patterns of design. Only at the extent of his physical limit was Nicodemus finally allowed to collapse across the now-empty cart and mercifully visualize no more.

He was gently awakened sometime later by a Hand on his shoulder. The shock of recognition was sufficient enough to rush a startled burst of air through his teeth.

The Parable-Teller, the Messiah, the Carpenter knelt beside him, the consuming corruption of death no more than a memory of horror. The Son smiled, a relaxed easy expression that appeared foreign on the depthless, now ageless, Face.

"You've done well," He said in a tongue even older than the prophets'. Nicodemus nodded, trembling, somehow comprehending every word though dumb to the process. He pulled away from the cart and to his knees in his rags, shielding his eyes from the brilliance of the Other.

And by morning the Christo had left through the shaft but Nicodemus was still there, staring through the sepulcher, his mouth open, his eyes rolling, unrecognizable even to his own mother after the revelation he'd survived.

***

The pounding of the shells easily reached the recesses of the bunker. The Russians were as far as Potsdamer Platz and it wouldn't be long until they began hammering away at the very door down here. The chauffeur had recently been dispatched to round up 200 liters of gasoline. Adolf Hitler and his former mistress, Eva Braun, now married by the mere count of hours, already awaited the action of their funeral pyre.

The meal and farewells were done. As Dr. Goebbels and several generals waited nervously in the dimly-lit passages of the underground bunker, Hitler and his new bride retired to their private quarters. There were two Lugers between them and enough poison to ward off cowardice.

Inside the cramped, fetid confines the light was feeble now, most likely from the repeated shelling from above. Her Fuhrer looked older than his fifty-six years, worn and ragged like some common thief or alley beggar. The confidence he'd pretended at dinner was gone, replaced by a rising terror Eva had never seen before.

The Lugers were in the bureau near the bed. She noticed he'd absent-mindedly forgotten to close it after last he'd peered inside. Now it was a gaping mouth awaiting a feed.

Another dull whoomp sounded close by. A bank of dust swayed through the air and the man coughed damp malevolence into his palm. His eyes kicked about watery and searching as if looking for an answer in some random place he'd never find. His lips pouted within the shadows of the metal walls. Eva helped him to the couch, whispered soothingly in his ear. The Power was great in her now; with her official signature on the marriage document hours before she'd finally felt heir to this thing she'd known inside all her days.

She went to the bureau, fetched the guns.

Her Fuhrer mumbled something underneath another wet cough, and she strained to hear. Something about the Russians taking them both, how there might yet remain a chance of survival. Perhaps even exile...?

Eva placed a finger to the trigger of one Luger and tossed the other onto the bed. Here, she would allow no welching. Prisoners were not remembered to history, only martyrs. And the ones outside the door were waiting to make one.

She walked over to the man, still incessantly muttering some half-lucid harangue, and sat down with her arm draped reassuringly over his shoulders. His face was drawn into the stricken lines of a terrified and helpless old man. A mere human. Eva steeled herself with the knowledge that this weakness of spirit was for her eyes alone. The World would never be witness to this commonality. She kissed his ear, murmuring her own salves, and as the Fuhrer's eyes closed, she brought the Luger up and shot him through the mouth. The noise was loud in the cramped space, but he went as easy and quiet as a lamb.

Eva Braun then stood and stared at the dead body. Tenderly, she placed the Luger in its still hand and walked over to the bed. She extracted the vial of arsenic from her stocking and looked to the ceiling with deadened gaze as she poured the contents down her throat. And in her last fleeting instant she was consumed by the power, her forever unknown courage as the filter by which her Fuhrer would be denied shame. After all, she thought before the darkness came down completely and forever, what good were lessons if the monster were defeated in the end?

When Goebbels and Bormann entered the room twenty minutes later a small smile still touched a ghostly print to the blue corners of Eva Braun's mouth. And later, under the hellish siege from the Russians and the heat from the Viking funeral pyre, the legacy she'd helped make was solidified in black smoke and nightmares enough for centuries to follow.

Chapter 1:"At This Late Date"

The old woman across the courtyard downstairs has turned off the light above the sink and drawn the blinds. She wheeled her equally ancient husband inside an hour ago, and though I could not hear their voices, the tenderness with which she treats him speaks of years together. She reminds me of my grandmother; he reminds me of no one. Sometimes their glances at each other very nearly touch the memory of my mother, but I don't let myself get drawn into these avenues often. At least when I can help it.

My grandmother, though. She's still concrete in my mind's eye; that certain squint she had when catching me in a lie, or how the lines in her forehead deserted her when she smiled. I remember all of it, more of the former perhaps, and it's not so good since that's what I'm left with. She's gone, my mother's gone.

And Mom...poor Mom, she's much farther away. Her face has lost its place in reality for me; I see her now like a curled photograph discovered in some lost attic trunk. I don't remember her voice, her expressions. The only thing that remains is her sense of desperation. Always the desperation. A woman enveloped in frightening whispers, uselessly fearing the fate she felt pursuing her.

Pursuing me...

***

The streetlights flicker on Rue Rampart. The old couple's place dances blue through the thin curtains, the TV flashing random bursts of color within. It is this mysterious, haunting moment when the day sacrifices itself to night, drawing upon long shadows to make up the coming darkness. It is a dreaming time, thick with rich possibilities, pregnant with nightmares. And looking back there's really not much to distinguish one from the other, or even reality from fantasy if you want to go that far. Not for me anyway.

I keep hoping to wake up, to find some kind of easy television-drama reality shut around me, but I already know it's not gonna happen.

So I sit here this night, most likely my last night, staring down ghostly Rampart, for some unfathomable reason conjuring images from Orwell's Animal Farm. You see, even though I was never much for school I've never been ignorant of literature. About some things, sure. But I've read, I've always read. Perhaps, initially, because we were poor and the only toys my mother and grandmother could afford were not even toys, really, but cheap Golden Books. Stacks and stacks of them now lost to whatever hell Time warrants. It was my starting point, the axis which has since impressed me with the peculiarity of living other lives through words on a page.

Therefore Animal Farm comes, and with it, those two great swine, Napoleon and the defeated one. Because I am that ill-fated Snowball, with just as much a chance in hell.

Regardless, I'll confront him tomorrow, tell him what I didn't do. Of course I could make a run for it but what good would that do? He'd find me eventually; the world is not large enough, the oceans not so deep, so I'll wait the night, treading this thin line...

But I do go deeper, darker; somehow oppressively ripened. Driven on by this twilight period, this lull so ripe with ghosts they flicker on the very edge of my vision. I feel their icy, phantasmagoric fingertips dragging the ridge of my backbone even now.

Because the dream was upon me again last night. The same as it's always been, its power neither increased nor diminished since childhood. What I remember from then, is still all I get now. But the worst thing is--unlike in my childhood--the nameless are finally recognizable. There are no secrets in the end, it seems.

***

Anyway, this is the dream as it comes.

As it always comes.

***

I'm in the cab of a pickup truck barreling down some south Louisiana highway. I know this instinctively because sugarcane fields stretch off to the horizon on both sides. And though I'm inside the truck, I'm not a part of what's going on. Just along for the ride it seems. The driver, a trim, chiseled man, appears extremely nervous; it doesn't look like he's changed his shirt in days. Sweat runs freely down his cheeks even though the window is down and the rush of wind inside all but deafens the radio station ebbing and flowing tenuously through the air. The cab is littered with empty hamburger and candy bar wrappers, cigarette butts, gas station receipts and cans.

He checks his watch as if he's late, grimaces and rubs his face. He slaps his knee in frustration then, barks words that are immediately torn away by the rushing wind.

And oddly enough, it is broad daylight. Not usual in my dreams, when I have them. Especially the bad ones, the ones that curl rank tendrils around my brain until hours after lunch. But it hardly makes any difference. Even though the sun is shining, the man's nervous tension brews a thick contagion in the swirling, rushing air that proves just as ominous as nosing through a graveyard at midnight.

We near a town; could be any one of the seeming hundreds that sprout like ragweed along the highway skirts of Plaquemine Parish all the way into the marshes of Venice. I know because I've canvassed the area, enraptured by the weirdest sense of deja-vu I've ever experienced. So bad, in fact, I had to pull over eventually at a gas station and drink a coke, smoked a handful of cigarettes before feeling well enough, safe enough, to continue.

In this dream the highway runs parallel to a rail line, and as we approach the blinking signal lights announcing the reality of the next few scattered houses and lone post office as a town, my vision suddenly expands exponentially. I peel away from the tension-filled confinement of the cab, riding an impossible curve up and out until I'm directly above and in front of the speeding truck, my presence still as ethereal as a dandelion seed in a hurricane.

Now I see the man is not the only figure to play in this drama. There is a small boy hunched by the side of the road, seemingly intent on something I cannot, at first, make out. And it is at this moment also (always at this moment) that the fear crushes in on all sides, leaving me ragged and shaken for long minutes after I finally, eventually, awaken.

The familiar nightmare staples of slowness and helplessness contort the whole aspect of what I'm seeing into a slow grind of excruciating melodrama. Suddenly at ground level I'm granted the sight of a mute and stoic witness able to stare with unblinking nonchalance into the guts of an imminent accident.

Now I see what it is the child's after. A beautiful green grasshopper, its veined iridescent wings half-drawn, nimbly hopping through the gravel which lines the shoulder of the road. I also see the Mason jar sitting crookedly by the willow tree, the partially-open front door behind the screen, and the boy's intentions are suddenly clear. But the truck is too close and moving too fast. Even worse, coming up out of the vague ditch to street level, the boy will never be seen in time. The fear which seizes me is debilitating, but worse (I've always thought), far from blinding.

The boy races through the ditch, bursts above the lip of ground separating gravel from asphalt. The grasshopper, aware of pursuit and tensed on the center, yellow stripe, is poised to make its own escape when the boy makes his lunge. The instant afterward the driver's eyelids peel back to the whites and he jerks the wheel savagely to the right, away from the uncomprehending child spilling out into the roadway. The grasshopper disappears to pulp as the boy goes down chin-first on the highway, his wail lost to the frantic screech of rubber.

A concrete culvert, strengthened considerably to bear the weight of the Illinois Central that races across it twice a day, proves unavoidable and unyielding. I see the man's screaming face a moment before the truck tears into the embankment and explodes with the force of a bomb, throwing pieces of man and metal for hundreds of flaming yards. I also see, there at the end, as the screaming, bloody-lipped child raises his head from the asphalt, a bright, ragged seam rent the air between them.

That has always been the strangest moment, the most unsettling. Because with those two instantaneous glimpses a connection is established in me with just as much authority as a nail driven through my head. And I've never had the slightest idea what the fuck it meant.

Up until yesterday I've tried to persuade myself I didn't know who they were. Now there's no sense pretending.

The man in the truck was my father.

The little boy is Aldo Sautin.

***

So at this late date it boils down to the point of acceptance. Do I really, possibly, believe anything I'm going to relate? Messages from reoccurring dreams, ghosts, divine intervention, predestination? Damnation, perhaps? Probably, to an outside party, it wouldn't seem that far out of the ordinary, considering my Southern Baptist origins, but I left all that behind years ago. Or at least I thought so.... It's funny, though, how all those lessons Grandma taught me have continued to flutter about my head like a misplaced halo ever since, regardless if I've been aware of them or not. One I've refused to claim so far, and you may wonder why. Because it all seemed like a dance with mirrors to me.

Regardless...I can't discount the unbelievable.

Not entirely.

I still recall That Day, playing in one of the many houses and duplexes we were constantly either moving into or out of. We were always on the move those days, not large jumps really after a while, but just apartment-jumping in the wake of back-owed rent and bill collectors. We lived off welfare and baby-sitting money and neither one of those makes for any kind of security.

But I'll never forget Grandma's face.

I'll never forget the way she hustled us (Donnie was the other kid That Day, the only one she was getting paid to keep) into the dining room and dialed Cousin Linda's number as she stared at the receiver with wide, uncomprehending eyes. Eyes like the ones from the dream. When you really think hard, everything comes back. It truly does.

I remember her crying when Linda arrived, and the two of them going into the bedroom (she would not go into the living room for weeks afterward) and talking in low murmurs while Donnie and I played as quietly as possible in the bedroom next door. Only years later, months before she died in fact, did she tell me what had happened. And, as I've said, she was never one to lie. She had no need for such trickery.

She'd been hanging curtains in the living room. Donnie and I were playing on the patio right outside the closed screen door, our voices clear from around the corner, according to what she told me. I heard nothing. But while up there on that chair, arms outstretched as she hung the curtain rod, she suddenly became aware of a presence behind her.

My grandmother came from a large Nebraska family, four brothers and three sisters. Assorted wars and farming accidents had weeded out the brothers before I was even born, but the sisters lived on. There was Clara (my grandmother), Dorothy, and Inez. Inez was the oldest, and when I visualize her even now I find a smiling, white-haired woman in a vast kitchen alive with the smells of bubbling peas and rising bread. Nice, comforting.

She'd lived not far across town in an ancient, though mystically-sound frame house. It was spacey, airy; I remember a feeling of hidden treasures and undiscovered territories; she'd owned a half-empty apartment building fronting the side street, and pushed back to the corner of the lot stood a two-story garage made up of another studio apartment perched on top of a derelict woodworking shop. I never knew of anyone actually living or working there. I'd only been inside once or twice myself.

She'd not been in the best of health during this time, already in her seventies when my grandmother was not yet mid-fifties, but she had good kids that sent for her and kept her in groceries. Only she wasn't with any of them That Day. Grandma told me (and even now I can see the nervousness, her eyes cutting to the corners of the room as if half-expecting to see the apparition again with her telling of it) her sister had flown to Atlanta a few days before. An old friend from Wherever, Nebraska had called out of the blue, asked her to fly out and stay the week-end. The woman's husband had done well, Grandma said; he was a foot doctor of all things, a podiatrist, I believe. So for a couple of days Inez was not at home, and she was not with her kids. She wasn't anywhere familiar is how Grandma put it (still looking away to the corners as if expecting the shape to slide into view any second). Because when she turned from the uncomfortable prickling at the base of her neck, there had been someone, or something, else in the room with her.

Matt had always been a big man, a sheriff for the better part of thirty years, and a farmer before that. The one picture I've seen of him placed him well above six feet with a large, gregarious-looking face. He'd been standing by the couch in the sunlight streaming in through the front window in full uniform, hat in hand. And at that time the man had been dead for over fifteen years.

The initial surprise had almost spilled her from the chair, but the ghost (if that is indeed what it was) had held out its surprisingly substantial hands, promising in a hoarse-cloak of a voice that it meant no harm. It only wanted to know, it said, where Inez had gone. She wasn't home and she wasn't with the kids. I can only imagine how Grandma must have felt then; I've never forgotten how her eyes strained frantically as she told me.

'I told him she'd gone to Atlanta to see Stella,' my grandmother told the apparition and right away (according to her) the ghost had smiled and nodded its head in a semblance of relief. Then it simply disappeared. No swirling of air, no strange smell of lingering brimstone. Just gone. And that's when she rounded us up and called Cousin Linda. That's also where she left the story. Never talked about it again even though that would have been highly improbable in retrospect. Her life was almost out.

That tale, though, has left a mark on me like a footprint in wet cement; the memory of her telling haunting me like a mild, temper-less ghost itself. Because I've never been able to put a firm commitment to it; I've never been able to finally admit whether I believe what a woman who never told a lie in her life told me, or simply cast it off as some weird figment of her imagination. Seems there are never any easy choices, right? But if I've come to believe anything, including my own reoccurring dream, then it seems only logical to believe hers...or at least her ability to interpret whatever she thought it was.

Only this question is left, then: Do ghosts really watch over the living, if they do, in fact, exist? Up until now I've thought...no, I'll be plain, wished it not to be so. It lends itself to too many other disturbing possibilities. But there have been signs. Portents even.

Chapter 2:The Party

I was born in the proverbial hole in the road just outside Hot Springs, Arkansas. My mother and I lived in one clapboard shack after another until I was five years old and there's not really much I remember about the essentially different but, nonetheless, same places. What I do remember is little more than snapshots, still-frames of places and scenes that make no more difference in my life now than shoes on a turtle would, ever. Scattershot pictures of an ancient station wagon grinding its way into the Smokey Mountains; a corner store proprietor who constantly twirled his handlebar mustache and joked about how I should have been a girl, with my face and all, he' say, winking to anyone listening. And others: my mother as a young girl, no older than the ones I see everyday leaving high school, my grandmother, healthy, later on. Not much else though, nothing substantial, kinda like a book with most of the good parts ripped out or soiled beyond the point of readability.

I have no recollections of my father at all, except the dream, and as I said, up until today I'd never admitted to myself that it was actually him. Of course, inside I knew. I believe I've always known.

My Grandma was not around much then. It would have caused too much trouble while my grandfather was still alive. Grandma (on that stormy, revealing day of my thirteenth year) broke down and told me he asked about my mother late one night after he'd taken several (for him) very out-of-character drinks, and even now I do believe that may have been the only true lie she ever uttered.

The problem was me, you see. My grandfather couldn't abide a bastard and that's what I am. He was a man of strict upbringing, a 99.9% teetotaler, straight-line Baptist, as inflexible as a nail in a two-by-four. And having a child out of wedlock was unthinkable, regardless if it was your own daughter or not.

But I don't hate him, at least now, because it's hard to hate someone you never really knew, or at least it is for me. He had principles, and his daughter (to his way of thinking) had taken those principles and rubbed his nose in them. To each his own, I guess. We all live with our sins. But Shreveport, Louisiana was a much smaller town then than now, and he was a failed salesman. Business was one thing, but the shame my mother put upon him was something from which he obviously didn't, or couldn't, recover.

Thank God my Grandma was different.

Regardless, until they found him on the side of the road that day my mother and I were on our own. What little I learned of my father I had to get from my grandmother years later, a piece at a time, little tidbits like pieces from a mousetrap. I used to think she didn't want to talk about him whenever I mentioned him, but now that I'm older and wiser (ha, ha) I think she didn't say much because that's about all she knew.

I was born in 1968, conceived during the Summer of Love. It was the time of hippies, drugs, Vietnam, rebellion. And my mother, it seems, fit in quite nicely. But even so, it hardly explains how we ended up in Hot Springs, Arkansas, that hotbed of social unrest. Hell, now I guess you'd be lucky to find a six-pack and a joint without turning over every stone for miles around. But then again, what the hell do I know? I haven't been back since the snapshots were stored in my brain.

I have no idea what my mother thought of the place; I don't know what my mother thought about at all. Those first years were a daisy chain of cheap childcare dives and dry cereal. My father bugged out not long before I was due (in the proverbial dead of night to get a pack of cigarettes), and with my grandfather still gnashing his teeth over his black-balled daughter, she had no choice but to work. And the jobs she could find were menial, pathetic. One day ran uneventfully into another and perhaps that's why I don't remember much from that time. We was always on the move, never stopping long enough to get a bearing. But when we finally did touch down it was in a trailer park not too far from one of the numerous chicken-processing plants that sprout in Arkansas like dandelions in a spring field.

You might ask how I know these things since I've already admitted to scarcely remembering my mother at all and Grandma being out of the picture at this time. So how? The smell really. There are certain things that never leave you: the first time you get laid, maybe the day you graduate from high school if you didn't get any farther, more likely the day you got your driver's license. For me (along with the snapshots of the old man at the corner store and the station wagon sloughing its way into the mountains) there is the smell of chickens. To this day I can hardly stand to look at those motherfuckers. One irony after another that I don't remember my mother's face but can't forget how the decaying funk of processed chickens hung around her like an old dress that refused the hamper.

She worked the Line, that much I know from Grandma. She told me as much and I guess it's only Providence or Dumb Luck that kept my mother alive as long as she was. Because if she'd've died sooner it would have been an orphanage for me, for sure. Like I said, my grandfather was never one to live and let live.

So we plodded on, a woman making only a whisper above minimum wage, and a bounced-around kid leaving early every morning and getting back to the leaky, chicken-shit-smelling trailer late at night.

She worked alongside what my grandfather would have bitingly called niggers and poor white trash, taking each truckload of plump and lively chickens from the staging area to be beaten, thrashed, plucked, scalded, and subsequently dismembered. Like I said, even the idea of chickens is enough to make me want to puke.

However, luckily for me, my grandfather's ticker gave out on a two-lane stretch of highway between Homer and Coushatta in the poverty-ridden northwest corner of Louisiana. When the police found him the car was still idling on the shoulder, all his fruitless sales apparatus neatly arranged in the seat next to him, and him just as dead as a Kennedy behind the wheel. No life insurance policy, no retirement fund, not even a iron pot to shit in. Needless to say, my Grandma didn't keep the house long.

He kicked several months before my fifth birthday and before he was in the ground good Grandma decided what it was she had to do. She packed up, and from the bills that chased us around for the next coupla years like a bounty hunter on meth amphetamine, they were substantial. She rode into town on a bus and my mother and I picked her up at the Greyhound station in Hot Springs. And that is another snapshot: my Grandma hurrying toward us across the scuffed floor, skirting people as she came, a suitcase in either hand and tears in her eyes. And there to greet her: me and the shadow that was my mother. It's one of a select few memories I have of being very happy, as if Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny had decided to appear in person. She'd sold my grandfather's Chrysler and all the money she possessed in the world was tucked deep in the folds of both of those suitcases, in case she lost one or the other, she later told my mother.

By the time of the birthday (both my mother and Grandma decided to go whole-hog for cake, presents and the like, since I'd not had a "real" party before) we were actually living for the first time as a family. I was cared for without the need of daycare for once, and the one thing that remains with me is a "sweetness" that found its home within me until my grandmother died. If there's one thing I do know it's this: between love and money, give kids love. The rest will take care of itself.

So even though I was out of daycare, the friends I had were not forgotten. And it just so happened the current daycare had been run by the processing plant's management. Many of the children I played with had parents who shared some, if not all, of my mother's duties, so even if I wasn't with them during the day, they weren't far in terms of geography.

The party was to be an extravaganza. It was lucky I was born in the Fall because the trailer could not have held the turnout of a cold, drizzling winter afternoon. And it did become an extravaganza, though nothing of the sort my mother or Grandma had envisioned. What happened is another thing she reluctantly told me on that stormy day in my thirteenth year. I'd finally come clean about the reoccurring dream I'd had the night before and I guess she figured it was finally time to do likewise. Because (unlike what she told me about my grandfather) I know this is true.

The party was going well, the turnout thankfully lighter than mother had wished, but Grandma admitted the food scarcely held out for the ones present. There were crepe paper and balloons, a Mexican piñata they'd splurged for and tied to the rim of the basketball net in our neighbor's yard, hot dogs and hamburgers, and of course a cake decked out with the Archie characters from my favorite Saturday morning show.

It was a Sunday afternoon (the only day of the week that the plant closed shop) and most of the co-workers and their children were more than happy to share in the good times on someone else's expense. Grandma told me she turned a blind eye to the amount of booze chugged down that day and I believe her on this one too. She was human first, Baptist second.

It was during the cake-cutting that it occurred, whatever it was. Whatever has continued to dog my heels like an irritating mutt warning me away from its territory. The only thing I recall is the flash of light, another snapshot that could just as easily have come from a camera as from anything—or anywhere--else.

When I mentioned this to Grandma her eyes tightened involuntarily at the corners, and I could see her holding back on some hasty comment. That was another of her more subtle talents. She was more of a plodder, someone who thought hard on any particular subject before voicing an opinion. I suppose she got that from living with my grandfather all those years.

But during her telling, as the rain dripped and splattered across the roof tiles and echoed metallically in the several pots we'd placed strategically around the kitchen, she never wavered from the subject nor held back any of what my mother had believed.

Because no one else saw a thing, or if they did, nobody said so.

She was attempting to hustle some wayward kids out of her way to cut the cake when I suddenly began clapping my hands. Nothing out of the ordinary really. Just a typical five-year-old reaction to over-stimulation except...that my mother turned suddenly, knife in hand poised above the cake, as if to follow my gaze which was not centered on the cake anymore. Even Grandma admitted that much. According to her, I was actually pointing by the time it happened.

This is what the people at the party saw: my mother turning, her eyes going wide as the scream began, falling backward onto the table, tripping and going down in a heap of folding chairs, cake, and children, the knife gashing her forearm so deeply an ambulance had to be called, and the party collapsing like a pricked balloon amid the following chaos.

This is what my mother told Grandma late that same night after I'd gone to fitful sleep, her high on the pain killers the doctor had prescribed and shaking her way through the second pot of coffee. I remember the strain standing out in cords along Grandma's neck as she recalled the unnerving episode.

My mother said she'd seen a contingent of ghosts, of vast assortment. All eyeing me.

It was a jumble of vague forms tightly knotted together, and in such configurations and overlappings they were really no more than a collage. Some were even super-imposed upon the party-goers, turning the whole area into a surreal panoramic mash of the living and dead, clustered all the way back to the line of trailers skirting the entrance drive. And even though they appeared insubstantial, many of their features and clothing were discernable. Races and ages were well represented: Arabs in robes of flowing iridescence, half-naked savages bloodied with rage, European aristocracy in powered wig regalia, hunched and bushy-haired humanoid creatures, and other more impossible beings packed and stacked together like rampant fans at a rock concert. All present and somehow drawing my attention; a silent multitude crashing my birthday party with their tenuous but studied presence. Mother said the hunger, the need, the longing in each pair of eyes was heart-breaking and unmistakable.

And she'd fainted.

And I remembered nothing. Just the flash of light and the commotion that followed. And as Grandma went on I soaked the information in, stored it safely away in a place where I could pick at it curiously when it had cooled, and I was alone. When she would not be aware of my disquiet. Time to think over both the dream (or vision) that had caused the revelation of the tale and then the tale itself; time to begin in earnest the strange path I've been following ever since.

Chapter 3:Down, Out, Gone

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The ages of five to thirteen were only good in the fact that Grandma was with me. My mother was too, for awhile, but the shadow sucked her up well before I had any chance to really know her.

After the fiasco of the party Grandma said Mom had a hard time at work. The people were different. Not mean, really; it was not that, just different somehow. And as I've grown I've come to know what my grandmother could only guess; I've felt it at my shoulder like a mugger for years.

One time is still crystal clear.

I was walking home from one of my numerous schools (I don't even remember if I'd been sent home or managed to last the whole day; the way things went back then it could have been either) when I heard a very vague whimpering coming from a ragged ditch not far ahead. It was cloudy and cool that day and there were no shadows except for the one haunting me. But by that time it was as familiar as sliding into an old pair of jeans, though hardly as welcome.

It didn't take long to find the dog. It must have been hit by a car a short time before because the blood bubbling out of its nose hadn't had time to crust over yet. The real, initial shock came from the fact that it was so big, almost as long as a man. In fact, I thought it was a man in a brown coat until I saw the teeth. But even then, I only half believed it was a dog...perhaps more likely a demon with the luck I'd been living with. The lips were pulled back in a grimace and the eyes were almost human. I could tell from its frantic breath it was dying.

I looked up and down the road, and although it seemed I'd been passed by a car-a-minute up until that point, it was ironically empty and clear then. The dog's sounds became more strangled, more choking, and I jumped down into the ditch. Its head was crooked away from me but I could see the sun glinting off the eye on my side. The grass was pretty high, but it saw me coming and began kicking its back legs as if trying to make a getaway. All it managed to do was spin around into an even more twisted tangle of limbs in the stagnant water. I remember it raised a mighty cloud of flies in the process.

I saw its eye better then (I was no more than ten feet or so away) and it was wide in terror. I'd heard about animals being very dangerous when injured or near death, so I held back and looked really hard. And the oddest presence washed over me. That's the simplest and most effective way to describe what happened; it was just like the dream with the man in the truck speeding along the highway. I was suddenly apart from myself and plunging into the frantic, dying eye on the ground before me. I saw every hair lining the ridge of black along its nose; the gash at its neck heaving and gurgling blood with every labored breath; the bristled mane running down the muddy crest of flayed spine. And even though I'd physically stopped getting any closer to the dying animal, my sight had not. Nor had the dog's perception lessened, evidently, because it began kicking violently again, burying one side of its head deeper in the muck. When it breathed (and it was quite obviously with less gusto), bubbles popped on the surface of the insect-riddled water, sending the flies into renewed turmoil. I remember wondering morbidly how many were being sucked inside the dying animal when it did that. But in the meantime I continued zooming in, fastened to the stricken eye like a fish to a lure. It became even wider, more expressive. I could suddenly see my own reflection embedded there amid the sparkling agony that was like a live thing in the air.

Then the dog's breathing was lost to a loud buzzing in my head (or my consciousness perhaps, since I felt so completely disembodied by this point), and the eye consumed my sight, mirroring the image it held until minute details rolled and unfurled themselves like flags in a high wind, until the clarity was icy pure.

I found myself in the image (much smaller and younger than I allowed myself to believe) standing ankle-deep in the mud, drawn to the dying dog like some alien ghoul from the wastes. But grouped all about me, both within the slimy trench of the ditch and above, closer to the roadway and lining the ditch for as far as I cared to see, stood a silent throng of ghostly strangers much like the ones my Grandma described years later. And every eye was fixated on whatever I'd become.

With this realization I started from the bizarre image and immediately found myself on my knees in the muddy water, gasping much like the dog had been mere seconds before. Only now the animal was dead. As I pulled myself from the mud to my shaking legs, that was painfully apparent. There was no expression left in the lone, glassy eye; there was nothing at all left there.

When I finally found the courage to turn around I was alone too, but the nerves in my body were humming as if I'd just taken a healthy dose of electricity.

This was the thing I remembered while Grandma talked in the leaky kitchen. This is the thing I valiantly tried to hide as my mother's story spoke from her grave through my grandmother's voice. This is the thing I have mulled over and found unexpectedly in many places since.

***

It wasn't long after the birthday party that my mother began developing severe headaches. One day she collapsed on the Line (it was only by sheer luck that she didn't fall into the scalding unit). She told her Super it was from the heat, and he hurried her home. The plant didn't have a neat safety record and did its best to avoid negative publicity when it was in its power to do so. You see, some things never change. She mentioned nothing about her double vision; she didn't even tell Grandma, until she wrecked the clunker of a station wagon several months later in Baton Rouge, she couldn't make out things very well over fifteen or twenty feet. She began having a hard time getting up in the morning; her neck was frequently stiff. She started missing work, so much so that Grandma picked up a part-time job to supplement our already meager income.

And me? It was off to a neighbor's trailer for awhile, for free. I remember absolutely nothing. Perhaps I've blocked out that time or simply chosen to forget it out of boredom. Or maybe sadness. It doesn't matter.

The only thing that's important now is the truth, and the truth is Mom lost that job. There was never any insurance or other benefits involved (this was the early '70's and there were a helluva lot of other things going wrong in the country to keep most people busy), but the trailer was leased through the company and no job meant no roof. Or, at least, not any roof there. And this time there were three footloose beggars to house instead of just two. My grandmother's suitcases had been no Pandora's Box of riches.

So with little money, few contacts, and no rich relatives waiting to snatch us from the fire, the decision was made to change location. Completely. Grandma wanted to get back to Louisiana but Mom didn't want to live in Shreveport again. The foot of the Boot was suggested, though New Orleans was immediately rejected as being too big, too violent. In the end three names were dropped into a shoebox and (supposedly) I fished one out. The choices were Lake Charles, Lafayette, and Baton Rouge. There were varying degrees of distant relatives in all three, even if none of them were falling over themselves to save us.

We landed in the Capitol a month later; the wagon on its last, coughing seizure; Mom constantly sickened from headaches; and Grandma worrying enough for all. Me, oblivious; just that short span of time we get to be so.

We were saved from complete disaster by a quirky bit of providence at a Stop sign. My wailing from the backseat was enough to distract Mom's attention from what she was doing, which was driving. The brake pads had been grinding for the last hundred miles or so and this time they didn't hold.

We rear-ended the Caddy (not even hard enough to put a sizeable dent in the bumper, according to Grandma), but the thin, chain-smoking, beanpole of a woman behind the wheel painted it as the Second Coming of Christ, and her, apparently, completely unprepared for such an event due to my mother's negligence. She existed the car already railing to high heaven while my Mom (fighting through another blinding headache, she told Grandma later) attempted to get out and appease the bitch. When the cops arrived fifteen minutes later the tobacco-eater was almost to the point of apoplexy.

Of course we didn't have any insurance and the inspection sticker had expired eleven months before. So it was really no surprise that no more than forty minutes after reaching (what we hoped to be our saving grace) we were off to the police station.

Wherein lies the quirky part.

A little less than two hours after being booked in, Mom left with both an address of a nearby duplex and a job. Don't ask me how she managed it; Grandma said she didn't know (or pretended not to) but I am neither blind nor stupid. From the few pictures I've seen, Mom was a woman capable of drawing second and third looks. She used what she had, I guess...hell, who doesn't in the end? Regardless, whatever sin she may have had to commit to save out sorry asses, it was very nearly her last.

We moved into the duplex (not too great, but better than the trailer in Arkansas), and Mom worked at the police station. Ironic, no? Life constantly sets such things into place as if to see just what great comedy or tragedy will evolve. And I guess none of us happened to be born with the good luck of a sense of humor.

A little over four months into the six-month lease I came waddling into the tiny living room, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, crying into my T-shirt. Whatever job Mom had around the station provided enough money for Grandma to stay home with me again. So be it; I never asked any questions.

I remember what followed as if I am still enmeshed in that dream which had only half awakened me.

I was crying, rubbing tears from my red eyes. And I ran to her, squeezing her tight and desperately as if something pursued me from the bedroom. Grandma told me later she even got up to peer down the short hallway which led to my bedroom, half-expecting some maniac with a gun or knife in hand to come stalking down it. Amid my onslaught of sobs, she said it took the better part of ten minutes to calm me enough to find out what was wrong. I'd never been one for nightmares. She bent down to tend me, and all I kept saying, moaning, was "Mommy, Mommy," over and over again.

On the same day of the storm in my thirteenth year, she told me she knew something had happened as soon as she saw me. Something in my eyes, she said. Well, she stroked and cooed until I calmed down a little, all the while making a pallet in front of the couch. She got me a glass of warm milk, turned the television to Captain Kangaroo.

She was working up the nerve to telephone the station house when someone knocked on the door. What followed was the only true case of premonition she ever had, because as she walked the short distance to the front door she already knew my mother was dead. 'Just as clear as a bolt of ice water shot through my veins', were her exact words. She saw my mother falling across her desk (much as she must have done the day of my fifth birthday), the blood already coming in thin rivulets from her left ear.

It was an aneurysm, a simple little blood vessel in her head that could no longer take the strain it had been constantly under. Its warnings of headaches and double vision had gone unheeded and the clock had finally come to reset itself.

She was twenty-two and I was a little shy of five and a half.

So she became the ghost, the curled picture in the attic trunk, and I another step closer to becoming an orphan.

Grandma collapsed before the two policemen at the door even began their explanation as to why they were there.

Chapter 4:Alone

The next several years would have been an even bigger blur than the previous five had I not been older. The memories are stuffed and crammed into every available cranny of my mind like broken tools left to rust at the bottom of a discarded tackle box.

Grandma didn't allow me to attend Mom's funeral, I guess she was afraid the experience would do me too much harm. Even so, I'm not sure the alternative proved any more beneficial, but after all, we do, in the end, what we feel we have to. Mom was cremated; there was no money for anything more.

I have no idea what happened to her ashes.

I was left at the police station the day of the funeral. We had not lived in the duplex long enough for Grandma to entrust any of the neighbors with what proved to be her last possession (me), and the precinct seemed to be the most logical choice, the safest. Although some of the men and women took off to show their respect at the funeral home, the office was by no means deserted.

There is nothing from the moment Grandma dropped me off with the receptionist that is not preserved in my head like some Paleolithic dragonfly in amber. I still have the ability to call it up from memory in its entirety like some gruesome joke that refuses the release of a punch line.

And I really can't blame the office worker. She was a simple nine-to-fiver putting in her hours with one eye on the clock, I'm sure. And there I was, a young curious boy of not quite five-and-a-half, full of energy made even more potent by curiosity. So it didn't take much in the confused goings-on in the precinct to slip outside her thin range of awareness.

I explored, or rather I believe, was drawn.

In the movie-like reel that encapsulates the memory of that afternoon, I can clearly see the small boy ducking around the last corner into the hallway. I watch as he makes his way down to the third door on the left, his eyes fixed as if in the throes of a consuming dilemma. He reaches up (straining to his tip-toes) to reach the doorknob, and even though, normally, he would have never been able to turn it, the last person out has forgotten to close it firmly. The door swings open and Mr. Curiosity goes inside. And even though this action may tend to kill a cat, to a young boy it does nothing. Except endure.

With the hair actually sticking up along the back of my head (I know this; I can see it), the boy creeps in, seemingly narrowing in on whatever has drawn him. And although the forensics team and even the janitors have both done their job well, there is still one thing they've missed. Crawling underneath the desk I find the congealed spot of my mother's blood as easily as a beagle flushing out a rabbit warren. And as I watch the memory (or as it watches me) I see the tiny boy who is the ghost of myself put his finger to the spot as the tears begin to come.

It takes nearly eight minutes for anyone to discover I've slipped away, and by that time I've completely rubbed the telling spot away. And no one ever knew.

***

Until now...

I've drained the seventh beer and call. No more. I can't be dulled by a hangover tomorrow. I'll need a cool head and all the courage I can muster to tell that sonofabitch what I have to say. And, Christ, I can already see it, his lip curling with that familiar smile, his eyebrows arched knowingly. Of course he won't believe me at first (not after the things I have done), but he'll see it soon enough. If I can pull it off without blinking it'll be one of my greater achievements.

So...

All darkness now across the courtyard. The blue, dancing light of the television there winked out almost an hour ago and I imagine the old couple curled into their bed together, dreaming what I think to be the diluted dreams of youth. I hope it's remembrance without the storms, at least. Mercifully, it will be.

They have at least one child, a fairly well-to-do man. He visits once or twice a week and treats them both with the kindness and respect evinced by his mother to his father. Their profiles reflect his identically, denying the piling on of years which has muted her high cheek bones, tried to deny his thin, Romanesque nose. I wonder what he does for a living? Surely he's not a foot doctor too, some doppelganger podiatrist. He drives a new Saab and his parents don't appear to want for anything. He looks like he's got it made, like he hasn't a care in the world, and at this moment I have to admit jealousy pricks me. I've sometimes, unwittingly, placed my face upon his features and tried to read the route of his life. I know it is utterly ridiculous, a bitter fugue to dull my own dissatisfaction, but sometimes, sometimes, it does seem to help. I picture magnificent Christmases and prestigious graduations; all those smiling girls and envious schoolmates; ivy-draped vacations and quiet beaches; a picture I'm sure he never actually lived, but I see it nonetheless. Maybe, it's just the time of night that tends to send me on so, spiraling me down into the bitterness that has paled me. Reduced me.

It's surely nothing to think on, but it comes and won't leave until it's ready. It plays on, all the while the picture of his idyllic existence parading before and around the images I harbor of my own childhood. Images of Grandma worn to the quick from her job at the post office, still-shots of more shitty daycares. Pictures of loneliness. Shadows of anger.

I became withdrawn after awhile, I guess it was inevitable, unable to give myself out of fear any new friend I would gain could be whisked away on the faintest, slight shift of breeze. Trying even as a child to buffalo my grandmother into believing there was really nothing wrong. Telling her the infrequent bruises and black eyes I carried home were hurts sustained in accidents on the playground rather than telling the truth. You see, I was small for my age until about twelve or so, and I've always had a mouth that was two sizes too big anyway.

But we both limped along.

I went to three schools between first and seventh grade. We lived on at the duplex in Baton Rouge and I managed the first school until fourth grade. Then Grandma was transferred to another district on the opposite side of town, and I had a hard time making the change. There were several fights, numerous trips to the office. I was eventually pulled out during the second semester of sixth grade and placed into another junior high to finish the year. Because of what, specifically, I have no recollection. I've erased all memories from my mind. I only remember sealing up tight through the seventh grade until the day I walked into the duplex and found Grandma sprawled on the couch.

I'll never forget how she looked. Worn, discarded like the couch she was lying on. Faded to every fiber and skinned to the soul. The fear in her eyes was apparent the moment I came inside. No more than five or six months after the storm and the revelations it had accounted for, and almost subconsciously, I'd come to fear for her more and more. It was as if she'd poured everything out to me that rainy afternoon with the raindrops pinging in the buckets we'd placed around the kitchen. It was as if until that day she'd not realized how old she was, or, more pointedly, my youth. And there we were, for the most part, penniless. I knew she was not sleeping well, but there was nothing I could do. I tried to be good at school; I endured several comments during that period I would not have otherwise entertained, but I could feel the tension in the house like a filled helium balloon and dared not add another percentage to it. Looking back, I realize it was as if I'd decided to bide my time, knowing somewhere inside, where the truth waited, that it would not be long. I'd hurry home from school every afternoon half-expecting to find Grandma in a position very similar to the one I did find her in that day.

The front door was half-ajar and the broom flat on the floor, the drift of dust from the pile she'd made trying to escape back to the corners. Her breath came raggedly in short little stabs. Her forehead was soaked and she clenched her left hand, all the while massaging the muscles in her upper arm by the shoulder with her right. I stopped cold in the doorway when I saw her eyes. The look was the same as the one I'd seen in the dog, only the terror was muted (Grandma could never see that thing that others do in me). I heard the book sack hit the floor, was unaware I'd dropped it.

She quit massaging her arm and motioned for me to come over to her. I hurried and knelt down, her arm falling away to where her knuckles dragged the floor. There was a thin, glistening line of drool spilled across her wrinkled chin. And it was at that moment I was truly 'reborn', ripped up and out of my life into what I have become.

All this and me not fourteen for three or four more months.

I bent as close as I could, conscious only then of how ragged her breathing was. Her nose made a high pitched scream every time she drew in. She didn't make much other noise but the pain told out from her eyes. They were blood-shot and bulging. Sweat coursed down her cheeks. The only thing I could think to do was take off my shirt and dab it weakly at her face and forehead. Her hand came up again, settled and squeezed my shoulder.

She couldn't raise her voice above a whisper and I leaned so close I felt her lips tickle my ear. That is my last physical memory of her, that tickling. She said she'd been waiting; we had no phone, the neighbors weren't home. She said she loved me and didn't know what she could do now. And she died moments later it was like the dog too. One minute she was there and the next, nothing. Her eyes turned as deep and vast as a pit, and she was gone. To this day I have never been anywhere quieter than that room as I held her and cried. When the sobs finally subsided I got up, walked over to the front door, and kicked my book sack out of the way so I could push it closed.

It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving holidays were to begin. Our street ended in a cul-de-sac, pulling up short before a stretch of concrete and the blocked, forbidding wall of a deserted parking garage covered in layer upon layer of moldy storm runoff and graffiti. Not a breath of wind stirred.

Perhaps because of the stillness the idea came to me, wafting in out of the clear blue. The neighbors were gone; there were two days until Thanksgiving holiday. It was already apparent no one would help me, or at least no one I would abide living with, even if they would take me in. And even the bare-edged thought of being stuffed into an orphanage with some other castaways hating me as much as I would come to hate them, churned my stomach like cancer. When the idea came it really seemed more logical than morbid because at least it gave me time to think, a little gap in which to formulate some sort of plan. With its appearance it set in like stone and the crying stopped. To this day I have never shed another tear for anyone or anything, alive or dead.

I walked over to the couch where she lay and (thankfully since she was a small woman) wrestled her into my arms, off the couch into a standing position. My knees almost gave but it was not from her, my life hung like a lead weight just above my ears. When I was finally able I brought her back to the bedroom, kicking another door closed with one foot while I held her to my chest.

The moment I laid her on the bed I realized how irrevocably everything had changed. My grandmother was no longer here and I was very small in that room. I remember taking a damp washrag and cleaning her face, removing the tight shoes she wore and pushing her legs beneath the covers, tucking her away like a child, as she'd done for me countless times before. As she'd do for me no more. Then I sat in a chair by her nightstand in the corner and waited.

Night came on like a black sheet of nothingness; Grandma a mere, vague hump in the bed, the only thin shadows leaking from a streetlight which slipped in through the window slats and stuck to the walls near my chair. The enveloping silence swelled into a monster and for a moment I believed we'd both died in the afternoon and now, here, somehow, we both inhabited some bizarre afterlife of boredom. Only, oddly enough, I was still breathing.

I got up and walked, zombie-like, to my room and slept dreamlessly. I woke up the next morning before the alarm would have gone off if I'd remembered to set it, and dressed quickly before the bathroom mirror. This is another frozen picture I retain: a young kid dressing robotically, his eyes staring into some far reach. Then I went to school on Thursday and Friday like nothing had happened.

I kept quiet, to myself, answered questions when the task fell my way, didn't fuck with anybody's girlfriend. My mind scrubbed clean and me without the slightest idea what to do next. When the last period bell rang on Thursday I didn't even hear it, but by Friday I was poised on every tick. Because with each one I felt a little more opportunity slip away.

Even today it's strange looking back on this behavior. I surely loved my grandmother, and there was a huge, burning agony in my soul, but it was as if everything had switched to a new, unknown gear. I became predatory; my vision seemed sharper, as did my hearing, my sense of smell. Maybe it's exaggeration (after all my grandmother had not been professionally tended and of course there is no denying the natural processes which were taking place in her room), but it was a very effective one. By Friday the smell was impossible to ignore. There was scarcely any food left in the house. Twice someone had come to the door and I'd hidden in my bedroom, praying they'd go away. After awhile they did but I knew they'd be back. Soon. More neighbors were around, my window-of-opportunity shivering down another inch. I made a brief appearance on the porch Friday afternoon to quell any rumors of wrongdoing or trouble at our place. But in my mind's eye those two endless days were that simple, ticking junior high school clock pacing away to my predictable and terrible end.

Late Friday night I made the decision. I went again into Grandma's room, twisting my nose against the inherent corruption. I was thankful it was night, that I could not see her face. Her body looked larger than it had when I put her there a little over forty-eight hours before and that is probably what kept me away. I'd intended to walk over and touch her hand but in the end I didn't. I simply turned from the room and left the house with what I wore, and the small wad of money Grandma had kept hidden at the bottom of her underwear drawer. Then I hit the street.

Chapter 5:Sautin

Up until March, 1981 had been a real loser for Aldo Phinneus Sautin. January had begun in Atlanta, but by February he'd sprung free, and not exactly by choice. Another sour spell on a nothing job, a few threats here and there...same old shit, different day. And as it turned out, it'd been best that he'd gone when he had, from the looks of the motherfucker he'd left lying bleeding in the parking lot. Lucky for him he'd picked up the last check before that brawl, Sautin thought acidly, because without it he'd have never gotten the chance to nibble on a dry piece of bread on a Salvation Army cot, smelling the corpse of defeat folding around him like a smallpox blanket. It was then the reality of his situation brought a grimace to the corners of his eyes, and a few crumbs spilled from the corner of his mouth to the dirty floor where he kicked at them savagely with his foot.

Because, goddammit, he really couldn't believe it. He'd been born for better things and he knew it. All his life he'd known it; it just hinged on convincing all the other assholes in the world what he took for granted. And one day, oh, one day, a day that crept closer with every sundown, they would take notice.

He took another bite of bread, imagined it was bones he crunched in his teeth.

Thunder pounded deep within the concrete floor at his feet. Through the filthy ring of windows which encircled the entire room, he could see moving jabs of lightning, bright stabs of white, slower tendrils of purple. He rocked back on the squeaking mattress, leaned over to extract what was left of his wallet from his equally wornout jeans. Talk about fucking pathetic. When he'd pulled into New Orleans on the Greyhound a couple of days back, fuming over his current circumstances, he'd been so disgusted with himself that he'd thrown his driver's license into a garbage can on the corner of Canal. And now, hours, days later, things weren't a whole lot goddamn better.

He cracked it open and peered inside like some cheap peeping tom sneaking a glance through a teenager's window. Not much left. He shook his head, thumbed the cash through, counting silently as he went, his lips matching the numbers. It didn't take long. Less than thirty fuckin dollars, his life's ransom. He pressed the wallet closed and set it back to its place. A coughing, cigarette-rattled voice burped something incomprehensible into the intercom and he squinted at it menacingly, already knowing he'd do this thing that'd been presented him, regardless of what he'd told the goon. In fact, the only real problem he could see was getting someone else to go along. Even though he'd never done anything like it before (lifting items from shop windows and pilfering through garages was not of this league), he believed it'd be best to have someone else's ass on the line if the shit went south.

Because this one, like a deep, persistent itch, was a dark hole he couldn't quite see into. And it wasn't the violence that had him on edge. No, he could handle that, as goddamn mad as he'd become lately; he just didn't want to get caught. The idea of doing hard time behind bars was as unappetizing as nibbling a piece of cold, hard bread on a fucking Salvation Army cot, and he already knew that reality. He fingered his shirt pocket, searching out the pack of smokes, scanning the room like a snake easing into a rat hole. All he had to do now was figure out which rat it was gonna be.

He'd been rooming at the Army for a little less than a week and even in that short time most of the faces had come and gone. Seems most didn't hang on long around here, the call of drugs or booze too much to handle. And the Salvationists didn't let you do that shit right here under their noses. But that didn't matter for Sautin, however, because drugs nor booze had ever been a problem. Just everything else.

In the dim light of the cheap 40 watts he studied the faces he knew: Lucky, that dumb sonofabitch, forty going on eighty. Or Mitch, Jesus Christ, he claimed to be an electrical engineer and could barely count the change in his pockets. Not those two, no way. Sautin needed brains. Not much, but some. So there was Nicky, and his head seemed all right, but his moods were tricky. And that dickhead Boz; he was already close to getting his ass kicked if he said much more.

Sautin flicked a match to life with his thumbnail, the cigarette one of the last five in his pack. It had to be quick, this also according to the goon. 'Fuckin day before yestadee,' he'd smirked, almost smiling again. It pissed Sautin off now just thinking about that asshole. He looked to the left, at Pauly. Just like the goofy fucking brother from Rocky, only bigger. Dumber maybe, but that probably wouldn't matter. Probably. He breathed out a plume of smoke and stared down at his knees, shaking his head.

The moment ran back through his mind, as it had continuously since early afternoon. He'd been standing by the bus stop, ready to get on and go anywhere rather than sit another idle minute where he was. Because, after all, that was another thing those sweet Salvationists didn't smile on: sitting around on your ass all day waiting for the dinner bell. The cot was free but management didn't take things much further than that. God, it'd been hot. He remembered spotting the kid a little after two, twenty fuckin minutes after the bus should have been there. Obviously the fucking drivers didn't give a shit about posted schedules.

And at first he almost believed the guy wasn't staring at him. Why should he? Sautin had on one of his two remaining pair of dirty jeans, gracing the street in a sleeveless T-shirt with absolutely nothing on that. Just Nobody, nowhere, but after a second and closely-followed third glance it was apparent the guy was looking not just his way, but directly at him. Some stocky, smirking bastard, dressed-down and younger (if only by a few years) than Sautin himself. He'd returned a lethal glare and sat down on the bench close by. No one else had been waiting.

It didn't take long for the asshole to cross the street and walk over. And as Sautin studied him, he realized the guy really wasn't a stranger at all. Or not quite. As the goon dodged through a smattering of traffic at the crosswalk, Sautin became certain he had seen the face before, several times as a matter of fact, lingering in the street outside the Army. Probably just some fucking fag, a dope pusher, but who knew? His spine hardened and when the punk got close Sautin said:

"What the fuck you want?"

It appeared to take the guy by surprise but not by much. In fact, if anything, the young player looked a little slicker on this side of the street than he had from a distance. He held out his hands in a sarcastic pantomime of fear. "Hey buddy, nothing," he answered sarcastically. "Came to catch the fuckin bus," to which Sautin immediately knew the fuck was lying. The clothes spoke enough themselves, even without the attitude. This motherfucker didn't ride buses.

The kid had his back turned then. "I seen you a coupla times at the Corner," he said, looking far down the block as if something much more interesting was taking place down there. Sautin had already been at the Salvation Army long enough to know its street moniker. "Hard fuckin times, looks like," the kid added, turning his head to look at Sautin again.

It was then Sautin started to his feet and the kid got a quick look of surprise and backed out into the street. "Hey man, be cool, man. I ain't faggot. Keep your fuckin shirt on, why doan'cha?"

"I'm waitin for the goddamn bus," Sautin replied, stepping closer. "I don't know what the fuck you're doin."

The guy stepped back to the curb. "Yeah, well. Hot as a motherfucker, ain't it? Get on the bus and let the breeze blow your hair, right? Like you're in fuckin Hawaii, right?"

Something deadly in Sautin's face toned the goon's rhetoric down a notch. Regardless, Sautin didn't sit back down. He edged one foot closer. The other guy held tight, although the twitch in his cheek belied his initial confidence. "Hey man, I said be cool! No shit!" The kid held out his hands honestly now. The smirk had retreated to a spot somewhere far back in his sweating hairline. "I ain't here ta fuck wit'cha, b'lieve it. You wanna make some fuckin money or what?"

"Who the fuck's askin?"

"Names doan matter," the guy said reaching into his front pocket. Sautin's eyes followed. "But money talks," the goon added and took out a surprising wad of cash. Sautin's expression never changed. His hands stayed put. The youth's eyes flashed, forming a question his lips didn't ask. The thin smile wavered. "So?" he suggested. "Int'rested?"

And Sautin had eventually nodded.

Now, sitting on the bunk smelling the bite of disinfectant and the oily mix of farts and dirty socks which made their continual circuit, he'd had plenty of time to think. He'd been around long enough to spot a chickenshit when he saw one, and they didn't get much worse than that one. Sautin had read it in his eyes, seen it in his twitching cheek. But on to the business...

It seemed there was an antique store, Mel's Past, not far from here where Mel lived. He'd apparently made himself disagreeable to certain, vindictive, though unknown persons. Said trouble involving drugs, money...fuck, Sautin didn't care if it was fuckin kiddie porn. Guy supposedly lived above the gallery in a small two-room apartment. The punk wanted Sautin to bang the guy around, bust up his place, and grab the drugs that were (supposedly) inside. Fucking laughable.

As he rocked back and forth on the paper-thin mattress, smoking a solid chain of cigarettes and studying any man's face he could bring to light, Sautin wondered, deliciously, how he could turn what information he had to his advantage. There were many factors involved: the risk of capture front and foremost, of course, and then deceit, another man's cowardice, and perhaps most importantly, the rock-bottom, mudhole poverty which had become wholly insupportable for him. He'd been feeling tinges lately, little warning flashes that time was running out. Somehow, someway. If he was going to make a go at the Big Time, rather than remaining an itinerant, hot-headed roustabout, it was goddamn time!

He dropped the cigarette into the tray beside the bed. Well, what about the real weirdo? he thought finally, getting to the end of his line. The guy who'd come in late last night? He was young enough, sure, probably stupid enough to serve as a patsy. The fucking egghead that afternoon had suggested breaking in at night, but what did he know? The first sure sign of an amateur. Guys his age hadn't done enough to go pawning jobs like this off on complete strangers. He was just a cracked step on the ladder, and Sautin would find out where it led afterward. Of that he was sure.

Surprisingly, the thunder and lightning had died down while he worried his problem. No doubt showers would fall, but the hint of serious thunderstorms seemed to be fading. He'd told the punk he'd give his answer tomorrow. First thing in the morning. Only thing left to do now was decide which one of these losers was best suited for a Fall. The knife was already right where he liked it: in his boot.

Chapter 6:Groundwork

He ran down to the convenience store on the corner first thing in the morning for a pack of Dorals. Fucking cheap nigger weed and smelled like shit but that's what the meathead smoked. Name of Darrell, as it turned out. Sautin had studied him until lights out and the more he saw the more he liked. Guy was quiet, kept to himself. He didn't appear timid, though, and that was good, but he stuck to the shadows. Hadn't talked to anyone Sautin was aware of.

And as he hurried along the dirty sidewalk he knew that was the way in. The dude had gone to bed fairly late, and Sautin didn't figure him for the early riser. Once again it was just a feeling, but as of late these things were getting stronger.

He twisted his wrist, glancing at the scratched and foggy watch crystal. A little past seven and only a block from the Army. Plenty of time to get this thing rolling, and it didn't even really matter if Darrell had plans of bugging out today or not. He'd be there for breakfast (the guy was ragged and thin, and he'd wolfed down dinner last night like a ravenous pack of dogs). Sautin felt sure by the time the last bite of eggs went down he'd have the fucker right where he wanted him.

He pulled up by a lamppost a stones' throw from the Corner. He skinned the cellophane and foil wrapper from the pack and shook four cigarettes into his hand. He put these in with the half-pack of Marlboros he already had in his inside jacket pocket because illusion (he felt) had need fit as closely the truth as possible. And if he had to smoke a few shitty cigarettes to put the close on this deal, well that was just the cost of doing business. He stuck the cigarettes back in his pocket, set his jaw and rounded the corner to get some breakfast.

Most of the men were already stirring when Sautin pushed through the door. It was obvious some planned on clearing out soon from the backpacks and duffel bags sitting like fat, damp mushrooms on many of the bunks. Some of the druggies were still deep in their narcotic dream worlds but the drunks were up and edgy, already itching for that first drink. Again Sautin fought at the burgeoning ghost of disgust that had been bunching around him lately. Maybe this is what you're gonna get, a nasty voice deep inside his head traitorously suggested. Nothing but a deadbeat like the rest of these motherfuckers. He set his jaw and walked through the room to his bunk. A metallic hum which filled the room like a hive of bees spoke of the intercom having been recently clicked on. The sounds of breakfast preparation clanged from the kitchen through the uneasy partition of swinging doors far off to the left.

He sat down on the bunk and reached for one of the shitty cigarettes. Darrell was in his corner, already up and rummaging around in what was left of his duffel bag. The Army was less packed than it'd been when he came in several days back, so getting a seat next to the patsy would not be the hard part. Sautin's mother used to say he could sell an Eskimo ice water (this during infrequent cookie sales in junior high), but he'd never had the time to develop this supposed talent in any legitimate way. He figured it to be that he didn't care enough about people to make it totally believable. But with Darrell, he didn't anticipate a lot of trouble. After all, it only took a bone to get most fucking dogs. That, of course, or a cigarette as the case may be here.

He watched as the men queued up after the metallic screech made an all-call. Darrell hung back a moment and this time Sautin unconsciously crushed the butt of the cigarette on the floor. There would be hell to pay if one of the workers saw it or the ashes (they could be real pricks here about certain things), but he didn't care. For good or ill, this morning was the last he'd spend at the Army. The punk had promised him four hundred dollars and that'd be enough to get him started.

He waited until the head of the line ran through before getting up. As he'd figured, Darrell did choose to eat alone, stuffed far back in a corner so no one could sneak up on him apparently. Wise move, Sautin thought. Only your trouble won't be creeping up from behind, pal. It'll be me, just a helpful guy with a pack of Dorals.

***

Outside, later, Sautin wanted to laugh at how easy it'd turned out. Darrell, the self-proclaimed ex-guitar player from some fucking dead-head metal band, stood puffing away on his fifth Doral and talking a blue streak. Jesus, after awhile it was like a monkey chattering from a tree. And even with the ice broken, things weren't much easier; here he was listenin to this dickhead and he could've cared less about anything he had to say. But as the boring diatribe continued he never took his eyes from the animated though slightly spacey stare. He just kept shaking his head in agreement whenever the story slowed down.

All Darrell knew for certain was Sautin needed someone to take a fall in an antique's store, and if done right, that someone would make a hundred bucks. His eyes made it look like a million. Sautin wondered idly what kind of loser fucking band would have taken on a guy like this in the first place, but hell, he'd seen a lot of shitty bands in his days too. Regardless, all Darrell had to do was make the fall.

Listening to his contradicting babble (now he claimed to have been outside Thibodaux pulling a stretch on the oil rigs since last June or July, obviously he'd forgotten about The Big Gig he'd pulled in City Park during that same period), Sautin grimaced his way through another Doral, pausing to check his watch again before tossing the rest of the pack to the patsy. Darrell's face registered inordinate surprise with the motion, as if Sautin had just given him half pay for the job instead of a few cheap cigarettes.

The thought of the young punk he was due to meet in less than an hour brought a mean streak of bile high into Sautin's throat, and he looked away in fear his eyes would paint a different picture than the one his tongue had provided. Clouds were high, even though they were piling in from the southwest. Tropical depression in the Gulf, according to what he'd heard from some old pair of crones earlier. That would be just fine too, because he had a little storm of his own to brew up, and if the two chanced to meet it would only add to the chaos of which he intended to use to every advantage.

Before he left for the meeting, he gave Darrell the address of a governmental building not far away. The antique's shop would be somewhere close, it had to be. The punk didn't strike Sautin as being the sort of person who'd stray often or far from his territory. He'd made allusions to knowing some of the more 'regular' drunks in the area, and Sautin figured it was because the punk had used them on other occasions. Only this one demanded a little something extra, and the punk had found it staring at him from across the street. But there was an awful lot the street punk hadn't seen beneath the surface, and that fact alone was gonna end up costing him dearly.

So, inwardly satisfied with the lonely, hang-dog look on the patsies' face, Sautin went over instructions again, making sure to go slow through the part about where he should be at four-thirty that afternoon. The patsy repeated it, but just to make sure, Sautin reached into his wallet and placed twenty of his last twenty-five and change in the patsy's hand. Perhaps only at rock-bottom could one truly expect salvation, whether from Heaven or Hell. And with time running out, it was indeed ripe for a pivotal moment.

***

Leaning against a lamppost not far from the address he'd given Darrell, Sautin looked at his watch again. It was fast becoming habit, but at least by so doing, by having a schedule, he again felt purpose he'd long missed. He'd watched Darrell shuffle up ten minutes before, seen him sit down on the bench. The guy wasn't much to speak of, but then again, neither was Sautin even though he'd tried to clean up as best he could earlier that morning.

When he'd passed the antique's store twenty minutes earlier he'd seen only two people inside. The streets weren't that busy (he could thank the gloomy weather for that), but there was really no telling how the thing would go. Especially with Darrell. Sautin had told the patsy only what he had to know, what he had to do, and everything else was up to the roll of the dice. Well, he hoped, great things came from great moments. And from the way it looked, Sautin was just about out of opportunity. Turning back was no option. This thing had crawled under his skin; it burned with some indefinable imperative. A smell, the smell of opportunity.

He shook down his sleeve and started for the corner of the building.

Darrell sat off by the curb, on a bench crammed beneath two scraggy iron-wood trees. He looked nervous and Sautin tried to lighten the tension with a great, confident smile as he walked over and sat down next to the man. He wasted no time. "The place is right down the street, about three blocks. Don't look like much traffic today. Won't be any trouble. Simple in and out." Then he paused and looked hard at the ex-guitar player. "Ain't nothin but opportunity and cash."

Darrell managed a thin smile. The butts of four Dorals littered the concrete around his feet. There was none in his hand now, so Sautin figured he'd already finished the pack. Tough shit, Sautin thought. No, it looked like those four cigarettes were the last of a long line.

"Like I said," he continued softly. "Just look at all the pretty stuff for five minutes or so until you get a feel for the place, and the numbers are low. Go down when I give you the sign, and make a fuck-load of noise doin it. I'll handle the rest."

"You'll handle the rest," Darrell repeated in monotone.

"I'll handle the rest," Sautin answered reassuringly. He actually patted the slime ball's knee. "Doan worry. 'S'no sweat. We'll be in and out in a flash." Sautin grinned at the nervous man and, eventually, Darrell tried to return it. The chain is only as strong as its weakest link, Sautin knew. However, he could do little to stack additional odds in his favor. In another hour it would either be done or he'd be dead too. He'd come to the point where he wouldn't settle for anything less.

Chapter 7:The Job

The bell dinged lightly against the doorjamb when he entered the antique's shop. Darrell had gone in nine minutes before and Sautin had endured those most important minutes in the alcove of a po-boy delicatessen twenty steps up the block. A little more thunder grumbled in the distance but the clouds didn't look like they were going to let go anytime soon.

While he suffered through the interminable nine minutes (he'd told the patsy ten, but who the fuck was countin?) every number of catastrophes visited themselves upon his racing mind. What if he'd misread and the fucker simply folded? What if the shop was full? What if he fucked up the dive? What if...what if...what if? What if the whole thing blew up in his face? "Then that's just how it fuckin ends," he'd mumbled, pushing away from the alcove. It wasn't the end of the line for nothing.

Entering the shop, his pulse slowed. No wailing siren greeted his entrance, no frantic, pointing fingers pinning him in the doorway. Darrell was busy nosing through a shelf of old magazines at the back near a staircase that undoubtedly led up to the loft, and at the moment (aside from Darrell and Sautin) there was only an old man fumbling idly at a phone book behind a heavy, wooden desk and an even older couple apparently discussing the virtues of one of many crude oil paintings hung in conflicting rows against the right wall. Sautin assumed (rightly, it turned out) the old man behind the desk was the one due the ass-whipping.

Darrell did look up momentarily when Sautin opened the door but thankfully went back to his business with only half a glance. None of the others even gave him that much. He moved into the shop, playing for all the world (he hoped) like just another junk-seeker in search of a bargain. And this, indeed, seemed the place to find one, more junk-shed than antique gallery, really, replete with everything from used clothing to lopsided, second-hand furniture.

He cut along the left wall, weaving in and out through a montage of tie-dyed T-shirts and bellbottom hand-me-downs. Against the far wall (the one behind where the old man still thumbed at his ragged phone book) the more pricey items were displayed, but even here there didn't appear to be an alarm system. Of course, that didn't mean there wasn't one, Sautin just couldn't see it. But if what the punk had said was even half-true the old man fronted with this store while pulling in most of his money through backdoor drug traffic. Having no alarm system suggested the old man figured himself capable of handling any problem that happened to wander in through the front door. He shouldn't forget that, Sautin reminded himself.

He picked up an old US Marine bedroll, pretended an inspection of the stitching. The old couple, apparently tired of discussing the merits of the oils tacked to the walls, now crept over and busied themselves with a hand-carved, cypress coffee table dredged up from some God forsaken swamp. The old man had swiveled around in his chair by now, kicked his feet up on the filing cabinet behind his desk and continued talking in low whispers to whoever was on the other end. Darrell looked at Sautin. Sautin nodded and the two men radiated farther away from one another, Sautin cutting a swath through the mess of tangled clothing displays while Darrell sidled along the far wall to the front of the store. At least he had that part right, Sautin thought, his mind already ticking away the seconds. He glanced to the stairway, judging it no more than fifteen-twenty steps to the landing. Supposedly the drugs were up there. What Darrell didn't know and wouldn't was that not only had Sautin scoped the place from the front, he'd also traversed the alley in back, scanning the upper floors for a possible escape route. And as he'd hoped, two fire escape ladders clung rigidly to the back of the two-story building, one of which (Sautin was willing to bet all the hair on the hog) providing access to the old man's apartment.

As he watched the ex-guitar player position himself for the fall, Sautin sent out one wish that the old fucker would hang up the phone. Of course, it did provide added distraction, but it also let someone else in on the action. At least the knife in his boot provided a reassuring presence, a hardness of purpose that brought the reality of the situation home.

He stared at the old man, swiveled around and talking with his eyes to the wall. Then over to the old couple, still animatedly engaged but closer to the door, and that wasn't so good. He backtracked around, running his fingers over a dusty rack of Soul albums, until he was back between them and the front door.

Then he coughed loudly, once. And the show began.

In a startling display of acumen, Darrell reeled back in a startlingly pronounced parentheses, both his hands gripped bone-white upon the rack of clothes before him. A thin wheeze began down deep in his throat and his eyes bugged forward in the throes of some violent seizure. Sautin, for a moment, stared transfixed at the ex-guitar player, buying the whole goddamn thing like a hot item off the TV set. The old couple gasped in unison off to his right. The old man said something loud into the phone and spun around, eyes wide, the curse already on his lips. Tough old fucker, Sautin reminded himself for the second time.

The wheeze ranked up to a ragged, gagging scream, and Darrell suddenly fell back, taking the whole rack of clothes with him as he went. He hit the floor with a thump that rebounded from the very walls around them, and then, in the split-second silence that followed, went into a full-blown epileptic fit.

Sautin yelled, also on cue, "Guy's havin a fuckin seizure!" and the moment shattered like raw-blown glass. Surprisingly, it was the old man of the couple who let out the next squeal of surprise as his companion started forward, forcefully pushing her way between two tight racks of second-hand jeans before Sautin had a chance to collect himself. He cut his eyes to the proprietor, glad to see the phone on the hook as the old guy hurried around the desk.

But the look in his eyes said trouble.

Even though the rack of clothes had spilled everything on top of him, Darrell was doing a fine job of clearing them away with his violently-kicking legs even before the old woman bent down and began throwing off double handfuls herself.

Sautin started forward, attempted to leap into the fray, but the woman stopped him, gripping his shoulder with no bullshit force, one knee still on the ground. The look in her eyes was a cold shock, like a flashlight in a cave. "I was a nurse for twenty-five years at Charity, boy. Call 911!" and dismissed him immediately. Her companion stood motionless against the wall near the cypress table, his mouth tightly shut, eyes wide open, and suddenly, irrationally, Sautin wasn't sure the two were a couple after all. What had it been someone told him once? Nothing more sad than an old fag or some such shit. Well, there was no time to check the memory for truth now.

He turned, finding the proprietor suddenly at his side. The man's eyes were livid with anger. "What da hell's goin on?" he spat dangerously, his eyes glued to the kicking figure beneath the sprawl of clothes.

"Guy's havin a fuckin heart attack, man! How the hell I know?"

What came next was a surprise. "Motherfucker picked a hell ova place ta have it!"

The old man pushed past and went down on one knee too. The nurse had already managed to clear most of the clothing away and Sautin was glad to see Darrell still in full tilt. Spittle bubbling from his open mouth, his eyes rolled back to the whites.

"Jesus Christ..." he whispered in amazement. For a moment he wondered if this was really just part of the act. Because if so, God help him, the guy had missed his calling. Hollywood paid a fortune for shit like this...

"What the hell's goin on?" the proprietor repeated, louder this time, face-on to the retired nurse. She flashed a look that would have boiled ice, her companion still a mute block near the table. Darrell's flailing died away and he began making a thin mewling gasp deep in the back of his throat.

"Like he just said," the nurse began, flicking her head in Sautin's direction, emphasizing every word. "This man's having a seizure and someone, anyone, YOU, needs to call 911!" She bent closer and cradled Darrell's head in her hand. With the other she probed his mouth to keep him from swallowing his tongue. The proprietor shot back to his feet, his mouth squeezed into a rictus of anger.

"Of all fuckin shit," he spat venomously. "The motherfucker..."

Sautin placed a hand on the sweating man's shoulder and he spun around like a rattlesnake that'd just been stepped on. "And what the fuck you want!" the old man yelled.

Sautin stepped up until his face was inches away from the shopkeeper's. "I want you to get on the horn and call a fuckin ambulance!"

The man looked as if he had at least one more thing to say, but the look in Sautin's eyes decided the better of it. "Right, right! What the fuck ever!" he said in the same rancid tone, pushing past the younger and bigger man. Sautin cut a look to the nurse's companion, satisfied the old fag was out of the ball game from the look of awed wonder on his face. The nurse was fretting with the gurgling Darrell on the floor. Sautin turned to follow the old man, his ears in high gear to catch the sound of the bell above the door. None came, hopefully, none would. The knife was a huge knot in his boot.

He made his move by the desk.

He'd grabbed a scarred-up hockey stick resting against another oaken end table on the way over and when the old man turned to snap at him again, Sautin let him have it in the temple just like the asshole deserved.

"Wha--?" he tried, but there was really nothing to do in the millisecond he had to react. The stick caught him just above the right eye and the sound it made in the now stultified quiet of the antique's store ricocheted off the walls like a baseball being knocked out of the park.

The impact sent the old man reeling across the desk, clearing it of three-quarters of the pile it supported, and then out of sight on the other side to the floor, the chair spinning away madly in his wake. It was then the screaming began behind Sautin. He turned, the stick still tight in his hand.

Seemed the act was over. Darrell was now completely upright, having obviously just pushed the good nurse away with a little extra strength than necessary. Because now a higher, more shrill scream welled up from below, where the old woman lay in her own pile of clothing. Her leg was twisted at an excruciating angle (Sautin could see that even from here), and the screaming didn't sound like it would stop any time soon. He was preparing to mop up the old man when he was tackled from behind, hard. You knew to watch him, the cold voice reprimanded him, almost with a disgusted sigh.

"Goddamn punk motherfucker!" he heard as his head ripped alongside something on the way down, his ear coming aflame. Then he was flat on the floor, in a heap, the old wildcat on his back. Seemed Mr. Feeble Shopkeeper had a few tricks of his own. But with the surety of instinct alone, Sautin kicked out with both legs and flung himself over and across two feet of scuffed and peeling floor. He twisted around and managed to land on his back, grunting in satisfaction as the air whoofed out of the old man, still scratching and clawing like a madhouse lunatic. Sautin's hand immediately went to the boot, fumbled around the bellbottom to get at the blade. The old man went loose on a solid stream of profanity and whirring fists and with all this to contend with Sautin couldn't tell what was happening near the front door. He almost laughingly tried to negotiate this new series of circumstances in his head, to little effect. But one lived with the deal of the hand; he'd known that for a long time now and he fisted the knife's shaft. Desperate times, desperate measures, he thought and pulled it free. Seemed a simple ass-whipping was no longer on the agenda.

The blade slid out sweetly to the light and for just a moment it froze there in the air, as if asking whether or not it should continue. Because it looked like he'd have to. Why, even now, the old bastard was working his fingers into Sautin's eyes, and even with the bigger man's weight full on him the proprietor's adrenaline was apparently going to be enough if Sautin didn't get the show on the fucking road.

He spun the blade around deftly into a downward striking grip and drove his elbow back hard. Instantly, the rabid fingers let go of his face, giving him both time and opportunity to free himself from this surprisingly persistent nemesis. He raked the blade free with a savage pull and stumbled to his knee and then up to both feet. Somewhere far back in his mind he could still hear frantic screams coming from the nurse in breathless continuity. He had no idea where Darrell was. Almost twenty-five seconds had passed since the Fall.

Another three seconds later he watched the proprietor struggle to his own feet and knew he'd gotten lucky. Blood pumped from the old man's leg in a spraying gush; so he had gotten the damn artery. Well, fuck him. The old man's eyes weren't registering pain yet, that much was clear, only a mighty fucking lethal dose of hatred. Yeah, it was time to cash his ticket. Sure is sure. Sautin slashed out with his right hand, catching the shopkeeper just below the chin and opening his neck with the lucky precision usually found only in second-rate horror movies. The old man sat back down in a rumpled heap, his hands to his throat, his eyes quickly losing their lust for revenge. Sautin watched him dim for a moment and turned to see what he could salvage, calculating already how many steps it would take him to get across the showroom floor to the staircase. Fifteen, probably, at least no more than twenty.

And at that moment of indecision another voice chimed into the fray, drowning out the frantic background screams coming from the nurse and the gurgling of the shop owner. And this one small miscalculation almost sealed the deal. It was something Sautin never forgot afterward, or at least not until it was too late.

Darrell was standing in front of him about twenty feet away looking down at the nurse, but that wasn't it at all. Sautin jerked his head around and found the old fag.

His voice held its high, shrill edge but the pistol, it looked like a goddamned Police-issue .38, laid a new wrinkle to the personality Sautin had so readily dismissed. A wave of madness had swept his face and Sautin had a moment to drink it in, damning himself for missing the little things. Then the nurse got a little louder and that seemed to crank the fag up a notch. Darrell noticed the track of the gun pin him to the wall and surprise was just changing his face to china white when the gun went off and a neat dot of blood appeared immediately dead-center of his chest. He brushed at it for a moment like flicking away a fly until another one appeared by his left shoulder as a perfect match and with that he went down without a sound, bloodlessly. Through the window, across the street, Sautin saw a head turn and a finger point their way. The old fag was still screaming, stepping up a few paces now to plant a couple more slugs into Darrell.

Sautin, noticing he still held the hockey stick, dropped it to the floor.

He bolted across the scuffed, paneled flooring then, throwing over a bookcase full of nicked and depressing bric-a-brac and scattering a hedge of plastic shrubbery as he cut for the staircase. At the banister he paused for one moment: there was continued activity on the street outside and the Unknown Element was now turning his attention Sautin's way.

Sautin took the staircase three steps at a time and shouldered his way through the door at the top of the landing as two ripping thunderclaps showered sheetrock and wood fragments all around him. He thought he also heard the sound of the bell above the door, and maybe even sirens, but couldn't be sure in the chaos and rolled quickly across the floor as far away from the door as he could get.

The room was small, with all the depressing finality of a bachelor pad, and sparsely furnished with shit that could have graced the floor downstairs, but there were still many places an eccentric old fuck of a drug dealer could stash whatever he had. And time was something Sautin didn't have a lot of. From the random firing and ruckus below, the whole goddamn French Quarter ought to be coming down around his ears anyfuckingtime now.

And at this singular moment of his existence, a slot clicked into place. A cog setting for the young murder and thief. A sudden, stunning calm descended upon him, blocking out the din outside and all the mad, spinning thoughts inside his head. Everything disappeared as the thing slid surely into place. And oddly, it was as if he'd known it all along.

He pulled himself slowly to his feet and walked over to the closet, wrenching open the door and stepping over the expected pile of boxes inside. His arm went to the attic entrance (a tiny notch cut in the plywood years before and practically impossible to see in the darkness), his fingers clenching into a fist with which he punched away the cover. He reached into the darkness above his head, not even mildly surprised when his fingers closed around the rock-hard brick of Colombian marijuana.

He pulled it down, looked at it and grunted. Not much, but enough for now. Time and opportunity provided to fit the occasion, and one was advised to respect the courtesy. The commotion downstairs was getting hotter, different frantic voices reaching his ears, though his own eyes were wide at the thing he'd found with his sudden act of violence. He turned, already keenly aware which window the fire escape served.

And minutes later, even as the siren-wail bounded against the surrounding buildings, he walked the back alley, keeping his sight firmly fixed ahead and letting the new purpose he felt in the very marrow of his bones steer him safely away from the scene of his Awakening.

Chapter 8:On the Streets

I waved to a few of the neighbors as I locked the door (I wanted to keep people out of there as long as possible), and made off down the street as if headed to the store for a loaf of bread and a stick of butter. I still remember that old cartoon sticking in my head, trying hard not to think about what I was actually doing. Because I was alone now, completely and utterly alone.

I didn't know what the hell I was gonna do; I didn't know where the hell I was gonna go. I just knew I had to put as much distance between myself and this place as humanly possible. Scared as hell, sure, but not scared enough to fall into the Hands of the State. I'd listened in on too many of those conversations with the moon drifting in like thin sheets of paper through the slats. I'd read Orwell by then too.

I covered the better part of five blocks before I even slowed down or stopped looking over my shoulder every thirty seconds. I kept my hands in my pockets, one of them wrapped around the tight knot of bills I had there, the other around the house key I'd never need again, and I remember trying to figure how long I could expect the money to last. Because when it was gone, there I'd be...

We lived not far from downtown and back in the day, before all the "Beautify Our Fair City" campaign struck up, there were plenty of old buildings and parking garages to get lost in on the off chance some perv got loose on your tail or the night got too goddamn cold. But of course hiding out in deserted buildings wasn't gonna be a viable option for long since A) I had to find a way to make money if I wasn't gonna resort to eating out of garbage cans, and B) someone was eventually gonna notice and start askin questions. I remember that first night, lying miserably in the crawlspace beneath a deserted frame house (I dared not stay inside for fear the ones who obviously slept on the filthy mattress came back with more of the shit they were shootin as evidenced from the needles scattered across the floor), going over plan after ill-formed plan in my head. I could take the bus. OK, where? Nothing came to mind. I could try to get in touch with one of the several relatives Grandma had talked with infrequently. Again, fine, but to what purpose? These people had kids of their own or were two fuckin old to go through the whole business again. Or at least that's what I told myself; inside I hadn't liked any of them that much anyway. And then, of course, I could go to the police. But that one I considered most ridiculous. As far as I knew, they might have a few unpleasant questions for a runaway who'd packed his grandmother into a back room and walked out without saying a word. Somehow I felt sure there was something illegal about that. The only thing I knew for certain was I was most vulnerable alone. I needed to get in with others, now, fuckin yesterday. I didn't know how or with whom, but I did know that numbers would be my best shot at staying free. At least for the short term.

I thought maybe the campus might be the ticket. LSU had plenty of young, unsuspicious kids loitering around, and bars. I pictured myself slinking around in the alleyways, picking through garbage cans, looking for hand-outs. Fucking pickle-puke nasty in retrospect, but realistic I thought, and lucky for me I hit a sudden growth period and shot up almost four inches in the next six months. Fuckin knees hurtin like hell. I could grow a full mustache by the time I was fifteen; a street-tough persona by sixteen. But I can't take credit really.

It was Blinky who saved me. Without a doubt it was her. And goddammit, she never had a chance. I saw that from the first, from that first look in the alley, but I clung to her anyway like the fool I've always been; you don't abandon a leaking life raft in the middle of the fucking ocean just because you have to keep scoopin out water. But with her it was different because I did love her goodness, and her desperation too, I guess, this poor girl dealt a shittier hand than mine, even though she (as opposed to Yours Truly) never lost her sense of balance. Or humor.

Until the end, that is. At the end there wasn't much left to salvage, and I guess that in itself allowed me to leave her. I seriously doubt (if she's even alive somewhere, somehow) she'd even recognize me now. Oh, she'd know me the moment I opened my mouth, I still believe that, but manys the time I've lain awake trying to picture her face remembering me. No real point really, I know it's wishful thinking, self-indulgence. But what the hell, right? Anything in a fuckin storm.

She was the one who popped my cherry, but the drugs took something much more precious than that from her by the time I finally ditched. And by then she was a shell. That, too, reminded me of my mother. It was as if I could smell the thing which consumed her a little at a time, and I knew there would be no going back for me, or any of us at a certain point.

I met her on Chimes Street just off campus. It was dark, the week after Thanksgiving and the air starting to wear a chill. Not much, but a mild warning nonetheless of winter sneakin up from behind. And even though it was south Louisiana, when you spend every hour outside or underneath some shitty overhang, or beneath a house when it rains, winter always means different degrees of the same fuckin thing: cold and miserable. Doesn't matter where the fuck you are. I tried keeping a low profile during the day because the holiday was almost over and Christmas was not for another couple of weeks. And sad to say, that was my only goal at the time: not getting picked up for vagrancy (or God's knows what else?) before the year ended.

Maybe I was looking for a sign, those portents I mentioned earlier, and if so, I found it in the weird gaze of the girl who proved to be my first lover. No beauty, for sure, but in my eyes, for awhile, nothing compared. She told me late one night, looped on acid and fading between waning bouts of the shivers and frantic laughter, she'd been pinched by forceps at birth. Fuckin doctor said it wouldn't affect her later, but it had. The orbit around her right eye was pushed inward just so, drawing the lid to a tight half-mast. It blinked constantly, too, and wept, and she hated it. I personally didn't care because I needed her. She was seventeen, a runaway from Meridian, Mississippi. Fuckin pervert of a stepfather couldn't keep it in his pants and her mom wouldn't hear any of it.

I met her behind The Bayou. I guess it was my first Saturday night on the street, and I remember sitting on a trash can listening to the music pump from inside, wondering what the hell I was gonna do. There was a lot of bickering, laughing and cursing from the street, and I flinched when I saw a shadow round the corner and head my way. Then I saw it was a girl, and a pretty drunk one at that, so I slipped off the can and scooted around behind it to hide. I don't know why, really. All I knew was nobody was getting the thinning wad of bills crammed to the bottom of my pocket, girl or fuckin not.

The only light in the alley dripped down from a rusty, utility-pole globe, almost obscured by a plywood billboard advertising a Lebanese restaurant for anyone passing on the opposite side of the street; from where I was you couldn't even read it. She stumbled over something and it gave me a chance to peek out to see if there was anyone with her. And as I expected, she was alone.

Right about then she pulled her pants down. Just like that, she was standing there fumbling with something that turned out to be her zipper, and in one smooth sweep she had them right around her ankles. And I saw her, framed in that yellow light like an angel out of Heaven, the perfect little dark triangle between her legs and those naked thighs. I think I almost came on myself right there and then, even before she squatted. The light was just right and I saw her ass then, the first, live female ass I'd ever seen. And right then I wasn't thinking anymore about the money in my pocket. I wasn't thinking of the weather turning bad, or of Grandma lying dead in that dark, silent room either. Right then all I could think about was that beautiful, round ass poised in the seduction of the light. My face was suddenly very hot, my pants bursting at the seams. I rocked forward to give my dick some leeway and the goddamn garbage can tipped over like a herd of fucking devils coming through. Her head jerked my way but she didn't stop peeing.

I ducked back to the wall, trying to hide, trying to pretend I didn't know she'd seen me. But it wasn't long before I heard pants being pulled up and then footsteps heading my way. I was crippled with fear and an awesome hard-on, I think the latter the most debilitating.

I knew she was drunk as soon as I saw her eyes. Of course, first, I saw that one, but the picture alcohol paints is always the same. Her words were a little slurred but I made em out just fine. What the fuck was I doing? What was I, some kind of fuckin peeping tom motherfucker? I remember the amazement that paralyzed my brain then, making me subhuman and inarticulate, the amazing guilty thrill that had me shaking and about to burst my zipper.

She must have figured me for a baby because her voice shook off the drunken belligerence and she squatted down again, this time to get eye-level. I could still see her shining, white ass in my mind, and when she reached over to touch me on the knee I came explosively in my pants.

And here's the thing about love: she must have known, but didn't say anything. And that's how I came to love her.

***

I ended up crying out the worst of my story sitting back there amid the garbage cans in the alley, eventually spilling out the whole miserable story as the music pounded louder through the wall and the drunks got louder on the street. It was as if I'd been waiting for her and now that she was here I held absolutely nothing back, suddenly released from the black pit of my mind, and I remember how she cradled me and brushed my hair back as I went on and on. Once she yelled some curses down the alley in the direction of laughter, me not even looking up, like a child in her arms, then rocking me back and forth until I was better. She asked if I'd had anything to eat and I said no. She asked where I was sleeping and I told her anywhere. She smiled at me then, ran her hand across my face to dry the tears, and pulled me to my feet. At that moment I would have followed her down the steepest, bloodiest stairway of Hell itself. And funny, as it turned out, I very nearly did.

I lose track of the flow that night. I remember a knot of some very older-looking people, a very dangerous-looking bunch I was afraid of even from a distance, though they didn't fuck me over or turn me in to the police. They eyed me blankly, alone there under the streetlight on the corner, and after a few words from Blinky, kept me stuffed out of sight until the street closed down and all the night-rats crawled back to their holes.

And when they went I went with them, Blinky hanging back when they dispersed in the lamplight which was just fine as far as I was concerned. I was hungry, scared, tired, shit, everything, but I still didn't feel comfortable around all these...hoods. Because that's what Grandma would have called em. I'd seen this kinda crap plenty of times in our neighborhoods, and Grandma had made a damn good point of letting me know that under no circumstances was I to pal around with any of them. Her lips would move a lot when she didn't think I was watchin and even though her eyes weren't always shut, I guessed she was praying God to make sure He didn't allow me go against her wishes. But maybe He wasn't listenin.

So what did I do? Went straight for the hole. Many times that night a bottle passed my way and I'd be sure to drink at least a little, at first, just to keep from pissing anybody off. But then, sometime later, I stopped worrying about all that and drank just because I could feel it slipping me back to some soft, little place where I didn't have to worry. Just some perfect little room with music wafting softly in the light that streamed in through the windows, just me and paradise as the world passed on its careless route somewhere far in the distance.

But on the way back to our rat-hole this euphoria lost itself to nausea. My stomach got wet and hard and I found myself concentrating on small, little chunks of concrete to keep from losing what remained of my shaky equilibrium. Blinky gave me her shoulder and helped me back to the apartment even though I heard some of the other guys ribbing her for 'fuckin with the kid.' I was too busy trying to keep from puking my guts up to even much worry.

We wound up at a row of two-story ramshackle student housing apartments that couldn't have been much more ghetto if they'd been standing in a Harlem warren. There was still plenty of activity, but worse now because of the fair handful of older, more sinister-looking characters nosing around like weasels near a henhouse. The party was upstairs and went on for hours, obviously nobody really gave a fuck about curfews and loud music, and that night was the first time I ever smelled marijuana, and man, I smelled plenty of it. I ended up passing out in a corner and when I woke up Blinky was still there, watching over me like a mother to a child, and from that moment on we were inseparable until I finally pulled the cord and split.

***

The beginning of the True Madness started soon afterward. This group of Blinky's was so deemed the Gutter Rats and the name fit. Grandma'd been right, just like I figured. Nobody went to school and nobody worked. Legitimately, that is, because there was plenty we did. Call it the real beginning of my schooling, I guess, the postcard of the moment of my slide. Six months of intensive training for a future as a sociopath. Such sweet memories.

The guy who ran the shitty apartment complex supposedly had parents who were loaded. Robert or William something, big hairy fuck with a suped-up Firebird. He called himself the Manager and I guess he did sort of run the complex; hell, most of the people who stayed there were either friends of his or friends of friends, and the reason we didn't get more heat, I'm convinced, was because of the location: a mostly-deserted cul de sac, and his dad's influence in local politics. Or so it goes. Regardless, we weren't goin around killing people.

But I swear, I still can't figure how nobody fingered me. I mean, Jesus, I was the youngest one of the bunch by at least three years but no one ever got on my ass about school, vagrancy, anything. And as far as my grandmother, I never heard a word. Granted, the first couple of weeks were a haze of intoxication, and I guess if anything had been said it would've had to've been during that period. And I wasn't much up on the news then. So, yeah, there's that, but it didn't feel true then, and it doesn't now. I don't know how else to explain it other than to say it was really as if I simply ceased to exist in the real world after Grandma. I was not blind to patrolmen, and I figure they weren't to me, even though I'd swear sometimes one would level his gaze my direction, stop in mid-turn as if fixin to site me in, and...nothing. They'd usually turn their heads and drive off as if nothing had been there at all.

So I became a ghost.

And in my invisibility I also became a thief, and over time, a good one. Better than Blinky could have ever been, though she taught me a lot of what I had to know, initially. For the most part we slept during the day and crept out at night like vampires from some moldy, earthen tomb, like the ones in the comic books we used to palm from the Circle K. And oh yeah, we took a few lessons from em too, because we hunted the streets, even though most of the time the Straights had no idea they were even being run. Picking drunk's pockets and pulling shit on drug dealers and wanna-be's is not necessarily all that hard. But it can be dangerous as all fuck. We picked em over in the night and when finally able to rouse ourselves sometime late the following afternoon, we'd blow everything on whatever was going to get us moving through the next night.

I was like the friendly neighborhood dog as far as the other guys were concerned, and a man-child to be lavished by the girls. And, I'm almost sorry to say it, after the first coupla weeks it was hard to recall much of anything that had gone before. When I was awake I was drunk or stoned, and when I crashed it was to a death-like sleep. Dreamless, fathomless, endless, a small stretch of black death. I began picturing myself as a random piece of debris swirling endlessly around some gigantic drain, though hardly fearful of the inevitable. And this indifference made me bold. I remember many nights creeping through people's houses (by their very beds where they lay, searching out the woman's jewelry box, the man's wallet in his slacks on the chair) while the rest of the gang waited in idling cars parked somewhere close by. Because by that time I'd sensed if I made myself important to them, a valuable asset even, they would not run me off, and since I had nothing to lose there was nothing I wouldn't try. The 80s were not a productive time for burglar and car alarm salesmen. I was one of the reasons they became big business in the 90s.

Looking back, on night's like these with the clouds low over the river and the humidity a dripping ghost itself hanging on the very edge of the darkness, the shivers coursing my backbone are impossible to ignore. I remember the heavy breathing coming (many times) from the very room I rooted around in, and I also remember the infrequent times an animal came into play. That's the weird part really. To me, that's always been the eeriest part, the part that really refuses explanation of any kind because one or two of those dogs looked like they'd been trained especially for assholes like me. I remember one night walking face on from the shadows into a full-grown Doberman pincher. I was so close I could see its lip tremble, its ears laid back along the nape of its neck, but when I held out my hand it simply shied away, slinking back to hide in its spot by the cooling fireplace. Well, that's one I didn't finish. I left the house straight up, the ghost of my fate refusing to let up for days afterward. Completely mystifying. Or at least it was until now, it seems.

At least Blinky was always nearby; when I pulled a job on a house or office she was never hiding with the rest of em while I did all the work. Although she didn't often come inside (she was convinced she was bad luck with shit like that), she would wait patiently just around the corner until I managed to extricate myself from whatever it was I was intent upon robbing. My fearlessness brought me praise I'd never found in school. Brought me praise from people much older and (I thought) much wiser than I'd ever expected possible.

After the first month I was sleeping with Blinky and everybody knew it. Two weeks later not even the highest ranking motherfucker said a derogatory word to me. In the decade before gangsta rap and before anybody gave a shit about inner-city violence I was a white, careless, mothafuckin gangsta. I ate, drank, slept, smoked, fucked and robbed and that was about it.

I found out she was doing heroin around February. In retrospect, I'm sure she'd been using before I joined up, but never right in front of me until the night she got so fucked up she fixed right there by the bathroom sink while I was taking a piss. I didn't know what to say; there were others in the apartment doing the same thing. But not me. I remember watching her closely, a strong, biting jealousy ripping at my insides as I watched her go, the image of Gradma's shadowed body covered up in the bed on me like a nest of hornets. She ended up, way late, puking blood in a trash heap right around the corner of the dirty parking lot where we were stayin. I held her head as she did it.

Next morning I didn't say anything, but we didn't sleep together for almost a week afterward. And it was really nothing said between us. She may have been sleeping with someone else then, but there's a lot I'm not clear on. I was blown out of my mind most of the time, trying vainly to distance myself from the ghostly admonitions from my grandmother, and the reality of the life I was living.

Things went on about the same for the next little while. Even though Blinky was getting bad by then, I'd ceased to care. We robbed what we could, peddled drugs to worse-off motherfuckers than we were, and lived deep in the dark. But even as this went on I felt the person my grandmother raised rebelling. I began planning a way out. I knew two of the Rats, some chick named Tasha and a snaggle-toothed motherfucker they called Clay, who'd left early one morning and hadn't been seen since. No word, nothing in the papers. Just as if they'd drifted off like smoke from a fire.

But what finally got the thorn in my ass was a vision. We had piled into three cars one Friday night after Chimes Street closed down, and driven east from campus. There's a huge park which borders a thread of Highland Road back there as it winds through the hills and skirts the swamp just east of LSU. Within and along the edges are vast open areas fringed with old-growth oaks and pines, some funneling back into substantial pockets of woodland. At one end, though, still a good piece from the road, sat the remains of a huge, warped-front barn. It was a haunted, dirty place, like a rotten trap left forgotten in the woods, and as a result most of the Straights steered clear. But more importantly, at least as far as we were concerned, were the police stayed clear too; you'd've had to fuckin murder a family of Mormons back there for the heat to show up in those days. Mattresses had been hauled in by God Knows Who, a coupla filthy ice chests pushed back against the walls, and it was one of the late night fuck-and-drug spots that wasn't that far out in the Boonies.

It wasn't the first time I'd been, but that night was the last, at night anyway. I passed by again a few years back and parked the borrowed car I was in just off the highway in the overgrown driveway of a burnt-out shack. The barn had been bulldozed and the ground underneath might just as well have been sown with salt. Nothing was growing, just a big, mildewed bruise in the old outline. Here and there I could still make out the faint indentations where the foundation timbers had stood. No presence at all hovered nearby; the place was as vacant as an Egyptian tomb.

Anyway, by the time we got there the acid had started to kick in. It was supposed to be low-grade kindergarten but I'd've been scared to see the high-school shit. As soon as I got out of the car I knew it was the Heavy. The ground rose up beneath my feet like a giant, creaking gourd threatening to collapse with every step, the sky suddenly jammed with stars, stuffed full, so many in fact they seemed to be dragging the sky down toward us. I kept catchin flashes of blue and green tracers just outside my line of vision. And I wasn't the only one. Everybody was hunched over and duck-walking like we'd just got off a fuckin Huey in Vietnam.

The first thing we did was head for the barn. Thank God nobody else was there, and with the initial edge slipping off in our relief, we settled in nicely. I smoked a joint while Blinky and a few of the others spiked up. Even to me, then, it seemed logical. Well...

With hallucinogens, I've found, there's usually a very acute period, a time when claustrophobia and sheer paranoia swoop in from all sides and beat ya like a pack of banana bats. Usually when it's gone it's gone. You feel better, or at least different, as if you've just stepped through a strange door into a far different, stranger place, and nothing back on the other side was ever gonna be quite the same again. But the pros and cons. If you don't get through the Grind after ten or fifteen minutes (eons of vastless time if things are going really loopy) a bad trip is usually coming at'cha. And it doesn't take many of these to...change you. It's really as if you've lifted the veil on some tantalizing but disastrous secret left festering in the dark for untold ages, and its shadow will persist in your mind and soul for the remainder of your life.

I've never forgotten the one that night.

***

We hadn't been on the crest of the hill long when it started. The star-pocked sky was huge, bloating above us like a celestial pincushion. A few random clouds wandered among them and the noise from the roadway was completely obscured by the buzz of insects. A nest of crickets over here, farther over a lone toad belching for a mate. Our particular hill held an audience of two, Blinky and me. She couldn't talk by that time, and the only reason we'd stopped there was because we couldn't keep up with the rest. They were headed for a more secluded spot opposite the next copse of trees, farther from the highway, but I'd been happy to break off from them myself.

Her eye was uncontrollable. It tremored wildly and the other looked out in something not far from true terror. Between the acid and heroin she was not doing well, and I wasn't in a helluva lot better shape either. But when somebody you're with is tripping out, and you are not in fact doing the same, it tends to ground you somehow, screw your head tighter on your shoulders. I didn't feel drunk, nor stoned either, for that matter. I had transcended all that mediocrity. I was off and I wasn't sure the park would be a large enough place to contain me.

I tried to whisper something in her ear but I have no recollection of what it was. Her hair, the sounds slipping out of her partially open mouth, the swirl in the blades of grass directly over her shoulder, these are the things that had me. I suddenly caught a wave of laughter that attacked from nowhere and everywhere at once, and I stared into her eyes, and brought her head to my breast. I could hardly breathe.

And that is when Time stopped. It was much the same as the reoccurring dream, but this was much deeper. More forbidding. Her head at my breast, Blinky ceased to exist. I gazed mechanically down the slow slope of hill sliding away at the reach of my feet. The borders of the night-glowing soccer field were raggedly inked, but definite nonetheless. It was as if a huge chunk of forest had been ripped clean and then smoothed away into what looked like the bottom of a vast, empty pond.

And then, from the depths at the farthest end, an inky blackness began to flow, disengaging itself from the lesser shadows of the tree line, eating up bits of the phantom lake bed like a slow ooze of sludge. By the time it covered half the distance between us it was an immense, malign, cloudy mass of plowing oblivion. My sane mind told me it was just a bank of fog reflecting the miasma of stars overhead, but the otherworldly voice of the hallucinogens wasn't buying. It kept coming, revolving and screwing whatever mass it contained, stretching out every second into barbed-wire, crystal points. It didn't move like water at all, or like a cloud. It poured more like honey on a cold afternoon. The weird mass convulsed along the gradual rise, filling the basin completely. I didn't move a muscle as I sat there trying to convince myself of the sham of hallucinations. Perhaps, in retrospect, I couldn't.

When it washed over me in the next second I saw through it. My sight penetrated down, far into the murk covering the field. And I could see what I instinctively knew to be bodies hunched and dotted along the wide expanse of grassland. Hundreds, if not thousands, of these shapes. Some writhing momentarily as if in the throes of some devastating sickness. Others deathly still. There was no sound, and after the first glance there was no movement. The writhing bodies suddenly became rock-still, no more than lumps of coal scattered along the floor of a warehouse. My uncanny sight picked and pried at them and it was then that the revelation enveloped my brain. It destroyed my spirit, my sense of religion, that which I have only recently begun to retrieve (and hope to secure with what I will do tomorrow). I suddenly recognized all the scattered humanity before me as no more than slabs of unanimated flesh. Just meat heaped on bone. There was no essence to attend them in whatever mass suicide I was witness to, and the effect was mind-numbing. I felt myself becoming like them, all the dead limbs no more than storm debris washed upon some forbidding shore. And it was then I began to scream.

I broke from the deep cloak of darkness with Blinky repeatedly slapping my face and screaming back at me incoherently. I have no recollection at all of the rest of that night.

Chapter 9:The Body

Blinky was the only one around when I woke up the next morning. Somehow we were back at the apartment, but instead of my familiar corner, someone had chunked me into a bed. My head was still screwy, the acid still dancing around in there like a red-hot wire of confusion. There have been many times when I wonder if it's ever been right since. Maybe this whole goddamn thing is just some crazy scenario I've dreamed up in madness. And why not? It's happened before; history's full of such horseshit, people who see and hear visions. Nuts, crackpots, prophets. Only time tells.

But the girl's real. Thank God, the girl is still real.

It was the only time I'd ever seen the apartment complex deserted, that much I got from a quick peek out of the window. Except for a couple of cats congregating around the dumpsters the place was a goddamn ghost town. And that was good because my head was a screaming wreak. Blinky, from the corner, aware of my wakefulness, whispered she didn't know where the others were. The bizarre insight or vision from the night before still had my head reeling. And when I looked across the room to find her I saw true fear in Blinky's eyes. She wasn't sleeping in the bed with me, was instead curled up into a broken-legged recliner held upright by one bureau corner all the way across the room by the hall door.

Nausea seized me full force and I jumped from the bed to make the bathroom. In so doing I banged my head against the toilet rim hard enough to see more of those fuckin stars, and as I retched and coughed into that disgusting toilet in that equally disgusting bathroom, I knew it was time to go. Solo. The vision had succeeded in screwing a sense of isolation into my head that I've never yet been able to escape.

But if there is such a thing as redemption then just maybe, just maybe, I still have a chance.

I didn't even flush the mess down as I pushed away and huddled, shaking against the wall. When I was able I pulled myself upright next to the bathroom sink. I looked at the monster staring back from the depths of the smeared mirror. For a second I heard the blood pounding in my ears, got a quick wash of vision blown through my skull, and then I turned and left the stink behind. When I walked into the bedroom Blinky had just spiked up again and even though I saw no needle, the glassed-over eyes and drooling mouth told the story. Her huddled, shaking form brought me suddenly back to the field from the night before and all those still bodies bunched upon it.

I figure that's the reason I didn't get any closer. I looked at her sad figure pressed into the worn-out folds of the recliner, for just a moment the image of my grandmother superimposed upon her features, and left the room and the complex with no more than the clothes on my back and the sour taste of vomit in the back of my throat.

***

It was hot as hell. Not a fucking breeze stirred, sun radiating off the tops of car roofs like gas vapors at a filling station. The first day I hid out of the sweltering humidity beneath the overhang of Peabody Hall. Summer school was nearing the end of its brief run, but there were still plenty of junior and high school level groups fucking around here and there, their faces all sunny and serene, not a worry in the fuckin world. And regardless of the fact that it didn't improve my mood any, it did provide pretty good cover except for the fact that I was dirty as hell and smelled like shit. But once again, no one seemed to notice. Sometimes a lone walker would glance my way, but no look ever lingered. I sat down on the steps and smoked slowly through a crumpled pack of filter-less cigarettes I'd found on the walk over. So there, don't think I never got lucky.

Blinky didn't follow, I never saw her again. Like I said: when it was over, it was over. Just like erasing a line on a page or turning off a television. She couldn't or wouldn't say anything as I'd walked past her to the door, and although I half-expected, as I trudged across the littered parking lot, to hear a shrill string of curses chase me down, it didn't happen. She was gone, over. With me it's either here or gone. I suspect that's how things'll be tomorrow...

Anyway, as the day shortened and campus cleared out I began formulating a plan. Up until then I'd simply been blank. Totally plumbed out. But I needed a target, some kind of sanctuary; already I could picture the gang at the complex readying themselves to hunt me out. It was not that I expected them to do me harm, but that I might go back with them if they found me.

If the cycle was to broken it was to be broken now.

I decided to vacate the area and work myself into the depths of the heavily-wooded subdivisions between campus and the lakes. I knew several of the mansions lining the shallow and often polluted string of lakes had boat houses or unlocked sheds, so the plan was relatively straight-forward. Of course it wasn't wise for a bum like me to shamble down the clipped and trimmed sidewalks in these affluent neighborhoods, but running with the gang had equipped me with the skills to get around what I couldn't change. Besides, I needed some goddamn money if I was really planning to clear out.

At any time of the day or night the parks, bicycle trails, and pull-offs around the lakes were alive with people. Joggers, fishermen, girls out looking for a fuck, guys out looking for a fuck. I knew; I'd watched them many times and rifled a few cars when their heads were up their asses. The trick was in never taking too much. Perhaps that is why no one ever put the hooks in me; I was as nondescript a burglar as a person. Also, on the times I'd slipped into any of the nicer homes I was always amazed (at that time anyway) how many of the richest people spent the least on security. With a few handy gadgets I carried in my sock I could be into most houses in minutes, but then again I can't say it would have been the same for everybody. And nobody was as good, as daring, as I was then. At least nobody I knew, and I knew some genuinely crazy motherfuckers. I had nothing to lose and it showed. Or, to be more truthful, I didn't.

My plan was to swim the lake (even with the weird hangover I wasn't worried; it wasn't very deep and I didn't give a fuck if I drowned or not), pull up in the darkness in the tall border grass and water lilies, and proceed to introduce myself to someone else's belongings. Like I said, it was amazing the shit rich folks leave in easy reach. And the damndest thing about it was most of the time they didn't even know they'd been picked. Sure, a week later one of the gardeners finds the shed rifled for several particularly well-selling pawn store items, but by then it's old news. Bring out the dogs if you wanna; I'm working a different section of town.

I chose the biggest and the closest neighborhood that night for one reason alone. We hadn't rifled it as of yet simply because it was too close, and I knew the gang wouldn't look for me there. I would sneak ashore, befriend any animal I might find 'guarding' the place and then reconnaissance. Boathouses were my first line of business, but I was not against a little breaking and entering on the residence itself, mansion or fucking not.By 9:00 I was in the water. A half hour later saw me wading through river lilies and swamp grass next to a fairly large, dark boathouse fringed by a soft line of azaleas out near the dock. As I'd expected, no waterfront motion detectors. From a parking lot on the opposite bank I'd chosen this white, two-story Greek Revival set down tight among the many old live oaks which stood in a silent groping line across the backyard and hung ponderously out over the water. There was no fence to negotiate. The house was dark except for the cast of moonlight which sprinkled down through the trees among the columns and a halogen lamp twenty or thirty feet up in a tall pine tree, illuminating everything in the backyard except the dense pack of shrubbery along the far right side and the waterfront tree line. The houses on either side were completely blocked off by immense hedgerows. There were no dogs, deathly quiet, the only sound, water gently lapping against the bank.

The water level in the connected string of lakes didn't fluctuate greatly except during extreme droughts and torrential downpours, and this was not one of those times. The boathouse was suspended almost entirely over water and the present level was almost to the top of the pilings. Above my head was a door with no visible padlock. I didn't even try opening it; if it was locked it'd be from the inside though it really didn't make much difference to me. There were two ways in: one, swimming up from underneath, and two, climbing out through the weeds and in through the yard-side door. The second choice seemed more civilized and that's the one I chose.

As it turned out, as I'd half-expected, that door wasn't even locked, though there were two heavy steel rings for a padlock. Mysteriously absent, or so I thought until my right foot came down unexpectedly on a Yale lock lying forgotten on the deck planks. Strange, but not completely out of the ordinary. Rich folks have just as many quirks as the rest of us.

I thumbed the latch and pushed the boathouse door open, watched as the light from the halogen reached inside. Not much. Or at least not much I could use. Sure, a Cajun Special fishing rig with a 15 horsepower Mercury and an equally new and impressive same-make trolling motor. Completely useless. I couldn't turn that into ready cash. But what I was interested in rested right alongside: a two-man kayak with matching fiberglass oars stuck just above it to the right side wall beneath a water-stained picture of James Dean walking the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. It would serve for the return trip. When I bent down to examine it my eyes involuntarily picked up on several Igloos and deep-sea ice chests stacked against the lakeside door on what looked to be a hinged section of deck that when raised, I had to assume, allowed boat access to the lake. So I'd have to move all that shit out of the way to get out. Well...

I left the goods and made my way to the door, quietly closed it and scooted into another mass of azaleas which flanked the far side of the boathouse on the weak side of the light. Time for a plan. The quick inspection of the boathouse had taken no more than five minutes, but looking down at my wrist, I realized everything I did from then on would have to be self-timed. The cheapo watch had finally kicked at 9:42.

Still no activity, no lights, from inside the house. No movement on the lawn and only an occasional car passing by on the road out front. A pair of dogs had started barking farther down, I guessed a house or two down, but it sounded like the other side of the street and I didn't let it bother me.

Keeping to the deepest shadows along the perimeter of the yard I slunk up next to the house. It was tailor-made for picking. Shrubs and palms close off the eaves, shadows everywhere. The curtains had been pulled shut across the back rooms but in what appeared to be a washroom window they were open. I eased up to get a peek inside and saw a tiny green light reflecting off a hallway mirror just in front of the doorway. Bingo! The silly fucker had an alarm (I could almost guess the company) but like a lot of people who felt the sign in the front yard was enough, he didn't take the time to turn the goddamn thing on. His carelessness made me smile.

I crouched down again and took another long, slow look around. Nothing, even the dogs down the way had stopped their racket. The back porch was screened but the glass door was situated in a pool of shadows the halogen light screwed into the reaches of the pine didn't touch. I slid over and pulled back gently on the door in case the hinges were rusty. I already figured the damn thing would be unlocked too; this guy should have sent me a goddamn invitation. It slid back like water through ice. And then? Well, the easiest part of all.

Amateurs and chickenshits will lead you to believe breaking and entering has to be done covertly. I was (and always have been) of the opposite opinion. I go in through the doors. Fuck climbing through holly bushes or pushing up windows that haven't been opened in years. I go for speed and quiet. Doors are used to being opened; that's what they're there for. And for just this purpose, I have a ring of skeleton keys that can open a steel ball if the motherfucker's got something valuable inside it. I hit it on the first try, because like I said, I'm good.

From the stoop near the porch door to inside didn't take more than one, two steps. I'd ditched most of my clothing in the bushes near the boathouse, skinning down to my underwear. Clothes could rustle, clothes could get hung on stuff in unfamiliar territory. But if I was gonna lie dying or dead on someone's expensive rug it damn sure wasn't gonna be stark naked.

Once into the rear foyer I stopped to make assessment. That's really the main ingredient of being a thorough and, most importantly, breathing thief. Can't let the excitement get the best of you.

Hopefully no one was home; I hadn't seen any lights or movement, but it was almost ten o'clock, and mid-week. So I went on the assumption that the target was home, that the son of a bitch could be steps away in the kitchen grabbing a glass of milk...or a fucking gun. Caution, caution. There were no shrill beeps, no other tell-tales that alarms had been tripped. I shut the door carefully and walked into the adjoining room. And stopped cold.

I have never been able to shake the awe of privilege in which some people live. It had always been the tangible that proved life had no wish in 'being fair', whatever that meant. I'd heard a lot of teachers talk about 'fairness' in school, but the word is meaningless. Especially for the poor. I had been sleeping in a dirty corner of a spike pad for the better part of six months and this room brought that reality home. By itself it was bigger than anything I'd ever lived in with my mother or grandmother. The furnishings and decorations would have taken them (working in unison) three lifetimes to accumulate. Leather this, imported that, trinkets that would cost a working woman's whole salary, a television as big as a goddamn Volkswagen. Enough paintings to fill an art museum. Everything imaginable and not one fucking thing I could use.

I already knew I'd have to go deeper into the house for that, because money is the one thing people just don't leave lying around. They want it close, like a baby, in case it wakes up crying. Most of the time it's in the bedroom, or in the master bath near the sink. Sometimes (very seldom) I'd found them in the laundry room on top of the washer or dryer. Well, I knew where that room was and, figuring to scratch it off my list, hurried around the corner, identified the hallway mirror on a nearby wall and turned toward the back of the house where the undrawn curtains waited. Threading my way along through the darkness, I saw the tiny green alarm light shining from the kitchen. Everything was well.

My heart slowed to normal time and I fell into the groove. There's really nothing else I can call it. There's the old cliché of 'ice water in the veins' but that's just words from old movies. I don't believe in clichés, I've just always been able to handle pressure. I guess it's got something to do with the invisibility thing, about people never really stopping to pay me much mind. So since I was generally ignored I learned to use it to best advantage; I'd read the book by H. G. Wells. And even if you gotta go down in the end, it's best to go down swinging.

I snapped my second tool out in the washroom: a tiny penlight. Perfect for snooping. A quick scan of the washer and dryer tops was enough to convince me the wallet wasn't there. So I turned and headed back to the kitchen. Cool, tile floor, humming stain-less steel side-by-side refrigerators deep enough to hang meat. Not even two, but three fucking sinks lined up in military precession. A ship's galley worth of cookware hanging from the ceiling above the butcher block island. Everything male. Not one sign of female presence in the whole place. No little fancy dollies, no little cute notes on the fridge. Nothing.

I slid through the kitchen looking for the hallway to the bedrooms. The house promised a master suite, and I knew the sonofabitch who lived here wasn't gonna walk up a flight of stairs every time he wanted to crash. Through a door on the far side of the kitchen I thought I'd find just that. The adjoining short hall led back into deeper darkness where the door to the suite would be. I had to suspect the bedroom door would be closed. They usually were. These people were used to being secluded in their private offices everyday and that habit was hard to break. But, like the derelict alarm system, these doors were also very seldom locked.

I snuck forward, breathing quietly through my mouth. I couldn't risk a whistling nose this close to the clutch. I found the knob at the right height; it was a big sculpted number, as heavy as a shot put. But of course its workings were perfect and the bolt slid into the housing with nothing more than a sense of 'passing.' I paused before pushing the door open.

Then I crouched in the hall and waited. Several times before this had saved me. Because usually, if a man is going to budge, it's then: in the first few minutes when he senses someone entering the bedroom. With women you never can tell, but I didn't expect to find one there anyway. Not unless she was something dragged in off the street and all her clothes were in a pile at the foot of the bed.

A slow, relaxed drone of steady breathing reached my ears and I listened intently for any sign of disturbance, counting silently to three hundred as I did so. By that time my eyes had adjusted and the room was not so cavernous dark; I could make out faint patterns and shapes through the streamlet of light passing along the sides of the thick curtains which covered the windows.

From the sound of his breathing, the guy was lying on his stomach. That was good: one ear would be buried in a pillow. I held my penlight tightly and walked into the room. Though I had to fight the urge to crawl in the first few times, it was second nature to me by then. Walking was natural, and crawling, many times, made too much damn noise. The more casual a thief, the better chances he has of staying out of jail, or the grave.

I flashed the tiny dot of light around the room, getting a lay of the furniture. Everything except the bed appeared to be pretty much against the walls. I couldn't make out any piles of clothing or other obstacles to go tumbling over on the floor. The man's clothes were resting on a valise pushed back by the closet. It wasn't neat; it wasn't dirty. Typical man.

Well, time to get down to business. Quickness was the key, to get in and get the fuck out. Still, steady breathing, that was the gauge. I flashed the tight beam to the nightstand, empty except for an alarm clock and another expensive lamp. The bathroom then, it would have to be on the other side of the bed, back near the corner where a deeper darkness idled. I slid around the bed, carefully listening for any striations in the man's breathing. I knew even if he woke up now, there'd be a period of disorientation in which I'd probably get away, but then it would have all been for nothing. And let's face it, I wasn't there for the fun of it. I needed money. Bad.

The bathroom was massive. I could tell from the different 'hollowness' of echoes that curled around me. Perhaps it was all the tile and glass. I dared not use the penlight for fear of reflection, but the window near the toilet was covered with a set of wooden slats that created a ghostly white glow around what looked to be a sauna door. The sink was easy enough. I let my hands drift along the counter top, carefully weaving past the colognes and toothpaste dispenser for the wallet.

I found it and something else in the same moment. Of course I recognized the wallet, but the other item momentarily stumped me because it was so out of place. I slipped the wallet into my underwear at the same time winding my fingers around the straps of the unlikely purse. My first thought was that I'd missed someone in the bed, but when I trained my ears back in that direction I could still only make out the sound of one person. There was nobody else...at least in the bed.

The purse wasn't zippered and I reached inside for the wallet. There...long and thin, fake leather, and old, ragged. Odd. I squatted down beneath the reach of the mirrors and held the penlight in my teeth. It was also torn along one side, and when I opened it I found twenty-three dollars. Also a driver's license, an out-of-stater. The owner's name was Melissa Sandage, from Arkansas of all places. I stole the license and money before stuffing the torn wallet back into the purse. I left it on the floor, not giving a fuck what the old man thought when he woke up. His wallet would be gone anyway, along with his fucking kayak.

With the woman's license in my hand and the man's wallet in my underwear, I skirted the end of the bed and tiptoed across the carpet to the hallway. Just before I got to the door the guy in the bed turned over and snorted violently. I froze for five minutes until his rhythmic breathing reestablished itself. Then I closed the door slowly and went out the way I'd come.

I paused at the back door, looking out the windows for anything out of the ordinary. Still all quiet. Like the night had been cut out expressly for me. I was just as careful shutting the door behind me as I'd been coming in. Thoroughness. I still didn't know how much money was in the wallet but it didn't make any difference. You can't get greedy. That lesson had been impressed upon me by a two-time loser who'd talked out of one side of his mouth because somebody had whistled a bullet through his other cheek bone. It hadn't looked especially pretty, but at least that sonofabitch could still breathe. So I never allowed myself to forget. You have to be satisfied with what Fortune provides and know when to get the fuck out. All I needed was a little starter money. Now, I just had to leave with no one being the wiser.

Coolly, I checked the lock to make sure the bolt had passed through. Fine, snug. I slipped through the porch door and followed the same route back to the boathouse as I'd used earlier. No barking dogs...nothing. I climbed into the azaleas and retrieved the clothes I'd left there. They were chilly and damp in the night air, even though the humidity was still pretty bad, but most of the water had drained off. By morning I'd be fine. Barring catastrophe, of course. I always tried to keep that thought close enough to keep me straight. Squatting low and holding the penlight in my teeth again I rifled the wallet. Some sharp-dick named Stanley Ryster. Four hundred and seventy-two fucking dollars!

I closed my eyes and whispered a short prayer to whatever god of petty theft makes these things possible. There were still no lights bursting on from inside the mansion, no alarms from the high eaves to spell me of my reverie. I stuffed the woman's license into my back pocket, and the man's wallet into the front left. They'd be wet, but money dried. Now for the kayak.

I disappeared back inside the boathouse, careful to leave the Yale lock just where I'd found it. I always like to make 'em work for it, make them wonder a bit, just for a while, if in fact they have been picked. Any advantage added time and time is something you just can't get enough of. I know that now.

***

I thought I knew that then. When I was just a skinny kid staying alive by any trick I could pull. But I didn't, not really; only now with the moon showering its cold light down upon the city, as I sit and watch the smoke rise and mingle with it, only now do I realize that you just can't ever get enough of it.

And the grown up thief, the man named Jesse Avery, flicked the cigarette he'd been smoking through the window to the street below.

***

Once inside I loosed the kayak rope from the boat hook. Then I carefully took the oars from their rack and laid them on the wood-planked deck. As usual I had to fight the urge to hurry now that I wasn't inside the house. That's the hardest thing to do but I pride myself on control, of not letting my emotions get the better of my common sense. I breathed in deeply, relaxed, and scrutinized the boathouse one more time for anything else that would be feasible to take. My eyes were drawn again to the ice chests stacked against the back wall, blocking the door through which I'd be leaving. The one on top was small enough for good use. I'd use the tether-rope and drag it behind the kayak to the other side of the lake. It was dark blue, thankfully so, since all the others of varying sizes and shapes were white. Sure giveaways in the moonlight.

I walked around the horseshoe-shaped deck to the bank of chests, figuring to pull the bottom, and largest one, out of the way of a stinking trolling net which hung down from the ceiling. But when I gripped the handle and tried to pull, nothing. A muffled sloshing within made it clear: the goddamn chests (or at least the bottom one) were full!

Shit! And since I couldn't keep an eye on the house from here, it was time I could ill-afford to waste. However, I couldn't get the hinged section of deck up without moving the chests, and without that the kayak was going nowhere.

I reached up and set the one on top (the one I'd be taking with me) off to the side once I'd fought through the vestiges of the net, and next busied myself with the rest of the unstacking. There were two more chests of varying sizes stacked on top of the deep-sea, and I was happy to find neither one of these had anything in it.

As I reached down to grab the handle of the biggest (hoping I could pull it out of the way with less trouble now) an odd, warning tingle began at the very base of my skull. The hair stood up along my neck; my skin rippled into gooseflesh along my arms. But my heart stayed cool, my mind clear. I figured the damn thing probably held over a hundred pounds of water, ice, beer, fish, whatever the hell you needed. Obviously Mr. Ryster hadn't taken the time to empty the bastard when he came in. Sure and--

The eyes were the first thing that struck me, the first thing I recognized as human. That, and the black fan of hair trailing out from the bloated face. The eyes were stretched wide, swollen and huge in a face that could scarcely contain them. The familiar, cloying, sticky stench I remembered from Grandma's house began to crawl upon the boathouse.

It took all the control I had to keep from screaming then, but somehow I didn't. Somehow. Then I stood up in the ghostly darkness, staring down at the small body stuffed into the ice chest. Watching as the water lapped over the edge to wet the deck planks. The drops sounding very loud inside the boathouse. There was no telling how old she was but the license I'd found inside suddenly took on a whole new significance.

A taut, bloated fist with fingers like sausages floated to the disrupted surface and for one, bare, cataclysmic moment I knew she would suddenly grip the edge and climb free of the stinking ice chest. She'd pull her dead, water-logged body from the cold water and do whatever the dead did to the living to exact their revenge.

But the madness passed. It didn't go easy but it did pass.

She was very small, her license, later, put her at ninety-seven pounds. The water was a little discolored, I don't know from blood or what, but I don't think she had on any clothes. She was pretty crammed in, but I admit I didn't study her that closely. And suddenly those twenty-three dollars felt like cold, brutal murder in my pocket.

I wondered if there was any movement in the house now. I'd completely lost track of time and it appeared old man Ryster wasn't such a good ole boy after all. I didn't know what she'd done, but she wasn't gonna be doing any more of it. I imagined the boathouse door facing the house slinging open and the Breathing Man coming inside. And goddamn, he had plenty more chests.

With that thought I turned quickly (too quickly) on the slick deck. My foot went out from under me, catching my other leg at a nasty angle, and I rolled with the fall, hoping to save myself a torn ligament. Right into that fucking chest. I hit the sticky water, my right arm glancing off the inside wall as my face, shoulders, and left arm followed. The moment my face broke the surface the oily water was all over me. The sticky-sweet presence rushing up my nose and I gagged, choking. My right elbow connected with the bottom of the chest and my face pressed up tight against skin that was as loose as taffy left on a summer porch. My left hand scrabbled for a hand-hold on the other side, and when it did I wrenched myself free of the chest and its dead occupant. More putrid water splashed over me as I sat down hard on the floor. The smell threatened to suffocate me. A flap of her hair that had torn away was stuck to my cheek and I slapped it away.

Then I scrabbled to my feet again, careful now of the slick deck. The water was in tumult. I could see a big mop of wet black hair, a hand, what must have been a section of blue-white thigh. I thought of myself in there with her. The smell grew huge.

I figured the dogs would be raising holy hell if I didn't get the lid shut down tight, and quick. But I still had the kayak to handle so any speculation on why she was there would just have to wait.

But the goddamn chest was still blocking my getaway. I hunched down at one end and put a shoulder to it, closing my eyes and straining with everything I had to get that damn thing moving. I guess the spilled water helped grease the deck because when it went, it really went. The putrid water rolled over me with a thick, embedded stink and I thought I'd puke my guts up right then and there. But I didn't. I collapsed on the now-empty section of hinged deck and looked at the chest. One of her arms had washed over the side and stuck blue/white at a right angle as if she were trying to point toward the house. There was no way I was touching her. Let the dogs raise holy hell, I thought, I'm getting the fuck out. I wouldn't be restacking shit either, and the small igloo I'd had my eye on earlier could stay the fuck where it was.

I stepped off the hinged section, found the catch that locked it in place and threw the bolt. Then I wrenched the section straight up and let it stand. Next I pushed open the lakeside door and breathed in the fresh air sitting like a fat man sprawled across the lake. The thought of the Breathing Man finding me now made speed paramount. Securing the door with a wood wedge I found close by, obviously suited for that very purpose, I rounded the corner, picked up the two oars bundled in one arm and the tether rope with the other. Then, carefully so as not to knock the oars, I lowered myself into the murky water (hoping to kill the smell clinging to me like glue) and pushed the kayak out as I backed away with it.

With the moonlight glow surrounding me as I passed the open door, I reached up and knocked the wedge loose, letting the door swing closed. I thought I heard a bolt catch but wasn't sure. Regardless, I wasn't going back to check.

It had clouded up a little more since I'd come ashore, and I once again thanked the god of petty theft for its protection. Because this was surely out of the scope of my usual business. Regardless of the game, I hadn't been expecting to pull money from beneath the nose of a murderer. I set the oars to their locks and began stroking for the opposite shore.

Chapter 10:Maniacs

Next morning things didn't work out as planned. By the time I'd reached the opposite shore the night before I was exhausted, I could hardly put one foot in front of the other. I think it was the stench, as if I were in fact dead myself, somehow attempting to escape my own fate. I left the wallet on the bank and splashed back into the water, trying to wash the reek away. Sometimes, though, I can still smell it. Times like tonight.

I intended on going to the Greyhound station on Florida Boulevard first thing in the morning but lost the nerve. Ryster's crime hung around me like a hangman's noose, and knowing how I'd left things, I half figured him to be patrolling the area, looking for another motherfucker he could stuff in one of his chests. I knew of an abandoned building on Acadian Thruway, just on the other side of the lake adjacent to where I was. Hadn't been used since some old LSU running back got busted printing his own money there almost a decade before. A rusted ladder clung to the back of one peeling wall, and I felt sure no one would be up there today. Too goddamn hot. And even though I didn't like the idea of whiling away the day while Ryster investigated my trespass, I could go no farther. I'd just have to slow down a little on my way to Nowhere.

By the time I sat huddled on the deserted, gravel-strewn roof, the sun was high and hard over the treed horizon. It was miserable, fuckin miserable. I got virtually no sleep, just occasional lapses of consciousness during the hottest parts of the day, and the continuous image of Ryster cruising the lakes in what would no doubt be a 500 class Mercedes didn't ease my nerves one damn bit.Thankfully, a nearby oak had grown over the edge of roof on the side away from the road and it wasn't too bad, considering I didn't have any other alternatives. But I was hungry as a bastard and just before dark I cut out.

It took about two hours. Hiding in Sweet Olive Cemetery right down the street from the Greyhound station, I took a moment to buck myself up. I was fourteen, didn't have one iota of identification on me that was mine, and looked spitting distance from the nearest trash bin. I hoped my clothes didn't stink as bad as I thought they should. My hair had gotten pretty long lately and I raked the bangs down over my eyes in case there happened to be a poster up somewhere with my face on it. Also, I hadn't shaved and had a nice little black, patchwork shadow on my face. From the look I had at myself a bit later in the distorted gaze of the Greyhound bathroom mirror I definitely qualified for a veteran of the hard-core circuit. Truly, completely sickening. Standing there assessing the mess I'd become, I remembered all the talks my Grandma and I had had, and her close-to-frantic pleas to 'do the right thing, always' above all else. And here I was. What a fuckin chump. But that always amazed me about her: the fact that she never gave up. She really believed life could be good, that if one honestly and faithfully steered the course, things would have to get better. I hope she wasn't wrong. I hope she found what she thought she'd find. As for me, I hardly care anymore.

Even so, when I need strength, I conjure her face. I imagine her laughing, joking like she used to, and I actually do feel a little better. Maybe only be for a second or two, but every little bit helps. Tonight I can't get her off my mind...

But back to the Greyhound station. Once again, I was the Invisible Man, so it turned out I didn't need half the courage I showed up with. I just walked straight up to the counter, eyes hard ahead, money in hand, and bought a ticket to Little Rock, Arkansas. It was the only place I was familiar with (by name alone, I now realize), and I was already convinced I had to get the hell out of Baton Rouge. I had the uneasy, pressing notion that every second spent here inched me closer to some crushing doom, whether from Ryster or elsewhere. Just one of those little things that keeps on giving.

Well, somebody's snaggle-toothed grandmother rattled off the charge and took the money. When she handed me the ticket and told me which terminal the bus would leave from I still had two hours, thirty-seven minutes to wait, according to the clock screwed into the wall above her head. Anyway, I was feeling safer than I had in days (sitting there quietly with my hands on my lap as the arriving buses rumbled in the loading terminal) when the two assholes stepped aboard my bus and made their loud way to the back. Man, I could tell they were trouble the second I saw em. And it was nothing really too obvious, just two fuckin scumbags. But I knew.

***

I've wondered plenty since if things would have been different if the bathroom on the bus hadn't been out of service. Always those little things, inconsequential it seems until they all add up and fuck you hard. It's one of the series of jokes life plays all the way along. Those odd little moments of time that stay behind to remind you where either things went good or bad. Is there something important hidden in each one, some essential thing left undone? Is that what makes em linger, continually haunting you with the suggestion that an overlooked opportunity or circumstance has eventually, and scarier yet, irrevocably, brought about whatever current reality you now experience? Ahh...the perils of philosophy.

So you might wonder how for want of a working bathroom was the kingdom lost? to paraphrase some work I've since forgotten. I'll tell you: it's a long goddamn ride from Baton Rouge to Little Rock and with a busted restroom, it made for a lot of evil potential.

Shreveport's where I fucked up. I was tired, dogging in-and-out of a fitful, uneasy sleep. The day on the rooftop had done me no good. My head was fogged, my stomach as good as empty. My eyes felt like someone had been ice-skating on them. And I really had to piss. Just about that time, as luck would have it (I thought), the driver came over the intercom to announce a rest stop in Bossier City.

I didn't think about the two assholes at all. If I'd've been more sharp, perhaps awake for fifteen minutes longer...but it really doesn't matter now. It has become a concrete moment that always unfolds the same in eternity. If, in fact, such a thing even exists after its passing.

When the bus pulled over I got out and went into the convenience store across the parking lot to get a candy bar before going to the restroom around back. By the time I got through the line, the last person from the bus (I thought) was shuffling out, but I wasn't worried. The driver had announced a fifteen minute break and I knew I hadn't burned but ten. He'd be there when I finished.

And just like that my guard came down another notch.

I'd just unzipped when I heard a sharp scrape behind me. Then a hand came down on my shoulder along with a demonic, hissed warning: "Scream an I'll fuckin kill ya. Even if'n I hafta kill everbody else in this muthafuckin place, it's a done deal. You fuckin undastand?" My urge to piss dried up like a desert sandstorm and I nodded. For a moment I thought Mr. Ryster had followed me, that he'd been waiting vigilantly in one of the stalls, and now he was gonna cut out my fucking heart. I didn't move a muscle, but I heard another pair of sliding feet come closer to the one who had me. So there were two.

The voice came back to my ear. "Yer gonna back inta that stall wit me, young pa'tna." I'll never forget it. Word for word. "Keep ya mout shut if ya wanna live, bitch," and he pulled me roughly through the swinging door. I don't know where the other guy went. Whether inside the bathroom or out I can't say.

The one behind me got up on the toilet lid and hunched over my shoulder so nobody else coming in would see him. I could still hear someone pissing off to my left. I kept my mouth shut, trying to get a plan together, weighing my best chance of escape. He said he'd kill me and I had no reason to doubt him. I remembered the two getting on the bus in Baton Rouge. They had the look of killers and the whispered urgency in their voices of desperation. I could only play for time and hope like hell to get some.

After a few more minutes the lone pisser finished up and left. I heard the door close and then reopen again a second later. The other pair of footsteps echoed on the tile. "Clear, Dingo," its voice said. Dingo grunted and stepped down off the toilet lid, pushing me out of the stall as he did so. I turned around to see. Definitely the two fuckers from the bus, the fucking bus that was now short at least three fucking passengers! The fucking bus that was probably leaving as I stood alone with these two murderers! Because I knew it; I could smell it on them like cheap cologne. They would kill me if I wasn't very careful; perhaps they'd kill me regardless. I kept my breath steady and my eyes up. The one behind me grabbed both shoulders again and said a little louder this time: "We gonna walk outside an down the road, boy. You gonna walk 'tween me and Pete here, an ya ain't gonna do one gotdamn thang. Ya got that? Ya do an I'll kill ya wit this gotdamn gun. Now, ya fuckin un'erstan what I'm sayin?"

I nodded never taking my eyes off the one in front. He wasn't scared, though. At least not of me. He was looking frantically at Dingo and obviously wanted to get as far away from the restroom as possible. So, the question of the leader was solved, but I didn't see how that was gonna help me in the least. But you bide, you wait, you see.

Dingo pushed me from behind as Pete made his way to the door, and once there, he peered outside to see if the coast was still clear. I felt the big wad of money in my pocket and again wondered if it had been a good idea to take that off the dead girl. Maybe it was cursed and this was how it made its rounds.

I knew one thing for certain: I couldn't fight them and win. They were older, stronger, crazy. That was a given. But I did believe myself faster. Only, of course, the timing would have to be right. If it ever came. I'd do what they wanted and keep my nose to the ground.

When we filed out into the sunshine the bus was gone and I cursed the life of the no-good, empty-headed sonofabitch who would leave without taking a goddamn head count. Three fucking people short!

There were a few cars in the parking lot but no cops. Dingo had a vice grip on my upper arm and every once in a while I felt what was undoubtedly the cold, round barrel tip of the gun he'd warned me about poking me in the ribs.

I hurriedly surveyed the area they were steering me toward. The road which ran past the convenience store dwindled off into a heavily wooded track of land no more than a couple hundred yards down. Several steps past the parking lot the asphalt yielded to gravel. What could have been a small feeder road to a trailer park or cotton field cut away to the left.

I tried looking over my shoulder but the steel circle in my ribs pushed deeper and Dingo spat a curse-riddled warning in my ear. I let myself be herded on as I didn't see any other option. But the farther we got from the convenience store the faster the two went, so I knew right off they weren't professionals. Pros never change the pace; that's part of the secret.

It was also right about then my balls started crawling up into my belly. This was starting to feel less and less like a straight-out robbery and more like...something else. Even then, vague images of the movie, Deliverance, from a few years back, bubbled to the surface. I'd read that book too, and the sodomy scene had been no easier to take there than in the film.

We took the gravel driveway to the left, between two twin oaks that stood sentry to the lot beyond. What I thought must have led into a trailer park was actually the mown entrance to what had once been a great home. Once. It was now rotted to the soul of the timber, though someone had decided to salvage whatever he could. Must have been for the cypress, although at the time I had no idea nor cared in the least. There were two dumpsters arranged side by side near an ancient, gnarled magnolia, and we made our way in that direction. I was scared as hell but maintaining.

Nobody said a word. To this day, that was the creepiest thing of all. Once out of the restroom stall Dingo had fallen silent as a leafless tree on a windless day, barring his one venomous warning. Pete reminded me of a young kid under the influence of the town bully; I got the immediate feeling he didn't want to go on with whatever we were going on with.

By the time we got in between the dumpsters the sounds from the interstate were no more than a fugue. I had no hope someone would come racing to my rescue. As far as I knew, I was invisible anyway. If blood can actually run cold from a thought, mine turned to ice.

Dingo pulled my arm sharply and I stopped, spun around. He was fucked up, I could see that right off. Eyes red and watery, kind of jittering up and down. He didn't smell of booze so I guessed pills. But whatever it was gave the motherfucker balls enough to kidnap a fourteen year old from a public restroom in broad daylight. That seemed to say enough in itself. I didn't let myself forget it. Whether it would have done me any good is a mute point now, but once again, like those maddening snap-shots, the image persists. The mind wanders.

Especially at night.

I'd forgotten completely about the cash. If I could have handed it to the both of them at that second and walked away I would have gladly done so, but that was not an option. I kept my mouth shut and eyes open.

"Whar the fuck ya goin, doll?" the asshole asked.

"Was goin to Little Rock. Don't know where now," I answered, as proud of the strength in my voice then as a new father must be proud of his first born. It was one of those Moments.

Well, that really broke em up. Dingo looked at Pete, loosened his grip on my shoulder a skinned second and laughed a fatal blast at his henchman. Of course, that loser marked him stroke for stroke. I used the instant to look around and develop strategy. One thing was instantly clear: right here between the dumpsters was definitely not the place to be. Pete had a beer-gut and I didn't worry much about outdistancing him when I made my break. Dingo, on the other hand, was the scary one. He had on a biker's jacket with the sleeves cut out and a tank top T-shirt. Fucker looked like he wrestled cows for a living. He was also missing a couple teeth, but that didn't hold back his smile at all. Jailhouse tattoos decorated him like a cheap cartoon. And worst of all there was a madness in his eyes I've rarely seen. I recognized it then because once at the zoo with Grandma I'd watched, amazed, as a gorilla went berserk on one of its rivals. We'd been watching them from across the fence and lagoon, and even though most people had been drawn to the one putting on the show, I hadn't. I'd been watching the one curled up by the tire swing, his eyes riveted to the back of his capering foe, the one hamming it up for the crowd and the females. The second before the animal had snapped, the same look I saw on Dingo had appeared in its eyes. Even from a distance there was no mistaking it.

Straight ahead past the dumpsters was a tangled mess of underbrush gone wild, and helter skelter piles of rotten timber and other demolition trash. It was a damn sight forbidding, especially when I factored in the additional bonus of having two lunatics chasing me, at least one with a gun. I didn't think the petty theft god could do much good here, and I wasn't real sure God Himself would take time to listen. I'd done some pretty rotten shit and I kinda figured this was how I was gonna end up paying for it.

As fast as they started laughing, they stopped. Dingo turned his attention back on me. "Well, well," he said with a mocking nastiness. I could see the naked gun barrel peeking through a hole in his jacket pocket. He was sweating like a madman, smelling worse. I swear even Pete backed away from him a step. I noted it and prayed to use the advantage. Then I stared hard at Dingo, wondering what other crimes he'd committed and what quirk of nature allowed him to walk the earth. It was just my fuckin luck to met up with this bastard.

He leaned into my face and his breath was the reek of tombs, barnyard neglect. I actually teared up from the assault and he turned to Pete, that ghastly smile stretched ear to ear now. "Lil guy's gonna cry, Pete," and he laughed. Pete managed a strained smile in return. Dingo gave him a withering look before pressing on, "We saw ya in BR, sittin there lak ya owned the fuckin worl." He laughed again while I tried to imagine what depth of delusion he possessed to think that. The smile vanished as his eyes glazed over, reptilian. "Sa how much uv it do ya?"

I could feel the twenty-three dollars throbbing like an open wound in my pocket. I should have left the goddamn money...I knew it but still—

\--He punched me in the face and I went down hard, my head hitting a glancing blow off the closest dumpster. I tasted blood and tried to sit up, spitting out a chip of tooth. I've never been hit that hard before, ever. For a moment I couldn't even make out the forms of the men above me. The right side of my face felt as if Mount Rushmore had been screwed right into my cheek. I blinked but it did little good. But my ears worked just fine.

Dingo was upbraiding Pete about something, puffing himself up while his doleful Yes man grunted in all the right places. My head was an agony, void except for a high-pitched whine whistling through my ears. Sparkles of light danced around the periphery of my vision and I could barely move my jaw, but at least the motherfucker hadn't blinded me. Or at least not yet.

Dingo stopped shouting and by the time I was able to focus well enough to make him out, he'd taken his jacket off and his shirt followed. When he was bare from the waist up, he handed the gun to Pete. And by that time it didn't take a genius to figure out what he had in mind. My balls had known it long before my brain, and my asshole was just beginning to get the message.

Pete held the gun a few feet away from me, but you could tell he wasn't comfortable with it. His eyes read fear. I pretended to be more confused than I actually was. Dingo stared down at me with his feral eyes, unbuckling his belt. He still had his boots on and I didn't think he'd be one for much formality. Then he let them fall and I saw the hard-on straining against his yellowed underwear. He had a nasty Jack O' Lantern smile on his face as he rolled them down and started to masturbate.

I knew it was now or never. My head was still spinning but in another couple of minutes I knew that wouldn't matter. I don't believe I've ever moved faster. Pete didn't even have time to register surprise when I rolled over and crab-crawled across the short distance between us before leaping straight into his chest. The gun glanced off a rib on my right side but the sonofabitch didn't go off; I swear I heard a fucking click but nothing happened. He didn't drop it, though, and while he flailed and the curses rained down from behind us, we went to the ground in a dusty tumble.

It's amazing how fear and fighting for your life can clear the head. A bobcat would have had a hard time stopping me that day. A single bobcat. But I was looking at a stacked deck. I knew it was only a matter of seconds before Dingo jumped in, so I focused every ounce of strength and madness I possessed on getting that goddamn gun.

My initial charge had landed Pete on his fat ass but he hadn't dropped the gun. I buried two roundhouse punches into his soft gut and then grappled madly for the gun. But in another moment Dingo was on my back.

Desperation.

I leaned in and bit the living shit out of Pete's cheek. He howled like a woman and I tasted blood at the same instant my hand found the gun. I twisted it back as hard as I could and forced my finger into the trigger well and began firing. I didn't care who got hit; it went off twice.

Suddenly I felt the tension on the gun go limp. Pete stopped struggling and I tried to roll away, the gun somehow getting knocked from my hand. I just wanted one chance to run for it, figuring Pete, at least, was out of the race now. Of course I still had the worst of the two and as if to confirm this Dingo kicked me solidly in the stomach, screaming at the top of his lungs. I rolled a few feet over and crawled to my knees, my brain still spinning. But at least I was more in control of my senses.

I saw a flurry of activity around Pete, blinked my eyes trying to clear the dust. And a moment later is when I caught what felt like a school bus in the chest. It lifted me completely off the ground, landing me hard on my back, my feet straight up in the air. My right knee caught me square on the chin and stars flashed back across the screen of my vision. Only this time I could hear just fine.

"FUCKWAD!! YA KILT PETE!!"

I strained to focus, searching for the source of the screams. Before, I'd thought both these punks were crazy, with Dingo at the top of the list, but I'd been off by a little even with that. What I saw now made what I'd thought before pale underneath my reality. Madness was far too light a word to describe ole man Dingo. Satanic only touched it. He was standing by the prone, dirty body of his accomplice and his pants were up now, his belt buckled. I remember thinking that must have been what allowed me the time to deal with Pete: the motherfucker had been pulling his pants up. I wouldn't have thought that.

He drilled me with his eyes and I saw the gun in his hands. I groaned and turned over, pushing myself frantically to my feet. Then the gun drew a lead line to my face, Dingo still cursing a blue streak as I looked him directly in the eye. He pulled the trigger, and I remember thinking, This is it.

The hammer came down with a dry click.

Dingo's eyes grew wider (it must have been a trick of the light because I don't see how that was physically possible) and he pulled the trigger again.

Another dry click.

And with that I turned and ran like hell for the back of the rotten house. As I neared the edge of the sagging porch a blast ripped the air and a quarter-sized chunk of wood fragmented off a supporting two-by-four. I ducked, throwing my hands up wildly (as if that would somehow stop the bullets) and crab-ran now across the weedy backyard to what looked like a solid wall of waving grass and brambles at the properties' border. Two more bullets whistled by close enough to kill my shadow.

I dove into the grassy border like an Olympic diver going off the high board.

I tore through a seemingly solid wall of vines and thorns before hitting the ground and rolling to my feet, and began thrashing my way deeper into the morass. Razor grass and wild rose thorns gashed and tore me from everywhere, but the threats and gunshots from behind worried me a helluva lot worse.

I kicked and fought through the brambles, saw-grass, thorns, and cat tails for the better part of a year it seemed, or at least until the screams from behind were only faint, dying wails. And by then I was gasping for air. I could barely see out of my left eye (I had no idea how bad the right was), and my sides were cramping as if I'd swam on a full stomach. Dingo's maniacal insults and demands faded completely and I stopped.

For a moment.

Then I moved on, half-heartedly flailing at the wall of weeds and thorns with my bare arms. I heard no more gunshots.

Chapter 11:John

I awoke face-down later in darkness, one leg soaked to the knee in a pool of stagnant water that had leeched in a long, fat finger from a nearby ditch. Everything hurt. For a long, lost moment I wondered if Dingo had killed me and I now lay in some distant hell waiting for the torture to come on in full. I could see a little out of my left eye, but it took me awhile to make out anything concrete. But since it was cool I began to question whether or not I had indeed found my own private hell.

I moved and it really hurt, continuously, but even so I rolled over on my back and tried to smooth out my knotted muscles. I breathed slowly in and out, gradually taking the air into my lungs deeper and deeper, trying to convince myself I was still alive, waiting for the tell-tale stab of excruciating pain that would signal a punctured lung. Miraculously it did not come. I gradually began to make out stars overhead--a vast, high multitude, and for awhile I lay still, watching them, half-expecting some sign from those icy depths. None came. I tried to open my mouth and my head almost split open from the effort. I gingerly raised my hand and ran it over the goose egg my right eye had become. I hadn't the slightest idea how it had happened. I didn't remember the punch, only my knee connecting with my chin and the monstrous, bus-kick to the chest. Every breath hurt like hell, but I used the pain as evidence there was still enough life left to matter.

Finally, tired of staring at the opinion-less stars, I worked myself into a sitting position. It was like pushing a boulder uphill and I used a mound of dirt close by to support my back. Then I waited, tense with pain, several long moments for the new-found screams of bruised and inflamed muscles to die off and the fresh, ripping welts to ooze more blood. I closed my eyes and concentrated.

I was alive, by God. Alive. This was not hell.

Not in the best of shape, but still breathing. Pain could not stop the unbidden grin of relief. The scene with Dingo and Pete ran brokenly through my head, the sound of the two dry fires with the gun leveled at my chest, and I could not believe I'd actually gotten away. I thought again of those twenty-three dollars, the poor girl in the ice chest.

It had not damned me.

As surprising as that seemed, somehow I'd managed to shake free of the Reaper. But I also knew to the depths of my soul those bills would never be spent (I'd kept them separate from the rest like some ill-thought-out talisman). They deserved a decent burial of their own and I would keep the driver's license like a revved-up St. Christopher's medal. My religious icon a woman I'd never known, killed for a reason that would probably never be discovered. Regardless, some more deserving people had lesser legacies.

The only thing that didn't hurt was the soles of my feet and the tips of my fingers. Even my hair weighed a fucking ton, felt like it was stretching my scalp. Had that child-molesting motherfucker pulled it? Unclear, but it felt like it. I examined my face and hoped nothing was broken. I could only pray my eye was okay somewhere down in the depths of that huge lump. So, no doubt I was a mess but bruises would fade. I felt the lump in my pocket and knew the money was still there. And that was the hardest thing to believe; after everything, they hadn't even robbed me. Goddamn, fucking amateurs.

But the question remained: What the hell was I going to do? I didn't remember much of the mad dash from Dingo; there was only an image of the morass of stinging grass and thorns, and looking around it was clear I'd not broken completely free of that wilderness yet. What I had taken for a ditch—that which I was now staring into--was in fact the crooked remains of a creek bed that held but a dribble of water. I scrabbled over painfully and used it to clean my wounds as best I could. After which I was keenly aware of my pervasive exhaustion. I was powerfully hungry too, but there was no ready remedy for that. I couldn't eat grass, or mud. I had to be thankful my pants leg was the only thing wet I had on. The rest was dirty, filthy even, and sliced to ribbons, but it was better than nothing. I was just lucky it was too cool for mosquitoes because they'd put a true hurting on me.

I couldn't complain. I was alive, miraculously alive. And with this somewhat comforting realization I curled up next to a cypress stump and faded off into another abandon of death-like sleep.

***

Morning, a thin stream of light. When I finally managed to pry my left eye open I found it was not the sun which had awakened me. The humidity had. A thick blanket of mist drifted in among the creek bed and bordering grasses, like a gossamer cloud drifting just above the ground. I was as stiff as a leather strap left out in the sun, and when I moved my joints popped loudly. I felt the knot that made up the tissue around my right eye and hoped I wasn't imagining that the swelling had receded a little over night. There was a prehistoric taste in my mouth that denied explanation. I stretched against the pain until I was finally able to stand up. Then I looked around through the slit of my left eye.

What was the old castaway saying: Water, water everywhere? Yeah, only the color of this sea was different: grass green to straw brown. My stomach screamed for food, howled long and loud for it; the last thing I'd eaten was that Snickers bar at the Greyhound station. I had no idea what had happened to the Milky Way I'd bought before getting kidnapped. But first things first.

It was time to move. Okay, where? No idea, but to remain would be no better than taking a bullet from Dingo. I could shudderingly picture that demon methodically picking through the foliage and undergrowth, those eyes as wide and round as dinner plates as he sniffed me out. And sore or not, that was finally what got me going.

Rather than attempt another foray into the razor grass I decided to follow the creek. It had to go somewhere, everything did, and if I happened upon Dingo in the process...well, thems the breaks. I needed a road, anything mildly suggesting civilization. I had no idea what a random motorist would make of me, but I didn't care. I would die of exposure and starvation if I didn't do something quick.

And as far as I could tell there was only one thing left to do.

I kicked a trench in the soft mud which clung to the side of the creek. Then I fished out the twenty-three dollars I'd filched from the dead woman's wallet, rolled it into a slim tube, and placed it gingerly, respectfully, into the hole. I closed my eyes, waited for what I thought a sufficiently solemn moment to pass, and raked the dirt over the bills.

Then I turned to follow wherever the creek led.

***

No more than a half-hour later I paused, cocked my head in the general direction to be sure, my heart pounding in my chest. But yes, it was unmistakable! The sound of cars flying by on asphalt somewhere ahead.

By now the creek had receded into a deepening cleft in the soft, spongy ground, and it took concentrated effort to stay out of the water because the mud which lined the bank had an irresistible pull, and thick clusters of tall grass grew right up to its edge. The creek had grown from a trickle to a flowing turgidity, and just staying out of the gumbo-mud on the periphery was hard enough.

I'd finally managed to coax my right eye open (if even through a thinner slit than the left), and when I saw the culvert all my lingering aches and pains pulled back. I ducked underneath an overhanging, lichen-encrusted limb from a leaning live oak and let out a yell of triumph when I saw the bridge stanchions no more than thirty feet farther along. Concrete stanchions, not wooden. So it wouldn't be some lost farm road on the ass-end of nowhere. I wanted a state highway. An interstate if I was lucky. If I climbed the bank and found a whole contingent of State Troopers waiting patiently on the shoulder I would have considered the day a ringer. Just as long as I didn't see that bastard Dingo.

I started up the side, grabbing any stray root and embedded rock that looked capable of supporting my weight, and I must have looked like a dung beetle going up that embankment. But it was pretty quick going if you didn't mind the mud and by that time I was past caring. When I pulled myself to street level I got the weirdest feeling I was looking past the edge of the world, at something I'd never been meant to see.I was panting, gasping with every move. Several cars passed as I crawled out of the undergrowth to the shoulder. Nobody saw me, or if they did they didn't let on. The sun was, in contrast to the days before, choking hot which is not out of the ordinary in Louisiana at just about any time of the year, and things suddenly got real hazy. The next thing I remember was waking up face down, the back of my neck burning. I raised myself to one knee and looked right and left. Highway stretched away in a shimmer of pavement. I heard an engine approaching and held my thumb out, wavering like some drunk fresh off a bender.

It was a motorcycle, slowing as the rider saw me and moved over to the shoulder. I tottered over in the heat, putting down one arm, still keeping the other out, thumb up. The bike throttled down from several hundred yards away. It pulled over to the side of the road and idled. All I could make out was a burly form hunched above ape-hanger handlebars, the rider's face lost amid a cloud of hair and helmet shoved down tightly on the crown of his head.

I could no longer stay upright and collapsed in the gravel by the shoulder. I heard one word before I lapsed into unconscious. "Goddamn," the biker said as he pulled within feet of me. Then nothing.

***

I don't know how much time passed. I was lost in a deep, dreamless world of nothing at all, quiet and still as death is imagined to be, but very gradually sound crept back into my brain. Crickets scratching away somewhere in the grass, a far lost drone of passing vehicles. When I opened my eyes I saw nothing, continuing the illusion of being lost in a void. But I could hear a voice.

"Easy, little buddy," the voice said. I felt a warm, soothing hand pressed against my forehead and for a moment I thought it was my grandmother's, come back from the grave to comfort me in whatever new hell I'd descended to. And that was actually what boosted me the rest of the way to consciousness. I remember wondering what right she had in a place like that, was actually on the verge of real anger as I came around, but when I opened my eyes it was not her face I saw.

The face was male, bearded and sun-burnt like some farmers I'd seen on a National Geographic special, bright questioning green eyes hidden behind what looked to be perpetually-squinted lids. Now I noticed the roughness of his hand and the curl of scar just to the right of his pug nose. His teeth were as thick as alligator claws. I coughed weakly and the hand swept across my mouth, wiping away whatever I'd choked up. Another rough, calloused hand cradled the back of my neck and before I could form a single thought I was fully upright. The bearded face before me again. And thankfully, instead of madness this time, I saw concern. The man's lips moved but it took several moments more before I could understood anything, like his words were filtering down to me through a funnel stuffed with cotton. But before I could reply I gagged again and felt a gigantic tearing sensation in my chest, like muscle pulling away from bone. His hand clapped my back gently, holding the back of my neck for support as I gagged and threw up between my legs.

"Easy now, go easy," I heard. I couldn't tell if it was day or night. I tried to whisper thanks to this new savior but couldn't find the power to do so. The face came into focus again; his eyes golden-green I now saw, like little pieces of amber reflecting in a vast field. "Don't try an talk," he added gruffly, once again reminding me of the care my grandmother had given until she was gone, though not in her tone. "Relax, everything's gonna be all right."

I almost laughed at that one until I lapsed into another uneasy passing.

***

It was better the second time around. My head didn't pound as badly and the pain in my face and chest had lessened. And I noticed it was much cooler now. I raised my head and looked around. A campfire was burning close by and the crackling wood lent a certain comfort I hadn't felt in months, since well before Grandma died. The biker was sitting next to it, holding a long stick over the flames with what looked like a rabbit stretched along its length. The smell reached my nostrils and my stomach immediately began to perform summersaults. I grunted and rocked back, trying to hold it in place and with the movement he looked my way and smiled, went easily to his feet and walked over to me. He was tall, not a single ounce of fat it appeared, dressed in black head to toe, the shirt sleeveless of course though there were no tattoos which was a surprise. It was then I noticed I was covered in a blanket and it was full night. Always it seems, as if I was lost in some dark realm that refused to surrender itself to the light of day.

The biker squatted down. He held out the stick and the wafting smell of cooked rabbit brought on spasms of near hysteria. "Take it," he said and handed me the stick. I grabbed the hot meat with my bare hands and began woofing it down like a starved dog. I remember hearing him laugh gently as I went berserk on that rabbit.

***

His name was John Brady, just like the guy who got the worst of it when Reagan was shot. Makes me wonder, you know, if maybe some names are just flat unlucky from the get-go. Said he was in the area for a Harley convention and that was understandable, his bike was a real beaut. Shovel-nose, chrome and leather. I half-expected to hear police sirens in the distance coming to nab his ass, but that goddamn rabbit was good! By the time I managed to mumble my thanks a pile of broken and gnawed bones lay at my feet. Just tearing through it like a dog on a T-bone. In retrospect, it was a good thing he cut the head off or I'd've eaten that too. And the whole time I went barbarian Brady sat quiet by the fire, looking over at me every once in a while and stirring the coals of the fire with the tip of his boot.  
When I finished I gathered up the scattered fragments of skin and bone and walked over, dumped them on the fire. It was then he told me his name (no ominous portents since Reagan's assassination attempt was only an unknown arc of potential in the future) and where he came from. Miami Beach, Florida, the Sunshine State, he added grinning so broadly the beard below his mouth bobbed around like a disembodied cloud. I thanked him again for the rabbit and he shook it off.

"What gorilla tangled w'chu?" he asked. Up close, his wrinkled, sunburned eyelids only added to his sinister persona, and I suddenly felt very wary again. This guy made Dingo look like a junior high kiss-ass.

"Some dudes snatched me off a bus in Bossier," I told him, glancing off into the crackling night, fireside. "Broad daylight. Driver never even stopped to count passengers, I guess."

"Near a Big R?"

I thought that had been the name of the place; I wasn't a hundred percent sure, but I thought so.

He looked away, but continued talking. "Paper says police found a body right down the road from a Big R near Montgomery Exit Ramp. Near Bossier City. Hell of a thing, ain't it? In a construction site dumpster, as a matter of fact...some old house being renovated, it said. Nobody seen nothing." His information trailed away and I felt the skin around my mouth tighten.

He lit up and pulled long and hard on a cigarette that he flipped deftly from his T-shirt pocket before giving me the next little tidbit. "Papers also say the guy'd been picked up before for kidnappin'. Molestin' kids an shit." He stopped and picked a piece of tobacco from his tongue, examined it in the firelight, and tossed it away. "Odd bit, ain't it?"

I rubbed a hand across my mouth, already aware of the trickle of ice-cold sweat skimming down my spine. I shrugged, hoping to buy time until I decided what options I had. Surely this guy wasn't a cop, but what if he knew Dingo or Pete? And where the hell was I if I did make a break for it? He had a bike I could never hope to outdistance. Before I could go any further he continued.

"I been to jail once, kid. One summer got mixed up with some other stupid assholes and robbed a convenience store." He shuck his head and grimaced into the campfire. "Fifty-four fuckin dollars we split three ways! Did nine months for that one an it was a hard lesson. But I learned a lot more in the joint, kid. One of the most important things was child molesters are scum, pure scum. They don't usually last long in the joint either. So when I hear about things like that Big R, I don't waste time worryin about the guy in the dumpster. I'm just glad he ain't ever gettin another chance to do what he done before."

And when he looked back into my eyes his face held our mighty secret.

We rode together until he was killed less than two months later. It happened on a country road running through a cotton field in Alabama. Bad goddamn timing was all it really amounted to. And of all people an ex-sheriff, the sonofabitch who pulled the trigger.

This is why.

***

September 16, 1982, William Robertson got a visit from hell. He'd been a sheriff then; he would carry his badge another six months from that date as well, but it was effectively over when the clock struck twelve that night. September 16th was the day he stopped being a law enforcement officer, the day he stopped being anything at all. Not that he'd ever needed to be anything in the first place. His father, William "Big Bill" Robertson, had controlled a large slice of the economic lifeblood of the Alabama Gulf Coat in the late 40's and 50's. Tourism wasn't the monster it is now, then, but it was nothing to sneeze at. He bought land cheap through connections he had in Memphis and Mobile, built motels and roadside restaurants, and sold large. He even managed to play the hurricanes right through some left-handed deals by insurance brokers he wined and dined on a regular basis. He was mayor when he died in '59 running for an uncontested third straight term in office. He left behind a wife (already in her mid 60's) and a teen-age son. The only child the marriage ever produced even though for years they'd tried. And then: bang, she was pregnant at forty-four. The doctor said it'd be a miracle if she carried to term, another miracle if the baby was born with only mild physical or mental defects. Big Bill believed the doctor full of shit and told him so. He said it was a wonder anybody got delivered alive with the "medical whackos we got around here," and vowed to prove the man wrong with an unassisted home birth. Of course the doctor knew of Robertson's reputation and did his best to talk the man down, but it was to no effect. Big Bill kept his wife at home and delivered his son himself (under the eye of a midwife) to spite the sonofabitch.

And the boy turned out fine, the spitting image of his old man with just a paintbrush sketch of his mother behind the lines. The townsfolk wrung their hands in envy and wiped their brows contemplating his good fortune. Some estimated Big Bill's wealth at 100 million, some at 200. In actuality, it was just shy of 30 million, but with the median salary at the time around $15,000 a year it didn't really make a helluva lot of difference. In the mix was also over a quarter million acres of land both in Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The old man's list of friends read like a Republican fund raiser list. The boy would have been able to do anything in the world. Absolutely anything at all. It just so happened he wanted to be a deputy sheriff.

Perhaps if Big Bill had lived a little longer things would have been different for his only son. Maybe he would've been able to talk his boy into something less dangerous, more prestigious maybe. After all, here was a young man with unlimited resources. Why not investments like his old man or even a construction company? Little Will told Big Bill several times he intended on becoming a sheriff, but of course the old man laughed it off, said it was 'kid's stuff'. After all, every boy wanted to be a cop or fireman, didn't they? he'd laugh, pounding one of his friends on the back. That's what kept the toy manufacturers cranking out all those rescue vehicles, ladder trucks, paddy wagons. Most of them grew out of it by the time they got to high school. And so Big Bill died believing his son's wish was no more than a whim of childhood. He was hardly two years in the grave when William entered the police academy.

Of course when he was done, as Big Bill would have expected, Will came dutifully home to mother, living in the families' rambling and largely vacant estate until she died at the age of seventy-three. He worked for the Broward County Sheriff's Department then (his checks on automatic deposit or they would have never been cashed at all), and only missed two work days up until that fateful day in '82 when she passed. One for the wake and one for the funeral. Then he was back as if nothing had happened, the only sign of grief the fact that he put in double shifts continually for the next four months.

He moved out of the family home during this period. Nailed sheets of three-quarter inch plywood over the doors and windows, let the yard go wild. One day a pre-fabricated Martin Home was spotted weaving its way beneath the power lines of Millburg, headed out toward the Robertson place. He had the thing set up directly behind his parents' house at such an angle from the street that no one could see it, at least not until you'd left the drive, but not many people did because of the firearms and dogs. And that was where he lived until September 16, 1982.

That was the day of the Harley Davidson convention in Biloxi. It was billed to be the biggest payday in years for the town and since being a sheriff gave him a pretty broad scope, William signed on for crowd control. It wasn't so bad: two days comp at the beach watching over a lot of drunk bikers. They'd come before and never caused much trouble, and it wasn't like Will Jr. couldn't appreciate a good scrap every now and again. There were plenty of guys at his former high school who would have readily attested to that.

On the second night it happened. A big, keg party on the beach got out of hand. Several idiots showed up on Hondas. "Fuckin rice-eater's bikes" in the vernacular of the Harley crew who were drunker and in greater numbers. Robertson had been sitting in his squad car not two hundred feet away (making sure the bonfire on the beach didn't get out of hand) when a little bit of ribbing turned into a full-blown argument. A Biloxi unit had been right down the way, but the situation didn't looked like anything Will couldn't handle himself. A little straight-forward authority with hand firmly on the butt of a revolver tended to get things cleared up pretty fast.

He had about forty feet between him and the fire when the argument erupted into a fist-fight. Roughly a handful of Honda riders versus a seeming Hell's Angels' contingent. With his left hand William pulled out his walkie-talkie to alert the unit down the beach and with his right, the .45 Colt crowd disperser. A couple of well-placed shots above their heads was usually enough to bring all activity to a halt, and as he ran forward, holding back until the last minute, he didn't know what else was about to happen.

And that was not a good thing.

One incredibly asinine and drunk non-participant in the fight decided on a little vengeance of his own. He grabbed the handlebars of one of the Hondas and rolled it over into the bonfire. He had about fifteen seconds to admire his handiwork before the gas tank exploded. Pieces of the unfortunate idiot and the bike became flying shrapnel.Robertson was on the fringe of the melee, when a guy standing next to him had his head caved in by a flying exhaust pipe, and Robertson lost his right hand, his gun hand, at the wrist by a serrated sliver of the tank which continued on and buried itself in the windshield of his cruiser. Another foot and he'd have been all right; another foot and Brady would still be alive today.

He was in the hospital for two months, on sick leave for another four. And then his badge went away like a dream in the morning. He received a nice dime from the State for being disabled in the line of duty, but what the hell did he need money for? He'd had plenty of that before he enrolled in the Academy. So he went home and locked himself away.

But the sonofabitch learned to shoot left-handed.

***

We were cruising through Alabama, entertaining a vague notion of heading to Florida for reasons pretty well lost to memory now; a lot of things stick, a lot of things don't. Regardless, we couldn't have known without somebody telling us that we were driving highways surrounded on both sides by mile upon mile of land owned by the craziest, motorcycle-hating motherfucker who ever walked the earth.

It'd been a long day and even though John knew about my money and wasn't exactly broke himself, a motel was out of the question. He said he liked to sleep outside whenever possible, under the stars where "you could soak in the universe," and after a few nights out I came under the same mind. It really wasn't bad, all you needed was a can of OFF and a sleeping bag. Everything else took care of itself.

The weather had been nice for the last couple of days and there still wasn't a sign of rain in the sky. Soybean fields stretched out to the left and right, seemingly endless fields. Every once in awhile a scarecrow or tractor would break the monotony of the landscape. I bet we didn't pass a car for better than two hours at a stretch; like we were the last ones left on earth, and I gotta tell ya the feeling was not bad.

Not bad for a ghost, anyway.

Right about dusk John spotted the creek winding off to the left, pooling (it appeared) in a little decline near a small copse of trees. Not a goddamn fence in sight either. We pulled over to the side of the road, pondering how feasible a place it was for the night. I bet no more than two farm trucks, one loaded with chickens, the other with pigs, had passed us since noon. The weather was cool enough to keep all but the most persistent mosquitoes away and the little copse of woods would surely have enough fallen debris lying around to provide a nice campfire. It looked like just the spot.

What we didn't know was right around the next bend, sitting alone in a mobile home where the power had been disconnected for almost three months, drinking straight gin from a Mason jar, sat a one-handed ex-sheriff itching to fuck somebody up. Just another one of life's little surprises. And the sonofabitch must have had ears like a bat because we didn't go screaming into the fallow field; we just rolled in real quiet, walking the bike in more or less with John's size thirteen leather boots. I had supper in my backpack (Slim Jims and trail mix) and we were both pretty tired.

It was right before dark we heard the sound of the ATV. I remember looking down at the gooseflesh pimpling my arms as if a horde of mosquitoes had only recently abandoned ship. We had a small fire going, hardly enough to be seen from the road, and we really weren't expecting any trouble. The day had been far too peaceful. And it wasn't the first time we'd camped out wherever we got tired. Two other times we'd been discovered, once by the law and once by a landowner. Both had turned into lively discussions about traveling and bikes. No big deal. We told anyone who happened to ask we were father and son, and that was that. My hair was getting long and the beard had come along pretty well by that time too. I could pass for anywhere between seventeen and twenty-five. But no one ever seemed to care, or notice really. Just as if I were no more than a mere reflection in a mirror, caught briefly with a sidelong glance.

Anyway, when we heard it John stood up and squinted in that direction. He didn't say anything but I could tell he was uneasy, immediately on alert. He pulled his long hair back into a pony-tail while the noise grew. The other times people had come from the road; this one came from a clump of woods about a half-mile off.

As the noise got louder we began to make out a bobbing Q-beam of light cutting through what must have been a very rough trail through the woods. And the sound was large, throaty, one of the bigger ATV's; one of those bastards that could haul a bear out of the deepest woods. Or a man. I shivered as the thought washed over me, thinking back about that dark mansion and the dead girl in the ice chest.

Brady continued squinting into the darkness, completely motionless, watching the bob of light grow. He turned to me just before it broke free of the tree line. By the way it throttled up it wouldn't take long to cross the remaining four or five hundred yards of open field. John didn't look scared but his eyes were wary. "Be cool, kid. Anything goes down, you just be cool." I nodded for answer, watching as he hitched up his pant leg over the top of his right boot, the one where he kept the knife. I'd never seen him do that before. The gooseflesh rippled along my legs too, underneath the jeans. It seemed like it got suddenly colder. The lights were no more than two hundred yards away, coming fast.

My first thought when I saw the man riding the ATV was, 'What's a guy like him doing on that?' The machine was remarkable, didn't look more than two or three months old, and it was a big one, deer rack on the back, huge grill on the front in case you needed to really get serious and run over, say, a ten or twelve year old tree. But the thing sitting in the seat holding on with one hand, was more apparition than man. A ghoul. Then he was upon us, dragging a dust cloud behind him that rolled across us as he idled loudly ten feet away. The first thing I noticed were the house slippers, old ragged pieces of shit it looked like he pulled out of a Dollar General dumpster. They were stained in what looked like either shit or puke. Maybe both. He didn't have on a shirt and his jeans must have come from the same dumpster. His ponderous belly was fish-white and speckled with what looked like tobacco juice and cigarette ashes. His face and head were cleanly shaven, his eyes little crystals of insanity. His cheek puffed out on one side like a balloon and right before he spoke he spit a great wad of tobacco juice into the dust not far from the toe of John's boot. The rest went down to spackle the huge belly.

"Wha'da fuck you boys doin?" he said, and I could smell the alcohol from where I stood. John moved over a couple steps to get between me and the nut on the ATV. He tried to sound good-natured, though I could hear the line of tension thrumming in his voice. He wasn't the kind of guy who took being cursed at well. Especially not from some slovenly mutant like this one.

"Just resting for the night," he attempted and the man spat again. John shut his mouth.

"Restin, huh? Know you restin on private prop'ty?" The fat man's eyes glinted like a coal-stoking demon's in the light from the campfire.

John put his hands on his hips. "Didn't see any Trespassing signs and didn't plan on staying long, mister. Just pulled in with the boy to rest for the night until we get on toward Florida in the morning."

I'd moved over enough to get a bead on the drunk and I could tell he wasn't looking at John at all, but at the bike parked over by the fire. John said something else I didn't hear, and the man spat again, a little closer to the boot this time. John didn't move and I held my breath.

The fat guy's mouth drew up in a tight circle around the huge chunk of tobacco and he turned his attention back to John. "That your bike, big man?"

This time John didn't reply. He grunted.

And that's when the fat bastard pulled a gun from a sack he had strapped near the gas tank. A big, shiny one that caught the color of the flames from our fire along its deadly black length. He went to wipe his sweaty, bald forehead and I saw he had no hand on that side. Just a mottled stump.

"Fuckin hate bikes," the lunatic spat.

John stepped up instead of back. I noticed his foot came down squarely where the wad of tobacco juice had just landed. "That so?" he said.

"Gotdamn right, that's so. An the only thing worse 'an bikes is gotdamn bikers." He wasn't pointing the gun yet but I could tell he wanted to. The situation was about to erupt and I leaped in to try and diffuse it.

"John," I pleaded. "Let's just go." I looked over at the lunatic. "We don't want trouble, mister. We'll put out the fire and leave."

He just smiled and spit again. This time it hit John's boot and the gun leveled on my friend. The lunatic shook his head. "Doan think so, lil man. See, trespassin's a crime 'round hea. This hea is my land you goddamn tramps are burnin up!"

It appeared from the look on John's face he was through talking. The gun wasn't leaving his chest either. I wiped a sweating hand across my mouth. "Like I said," I began, holding my hands out to placate the bastard. "We're not looking for trouble. We didn't know. You don't like it, we'll get the hell out!"

The lunatic laughed this time, a sound that broke the night like a stick over a dog's back. He turned his eyes back to John. "This your lil faggot?" he asked. John said nothing. "Lil faggot for a wild biker fucker? That it?" Again no answer. I heard as the hammer of the .45 was pulled back. John wasn't moving, wasn't talking. The only thing I could see was the back of his head.

I made a final play. "Look mister. We ain't faggots and we ain't here to fuck with your land! You don't want us here, we'll leave! There's no sense in this getting out of hand!" He smirked and spat again on John's other boot and I wondered morbidly if the fucker was half as accurate with the handgun. Not that he really had to be; it couldn't have been more than ten feet separating the two.

"Naw, naw, naw!" he barked and laughed that eerie laugh again. "It ain't always that people gets what they wants." He held up his stump of a hand so we could get a good look. "I din't ask for this, but Ah gotdamn well got it!" The gun wasn't coming down and it wasn't shaking. "Le me tell ya how ya go 'bout getting shit ya doan want!"

And for the next ten minutes he rattled off the story of the bonfire, the bikers, the explosion. Every word is as fresh in my head today as it was the night I stood listening to it under that humid, cloudy sky. And the whole time he rambled on the gun never left the circle he'd described on John's chest.

When he finished he got quiet for a moment. I didn't see any chance of honest escape. Of course I could've made a break for the pond but that wouldn't have done John a damn bit of good. In fact that was probably what the crazy fucker wanted me to do all along. He was itching to squeeze that trigger, just looking for an excuse, tiny as that might be. He spit again and his aim was a little off; it went directly between John's legs.

"So now ya know why I doan like fuckin bikin tresspassin assholes on my fuckin land," he growled like a rabid dog. I didn't say a damn thing; it was useless. I just waited for the bomb to go off. John provided the fuse.

He said, "Okay, mister. I get your point, but I really don't give a flying fuck what some one-handed shit-for-brains has to say."

That's when I hit the dirt.

I didn't see the first shot but I damn sure heard it. The gun was a cannon. Some images raced past but others dragged along at a snail's pace. I know it doesn't sound right, but that's the best way I can describe it. And lots of things go the same way. Sometimes I'll think back to a particular moment and it really doesn't seem like it took place that long ago, but then all the things that have happened since start rolling through my head and it's almost like that one thing should have taken place much longer ago than it actually had. Time has a strange way of fucking with you: December takes nine months to pass when you're a kid waiting for Santa Claus, but the older you get, it keeps peeking around the corner every month or so. I guess it's all just a matter of perspective.

And the perspective I had that night came with my nose pressed flat to the ground. God knows how long that fucker had been waiting to really go off and we'd walked right into it like mice going after a hunk of cheese.

For a tall, gangling guy John was no slouch when it came to moving fast. I guess looking like he did he was used to sensing trouble and then reacting, and I don't really think it would have set good with him for some washed-out, one-handed drunk to get the best of him without a hell of a fight.

He wouldn't have gotten up from that first shot if not.

It took him in the shoulder, sprayed the whole area with blood and bone. Something nicked me hard in the forehead and I guess that was a piece of him. I didn't even notice until later when I was far away but I remembered. So many things I remember... It took him completely off his feet and threw him backwards, sending him down like a tree in a storm. He rolled just as another bolt of lightning flew out of the end of that goddamn cannon. And that's the part that went fast.

This is what went slow. I stared across the lingering dust at the lunatic straddling the ATV as he cocked the hammer back one more time. I'm sure he could have simply pulled the trigger and finished John off, but he'd waited for this moment a while from the look in his eyes. He wanted to make a game of it, to savor every second. And in the meantime the sonofabitch had completely forgotten about me.

I fanned my hand through the dust, almost knowing I'd find the stone there in front of me before actually finding it. It was a little bit bigger than a golf ball but not nearly as smooth. I'd never thrown anything except a football a couple of times in my life when I went up on one knee and let that damn thing go. The chances I had of hitting the tobacco-chewing maniac couldn't have been better than one-in-a-thousand, and the chances of hitting him in the head higher than that. But that's exactly where I hit the sonofabitch.

His next shot went wild, but not by much. Out of the corner of my eye I saw it kick up a big chunk of dirt not a foot away from John's right kneecap at the same instant the monster ATV reared up on its back two wheels like a renegade horse throwing a cowboy. I guess the fucker had kept his stump on the accelerator. It kicked him off the back and rolled a few yards ahead, coming to a rumbling stop like it had a mind of its own and pissed off about not being able to finish business. The fat guy landed on his back hard, but not hard enough.

He decided right about then he'd better deal with me too. I subsequently froze like a dumbass and it'd been the end for sure if John hadn't pulled through. His left arm was hanging like a loosely-attached strip of cowhide in his blazing red shirt, but the knife was in his right hand. And as the .45 swung around to find me, he leapt after the bastard who'd just shot him.

John hit him high and I watched the gun do a lazy circle in the air before coming down a few feet away from the scrabbling pair. The lunatic may have had only one hand but his madness made up for the handicap. It looked like two devils fighting over a yard of hell and I saw the knife flash in the campfire light exactly twice before burying in the lunatic's chest. His eyes never even registered; he just kept swinging and cursing and John twisted the knife and pinned him down with the little strength he had left.

It wasn't quite enough. The lunatic threw one massive roundhouse to the side of John's head and my friend went over on his side, his eyes rolling to the top of his head. Blood poured in a fountain from what was left of his shoulder. Then the lunatic struggled to his feet.

His eyes were wild and lost now as he pulled the Bowie knife out of his chest. A great gush of dark blood spilled out like a plug had been pulled from a drain and I thought he was gonna go down but he didn't. He coughed up something that could have either been tobacco juice or blood and I started for the gun. There was no doubt that he fully intended to kill me.

It was the only purpose he had left.

Time sped up again and I scrambled across the dusty ground trying to get the .45 before the lunatic spotted it. I dove for it like sliding into second base and spun around, trying to find the trigger well before the knife sunk between my shoulder blades.

He was no more than five feet away, swaying on his feet. My hands were shaking so badly the gun fell to the ground and my knee twisted behind me. I went down hard on my ass and looked up waiting for it to come.

The lunatic fought through another violent rack of coughing and his eyes started to glaze over. It looked just like somebody drawing the blinds in a darkened house. He tried to take another step forward and lost his balance, spilling in a heavy thump, the knife coming down hard in his hand, sinking into the ground inches away from my left foot. His stump beat at the ground as if demanding a last rage and he did manage to roll over to his back. He breathed deeply once, his eyes still open as the blood boiled out of his mouth, but I knew he was done.

I immediately rushed over to John, lying ten feet away in a lake of blood. He was still breathing but his eyes were lost. That's the thing I remember most vividly. There was no pain or fear in those eyes, just a vast aching exhaustion. He tried to speak but couldn't. I already knew the artery was severed but there was very little pressure left. The blood only welled out in short, weak little burps. And no way to tie it off.

I got down on my knees and took his face in my hands. And that's when he died. No shouts, no startling insights, no vital last words. His mouth parted a fraction of an inch and then his face lost all expression.

And with that he was gone.

Chapter 12: N.O.

I should have packed up and left right then but I couldn't. Seeing John lying there dead, the blood still draining weakly from the mess that had been his shoulder turned a wicked lever in my head. I'd just lost a true friend, maybe my last. Of course, there'd been Blinkie but a certain vileness of memory remained and I'd really been grateful, even relieved, being quit of her. But this was different. I saw John stepping in front of the lunatic to shield me from the gunshot; I saw us pulling off the highway and setting up camp only a couple hours before that; I saw the stars perched in the sky exactly as they'd been as he'd sat and smoked earlier, and I really couldn't believe it. Not even a little bit.

And as the frogs in the pond began voicing their complaints at the broken silence, I looked at the lunatic lying in his own pool of expanding blood. Scarcely human really, though not much different than when he'd been alive. The only difference now was he just looked dead. A guy who'd wanted to murder me minutes before for no good reason; I saw in the dying light from the campfire exactly where the rock had struck him. There was a welt above his right eye, not much different than the one I was still carrying around after my encounter with the child molesters.

But there was one major difference: I was alive and that motherfucker wasn't.

I walked over and picked up the .45. The goddamn thing was still warm, still breathing of death. And for the next five minutes or so I meticulously wiped it clean of every print, going over every inch of it with a greasy rag I found in the saddlebag John carried on the Harley. When I was finished I threw it in the pond. The frogs stopped protesting for a moment, seemed to catch their breath, and then began again, further enraged at my impertinence.

I guessed the Hog was mine now, but before I worked up the courage to rifle John's pockets for the keys I kicked dirt on the campfire until it smoldered weakly beneath a blanket of glowing dust. There were no cars on the highway, no flashing lights rushing to investigate the cannon shots in the night. The ATV still grumbled ominously a couple of feet away and I walked over and killed the engine. I put the keys in my pocket, looking over one more time at John Brady lying dead on the ground. Then I went and got his keys. I knew he deserved better but nothing came to mind. Except a helluva lot of explaining to do if I chose to hang around. And after the lunatic's story I seriously doubted any lawman in the area would give a tin shit about anything I'd have to say.

But there was one thing left to do.

I got on the bike, careful to scrape away the footprints I'd left in the dirt. Of course there was nothing I could do about the bike tracks, but even then I didn't figure there was much chance of getting caught. I hadn't up until that point and didn't think much would change in the immediate future. I wasn't made to be caught, it seems, and I knew it then just like I know it now.

I'm here to witness.

I fired up the bike and pulled away to the road. I already knew which direction the lunatic had come from.

A half mile down the highway I saw the lonely, wrought-iron gate at the end of a gravel drive. It might as well have been a fucking neon sign with a big finger pointing left because I didn't even consider anybody else living at its end; something told me the lunatic had lived alone. And on the off chance someone was there...so be that too. There comes an end to everything, right?

I wheeled around to the left and up the drive, pulling up to the front porch with the headlight on Bright. At that moment I was just as crazy as the motherfucker who'd just shot John. If someone had appeared at the front door I would have cranked up the Hog and roared up the stairs and inside like one of the Horseman of the Apocalypse.

But no one did. I killed the engine, killed the light.

The front door was no longer sealed off, the plywood was propped at an angle against the porch railing and when I tried the lock it was open. I pushed it and it creaked away to darkness. A Coleman lantern sat directly in the middle of what passed for the living room which contained, other than the lantern, a single couch. Nothing else. It looked like he hadn't been much for company. I tried the light switch and nothing happened, though I already suspected that. The guy had been a time bomb wanting to explode.

I walked across the foyer and down the hall to the kitchen, passing an antique grandfather clock on the way. It still ticked loudly, proclaiming the right time in a country somewhere half around the world. It turned out to be one of the few things in the house that still worked. Another was the gas range. I turned all four burners on High. And in the orange glow that flickered and danced across the walls and ceiling, I turned, hunting for something to feed it.

There wasn't a goddamn magazine or newspaper in the whole damn place, so I grabbed one of the wooden chairs at the table, lifted it above my head, and smashed it down on the dirty, tiled floor. It broke apart like kindling, which was, ironically, what it was going to be. By the time I finished piling the broken legs and back on top of the range there was only two or three inches to the vent hood.

The kitchen was getting plenty hot by that time and I walked back down the hall to the foyer. There was a staircase off to my left past the grandfather clock, but it wouldn't have mattered if the fucking Crown Jewels of England were somewhere safely put away in a box up there. I just wanted the whole fucking place to burn like nothing ever burned before.

I left the front door open when I left and kicked the Hog into first gear, watching the flames really begin to swirl down that long dark hallway. I left about half as fast as I came.

And the oddity? For the next twenty-five minutes I didn't pass the first car. After that I passed one about every thirty seconds.

***

By the time daylight rolled around I was resting at a roadside park somewhere between Nowhere and Almost Somewhere. I think it was still Alabama. As I smoked the last of John's filter-less cigarettes I contemplated my moves. Florida seemed out of the question now; that was his home, not mine. The only place I thought of in the same mind was Arkansas, but I didn't picture myself riding the Hog all the way up there. I figured my luck with the police was bound to dry up sooner or later, and a young guy on a Harley would draw attention quick in the Bible Belt. Invisible or not.

I needed somewhere to fade into the scenery without anyone batting an eye. A sizeable place, preferably a decadent one. New Orleans came immediately to mind. Sin City, a place that spoke of negatives even in the acronym of its name. And what, you may wonder, was I expecting when I got there? I had no fucking clue.

Early morning till noon I spent in search of the bastard interstate. I didn't dare try a convenience store because I had no idea what the news was reporting by now. It felt like the stench of blood, madness, and fire stilled swirled about me like a malevolent ghost wanting one last feed, so I stayed on the road. Then, just outside a dust-bucket town called Arlenville I spotted a familiar green highway marker. It mentioned nothing about New Orleans, but it did point me in the direction of I-10. Idling by the side of the road I checked the gas gauge. It was a hair over half a tank and I hoped that would be enough; I wasn't going across the world, just back to Louisiana.

I coasted through a long, green stretch of Mississippi in the early afternoon hours, almost losing myself several times in the forested isolation. The only time I felt the knife-edge of panic was when I thought a Highway Patrol car was following me. I kept waiting for the flashers on top to come on, a loud, commanding voice to direct me to the shoulder. I kept the Hog a shade under sixty regardless, and when the squad car jerked out to the left lane it looked as if it did so merely from impatience. When the trooper passed, picking up speed all the while, I chanced a sidelong glance and saw the driver wasn't even looking my way; instead, he was deeply involved with another trooper in what looked to be a heated conversation.

He put the pedal down even more and the squad car was out of sight in about thirty seconds. For just a moment I felt like pulling over and puking up my guts but managed to avoid it. And for the first time I actually understood the full weight of what I'd thought all those years. Maybe I really was an apparition, tasting the hell of this world but unable to pass as substance among the living. Perhaps I did tread some netherworld between the real and imagined.

I swung into New Orleans by way of Slidell about two hours later. The first thing I did was exit the interstate. The gas gauge read less than a quarter tank and I knew the bike's use to me was almost done. John and the lunatic would be found in the field by the pond soon (if they weren't already) and I wasn't ignorant enough to think the authorities wouldn't be wondering who'd left on the bike. I hoped I'd been able to scratch most of my footprints away (after all, it had been dark) but there'd been bike tracks all over. Including the front yard of the house I hoped was smoking like a Devil's cinder of charred wood by now.

No doubt the Hog would draw attention like a magnet if I kept it with me.

I threaded through a maze of streets, followed a couple of signs to the Super Dome. I remember thinking it should have somehow been bigger, from all the things I'd heard, the games I'd watched on every black-and-white set we'd ever owned, but at least there it was, real as life, a huge, age-beaten spaceship mired in concrete. And with all the construction going on around it, the City appeared to be closing in to cut off any escape route. I eased the Hog off Canal Street and jumped a curb underneath the raised section of interstate which wound through the CBD. Even though about a million cars were parked everywhere and there were plenty of parking meters I could have fed, it just didn't seem right to abandon the bike to the street. It just didn't close out that chapter of my life sufficiently.

I found a parking garage on Vermillion in what looked to be a recently renovated movie theater and drove up to the gate willing to chance it. The woman sitting behind the filth-streaked window had no more than a handful of teeth left in her head, and that was by laying great odds on the ones in back I couldn't see. Her hair was lank and nasty like she thought she'd be better off without any, but she had on lipstick and I guess it was mascara around her eyes. Either that or somebody had been using her as a punching bag. She didn't miss a line of the soap opera flickering on a five-square-inch set screwed into the metal ceiling of the box that contained her, and that was fine with me. The less she remembered about 'a young guy on a Harley,' the better if the cops managed to track me here.

Even though I had a plan in that case.

I paid for two days, took the ticket and idled past her booth, keeping it at a low growl as I coasted up the ramp to the second floor. Dirty and smelling of old concrete, the place was about three quarters full but no bikes as far as I could tell. I put it in a tight spot near the back stairwell and killed the engine. Sat back and stared at the speedometer. And at that moment, it was like letting go of another old, dear friend. Then I was done and I got off.

For the next fifteen minutes I went over every square inch of that Hog with a rag I pulled from my bedroll. Nobody came nosing around while I did it, but I did hear a lot of loud street talk drifting up from the direction of the toll booth. Sounded like two or three men arguing down there and I wrote em off as employees since I couldn't fathom any other reason to be hanging around if not. And as the last little bit of insurance, with the towel knotted over my hand, I pushed the key back into the ignition. Hoping all the while the bike wouldn't get to sit out its whole two days.

Then I turned and left the building by the backside stairwell.

The door opened out onto a skinny strand of alley, empty except for a fantail of broken bottles and a 3-yard dumpster canting over on one side. The street was about twenty feet to the left and I emerged into the humid, swirling late afternoon of Mid-Town with absolutely no thoughts whatsoever in my mind. I walked down to the first Stop sign and stared at the monstrous hulk of the Charity Hospital, all its sunshot windows blasting down on Canal Boulevard. My stomach turned, a reminder of how long I'd gone without eating. I rounded the corner to Liberty Street, followed it back around to Canal, glancing over my shoulder every few steps, making sure no one was following even though I was pretty sure no one would. No easy task following a ghost. Finally I came across a sign announcing the Vieux Carre. I walked straight ahead into the French Quarter, both hands in my pockets and squinting into the middle distance. There were already a lot of people on the streets, a good many of them drunk; I had no idea what day it was but I didn't think it mattered much. Not here anyway. I also noticed a sprinkling of cops but by that time I hardly paid them any more attention to them than they did to me.

I clutched the money in my pocket and slid into a convenience store on the corner of Bourbon and Conti. The guy behind the register was Middle-Eastern and hardly gave me a glance as I pushed down the tight aisles inside the shotgun store to the freezer in back. I grabbed a couple of sandwiches and a bag of chips from a Lay's display. A black couple stood in a back corner arguing over what looked like a fucking Slim Jim but the guy at the register never even slowed down, just kept talking loudly foreign, to another guy who'd popped up from behind the counter. From the looks of it they had to be brothers. On impulse I opened the other freezer on the left and pulled out a quart of Budweiser. Just to see how old I looked, I guess, because I'd never even thought about drinking since Binkie.

I sauntered up to the counter like I knew what was going on, plunked everything down at once and stared the guy straight in the eye. He glanced at the stuff and started ringing it up, never even slowing his ass-wringing of the other guy. Then he looked my way, said something else incomprehensible, shook his head in exasperation, and pointed to the price glowing on the register. His meaning hit me then and I fumbled a twenty from my pocket and handed it over. He hurriedly rang it in, made change, and went back to his diatribe, ticking off what I guessed to be a list of complaints on his fingers. I scraped the stuff together, glad I hadn't gotten more, and left, shouldering the door open to the street. I guess he didn't believe in bags.

Once on the street I shuffled off to a little alcove between two sweating buildings (one an apartment, the other a hardware store) and scarfed down the food like a dog. I made it easily through the first two sandwiches and after the tuna I lit into the double-meat cheeseburger with no less relish. Looking back it's pretty hard to image how the hell I managed, especially since the shit was cold straight out of the freezer. Everything was roughly forty degrees Fahrenheit but that didn't stop me from plowing through it like a bulldozer. I swallowed each bite, each tasteless, freeze-dried charcoal bite, scarcely thinking about anything but the mechanics of chewing. I wasn't in the shit for the pleasure. By the time I got to the chips I didn't even want em. I popped the cap off the beer though. It was full dark, especially in the crevice between the old buildings, and drinking felt like the right thing at the right time.

Toward dark a wild blend of music meshed and fought along the cobbled stretches of Bourbon and the crowds were getting thicker. I slammed the rest of the alcohol, coaxing a little drunken courage to keep me going. And that was about it, really, for my first experience in New Orleans. Most everything else is no more than a foggy haze of sickness. I remember a ghastly whirl of crowds and loud music; more drinks; puking behind a dumpster; shitting somewhere else equally disgusting; the night increasingly thicker and blacker. And then nothing.

I woke up in an alley and my money was gone. I tried to stand and my stomach knotted up, bowling me over in a cluster of garbage cans. It made a helluva racket but nobody except the cats complained. My head felt like somebody had taken a cold chisel to it and when I finally managed to pull free of the garbage I stood very shaky by the wall, cursing my own dumb fucking ass. And the rest of that fucked up morning I wandered the streets of the Quarter like any of the other bums and weirdoes who seemed to feel much more at home than I did. I looked worse than most of em and was pretty goddamn sure I felt worse. And when I say I'd been picked, I mean, clean. I didn't even have the 'one thin dime' Otis Redding sang about. Not that calling anyone would have done me much good. Most of the people I knew were dead.

I thought about stepping out in front of a bus on Canal but chickened out at the last second. I remembered a story I'd heard from somebody about a guy quitting his job in Mandeville and coming to New Orleans to be a juggler. Supposed to have been a pretty good one too, until he got smeared across the pavement by a mid-afternoon bus; I felt bad, but not quite suicidal. I decided to give it another twelve hours or so. Maybe less if the headache got any worse.

But knowing what I know now, I doubt I really ever had a choice. My whole life is like a magnet endlessly drawn from one confrontation to the next, everything leading up to the crescendo I'll face tomorrow morning. There's no doubt in my mind that just about anything could have happened to me during that first night here and I would have still wound up at that goddamn Salvation Army shelter.

When I hear people talk about free will I laugh.

***

Of course, the Army took me in. I was a little younger than most, but no record in their books, I'm sure. They didn't ask questions and I didn't venture information. I just took the newspaper-thin blanket and sack of shredded paper that served for a pillow and melted into a corner. I kept to myself, didn't talk to anybody, and tried to put my situation as far out of my mind as possible. It must have worked because I did sleep. The next morning I was awakened by an urgent shaking. For just a moment I thought it was my grandmother again, hurrying me out of bed so I wouldn't be late for school, but the moment I opened my eyes the dream vanished.

The face hanging above me was no one's grandmother. A huge white and yellow-streaked beard, red eyes, and breath to kill a vulture barked something about 'gettin up or missin breakfast'. The apparition snorted loudly, scratched a cloud of dandruff into the air, and scrabbled off to another occupied bed, three down from mine.

I raised up on one elbow, checking my state of affairs in the early morning light that had managed to claw its way inside through the cobwebbed windows. Although I didn't know it then, the place hadn't been painted since Sautin's tenure; the intercom was also broken, a couple of wires hanging limply from a ragged hole in the wall. The windows may have been cleaned once, but there wasn't much to look out on that would make anyone do it again. At least the floor was clean. Cold as hell, but clean.

I pulled my only pair of socks out from underneath the mattress and put them on. I hadn't taken off the jeans and what was left of my shoes was underneath the cot. The Wake-Up Creep moved slowly to the breakfast line which started in the group 'bedroom' along the far wall and trailed off through the double doors of the kitchen/dining room. The place stunk of feet and urine and I'm not sure which was worse.

I laid back down, staring at the ceiling. My stomach still wasn't right from those goddamn sandwiches, and the mere thought of food threatened more contractions. I breathed steadily in and out through my nose, trying to formulate a plan. Trying to figure out how in hell I'd get out of this one. I had no money, none! I didn't dare go back to the parking garage because odds were the bike was gone, and if not, the cops might be staking it out. The only living people I knew had no telephones, and even if I could get in touch with Blinkie and the others, what fucking good would that do? They weren't the kind to take desertion easy. Or well.

Sweat broke across my brow. First things first.

I had to get money. Priority one. If I had to knock off an old lady and her two crippled grandkids, so be it. At the end of the line options tend to drain away. And that's the moment I heard another voice. The next link in my chain...

"You sick, kid?"

I snapped my head toward the sound. Another old guy, slovenly but cleaner than the last. No beard on this one and his eyes still looked as if alcohol hadn't washed all the life out of them. He had a broom in his hands and looked like he was intimately familiar with hard manual labor; his skin was the color of a desert in the early morning. There was a small pile of dust at his feet which he patted at with his broom.

I shook my head, no.

"Don't feel like eatin?"

"No."

"Well, think a man oughta suit hisself," he said. He turned around and squatted, reached underneath a nearby cot to flush something out into the open. A paper cup rolled out along with two cigarette butts. "Sonsabitches cain't even use the gotdamn ashtrays!" he spat. I sat up and bent over to tie the laces of my shoes.

"Hey, old man," I said. "Wouldn't happened to know where I could make some money, would ya?"

He turned around and faced me, his eyes holding a mysterious, knowing smile. He held out the broom and said, "Ya know how ta work one a these somebitches?"

"Long as I don't have to ride it," I answered, and he laughed.

***

Fella's name was Willy Williams. Told me everybody called him Chubbs. Said he knew a guy worked at a coffee warehouse several blocks down the riverfront. They'd been needing the place cleaned but weren't gonna pay much. Said it was supposed to be a helluva mess.

When I said I was game Chubbs laughed again. "Why you ain't even seen it!" he said. Doan matter, I told him. "I just need the address" and he readily gave it. "Talk ta Toran," he called as I shouldered through the heavy glass door street side. I didn't have to write anything down because I remembered passing the place the night before. Wouldn't have if their billboard hadn't been lit up: a leggy blond wearing ski pants and a bikini top, a big mug of something in her hand. I couldn't remember what she was selling but I did remember those tits.

When I got there I noticed a few people milling around by the front door. I steered around back on the old man's orders. He'd said to circle around to the loading dock through a hole in the fence which I found just like he said, find Torah, or Toran, and get to work. It all sounded pretty straight-forward to me. At the loading dock there was another group of black guys hanging out, obviously on their morning break; it was about nine o'clock. I didn't feel comfortable approaching them out of the blue like that but no other choice presented itself. I squeezed through the fence and started over, trying to look nonchalant.

Five steps in they saw me; I heard very clearly 'look at this muthafucka' and the biggest one turned and yelled my way. I pretended not to hear, grinned stupidly and kept on walking. This seemed to piss off the one who'd yelled and he cut away from the knot of men, pointing back the way I came with a big, muscled forearm. It was pretty clear he didn't like fucking trespassers but it was the only line I had.

I continued toward him, painting my face a moon of imbecility. He turned back to his boys, yelled something else I couldn't quite make out, and hot-footed it across the back lot to meet me. I was relieved to see he didn't look completely pissed off when he got up close, but he also didn't look like the kind of guy people saw twice if he was.

"Wha'da fuck, kid?" he said, eyeing me up and down. "Ya doan look reta'ded an ya gotdamn show ain't blind."

I tried to smile but he didn't. I swallowed hard and said, "I need to talk to Toran."

He didn't move. "Doan know no Toe-ran," he said. "My name be Torand wit a 'd', but who da hell's axin?"

"My name's Jesse," I said holding out my hand. "Chubbs said you might have some work."

His face didn't change but something did in his eyes.

And he didn't run me off.

Chapter 13:A Few Dollars

Torand went and talked to the boss (a young white guy I only saw through a plate glass window while sitting quietly in the workers' lounge), and I heard a bit of loud laughter, and I got the job. Oh yeah, I got it all right. Chubbs had been right; I soon found the place was indeed a hurricane-sized fuckin mess. But I had to go through with it. Because now I knew, invisible or not, I'd lost my edge. Just thinking about pulling a job got my hands to shaking and my heart pounding, suicide for a guy in my line. The mess with the lunatic had fucked with my head. So I was stuck with this, but (I told myself, sitting in the lounge waiting for Torand to come back) the only thing I had to do was clean the warehouse. Simple job. Right?

Wrong.

To my knowledge and experience the place had never been cleaned before. Ever. And it was about a thousand years old. Chubbs had said a coffee warehouse but that was like saying the World Trade Center had been two, tall buildings. And it wasn't just a warehouse either; there was also the loading platform and staging area, and a huge walk-in freezer where a deep-sea fishing rig could have been hidden if necessary. It made me think of those damn ice chests again, and man, did my fuckin hands shake then.

It was Tuesday and Torand said I had till Saturday, no reason offered. Not much time. He gave me a broom with an extension handle and pointed me toward a ladder leaning by one of the bay doors. It was a heavy ten-footer but that wasn't tall enough to get everywhere. Just the warehouse itself was several thousand square feet.

The assignment was easy enough: clean the cobwebs from the corners and ceiling. Fine and dandy, but the ceiling had plenty of recessed skylights that looked to have been the homes for countless generations of spiders and other insects. He pointed out a wash basin where several semi-clean towels dripped from a rack. Said I'd need those for the dust. He told me to start in the back, away from the rest of the men. Then he walked off.

For the next seven hours I wrestled the ladder, fought vertigo, and choked through a Saharan storm of cobweb dust and spider shit. The only good thing was I had no supervision since nobody else was willing to inhabit that swirling hell of dust. Another lucky thing turned out to be the shelving; it reached up to about six feet from the ceiling (five-and-a-half if you counted the level of dust up there), so it gave me something to stand on instead of having to drag around that damn ladder.

I also found out what Torand meant about the rags: I had to soak em down and wrap em around my nose and mouth just so I could breathe. Every twenty minutes or so I'd ditch one (two black circles the size of dimes, and one the size of a coffee can) and tie on another I kept in a Ziplock bag in my back pocket. By noon I looked like Al Jolson from the bridge of the nose up; from the bridge down to my neck I was a white, sweating ghost.

I took breaks when I wanted, after all the guy was getting his warehouse cleaned for an astonishingly low price. I thought of the five hundred bucks I'd fucking lost and it almost made me as sick as that goddamn double cheeseburger had.

The only interesting thing at all were the boxes.

The place sold a little of everything, I soon discovered: holiday gift baskets, imported and domestic teas and coffees, cheeses, wraps, preserves, dried meats, European candies, and on and on. It was like some sort of archeological dig in reverse. The newer shit was closest to the floor, usually the first three shelves or so, while the higher you got, the older shit was. And up on top near the ceiling, under layer upon layer of grime and dust (many of the boxes too sun-bleached to even read) was stuff I seriously doubted management even knew existed. Inside one such box I found a nest of rats and what was left of about a thousand airline packets of peanuts. I shut the box and left them right where they were.

I even found an old box of Penthouse magazines dating back to the '70's. After about twenty minutes of thumbing them through I considered jerking off but after one look at my grimy hands, decided against it. I'd sneak one or two out in my pants whenever everybody except the lock-up man had gone.

Around three or three-thirty the warehouse crew cut out. The place got a lot quieter then, taking on a more ominous pall. Most of the skylights were too grimy on the outside for the work I was doing inside to be of any effect, and the building next door blocked out most of the rest of what little light could get through. There were about ten or twelve halogen bulbs burning (about half the lights the day-crew worked under) and they struggled to hold off the demons of that choking, expansive hell hole.

I was more careful in moving the boxes by then; the box of rats had unnerved me and God only knew what else could be living up here. At a skylight near the darkest corner I found the remnants of the biggest web yet. It looked newer than a lot of the others that swung free in the fetid air near the ceiling, the strands almost as thick as horsehair and as sticky as gum on a hot, city street. While I fought to get it down my flesh crawled, my mind conjuring the monster that probably eyed me from some hidden, nearby nook, just waiting for a chance to slide down and sink its teeth into my spine or something equally deadly. It didn't help finding the bones either. They fell from a massed corner, wrapped thickly in the dirty horsehair strands. Some kind of sparrow, all gone now save for a few feathers and a sprinkling of bones. I decided to save the rest of that area for the next day.

At five-thirty the lone, remaining black guy called me down. He had my hours written down and said I should return the next morning at seven. By then I was almost too tired to care, and I still had the walk back to the Salvation Army. The moment I stood outside on the loading platform I realized I'd not eaten the entire day. And there wouldn't be any going back inside for a candy bar from the machine. When I'd stepped onto the platform the black guy had grabbed the garage door behind me and slammed it down to the concrete. I heard a loud click of a lock engaging and knew that was it.

Seems they didn't want me going out through the front door.

I limped over to the hole in the fence. My back was stiff and aching from standing and reaching over my head all day. I was hawking up big, nasty, black chunks of phlegm and dreading the next morning. Just the thought of another day of that shit made me want to walk straight off one of the piers. But the thought of those bones in the web resurfaced, and I pictured my own rotting body pulled apart by catfish the size of Volkswagens near the ragged mouth of the Mississippi.

I opted for a few more days on the street. Maybe the dust and other shit would be enough to finish me off without actually having to fucking kill myself.

***

The Army was quieter that night. It had about half the men from the night before and not many newcomers. Chubbs was gone but I was willing to bet he'd be back. Probably begging for a little of the money he'd sent me to drum up. Well fuck him, I thought, scrubbing the black mess from my face in the cracked mirror over the hard-water stained sink. I figured I could make it till Saturday, and then I'd take the money and get the hell out of New Orleans. If I really busted it I could make about two hundred dollars. Not much, but enough to get the fuck out.

And where then?

I was afraid of the answer.

After my shower I hobbled into the dining room lucky to find one of the kitchen help ladling out a pot. She was a kind black lady whose tenderness reminded me of my grandmother and after taking one look at me she didn't even have to pose the question. She told me to sit down and she'd throw something together. That 'something' turned out to be soup and bread, the best goddamn thing I think I've ever had before or since. I thanked her from the bottom of my heart when I finished and stumbled off to my cot, seeing no one, hearing nothing.

I don't think I even took my shoes off before I went to sleep.

***

The Creeping Weirdo didn't have to wake me the next morning. Matter of fact, I don't even know for sure if he was there; I never saw him again. Fate took me elsewhere. I started awake suddenly, a tiny cry escaping as my eyes flew open to the semi-darkness of the dormitory. The smell is what killed the horror of the nightmare; I had been chased through row after row of coffee-slicked aisles, dogged at my heels by a spider the size of a cocker spaniel. I'd run out of room when I started awake. I'd also run out of sleep.

None of the other men were yet stirring and when I took a quick look around I didn't see Chubbs either. I shook my head to clear it and five minutes later hurried down the street to the warehouse. The sooner I got it done the sooner I could high-tail it to...? It didn't matter. I just wanted to be done. And I also didn't want to be late; Torand wasn't the kind of guy to be late on.

I raced down the dimly-lit streets, past the billboard, and hunkered into a vacant doorway right across the street from the warehouse. It was a good fifteen more minutes before first a blue Chrysler, and then a beige Crown Victoria wheeled into the parking lot. A woman got out of the Chrysler, two men from the Crown Vic. Two of the three finished smoking their cigarettes, and then they all went inside. Several minutes later the windows in the parking lot-fronted upstairs window came on. No sign of a work crew yet. I half-wished I'd hung around for breakfast but there was a snack machine in the workers' lounge. I had enough change to make that work, at least.

I left the early morning shadows of the warehouse and circled around back, still keeping to the shadows. They'd cast me out like a stray the day before and I wanted to make sure I didn't piss anybody off for being somewhere I wasn't supposed to be. But the whole time I slunk around hunting for that torn spot in the fence, I wondered why? Why the hell was I doing this? After all, I was a thief by benefit of talent. I could have made more money stealing one purse than I did choking on spider-shit and dust all day long the day before. And now I was gonna do it again. What the fuck was I thinking?

But by the time I got to the opening in the fence I knew. I was chickenshit; I'd lost my nerve. My hands were already starting to shake just thinking about it. When had it happened? The night I found the woman in the chest? The night John bled out near the pond? When I burnt the lunatic's house down? I didn't know and couldn't say, and even now I have to admit there was more to it. Somewhere in the deepest recesses of my mind I was answering another purpose. The first piece in the purpose I fulfilled yesterday, and the last piece I will fit today before noon today.

There was no one at the loading platform as I ambled up. I thought about knocking on the back door (just the thought of that candy machine had my mouth watering like a trained dog) but decided to sit and wait. Surely the crew wouldn't be much longer.

I heard the rusty grating of the garage-door rollers and stepped away from the wall. Torand walked out onto the loading platform, pretended not to see me, and yawned hugely. Flexing his arms as he did so, I experienced the image of him squeezing money from a safe. He didn't even look my direction when he spoke.

"Les go, boy," he called, turning back inside. I heard a lot of other voices in there. I crossed the fifteen yards separating me from the loading dock where I'd been hunkered down, placed both hands on the rubber bumper for incoming trucks, and jumped up squarely on the platform. Some of the other guys I recognized from yesterday piled through the bay door, jostling each other and talking shit. Nobody said dick to me.

Torand was waiting just inside the door, standing next to the ladder and broom. The compliment was quick but surprising. "Done awlright, yestidee. Gotta hump ta get finished, though," and he walked away. I slipped into the workers' lounge and got that damn candy bar, practically ate it through the wrapper. Then I went to doing the same shit I hated from the day before.

Later on that afternoon I was headed to the can. I hadn't pissed all day and it was a little quieter than usual. I figured most everyone else was eating lunch but the candy bar had taken all the spare change I had.

The workers' can wasn't located by the workers' lounge. Maybe because the lounge had been added later; from the looks of it the can had been there since the Stone Age. Probably got cleaned every fifty years or so whether it needed it or not. It was stuffed back by a utility closet and the only way to get there was to pass by the gigantic freezer all by itself in a weirdly humid room just inside the last set of bay doors. The closer I got I could hear voices coming from there. Two of em and not any of the crew's. I recognized the first voice as Mike's, the owner or boss or whatever, but the second was unfamiliar.

I wish it had stayed that way.

Something told me to go back (just piss in a corner back there somewhere; who the hell would know?) but I didn't. I kinda hunched my shoulders forward and walked into the humidity. The one I didn't know was pointing at the freezer, saying, "--be a bad idea if—" and stopped abruptly when he saw me. I acted like I didn't see him, fiddling with my belt or something, but I saw him smile. I saw when he put a hand on Mike's chest, a facsimile of mock disbelief spreading across his features. "Goddamn Mike! Wha'cha ya doing to the help around here!" he said as both men laughed.

I stopped walking.

Their humor cut back a pace and the stranger held out his hands. Just like I supposed I had right before the lunatic killed John. Little did I know the situation wasn't much different.

"No, no, kid!" the stranger said, his voice softer now. When he put his hand on Mike's shoulder the 'boss' shut the fuck up. The stranger looked back at him. "Goddamn man, I said! You trying to kill this guy?"

Mike shrugged his shoulders. "'S a fucking dirty place, Aldo. That's how it is. He said he wanted it, so I gave it to 'im." He tried to look squarely into the other man's face but had trouble doing so. The stranger, Aldo, made this guy afraid. I couldn't exactly put my finger on what or why but it was true.

Sautin took his hand off Mike's shoulder and walked over to where I was standing. His smile was real then, too, like always. He was the smoothest motherfucker I'd ever seen. And he was holding out his hand to me. I looked down at mine, saw how grimy they were, and set my eyes on his, keeping my hands at my side. They didn't fit the mouth, too cold, calculating, but later I realized that was the reason he'd perfected the smile: to focus attention elsewhere. His hand was still out.

"Go ahead, kid. I wanta shake the hand of the man who needs a job as goddamn bad as this! Name's Aldo Sautin!" and he laughed again, but this time I detected no mockery. Mike was silent over where Aldo had left him.

I shook his hand, mumbled my name, as he pumped it up and down twice. I let go before he did. It felt like his eyes were peeling off the top of my head. I knew he must've really made women nervous even then, like being in a zoo with all the cages sprung.

He turned back to Mike with his hands on his hips. "I think I can use a guy like this." He walked closer to the guy. "You gonna be needing him much longer? I mean it doesn't sound like you intend on keeping this hustler around long."

Mike made a sound close to whining. "Meant for him to clean the ceilings in the warehouse. You know how it--"

Aldo whisted short and loud, silencing the man outright. "Jesus, Mike. I'm not even sure that job's fit for a nigger," and he turned his head back my way. The smile was a fixture within his hard features. "Tell you what, let me take him off your hands and I'll pay him what you owe him? So what about it?" he said (to me, before Mike could answer), "Sound good to you, Jesse?" and he winked at me as if we both shared the joke at Mike's brooding expense. It was the first time someone had called me by my name since John. But Sautin's always been good with that kinda shit, getting to the switches of manipulation.

I said, unfortunately, "Yeah, sounds fine to me."

And that's how it's been ever since. Before we left (after I'd cleaned up about an hour later) he pulled out one of the fattest wallets I'd ever seen and handed me a one hundred dollar bill. "Here," he said. "That motherfucker should get niggers to do nigger work."

Chapter 14:Back to the Trade

It didn't take him long to unroll my tangled yarn; he has the humility to bring whatever he wants out in anybody. Or at least anybody I've ever seen. And I've seen him crack harder cookies than me. When he asked where I'd been staying and I told him, his eyes rolled back and he slapped his knee, laughing. He made like he didn't know, but I've seen Chubbs poking around his doorway a few times over the years since. It was a set-up; I just actually proved to be worth something.

A good thief is pure gold and he knew it.

What he told me about himself was mostly made-up I'm sure. But he's always taken special pains to remind me how many similarities we share. He said he saw himself behind the spider-shit and dust and didn't want me run by some pansy-assed idiot who was handed everything he had by his old man. He assured me people like Mike were easy pickings for the likes of people like us, and I didn't ask him to explain. When he's talking it's like hypnotism. You hang on every word, you want to do whatever it is he's asking. God knows it's worked enough on me.

Right up until tonight.

Like I said, this morning he's not gonna know what hit him. Because this was his biggest thing, the most important. He must've said that a hundred times in the last month, always with that faraway, dreamy look in his eyes that is so out of place on his inhuman face. But it almost worked. If I hadn't thought back to that rainy day with Grandma I don't think I could've mustered the guts to deny him the deed. But I did.

Somehow I did and what's done can't be undone.

I hope.

***

First we went to the mall and he bought me some new clothes. I'd been wearing the same smelly old T-shirt and jeans for the better part of my lifetime, it seemed, and right about then I wasn't asking any questions. I figured what the hell? I was young and naïve, still wanting to believe there was good in everybody, regardless if up till that point I'd had strong reason to suspect otherwise. But people are easily fooled; we believe what we want to believe. I guess that just shows what a little money and good food will get you.

I didn't know enough. I hadn't read enough, though I don't believe that would have changed much anyway.

He actually asked if I wanted him to bring me back to the Army. He said it in all seriousness and the look on my face must have been hilarious because he started braying laughter again. Hitting the steering wheel, slapping his knee, almost going overboard with the act.

Almost.

When I said 'no' that sealed it. From that day till this I've been his boy. Not in any homosexual way, but he's a child predator in every other sense of the word, and I don't know that it could have been much worse. Not in the long run.

He lived Up Town but said he had an apartment Down. His cousin was living there right then, not much older than me, he said. I said it sounded okay, for a long while there I'd slept stuffed in a corner, ignoring the people who came and went, the fucking on the couch, the dirty needles littering the floor. I figured it couldn't be any worse and would probably be better. Such youthful fantasies.

It was a third story place in the best part of town I ever lived until then. He brought me upstairs, introduced me to Duane, a tall black-haired guy who bore absolutely no resemblance at all to Sautin. I didn't know what kind of game he was running then, but I do now. The boy was no more than another me: a homeless runaway liberated from the same Salvation Army. I learned later he'd fetched out several others from there, courtesy of Chubbs, and they'd all met with predictable fates. All except me, that is.

For the moment.

By the end of the first couple of days I was convinced Duane was neither Sautin's cousin, nephew, mother, or messiah. He was just a simple pawn holding its dangerous position, momentarily, on the board. Of course, Duane confirmed everything Sautin had told me, but I didn't believe a word of it. His eyes couldn't lie even though his tongue tried; he had the imagination of a rock.

For several nights thereafter I had dreams of flames and sirens, screaming people and blasting guns. Looking back it wasn't even very prophetic; I simply knew the guy would be nothing but trouble.

When I awoke the next morning I showered, shaved to remember what I looked like, and stepped from the foggy bathroom like Lazarus from the tomb. Duane was up watching television (cartoons) and when I walked into the room he spun around quickly. I never actually found out where he was from, but I didn't care. His eyes were always jumpy, constantly distracted, as if always expecting the inevitable blow. And when it came of course I was there.

He asked if I was hungry and I said 'yeah'. He had a credit card from Sautin; we could eat wherever we wanted. He did it all the time, he said. We'd see 'the Boss' later in the afternoon. He always called him that when Sautin wasn't around; only 'sir' to his face, though. I don't think it mattered to Sautin one way or the other.

I ate enough for three people at the Shoney's around the corner.

It was a pretty relaxing afternoon, later. Duane was over the novelty of whatever I was experiencing. He was a dull bird and I couldn't see lazing around the apartment all day while he watched TV. The sun was out and we broke company outside the front door. I did a lot of walking, looking at the shop-window stuff, listening to random fragments of conversation from different knots of people. I didn't feel quite as invisible for the first time in my life; I guess it was because I wasn't as desperate. Sautin has that effect; he finds tormented people and appears to soothe their problems, smooth out all the wrinkles. It's as old as B-plots from the fucking movies, but that's why movies are about that kind of nostalgic shit in the first place. People buy it; everybody, down deep, wants to believe it. All that 'somewhere over the rainbow' shit.

I even spent a little of the money he'd given me on a leather hat. A beanie-looking number with the Saints logo on the side. Typical tourist shit but once again that's why clichés work; typical actions for typical people. Reading peoples' wants and tendencies just so happens to be Sautin's most potent talent.

By five I was back at the apartment, a little sick to my stomach from one of the hotdogs I'd foolishly bought on the street. Duane was planted right where I'd left him, though no cartoons this time, just a re-run of 'Taxi'. Sautin came in with an armload of groceries and instructions about twenty minutes later, a little different acting than the day before but subtle enough not to cause any alarm. I put the stuff away while he went into the front room and whispered to Duane. I heard that dupe grunt a few times and thought nothing of it.

When Sautin walked back into the kitchen ten minutes later he was all smiles, his mask twisted on tight again. Said he had a few things he needed Duane and I to do after dinner, and he'd brought over groceries for sandwiches. As if I didn't already know that. He seemed distracted, checked his watch a couple of times while carrying on a half-assed conversation it was easy to see he would have rather avoided. I acted like I was listening but I really wasn't; my mind was sizing things up.

Because let's face it, I knew something was wrong with the set-up. He didn't strike me as the kind of guy who'd just walk right up and help someone out if he didn't have a stake in it. I knew this. I'd lived on the street; I knew it was unwise to trust anybody. Because when you did you set yourself up for a fall. But the thing was I really didn't care; I didn't plan on hanging around long. I was convinced in a few days I'd be far away, doing what? I had no idea. But far away, regardless. I didn't know I was already strapped to his wheel.

Right before dark we headed for Algiers. One of Sautin's nicer job descriptions was Slum Lord. Duane told me on the way over the Mississippi bridge; he was a collector. Sautin owned a block of tract-housing close to Westwego, clapboard shacks that made the last place Grandma and me lived look like caviar and ice cream. We passed by some fairly rough areas on the way in, but the block Sautin controlled was quiet, considering what I'd been expecting. I wasn't real hot on the idea of collecting anything from these neighborhoods that close to dark, but I was in no position to back out. Sautin always sets it up like that.

Or attempts to.

These were the people who were hard to catch in the daylight, according to Duane. That's all he said. Sounded like pure shit to me. The first house we pulled up to had nothing but a gravel driveway and two hulks of rusted metal rotting away beside it. Half the front porch sagged heavily into a ragged drainage ditch that ran just along the wall on that side. The stairs were on the side that was still useable. I noticed the streetlight in the adjacent yard had been smashed out; a tennis shoe hung from the power line. It was all dark inside.

Duane pulled to a stop behind the closest heap and opened his door. He hadn't said anything since turning onto the street and I hadn't either. This shit wasn't new to me, the rules were the same. Watch your own back because I'll be doing all I can to watch mine. The only thing different was we weren't here to steal money, or at least not in the way I was used to doing it.

I stayed on Duane's left shoulder as he walked to the porch. From there I could see down around the shadow of the house to what could hardly be described as a back yard. Landfill would be a better description. I don't think I've ever yet seen a conglomeration of shit that quite matched it: broken dishwashers, rear axles, bird baths, and cement bricks, screen doors and soggy mattresses. It loomed from back there as if it had half a mind to see what we were up to in the front. One thing I noticed right off: there were plenty of places you could hide in all that shit.

I was pretty tense by the time Duane took the first step at the porch. He threw back the broken screen door like he owned the place and creaked dangerously across the slowly disintegrating wooden planks to the door. Someone had written there in permanent marker: Fuck Da Deke. No one had bothered to wipe it off or paint over it.

Duane banged on the door hard enough to drop a cloud of dust from the equally rotten rafters overhead. I scanned the area through the ripped mess of the screened porch, glad nobody else was on the street. But it was getting darker and the shadows were stretching. Duane looked at me and spit on the porch. "Like this every fuckin' time," he said. Then, "RAFUL! ANSWER THE DAMN DOOR!!" He banged on it a few more times. No one came but I did hear another door slam shut a couple houses down. Duane looked at me again, pursed his lips. "Motherfucker ain't home," he said matter-of-factly, as if I didn't quite get it. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out what looked like a business card. It glowed blue just like a kid's Match Box car. The name Sautin was emblazoned in red. Duane turned and stomped his way back to the car, cursing under his breath. The guy was born to be a fucking amateur.

The next stop wasn't so bad. The house was a little nicer and a brand new Dodge Dakota sat in the drive. The yard was well kept. Duane was different this time, about as cordial as someone like him could get. He introduced me and asked a thin, black-haired, black lady where 'Mr. Sam' had been. Mr. Sam turned out to be the owner of the Dodge, a short, white-haired little black man with one of the deepest voices I've ever heard, a la James Earl Jones. The sides of his boots were dirty as were his pants up to the knee; his hands looked like he scratched through stone for a living. The inside of the house was spare but nice. The old guy had about a hundred times more dignity than the creep collecting his rent could have ever managed. I watched that man hand over two hundred dollars in tens to Sautin's goon, and that is when I made the first true mistake of my life. I hated Duane and not Sautin. It's hard to hate someone who's buying your food and groceries, but my Grandma had raised me better than that. I should have hated Sautin and been done with the whole fucking thing right then.

But then Annie would be dead, wouldn't she?

There's really no doubt of that in my mind. Maybe this is just how good things turn out sometimes, by a seemingly random set of bad circumstances and decisions. Sounds crazy but a lot of what I've said must sound the same.

There was only one more house that has stayed with me from that night, and I don't have the faintest notion how the people who lived there fit into the 'hard to find' category. Sometimes when I watch the couple downstairs I think about that ancient old couple in that dilapidated shack. Sautin knocked it down immediately after the old man died, leaving the woman at the mercy of a state-run nursing home. The place had no central A/C, no window units. I saw a few space heaters positioned like bombs waiting to ignite the place in flames. The porch had fallen completely away and one of the neighbors must have been nice enough to put the cinder block beneath the front door. I'm sure the old woman couldn't have managed that by herself.

She was so old as to be practically transparent when she opened the sad excuse for a door, and her eyes were wide in the feeble light drifting in from the working streetlight in her front yard. No cars, no driveway, just a little old woman standing in the crumbling doorway of a little old shack. She didn't look scared, just hollow-eyed and tired. I heard the thin shriek of a radio coming from inside. Duane said something and the old woman nodded, looked my way, and waved us both inside. Duane went like a bear into a cave and I followed.

Inside was worse than out. The floor was bare, rotting planks; every step threatening to plunge you to the ground a foot and a half below. A true study in poverty, or man's inhumanity to man: spindly furniture that appeared to have been dug from the worst garage sale, ancient curling photographs pinned to the stripped walls. I picked the closest approximation of a chair and sat down. Duane remained standing, talking in a voice so low I couldn't make out a thing. The sound from the tinny radio was clearer here and I heard the unmistakable voice of a black preacher ranting about money to a chorus of 'Amens' and 'Hallelujahs' in the background. A deep, throaty moan wafted over and through the diatribe and I bent to my knees, attempting to stare past the old woman and Duane into the bedroom where the radio wailed. I could see nothing in the squalid darkness, my vision obscured by a hanging sheet bearing its own long tears and stains of long use.

The old woman hung her head and ducked away from Duane. She disappeared through the cleft in the sheet and we were left alone for a moment. Duane looked my direction but I chose to find interest in something on the floor. At that moment I couldn't bring myself into conspiracy with the collector. I heard him grunt loudly but I didn't raise my head.

Moments later the old woman returned with a ragged bag in her frail hands. When I looked up I noticed, for the first time, how thin and white her hair was raked back into a tight bun at the back of her neck. It seemed to make the flesh there scream. She glanced my way and I looked down again, but not before seeing the imploring eyes she drilled me with. She perched her tiny body on a barstool set close to the bedroom entrance and studied the contents of her purse under Duane's steely glare. It was also at that moment I felt my grandmother's presence stronger than ever before or after. The feeling was an eerie mix of déjà vu and shame and revulsion and something hitched up thickly in my throat. The sensation was so deeply sinful that I carried it with me for the better part of the next week. Some nights since, when I've been at my lowest, it has returned to chastise me for the life I've let happen.

She cleared her throat like an old engine turning over for the last time and I finally had to look. I felt it was the only thing I could do to retain my manhood, the only hope I had of passing whatever fell test the night had placed before me. The only attempt I had at saving my soul. In her thin, palsied hands were several hundred dollars as crisp as when they rolled out of the mint. Her eyes showed the defeat of old age and circumstance.

Still, the tinny whine of the radio grew from the room behind the curtain.

Duane took the money with all the emotion aplomb of a statue getting rinsed of birdshit. He never said a word, never wrote out a receipt or in any other way acknowledged the payment; he simply took the money and crammed into the front pocket of his jeans. I tried to concentrate on the smells drifting around, the mushy odor of mildew; a deeper sort of wet smell—collard greens? The reek of sickness and approaching death. The old woman's mouth continued moving but no sound issued out, or if it did, it was nothing I could hear.

"Good," Duane said, backing away from her perch on the stool. The old woman nodded her head like a child to its parent and I knew then I really hated Sautin's boy. I stood up on weak knees and started moving toward the door. As I did a gust of wind rifled the sheet which covered the entrance to the bedroom and for a single, frozen moment I saw inside. A man who appeared, impossibly, more ancient than the woman lay on a bare mattress amid a cluttered, worthless mess of scattered newspapers and dirty linen. There was hardly enough skin on his head to cover his skull and his mouth was drawn into a toothless O. The radio preacher railed about salvation and God's infinite grace. Whatever was lodged at the back of my throat refused to go down, and I didn't look back as I stepped out of the doorway to the cinder block below.

Chapter 16:The Apartment

That was the last trip I made with Duane. Everything that was left good inside me refused to be a party to collecting again. On the way back to the apartment I focused on a way to split company. Thankfully, since he didn't talk much I didn't have to listen to any of his bullshit. Not that my silence would have overtly bothered him; from his looks I'm sure my feelings were mutual. We were too different, both criminals, sure, but too damn different. I'm just glad it was like that because if we'd fell in with each other Annie would have never had a chance. Being so damn naïve, she would have been easy game...under different circumstances. Like I said: funny how things turn out sometimes.

In truth, Annie should thank my grandmother for being alive today.

By the time we got back I had a plan. But to initiate it I had to talk to Sautin alone; show him where my talents would do him most good. I figured him for a man of reason (as long as that reason had to do with personal gain) and having a professional thief handy would be worth a helluva lot more than two common street collectors. I wasn't ready to dive back into my former life yet but I knew the worm was gonna turn and leave me no alternative. But first things first: I couldn't live with Duane. It just wasn't gonna happen.

I knew where Sautin worked, or more correctly: where his offices were located. He had a trim, waif-like, college-age girl manning the phones but she'd be as easy to get around as a barber fucking over a blind man. What I didn't know was what time he usually got there in the morning, but that didn't matter greatly in the general scheme of things. I had a lot to do. Stuff that'd keep me busy the rest of the night.

The next morning I heard the key fit into the lock and turned in the leather chair facing his mahogany desk to watch Sautin enter. I'd been in the office for about three hours and my spoils were cast about on the floor around his desk. I'd taken the stolen suitcases I'd used to carry the stuff and stacked them neatly against the wall. And my hands hadn't shook the first time when I got right down to it.

He didn't see me at first and when he did his face showed surprise for just a split second. I'll give him that: the bastard has control. Then he began assessing all the stuff I had piled on the floor (wallets, stainless-steel cutlery, a coupla purses, three cases of imported beer, etc, etc), walking in a vague semi-circle from the light switch to the desk. I faced him across its empty expanse. Like everything else in his pitiful charade the office was strictly for show. I never saw him write down a damn thing. He put one forefinger to his mouth while staring silently at the ceiling and then brought both hands down, tenting them on the desk top, standing there in front of me. "Maybe you oughta tell me about this," he said and I did.

***

I only went back to the apartment once more after that. Sautin put me up in my own place (the money in the wallets alone was enough for deposits and first month's rent) and he didn't require me to have anything else to do with Duane. But only after a long talk about my specialty and the benefits it could provide. And as I talked, Sautin smiled and nodded, eventually agreeing with my terms: a different residence for a different job. Of course he was a little mystified by the fact that I'd been staying in the Salvation Army when I possessed such skills, but I dusted that away with the excuse I'd lost my nerve after being rolled that first night in New Orleans. After all, it was the truth; Sautin's always been able to smell a lie; I could tell that even then. He laughed when I told him, assured me no one should ever abandon their true talents.

It was a little over two weeks later when I got the phone call. From Sautin, concerning Duane. It was getting late, close to eleven. I remember the monologue of the The Letterman Show was over and some dog was attempting to dance on his hind legs while its 'master' (and I use the term loosely) accompanied it on a tambourine. It was the first time I'd heard Sautin nervous, although that's not quite it. You see, in a way he's always seemed inhuman to me, as if he were miming actions from some storehouse of knowledge he possesses. Like a real-life alien, not some Roswell bullshit, the real thing. But I guess it's his hypnotic voice that covers over the alien so well.

He said he hadn't received a call he was expecting from Duane. Of course, I had no idea what sort of business he'd been handling for 'the Boss' and that was just fine with me, but obviously I was at least gonna be let in on the ground floor out of necessity. Sautin was in Bossier City hashing out other business, and I'd had a pretty good two weeks.

Sautin's phone call wreaked all that.

Seems he'd been trying Duane's place for the last few hours and nobody answered. Increasingly odd was the fact that after the third call a busy signal had replaced the incessant ringing. Sautin didn't actually say it, but I could tell he suspected trouble. I told him I'd go check it out, get back in touch when I found out what was going on. He hinted maybe I shouldn't go in the usual way, and I told him I hadn't planned on it. It's funny, I remember the novel I was reading when the call came: Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton. I didn't pay it much attention then but it adds to the irony in retrospect.

I hailed a cab outside my building near the bus stop. The cabbie who picked me up must have just had a fight with his wife or something because he never said a word the whole time, and even though it wasn't a long ride, it was an eerie one. Almost like I was on the River Styx or something, being drawn irrevocably toward some horrible destination. Maybe it was the cabbie himself; he had a long scar running down the side of his face, and it twisted the edge of his mouth up into a cruel smile. I remember thinking what a drag it must have been waking up to that mug every morning, but we live with what we got. At least he kept his mouth shut.

He dropped me off a block from the building because I wanted a look around first. See if there was anyone hanging near the shadows, anything suspicious on the street. The busy signal was a bad sign unless Duane had gotten drunk and knocked the phone off the hook, but my dealings with Sautin ran counter to that idea. No, if he knew Sautin was gonna call he woulda been there. Something was up.I did see a couple of drunks and what could have been either a prostitute or a lady who didn't know any better, but nothing out of the ordinary. Nobody paid me any mind. I checked the main entrance to the building and didn't see any shadows lingering there. Nonetheless I chose to abide Sautin's advice. Doing what we do makes a fair number of enemies and I didn't want any of Duane's. Besides, the apartment was only on the second floor. I didn't anticipate any trouble getting in.

I skirted around the corner, glancing once over my shoulder to make sure no previously unseen shadows were extricating themselves in pursuit. Nothing. The alley running behind the complex was skinnier than most, just wide enough for the city garbage trucks to back in without scraping the sides. The one thirty-cubic-foot dumpster sat at the far end of the rectangle formed by the three adjoining buildings. The apartment butted to the corner where two of the buildings came together, right alongside a metal drainpipe that was fastened to the bricks all the way to the concrete foundation. It was rusty and corroded but if you didn't mind the smell of garbage and rot-water and had a pair of gloves, getting up to the second floor was nothing. But because the alley was a dead-end and after the ride with the creepy cab driver, I have to admit my heart beat a little faster than normal. My hands were clammy within the gloves. I could feel something bad in the air. The smell got worse the closer I got to the dumpster, but I tried to ignore it, setting my eyes instead on the apartment window. Several lights were on along the back wall but none in his place.

I scaled the pipe and minutes later, holding my breath, I slithered in through the window. I hadn't figured on Duane being the type to check his housekeeping very closely and the window was unlatched just as I'd left it. I hunkered down in the darkness, every nerve on edge as I couldn't see a damn thing, acutely aware of the single sound I could make out in the cavernous dark: the tell-tale buzz of a phone left off the hook.

After a few minutes I fished the penlight out of my sock. There didn't appear to be anyone home but experience had taught me never to assume anything. Something didn't feel right and there was no way I was ignoring that. I played the pencil-point of light around the room at floor-level. Nothing moved nor breathed. I had a knife taped loosely to my right shin but I had no wish to use it. This was simply a check, no more or less than Sautin had asked for. Finally satisfied no one was in the room with me, I slowly stood up, resting one hand on the couch as I played the beam around the rest of the living room.

Nothing out of place, nothing broken. Just the phone resting on the table right next to the console. A funny place to leave it, for sure, but not something completely out of the ordinary. I slid out of the living room, pulled up at the kitchen arch. Nothing in there but a pile of dirty dishes. Next came the short hallway leading back to the bedrooms. Mine had been on the right; Duane's was at the end past the bathroom.

Tomb quiet, tomb dark. I understood where the terms came from, the power of their connotation. I didn't want to go back there and I couldn't really say why. I'd been in countless dark houses, creeping around in bedrooms while the owners snoozed mere feet away. I'd robbed a house with a couple fucking in the room down the hall while I drained the safe. Never any big deal.

Except for the fact that I didn't want to go down that fucking hallway.

I crouched low to the floor and moved forward. The penlight cut a slight gash on the carpet and I followed, the buzzing phone suddenly monstrously loud in the dead air. I wished I'd hung the damn thing up but that would have been potential suicide if someone was laying for me.

The thin shaft of light touched the bottom edge of his door. It was open, not all the way, but enough for me to slip through without touching it when I got there. My old door, on the other hand, was closed. I wagered Duane'd not been in there since I cut out. Best to stick to the agenda, I decided, and covered the remaining few feet, held my breath, and slipped through the door to his room. Stood within its silent vacuum. I kept counting the seconds, steeling my nerves. It keeps the mind trimmed, calm. I stopped counting when the light crossed over Duane's body. There was an awesome amount of blood soaking the sheets, dripping down to the carpet, spreading to within a couple of feet from where I stood. His eyes were open but he was way dead.

I immediately snapped off the light and ducked down into a darker spot of blackness next to a closed closet door. I pulled the knife free and held it in my right hand, my eyes straining in the darkness for movement, my ears straining for sound. I started counting again. At one hundred and twenty I eased from my crouch.

There was no one else in the room; I could feel that. The same sensation hung in the air as the one I remembered in Gran'ma's room. A vast absence. I pictured the layout and moved left, feeling for the bureau, finding the small lamp on top of it a moment later. I pulled the string and light flooded the bedroom. He was dead all right; goddamn was he. He'd been stripped nude and his hands were tied with wire to his ankles, his feet pulled back to his ass. He didn't seem to mind the inconvenience, though, even if it did look excruciating. His ass and feet were coal-black, the tips of his fingers and toes too. The nails stood out a dusky, newspaper-white. A dime-sized hole in his forehead and a huge gout of blood on the pillow behind it had obviously been what did him in. But that had, obviously, been at the end. His mouth had been covered in electrical tape so he couldn't scream, and somebody had done extensive work on him. There were long, jagged cuts on his arms and legs, cigarette burns on his chest and torso. His nose had been cut off and lay on the bed beside him. His eyes held a flat fish-gaze.

I looked left and right, assessing the crime scene. The room wasn't disturbed for the most part; it looked about like it always had except for all the blood. Nothing broken, no signs of a struggle. I remembered Sautin telling me the phone had rung for a while before he got the busy signal. Definitely a cool customer, a professional. Or an out-and-out psycho. I remembered the girl in the ice chest and my hands began to shake. That got me hurrying down the hallway to the front door. It opened onto a hallway about twenty feet from the elevator, just down from the stairs, but I had no need to check any of that out. I wanted to see the door itself.

Flipping the light on in the foyer I bent to one knee. The frame hadn't been busted, the bolt was still in place. Locked from the inside with the security chain hanging loose. No big deal; neither of us had ever used the thing when I lived there, and I doubted he started after I left. There was no carpet in the foyer and I had probably fucked up any footprints that might have been left in the hallway and bedroom. But fuck it, what'd I care? Sautin wanted me to check it out, well, I'd checked it out. Game fucking over.

I turned the light off in the foyer, paused before the closed door of my old bedroom, thinking of myself in there with a hole in my head. The god of petty theft had saved me again. Regardless, I reached down and opened the door with one gloved hand. With the light spilling from Duane's room and the penlight, I didn't need anything more. It too was undisturbed, the bed made, a little rumpled perhaps as if somebody had sat on it recently. But I'd be pissing in a barrel to assume if anyone had been staying there. I closed the door and crossed the few feet back into my dead ex-partner's room.

Nothing about him had changed. His expression said he still had a long while to wait. I walked over, dragging my feet through the carpet to cover any tracks, and switched the table lamp off. Now the sensation of being within a tomb was complete. I felt a shiver begin deep inside my soul and left the apartment the same way I'd entered.

When I got back to my place I called Sautin on his cell phone. He answered on the first ring, his voice noncommittal; he could have been either in the room next door or on the moon. Nothing in it whatsoever to give direction or bearing. I told him what I'd found and he took the news in deep silence. When I finished he breathed out deeply, a guy calculating his next move. I wonder now if it was more relief than anything else. I don't know; it doesn't fit right. I doubt if a character like Duane held much importance to Sautin at all. Regardless, he finally opened his mouth and told me to sit tight, he'd be there soon.

I did as he said but didn't sleep. I remember sitting wide awake in my chair before the muted television, running the scene through my mind moment by moment during the course of the whole night. I also remember, for the first time, actually beginning to fear the man.

Chapter 16:The Dream

The next six months went on with no more stunning discoveries or tragedies, in short, as normal as things get when you're a thief working for someone like Sautin. At least there were no more dead bodies. Then he began to slip, just a little at first, things so small I didn't even really notice at first. I was making money, after all, and he generally didn't get involved in my side of things as long as I kept the money rolling in. Duane was written off like a bad account at the bank; the apartment was emptied by a 'cleaning crew', and I never heard anything more about it. I handled my business. Robbing houses, robbing stores. Penny-ante shit mostly, occasionally something more...difficult. I didn't experience any more panic attacks and basically had free rein to do whatever I wanted. I didn't read anything for the first time in years either. Seemed I had no room for philosophy or make-believe in my head. In fact, I came to wonder how it had gotten there in the first place. After all, I was, in point of fact, a slum orphan. What need did I have for philosophy?

But there was one book I wasn't able to shake, never have been. It was something John had given me one of those nights by the campfire: Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Oddly enough, it really hadn't been about motorcycles at all and that's what had turned John off about it. For me, however, it was a different story. I remember carrying it around for awhile like some metaphysical bible, greedily sucking in each revelation as it burst upon me. It was about attacking problems, anything big or small, seeing things on their simplest terms, realizing how even the greatest difficulties can be solved by a simple progression of fundamental steps. It opened my eyes, continues to, though I haven't seen a copy of the book in years. Amazing, really, how time slips by. And just recently I discovered I've ignored the lessons I learned in that book for too damn long. Until I decided to do something about it.

Deep down I just wanted to save Annie. But I wonder: why exactly have I done these things? Is it guilt? Dissatisfaction? The supernatural fears I've felt breathing down my neck for years? I'm not in a good position to judge the first two, and I realize the last could very easily be explained by encroaching insanity. God knows, I wouldn't be surprised if that was all it was. But I don't believe that's it, everything within me says no. I think it's the voice of my grandmother.

I cannot forget the dream and the talk we had that day as we sat in the leaky house, the wind and rain pounding like malevolent ghosts trying to get inside. Because it's finally time I told you that part.

***

It had been an exquisitely bad week at school. There had been a fight, a subsequent suspension. I'd listened to my Grandma cry for two nights in a row, crying while I lay in bed, fists clenched, cursing every living person and unknown entity I could conjure. It was the loneliest time of my life, worse even than her death and my stint on the streets. The point when I felt the most helpless, the most insignificant.

We'd had chili that night, early, before the sun went down. Grandma had looked sick, unwilling to talk as we munched through the 5-alarm and a stack of stale crackers. She wouldn't look at me and that had been the worst, the thing I had the least control over. Because as far as I was concerned the suspension could not have been avoided. That little fucker had made the comment about my old, fucked up shoes and a cluster of girls standing nearby had gotten too much goddamn amusement out of it. As far as I was concerned, I'd just taught a big mouth a much-needed lesson. Of course, nobody else saw it that way.

I'd awoken at some point in the dead time of night, a time like now when every wish or nightmare seems on the verge of coming alive in some beautiful or grotesque manifestation. Or, even worse, in something revealed as secret as the most guarded, personal memory.

I'd come alive with a horribly violent stomach ache. I remember my eyes flashing open to utter darkness, the razor in my belly threatening to spill its contents. The air like a thick blanket in the room because I'd forgotten to turn on the ceiling fan. The curtains were drawn and I'd just as soon been within the depths of an immense tomb for as much as my senses allowed. But the pain in my gut cut through all that primal fear.

I leapt from bed and barely made it down the hall to the bathroom. And then, sitting on the toilet after the first eruption, my knees shaking as I gripped my stomach with both hands, I felt very much a part of the real world again. And it stank of corruption. By the time the cramps subsided ten minutes later I felt better, a little more level-headed. Once more myself. Once more a part of the common course of events.

That lasted about another five minutes.

I remember tip-toeing slowly back down the hall to my room. Careful not to awaken my grandmother. I didn't want to alarm her with some new threat of food poisoning. Not after what I'd already put her through. Just nerves, I told myself. That's it. I'd let the problems at school overwhelm me and my stomach had taken the brunt of the punishment. And now it was over.

Or so I thought.

The door to my bedroom was closed and that was the first odd bit. I didn't remember doing it, had no idea why I would have anyway, and already knew it wouldn't close on its own. The doorknob felt cool to the touch but I blew that off immediately. I turned the knob and pushed the door back, no more expecting what was about to happen than being mugged by the police in the quiet of my own room. I fumbled the door closed in the dark. Then I paused.

There was a figure standing in the corner.

A figure so clearly delineated against the wall that I still don't know how I managed to keep the scream down. Perhaps it was the uncanny light that surrounded it, or my own paralyzing fear. There was nothing really odd about the figure, except for the fact that he (I could clearly see it was a man) stood quite nonchalantly near the curtained window, a clip of smile pinned to the corners of his cheeks. And I believe now, as I always have, that it was at that moment I left the world of the living to travel awhile in an unknown realm. In a realm usually exclusively traveled in death.

I asked the figure a question, the simplest I could form with no preliminary thought. "Who are you?" I said into the vacuum that surrounded us. The figure did not speak. He moved his head slightly to the left and I was amazed at the angelic features, the posture that somehow forbid fear. Then he turned and walked slowly over to the chair near my cluttered desk. He reached out a hand and pulled the chair back. Sat down. Turned to face me.

"Someone who can help," he replied then in vague answer.

I took a step closer, inexplicably unafraid, convinced that the whole flight to the bathroom had been nothing more than an unruly figment of nightmare, some undigested bit of beef or a crumb of cheese, as Scrooge had believed Marley's ghost to be.

"How can you do that?" I asked.

The figure smiled, crossed his legs. It was then I noticed that his clothing changed with the frequency of a kaleidoscope. One second he was garbed in jeans and T-shirt. The next, a mixture of robes and free-flowing skins. A second later he appeared as a Roman legionnaire or an American Indian, other adornments in which I could not pinpoint the era or place. And it was this detail above all others that affected my grandmother the most, the hinge upon which her revelations of the birthday party were focused.

The figure seemed not to notice, but he did not let the question I'd asked go unanswered. He smiled again, a smile both full of potential happiness and the gripping reality of unforeseen circumstances. "It's not always clear," he said. "But, nonetheless, it is true."

Unsatisfied with the shaded answer, I asked again, "Who are you?'

And he said, "A friend." He shifted in the chair, leaned down so that his elbows were firmly planted on his knees. I remember noticing he wore an Irish kilt at that moment, though he'd made no move and his eyes had never left mine. "You're growing fast," he acknowledged, as if he'd known me sometime in the distant past.

I merely nodded, wide-eyed. Surely this was a dream, an hallucination even, maybe it was food poisoning, as the costume changed again into some tribal African garb.

His aspect, however, didn't fade or change with his clothing. In fact, it appeared he took no notice at all of that which held me enthralled. He simply went on speaking. "You have your father's looks."

"My father!" I exclaimed, mystified. "You know my father!? Where is he? Can I see him?" and I reached out, but the figure held up his hands to stop me. He pursed his lips and placed a finger to them, a habit I'd seen Sautin pull numerous times. When he shook his head it was so slight as to be practically invisible.

"I know of him," the figure admitted, now wrapped in the flowing robes of an Islamic imam. "But that doesn't change the circumstances, as sorry as I am to say it. Whatever functions are required of him will be performed elsewhere. But I see you possess in full the thing he believed of himself." Now the imam was gone, replaced by what looked to be a Civil War-era colonial gentleman.

"I don't know what you're talking about...what is this?"

"Child," the figure said tenderly. "I know that, but it won't make you any less effective than you would otherwise be. I just wanted to see the one who's causing such ripples." An Egyptian headdress cascaded down across his bare shoulders. "And I must say, I'm impressed." He smiled again before standing up abruptly. When he next bent down to stare into my eyes the Catholic cleric's collar was evident. "When the time comes be firm, confident. Remember," and he put his forefinger to his lips again, "Nothing in this world is as it appears..."

And then he disappeared.

***

Nothing else remains in my mind of that night. It is only those few, initial moments that have formed their impression, the reality of the stranger in my room, the seemingly nonsensical talk, the feeling that I was involved in some great, cosmic mystery. The odd lack of fear I felt and his assertion that he was, in fact, a friend. Everything else is mere images, shaky photographs that are in no way as clear as the still-shots I've mentioned from my childhood. Hazy waves of storms and a cacophony of noise, as if a billion people had suddenly willed themselves together for one shattering moment, though their intent remained unclear.

The next thing I knew I came awake to the morning chill leaking in through my partially-opened window. The chair was back in its place, nothing apparently missing, no strange articles of clothing littering the floor. I felt as if I'd slept a year, barely escaping something that could take the world in its jaws and munch peacefully away for the next long eternity.

It was a Thursday and my suspension for the fight was done. I stumbled down the hallway, ducking into the bathroom before Grandma had a chance to see me. I heard her banging around in the kitchen (she always got up early to fix me breakfast), but I usually took a shower and I didn't want to break the routine. Not that morning. And when I looked into the bathroom mirror the person I saw staring back was not myself. The hair was too wild, the eyes diabolically bloodshot and swollen; nothing much different, really, than any other morning, but somehow a 100 percent change regardless. Like Moses after witnessing the burning bush, like any of the unknown crowd who viewed Lazarus's resurrection.

I was changed; that much I knew for fact.

Perhaps that was the moment I became invisible to the world. The moment that my talents as a thief took on their new importance. But I have been misled. I know that now and I hope the actions I took to save Annie's life will save me from the fire I feel is waiting. Because I am positive death awaits me this morning.

I hurriedly brushed my teeth and showered, trying to scrub away the effects of the eerie presence that still seemed to cling upon me like any number of the strange vestments that had clothed last night's visitor. I tried to picture the man's face but couldn't. I tried to make sense of the things he'd said, but again, met merely a blank wall. By the time I'd brushed my hair and dressed I'd half-convinced myself nothing had really happened at all, but the first glance at my grandmother shot me back in the opposite direction.

"What's wrong, Jesse?" she said, her brow creasing in its curious, idiosyncratic way.

I just mumbled something incomprehensible and sat down at the table. I began to eat with my eyes on the plate, studying the eggs and bacon, feeling her gaze upon me like a blanket; unable to meet it. I didn't taste a single bite. She tried again before I headed out the door but I didn't reply and thankfully she didn't pursue it any further as I hurried down the drive to the sidewalk, beating a fast retreat to the bus stop around the corner.

School, for a change, went fine that day, probably because I was lost in my own thoughts more than usual, unwilling to bite upon every hook placed before me. I remember nothing of the classes, nothing of my classmates. In fact, it is as if that day never happened at all and that should give you an idea of the joy I found in public education. After no time at all I found myself back at the bus stop, this time getting off instead of on.

I walked back to the house mulling over the way to present my grandmother with what I felt sure had happened the night before. Because I knew somewhere deep inside, the only peace I would get from the experience was through telling it.

Just like this, though I'm old enough and have seen enough not to expect peace anymore.

I heard the television as I opened the door but it clicked off as soon as I stepped inside. I caught her looking over her shoulder when I entered the small but tidy living room, the concern she'd voiced that morning still hanging on her face like a red flag. I waved 'hi' and escaped to the kitchen, absently digging through the refrigerator as I listened to her footsteps getting closer. I didn't even turn around; my hand froze on the pickle jar. Offhandedly I noticed there was a single spear left.

"Jesse?" she said, her tone wavering just slightly. "Is there something wrong?"

"No, ma'am," I answered, too quickly, losing my grip on the lid. The jar almost slipped from my grasp and I made a concerted effort to make it seem a more precarious situation than it really was. Lucky for me it worked; the moment was diffused. She said something more about lunch meat in the bottom drawer and I listened to her leave the room. Moments later the television came back to life.

Well, I made the sandwich and ate the damn thing without even tasting it. I knew I had to talk to her about the dream, visitation, whatever the hell it had been last night, but I had no idea how. After all, I'd just come off suspension and that had done nothing to quiet her already frayed nerves. What would this do? I was suddenly confronted with the same emotion that had burst upon me the year before while lying in the bathtub reading a comic book. The illustrator had been good, real good; his women were life-like, incredibly endowed, and their costumes didn't leave much to the imagination. And suddenly I found myself compromised by a tremendous hard-on. I studied it curiously for several moments, my eyes jumping back and forth between the thinly-clad heroine and my dick, and when I touched its glistening tip my body convulsed, completely. I found myself lying in the bathtub with what looked like several good globs of shampoo floating around and on me. It was only then I realized what had happened, and almost frantic, I'd flung the comic book into the corner, trying to halt the crushing wave of guilt that had suddenly taken over. As if turned out, that first waking wet dream had taken the better part of a week to justify, the first few days a misery of how I'd explain to my grandmother. Because for those agonizing hours I really believed I must reveal to her the source of my shame. However, thankfully, in the end reason prevailed and I realized it was just another surprise part of growing up.

But this new thing was different. It could not be hidden; it begged for release, as if the strange man had planted the seed in my head that could not grow until I revealed the planter. So with the last tasteless bite of sandwich inching down my throat I convinced myself of what had to be done. Of course it made for a miserable afternoon, but at least I got all my homework done for once.

The rain started about five o'clock with the brunt of the storm arriving less than an hour later. We were as prepared as possible; we'd lived in the house for six months or so, and it wasn't the first storm to blow through. We already had the pots out before the rotten spots in the ceiling began to show the pattern of darker brown toward their centers. When the storm started in earnest the small house was a ringing tin drum of offbeat rhythms as each leak played into its own pot. The power went out and we pulled out the box of candles, placing each one in its customary spot. Sometimes it was a storm and sometimes it was simply a case of the money not being there; in any case, it was really nothing out of the ordinary.

So in that wet, dripping, flickering kitchen I took my grandmother's hand and led her to the table where we sat down. There was a mixture of fear and relief in her eyes. I believe if I could have seen mine there would have only been resignation.

And I told her what had happened.

I told her everything, careful to add the feelings the stranger had inspired in me: the curiosity, the need, the fact that fear had played no part in our meeting. And she had listened in silence, her eyes growing wider in the moving shadows of the room. At one point she put her hand to her mouth as if to stop a sound from escaping, but I continued on nonetheless. When finally finished I shut my mouth and looked at her as if she should now tell me her part.

And she did; not that it made much sense then.

Not that it makes much sense now.

Chapter 17:Annie

And now, finally, I come to the crux of this matter. Everything else has been a mere prelude to this thing that has become my only purpose. Maybe I am crazy but I don't think so, perhaps lunatics never do. Regardless, I've reached the point where I can no longer believe my life is a random crap-shoot. There have been too many dreams, the visitation I had years ago, my tendency of avoiding trouble even while committing it. Especially that, I think. Perhaps my grandmother's religion is finally exacting its price because I see no other option.

If nothing else, I've simply saved the life of an innocent girl at the probable expense of my own. Things could be worse.

Her name is Angela Frenoit, a University of Paris economics major, who up until today was staying in New Orleans on a summer fellowship. Studying the effects of Louisiana's Napoleonic Law Code upon and among the cities' poor. Funny, but I wonder if she'll ever finish that paper now?

So what the hell does she have to do with me? I'll tell you.

Only this:

I was supposed to kill her yesterday. There it is in one easy sentence, finally the truth. The crux of the matter. That is the only reason for the pile of cassettes already packed into this shoe box labeled with your address.

All this hot air because I would not kill one girl.

It may surprise you that I seem squeamish to the act of murder, since I am, no doubt, a criminal. I wish it were so. There is no doubt I was a thief before I met Sautin; I willingly became a murderer under his employ. You will find enclosed information that should take a few unsolved homicides off the books. Maybe it's enough to put Sautin behind bars, but I can't hope for too much. These things will settle themselves in due course. But I have to pay the price I've set, and I go willingly enough. It's important that you know it's not out of pride I've refused him because I don't consider myself a martyr.

So be it.

Because I really have to get back to Annie. I saw her off on the plane hours ago. She's probably close to New York by now and should safely be over the Atlantic soon. If not, I've done what I could.

You see, Sautin's secretary and fuck-doll takes in exchange students. From what I've heard she's been married several times but they 'didn't work out'. That is exactly how Sautin put it, his face lapsing into the dry, deadly gaze of a rattlesnake sunning in the desert. She's always done whatever Sautin wanted her to, right down to the cum-stain I found on her desk blotter one morning. Later on, she set her coffee mug right down on top of it and continued along as if it didn't exist. The looks they gave each other the rest of the day are still with me. Jesus Christ, all these still-shots...

One of her marriages produced a child, a boy. I don't know his name because Sautin has never mentioned it and I don't talk to her. She's always known how far to press Sautin and the bastard pays her well. It's a question of priority. She gets a new sports car every two years and the motherfucker's always loaded. But I've never seen a child's car seat in any of 'em. That's why she takes in exchange students. Somebody has to keep an eye on the kid.

There have been at least three others before Annie, but there was never any need to take notice before. They had their jobs and I had mine. When I saw them at all, it was through the window of a car downstairs as I was leaving. Sautin never lets kids inside the building. Says he hates 'the little bastards' and I've learned when he says something he means it.

It's a goddamn good thing that doesn't hold true for me.

Annie's been here since two weeks before the summer session started at UNO. She's pretty, not beautiful; striking in the face in a way that's impossible to put a tag on. Short dark hair and eyes, neither tall nor short; she should fade into a crowd with the least possible resistance. Only she doesn't. And I can't say why. Only by seeing her in person do you realize the difference, but I don't even think that word approaches what she really is, what she's capable of. Many people don't notice her at all. I know because I've watched. First because I was instructed to, and later because I could do nothing else. When she's around there seems to be something better about the day; people not even looking her direction tend to smile, look brighter just for a second or two. Maybe that's why most people don't pay much mind: most people are basically good, regardless of what I've thought most of my life. A little rough around the edges, sure, but inside, basically good. Perhaps that's why Sautin was so shaken by her, why even I felt a slight twinge of guilty surprise when he grabbed my arm that day as we returned from Nine Dragons after lunch. Good people don't take obvious notice, but evil people do. I know that just as certainly now as I know my own reflection in a mirror. And if there is a such thing as redemption I hardly think one deed can balance the scales.

She became an obsession to him.

I never thought much about his initial reaction to her through the BMW's tinted windshield, but looking back he practically shoved the both of us through the front glass doors of his building, peering over his shoulder as if armed men were chasing us down from behind. But three days later when he called me at four in the morning, his voice torn ragged with whiskey and cigarettes, I began to pay closer attention.

I began to use my brain for once. I also began to worry.

He wanted me to break into his secretaries' house while she was at work. He didn't care if Annie and the kid were there or not, but he didn't want her to know if she was. He wanted a photo of her. He also wanted clothes.

At first my balls drew up in my stomach as I listened to that gasping voice on the other end of the line. I imagined he wanted her panties, a bra maybe, and I wondered what new turns he was preparing to make. But I wasn't quite on the mark. "Anything of hers," he said that early morning. "Anyfuckinthing," in a tone that paled humanity.

So I told him the only thing I could. I said okay.

And as easy as that the thing was set in motion, or at least I was finally made a part of it. When he slammed down the receiver I was left with the cold, dead buzzing tone which shredded the sanity of my darkened bedroom.

***

The next day started off like any other. I awoke, took a shower, all the little niceties a million other people plow through before starting on their way. I had one thing to accomplish: get a photograph of Annie and a piece of her clothing. Just another job, albeit a strange one. Nothing really out of the ordinary because I was a paid man, and when Sautin said he needed something taken care of, I did it. I'd long since ceased worrying about capture; I could have been a Wal-Mart employee and felt about the same amount of tension. No more shaking hands and pounding heart. But some small intuition that morning warned me things were gonna be different this time.

From what little Sautin told me I knew Annie had morning classes and left the kid at a childcare center near UNO. As I shaved my face and stared stupidly into the mirror I worked everything out in my head. Taking a cab over (paying cash, or course), working my way around back and entering the house. I didn't expect any trouble. Daylight, night time; it's all the same. Get in, get out. No sweat. I'd be back to the apartment before lunch. No more than a half-day at the office, but still, it didn't feel right.

I was nervous, irritable. Glad nobody was there to see me.

By nine-thirty I was in the neighborhood. Working class, the kind of place where couples both had full-time jobs. On any other day I'd been a kid cut loose in a candy store, but not then. Every step felt like masturbating in public. By the time I got through the back gate and stood near the patio window I was sweating more than the temperature permitted. Nonetheless, I had a job to do.

Amid this unnatural tension I went about my business and less than five minutes later stood in the living room. It was a neat place, nice furniture. All this shit that Sautin paid for, stuff that speaks of the reality of a mistress much more than the rote routine of a secretary. Or even a wife, I have to suspect. Digital cable box, stainless steel pots hanging above the tiny kitchen island again. Not one goddamn toy in sight. The place looked right for a Gregorian chant.

I turned and headed down the hall. Every apartment is the same after awhile. There's the living area/kitchen, then the short hallway breaking off to the bedrooms. People don't realize how standard everything is these days, how fucking predictable. If a good thief has a sense for where the furniture is placed he's actually in a better situation than the dweller. The thief knows someone else can be inside; the dweller doesn't even suspect it.

I felt the TV and it was cool; the place felt vacant.

I pushed open the door on the left down the hall, already knowing that was her room. It opened and I just stood there as if someone had stuffed a pole up my ass and cemented it to the floor. The curtains inside were drawn, but a thin light filled the room, catching all the stray particles of dust that lazed around in the now-disturbed air.

There was nothing at all strange, or odd, or telling about the room. Nothing except the absolute knowledge I should not be there. As if disturbing her things would jeopardize something as meaningful and needy to me as water. But I'm me; I stepped inside.

It looked typical college-student, a little neater than most, but typical. I'd seen it all before. There were pictures of her family and friends stuck in the corner of the mirror of the bureau, and I found myself drawn to them. Smiling, smiling, always. Both her and the people around her. I wondered how she felt since coming to New Orleans, if she'd figured out the reason Sautin's secretary took in exchange students. I wondered if she was getting anything done with school.

I caught a look at my own reflection in the mirror and turned away. No time for self-examination. Then I turned and sized up the rest of the room. The bed was unmade and the closet doors stood partially ajar as if she'd been in a hurry that morning. A bra and panties lay on top of a small pile of dirty clothes near the night stand, and I immediately looked away. And at that moment I knew I wouldn't have brought him those even if he'd asked for them. The ghostly presence of my grandmother forbade it.

But what would it be? The picture was no problem; I simply had to slip one down from the mirror. What else? Something harmless, something she wouldn't miss. I wiped a hand across my mouth and searched. The second my eye traveled the night stand I saw it: a scrunchie, those things girls use to tie up their hair. It even had a few of hers trapped in its many convolutions, and I didn't think she'd be prone to miss it. The room was just messy enough...

I hurried over and snatched it up.

And that was that. Less than two hours later I was back at the pad, lying on the couch with a big bag of Lay's potato chips between my legs and the empty remains of three Budweiser's on the table. I think Patton was on the tube.

When the phone rang after dark I had no idea what it was or where it was coming from. In my dream I was lost and rambling in a huge, though somehow vaguely familiar house, searching for the source of the sudden, incessant ringing. It was only after the answering machine kicked on and I heard Sautin's grating voice that I surfaced. His disembodied snarl filled the room, raising hackles along my spine with the imperative behind his words.

I spilled the rest of the chips and the beer when I lurched across the coffee table for the receiver. I no more wanted to talk to him than see him at that moment, but just listening to his voice echoing off the walls was enough to get me going.

I didn't realize my hands were shaking until I put the phone to my ear, and by that time it was far too late to hang up. It sounded like he'd been running. Either that or drinking again. It was getting harder to tell; up until that point he'd always been an 'ice man'. No longer. His voice cracked with nerves and he must have been chain-smoking from all the blowing coming from that end.

The whole conversation lasted no more than two minutes, but it seemed much longer. I answered his questions and nodded at the walls. He sounded as pleased as a man headed to the dentist for a root canal. He said he'd be at my place within the hour to pick up the girl's things and I said okay. Always the yes man. Because what else was there to say? Then I simply hung up the phone and went back to the couch. I didn't bother cleaning up the chips and spilled beer; I just sat there and unwittingly dreaded the ragged man on his way over.

***

The next day saw little action. I heard even less; I talked to Sautin on the phone once, about nothing. He was distracted and that made me all the more nervous. He didn't ask me to do anything, nothing. I just sat at the apartment and waited. And waited.

By the end of the second week it was too much. Late one Thursday night I worked up the nerve to call him, which was highly out of the ordinary. I didn't expect him to be home but he was, even though I was ready to hang up by the time he picked up. When he did I could tell he was drunk and that was doubly strange. I'd never known him to be much of a drinker and here it was again. And all this time I'd thought he just liked to make money, legally or otherwise. He didn't chase skirts (the secretary was his only fling, or at least the only one I knew about) drink to excess or do drugs. Usually. Just another typical businessman as far as I knew. No big deal. Was it Balzac that said, 'Behind every great fortune there is a crime'? That is if you could even classify him as such. Hell, he had a lot more money than anyone I'd ever been associated with, but what he controlled could hardly be deemed a 'great fortune'. Regardless, I've been young and stupid. I guess all error starts off in such small degrees.

He wanted to know what the hell I wanted and I wasn't up to the truth. I mumbled something--I have no idea what--and was cut off as he changed tone and direction. "You ever read the Bible?" he asked.

At first I thought I'd heard wrong, that I'd missed something. Not so. He asked again and I said 'no' offhand. Of course, Grandma had familiarized me with the Book in the ancient past but I hardly considered myself knowledgeable of its contents. My reading interests had been elsewhere. I knew I used to believe in good and evil, but that had been a long time ago. He laughed.

It was the most evil sound I've ever heard and the skin crawled along my back. My knuckles popped from holding the receiver so tightly. "Well I am," he said and paused. "Or at least I have been," he finished. "I've been busy lately with a problem that's sprung up."

Again, I had no idea where the conversation was heading, but I decided to humor him to get an idea. After all, it was I who'd made the call. "A problem?" I asked stupidly, completely out of the fact that I had nothing else to say.

"That's right..." and his voice dragged behind a great load of alcohol. I wanted so badly now to hang up I could taste the bile rising in the back of my throat. There was only one thing left to say, and I could not avoid it. I swallowed hard and choked the knot down.

"What problem?" I asked specifically.

"The problem of the Apocalypse," he replied flatly. The accompanying dull drone playing through the line felt like a timer about to explode. I coughed.

"I'm not sure I get you," was all I could manage.

"Thought not," he dead-panned. "Read The Revelation. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

And with that the line went dead.

Chapter 18:Sautin's Revelation

That night I sat down and read it. And when I was done I hadn't the slightest idea what he was talking about. The man wasn't religious—even in some holy roller, screwball way--and I never saw him reading anything except the financial section of The Times Picayune. Him reading The Bible seemed about as off-center as the President of the United States suddenly announcing he was bisexual. Or so I thought. At that time I didn't know Sautin was having dreams of his own.

But I found out soon enough.

Anyway, The Revelation. I didn't know what to make of it. All that talk of angels and demons, signs in the sky, monsters and burning cities. I had no idea where Sautin was coming from but it made me plenty nervous regardless. Reading the short book of prophesy brought my grandmother's long discarded warnings; it brought back the sense of doom she had prophesized for evil men, and now I was one of them. A burglar, a thief, even worse, a murderer.

I remember staring at the silent phone sitting in its cradle until the sun peeked between the buildings.

Like now...just like now.

***

At nine o'clock I took a cab to the CBD and stood awhile outside Sautin's building. At a quarter of ten I took the back stairs up to his office suite, not wanting to encounter any of the other tenants in the elevators. I wanted full advantage of my invisibility.

The whole top floor was his private suite though he actually used less than half of it. A seldom-used freight elevator ran a direct line between the waterproof basement right below street level and the top floor. Sautin said the shaft had been there when he purchased the building, and he'd had the elevator installed shortly thereafter for his own private purposes. It's been used for disposal several times that I know of. The living seldom ride its cables.

I came in down the hall near the restrooms, and I ducked inside the Men's Room for a moment. My guts were boiling and I had the beginnings of a headache. My hands were shaking again. Another bad sign. I've never been that nervous before, but it proved to be a sign of things to come. There's only one significant difference now. Then I planned on living; now I don't.

My face didn't look too bad in the mirror; a little drawn, but not much different than usual. I washed my hands, splashing water on my cheeks and running my fingers through my hair. Then I cleared my throat, set my jaw, and left the cold confines of the empty fifth floor restroom.

I followed the magnificent green carpet to Sautin's suite. The reception desk was empty and I checked my watch to make sure I wasn't going crazy. His secretaries' days off were about as infrequent as a priest's. My unease grew. I glanced behind the wilting palm, through the twin glass doors that opened to Sautin's foyer. The door to his office was slightly ajar. I walked around the desk and pushed through the glass doors. I heard a clear, crisp tinkling: a coin meeting the bottom of an empty glass. It was a sound I well remembered from my stint on Chimes Street.

The glass doors in the foyer were swinging shut when I heard his voice. "Jesse," it rasped. "Get in here." I swallowed hard and entered the man's office.

It was the first time I'd ever seen him in such a mess. He had on an old T-shirt and his hair was an uncombed nest. He obviously hadn't shaved in several days. I could see his raging, bloodshot eyes from across the room even though the only light in there was what managed to seep through the seams of the custom-made drapes which squeezed hard against the double-paned glass along the south wall. A bottle of Jack Daniels sat on the desk, half-empty. I stood by the door while he sized me up, almost expecting him to lick his lips like a lioness stalking its prey.

He nonchalantly flipped a quarter into the empty glass, studied it a moment as it tattooed out a rhythm, and then grabbed the bottle by the neck and drank deeply. He didn't even grimace when he sat it back down again. "Want a drink?" he asked behind those snake eyes. I simply shook my head and waited.

"Close that goddamn door," he said and I did. He motioned me over to his desk with his right forefinger. Then he ran a hand through his own thick, black hair and turned his deadly gaze on me. "You read it?" he asked. A nerve in the hand holding the bottle began ticking violently. An ashtray pushed off to the side of his desk was brimming with cigarettes and I'd never known him to smoke. In fact, he'd adamantly fumed against the practice on several occasions.

I nodded and sat down in the big leather chair usually reserved for his business contacts...or the doomed. I wasn't sure which one fit right then.

"Wha'd'ya think?"

I shrugged. "Sounded crazy to me."

Sautin grunted and smirked at the same time, taking a moment to pull off the bottle. He thrust it across the table in my direction and I took it without comment. I knew this snake bit, so I choked down a shot, staring at the man behind the desk as the whiskey burned a trail from my throat to my stomach.

"Right," he said. "Crazy like a fuckin joke, or a riddle?"

I shrugged again and attempted to relax in the big leather chair. After all, I was his man, the guy he counted on to get things done. What had I to fear?

Plenty.

He cleared his throat and put two fingers to his lips. They looked very dry, parched to the point of cracking. He rubbed one burning red eye before speaking. And when he did it was in a monotone that never varied.

"Had a dream, Jess," he began. "Least that's what I thought it was the first time. Now I know it's a vision." He cracked his knuckles and leaned into a crouch over the desk. Facing me like a mad tiger. The light cast horrifying shadows into the depths of his face and I shrunk back in the chair though he appeared not to notice. I knew he had though; Sautin's not one to miss weakness.

"The bitch brought it on," he breathed quietly, tapping his desk with a well-manicured forefinger.

"What bitch?"

He grinned, leaned back in his chair, and dug momentarily in his coat pocket. He pulled out the scrunchie I'd taken from his secretaries' house and flipped it onto the center of the desk. "Smells the same," he said, raising his eyebrows as if I should understand every word.

I tried to buy some time. "The chick who watches the kid?" Just for a second the mask faltered and I saw the slavering monster lurking just below the skin. A nerve ticked at the corner of its mouth.

"Her name's Annie Frenoit. Economics student from Verdun, France." He smiled menacingly. "Or at least that's the front. She's a Babylonian whore in actuality." He must have seen my expression change because he smiled broadly, his sales pitch smile. "You did read it," he beamed. "I wasn't really sure until right now." He paused and looked over my shoulder. "Used to be better at judging people," he whispered.

Another long draught followed on the tail of this comment and he pushed the bottle closer to my end of the desk. I took it more willingly this time. "Ya remember the day we came back from the Dragons, doan'cha?" and I nodded. It was more than a still shot; it was a whole slow reel of film in my mind. "The night before that I had a dream for the first time in my life. The first fucking time."

I knew he was begging the question and I took another hard swallow. "A dream?" I had to ask.

"Yeah. Something that convinced me of the thing you're gonna do." I tried not to betray the adrenaline rush of panic those words elicited. Sautin leaned farther over the desk, his brows crunching together as if a kernel of rock-hard thought was coming dislodged.

"This is the thing, Jess," he said. "I don't dream, ever. Not when I was a kid and not since. When I sleep I'm a bank vault; I wake up and it's as if things froze in place while I've been down. Also," and he pointed his index finger at me. I saw it was shaking too. "I ain't religious; got no time for that bullshit. I do according to my best interest; that's my religion. Business is it...but you know that already. You gotta understand what I'm gonna ask you to do is the most important thing I've ever asked...the only thing now."

I just nodded dumbly and kept my mouth shut. He was rambling and I'd never known him to before. He was also plenty drunk though his voice controlled it better than most. The guy has more tricks than a rich magician.

"You dream, Jesse?" he asked suddenly, as if to catch me off guard, which it did. I nodded, shrugged my shoulders at the same time.

"Sometimes. Not much. Never seemed important..."

Sautin laughed again, rubbed a finger against the incessant tick in the corner of his mouth. "The separation 'tween me and thee..." he whispered, glancing off to the corner of his dark office. I pretended not to have heard.

"She came to me in the dream," he said in the same tone, still looking off. It hardly appeared he remembered I was there. "It was her, the exchange student. Annie. But she was just the beginning. There was nothing but complete darkness. Like black, spilled ink. Then I could see crackling flashes of orange and red. I smelled smoke and suddenly realized a burning was takin place close by. I saw the outline of a city engulfed in smoke, great buildings tipped and shattered as if a bomb had just gone off. I walked through the wreckage, across streets filled with rubble and smoke. I could smell bodies burning, Jesse. When I got to the edge of the destruction I found a green field beginin at the smoking limit of the destruction and stretchin way on outta sight. It was then I noticed her standing right there beside me. I turned and knew her immediately; I said her name--not Annie, then--and she smiled. While I studied her, memorizing every line and curve of her face, she raised her right arm and pointed off into the field. I turned my eyes to follow. There was no longer any hint of green. What spread out before us now was as empty as a scorched desert except for one small spot a long way off. There seemed to be a smaller fire burning there, and I felt the girl take my hand. We lifted off the ground and rose up until we were directly above the smaller fire. When I looked down I saw the bodies, twisted and blackened and each one with my face. And all the heads were screaming, the bodies bound together in the shape of one word: Revelation. And I turned to the girl again. 'For you,' she said and disappeared. Just disappeared and that's where it ended." Sautin, finished, drummed his fingers on the desktop and pushed back deeper into his chair.

I didn't know what to say. Only after several lost moments could I fashion any sort of reply. "So what do you make of it?" I asked.

"You read it, Jesse," he said as if the point were very clear to anyone but the biggest imbecile. "We are at a monumental time and place in history. You have to take my word on this."

"Okay."

"Good. That's good," he whhispered, the maddened daze leaving his eyes momentarily. He clapped his hands together and just as quickly it returned.

"But I don't know—" and Sautin cut me off with a wave of his hand.

"Oh yes you do." He smiled horribly. "You're going to kill her for me."

And again I said the only thing I thought I could, "Okay."

***

On the way home I knew I wouldn't do it. I'd seen the girl and knew she didn't have a damn thing to do with this lunacy. She was young, foreign, a student, for God's sake. She had about as much to do with Sautin's life and well-being as a New Testament at a synagogue. But I had no idea how to get out of what I'd told him. Sautin's not the kind of guy who fucks around; when he says do something he means it. No questions. My life, as far as he was concerned, had been bought and paid for. Without him I was flat-ass on the street again. The little bit of money I had wouldn't take me far, and it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Sautin would find me; I knew that as well then as I do now. He may seem a small-time operator but there's an evil surrounding him as real as flesh over bone. And this was his most important thing.

But I wasn't quite ready to snuff it.

I'd gotten used to the apartment, the money, the lazy hours between jobs. He'd lulled me into a false sense of security, and as I walked alone down the busy streets in the CBD I knew I'd been misled. I could practically feel my grandmother walking along beside me, shaking her head as we went.

And I wondered if this was how it always happened. Does every lost soul suddenly wander unknowingly upon the truth, only after the moment of redemption is past? I slipped into a bar and ordered a drink.

Sitting there in my solitude I examined what he'd told me, and no matter how I rolled it around it didn't make sense. He'd never dreamed and one dream was enough to bring this on? It was farfetched to say the least, but what did that matter? He believed it. Sure he was drunk but the vision (and I definitely know a little of the power of visions) had set him to this. Only then could I fully convince myself of his madness. I'd seen the girl, though only once, and fleetingly at that. There was nothing...it didn't wash. But that wasn't quite right.

There was something. I'd known it that day too. Just seeing her through the windshield of Sautin's secretaries' car, I'd known...

I thought back on the text. Sautin had called her the Whore of Babylon and that was the only direct reference I'd recognized. Of course there was the stuff about burning buildings but that was not so odd. Not coming from him, at least.

Was he, in this delusion, actually talking about stopping some Anti-Christ from being born? Had his twisted imagination set this up as a way of absolving himself of the crimes he'd committed? If it was, I didn't see how; he'd wholeheartedly admitted his disavowal of religion. Even the thought of him reading Revelation seemed completely out in left field.

And I'd told him I'd kill her.

Chapter 20:The Betrayal

Sautin hadn't given me any time frame but he wasn't gonna wait long. He'd grown progressively worse since the day back from Nine Dragons and things weren't getting any better. He didn't call me for anything. His secretary even phoned once, grilling me for any information as to the change in his behavior. I kept my mouth shut and got rid of her as quickly as possible. But just the few minutes I was on the phone brought back a memory that'd seemed ludicrous at the time, something brought up one night in the Chimes Street pad. One of the losers (I don't even recall his name, just the fact that he had the most severe hair-lip I've ever seen), high out of his mind, had made a comment in jest that had resurfaced from time to time with me. He said he expected someone to show up at his door in the future (when he'd put aside the drugs and criminal activity, he was careful to explain through his hair-lip), an old man with a long, trailing beard. Typical, non-imaginative bullshit. The loser even forecast his son or daughter opening the door to the stranger and the stranger asking for him. The loser--he'd stopped laughing by this time—would approach the door, the stranger smiling all the while back at him. It wouldn't be a cop or the FBI, that would be as clear as rain through a windshield, he'd said. The stranger would say nothing as he withdrew an old parchment, a scroll, from the folds of his coat. He would then grab the scroll at both ends and let the bottom fall away. And on it would stretch the wide array and classification of every offense, minor and major, a complete tally of all the shit the loser had piled on over the years. And at the bottom, a total.

The stranger's scrawl at the bottom would contain two words: Your Life.

I've thought a lot about that over the years, more lately. Because maybe that fuck had his finger on more than he knew. I say this now because my scroll has finally been laid out and it might as well bear the very words he so readily expected.

**

Like I said, the moment I walked away from Sautin's office, well before I slipped into the bar for a drink, I knew I wouldn't do what he wanted. The other shit had been different, fucking over weirdoes and crooked dealers. That hadn't seemed to matter. But I thought a lot about that girl floating in the ice chest. Maybe I tried to use that image as the justification for the things I'd done, as proof the world wasn't fair or caring and you just had to grab whatever you could get your hands in the little while that you had, but I know now (now that I've come to my own senses) that it just ain't enough. I was wrong, I've been wrong all along. A party to unjustifiable evil.

But there is one vague hope left. The lessons my grandmother taught me have refused to fade over the years. They've receded, sure, but eventually they've come back like the tide. I remember her story of Saul the Persecutor, of his intense hatred for this new sect, the Christians, until his startling redemption on the road to Damascus. How his name was changed to Paul, how the foundations of Christ's teachings rode upon his shoulders thereafter.

Maybe I'm trying to change my name now.

Anyway...this is the last of it.

***

I did stake her out. I have certain routines and the last thing I wanted was for Sautin to get suspicious. He wanted the girl dead and he'd have her dead (either with or without me) unless I did something to stop it.

The money still came in on Fridays but there were no other assignments. As Sautin had said, this was the most important thing. He called me drunk in the night several times and I put him off with excuses I'd carefully contrived over the course of the days in between. I told him this was different; the girl was no crooked businessman or drug-dealer on the move. This was a young, female, French citizen who would raise a helluva stink once she turned up missing. I convinced him I was working on it, that it had to be done right. He even told me during one of these slurred conversations, when the clock was well into the midnight hours, that he'd thought about doing it himself, but some mysterious impulse had warned him away. He said it wouldn't matter if she were holding the kid in her arms when he pulled the trigger. But I begged him off, told him to stand by his impulse (though in reality that had me plenty nervous in itself), frantically trying to convince him the situation was in hand, that what he wished done would be done in the greatest possible haste.

It worked. I bought some more time. Not much, but some.

I followed her in the city, on campus. I became accustomed to her schedule: where her classes were, when she picked up and dropped off the kid. That was a big thing: I didn't want the kid involved. It would complicate matters, and a mother (no matter how bad) was always a mother. If the kid disappeared too it might lead Sautin into doing something even more rash than what I had planned.

I wanted to keep that crazy bastard as sedate as possible, so I strung it out. But the call came again late last Tuesday night. Him again, worse than any previous time. He said he was out of fucking patience, that the dreams were coming every night, that they were getting worse. But now, he said, the burning bodies didn't have his face any longer. They had mine.

I knew Annie would be dead within twenty-four hours if I didn't make my move. But, luckily by then, I had everything finalized.

I just wasn't sure she'd buy it, and of course it'd be impossible to get a kicking, screaming woman onto a plane in full view of security.

I went into action on Wednesday morning, first taking a bus to the airport and then paying cash for an Avis rental. A Kia so I could get into tight, nondescript places. I planned on taking her right after her field-study class let out. I'd checked the catalogue and by overlapping that with her scheduled routine, I figured they turned in current work on Wednesday mornings before going out to gather more information in the field. She wouldn't be doing that part of it anymore, though. There was only one more thing to take care of, and for me, slipping into an empty house was no trouble at all.

***

UNO has a nice campus, plenty of trees, plenty of people milling about. The security crew is usually busy doing nothing more than handing out parking tickets and I've yet to read in the papers of violence or other mischief occurring there during the day. I had my bag, a small briefcase I take on certain jobs. It has everything I need plus enough space for priority items dependant on whatever it is I'm doing. That day it was a small white rag and a vial of chloroform. It's not that hard to get if you know who to get it from. And the shit works.

She'd parked her car in a small lot just off from the stadium. She'd dropped off the kid earlier and wouldn't be back to get him until a few hours after class let out. I parked the rental two spaces over from hers (I had parking passes to just about anywhere in town; Sautin knew a guy who specialized in such things), and I sat back to wait. As usual I wasn't nervous. In fact, I'd been more nervous that morning just getting everything in gear. That's the part that makes me a pro; when it's time to do whatever it is to do, I settle into a groove and get it done. Once committed to a course of action, there's no time for second-guessing. Maybe it's really this confidence that breeds my supposed invisibility. I don't know.

Thirty-five minutes later I watched her walk down the sidewalk to the tree-lined path which led to our parking lot. There were a few other students ambling around but they were too concerned with their own business to worry with mine. She, on the other hand, just looked happy. Same as usual. I knew she'd seen my face that day back from Nine Dragons and I planned on hitting her quick with Sautin's name to drain any tension or urge to flee. I was sure the secretary had told her more than she wanted to know about that sonofabitch.

I opened the Kia's door when she set foot on the parking lot, leaving her class. She had about fifty feet to her car, an older model Sautin's secretary had tossed out several months before, and I quickly unscrewed the lid on the chloroform and up-ended it on the rag. I held it loosely in my hand to keep it from drying out in the wind and got out myself, stepped away from the vehicle. She still hadn't noticed me and that was just fine. People were scarce, but all it would take was a surprised shout to bring the few who were around to attention. I didn't plan on giving her reason or time for any of that shit. People usually think that anyone who knows their name must be friendly. And I was, just not in any way she could imagine.

She had her head down, studying the cover of a textbook, when I called out. I stood just inside a fringe of shadow in the space between her car and mine, and when she looked up I was smiling. It worked and she smiled back, though her look was questioning. I was relieved to see a bright spark of recognition flow quickly into her eyes; I'd not been off the mark about her perception it seemed.

"Annie," I said. I've always found the first name most effective. I wonder how many kids have been abducted because their parents were careless enough to have their name printed on their shirt or jacket. It's a common reaction, whether you're a child or adult; if someone calls you by name your guard comes down. It worked with her to perfection. Her brilliant smile grew wider, even though I could see the question mark remained in her eyes. Just that half-second allowed me to cover the remaining ground between us.

I reached out my left hand to distract her while bringing the right up, leading with the chloroform-soaked rag. It couldn't have been cleaner; we were on the edge of shadow, just inside the verge of tree line. By the time alarm darkened her features the rag was against her nose and I had my left arm coming across to embrace her. For all practical purposes we were no more than two friends meeting after class in the parking lot.

And chloroform works fast, just like in the movies. I pulled up close to her as her legs gave way and braced her with my body as I steered both of us back toward the rental. I'd left the passenger side door ajar so I could kick it open with my foot, and less than thirty seconds later I had her in the seat, already thrown back for the occasion. After that I was just another college student rummaging around in my car for some misplaced something. I wasn't even breathing hard when I came around and got in on the driver's side.

I didn't bother looking around as I backed out. The car was rented under a false name and would be back at the lot awaiting another customer before dark. Biting back the urge for a cigarette, I dropped the car from Reverse into Drive and headed for one of Sautin's many warehouse properties. Of course, I'd let him in on none of this. Up until our meeting later on this morning, he's had no reason to mistrust me. Blood on the hands does a lot in the way of soothing suspicious nerves.

I hit her with another dose on the way to the warehouse and carried her in through the back loading door while she was still in La-La Land. Then I took her into a small office with a steel door and no windows: a good place to scream all you want to no effect.

I used electrical tape to strap her to the barber's chair, and only with this initial phase of my plan complete did I take a smoke break. I was on my fourth cigarette when she began coming around. I hadn't taped her mouth because like I said, the place was perfect for screams. Completely soundproof.

I put on a smile to greet her as she came around to full consciousness.

Surprisingly enough she remained quiet. Many bigger, tougher men had been nowhere near so composed. I made the second greeting simple enough.

"Hello," I said, stubbing out the cigarette on the concrete floor.

She just looked at me and for the first time her face registered hate. I tried not to notice, and (bending at the waist with my elbows on my knees) began telling her what it was I had to say. She took the whole thing in silence, and when I finished I stood up and left the room, closing the door tightly behind me. I knew she needed time to digest the scenario I'd laid out.

Plus, I had a phone call to make.

I walked out to the rear parking lot and studied the dreary skyline across the muddy Mississippi River. It was only then that my pulse sped up. I punched out Sautin's private number on my cell phone and closed my eyes as I listened to the pulse echo in my ear. I had one more play left and I prayed it would work.

He picked up on the third ring.

I chose brutal directness to cement my intent. "Sautin," I said. "It's done. You wanna see the package?" I had every finger crossed on my free hand.

There was a long pause on the other end. "Ahh...no. At least not yet." Another pause and I could almost see him biting his lip, not sure whether to be relieved or frightened. "No problems?" he asked. Even on the cell he was paranoid and he'd never been before.

"Like a charm," I said. Then I got down to the real business. There was still the disposal to worry with but that shouldn't concern him; the only thing he needed to do was handle the secretary. She needed to keep her mouth shut, no missing person's report for a day or so. Until the loose ends could be tied away, I said.

He unhesitatingly agreed and I slowly uncrossed my fingers. I hung up several seconds later. Then I went back inside. Annie looked up quickly when I entered the soundproof room, but most of the fear was gone, or at least as much as I could tell.

She made me uncomfortable, I guess because of the poison of Sautin and my own marked past. I stood close to the door, not wanting to approach her for a variety of reasons, many of them which I couldn't voice. Mistrust still leaked from her brilliant blue eyes.

I reached inside my jacket and withdrew an envelope I hoped would help reassure her. She didn't look like the type who'd be open to bribery but she'd have to trust me on this one. And we didn't have much time; Sautin's recent instability might make him prone to change his mind about seeing the body. I already knew his thread was fast unraveling.

I opened the envelope and reached inside, withdrawing what it contained. There were twenty one-hundred dollar bills awaiting transformation into Traveler's Checks. She had nothing but the clothes on her back, but there was no way we were going back to her place. I still had a plane ticket yet to buy, but the table had to be set a little at a time. If at all...

I said,

"Everything I told you's true. You're in grave danger and if you want to live to see tomorrow you better listen to every word I say. Because I'm the man sent to kill you and we don't have the time, and I don't have the energy to explain why. I'm gonna give you this money and you have to come with me to Baton Rouge. You're done with New Orleans. You're not safe here; you should be dead. Believe me if you've never believed anything else in your life. Whether you're gonna remain alive depends on you. I can't buy your airline ticket for you, and I can't drag you screaming into the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport. You've got to trust me. Guy I work for wants you dead, believes you're already dead. I just got off the phone with him and told him so. But the only thing that concerns me at this moment is getting you out of town and on a plane back to your family. You have to believe this. If you resist or give me away; if you remain in the States a day longer, you will die. But like I said, I can't drag you to Baton Rouge bound and gagged. You have to come of your own free will. And that's just the way it is..."

I finished the lecture and lit another cigarette. It was all up to her now.

The change came first in her eyes, of course. I saw her brain working feverishly behind them and it didn't take much longer for her response. "All right, I'll go with you," she said, showing no sign of fear now. In fact, her resolve set me back. Definitely something peculiar, something apart from this world about her. Like a glimpse out of the corner of your eye or a smell you can't quite put a name to. Something as tenuous as a foggy night. Again I felt the presence of something unworldly, perhaps otherworldly circling around us as I set about cutting the tape which bound her wrists and ankles. "But I do not think it will work," she admitted, and I only then realized how thick her accent was. "I do not carry my passport to class."

I reached into my back pocket and pulled it out, having fished it from the house on the way over. I handed it to her and she took it without a word.

***

Within the next thirty minutes we fled New Orleans, headed for Baton Rouge. I went straight for the airport; the sooner she had the ticket the better because I wanted her on the earliest flight available. The chance that Sautin would put his nose to the ground on this one was unpredictable (I knew he wasn't thinking straight), but I didn't want any fuck-ups. I figured I had a day before things fell apart, tops.

As it's turned out, I had a day and a half. Even though the flight didn't get booked as planned and I had to leave Annie at a Roadway Inn with a purse full of Traveler's Checks, that's how it turned out. As far as I know...

I hope she's over the Atlantic by now, but how can you know for sure? I've done what I could. There have been no calls from Sautin; he has not been to my place. Perhaps when I walk into his office this morning he will be honestly surprised I have betrayed him. I want to see that in his eyes; that, and fear.

***

I drove back to New Orleans as satisfied as I could reasonably be that she was safe. She'd pulled it off at the airport counter, no hysterics, no finger-pointing while security dragged me away. I hadn't thought she would by that time, because maybe she couldn't. That would be like stopping a movie before the final scene. There has to be a conclusion.

And with this I supply it.

***

Almost six fifteen. The sun has already begun to burn through the blanket of fog huddled down upon the buildings, and I saw the light in the old couple's place go on above the sink ten minutes ago. I guess the longer you live the earlier you rise. Maybe in the end you don't sleep at all, just waiting for the end to come.

Anyway, that's it. That's the story, set down and recorded, and I can't change anything about any of it. What's done is done, as the old saying goes. The last couple days have been a fine time for thinking on the run, putting off for later the thing that has caused all the trouble in the first place. But, right or wrong, it's done. Finally finished.

Maybe there is a purpose to life and everyone's got a particular part to play. I don't know what that says about free will, but by now I don't see that it matters. You do what you do, because, inside, you have to. You just have to balance yourself out in the end. When you hear the alarm you better damn well take heed...

***

And with this Jesse Avery reached over and clicked off the recorder. He carefully placed the stack of five cassettes into the box with the D.A.'s address crudely scrawled across the front. The alarm clock went off and he jumped, having not remembered to turn it off the night before. He stared at it for several moments, only then realizing he wouldn't need it anymore. Then he gathered the box and left the apartment to walk the three miles to Sautin's office.

Chapter 20:Curtain

The street bore its standard traffic of bustling people, even at this early hour. It was getting on toward the end of the week, and everyone sprinted toward whatever finish line they'd set for themselves. Jesse, however, walked slower than usual, taking his time to watch all the drama of both mindless and purposeful action. All the serious, worried faces, the tight lips and pinched brows. Occasionally a smile that vanquished the storms surrounding it. A presence, it seemed, hung in the air, something perpetually waiting...

Jesse pulled up at a newspaper dispenser pushed into a tight crease outside a barber shop. Same old news, same old day. Nothing about the trials he'd been through, nothing about the grave duty he went to fulfill. Nothing at all out of the ordinary except the impetus that had him by the throat. He saw the vision in his mind, the long, withstanding dream of the man racing along in the truck. And then the boy in the ditch, breaking over the verge of road into the truck's path. His father had felt this thing, even if the summons had not been his to fulfill. That spoke of, if not eternal, then surely lasting power.

He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked on, empty-handed. He'd dropped the package into a mailbox outside his apartment building. Only another block to the office, but he kept his pace studied, his eyes on the many faces as he walked, unnerved by the images that assailed him with every feature he took in. Secrets swirled in the air half visible, gaudy little hints and indiscretions, voyeuristic happiness, and the depths of solitude breathing within the throng.

When he reached the building, he actually sighed in relief before taking hold of the handle in the brass plate and swinging the door back to the street. Enough was enough; the sensation trip (perhaps from lack of sleep) was wearing him thin.

He didn't choose covert tactics to spirit him to the top floor, but neither did he say anything to the few people he passed in the hallway, the ones he rode the elevator with, on the way up. He just went as he was used to: like an unintentional ghost, hardly taking the trouble to part the air before him.

Jesse knew the receptionist's desk would be empty before the doors even slid back at the fifth floor. Indeed, his premonition was made concrete. Through the glass partition behind it, Sautin's office doors were thrown wide, the desk lamp casting a murky glow, concealing a familiar shadow sitting behind it in the leather chair.

His heart beat madly then; was it possible Sautin already knew, that his dreams had changed to portents of doom? A long-shot, sure, but not out of the realm of possibility. The man might be losing his mind but he was still savvy enough to know when someone was fucking him. It had a particular feel you just couldn't shake.

As the elevator doors began sliding shut in front of him Jesse came to his senses. He stuck out his foot, breaking the beam of light at the floor, and the doors jerked back as if in surprise. He stepped out of the elevator and covered the remaining twenty feet to the receptionist's desk. He pushed through the foyer entrance and walked into Sautin's office, making his way straight for the chair he'd sat in plenty of times before.

The shadow was Sautin all right, curled up in the chair like some fat tomcat, though not nearly as confident as one now, it seemed. The man's head was down, his face cradled in his hands. It sounded like he was crying. Jesse sat down and Sautin's worried fingers stopped kneading the flesh above his brows. Then he looked up with hideous, red-rimmed eyes. If had had been crying, there were no tears to prove it.

"My Jesse," Sautin whispered across the desk. The grating rasp in his voice raised hackles on Jesse's shoulders. And with it Sautin leaned across the desk, his nose inches from its surface. "Something wrong," he said as neither question nor comment. As simply a statement of fact.

Jesse looked down at his lap, studied his hands.

Sautin licked his lips and pushed away from the desk, once again shrouding himself in darkness. The whole room stank of whiskey. A mere splash of the stuff remained at the bottom of the bottle which sat just left of the desk lamp. Jesse couldn't see his face but the question was plain enough this time.

"You think people got purpose?" the rasping voice asked.

"Nahh," Jesse lied.

"Well I do kid." The evil laugh trailed out of his mouth and floated in the air above his head. A hint of smoke or fog followed along but there were no cigarettes burning. The windows were tightly screwed down, and the A/C didn't seem to reach this part of the building. Jesse began to sweat. "Never woulda believed it one month ago. Without the dream I'd never believe it now, but ya gotta recognize signs when they come."

Jesse hoped the wraithlike man seated behind the light didn't see him wince at the suggestion. Because he knew exactly what Sautin was talking about even though their trails had diverged dramatically, regardless if Annie was on the plane or not. "Yeah, I guess when you get a sign you gotta follow..." he repeated mindlessly.

Sautin disregarded Jesse's reply. Again the evil laugh swirled through the air. "Never will forget it. Live ta be a goddamn hundred and nine and it wouldn't change a thing! Signs! Goddammit! I knew it! Somewhere down deep I always knew it!" He slapped his hands to his chest. "Look at me! All those years on the streets, cutting out my niche. But always in the shadows like some bitch-dog that can't come inside the house. Shit! Important men have come to me! Me! Goddammit, Jesse, you should know that....

"When I saw her in the dream I knew what had to be done, but there was something naggin me down deep. I wasn't gonna be the one allowed to carry it out! That's the thing I still can't understand, but it was plain as my face in the mirror." He paused and coughed briefly into his palm. "And Jesse," he continued. "You have done a great thing. I know I can't convince you a that; I really can't even explain it to myself, but you have done a great thing. Whether an old fable can come true or not now is an option that's been erased." He leaned closer into the light so Jesse could see his face "We're saviors, boy. And the world will never even know it."

What followed brought lucidity back to Sautin's strained, wild gaze.

"You're wrong," Jesse said. He had never rebuked Sautin and the surprise showed on the man's puffy face.

"What the fuck d'you say?"

Jesse pushed himself further into the leather chair. "I said, 'you got it wrong.' We're not saviors. Not of anything."

The shock passed out of Sautin's face and the smile crept back. There was still a look of wariness, but now it seemed Sautin would content himself setting this wayward child straight. He held up his right hand and pointed at the ceiling, the smile growing at the corner of his lips. "Oh, no. You're the one who's wrong, boy. Completely wrong. Some people are made of different stuff. Stronger stuff. Some people avoid early death for that one reason alone." This made Jesse think of his propensity for invisibility but he remained quiet. He watched Sautin take the last pull from the whiskey bottle before going on.

"You know I was almost killed as a child?" he asked, cocking his eyebrow behind the bottle. "I was too young to remember much, but there is a brilliant frozen moment in my head. My mother had fallen asleep on the couch watching soaps and I was playing outside. I ended up on the highway and a truck almost ran me down like a dog." Sautin saw the realization in Jesse's eyes but took it for something else. "But it didn't because my purpose wouldn't allow that to happen. The driver was killed. But I lived...I lived to fulfill my duty. And that duty is done."

Jesse cleared his throat violently. He had not been wrong about the dream then. But it was finally time to pull away the mask. He reached out and gripped the edge of the man's desk, pulling himself closer so the Pretender would not misunderstood what he said.

"Your purpose runs counter to mine," he said softly. "You only got it half-right. It took me a while to get a finger on it but the girl helped me see. Maybe she is some sort of crazy puzzle piece, but then again, aren't we all? Every last one of us." Sautin sat up ramrod straight in the shadows cast from the lamp. His breathing was suddenly more forceful though he didn't say a word. "Anyway," and Jesse pushed back to the confines of the leather chair at his back. "You always do your own work. You should known that. It's what you've always told me," and this time Jesse smiled.

"Because I didn't do it, Aldo. You wanted me to kill an innocent girl and I didn't do it. I bought her a plane ticket, gave her some money, and got her the hell away from here. If you can still get at her it won't be because of me."

Sautin said nothing. He just sat there, not even breathing now, like some granite statue misplaced on a leather chair. He bent and pulled the desk's pencil drawer open, the chair emitting a single squeak as his weight went forward. It was the only sound for miles. When he spoke his voice was already dead behind the light. "This your idea of a joke, Jesse? You know I don't play. Now you tell me the TRUTH goddammit! WHERE'D YOU PUT THE FUCKING BODY!"

"There's no fucking body, Aldo. I think you already know that. Can't you feel it?"

And with that Sautin pulled the gun from the drawer so quickly it seemed a rehearsed act. Jesse never moved. With no thought to the next moment, enveloped completely in an icy-hot wave of raw hatred, Sautin pointed the .357 across the desk and pumped six hollow-point, steel-jacketed bullets through Jesse's jerking body and the ticking of the expensive leather chair.

It took a long time for the echoes to fade away in the closed office.

Chapter 21: The Stadium in the Desert

I don't know when I came back to my senses.

It was almost like a dream of drowning. First there was a bright flash of pain, a stab of light which quickly dwindled, and then, immediately thereafter, nothing. No sound, not even the dull throb of vacuum. Merely a complete release, an endless drop into oblivion.

And now there's this.

I have no idea where I am. Nothing but wasteland stretches out before me. A vast barrens. The only thing visible is sand. Just as far as I can see, nothing but sand. Not a tree not a bush, not even a shadow. But the sand...it's a brilliant orange, almost as if the sun were reflecting off it on a blazing summer day. But that's not the case. The sky's nothing but gray turbulence above. No clouds, no wind.

I can hear my thoughts if I try.

***

The only thing which convinces me that Time is passing is the big plume of dust rising up from the desert, heading my direction. I say this only because it was not there before and it is now. I don't remember having discovered it, and now it seems like it could have been forever ago when I did. Or perhaps, mere seconds, depending on how I think it through. It's very confusing...

There's no change in the sky and the sand continues radiating its electric-orange hue.

***

"'Lo, buddy."

I squint into the face behind the voice, but I can't make out any solidity of features. I shake my head to clear it while the guy continues. "Looks like ya could use a lift."

I shrug my shoulders and pat my empty pockets.

"No money, huh?" The cabbie laughs as quick and sharp as a mallet striking steel. "You're not quite that far gone yet, kid." The back door on my side swings open. It's empty back there. "Get in," he says. "I know where ta take ya."

For just a moment I consider not, but after taking another look around I don't find much reason for denying his offer. Drab barren gray sky and sand in all directions. I climb inside.

The same totality of silence fills the cab. The cabbie rolls up his window and drives off like any regular cabbie on any ordinary day. And as I gaze out the window I still have no hold on what's happening, where I am. I didn't think I was crazy before, and I don't feel like I've gone crazy since, but let's face it, enough is enough.

"Where we headed?" I say to break the terrible silence.

The cabbie looks in the rear view mirror and smiles. "Only place we can, Jesse."

"You know my name."

"Yeah, it just sorta always comes."

"What is this place?"

"Tha Barrens, a course. Gotta start somewhere, and you figured as much, dint'cha?"

"Me?"

"Yeah, course. The very definition of the word, right?"

"Yeah," I say a little more warily. "The Barrens. Just what I expected."

"Aim ta please. That's the course a action." I try to tune him out then, out of a need to gather what thoughts I can together, and look outside at the phantasmagoric emptiness.

One thing's certain: things have definitely changed.

***

At first the stadium is only a smudged point growing on the very edge of the burnt orange haze. The cab veers over a few degrees and when I look behind there's just swirling dust behind as if everything is being wiped clean with our passing.

I knew it was a stadium before I even saw it, but I have no idea why. I've never seen it before. It shakes loose no memory from my brain. We get closer still and I don't see any parking lot, just an old, red-brick football stadium, open at both ends. We pull up to the closest side and the dust swarms up around us from behind.

The cabbie snaps off the engine and for just a moment the silence grows huge. The dust twists and dances against the stadium's façade. He makes as if to turn around and suddenly slumps over on the passenger seat. When I look over the headrest he's gone. No sign of him whatsoever; no clothes, no smell, not even a key in the ignition.

And at that very moment the dash begins to undulate slightly, giving up its color as if the outside dust has pushed inside through the windows, squeezed through every crack. Everything looks as if I'm staring at it through the murkiest of water. The passenger door handle is fading too, and I pull on it and lunge outside. In terror, really, because with the fading of the dash I can suddenly see nothing through the windows, not even the swirling dust, creating in me the eerie premonition that Time inside this particular ghost crate has played out. That to stay any longer would be to find an interminable oblivion.

***

I go face-down on the familiar, orange sand, roll over twice to get away from the vanishing ride. And as I raise myself on hands and knees, I see the stadium is still there. The car, however, and as I figured, is gone. No more swirling dust, no tire tracks in the sand. Nothing. Just as if it'd never existed at all.

That's when I hear the crowd. A throaty roar rises up suddenly from inside the stadium, reminding me of the noise I remember from week-ends on Chimes Street during football season at LSU. You could always tell when something big was happening; the sky rained it down upon you. This is the same.

I turn to study the barred entranceways. Must be ten on this side alone, even though all of them are inaccessible behind high razor-wire fences and heavy gauge chain. I make my way over to the closest one, even now listening to the initial cheer fading off. I touch the lock and it falls away with no complaint whatsoever. The chain follows suit and the gate swings open. The last of the cheer dies away.

Nothing moves inside. Trash and broken furniture litter every square inch except a thin strip of concrete which leads to the access tunnels. It rises at a forty-five degree slant, a little steep without the aid of stairs, and nothing but the swirling gun-metal sky is visible at the other end. I walk up to the arched exit and grip the wooden rail I find there, staring out across the field.

It is a football or soccer field (I'm not sure about the dimensions), though it's being used for neither now. Across from me stands an identical set of bleacher seats in what appear to be the mirror-image of this one. Both sides are completely full of people. The lights, high atop five tall poles arrayed with massive light racks, are not on.

I turn to face the stands above me. And the jolt I receive is like a punch to the face.

Just to my right, stuffing his face with popcorn sits Johnny Hobbs, a weird bespectacled little kid who'd lived next door to me when we first moved to Baton Rouge, all those many years ago. His mother is anchored rigidly alongside and neither pays me any mind. The dentist who'd pulled a rotten tooth from my mouth when I was eight is three seats farther down from them. Others I see strike me as vaguely familiar but I can't place their names.

I look higher up.

Peggy Schneider, a girl I had a crush on in the sixth grade is there, and Paco Bryson, a punk I'd fought in seventh sits right beside her. Blinkie and the Chimes Street crew smoke cigarettes in a tight cluster five rows to their left.

I put my foot on the first riser, completely oblivious now to what is obviously preparing to happen on the field. After all, I doubt these ghosts from my past are here for nothing. An older woman's profile strikes me curiously and I start toward her, pushing through a row of people seemingly hell-bent on slowing my progress. Their eyes speak strangely to me but I don't say anything. Not yet.

"Mrs. Metterton!" I finally yell when close enough. For just a second I think I recognize the man turning to whisper in her ear, but when she turns to face me I lose that scant thread of memory. She scrutinizes me up and down before deciding I'm somehow 'wrong', then looks away back across the field; somehow it is not Mrs. Metterton...couldn't be the former duplex manager with whom my grandmother had traded money orders for pies. What would she be doing here? Wherever here is.

I stumble back down the aisle, letting the people jostle me along. Absolutely nothing makes sense. The deepest glimpse into my past is the recent ride with the ghostly cabbie. And that is just not enough in the way of explanation. Not for this.

Maybe (and my mind chases itself like a dog pursuing its tail) I'm in some Mid-Town hospital in New Orleans, high on Thiamine and Morphine, dying amid a profusion of ramshackle memory fragments. Because New Orleans...there seems to lie some fleet answer—

Gunshots pull me away. Coming from somewhere above. I jerk my eyes toward the fence-backed wall at the top of the stadium in time to see a one-handed fat man trading shots with someone who can be no other than John Brady. No one around them appears to take any notice. I start toward the isolated commotion as a hand comes down hard on my shoulder, staying me. I turn and the man from The Salvation Army squints down, Chubbs, the one who'd introduced me to—

"'Ave a seat, kid!" he says, dropping the butt of the cigarette from his lips and stomping it with his foot in one fluid motion. "Good part oughta be comin up any minute now!" He claps me on the same shoulder again after releasing me from his vice grip and I go to one knee. As he turns away someone in the row ahead shoves me back with a violent elbow. His jutting chin matches identically that of a postman I'd been acquainted with in the CBD for a short time.

I stumble into the aisle and fall across a short stretch of empty bleachers. I see several teachers I'd had trouble with in grade school point their fingers at me around the knees of a peanut vendor I swear used to run the convenience store on the corner of 5th and Ivy.

And that's when the drums start.

They seem to come from the direction of the field, although the crowd's rise to echo its excitement makes the source hard to pinpoint. I peel myself off the bleachers into a sitting position. My head pounds from the roar. All I can see are people's backs and I stand up on the bleachers to get a better view.

As if by instinct the two people in front of me push away to either side, as if for the sole purpose of affording me an uninterrupted view. And then, amid the wild mishmash of pounding drums and straining voices, this is what I see:

A flurry of activity is taking place on the unmarked field though none of it expressly athletic by nature. In fact, through the bustle of moving bodies the action seems more stage-directed than natural. Oddly cloaked figures rush pieces of furniture, rugs, potted plants, and area lighting to centerfield, thirty yards away from where a wild and similarly dressed drum corp beat a syncopated rhythm the 'stagehands' have a hard time keeping up with. But from no lack of effort it seems. They move like ants on speed.

I can't tell where these items are being carried from; the crowd obstructs my view down toward the level of the track which rings the field. And the workers continue to pour onto the grass, headed for midfield, carrying one thing or another as if newly-emerged from some secret hole I can not see. The crowd stomps its feet and claps its hands in primal joy.

I alone watch in silence, already aware of the room they are building a representation of. The furniture is unmistakable even from here. The carpets, the leather chairs, the way the lamps cast their shadows—everything begins coming back. A deep ache wells in my chest and steadily grows.

The crowd quiets down as the crew begin wrapping up its work. The drummers hit a final fractured note, tuck their sticks into pouches or simply drop them where they stand and march single-file away into the middle distance. Mindlessly, I follow them until they pass from view. Only then do I realize how dark the area has become. It is also at that moment I notice I am alone.

A huge CHUNK! of a massive relay switch sets all eight racks of lights, both on this side and the other, bursting to life. They illuminate the field in a ghostly dull white, completely erasing from view everything outside their influence. I am completely thrown off balance momentarily.

But only momentarily.

Then I see the field as before. Only now it has completed its transformation. About mid-field sits a massive mahogany desk. I know this because Sautin had mentioned it in passing while we discussed other business one day. Every other thing is exactly where and as I remember.

The only thing missing is walls. But the two occupants seated across from one another seem to pay no mind. The one by the desk lamp gestures and points madly in the other's direction though the target of the harangue doesn't move. Of course I know who he is, or was; this perfect replication seems to have called the true tale of ghosts. I begin watching for the moment when Sautin pulls the gun, because it will always be unchanging, unchangeable; I suddenly know that now. I want to see if I flinch.

So, alone in the stands, the only sound a shriek of wind knifing through the guard rails near the silent announcer's booth, one facet of whatever I've become looks on in silence as the reel of my last seconds on Earth transpire. Because by then it's concrete...wherever the hell I was before has absolutely nothing at all to do with what or where I am now.

The conversation grows more heated as I remember it had. I can't hear what Sautin is saying but I already know. Even though the two arguing phantoms are well across the field I can make out every expression on their faces. Mine, I'm glad to see, never changes, seemingly resigned to the outcome. My replies are short and pointed, only serving to fuel Sautin's increasing fury. I remember him standing up so quickly the wheels on his leather chairs squeaked loudly, but that was about it.

Now I'm to see the rest.

Indeed, Sautin does burst upward and back as the memory proscribes, and I see my own face tense as the bigger man's image is lost behind the desk lamp's glow. From my new vantage point I have none of the problems I'd experienced before. There is no movement shadowed from my perception.

I watch in slow-motion silence as Sautin rips the gun free of the pencil drawer, the rage standing out on his face, clear and deadly as if carved by a sculptor out of stone. Then, crystal clear, I hear the familiar, lost click as the barrel glances off the desk's edge and watch as the hammer draws back. At this lost moment I'm pleased to see my face doesn't change; I can see no flinching. Perhaps it's because my killer is hidden in the light from the lamp, but the lack of sound does not make for lack of memory. I remember seeing the gun, and already know what the outcome will be. Though, of course, I've never expected a replay.

When Sautin fires I see a gout of flame punch out of the end of the .357. The only sound to reach me is a muffled thump that could have just as easily been the sound of my heart in my chest. But the repeated bursts of smoke and flame from the end of the handgun, and the way my body jerks violently away amid a cloud of floating chair stuffing and sprayed blood leave nothing unimagined.

I watch my lifeless body collapse backward in the punctured chair. Blood runs out of several holes in the back near the floor and I hang limp except for a momentary tremor in my left foot that pats out a fast beat on the thick Oriental rug. Then my body reels over to the right as I fold over the armrest, the fingers of my right hand dragging through the blood.

Sautin still stands monstrously huge across the table, punching with the gun even though the cartridges are spent. His mouth moves but I can hear nothing now, no beating, nothing. Absolute silence. He brings his gun hand up and wipes the bridge of his nose. Tears slide down both cheeks; I clearly see that. His lips continue to move.

Surely he isn't praying?

Then he sits down heavily, like an exhausted runner after the last mad sprint to the finish line. The pencil drawer is still open but he doesn't look inside. He keeps his eyes on my leaking body in the chair across the desk, idly fumbling in the drawer for something. Then he withdraws a single bullet and lays it on the desk blotter alongside the .357.

In the profound silence that continues he slowly packs the hollow-point into the cylinder and punches it home and leans back in the leather chair, the gun hanging limply at his side. He stares up where the ceiling should be, his mouth still moving as if entreating something within the stillness of the pantomime office to make itself known. Apparently nothing does because his eyes never change. And still mumbling he brings the gun up, never looking at it, and places the end of the barrel in his mouth. He pulls the trigger and his brains heave out in an astonishing spray from the back of his head. And with that the drama ends.

It appears the letter to the D.A. was unnecessary after all.

***

When I come back to my senses I am once again alone in the stadium. The lights blaze for another, crystallized brilliant moment, obscuring what little is left around me, and then begin a slow fade, the edges dulling around their icy-white cores. Within moments they're gone completely, drawing back the drab cloak of gray that sits above the stadium (extending in all directions) like a buzzard waiting patiently for the last few breaths of the dying to cease.

I look down at my hands, find them clenched tightly against my thighs. Then, convinced I'm suddenly real again, or as real as the dead get, I look up, surveying the field.

Everyone is gone.

The bleachers still squat on the other side but the field itself is completely empty. No tables, no chairs, no arguing men. No bloodstains. Just short-hewn grass coughing up a plea for water.

I stand up abruptly.

I never glance at the press box. If anybody is left up there, it's nobody I want to see. I walk back to the tunnel, back to the chain-link fence. It's still open; nothing has changed. Just sand, sand, and more sand. The sky seems closer, though, almost as if it's ready to open up and consume me.

I walk off into the orange gloom for no reason whatsoever.

Chapter 22:At the Doors

Walking through this limbo, this purgatory of confusion, seems to go on both forever and in no time at all, although I've not gotten hungry or tired. Nothing in the distance ever gets any closer (the stadium has been gone at my back for the better part of--?) but that doesn't stop me trudging on. There's plenty of space to think here, plenty of room to chase whatever preconceptions may arise. That one thing is almost tangible here. The time to consider things done, things left undone. Just like Grandma always warned me. And with this space, this endlessness, my mind wanders, leaving me to chase along behind like some errant kid on the coattails of a hurried parent.

The ghostly spectacle of the past is, regardless, no less real. With every dusty footstep I creep ever deeper into the crevices from which fevered whispers issue. I try not to listen but I know I have to.

Just not right now...please...not right now.

But the faces in the stadium return. The wild cluster of familiars. I know how my life ended (though what my fate remains to be I am completely ignorant), but I have no clue as to the presentation I was given. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of people there, cuing on every move I made, and I never saw a single face in the crowd that didn't strike me as at least vaguely familiar. No magic trick could have been more thorough.

More pervasive.

***

I can just now make out a darker brown smudge in the distance. A rushing wind drives against me, throwing a faint, jittering contrast of shape and shadow where before there was only a mere blankness. A few more steps and a definite outline emerges: a set of doors stuck into the desert as if standing sentry against some awesome secret. Just as out of place as a stadium curving out of a desert, replaying memories forever lost to the living.

Because at this moment I know. I'm just as dead as dead gets, as breathless as Grandma had been covered up nicely in her bedroom, as motionless as John with the dust powdering his face like a bad make-up job from some cheap production.

I am dead. Finished.

It's just unnerving to discover I still have to remain on guard.

***

I walk up to the doors through the swirling wind and they do not fade; I find they're solid wood. It is also at this moment I hear the heavy breathing. A very odd sound above the drilling rush of wind, but it is there, unmistakable. And with this another memory surfaces: a mat of hair fanning out in an ice chest, the bloated nude body beneath the fouled water. The woman's killer sleeping peacefully in the house, secure enough to forget to prime the alarm.

I take a step closer and step on some shifting something. The heavy growl of snoring ceases as the body (because that is what it is) shifts beneath my weight. I quickly jump away and look down. The wind slacks off, and as the dust settles I see exactly what it is moving in the sand.

A man stirs there. With his first few feeble movements it is impossible to know at first, but the snoring associates form to gender. Therefore it is not surprising when a hairy, long-fingered hand breaks the orange surface. A ragged shock of black hair follows it. The figure sits up stiffly, a look of disinterest relaxing the face into a loose mask.

He turns my way and I'm still not sure—not positive. But when his face cracks in a smile I am, even though I've never seen him do so. He pulls his other hand free of the sand and I watch the cigarette pinioned between his fingers trail a straight line of smoke into the quiet air. The wind has now given up completely.

He brings the cigarette to his lips and pulls deeply. When he exhales I catch the reek of tombs. Then he shakes his legs free of the sand and stands up. His slacks are ripped and bloody from the knee down. What is left of his shirt also hangs in bloody rags from his shoulders. His body bears red, semi-healed wounds that (even though they appear horrible) seem to have little affect. It looks like he's been dragged behind a car; I can see pieces of gravel embedded here and there in the red mess of his flesh.

He smiles at me again and flips the cigarette away.

"Strangers, strangers everywhere, but some not so much as others," he says. Then he laughs.

I step another foot back. The thick smell of rot wafts off him in steady waves. He offers his hand to me but I only look at it. The image of the woman floating in the ice chest refuses to subside.

He cocks his head in the direction from which I'd come and whistles sharply between his teeth. "Been to the stadium I see," he acknowledges without the slightest hint of question. Again, I say nothing. "Out and out picture show, isn't it?" He clears his throat and looks back at me. His eyes are still achingly alive though his body seems to forbid it. "I watched them bounce me up and down that goddamn road until I couldn't take it anymore, I tell ya. And that's the plain truth," he says, nodding. "Looks like you didn't exactly die in your sleep either." He grins again.

I look down at my chest, amazed at the bloody holes I find there making a tatter of my shirt. I reach around back and find the exit wounds; when I bring my hands around they're covered in blood. I let them hang limply at my side.

"Where the hell are we?" I ask.

The familiar stranger only laughs again and sits down Indian-style. He claps his hands together, once, hard, before looking me directly in the eyes. A mesmerist is there in his depths. I wonder how many women he's killed. "Well, you're about half-right buddy. Myself, I never believed in any of that shit anyway. But now..." he shakes his head and spits into the sand.

"But the Waiting Room gives you plenty of time to think things through. Plenty of time to wait." He runs his hands through the sand and holds it up, letting it sift through his fingers. "This is all that's left of the ones who couldn't make a choice, boy. It may seem like Time doesn't go by here, but it does."

I look out on the miles and miles of endless stretches of sand and hold my breath against the horror of his implication.

He taps a finger to his lips. "I'm sure I know you," he says and squints, trying to sharpen me into revelation. It doesn't seem to work; almost though, but not quite. "You didn't happen to be at the stadium...?" he asks.

I shake my head no, remembering the night I'd gone through the woman's purse in this man's bathroom. Her name escapes me and that's a bad thing because I remember his clearly enough.

"No...hmmm...well, I can't rightly remember right now but it'll come. Everything does eventually around here. And since Time is no object," he smiles here, stretching his arms out extravagantly beneath the gun-metal sky, "what's the bother of worrying when?" He nods again as if agreeing to something I'd said and scratches his left hand in the sand at his knee. As I look on he extracts a lit cigarette from the furrow and fixes it to his lips. The smoke which then trails from his mouth etches a lighter-gray contrast between it and the sky spreading out beyond the crown of his head.

"You're Ryster," I say then, quietly.

His hand jerks at the name, a grimace almost escaping his close watch. He looks at me very closely. "And you?"

"Jesse Avery," I say. "I broke into your house and stole the kayak. I found the girl floating in your ice chest."

For just a scant second the lively, reptilian eyes glaze over and the muscles in his skinned and bloody neck tighten. He rubs the cigarette-less hand over the stubble close-cropping his chin. The nails there are cracked and caked with dried blood. He forces a coughing, bark of laughter as his eyes come back to life. "So...as I said...everything come back to its Maker."

I decide to change directions; stroking the self-pity of this creature is too sickening a notion to entertain for another moment. "What did you mean before about choices?" I ask.

He grunts, looking down, playing in the sand with his bloody toes like a child. "That's about all you get here," he finally says and spits again.

"Here?" I look around, now holding my hands out. "What is this place?"

He smiles again, always the smiling fool, and flicks ash from the cigarette. "I've already told you that...Jesse...the Waiting Room. Always has been; always will be. Nothing ever changes outside these doors."

The comment piques my curiosity. I momentarily put aside the image of the dead murderer fiddling with the sand with his broken, bloody toes and turn to look. The doors could easily belong in any upper-scale family home in the South. Heavy oak, it looks like, breaking the monotony of the desert and sky with their very solidity. One is white, the other black. Identical gold handles stand out near the jambs. I walk to the side of one and look around behind but find nothing. Just more sand. In fact, the only difference is there's no paint on the backsides, only dull, unfinished wood strangely mocking the colors of the sky above and the sand below.

I turn back to the creature in the sand. "What happens if you open em?" I ask.

Ryster blows out a plume of smoke and picks a bit of tobacco from the tip of his tongue. He examines it like a prize from an archeological dig before flicking it away and turning those lively, jittering eyes upon me again. The smile torturing his face would make children cry. "Now that's a whole different story," he admits, drawing another long pull. Even so I notice the cigarette hasn't gotten any shorter. It's the same; like the sky, like the sand.

"What the hell is this?" I ask again, menacingly this time.

He laughs. Spits. "It has a lot of names but none of em matter much. I call it the Here and Now because no matter how you cut it, that's what you get."

"And through there?" I ask, pointing.

"Somewhere else," he answers, smirking.

I turn away from the riddler in disgust, my hand already on the closest doorknob when he speaks again. I only pause because the voice has lost its edge of sarcasm. "Careful what you do," he warns.

I stop, listening to the swish of sand against sand as Ryster gets back to his feet. "Little something you should know..."

I turn to face him again, hoping this'll be the last time.

"Didn't finish telling you about the choices..."

"I'm listening."

He nods his head towards the doors. "May look the same but they're not." I let go of the doorknob. "You a...religious man?" he asks. I shrug my shoulders and he laughs again. "Not always easy to tell, is it? Least not here it isn't."

"You're talking about Heaven and Hell?"

"Call it what you like. I'm just telling you what I know. You see, there was somebody waiting on me here too. And notice she ain't around anymore. Gave me the Key to the Kingdom, though," he says proudly and points past my left hand. "That door's the one I was gonna choose; I've just been waiting around to get freed up, but in the meantime I've changed my mind. 'S only right you should know the alternative too."

"Alternative? What makes you think I'd trust you?"

"Hey man, I don't give a shit. You're my ticket back, s'all. You'll have a chance too when the right sonofabitch comes along, but right now lucky for me you're here. Not that it matters much to me, but there are people I need to drop in on and Time keeps on trotting along on the other side."

"Our lives, you mean?"

He smiles wickedly. "You pick that door," he says pointing to the one I'd almost opened, "you can go back. You pick the other one I don't know where the fuck you end up."

"Back where?"

"Where we come from."

"And the purpose of that?"

Whatever Ryster has become wrings its hands. "Unfinished business," the creature says. And it is with this that I picture his vengeful ghost tracking an endless trail of revenge and grimace. He must see it on my face because the smile vanishes.

"I'm done with that," I say. "I'm all paid up."

"Suit yourself."

I turn back to the doors, on a whim reaching out to grasp the knob of the door I'd been about to try. I'm not about to trust the creature smoking cigarettes in the tattered and bloody Italian suit.

Locked.

At least that much is welcome.

I move two steps to the right, looking back at the pathetic creature before turning this knob. "Thought maybe you were gonna change your mind," it says as the wind begins to pick up again.

I shake my head, pull back on the doorknob, finding it unlocked, and go through without even looking back.

Chapter 23: Continuum

Several steps past the threshold and the door no longer exists. When I look over my shoulder it has simply vanished into the desert sand, and in the dry monotony this 'other side' seems really no different than the previous one. There is, however, one positive, Ryster's gone. The endless sky stretches overhead, unmindful, silent. The wind has dwindled to nothing as soon as the door swung to; I feel sand between my toes and suddenly doubt everything I think I've heard.

Nonetheless, I turn back to my own precious direction. I have no real hope of walking a straight line (not that I even know I should) in the disorienting field of orange and gray, but there is nothing else to be done. So that's what I do.

And it is as I walk that the transformation begins.

The swirling myriad of orange and gray begins to merge, pulsing eventually into a thick fog that surrounds me. My sight fades with the colors and I move blind, forward, I think. Or perhaps only into an eternity of this mind-fog. The terror of having opened the wrong door into this phantasmagoria shrieks madly in my mind. The next available thing amid the desolation is so minute (though so coordinated) that I take no notice until it is unmistakable. Mist tendrils thickly around me, bloated like some reptilian killer squatting, rising up from the warm sand. A hum begins deep in the base of my spine, followed by an abrupt flash of pain and light and the next thing I know are solid walls stretching away from me at both shoulders. The sand has smoothed to a dirty, concrete alleyway. Having a look up, the jut of the identical and opposite eaves cut a particular shape I have no trouble remembering.

I'm somehow back at my former haunt, coming in through the back alley. Again, the rumbling terror that only uneasily keeps itself down shakes at the chains I've bound it with. The killer's spiel rushes back; his talk of the doors. His talk of going back, and the consequences I've pictured him facing once there. But he is nowhere to be seen.

It's just me who's back.

I recognize the opening directly ahead. Straight through there and I'll be in the courtyard that fronts the old couple's apartment. Frightened of the possibilities awaiting me in my own loft I break right, skirting through the last few feet of arched brickwork like a fugitive.

Because, after all, isn't that what I am? A fugitive of the dead.

And I am not wrong; everything is exactly as I remember. The row against the back wall where the garbage cans stand like sentinels to some silent murder; the cracked ceramic fountain surrounded by sweating Mexican tile; the profusion of airplane plants and ferns twisting lightly in the wind that spills in from the street. A blue light dances against the curtains in the old couple's living room. The blinds are drawn. For some unknown reason the walkway lights are out on that side.

I walk farther into the walled enclosure; stop momentarily to test my senses. As far as sight goes, everything is perfect. Touch follows hand-in-hand too (the tiles are solid enough below my feet), but there is no smell. And whatever rocks the ferns hanging below the second story walkway seems something other than wind.

I glance up in the direction of my former apartment. (There is no doubt in this knowledge; I am far past the realm of these memories, and yet to find out why they are being visited on me now becomes imperative.) Closed up tight and black—like a tomb. Nothing moves, nothing stirs. In fact, it is not much different really from the solitude of the orange-painted desert, though thankfully I am not being pestered by some killer formulating plans of revenge and escape.

Now it's I who have to digest the idea of passing back somehow to the land of the living. First impressions have been deceiving; I am no more home here than a wandering ghost passing through the places it has once known—

a disembodied ghost, surely not much different from the fate I'd assumed for Ryster.

And as this malevolent inspiration washes over me I very clearly hear the dry rasp of a lock giving way. A sound that very clearly comes from the direction of the old couple's apartment. I turn and am struck dumb.

My mother stands in the couple's doorway, her hand resting gently on the knob. And, incredibly, the first thing I recognize is the lack of what I've remembered up until now. She has on a simple print dress and coy smile, almost teen-age in its innocence. And the sense of desperation (that palpable object that hangs upon her memory like the weight of the albatross around the ancient mariner's neck, that thing that gives the only color to the photographic still-shots left to take up room in my brain) is gone. She simply stands, smiling, in the doorway, the familiar shades of expression of my Grand'ma giving definition to features that spring newly-remembered to my mind.

I cry out and collapse to my knees on the Mexican tile. Her smell drifts toward me, unleashing another torrent of suppressed emotion I had no idea I still possessed. The shock of memory and remembrance reduce me to a wet, sobbing mess before the fountain.

Only her touch on my shoulder is finally enough to bring me back to whatever world it is I now inhabit.

When I look up into her precious eyes, only now am I able to gain some semblance of control. She says nothing, pressing a forefinger to her lips. I grab onto the warmth of her hand and try to be still.

"Quiet," she says. "You've come a long way," and she pulls me effortlessly to my feet. "Come inside," she says. I go through the open door without a word.

Inside I find a pleasantness I've always suspected encompassed the rooms within. Through the tiny foyer an equally satisfying warmth waits. The furnishings are a study in simplicity; a small two-place dining table replete with a bouquet of wildflowers I can not name. A pot of tea percolating noisily on the immaculate stove; still-life photographs gracing the areas above the cabinets, stretching the length of the kitchen.

My mother lets go of my shaking hand and walks over, soundlessly, to tend the steaming kettle. I sit down at the small table then as if I've done that very thing every day of my life. The kettle whistles sharply and my mother removes it from the burner, sets it carefully down on the waiting pot holder near the sugar. With a delicateness lost to memory she measures out a portion in two glasses, and sets the kettle back on the stove.

"You'll have some tea," she says, never looking up.

"Okay," I manage, lost in the swarm of questions marauding through my brain. She brings the cups over and sits down across from me. After two tremulous sips I'm able to meet her patiently waiting gaze. I can no more hide the anxiety behind my eyes than pluck them out and be done with the whole thing. "Mother," I say, surprised how easily the word slips from my tongue. "What is this place?"

She merely looks on and takes another tentative sip. Then she sets the cup down and smiles across the space. Her mouth just turns up slightly in a way I have no right in remembering, but the chord is struck nonetheless. "Your face is more your father's than mine," she admits, ignoring my question.

I shrug, feint a glance into my own steaming cup.

"He was wrong, you know?" she continues. "God knows it was not his fault, but he was wrong."

"About what?" I whisper, already half afraid of her reply.

"That he was the one," she answers quietly. Then she pauses and drinks deeply, finishing off her cup. When she smiles, broadly this time, the subsequent rush of memory makes me light-headed, forces my glaze to the stark white table cloth my fingers paw at absently. She reaches across the table and grabs my hand. "Your grandmother never allowed herself that much, and I never forced the issue."

I look her in the eyes, unable to speak.

"People have a need to place blame when things go wrong; perhaps even a right. I never had the courage to challenge her anger at him," she says, unblinking.

"What was she wrong about?"

"The reasons he left. It had nothing to do with you or me, but I never knew the truth myself. Not then..." she adds ominously.

I find the strength to squeeze her hand. "Tell me," I plead. With her free hand she pushes the cup away, touches a finger to her lips again, and steels her eyes upon me. "He believed himself the trigger when all along it was you. It always has been you..." and her eyes dance with a fierce light.

"Your father was not a deserter; he did what he felt he had to do, and even if his timing was off, his intentions were true. He just didn't know it was you the gods proclaimed. Sometimes I try to believe he was only trying to take the cup from your lips. But perhaps I indulge this fantasy only from the fact that I never had the opportunity to question him myself. Opportunity is as hard to find here as anywhere else."

"Where is here?" I ask her, trembling.

Again the relaxing smile. "Where we all end up," she says simply.

I shake my head at this mystery. Tired of her riddles I decide to try my own. "There was a dream I had as a kid. So strong it crossed over into adulthood. And I know now, as I suspected for a while, that it was a vision of my father's death. A little boy jumped out into the highway. He was chasing a grasshopper and my father ran off the road to avoid running him down. The truck went up in a ball of flames. And the little boy turned out to be the one who eventually killed me."

So, there it is. On the table.

For the first time, the smile leaves my mother's face, and it is also at this moment I notice something behind her eyes I've missed in the paroxysm of joy I've felt at actually seeing her after believing her gone for so long. Another presence seems to wait there, but its hold is either so cloaked or tenuous that I can grasp nothing else about either its form or identity. I let go of her hand.

"Who are you?" I ask, surprised at the sudden violence in my voice.

Her eyes widen momentarily and then soften. "There are things you have to be made aware of," she says. "You were, are, different from every other you have ever known. You are a trigger, this great prize in the Universe. In all of them." I open my mouth to speak, but she hushes me with a wag of her forefinger. "Listen, son, and I'll tell you your legacy.

"There are moments in history that require a spark, a means of moving action from one plane to another. The Chinese have a name for such a thing: the Yin and Yang. Good and Evil. This is not a quality restricted to Earth. These are the necessary elements that enable, propel, this universe and all others through their paces. As there can be no up without down, there also can be no good without evil. Outcomes, however, are dependant upon what proportions manage to assert themselves over all other possibilities. These proportions are dependant upon creatures like you: catalysts. Your actions, or lack thereof, enable cycles to continue and change. Or cease."

I listen with mouth agape, fully aware now of the living being within my mother's form asserting itself.

"In all systems," it goes on, "there are Reality Shifters, ones born to shape coming global identities. Powerful religious figures, politicians, musicians, writers, scientists. But as I said before, there are always two sides. Two possibilities." The creature's voice has changed now, although its body still holds the shape of my mother. Its finger comes up and taps her temple. "You must excuse me, forgive me, please. There are many other worlds and it's not often easy to combine flawlessly. It has been ages since I worked with only six senses; I'm far more proficient with twenty or thirty. But," and the creature smiles, nothing like my mother now, "one must work with what one has."

I can no longer hold back and point my finger. "You! You were the one in my room that night! The one with the changing clothes, the costumes. You've always watched me."

The smile, though alien, is not menacing. "Not me, Jesse Avery, but one like me. We all have our parts in the Unending Drama." The creature pauses as if waiting for me to say something else, and when I don't it continues. It rubs my mother's hands together above the table cloth. "Maybe an illustration will help," it offers.

"Your grandmother was a Christian and she passed her beliefs on to you, only of course, you assimilated them differently than she did. Regardless, Christ was one of these Epoch Shifters, one of the greatest in sheer effect than many others from countless worlds. But His fate was not pre-ordained in the Unending Drama; it was hinted at, of course, but free will is a constant. Everywhere that beings hold sentience the Yin and Yang have a...moral responsibility to unfold on their own. The pathways have already been seen and charted out but the outcome remains untold.

"Here is something else. There was a Roman soldier who held up a sponge of poisoned vinegar which Christ, in his agony, was forced to drink. The soldier was a counterpart to your own Aldo Sautin. The evil half of the plan to silence the Great Teacher's lesson. The lowly perfumist, Nicodemus, luckily was able to muster the strength and will to undo and set into action the other side of the coin, and therefore the fledgling religion was given the impetus it required to grow."

"But what has any of that got to do with me!" I shout. "If I'm dead now, I'm not capable of doing anything!"

"Oh, I must interject, you do. You must not forget your chemistry. In chemical reactions the catalyst is always used up. It is the girl, this Annie, who will be the next great Epoch Shifter, and your action alone has saved her from the fate Sautin had planned. Interestingly enough, I have found that many times the positive course has a seemingly disproportionate chance of turning up victorious, but not always. Your great monster of the 20th century, Adolf Hitler, would have had much less effect on fanatics and radicals alike if his mistress had not killed him and staged the farce that made him a martyr in many eyes thereafter." The creature smiles. "What is your saying: the roll of the dice?"

I shake my head and try to control my frantic breath. The things the alien says bounce around my head like a pinball gone crazy. I study the lines in my knuckles and spread out my hands on the table top. "So it's all a great crapshoot, is that what you're telling me? There are these people, these Epoch Shifters, who are beset on all sides by ones like myself. These catalysts, as you call them. And even so, there are no guarantees of outcome, only endless possibilities dependant upon random actions of good and evil?" I pause to let what I've said sink in. If for no one else, for me.

The creature smiles and nods my mother's head. "That's not all of it, of course, but it's close enough. In the coming ages things usually tend to straighten themselves out along the pathways of new immortals. Because don't forget: as of this moment you are a fresh, newborn babe to this Other Place."

"This Other Place," I whisper, shaking my head. "Then why are we sitting in my neighbor's kitchen, discussing the mechanisms of the Universe over cups of tea?"

This time the smile is genuinely my mother's. The realization blooms in me like a new species of flower pushing its face up from rich, fecund soil to a brilliantly warm flash of light from above. "Well why not, after all? This is the place you looked upon fondly, the place where you watched the old couple and wished your own life could have been different, more pleasant. This has been a place of comfort for you, regardless of whether you've actually known it or not."

"I don't know...it's too much. What you've told me. It's just too much. I'm not sure...how to finish, what to do."

The creature smiles again. "There is nothing left to do. Your performance was extraordinary and now the girl will accomplish whatever it is her own strength and vision will bring."

I feel the tear slide from my eye, but make no move to stop it. I hold up my hands, palms out. "And now?" I ask.

The creature reaches across the table and grabs my hands in its own. I feel its warmth of kindness, watch as my mother's eyes soften even more. "That remains to be seen. There are too many other worlds and situations left unresolved as of yet. Only," and it barks a short burst of laughter before finishing, "time will tell."

I nod mutely and stand up, still holding hands with this messenger in my mother's form. Some secret imperative passes between us and we move away from the table. The messenger lets go of my hands and gestures toward the door. "Shall we go?" it asks.

I nod my assent and follow it to the door.

the end

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