Mr. X

“Is Toby Kraft still around?" I asked.

"Last I heard, dogs still have fleas," Nettie fired back.

Aunt May levered herself to her feet like a rusty derrick. Her eyes glittered. "Pearl Gates turned up in her second-best dress. Pearlie's in thatMount Hebron congregation with Helen Loome, you know, she went there from Galilee Holiness."

Nettie craned her neck. "The dress she dyed pea-soup green, that makes her look like a turtle?"

Aunt May stumped up to a hunchbacked woman outside cubicle 9. I turned to Nettie. "Pearlie Gates?"

"She was Pearl Hooper until she married Mr. Gates. In a case like that, the man should take the woman's name, instead of making a Cool out of her. Considering the pride your Uncle Clark takes in our Family, it's a wonder he didn't call himself Clark Dunstan, instead of me becoming Mrs. Annette Rutledge."

"Uncle Clark is all right, I hope?"

"An expert on everything under the sun, same as ever. What time is it?"

"Not quite twelve-thirty."

"He's driving around the parking lot to find a good enough place. UnlessClark has empty spaces on both sides, he's afraid someone'll put a scratch on his car." She looked up at me. "James passed away last year. Fell asleep in front of the television and never woke up. Didn't I give you that news?"

“I wish you had."

"Probably I got mixed up if I called you or not."

For the first time, I was seeing my relatives from an adult perspective. Nettie had not considered telling me about James's death for as long as a heartbeat.

"Here comes your Uncle Clark, right on schedule."

The old man in the loose yellow shirt coming around the desk bore only a generic resemblance to the man I remembered. His ears protruded at right angles, like Dumbo's, from the walnut of his skull. Above the raw pink of his drooping lower lids, the whites of his eyes shone the ivory of old piano keys.

Uncle Clark drew up in front of his wife like a vintage automobile coming to rest before a public monument. "How are we doing at the moment?"

"The same," said Nettie.

He lifted his head to inspect me. “If you're little Ned, I'm the man who saved your mother's life."

"Hello, Uncle Clark," I said. "Thanks for calling the ambulance."

He waved me aside and moved through the curtain. I followed him inside.

Clarkwent to the side of the bed. "Your boy is here. That should help you pull through." He examined the lights and monitors. "Hadn't been for me, you'd still be on the kitchen floor." He raised a bent finger to a screen. "This is her heart, you know. You get a picture of how it beats."

I nodded.

"Up, down, up, then that big one—see? That's a strong heart."

I wrapped my hand around my mother's. Her breathing changed, and her eyelids flickered.

Clarklooked at me with a familiar combination of provisional acceptance and lasting suspicion. "About lunchtime, isn't it?"

My mother's suddenly open eyes fastened on me.

He patted Star's flank. "Get yourself back on your feet now, honey." The curtain swung shut behind him.

Star clutched my hand, lifted her head a few inches off the pillow, and uttered my name with absolute clarity."Hvv . . . tkk tt ooo."

The machines emitted squawks of alarm. "You have to get some rest, Mom."

She propelled herself upright. Her fingers fastened around mybicep like a handcuff. She dragged in an enormous breath and on the exhalation breathed, "Your father."

A nurse brushed me aside to place one hand on my mother's chest, the other on her forehead. "Valerie, you have to relax. That's an order." She hitched up the bedclothes, introduced herself as June Cook, the head nurse in the ICU, and clasped my mother's hand. "We're going to go out now, Valerie, so you get some rest."

"She's called Star," I said.

My mother licked her lips and said,"Rob. Ert." Her eyes closed, and she was instantly asleep.

Outside the cubicle, Uncle Clark was tottering up the row of curtains in black-and-white spectator shoes, like Cab Calloway's.

"Where's he going?" I asked.

"Late for lunch," Nettie said. "Lunch is late for him, more like."

On the way out, I took off my blazer, folded it into my duffel, and zipped the bag shut again.

• 19

• Nettie lowered her bag onto a table in the visitors' lounge and pulled out sandwiches wrapped in cling film and a Tupperware container filled with potato salad. "No sense spending good money on cafeteria food."

Clarkdumped potato salad onto his plate, sectioned off a portion the size of a gnat, and raised it to his mouth. "When did you blow in, Neddie, a couple days ago?"

"This morning," I said.

He cocked his head. “Is that right? I heard something about a big-money poker game."

May gave me a look of bright approval.

“I don't play poker." I bit into a roast beef sandwich.

"Where did you happen to hear a thing like that?" Nettie asked him.

"Checking my traps."

"Uh-huh." Nettie rolled her eyes at me. "The old fool can hardly walk upstairs anymore, but he has no trouble getting to his favorite bars. If he missed a day they'd think he dropped dead."

"Neddie, did you win a lot of money?" Aunt Muy asked.

“I didn't win any money," I said.

"Where was the game?"

Clarktook a minuscule bite of his sandwich. "Upstairs in theSpeedwayLounge. My friends there treat me like royalty. Like a king."

"Friends like that common tramp Piney Woods, I suppose."

Clarkcoaxed another pebble of potato salad onto his fork. "There's no harm in Piney. Son, I hope to have the pleasure of introducing you to Piney Woods one of these days. I consider Piney a man of the world." He brought the speck of potato salad to his mouth. "Matter of fact, it was Piney who told me about you winning that money."

"How much?" May asked. "A whole lot, like a thousand, or a little lot, like a hundred?"

“I didn't win any money," I said. “I got into town this morning, and I came straight to the hospital."

May said, "Joy told me—"

"You heard him,"Clark said. "Joy doesn't see too good these days."

"How are Aunt Joy and Uncle Clarence?" I asked.

"Clarence and Joy don't get out much," May said.

Clarknibbled at his sandwich. “It could be put that way. My advice is, die young, while you can still enjoy it." He examined the contents of my plate. "A boy like that could eat you out of house and home."

“I'd be happy to help out with the shopping and cooking, things like that."

“Is that what you do now, son? You a short-order cook?"

“I'm a programmer for a software company inNew York," I said. His expression told me that he had never before heard the wordsprogrammer orsoftware. "We make things that tell computers what to do."

"Factory work keeps a man out of trouble, anyhow." He bit off a tiny wedge of sandwich and put the rest on his plate, getting into stride. "The problem today is that young men do nothing but hang out on the street. I blame the parents. Too selfish to give their children the necessary discipline. Our people are the worst of all, sad to say."

He could have gone on for hours. "Tell me about this morning, Uncle Clark. I still don't know what happened."

He leaned back in his chair and aimed his best sneer at me. "Carl Lewis wouldn't have been out of his chair by the time I was dialing the second 1 in 911. Saved the girl's life."

"The bell rang about six in the morning," Nettie said. “I'm up at that hour because I have trouble sleeping.That's Star, I said to myself,and the poor girl needs her family's loving care. I could feel my insides start to worry."

"The Dunstan blood,"Clark said, nodding at me.

"As soon as I opened the door, Neddie, your mother fell right into my arms. I never in my life thought I'd see her look so bad. Your mother was always a pretty, pretty woman, and she still would have been, in spite of how she let herself go."

"Extra body weight never hurt a woman's looks,"Clark said.

“It wasn't the pounds she put on, and it wasn't the gray in her hair. She was scared. 'You're worried about something, plain as day,' I said. The poor thing said she had to get some sleep before she could talk. 'Okay, honey,' I said, 'rest up on the davenport, and I'll make up your old bed and get breakfast ready for when you want it.' She told me to take her address book from her bag and call you inNew York. Of course, I had your number right in my kitchen.

“I had a feeling you were already on the way, Neddie, but I didn't know how close you were! After that, I did the coffee and went up to put clean sheets on the bed. When I came back down, she wasn't on the davenport. I went into the kitchen. No Star. All of a sudden, I heard the front door open and close, and I rushed out, and there she was, walking back to the davenport. Told me she was feeling dizzy and thought fresh air would help."

She turned her head from side to side in emphatic contradiction. “I didn't believe it at the time, and I don't believe it now, though I'm sorry to say it to her own son. She was looking for someone. Or she saw someone walk up."

May said, "According to Joy—"

Nettie glanced at her sister before looking back at me. “I asked her, 'What's happening, sweetheart? You can tell me,' and she said, 'Aunt Nettie, I'm afraid something bad is going to happen.' Then she asked if I called you. 'Your boy's on the way,' I said, and she closed her eyes and let herself go to sleep. I sat with her a while, and then I went back into the kitchen."

Sensing an opening,Clark leaned forward again. “I come downstairs and see a woman holed up on my davenport! What in tarnationis this, I wonder, and come up slow and easy and bend over to get a good look. 'Hello,Clark,' she said, and just like that she was out again."

"May came over, and I made all of us a nice breakfast. After a while, in she comes, putting on a nice smile. She toldClark, 'I thought I saw your handsome face, Uncle Clark, but I thought I was dreaming.' She sat at the table, but wouldn't take any nourishment."

"Those two took it for her,"Clarksaid. "Eat like a couple of tobacco farmers."

"Not me," May said. “It's all I can do to eat enough to stay alive."

"She looked better, but she didn't lookright. Her skin had a gray cast, and there wasn't any shine to her eyes. The worst thing was, I could see she wasso fearful."

"That girl was never afraid of anything,"Clark announced. "She knew she was sick, that's what you saw."

"She knew she was sick, but she was afraid for Neddie."

"For me?" I said.

"That's right," May put in.

"Clark heard her, too, but he paid no attention because it wasn't about his handsome face."

"What did she say?" I thought my mother had already given me a clue.

" 'A terrible thing could happen to my son, and I have to stop it.' That's what she said."

“I ain't deef,"Clark said.

• 20

• A few minutes later, I jumped into a brief, uncharacteristic lull to ask if my mother had said anything more about the terrible thing from which she wanted to protect me.

“It wasn't much," Nettie said. “I don't suppose she could have explained."

May said, "She asked how I was getting on without James. Star was here for his funeral, you know." A dark glance reminded me that I had been absent. "She didn't seem lively and full of fun, the way she used to be. I remember she asked Nettie to get in touch with some ofher old friends. Then she started toward the counter and made this funnysurprised sound. That's when she fell smack down on the floor. I swear, I thought she had left us. Lickety-split, Clark was on the phone."

"Superman never moved faster," Clark said.

I drew in a large breath and let it out. "This is going to sound funny, but did she mention anything about my father?"

May and Nettie stared at me, and Clark's mouth dropped open, momentarily making him look witless.

“I think she wants me to know who he was." An irresistible idea soared into my mind, and I hitched forward in my chair. "She wanted me to get here before it was too late. She didn't want me to spend the rest of my life wondering about him."

Clark seemed baffled. "Why in heaven would you wonder about that?"

"Star never said a word about your father from the day you were born," Nettie said.

“Probably she kept putting it off and putting it off until she realized that time was running out."

The aunts exchanged a glance I could not interpret. "You must have felt that my mother brought shame on your family. You took her in, and you gave me a home. Aunt Nettie and Aunt May, I'm grateful for everything you did. But I'm not ashamed that Star wasn't married when I was born."

"What the dickens are you talking about?" Clark said.

Nettie said, "Star never brought shame on our family."

"At the time, you must have thought you had to conceal . . ." The sentence trailed off before their absolute incomprehension.

May seemed to try to get me into better focus. "Neddie, Star was married when she had you."

"No, she wasn't," I said. "This is exactly what I'm talking about."

"She most certainly was," Nettie insisted. "She took off, the way she did, and when she came back she was a married woman about a week before delivery. Her husband had left her, but I saw the papers."

All three regarded me with varying degrees of disapproval, even indignation.

"How come she never told me?"

"Women don't have to tell their children they were born on the right side of the blanket."

A myriad of odd sensations, like the flares of tiny fireworks,sparkled through my chest. "Why did she give me her name insteadof his?"

"You were more a Dunstan than whatever he was.His name didn't count for anything."

"Do you still have the papers?"

"They'd be long gone, by now."

I silently agreed. With the exception of her driver's license, my mother's attitude toward official documents tended toward a relaxation well past the point of carelessness.

"Let me see if I have this right," I said. "She left home with a man you didn't know, married him, and became pregnant. Her husband abandoned her shortly before I was born."

“It was something like that," Nettie said.

"What did I get wrong?"

Nettie pursed her lips and folded her hands in her lap. Either she was trying to remember, or she was editing the story into acceptable form. “I recall her telling me that the fellow took off a couple months after she learned she was carrying. She could have come back here, but she bought a ticket somewhere. ... I can't remember, but she had a girlfriend in school there. At the time she left town, Star wasn't living with me. She was in with a crowd from Albertus, doing God knows what."

The women got to their feet. A second later, I joined them. "Didn't Star want us to call her friends?"

Nettie rammed the pickle jar into her bag. "Most of those people didn't know how to conduct themselves in a decent home. Besides, they probably moved out a long time ago."

"She must have had someone in mind."

“If you want to waste your time, here's her address book." She groped through the contents of her bag and brought out a worn, black leather book like a pocket diary.

From the door of the lounge, Clark was casting irritated glances at May's efforts to unhook her cane from a chair. Nettie moved grandly away. I knelt down to free the cane and placed it in May's outstretched hand.

"Aunt May," I asked, "what did Joy say to you this morning?"

"Oh. We straightened that out. Joy made a mistake."

"About what?"

“I said to her, 'Joy, you'll never guess, Star's over at Nettie's.' Iknow,' she said, 'I saw herwith my own eyes, standing out front and talking to her boy. He's an extremely handsome young man!' "

“I guess that proves it wasn't me," I said.

"No, it doesn't," she said, "but I know what does. If Star met you outside the house, she wouldn't ask Nettie to call you on the telephone."

• 21

• Star's address book was a palimpsest of the comings and goings of herself and her acquaintances over what looked like a great many years. I stood beside the bank of telephones on the ground floor and leafed through the chaos, looking for the Edgerton area code. I came up with three names, one of them that of a person in deep disfavor with Nettie and May.

I dialed his number first. A sandpaper voice said, "Pawnshop." When I spoke his name, he said, "Who were you expecting, Harry Truman?" The impression that Nettie and May were right to despise their late sister's husband vanished as soon as I had explained myself. "Ned, that's terrible news. How is she doing?"

I told him what I could.

"Look," Toby Kraft said, “I got some people in from out of town on a big estate deal, and I'm trying to expand my business, understand? I'll be there quick as I can. Hey, I want to get a look at you, too, kid, it's been a long time."

Before he could hang up, I said, "Toby, Star wanted us to call her old friends, and I wondered if you knew two people who were in her book."

"Make it fast," he said.

I turned to the first of the Edgerton names. "Rachel Milton?"

"Forget it. Way back when, she used to be Rachel Newborn. Used to go to Albertus. Nice knockers. Rachel was okay until she married this prick, Grennie Milton, and moved out to Ellendale." He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said something I could not hear. "Kid, I have to go."

"One more. Suki Teeter."

"Yeah, call Suki. Talk about jugs, she was the chump. She and your mom, they liked each other. Bye."

The former jug champ's telephone rang six times, then twice more without the intervention of an answering machine. I was about to hang up when she answered on the tenth ring. Suki Teeter was no more given to conventional greetings than Toby Kraft.

"Sweetheart, if you're looking for money, too bad, this is the wrong number." The underlying buoyancy in her voice made a little self-contained comedy of the time she had taken to answer, the unknown caller, her financial condition, and anyone straitlaced enough to take offense.

I told her who I was.

"Ned Dunstan? I can't believe it. Where are you, in town? Did Star give you my number?"

“In a way," I said. “I'm calling fromSt. Ann's Community."

"Star's in the hospital."

I described what had happened that morning. "Before the stroke, she said to call her friends and let them know if there was an emergency. Maybe you'd like to come here. It might do her some good." Without warning, sorrow blasted through my defenses and clutched my chest. "Sorry," I said. “I didn't mean to do this to you."

“I don't mind if you cry," she said. “Is she conscious?"

The question helped me climb back into control. "When she isn't asleep."

“I'll be there as soon as I put myself together. Who else did you call?"

"Toby Kraft. And I have one other name. Rachel Milton."

"Really? I'm surprised. Maybe they stayed friends, I don't know. Rachel sure as hell dropped everybody else. Ned? I hope we can spend some time together."

In a voice made of honey and molasses, the woman who answered the Miltons' telephone told me that she would inform Mrs. Rachel she had a call, and who was it from? I gave her my name and added that I was the son of an old friend. The line went dead for a couple of minutes. When Rachel Milton finally picked up, she sounded nervous, impatient, and bored.

"Pleaselet me apologize for the time you've been waiting. Lulu went wandering all around the house trying to find me when all she had to do was use the intercom."

I was almost certain that she had spent two minutes deciding whether or not to take my call.

“Is there something I should know?"

After I explained, Rachel Milton clicked her tongue against her teeth. I could practically see the wheels going around in her head. “I hope you won't think I'm terrible, but I won't be able to get there today. I'm due at the Sesquicentennial Committee in about five minutes, but please give your mother my love. Tell her I'll see her just as soon as I can." The wish not to be unnecessarily brusque led her to say, "Thank you for calling, and I hope Star has a speedy recovery. The way I'm going, I'll probably wind up in the hospital, too!"

“I could reserve you a room at St. Ann's," I said.

"Grenville, my husband, would kill me. He's on the board of Lawndale. You ought to hear him get going on the federal funds pouring into St. Ann's Community. They should be able to raise King Tut from his tomb, is all I can say."

After Rachel Milton hung up, I shoved my hands in my pockets and followed the corridor past the glass wall of the gift shop. A few men and women in bathrobes sat on the padded benches on the side of the immense, gray lobby, and half a dozen people stood in a line before the reception desk.

A small, fair-haired boy with gleeful blue eyes took in my approach from a stroller. His T-shirt bore the image of a pink dinosaur. Babies and small children charm me right out of my socks. I can't help it, I love that moment when they look inside you and spot a fellow spirit. I waggled my fingers and pulled an idiotic face that had been a big hit with the toddler set on previous occasions. The little boy whooped with delight. The tall, sturdy-looking woman beside him glanced down, looked up at me, then back to the child, who was crying "Bill! Bill!" and trying to propel himself out of the stroller. "Honey," she said, "this isn't Bill."

My first impression, that she looked like the female half of a local anchor team, vanished before the acknowledgment of the intelligence that irradiated her striking, even strikingly beautiful, presence. Her beauty and her intelligence were inextricable, and my second impression, standing before her lithe, tawny gaze and smiling at the efforts of her son to escape the stroller and hurl himself at me, was that if she resembled anything at all, it was a blond, particularly conscious female panther. Some quick recognition flashed in her eyes, and Ithought she had seen everything that had just passed through my mind.

I would probably have blushed—my admiration was that naked— if she had not almost deliberately released me by attending to her son, allowing me the psychic space to register the perfection with which her dark blond hair had been cut to fall like a veil across her face and the expensive simplicity of her blue silk blouse and white linen skirt. Lined up before the information desk with a dozen shapeless Edgertonians in T-shirts and shorts, she seemed unreasonably exotic. She smiled up at me, and again I saw that at least half of her smooth, shieldlike beauty was the intelligence that flowed through it.

"He's a beautiful boy," I said, unable to avoid the word.

The beautiful boy was struggling to pull his feet through the straps of the stroller, in the process levering off a blue sneaker with a Velcro strap. "Thanks," she said. "This man is very nice, Cobbie, but he isn't Bill."

I put my hands on my knees, and the boy swiveled and stared at my face. His eyes darkened in confusion, then cleared again. He chortled.

She said, "Good, this line is finally starting to move."

I straightened up and waved goodbye. Cobbie ecstatically waved back, and she met my eyes with a glance that warmed me all across the lobby and outside into the sunlight. Beyond the low stone wall at the far end of the parking lot, the land dropped away to the bank of the slow, brown-grayMississippi. It struck me that the river crawled along the city's western flank like an unhappy secret. I wondered if the aunts had old stories from the days when Edgerton had been a river town. Then, foolishly, I started to wonder if I would see the woman I had met in the lobby ever again. What was supposed to happen if I did? She had a child, therefore a husband, and what she represented to me was no more than a convenient distraction from my fears for my mother. It was enough to have been reminded that such people actually existed.

•22

• Thinking of the nights ahead, I ducked into the gift shop and picked up a couple of paperback mystery novels and some candy. The white-haired volunteer behind the cash register searched the books' covers for the prices and dowsed a finger over the keys.

Behind me, a childish voice said, "You're—not—Bill," and burst into giggles. I turned around to see a familiar pair of dancing blue eyes. He was holding a sneaker in one hand and a new teddy bear in the other.

“I'm not?" I smiled at his mother. Her attractiveness seemed more than ever like a shield behind which she could come to her private conclusions about the responses it evoked.

"We meet again," she said.

"The way this hospital is designed, sooner or later you see everybody twice."

"Do you know how to find the intensive care unit? I've never been here before."

"Third floor," I said. "Follow me."

The woman behind the counter counted out my change and slid the paperbacks and the candy into a bag. I moved aside, and the boy's mother came up to the counter. "How much are the teddy bears?"

The woman peered at the child. In high hilarity, the child peered back. "Our ICU patients can't receive gifts or flowers."

“It's for him." She groped into her bag. "A reward for behaving himself. Or maybe a bribe, I don't know. Our otherwise completely adorable baby-sitter abandoned us this afternoon."

The boy pointed at me and said, "You're—not—not—not—Bill!"

“I am too," I said.

The boy clapped the sneaker and the teddy bear to his chest and roared with laughter. Ah, appreciation. I tried to remember his name but could not. He fixed his eyes on mine and said, "Bill rides alawn mower!"

"No, you ride a lawn mower," I said, contradiction being the first principle of four-year-old humor. We left the shop and turned toward the elevators.

"Your new best friend is my son Cobbie, and I'm Laurie Hatch,"she said. "My cleaning woman had an operation yesterday, and I wanted to say hello. You're seeing someone in intensive care, too?"

"My mother." We came to the rank of closed doors, and I pushed the button. "Ned Dunstan. Hello."

"Hello, Ned Dunstan," she said witha feathery brush of irony, and then looked at me more thoughtfully, almost impersonally. “I've heard that name before. Do you live here in town?"

"No, I'm from New York." I looked up at the illuminated numbers above the doors.

“I hope your mother is doing all right."

Cobbie glanced back and forth between us.

"She had a stroke," I said. For a moment both of us regarded the yellow glow of theup button. "Your cleaning woman must be Mrs. Loome."

She gave me an astonished smile. "Do you know her?"

"No, but my aunts do," I said.

People had been trickling in from the lobby as we talked. Everybody watched the number above the elevator on the left change from 3 to 2. When it flashed to 1, the crowd pushed to the left. The doors opened on a dense, compressed mob, which began pouring out as the waiting crowd pushed forward. Laurie Hatch moved back, pulling the stroller with her.

Cobbie said, "What's yourname?"

"Ned." I watched the light above the elevator on our right flash 2 and change to 1.

The doors of the laden car closed. A second or two later, the others opened to release a cart pushed by a workman. He stared at Laurie, glanced at Cobbie, and gave me a meaningful smirk as I followed them in. I said, "Don't jump to conclusions."

“I ain't concluded, and so far I ain't jumped," he said. We both laughed.

Cobbie brandished the teddy bear. "His name is Ned. He's a bear named Ned."

"Oh, Cobbie." Laurie knelt down to wriggle the sneaker onto his foot.

Cobbie leaned over the strap of the stroller and in his deepest voice intoned,“I ain't concluded, and so faw I ain't jumped."

The car came to a stop, and the doors slid open. Embarrassed, Laurie glanced at me. “I don't know where he gets it from." She pushed the stroller into the corridor and turned in the wrongdirection. I gestured toward the ICU. "He just picks things up and repeats them."

I looked down at Cobbie. He fixed me with an expression of comically adult gravity and growled,"And SOO FAW, Iain't JUMPED."

"He must be part tape recorder," Laurie said.

"He has great ears," I replied, still grinning. “If he doesn't make it as a comedian, he could always be a musician."

"His father would have a heart attack." She startled me with a look so charged with resentment it felt like the touch of a branding iron. "We're separated."

Both of us looked down. Cobbie was holding the teddy bear's ear to his mouth and whispering that so far he hadn't jumped. "He'd even hate my bringing Cobbie to St. Ann's."

"Doesn't your husband approve of St. Ann's?"

"Stewart's on the board at Lawndale. He thinks you can contract a virus just by looking at this place."

"He must know Grenville Milton," I said.

She stopped moving and looked at me in dubious surprise. "Don't tell meyou know Grennie Milton!" Chagrin instantly softened her face. "There's no reason you shouldn't, except that he never goes anywhere except the University Club and Le Madrigal."

“It's okay," I said. "His wife used to be a friend of my mother's. About five minutes ago, I called to tell her what was going on, and she mentioned that her husband was on the Lawndale board."

"Rachel Milton and your mother were friends? Am I likely to run into her in the next five minutes?"

"You're in the clear," I said.

"Good. Anyhow, there's the ICU, dead ahead."

I swung open one of the big doors to let her pass through. Zwick glanced up from her post and prepared for battle. Beneath the window, a notice I had previously overlooked told me why. "Uh-oh," I said. "Slight change of plans." I pointed to the notice.CHILDREN ARE NOT PERMITTED ENTRY.

"Oh, no," she said. "Darn it. They don't let kids in there, Cobbie. You'll have to wait for me. I won't be more than a couple of minutes, I promise."

He looked up at her with the beginnings of alarm.

“I can put you in front of the window, and you'll be able to see me the whole time."

“I'll stay with Cobbie," I said. “It's no problem."

“I can't let you do that."

“I want to stay with Ned and Ned," Cobbie announced. "With this Ned and with that Ned."

"First you're my guide, then you put up with my complaints, and now you're my baby-sitter."

Aunt Nettie surged out and came to a halt with her hand still on the door. "Did I pick a bad time to go to the washroom?"

"Don't be silly, Aunt Nettie. This is Mrs. Hatch. She's visiting Mrs. Loome. We met downstairs, and I offered to stay with her son while she goes in. Laurie, my aunt, Mrs. Rutledge." I could not keep from grinning at the absurdity of having to explain myself.

"Hello, Mrs. Rutledge." Laurie contained her sense of the ridiculous better than I. “If your nephew hadn't led me up here, I would never have found the way."

Cobbie chose this moment to come out with“I ain't concluded, and SOO faw I ain't JUMPED!" He sounded a little like Kingfish on the oldAmos 'n' Andy programs.

Laurie Hatch moaned something that might have been "Oh, Cobbie." Nettie transferred her indignation to the boy and almost immediately relented. "Out of the mouths of babes. Honey, what's your name?"

"COBDEN CARPENTER HATCH!" Cobbie shouted. He fell back into the stroller, giggling.

"That's a mighty important name." She turned magisterially to Laurie. “I'm sure Mrs. Loome will appreciate your visit."

Smiling at her cue, Laurie patted her son's head and left us.

"Mrs. Hatch must be a good-hearted person." It was her way of apologizing. With a smile at Cobbie, Nettie sailed off.

Through the window, I could see Laurie Hatch approaching Mrs. Loome's cubicle and Aunt May stumping toward the nurses' station. I hunkered beside the stroller. Dinosaurs were Cobbie's favorite animals, and his favorite wasTyrannosaurus rex. Aunt Nettie reappeared and went back into the ICU. Aunt May gave the nurses' station a close inspection, leaned over the counter, and snatched a stapler off a desk. She shoved the stapler into her bag.

"Oh, my God," I said, realizing what Vince Hardtke had witnessed.

"Oh, my GAHD!" Cobbie chanted. "Oh, my GAHD, my mommy is coming."

Aunt May moved down the counter and took a pad of paper and a pencil from another desk.

Laurie came through the doors. "Did you two have a nice time while I was gone?"

"How is Mrs. Loome?"

"She's recovering well, but very groggy. I'll come back when they put her in a regular room." Her eyes sparkled, and she gave a little laugh. "Did your aunt make you feel like you were back in high school?"

Whatever I was going to say disappeared into a sudden whirlwind of physical sensation. A woman's body was swarming over mine. Hair slid across my face, and teeth nipped the base of my neck. An odor of sweat and perfume swam into my nostrils. Laurie's smile faded. The hands hanging at my sides kneaded the buttocks of the woman on top of me. A breast offered its nipple to my mouth. My tongue lapped the nipple. The woman above me tilted her hips, and I began moving in and out of her.

"Ned, are you all right?"

I tried to speak. “I'm not ..." I clapped my hands to my face, and the woman entwined around me turned to smoke. I lowered my hands.

“I'm sorry." I cleared my throat. "Yes, I'm all right." I wiped my handkerchief across my forehead and gave Laurie what I hoped was a reassuring look. “I guess I didn't get enough sleep last night."

“I don't want to leave if you're ill."

I wanted overwhelmingly to be left alone. “I'm restored," I said. "Honest." I went to the outer door and opened it for her. Still puzzled, Laurie got behind the stroller, and tendrils of consciousness seemed to extend toward me. I remembered thinking that she looked like a great glowing golden panther.

"The look on your face—it was like you were eating the most delicious ice cream in the world, but it gave you that ache in the middle of your forehead. Pleasure and pain."

"No wonder you thought I was sick," I said.

• 23

• Okay, I was stressed out, I told myself. At a time when thinking about anything but Star's plight made me feel guilty, a good-lookingstranger named Laurie Hatch had unknowingly pushed my buttons and induced a ten-second meltdown. On the other hand, maybe I was heading for another bizarre crack-up. Dr. Barnhill's perfunctory update faded in and out of focus. Over the top of his Martian head I glimpsed the entry into the ICU of a woman who would have been perfectly at home on the corner of Tenth Street and Second Avenue, and the sight of her reddish brown hair bushed out around the kindly, roguish moon-face floating above an opalescent tunic buttoned from waist to neck over loose black trousers made me feel better even before I realized who she was. Suki Teeter looked like a visiting maharanee. Dr. Barnhill scurried up the aisle, and the maharanee rustled forward in a manner that suggested the chiming accompaniment of many little bells.

Nettie and May swung around with the stateliness of ocean liners and moved toward the curtain.

"You have to be Suki Teeter." I held out my hand.

"Honey-baby, please." She engulfed me in a hug. Her hair gave off the faint, pleasant odors of peppermint and sandalwood. “I would have been here earlier, but I practically had to recite the 'Gettysburg Address' to get my car out of the shop!" She stepped back. “I'm so glad you called me. And you're sort of ... sort of incredibly. . . . My God! You're a marvel, that's what you are."

"You're a marvel, too." The glow of Suki's benevolent face intensified. Her wide-set, literally sparkling eyes were of two different colors, the right one a transparent aquamarine and the left as green as jade.

"Tell me everything."

I had nearly finished when Nettie swept the curtain aside and billowed out, May a step behind her. "Aunt Nettie," I said, "have you ever met Star's old friend Suki Teeter?"

"We met. You flicked cigarette ashes all over my porch."

Suki said, “I'm very sorry about Star, Aunt Nettie," and went into the cubicle.

Minutes later, Nettie's head snapped forward, and she seemed to turn to stone. "Now I have seen it all."

"What?"

Nettie scorched me with a look of the sort usually described as "baleful." "You called Toby Kraft."

“I thought he should know," I said.

Coming toward us in an ugly plaid jacket too heavy for the weather was a man with a gray, pockmarked face, Coke-bottle glasses, and a body like a cigar butt. His white hair swept back to a few inches above his shoulders, George Washington—style. Beneath the sweaty, savagely tiny knot of a defeated necktie curled the collar points of a shirt that appeared to have been worn for a week straight.

"Who's next?" Nettie asked. "Mr. John Dillinger?"

"Why, that's Toby Kraft," May said. "He must talk to the Devil himself."

Suki Teeter parted the curtain, and my aunts moved sideways in unison. Sorrow had erased Suki's normal radiance. She wrapped her arms around me. "Call me tonight, will you? Call me before that, if anything changes." She wiped her eyes without taking them from mine. The peculiarity of their coloring suggested that I was looking at two people contained in the same body.

Suki broke away and began moving up the aisle. Toby's eyes, the size of eggs behind his thick glasses, focused on the front of her tunic.

May said, "Push those manhole covers off his nose, he looked any harder."

Close up, Toby's face looked like cottage cheese. "A good sport, I hat girl. Loyal as the day is long. Hiya, kid. Great to see you. Thanks for calling."

He held out a fat white paw liberally covered with silver fur. “Isn't it great to see this kid?" The aunts did not respond. He released my tingling hand. “I wish I could look like the kid here for twenty-four hours. That's all I ask—twenty-four hours. Hell, at least I got all my hair. How's Star doing?"

I gave him a brief description.

"What a lousy deal." He smoothed his hand over his hair. “I'll let her know I'm here."

May said, “I'll come with you." She took his arm, and the two of them disappeared through the curtain.

"Aunt Nettie," I whispered, "you must know that your sister is taking things from the nurses' desks. What's going on?"

She gave me a glance more aggrieved than angry and pulled me toward the end of the room. "Let me tell you some things you ought to know. What your Aunt May does is none of your business. She's a magpie. That doesn't hurt anybody. What did you see her take?"

"A stapler," I said. "Some pencils and paper. But it doesn't—"

"These people, if they want writing supplies, they go to the storeroom and get for free what would cost us ten dollars at the store. May helps level out the balance. And you're a Dunstan. You have to stand by your own people."

I couldn't think of a single thing to say.

Nettie's force-field lost most of its intensity. "Now let me set your mind at ease. My sister might be slow on her feet, but she still has fast hands. May's the best magpie in the world. Has been ever since Queenie passed away."

"Queenie?"

"Queen of the magpies. How do you think she got that name? Your grandmother could leave a store, a color television set under one arm, pulling a dishwasher on a handcart with the other, and the manager would hold the door and wish her good morning."

We returned to cubicle 15 in what must have appeared to be harmony. Nettie radiated the satisfaction of one who had accomplished a difficult task, and I was managing to hold myself upright.

Toby came out rubbing his fingers over a quilted cheek with what in him passed for melancholy. "Keep in touch, you hear? I want to know everything that happens. Your momma worked for me when you were just a squirt, did you know that?"

“I remember," I said. "How did the estate deal go?" His eyes hardened, and I added, "The one you were telling me about."

"Oh, yeah. We're moving, definitely." He gave me a sidelong look and strolled to the counter. "You staying at Nettie's?"

I nodded.

“If it gets tight over there, I can find you a room in a good clean place, no problem. And if you could use a couple extra bucks, maybe I'll want some help in the shop. On account of you remind me of your momma."

“I'll keep it in mind," I said.

He nodded, and I nodded back, as if we had agreed on a business deal. Toby put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me down into a miasma of smoke and hair gel. "Between you and I, you spot May doing something which it might seem out of character for an old lady like her? Turn a blind eye. Word to the wise."

"She already swiped everything that wasn't nailed down," I said.

Toby batted the side of my head and chuckled.

"Nettie said it runs in the family."

"Queenie, the woman was a virtuoso." He raised his furry hand to his mouth and kissed the tips of his fingers.

• 24

• Dinner consisted of the same sandwiches, pickles, and potato salad as lunch.Clark negotiated a white pebble onto his fork and said, "Heard about you, boy."

I waited.

"Remember my mention of Piney Woods? I ran into Piney this afternoon. Six hundred dollars, he said."

“Is that right?"

"A fellow named Joe Staggers and three of his friends are looking to get it back."Clark sent me another yellow glance. "These are Mountry boys. You don't want to mess with boys from Mountry."

"Uncle Clark," I said, "the next time you run into Piney Woods, do me a favor. Tell him I didn't take six hundred dollars off someone named Joe Staggers. I never met anyone named Joe Staggers. I don't play cards, and I'm tired of hearing about it."

Clarkdipped his fork into the potato salad. “I did tell him some of that. Piney said he'd give out the same story himself, if it was him."

Before the change of shift, I wandered up to the counter and noticed that the duffel had been partially unzipped. On one of her predatory rambles through the unit, May had opened the bag and nabbed whatever caught her magpie eye—she didn't know it was mine. I knelt down and took out the blazer, which had been shoved back in by someone even less worried about wrinkles than me, and sorted through my clothes. Nothing seemed to be missing, including the Discman and the CDs. I went to the desk.

"Nurse Zwick," I said, "did you see anyone touch my bag? Or open it up?"

"Only you," she said.

After7:00p.m.,a nurse said that Mrs. Grenville Milton had sent a bouquet, but since flowers were not permitted in the ICU, it was being held downstairs. I told her to give it to the children's ward.

Clarkdropped into a chair and fell sonorously asleep.

Star kept rising toward clarity and fading back. My aunts told hershe needed sleep. I thought my mother needed to talk to me, and that was why she never let go of my hand.

Around9:00p.m.,Nettie poked her head around the curtain and whispered, "May, Clyde Prentiss has two visitors. You have to see them to believe them."

"Maybe it's hisgang," May said, and hustled out.

The arrival of two uniformed policemen and a plainclothes detective at cubicle 3 that afternoon had roused them into an investigative flurry. Prentiss's history of wrongdoing ranged from petty larceny, in my aunts' book merely a technique of economic redistribution, through assault with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to distribute illegal substances, to the big-time villainy of armed robbery, assault with intent to kill, and one accusation of rape. That he had been acquitted of most of these charges in no way implied his innocence. Hadn't he been shot by a night watchman while attempting to flee through a warehouse window? Hadn't his accomplices made their getaway in a pickup truck laden with microwave ovens? Added to his transgressions was that world-class felony, the breaking of his mother's heart. Nettie and May would have hammered a stake through Clyde Prentiss's own heart in an instant, and they were not about to pass up an opportunity to inspect his partners in crime.

Star clutched my hand. "Do you want to tell me about my father?" I asked.

Her eyes bore into mine. She opened her mouth and uttered a succession of vowels. She gasped with frustration.

"Was his name Robert?"

"Nnnn!"

“I thought that's what you were telling me before."

She summoned her powers. "NotRrrr. Bert." She spent a few seconds concentrating on her breathing. "Edwuh.Edward."

"What was his last name?"

She sipped air and met my eyes with a glance that nearly lifted me off the floor."Rnnn. T!"

"Rinnt?"

Star jerked herself up from the pillow."Rhine." A machine clamored."Hrrrt."

A name came to me from the furthest reaches of my childhood. "Rinehart?"

The night nurse erupted through the curtain and threw me out, but not before I saw her nod.

Ten feet up the aisle, the aunts werepoised at the counter like bird

Clark issued a thunderclap snore that jerked him to his feet. He staggered, recovered himself, and joined us. "What're you gawping at?"

Nettie said, "The Clyde Prentiss gang is over there. The ones that got away when he almost met his Maker."

A scrawny little weasel with a goatee and a black leather jacket twitched out through the curtain, followed by a sturdy blonde wearing a lot of mascara, a brief black leather skirt, and a denim jacket buttoned to her bra.Clark chuckled.

The blonde looked across the station and said, "Hey,Clark."

"You're lookin' mighty fine, Cassie,"Clark said. "Sorry about your friend." The weasel glanced at him and pulled the blonde through the doors.

The aunts turned toClark in astonishment. "How do you know trash like that?"

"Cassie Little isn't trash. She tends bar down at theSpeedway. The shrimpy fellow, Frenchy, I don't know him but to greet. Seems to me Cassie ought to be able to find a better man than that."

I went back inside and said goodbye to Star. Her hands lay at her sides, and her chest rose and fell. I told her I would see her in the morning, said that I loved her, and kissed her cheek.

Alongside May in the back seat of the Buick, I said that I wanted to talk about something before everybody went to bed.

• Nettie placed herself on the old davenport, thumped her bag on the floor, peeked inside, and folded it shut again. Clark gave me a wary glance from the easy chair. May sat beside Nettie with a deep sigh. I dropped my bags next to the staircase and took the rocking chair. I knit my hands together and leaned forward. The rocker creaked. Multiple doubts, doubts arranged into layers, whirled through my head and stalled my tongue.

“I saw you wave to Joy," Nettie said. “If you don't stop off and see her after escorting May home, her feelings will be wounded. Now I guess you had better tell us what's on your mind."

“I'm trying to figure out how to begin," I said. "When you were waiting to see Clyde Prentiss's visitors, my mother wouldn't let go of my hand. She wanted to give me a name."

A beat ahead of the others, Nettie fixed me with a warning glare.

“I don't know what we're talking about," May said. "Shouldn't we divide up what's in Nettie's bag, so I can go home?"

"Does Edward Rinehart mean anything to you?"

My aunts exchanged a glance almost too brief to be seen. May said, "Do you know that name, Nettie?"

“I do not," Nettie said.

"Star moved out of here to live with this man. She and her friends used to visit you, and they scattered cigarette ash all over the porch. Probably Edward Rinehart came with them."

“It was just Suki and a couple other mixed-up girls, all jabbering away about Al-Bear Cam-oo," said Nettie, proving that her memory hadn't lost any ground.

“If you can remember Albert Camus, you can hardly have forgotten the name of the man who took my mother away from Cherry Street."

"You'd be surprised what you forget when you get to be my age."

"What you got in that bag?" Clark asked.

The seat cushion between my aunts disappeared beneath a mound of pens and pencils, pads of paper, scissors, paperclips, tubes of lip balm and skin moisturizer, cigarette lighters, paperweights, envelopes, desk calendars, coffee mugs, wrapped coils of plastic tubing, light bulbs, antihistamines and nasal steroids in sample packets, cotton balls, a stack of gauze bandages and rolls of tape, stamps, and toilet paper. After a while, my dismay surrendered to amazement, and I had to force myself not to laugh. It was like going to the circus and watching the clowns pile out of the little car.

The sisters began dividing the plunder into two equal piles, now and then adding things to a third, smaller share.

I could no longer keep from laughing. "No alligator shoes for Uncle Clark? I could use some new underwear and socks."

"Medical gentlemen seldom wear alligator," May said, "and as for the other, you'll have to wait until the next time I go to Lyall's."

Nettie floated into the kitchen and returned with two grocery bags, one to hold May's spoils and the other for the smaller pile. "After you see May home, you can drop this off at Joy's. I'll leave some lights on."

I helped May down the steps. On the other side of the street, Joy's dark figure peered through a slit in her curtain. The lamps cast circles of thick yellow light onto the pavement and threw the trees intostark relief. The moist night air hovered like fog. May and I stepped down from the curb. "Don't you ever worry about getting caught?" I asked.

May shook her head. "Neddie, I'm too good to get caught. Now hush up, because talking brings bad luck."

I got her up onto the opposite sidewalk, and we moved into the light of the street lamp. Our shadows blotted the cement. "Hush up about that other thing, too, if you know what's good for you."

“I don't get it," I said. "We're talking about a man who disappeared thirty-five years ago."

“I'll have to hush up for both of us, then." She did not say another word until she thanked me for accompanying her home.

Next door, a bent, osteoporotic Joy accepted her bag of goodies and, in a voice age or unhappiness had ground to semi-transparency, sohesitantly asked me in that my refusal came as a relief to us both. The most infirm of the three surviving sisters seemed to exude the same musty, faintly corrupt atmosphere as the barrenness dimly visible behind her. I promised to visit the following afternoon. Inside Nettie's house, I carried my bags upstairs.

A lamp burned on a table beside a metal-spring bed opposite a sink with an overhanging mirror and medicine chest. Through the open window at the front of the room, I saw Joy's house go dark. I put my bags on the linoleum, unzipped the duffel, and took out my blazer, the CD equipment, and my Dopp Kit. The next day's clothing went on the seat of a rush chair, the blazer over its back.

The bedsprings yelped when I stretched out. I pulled up the sheet and the thin blanket. A disc of Emma Kirkby singing Monteverdi went into the player, the headphones over my ears. Before I pressed theplay button, I noticed my blazer splayed askew over the back of the chair and got up to hang it in the closet. When I lifted it from the chair, the blazer drooped to one side, weighted by something in its right pocket.

I reached into the pocket and pulled out a thick wad of bills. I fanned the money over the blanket. Three fifties, lots of tens and twenties, a lot more fives and ones—it added up to five hundred and seventy-six dollars. I separated two fives glued together with beer and counted it again. Five hundred and eighty-one dollars. I stared at the money, feeling as though I ought to lock the door. Then I thought I should tear the bills into confetti and flush them down the toilet. Inthe end, I pushed the money into a front pocket of my knapsack. I went to the mirror and looked at my face without seeing anything all that familiar or all that new. I pushed the knapsack under the bed, switched off the light, and buried my head in the pillow.

• 25

• For the first time in years, unconsciousness pulled me into my recurring nightmare. Despite its long absence, each of its details remained as fresh as the images on a reel of film.

In my earlier years, the dream began with the shadow ripping the seams that connected us and ended with the shadow's gesture toward the forest. Later, I pursued my shadow through the trees. Monstrous beings launched themselves from overhanging rocks, dug claws into my shoulders, and fastened their jaws around my neck. Years after I ran away from Vermont, a hitherto unexpected dream-capacity kept me from jolting out of sleep. Until that point, my fear, above all the sense that Irecognized the monsters, blasted the dream apart. The unexpected capacity I mentioned was the ability to defeat the monsters. When the dream-self had finally come to trust its capacity for survival, the dream went away.

But, hundreds of times before I seemed free of my nightmare, the shadow appeared before me, leaning against a tree trunk or perching on a low-hanging branch. Sometimes it sprawled in midair, head propped on one hand.

"You keep on coming, don't you?" it said. "Haven't you ever wondered where this is going to end?"

“I'm going to catch you," I said.

"What did I ask: where this will end, or how?"

“It'll end here." Even as I indicated the forest, I doubted what I had said.

“Is that the best you can do?"

“I don't give a damn where it happens."

"Ding-dong," the shadow said. "Would you give a damn if our conclusion were to take place in Jones's Woods, just outside the town of Middlemount, in Vermont?"

"No." A chill radiated upward from the pit of my stomach.

"Ding-dong. We'd think twice about going back to Jones's Woods, wouldn't we?"

"This isn't Jones's Woods."

"Ding. A half-lie. Remember what is going on. You aredreaming. F or all you know, we could be smack-dab in the middle of that forest where you nearly shuffled off the old mortal coil." The invisible smile lengthened on the invisible face, another impossibility, but there you are.

"Jones's Woods didn't look anything like this." The cold threading up from my stomach brushed my lungs.

"Ding." He sighed. “Isn't it your impression that dreams turn one thing into another and exaggerate like crazy? That they display a tendency toward the surreal?"

"What's your point?"

"We are getting closer to something you used to be able to see."

“I don't know what—"

"Ding-dong. You do too."

I remembered peaks and gables rising above the trees.

"Not very fond of old houses in the woods, are we?"

"You're not scaring me."

"Ding-dong,ding-dong! The last time, you were looking in the wrong place. If ever you come upon the right one, you'll be in danger of finding out who you are."

I fell back on an old conviction. "There is no right place."

"The right place is where you least want to go. When you get there, it's where you least want to be. If you answer a question of mine, I'll answer one of yours."

"Go ahead."

"All your life, you have felt the loss of something extraordinarily important. If you found it, could you live with the consequences?"

No one with half a brain would answer a question like that. Cracker-barrel mottoes about wooden nickels and pigs in pokes suggested themselves. Yet what came out was "Yes," and it was too late to say,Ask me another.

"Now it's my turn," I said.

“I changed my mind," the shadow said. "You don't get a turn, sorry." It flew on ahead.

• As if I were twenty again, I followed the shadow through a deep wood. The insolent shadow floated above the ground, and we had theding-dongs, the hit about surrealism, the allusions to houses in wooded areas, the paradoxes about real right places, the question, the shadow's flight. Like a dope, I wondered: So isthat all? There isn't any more?

I took two or three steps deeper into the forest and froze in my tracks, stunned by vivid sensory reality.

Sunlight filtered through the canopy swishing in a mild breeze and printed glowing coins on the spongy floor. Spicy, process-laden fragrances sifted in the warm air. I could not be asleep, because I was not dreaming. The air darkened to silver-gray. I glimpsed muddy clouds sliding across the open spaces between treetops.

A sparse rain patted onto the leaves overhead, and I took shelter beneath a big maple. Twenty or thirty yards away, the woods ended in a wall of thick oaks marking the boundary of a meadow. A thunderclap boomed, then another, and the air filled with the sound of wing-beats. Half the distance to the edge of the forest stood an enormous oak. Vertical sheets of water hurtled out of the sky. I took off and scrambled into the shelter of the oak. A drift of wind precise as an atomizer coated me with a film of mist.

A jagged branch of lightning tore through the sky and illuminated the landscape. In the few seconds of brightness, I saw that I had come nearer the border of the woods than I had imagined. Twenty feet of woodland and half as many trees stood between me and a broad field ending at a road. Something tucked into a bend in the woods registered in the corner of my eye, then disappeared back into streaming darkness. The road on the other side of the field would get me back to Edgerton, but I was worried about Star, and the storm was going to delay my return to the hospital. I wondered if what I had seen was a house. A house was exactly what I needed. If its owners let me in, I could telephone Clark and ask him to pick me up before he drove Nettie and May to St. Ann's.

Another lightning bolt shattered the sky and divided into sections that turned the air white as they sizzled toward the woods. I leaned forward and made out a tall portico and a stone facade with shuttered windows. About a hundred feet behind me, a glowing electric arrow shot into the forest. I heard a series of loud cracks, like the breaking of giant bones.

Then another sizzle, another stupendous crack. Rays of lightning darted across the sky, cutting off from a central bolt that executed a left-face over the meadow, stretched out, and angled for the woods. I smelled ozone even before the shaft came slicing down over the topof the oak and hammered into my old friend the maple. It split apart and burst into flame.

A vertical column of lightning erased the darkness. It sped in the direction of the house, executed a right-hand turn, and began working back toward my part of the woods. For lightning, it moved slowly, almost deliberately, and the entire fork remained in place as its business end winged down, carving Z-shapes in the air. I jumped away from the oak and tore through the tail end of the woods. A missile the size of a freight train brushed close enough to heat up my back. All the oxygen was sucked out of the air. I charged onto open ground, and a wall of water sent me stumbling for balance as the missile exploded against the oak tree. I kept running until I reached the stone slab beneath the portico.

Rainwater streamed from my ruined clothes and puddled on the stone. I wrapped my hand around the metal knocker and slammed it down. I waited; I raised the knocker for another blow.

A lock clicked; a bolt slid into a casing. Soft light spilled out.

“I'm sorry to bother you," I said to the person invisible behind the door. “I was caught in the rain, and I wondered . . ."

Behind the figure who held one hand against the door lay a gallery lined with glowing porcelain vases on delicate side tables. In the middle distance, a chandelier like a great ship made of light cast brilliant illumination that turned the man in front of me into a silhouette. A white cuff fastened with a golden link protruded from the sleeve of his gray suit. His fingernails gleamed.

". . . if I could use your telephone."

He leaned into the darkness to hold the door, and I stepped across the threshold. As soon as I entered, I experienced a recurrence of the sense of familiarity that had always shocked me out of my nightmares. The door slammed shut. A lock resoundingly clicked.

My host's almost entirely familiar eyes shone in triumph; his almost entirely familiar mouth opened in a smile. He offered an ironic bow. Although the utterly striking handsomeness of the man before me in no way resembled the way I looked, his individual features, taken one by one, mysteriously replicated my own. In combination, all resemblance vanished. His forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nose, and mouth fused with the modeling of his jaw and cheekbones to create an extraordinary physical beauty. It was like seeing what I might have looked like if I had hit the genetic jackpot. But more than his good fortune separated this man from me—thousands of miles of experiencelay between us. He had gone further, survived more, risked more, won more—simply, nakedly, taken more, and done so with an instinctive, passionate rage beyond any emotion I had ever known.

Surrounded by the vulgar splendor of his domain, odious to the core, the shadow stood before me and laughed at my helplessness. I cried out and shuddered awake.

26 • Mr. X

• Listen to me, You Star-Flung Entities, this isn't easy. It never has been, if you want to know the truth.

No one not born into my condition, in other words no one, except He of whom it now occurs to me You may have never heard, can understand the agonies of uncertainty I have endured. Great Ones, should You exist at all, I hereby request a degree of Recognition commensurate to my Service. Unless my life has been wasted, I deserve an honored Immortality. This Account of my Travails should be displayed in aGreatMuseum of the Elder Gods. Call it, say, the Patriot's Museum, or the Museum of Triumphs. I ought to have, if I may make a suggestion, a diorama reconstructing these humble chambers. The present Journal would be installed upon a replica of my desk. I also see a model of myself, animated if possible, now deep in thought over the page, now standing in a contemplative pose by the sink. A descriptive plaque or framed text of not less than eight hundred words would fill the bill. I am being modest. Remember, if You will, that the Nazarene has been represented in works of art all over the world, and his Image hangs in every Christian house of worship.

Do You in Your Otherness evenknow about The Other Guy? I mean, providing that You do exist, is it possible that You chose Him before me and watched everything go down the tubes? Attend—

Even the Jesus brainlessly sentimentalized in Canon Reed's Sunday school exercises had his moments of frustration, doubt, and despair. After all, He was half human too! I bet He stormed around in a black, blinding rage a lot more often than the Gospels let on. What I want to know is, didn't Jesus sometimes wonder if that Messiah stuff was a delusion? And this: did He have dreams?

A being in possession of supernatural powers and a world-alteringMissionofttimes finds himself down in the dumps for weeks on end. More often than any mortal. He endures periods of psychic sludge when the emotional landscape looks like a river-bank at low tide on an overcast day. A few old tires, broken bits of wood, and a couple of beer bottles lay scattered across the mud. All the best sources agree that these bleak periods are necessary to spiritual evolution. It isn't depression, it's the Dark Night of the Soul. I'd give you a hundred to one that whoever came up with that convenient equation was figuring out a way to turn his doubts into aspects of belief.

And if Jesus got it wrong, what about me? Iknow, but how can I be sure that Ireally know?

Until I was well into my twenties, the egotism and arrogance attendant upon the human condition prevented me from being distracted by those aspects of the Master's work not directly applicable. God knows there was enough to keep me happy. Doubt tiptoed in when I admitted that a number of the Master's tales did not quite come up to the mark. Some of them refused to get down to business altogether.

I told myself that sometimes His antennae had garbled the message, that He had kept trying even when He wasn't on the right wavelength. I told myself that He may have been incapable of distinguishing between truth and fiction in His own work.

Ah, before me rises the possibility that what I had taken as Sacred Text was all along merely pulp fiction. Night after night of Dark Night, I whisper to myself:Your life is a grotesque error, and you are far, far smaller than you think.

Misery-laden dreams pollute my sleep. I enter a shabby room where a man toils at a desk. The lantern jaw and cheap suit familiar from a dozen photographs identify the Providence Master, and I move forward. At last I stand before Him. I ask,Who am I? He smiles to Himself, and the pen drifts across the page. He has not seen or heard me—I am not there—I do not exist.

Only days ago, confident energy sent me loping through the night streets, abuzz with pleasure. The Grand Design swept toward its conclusion, and Star's wretched brat was to meet an excruciating death. Now . . . now it's all I can do to get out of bed.I think I was mistaken. I think I got it wrong.

If You do not exist—if the Elder Gods did not place me on earth to prepare its destruction—what am I doing here? Who was my true father?

• 27

• Faint, oyster-colored light washed through the window, making the chair and the dresser look two-dimensional. The hands on the sheet in front of me also seemed two-dimensional. From the blurry face of my two-dimensional watch I managed to make out that it wasa few minutes past five-thirty.

I didn't have a prayer of getting back to sleep, so I brushed my teeth, washed, and shaved, telling myself that the money in my jacket pocket had been a part of the nightmare. It had the same unreal quality—it seemed real in the same unreal way—besides, Iknew I had not won that money, therefore I had dreamed about finding it. Then I dried my face and looked in the closet.

The blazer hung evenly, displaying no signs of dream-boodle. I poked my hand into the side pockets and found only Ashleigh Ashton's business card. Male vanity suggested that she had slipped it into my pocket when I wasn't looking. Showing off, I even checked the inside pockets.

See?I told myself.You knew it all along.

When I pulled a pair of jeans out of the duffel, I caught sight of my knapsack under the bed. Everything inside me stopped moving. I put on my socks and regarded the knapsack. An ominously dreamlike quality suffused my old companion. I got into my shorts, pulled a polo shirt over my head, thrust my legs into the jeans, and yanked the thing onto the bed. Dream-memory singled out one of the buckled pouches. I worked the buckle, raised the flap, and drew the zipper across the top of the pouch. When I reached inside, I touched what felt like currency. My hand came back into view gripping a fat wad of bills.

Five hundred and eighty-one dollars. Two fives had been plastered together with beer.

I rammed the money back into the pouch, zipped it shut, and shoved the knapsack under the bed.

• 28

• A purple shirt hung from Uncle Clark's shoulders, and a turquoise bracelet swam on one of his wrists. He looked like a conga player awaiting the summons onstage, but what he was waiting for was breakfast. I got coffee going and started opening cabinet doors.

"Cereal is down at the end, bowls are right in front of you. I take Bran Buds and Grape-Nuts, fifty-fifty, with a spoonful of honey and some milk. It could be you're too young to handle Bran Buds."

He monitored the buckshot rattle of the cereal into the bowl and nodded when it was half filled. "Don't go light on the honey, and level the milk right up so I can give it a good stir. Keep your eye on that coffee."

I covered everything with milk and placed the bowl on the table. He dumped in three scoops of sugar. After I joined him at the table, he slid his ivory eyes toward me. "From all that racket you made last night, I'd guess you had a grade-A nightmare. Some will tell you that's a sign of a bad conscience."

“I'm sorry if I woke you up."

He ate down to the bottom of the bowl and pushed his spoon around, roping in stray pellets. "What was your nightmare about?"

“I was in a big storm."

"They say a dream of heavy rainfall indicates unexpected money."

"What about almost being struck by lightning?"

"That's supposed to mean a change of fortune. Could be a whole lot of money coming your way. Better hold your umbrella upside down and steer clear of Mr. Toby Kraft. Money has a way of winding up in that man's pocket."

I had an uneasy vision of the bills folded into my knapsack.

"Rainstorms, now," he said. "We used to get us some doozies in the old days. The river rolled right into town. Picked up anything it could get along the way. Cars. Livestock. Full-grown men. In the water a corpse will turnblue. It will swell up with gas and float on the current. The hands will look like catcher's mitts. I've lived next to theMississippi all my life. People think rivers are pretty things, but those with common sense won't trust one any wider than you can jump across."

I told him that until yesterday, when I had seen the river from

St. Ann's, I had nearly forgotten that Edgerton was built along theMississippi. He gave me a frown-sneer and then perked up again. "You didn't remember about the river?"

"Not until I saw it yesterday afternoon."

"Best part ofa river is when it lets you forget it. Way back, we needed the river, and history tells you towns like this got built because of it. Anda river town is a different kind of place."

"Different how?"

"A river town isirregular,"Clark said. "You get your gamblers and your sharpies before you get your preachers, and it might be some considerable time before any of 'em find an advantage in turning respectable. There's a differentmentality, you understand me?"

What he was describing sounded more like theBarbary Coast than southern Illinois, but I nodded anyhow.

"And maybe you go twenty years without a flood. If one comes, you build everything back up afterwards. The river needs the town, and the town needs the river. A month or two later, even the smell is gone."

"The smell?"

Clarkgave me a prolonged smirk-sneer. “I have pondered the question of why a river will smell fresh and clean when it runs between its banks and will leave behind such a stink after it floods. I believe the answer is that a flood will turn a river upside down and bring the bottom to the top. When it runs off, you will have river-bottom everywhere you look. Not mud—mud is just dirt that got too wet for its own good. River-bottom is what is supposed to be kept out of sight. River-bottom is the ugly part of nature, where everything gets broken down and turned into something else. It has a lot of death in it, and death carries a powerful charge of smell. Death is a lively business, when you think about it."

"Must be hard to clean up."

"That stuff willcling. I figure Edgerton rebuilt itself three times between the 1870s and the start of the century. Every time they built it up, it got bigger. There was a full-time circus in a full-time fairground, you could find two saloons and two gambling houses on every block. It had that same old mentality, you know what I'm saying?"

"Wide open," I said.

"But you had your banks and your businesses, and you had your fine ladies along with your fancy ladies." He sneered at me with what looked like pride. “It was at that time your people arrived in Edgerton, you know. The famous Dunstan brothers, Omar and Sylvan. 1874."

"Omar and Sylvan?" I said. “I never heard of them before."

"The Dunstan brothers rode into town on the back of a hay wagon and jumped off with a couple of valises and two hundred dollars in gold coins. Don't let that hay wagon give you the wrong idea. The Dunstans had a big-city style about them. Smart, good-looking gentlemen who spoke the King's English, knew the best manners, and dressed in the latest fashions. After they found temporary lodgings, Omar and Sylvan walked into a gambling establishment and tripled their grubstake in a single afternoon."

"They were gamblers?"

"Their livelihoods were in commerce and finance. Nobody ever found out what they did before they came to Edgerton, though there was considerable talk. Some said they'd been bounty hunters. One or both of them was rumored to have been in prison."

"What did they do when they got here?"

"Everything they touched prospered. When the floods came along, Omar and Sylvan wound up better off than before. Bought properties cheap off those who left town. Bought land where they figured the town would grow. Fifteen, twenty years later, they held the leases on a lot of important buildings. Naturally, they were as catnip to the ladies."

Clarkloved the story of the Dunstan brothers. The arc from the hay wagon to wealth thrilled his imagination. By now, he all but considered Omar and Sylvan blood relatives whose achievements added to his own merit.

“I bet they were," I said.

"Handsome as the Devil, they say." The glorious sneer declared that despite the ravages of age, Clark Rutledge knew himself to be no less handsome. "You couldn't tell 'em apart. They say, from time to time their high spirits led them to give the ladies the impression that they were having a good time with someone other than they thought, if you catch my drift. You can put your money on one thing, they were let into a lot of nice houses when the Mister wasn't at home." He hesitated for a moment. "Howard fell pretty close to the same tree, from what I hear. And so did a couple of the other sons, but they either passed away early in life or ran off."

"There must have been a lot of resentment."

Clarkhesitated again. "You know how it goes. Get too high, they slap you down. Omar married a woman from New Orleans name of Ethel Bridges and settled down a bit. Still and all, one morning he left the house we're sitting in right now, and someone shot him deadwhile he waswalking to his carriage. Sylvan heard the shot and got outside just in time to see a man on horseback galloping down the street. That man was never brought to justice. Don't you think he could have been identified? If it was supposed to go that way?"

I nodded.

"Sylvan married his brother's widow, built a house outside of town, and moved in. He and Ethel had some kids, three, four, nobody knows for sure."

"There must be records."

"You're forgetting thetime, and you're forgetting theplace. Those babies were all born at home, and the Dunstans didn't care to use midwives or medical men."

"Why not?"

Clarkmomentarily lost his sneer, but his natural garrulousness won out over discretion. "A long time ago, an old-timer told me the Dunstan brothers never knew if their babies were going to come out deformed in some way medicine never heard about. Like with a huge big head and a body no bigger than a pin. Or a thing with gills under its ears and no arms and legs. Or worse than that. Nearly all those babies died, he told me, but the few that lived were kept in the attic."

He glanced at me. “If you ask me, one or two of Ethel's babies took a wrong turn in the oven, and Howard, the oldest child in the family, overheard more than was good for a little boy. Which could explain why the man became so wild and squandered his money. Howard did considerable damage, all in all. Toward the end, I believe he was plumb out of his head. You'd have to say he was in a kind of dream world."

I thought all of it had come from the dream world, specifically the dream world invented in the rumor mills of a small town. "Which brother was my great-great-grandfather? If Howard was the oldest child of the next generation, I guess it was Omar."

"What I heard was, the brothers shared everything. I don't think they knew which one was Howard's father."

I said something, but I couldn't tell you what it was.

Clarkdisplayed a sneer of magnificent worldliness. “I'd pick Sylvan. Omar was the steadier of the two. Sylvan kept on romancing the ladies even when he was living in that house with Ethel and their kids. When Howard came of age, he acted the same way, except more so. Which counted against him, because by that time Edgerton wasn't the way it used to be."

“It got respectable," I said.

"What happened was, Howard needed an Omar of his own, and because he didn't have one, he ran to seed. The Hatches and theMiltons took advantage of his weakness."

The stairs creaked, andClark straightened up in his chair. "Best not go into this around Nettie."

• 29

• Registering suspicion at a change in the daily pattern, Nettie lowered her eyebrows atClark. "Surprised to see you up so soon." She turned her attention to me. "How was your night's sleep?"

"Good enough."

"From what I heard, you thought the Devil was after you. All of us are so worried, it's a wonder we can sleep at all." Nettie billowed to the stove and turned on the gas flame beneath a cast-iron skillet. She took a carton of eggs and a package of bacon out of the refrigerator, slapped the bacon into the skillet, and, like a chef, neatly broke five eggs into a glass bowl with her right hand. "My feeling is that we are going to see some improvement in your mother."

“I hope so," I said.

Nettie whisked the eggs, turned the bacon over in the pan, and took a transparent bag filled with okra from the refrigerator. Soon, about a third of the okra was simmering in another skillet. When the bacon turned brown and crisp, she arrayed the strips on a thick length of paper toweling. She poured the eggs into the skillet and gave them another whisk. The toast had been slathered with butter, sliced diagonally in half, and set at the edges of the plates. She sprinkled pepper and dried parsley into the skillet, gave the eggs another stir, and divided the okra between the plates.

"Do you eat this kind of breakfast every day?"

"Sometimes we add home-fried potatoes, and sometimes we have chicken livers, but today I don't want to take the time. Is the coffee still hot?"

“I'll warm it up," I said, and turned on the flame under the percolator.

The doorbell chimed. "There's May," Nettie said. "Would you let her in, son?"

A UPS driver in a summer uniform stood on the porch, holding a box wrapped in butcher paper. "Delivery for . . ." He looked at the name above the address. "Ms. Star Dunstan?"

I saw anEast Cicero return address in the top left-hand corner of the box. After I signed the pad, I carried the package into the kitchen. "UPS," I said. "Star must have sent some of her things before she came here."

Nettie flapped her hand at the package. "Put that on the floor." I placed it against the wainscoting. Nettie divided the scrambled eggs with a spatula and slid them out onto the plates. The doorbell rang again.

I went back through the living room and opened the door. Resplendent in a flowered hat, Aunt May extended a gnarled paw. "Help me over the doorstep, Neddie. I'm on the late side, but I thought I'd say good morning to Joy. Any chicken livers today?"

"Aunt Nettie thought they would take too much time."

"Chicken livers take only a little bitty time."

May clung to me on the way to the kitchen. I held her arm as she lowered herself into her chair. She made a show of admiring the overflowing plate before her. "Truthfully, chicken livers would have been too much for me today." She handed me her cane.

I sat down between May and Nettie underClark's ripe gaze. The sisters pitched into their breakfasts. The telephone rang. May dabbed her mouth with a napkin and said, "Perhaps Joy has had another vision."

Shaking her head, Nettie got up from the table and lifted the receiver. "All right," she said. She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “It's that doctor with the big head and the little red mouth."

Within my skull I felt a lightness like a reduction of gravity. I leaned against the counter and said, "Dr. Barnhill? This is Ned Dunstan."

Dr. Barnhill informed me that my mother had experienced another stroke thirty minutes earlier and that the efforts to revive her had been unsuccessful. He also said a lot of other things. It sounded as though he were reading them off a sheet of paper.

I hung up and saw their faces staring at me, suspended between hope and what they already knew to be the truth.

3

HOW I NEARLY WAS KILLED

• 30

• Neither Nettie nor Clark had seemed heartbroken when I told them not to expect me for dinner.Clarkhad spent the afternoon sulking over having been kept from checking his traps, and Nettie had not forgiven me for the crime of squandering far too much money on a coffin. After the sales pitch in the display room of Mr. Spaulding's Heavenly Rest Funeral Home, she drew me into a corner for a lecture on the subject of sensible behavior. Still under the illusion that my decision had to be sensible because it was mine, I reminded Nettie that I was spending my own money on my mother's burial. She couldn't argue with that, could she? I should have known better.

Mr. Spaulding's ambassadorial presence filtered in and out of view, andClark shifted his shoulders in his conga-player's shirt and sneered at the velvety carpet. When I took the leather chair before Mr. Spaulding's desk and made out the check, Nettie muttered in complaint. It occurred to me that my selection of the third-least expensive coffin over the bottom of the line had violated the principle that there was no sense spending money on the dead when you could give it to the living. Any illusions that Nettie did not have designs on my checkbook died when Clark nudged the Buick through the brick pillars at the end of Mr. Spaulding's drive, turned toward the Commercial Street office of Little Ridge Cemetery, and said, "Sometimes, boy, you have to think of other people, not just yourself."

My hour and a half with Aunt Joy and Uncle Clarence had been even worse. I went over with the idea that I was performing an act of charity for two old people. I hoped for some information about the interesting figure of Howard Dunstan, and I wanted to see what would happen when I brought up Edward Rinehart. Clarence, remembered as a chipper old party, might still be lively enough to brighten my visit, I thought.

Mindless as an infant, and like an infant oblivious to the stench of his own excrement, Clarence slumped over the leather strap pinning him to his wheelchair. Splotches of dried and drying baby food adorned his shirt. Joy told me that every night at7:00 she pushed him down the hall to the tub and cleaned him off, although she didn't know where she found the strength. Clarence was getting along just fine. Joy wished that she could say the same for herself.

We sat in the two chairs that were their living room furniture. As Joy escorted me into her maze and my pity yielded to empty-headed horror, the older, drier fetor I had noticed the previous night gradually overwhelmed Clarence's atmosphere. Established, ingrained, it seemed as much an aspect of the house as the floorboards and beams. Everything absorbed it, including Joy, who virtually swam in its sea.

The youngest and most diminished of Howard Dunstan's daughters perched on the edge of her chair and spoke as if she had been saving up the words for decades. There was no point in trying to interrupt her: Joy's bitterness claimed all the conversational space. Her transparent voice grabbed the oars and rowed straight toward the horizon of the known world. When she had reached it, she kept on rowing. Joy was talking about herself, our family, and Howard Dunstan. She plied her oars, and the dry, inhuman stink of her father's house carried her forward.Clark's river-bottom had poured into Joy's house and coated everything with what he called "the ugly part of nature." If that was nature, I wanted no part of it.

A flashing crimson hand halted me at an intersection. When my feet stopped moving, my mind filled with the image of Joy perched on a filthy cushion with one bony arm extended toward her husband. I saw what happened next. Blindly, I turned to the left and kept walking. Two blocks down onPine Street, the next traffic light burned green, enabling me to cross what I half-registered was Cordwainer Avenue.

I barreled along onPine Street, seeing nothing until a gray-haired giant with the face of a warrior and wearing a red and green dashiki slowed down and stared at me as the distance between us decreased. His expression combined anger and sorrow. I waited for him to speak. At the moment we drew abreast, the giant turned his head but said nothing. The current of tension passing between us snapped almost audibly when we drew apart.

I moved on for another two or three paces, then stopped walking and looked over my shoulder. The man in the dashiki immediately wheeled around.

"Son, you look like shit and sound like a steam engine. Please tell me you're not about to have a coronary."

"My mother died this morning."

“If you don't start paying more attention to what's going on around you, you'll see your mommaa lot sooner than you think. Take care of yourself, boy."

"Okay," I said, and watched him walk off.

I blotted my face with a handkerchief, leaned against ano parking sign, and closed my eyes. Grief flooded upward from the center of my body like a physical presence. I pressed the handkerchief to my eyes. Grief is an industrial-strength emotion, that's all I can say. Grief takes care of business, it tells you where you are.

When the onslaught subsided, I took in my surroundings. Parking lots and chain-link fences bordered auto-parts suppliers, die stampers, storage facilities, and other, less identifiable, concerns. Most of the buildings onPine Street were one-story and none higher than two. With their grimy brick facades and pebble-glass windows, they looked like reductions of larger, more accommodating structures.

Three blocks later, the chain-link fences and empty lots disappeared, and the brick buildings grew closer and taller. Traffic lights sprouted from every corner. I turned left and walked past windows displaying videotapes and liquor bottles. My shirt began to dry out.A street sign told me that I was on Cobden Avenue. I started feeling hungry.

Cars occupied by young couples and groups of teenagers flowed by. After two more traffic lights, Cobden came to an end at a four-lane boulevard and a small, triangular park. I had reachedCommercial Avenue, the center of town. I turned right and moved toward what looked like the action. Ahead of me, two couples with the uncomplicated, affable assurance of Midwestern wealth spun out of a revolving door under the attention of an impassive doorman in epaulets and brass buttons. A flushed, fiftyish man said, "Does he know what's going on? I mean, can you believe that?"

The taller, thinner man he was addressing placed a hand on his shoulder. Gold-rimmed glasses caught the fading sunlight. His rim of white hair had been cropped to a stubble. "You bet I do." Vertical wrinkles creased his face, and yellow teeth filled his carnivorous smile. “In about five minutes, he'll believe it, too."

The dark-haired woman with him said, "Honey, are you going to tell him?" Twenty years younger than the man she called "honey," shehad theaerobicized, face-lifted look of a second wife fighting to stay in the game. She sent me an irritated glare that almost immediately turned into something else, something I could not quite identity but that combined surprise, dismay, and embarrassment.

Her husband's chestyhar har har ridiculed the suggestion of "telling." “I don't have to, because, as everybody knows, our friend . . ." He noticed the look on his wife's face, glanced at me, and abruptly pulled himself upright. He was at least six foot six, another giant, in a grass-green linen jacket and sharply creased pink trousers. A lot of vibrant colors zigzagged across his bow tie. He was in his early seventies and still an unrepentant bully who thought of himself as a powerhouse.

"Do you require some form of assistance?"

I liked the "require." It had a nasty edge you couldn't get from "need." "Require" put you in your place. "Form" was a nice touch, too.

“I'm looking for a good restaurant. What would you recommend?"

Managing his surprise better than I had expected, he swept his hand toward the building beside us. A bronze plate beside the revolving door readMERCHANTS HOTEL. "Le Madrigal. Right off the lobby. We just had dinner there." He noticed something about me that stopped him cold, and his smile faded. “It's pricey, though—pricey. Try Loretta's, three blocks north. They can fix you up a good steak, ribs, anything you want."

"The Madrigal sounds perfect."

"LllluuuhMadrigal, notThe Madrigal. Around here, it's where the good people get together."

The other man said, “I love it when you talk dirty, G-Man."

"Word of advice, buddy." The G-Man slammed a big hand down on my shoulder. A silken wing of the bow tie slid across my temple. "You can show off, sure, throw your money around, fine, but stop off at the boys' room first and make yourself presentable. A polite little fellow like you wants to fit in, am I right?"

I tilted my face toward his leathery ear. “I don't need your advice, you overbearing small-town shithead."

Recoiling like a compressed spring, he grabbed his wife's arm and yanked her into the street. The other couple flapped their mouths and scurried after them. My friend forced himself to go around the front of a dark green Town Car to open his wife's door while the other couple climbed into the back seat.

For a second or two, the doorman permitted himself to smile at me.

An elderly bellboy directed me up a marble staircase to the men's room. I washed my hands and face under the regard of the black-suited attendant. I trained the hand dryer's flow of warm air onto my shirt, reknotted my necktie, and patted my hair. I used the mouth-wash anda splash of designer cologne. The attendant remarked an improvement in my appearance, and I contributed two dollars to his porcelain saucer.

On the other side of the lobby, I went up a smaller, carpeted flight of stairs. An illuminated podium and a headwaiter whose name tag identified him as Vincent stood guard before tables with candles and white tablecloths. Vincent brushed his lips with a forefinger to indicate contemplation and conducted me to a table near the bar. He produced a parchment menu and a leather-bound wine list. My waiter's name would be Julian. A girl who looked like a Norwegian high school student poured ice water into a glass, and a Malaysian sourpuss came by with biscuits and bread sticks. I opened the menu and heard someone speak my name.

Ashleigh Ashton was moving across the room. From the other side of their window table, Laurie Hatch raised her eyebrows and gave me a look that weakened my knees.

• 31

• I ordered salad frisee, a hanger steak, and a glass of cabernet from Julian, a roguish pixie. As for the cabernet, he had a special little something he wanted me to try. If Laurie Hatch saw anything unlikely in Ashleigh's story of giving me a ride to Edgerton, she kept her reservations to herself. Ashleigh had invited Laurie to dinner by reason of her connection to the legal case, but the connection went unexplained. Julian delivered his special little something and awaited the verdict. I expressed my wonder at the majesty of the little something. Julian asked if the ladies would care for their coffee now, or would they like something else? Now, Ashleigh said, she had to go upstairs to make some calls. Laurie requested a glass of the little something.

"How is your mother doing?" she asked.

"Oh, God," Ashleigh said. “I promise you, I've been thinking about your mother ever since you got out of my car. What was it, anyhow?"

"A stroke," Laurie said. "What do the doctors say?"

"They say she died this morning. They better be right, because I just bought a coffin and a cemetery plot." They stared at me in shock. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have put it like that. It's beena weird day."

Ashleigh said, "At least you were able to spend a whole day with her. Could she talk to you?"

"She was able to say a few things." For a brief time, I found myself unable to speak. The Malaysian sourpuss removed their plates, and the Norwegian girl refilled our water glasses. Julian scurried up with the coffee and the wine.

Laurie asked, "Are you going to stay around after the funeral?"

“I might. I'd like to see more of the town."

"Let me be your tour guide. After all, I'm in your debt."

"Sounds like a great idea," I said, and made myself stop looking at her. "Ashleigh, what's happening with your project?" Her reasons for coming to Edgerton had entirely escaped me.

“If I don't get anywhere in the next day or two, I'll throw in the towel. The guy lives behind too many walls."

"That's Stewart," Laurie said, explaining everything. “I wish I could have been more helpful."

Ashleigh gave me a rueful smile. "We spent most of dinner trading dreadful husband tales."

She had intended to pump her target's estranged wife, and the estranged wife was more than willing to talk. The next exchange between the women brought another clarification.

"Laurie, you won't be in any trouble, will you?"

Laurie shrugged. “I don't care if Stewart knows we had dinner together. Grennie can't hurt me."

"Grenville Milton?"

"The one and only Groin Vile," Laurie said. "And his wife, your mother's old friend. Plus two other people who think I'm a terrible person. They left about five minutes before you got here."

“Is Groin Vile a big old bald-headed character in a bow tie and a green linen jacket who thinks he owns the world?"

"You encountered our Grennie," Laurie said. “I hope he didn'tsay anything to you."

"He told me that I probably wanted to act like a big shot and tipwaiters wild hundred-dollar bills. Then he advised me to visit the men's room and spruce up."

Laurie groaned. "Grenville felt good about it. His state of mind improved no end."

“It took a turn for the worse when I called him an overbearing small-town shithead." Laurie laughed, and Ashleigh opened her mouth in a disbelieving half smile. Julian, whom I had not seen approaching, placed my salad before me with only a trace of his former vivacity and retreated. “I must be on a roll," I said.

"Julian has high moral standards," Laurie said. "Everyone in Edgerton has high moral standards, except me. If I'd heard you call Grennie a shithead, I would have brightened up immediately. I gather he's getting ready to dump Rachel. She's been leaving sad little messages on my answering machine."

She gave me an apologetic look. "When I married Stewart, Rachel Milton took me under her wing and helped me with the kinds of things she cares about, like finding a good hairdresser and the right caterer. She looked at me and saw herself."

"Herself?" I said. "Oh, I get it. A younger woman, an outsider . . ."

Laurie Hatch's dazzling face opened into beautifully ironic assent. "Rachel was too busy identifying to see that ambition had nothing to do with my marrying Stewart."

"Ned, let me put your dinner on my bill, will you?" Ashleigh said. “It's on the state of Kentucky. Laurie, thanks for a nice evening. I'll call you soon."

She signed the check. Julian asked if I would like a second glass of wine. Laurie Hatch asked for another, too. Ashleigh pushed her chair away from the table.

I said, “I'll walk you to the elevator."

The other patrons watched us wind through the tables.

“I wish Laurie had suggested another restaurant."

"Didn't you get what you wanted?"

She smiled. “I called Laurie to see if she could confirm some details. I thought we'd do the whole thing on the telephone, but she said she was free for the evening. Basically, we spent the entire time complaining about our husbands."

"Better than being alone."

She tucked in her chin with a sharp little nod and pushed the elevator button. “It must be nice, having a woman like Laurie Hatch waiting for you."

“I don't think Laurie has any special plans for me."

"Don't he so sure."

"Ashleigh, when dinner is over, I'm going to walk around for awhile. That's it."

"You could come back here. I'm in room 554."

I put my arms around her. “I need some time alone."

Ashleigh bumped her head against my chest and pulled away. “I'msorry about your mother."

The elevator opened onto mahogany and dark mirrors. Throughthe half inch of space before the doors closed, I saw her sag against the rear of the car.

• 32

• Vinnie glided a hand toward the far side of the room. I didn't fool him for a second, but he had to admit I had good moves.

Laurie Hatch looked at me with a relaxed, self-possessed amusement imbued with the innate consciousness that seemed to radiate from her. Julian snapped the cover from my plate and executed an about-face and a formal departure.

"Remember the old Julian? Remember the pixie?"

Laurie's flickering glance informed me that I had missed the point. "Julian has to wait on Grennie and Rachel at least once a week. He puts up with more innuendos about masculinity than you'll hear if you live to be a thousand."

It was like having my windows cleaned, like putting on new eyeglasses. I said, "Ah. Uh-huh," and cut into the steak.

Her smile changed. “I wish I'd been able to do more for Ashleigh. She's so smart and dedicated. You two get on very well together."For a hitchhiker and the person who gave him a ride.

"Ashleigh's easy to get on with. She wanted to hear more about my mother."

“I know how it feels to lose your mother. How is your father doing?"

“I wonder." I smiled at her chagrin. “I never knew my father."

"Do you know where he is?"

“I didn't even know his name until yesterday, when my mother toldit to me. I thought I might see what I can find out about him. My family isn't too happy about that."

"They don't understand it? Or are they afraid of what you could find out?"

The question startled me. "They act like I'm being outrageous. They won't talk about things I know they remember."

"What could they be afraid of?"

"God knows. My family is ... let's say, eccentric."

I had a memory-flash of Aunt Joy leaning forward and aiming a scrawny forefinger across the room to send Clarence's wheelchair rolling a yard forward, a yard back. She squinted. The wheelchair floated four feet off the ground and swung from side to side while Clarence pushed his tongue in and out of his mouth in babyish pleasure.

That's all I can do, now most of my strength is gone. At least I can get him in and out of the bath, because how else is an old lady like me supposed to handle a full-grown man? Wasn't supposed to end up like this, Neddie. We used to be like royalty in this town.

“I loved Aunt Nettie," Laurie said, delivering me from the river-bottom and back to Le Madrigal.

"You can have her. Aunt May, too. Once you have May in your family, you never have to pay for anything again. May just picks it up for you. She's a kind of magician."

"What do you mean? She's a kleptomaniac?"

"May's beyond kleptomania. It's like Zen, like a mystical kleptomania."

Laurie appeared to contemplate the existence of a mystical kleptomania. "But you still want to do it, don't you? You're not afraid."

A tingle of fear threaded my spine. “I want to find out whatever I can."

I heard Joy saying,Sylvan moved the family out of town, and he and Ethel had a hatch of kids, but some of those children, my daddy said, they didn't look human at all. The word for that in French is "epouvante." I was always superior to my sisters in my command of the French language.

"What was your father's name?"

Speaking his name in public seemed a violation of my privacy, or of some ancient code. I said it anyhow. "Edward Rinehart." It brought back the other name my mother had spoken, Robert. Who wasRobert?

"What a great name. Swirling fog. A mansion on a rocky dill above the coastline. A devastatingly handsome man in a trench coat and evening clothes. He never talks about his past. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you . . . Mr. Edward Rinehart."

Feeling even more uncomfortable than before, I said, “I don't think he was much like Maximilian de Winter."

"Excuse me?"

"The husband inRebecca. Grand house, rocky shoreline, unhappy secrets."

"No,I'm sorry!Rebecca is one of my favorite movies. Laurence Olivier, of course, exactly."

I had been thinking of Daphne du Maurier's novel instead of the Hitchcock movie, but so what?

She placed her hand over mine. “I was going to show you the delights of Edgerton anyhow, so let's see what we can turn up along the way. Together, we could accomplish more than you could on your own." Her dead-level glance might almost have been a plea. "You'd be helping me, too. I need something to think about besides my stupid situation." A moment of self-recognition silenced her, and she glanced away, then back at me. "Look, Ned, if I'm being pushy, or intrusive, or anything like that... or sort of crazy . . ."

And Sylvan told my daddy, Howard, don't trust anyone but your kin and don't trust them all that much, because you'll be lucky if some night I don't come along and split your head open with an axe. I always thought it was likely that my daddy shot Sylvan with that revolver he was supposed to be cleaning at the time of his death.

I told her she didn't sound even faintly crazy, compared to some people in my family.

"All I mean is that helping you would . . ."

Would give her something to do besides brood about Stewart Hatch. "All right. Let's help each other."

“I'm free all day tomorrow. Stewart gets Cobbie on Saturdays. Which means that a hired flunkey pushes our son on the swings in Merchants Park until Stewart walks out of his office long enough to stuff Cobbie full of hamburgers and candy before delivering him to my house at eight P.M."

We tried to work out where to meet. The park across the street turned out to be the place where the flunkey pushed Cobbie on the swings. Laurie suggested the front of the main library, four blocks up from the hotel and two blocks south, on the corner of Graceand Grenville.

"Grenville?"

"Half the streets in Edgerton are named after the families of people still walking around. LikeCobden Avenue? Stewart's father was named Cobden Hatch, which is how Cobbie got his name, of course. When should we meet? Nine-thirty? A friend of mine, Hugh Coventry, who works at the library, volunteers at City Hall on the weekends. Everything's closed, but he has access to all the offices, and he gets in around nine."

I asked why she wanted to go to City Hall.

"Edward Rinehart should be in the records. And you might want to look at copies of your mother's marriage license and your birth certificate. Nothing like hard data."

"Nothing like a brilliant dinner companion," I said.

Most of the people in the restaurant looked up as we moved toward the podium. Vincent's smile barely concealed a leer.

In an alcove off the lobby, I went into a booth and placed two calls. Laurie Hatch was doing her best to look inconspicuous alongside a potted palm when I came out, and I hurried across the lobby and followed her through the revolving door. The doorman handed her yellow ticket to an eager kid in a black vest, and the kid raced down into the garage.

"Adventure beckons." Laurie lifted her eyebrows in a comic, slyly conspiratorial glance.

The boy in the black vest jumped out of a dark blue Mercury Mountaineer and held the door. Laurie winked at me and drove away, and I walked across Commercial Avenue, going toward Lanyard Street and Toby Kraft's pawnshop. According to Toby, long ago the street had been called Whore's Alley, but these days all the best hookers were married to money and lived in Ellendale.

• 33

• I began moving down Ferryman's Road at the top end of triangular Merchants Park. Three-story brick buildings set back on postcard lawns lined both of the streets fanning out from the apexof the triangle. At the top of the steps before the first building in the row, a heavyset man in a tan uniform was flipping through a hall of keys. Wondering what sort of business required the services of a security guard on a Friday night in Edgerton, I looked for a sign, which did not exist. Then I noticed the legend carved on a stone headpiece over the front door:THE COBDEN BUILDING. I laughed out loud—here was where Stewart Hatch did whatever he did with his father's money.

Set deep within a ravaged face the color and texture of oatmeal laced with maple syrup, the guard's eyes fell on me. He looked too old for his job.

"A lot of keys," I said.

"A lot of doors." The guard continued to stare at me, not with the suspicion that would have been inevitable in Manhattan, but with an odd, expectant attentiveness. "No matter how many times I tell myself to put a piece of tape on that first one, I always forget. Here's the little sucker." He held up a key, and his belly strained the fabric of the uniform shirt.

"Do you work for Mr. Hatch?"

"Fifteen years." His smile widened without getting any warmer. "You new in town?"

I told him I was there for a couple of days.

"You should take a walk around Hatchtown, see the real Edgerton."

Ferryman's Road reminded me of certain places I'd seen in the South, parts ofCharleston and Savannah. A sense of purpose having to do with my investigations into the life of Edward Rinehart buoyed me up. In time, Joy's irreconcilable story would fade.

My daddy had so much Otherness inside him, he didn't care how he acted. Cruelty was his middle name. It's nothing but a curse, that's all. Nettie, she's got her own views, and whatever's Dunstan can't be bad to her. But Nettie doesn't know. What was in our daddy mostly came down to me, and it spoiled everything.

At the wide end of the park, I turned right onChester Street and walked through a neighborhood of rooming houses and apartment buildings. Loud music poured from open windows. Mothers and grandmothers perched on the stoops. Outside the tavern on the next corner, men and women in bright clothes were dipping and moving to Ray Charles on the jukebox. Brother Ray was pining for Georgia, and the neighborhood people were celebrating the arrival of the weekend.

I turned the corner and walked past an alley where two guys were hauling crates out of a panel truck.

OnLanyard Street the old fancy-houses had been replaced bya shoe-repair shop, an appliance store,a mom-and-pop grocery. The three brass balls ofa pawnshop hung above an empty sidewalk.

I looked through the metal grate over the window lettered in gold withKRAFT TRU-VALUE PAWNBROKER. Two small lights burned at the back of the shop. I pushed the bell and hearda noise like an electric drill. A rear door opened in a sudden wash of light, and Toby Kraft came into view.

He unlocked the grate and swung it outward. "Get in here, will you? What a lousy deal, makes you think there's no justice in the world anymore, if there ever was." Toby closed the door and shoved a police bar into place. He closed his hand around mine. "Kid, your mother was a champ."

Toby pulled me into an embrace. “It happened this morning, did it? Were you there?"

"We were still at Aunt Nettie's," I said.

He smoothed his hair and wiped his hands on his trousers. "How are you doing?"

“I couldn't tell you," I said.

"How about a schnocker?"

"No, I just. . . . Yeah, why not?"

“I'm still busy, but it won't take long." When I looked at the counter, he said, "Your momma sure brightened up the place when she stood back there. Who's getting your business, Spaulding?"

It took me a moment to understand what he meant. "Nettie thinks I spent too much money."

At the back of the shop, Toby waved me into a small, hot room with fluorescent lights. A metal desk heaped with papers faced out from the back wall, and a low bookcase jammed with green ledgers and a metal safe stood against a half partition dividing the office from a darker space containing rows of industrial shelving. Old calendars with pictures of naked, lushly upholstered women plastered the walls. The men I had seen in the alley were carrying boxes into the area beyond the partition. "Kraft?" one of them said.

“It's just my grandson." Toby turned back to me. "Don't let those girls poor-mouth you. They have enough to get by on. When's the funeral?"

"Wednesday morning." I sat down on the folding chair.

Toby sighed. "One second." He went around the gap in the partition and talked to the men. I heard the truck drive away.

“I'm glad Nettie and May have enough to get by on."

He rubbed two fingers together and winked. “I promised you a drink." He took a liter of Johnnie Walker Black and two smudgy glasses from a bottom drawer of his desk. "Sorry about the no ice, but I never got around to putting in a fridge." A pack of unfiltered Camels and a gold lighter came out of his shirt pocket. He poured three inches of whiskey into our glasses. “I wish it was a happier occasion. Here's to Star."

We clinked glasses.

"You getting on okay?"

"Pretty well," I said. “I saw Joy today."

"Been a long time since I did." We drank. When he thrust the bottle toward me, I shook my head. "She and Clarence doing okay, or is that too much to ask?"

"Clarence has Alzheimer's," I said. "She keeps him strapped in a wheelchair and feeds him baby food."

“I don't suppose Clarence is much of a conversationalist anymore."

"Joy did a lot of talking, though," I said.

He tilted back in his chair and smiled. "You're a smart kid, I don't have to tell you which end is up. Joy is a very unhappy person."

I took another swallow of whiskey and thought about what to say. “I don't suppose a lot of Dunstan babies were born with wings and claws, but there must have been something funny about a couple of Howard's brothers and sisters, because Clark mentioned it, too."

Toby propped his head on the back of his chair and stared up at the fluorescent light. A plume of smoke floated toward the ceiling. "First of all . . ." He grabbed the bottle and leaned forward. "Have some more goddamn Scotch. You're making me do all the work." I offered my glass, surprised that it was almost empty. He added more to his own, set down the bottle, and considered me for a moment. This was going to be good.

"First of all, think about Nettie's husband. I say that because being Nettie's husband is Clark Rutledge's full-time job. He's the vice president of Dunstan, Incorporated, and one thing aboutClark, the man loves his work. What's the main thing about work?"

"The salary?"

"Nope. Work gives you a place in the world.Clark is Somebody because he's a Dunstan, and he'll milk that cow until it drops. On top of that, Clark is not on your normal wavelength. One day he's telling you why the Jewish people, one of which is me, brought on Hitler by hoarding all the gold in Germany. The next day, the Jews are a great people because they're the people of the Book."

I smiled at him.

"Okay, that'sClark, first of all. Joy, now, Joy always felt left out. You notice how she talks about her daddy all the time?"

I nodded.

"Howard was a strange guy, but him and Queenie always got along. Joy had a problem with that. Joy was one of those kids, whine, whine, whine. Gimme more, gimme more, and it's never enough, right? Women built like that, they always want more than what they got, because what they got is never enough. It can't be, on account of they got it."

Toby's description seemed surprisingly acute.

"Queenie knew how to handle the old man, but Joy only knew how to get sore. Take what she says with all the salt in the grocery store, and then some."

"Joy weighs about ninety pounds. Clarence is maybe one fifty, pure deadweight. She gives him a bath every night."

"Good trick."

"Joy says she inherited psychic powers from her father, and all that's left of them is enough to pick Clarence out of his wheelchair, lower him into the tub, clean him up, dry him off, and move him back into the chair."

“I'll give her this, her stories are getting better."

"She moved his wheelchair back and forth just by pointing at it. Then lifted her finger and made it float off the ground and swing around in midair. Clarence liked it so much, he drooled like a baby."

Behind the thick glasses, Toby's eyelids rattled down and up twice, like window shades. I reached for the bottle.

"That stupid fuckin' Joy." He heaved himself off his chair and went around the partition. I heard him check the lock on the alley door. The Camels came out of his pocket. He took out a cigarette and examined it for flaws. After he got the cigarette going, he tilted back in his chair and looked at me some more.

• 34

• "This is what you came here to talk about?"

“It's one of the things I came here to talk about."

He ran a pudgy hand over his face. “I don't even know that much to begin with."

"You know more than I do. And everyone else refuses to say anything at all."

"Star didn't want you to know about this business."

"What business is that?"

"What passed down through your family, starting with Omar and Sylvan. You heard about Omar and Sylvan?"

"Oh, yes," I said. "Particularly from Joy."

Joy's frail voice told me,My grandfathers, they were the surviving remnants of pagan gods and could have ruled over earthly Dominions but cared for nothing but wealth and pleasure. To build that house on New Providence Road, Sylvan had the ancestral house in England taken apart stone by stone and brick by brick, and he shipped all those stones and bricks across the sea and put them back together again exactly the way they were in the old days. He might as well have flushed his money down the toilet. My daddy was the same way. C'est dommage.

"She could of had the decency to keep her mouth shut."

"Because my mother didn't want me in on the family secret. Whatever it is."

Toby took another slug of whiskey and pressed the glass against the silver fur spilling out of his shirt. "Your mother wanted to protect you. I'd say she did a pretty good job."

I stared at him without speaking.

Toby raised his left hand and held it palm up, so the smoke curled around his fingers. The gesture said: it's no biggie. "You were normal. There was stuff you were better off not knowing."

“I was normal."

"When Joy was a baby, I guess, if she didn't get fed on time, shit went flying all over the place, windows broke. . . . Where with you, all that happened was, you had those fits. Which ain't that unusual for a person. Hey, does that still happen?"

Recognitions, thoughts of a kind, began to take shape in my mind.

“I always hoped you were gonna grow out of that."

"Toby, you just said, 'All that happened was you had those fits.' "

"You did! Right there on your third birthday."

"But everybody thought somethingelse might happen to me. You were waiting to see if I was going to make things fly around the room."

His face sagged into a trapped, gloomy frown.

"We're talking about what passed down through the Dunstans. When it got to me, it looked ordinary enough to look normal."

"You never should of went to college," he said. "You listen too good."

"How much did Howard pass down to Queenie?"

"My wife had a lot of Dunstan in her, I'll say that much." He pulled at his whiskey and smiled to himself. "Sometimes she'd rise up a couple feet off the bed and hang there. Sound asleep. Take the covers with her. Damndest thing you ever saw in your life. And sheknew things." A memory made him laugh. "The first year we were married, two different pairs of idiots walked into the shop to score some easy money. They were thinking, old lady like that, show her a gun, she'll give it up fast. What you call a basic error in judgment.

Toby chuckled. "Second they come in, Queenie hauls the shotgun up from behind the counter. Scares the shit out of the little bastards. 'Lady,' they say, 'you're making a mistake, put down the gun before something bad happens.' Queenie says, 'If you don't get your asses out the door before I count three, you bet something bad is gonna happen, only you won't know about it.' Never had any more problems with stickups."

"Good for her," I said.

"Queenie had talent to burn. She wasn't queen of the magpies only because of her fast hands."

"Ah," I said.

Toby showed his discolored teeth. "Say you're in the kitchen, talking about this and that, and Queenie's next to the table. You go to the fridge, get some ice. When you look back, she fell through a trap door. You go out of the kitchen and yell, 'Queenie?' The bedroom door opens up, and out she comes, holding a feather duster. 'What the hell?' you say. She says, 'There's a spiderweb over the kitchen window and, for your information, we keep the duster in the bedroom closet.’ You get in the mood for a new TV set and figure you shouldn't have to pay for it, a thing like that is one hell of an advantage."

"The girls inherited their father's talents."

Toby refilled both glasses. "Queenie most of all, then Joy and Nettie. But May got her share.” His eyes drifted over the collage of naked women. "When May was about thirteen, she was going down Wagon Road—that's Cordwainer Avenue now—in Howard's rumble seat. What Queenie told me, May saw two girls pointing at her from another car. You know, laughing at her. I always had the feeling it took more than that, because Howard's family couldn't go anywhere without attracting notice. Once I asked May straight out, but she went into her vague act. Anyhow,whatever the hell she saw made her so mad she put on a fireworks display. Smashed windshields all up and down Wagon Road, blew out tires. Snapped the telephone lines. Everything went crazy."

Joy's papery voice rustled in my ear:

And my sister May created havoc on Wagon Road by setting off thunderations, even though to hear my daddy talk she was hardly a Dunstan at all, which was a nasty, untrue insult to my sister.

Because when we were young women, a gentleman came along who showed a liking for May. Unfortunately, the gentleman did not like her in the proper way and attempted to force her to his will. Rape is what that man had in mind. May took care of that fellow through what the French would call force majeure. She came home in great agitation and told me, Joy, my young gentleman attempted to take advantage of me. I was so frightened, I found in me the power to rise up and demolish my young gentleman. After I demolished him, my young gentleman was only a stinky little green puddle I cannot bear to remember.

I don't know how you can be more Dunstan than that.

"There was some business about a boy who tried to rape her," I said.

"Good old Joy," Toby said. "Leave no rock without first you roll it over."

I asked if he knew anything about Star's father.

"Queenie said Star's father was a jazz drummer, but she didn't tell me his name. That's where Star's musical ability came from, she said. I had the idea he might have been sort of like a Dunstan himself, the drummer. Truth is, I always thought Ethel Bridges, the New Orleans woman who married Sylvan after Omar got killed, was another one like that." He grinned at me. "Didn't you get pretty good on the guitar, up there in Naperville?"

Star had boasted about my guitar playing to Toby.

“I tried," I said.

"A couple of times, customers came in with big band photographs, like Duke Ellington or Benny Goodman, where the musicians signed their names. I used to look at the drummers in those pictures and think, if you're the one, you had a daughter you never knew about, but you would have been proud of her."

"That's lovely," I said, struck by his tenderness. “I guess people have the wrong idea about pawnbrokers."

"You know what we are? Protection for people who need protection. Or we used to be, before the banks started handing out credit cards right and left."

I felt the clarity of a long-overdue understanding. "Oh, boy." My skin was tingling. “I justgot it. My mother had me put into foster care to protect me from her family."

"Well, yeah," Toby said, as if I had said that having a lot of money and living in a mansion was more agreeable than scraping by on food stamps in a tenement.

"When I did come home, she must have ordered everyone to watch what they said. I wasn't supposed to know about the Dunstans."

"She wanted you to have a regular life."

"And her aunts didn't like that. They didn't see the point."

Toby rested his forearms on the cluttered desk. The egglike eyes were perfectly clear. "All the time you were a little kid, my wife and her sisters hoped you were going to show you had some Dunstan in you. When you got older, and Star put her foot down, it set up like a barrier."

"That's why I never came back to Edgerton after I was twelve. She didn't trust Nettie and May."

Toby poured out the last of the Johnnie Walker Black, mostly into his own glass. "About time we wrapped this up. Before you go to bed, maybe take a couple aspirins." He smiled at me. "Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?"

"Just one more thing," I said.

"Shoot."

"Right before we left the hospital, Star managed to get out a few words. They were about my father."

Toby's head drifted up.

"She said his name was Edward Rinehart."

The window shades went down and up again behind the thick lenses.

"Your in-laws want me to forget the whole thing. They know something, but they're not talking."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Star lived with the guy before she married him. Nettie would know his name."

"You'd think," he said.

"You know it, too, Toby."

He smiled. “I deal with hundreds of people, day in, day out. Names go in and out of my mind."

"You can do better than that," I said.

He pushed himself back and walked around the desk to stand in front of a picture of a black-haired woman proffering breasts like slightly deflated beachballs on the palms of her hands. “I am not a schlub who spent his whole life behind a counter. In 1946, the year after I got out of the army, I had a white Cadillac convertible and seven thousand bucks in the bank. Important people invited me to their houses, treated me like family. I killed a man once when he didn't give me a choice, and I did six months at Greenhaven for a deal where basically I stood up for someone else. Toby Kraft is not Clark Rutledge."

"And somewhere along the line, you met Edward Rinehart."

He peered at me through the thick lenses. "Star gave you that name?"

"Definally." I tried again. "Def-in-at-ly." I discovered that my glass contained only half an inch of whiskey.

“I maybe remember something." We experienced a meaningful pause. "After the funeral, suppose you work here for a week or so. Hundred bucks a day, cash."

"What's this, a trade-off?"

"An offer."

“It's still a trade-off, but all right," I said.

Toby pretended to search his memory. “I never met this Rinehart, but he got around, was my impression. From the little bit that sticks in my mind, he got into different places. A certain guy might be able to help you." He marched behind his desk, sat down, and searched through the rubble for a pen and a pad of notepaper. He leveled an index finger at me. “I didn't give you this name."

"Right," I said.

He scribbled, tore the top sheet off the pad, folded it in half, and passed it to me. "Put it in your pocket. Look at it tomorrow and decide what to do. You want to let bygones be bygones, that's okay, too."

The office swayed like the deck of a ship.

"Hasta la vista,"Toby said, shrinking again as he stood up.

• 35

• I was okay until I heard the blare of the jukebox. The more I walked, the better I got at it. Then I moved, not too unsteadily, into the noise of Whitney Houston howling about everlasting love, and the combination of alcohol and night air struck my nervous system. As I drifted across the sidewalk, a lamp post swung toward me, and I grabbed it with both arms before it could get away.

I held on until the sidewalk stopped moving and passed through the crowd outside the bar, assisted by a gentleman who seized my arm and propelled me southward. Women young and old regarded me in great solemnity from their stoops. At last I reachedMerchantsPark and stumbled to a bench. I dropped into its embrace and fell asleep.

I awakened with a pounding head and an ache in my gut. Lamplight illuminated the words carved into the slab over the entrance of the first building in the terrace across the street.thecordwainer building.I gathered my feet under me, and the pain in my belly took solid form and flew upward. I expelled a quart of watery, red-brown stew onto the asphalt.

It was11:35. I had been passed out on the bench for at least an hour and a half. Nettie and Clark were not yet so soundly asleep that I could get to my room unheard, and I was nothing like presentable enough to pass inspection. I needed to rinse my mouth and drink a lot of water. At the far end of the park stood a good-sized drinking fountain.

A granite basin flowed into a tall, octagonal pedestal. I located a brass button on the side of the basin and rinsed my mouth, gulped water, splashed my face, and gulped more water. I looked down and noticed the inscription on the base of the pedestal.

DONATED THROUGH THE GENEROSITY OF STEWART HATCH. "BY THE WATERS OFBABYLON SHALL YOU LIE DOWN AND REST." 1990.

Before me lay an hour of free time, waiting to be filled. I straightened my necktie, buttoned the jacket of my best blue suit, and walked not all that unsteadily out of the park in search of the night-blooming Edgerton.

• 36

• Two streets vivid with neon signs and theater marquees extended eastward fromChester. A fat crimson arrow flashed like a neon finger. The darker red, vertical stripe ofhote paris hung over a smoked glass door. People in groups of three and four, most of them men, meandered down the streets.

Low Street to my left, Word Street to the right. I picked Word because it was closer, and before I had taken two steps noticed a bronze plate designed to look like a curling sheet of parchment. At the top of the scroll were the wordsold town. I moved up to peer at the legend.

Site ofthe Original Town Center of Edgerton, Illinois,an Important Commercial and Recreational Destinationfor All Who Journeyed on the Mississippi River.Restorations in ProgressSupported Through the Generosity of Mr. StewartHatch.

The only signs of restoration I could see on Word Street were the lamp posts, two per block, which had the white glass globes of old Art Deco gas fixtures. The buildings, bars, movie theaters, liquor stores, transient hotels, and tenements had a hangdog look, as if they expected to be ordered off by a policeman. Splashes of neon light lay across dirty brick and flaking timbers. Men in worn-out clothes ducked in and out of the bars. Here and there, better-dressed people cruised up and down the sidewalks. A few residents sat out in lawn chairs, enjoying the night air.

A little way ahead, a couple straight from an advertisement for organically produced soap-free soap detoured around a drunk propped against the front of a bar. A familiar-looking rodent in a goatee and a black leather jacket slid past them and darted across the street.

I watched him slip out of sight into a neon-flickering passage and realized that I had entered what remained of the raffish village Uncle Clark had described. Here was the survival of the Edgerton where crews and passengers from the steamers had disembarked to gamble, visit bordellos, gape at the dancing bears and two-headed goats at the fairground, have their palms read and their purses cut. The town had remained essentially the same, at least if you stood in my great-great grandfathers' Edgerton late on a Friday night.

I moved across the street in the direction of the lane and the rodent in the leather jacket.

• 37

• Seconds after entering Dove Lane, I learned that there were two Old Towns, the one comprised of Low and Word streets, and the other, separate Old Town hidden behind them. A maze of twisting lanes sprouted smaller, darker passages as they meandered into postage-stamp squares on their journeys toward dead ends or one of the wider streets. Stewart Hatch's philanthropy had not extended to the hidden Old Town, and the lamps on byways like Dove were glassed-in bulbs on top of iron columns at least seventy years old. Every third or fourth bulb had been broken, but the district's neon signs and illuminated windows washed the narrow lanes in light.

At the next corner, Dove continued past dark storefronts and abandoned buildings. I turned right into Leather, where the brightness had lead me to expect strip clubs and massage parlors. Light spilled from a glass-fronted Laundromat, where a half dozen tired-looking women idled on benches in front of churning dryers.

From Leather I turned into Fish, then Lavender, Raspberry, Button, Treacle, and Wax. About the time I left Button, I became aware of footsteps behind me. The quiet footsteps continued to follow mine through Treacle and Wax, though I saw no one when I looked back. Wax led into Veal Yard, where light shone upon a dry fountain from the windows of the Brazen Head hotel. I circled into Turnip, walked past a bar called The Nowhere Near and again heard footsteps sounding behind me. I looked over my shoulder and glimpsed a dark, moving shape. My heart missed a beat, and the shape melted away.

I hurried over the slippery cobbles and emerged once again into the hustle ofWord Street. What I saw on its other side told me exactly where I was.

Outside the glass doors of a two-story bar, the furtive character I had followed into Old Town's lanes jittered in a hipster shuffle as he explained something to a chunky blond woman wearing a half-unbuttoned denim jacket. She was Cassie Little, Clark Rutledge's beloved, and the rodent was named Frenchy La Chapelle. I had seen both of them in St. Ann's ICU.speedway lounge blared in pink neon above the doors.

A hand closed on my left elbow, and a well-rubbed voice whispered, "Buddy, I don't know about brains, but you do got balls."

The disheveled old man beside me grinned up at my surprise. Dingy gray curls escaping from a flat cap; concave cheeks shiny with gray stubble; layers of unclean clothes; a clear, pervasive smell of alcohol. "Piney Woods," he said. "Remember me?"

• 38

• “I wasn't here on Thursday night," I said. "But I heard about you from my Uncle Clark."

"Unless you don't happen to be here now, either, you better slide back into Turnip." He pointed at four men with rocky faces and shirts open over T-shirted guts who were assembling in front of the Speedway. They had the look of small-town roughnecks who had changed in no essential way since the age of sixteen. Cassie Little had disappeared inside the bar, and the rodent had exercised his talent for evaporation. Three of the men carried baseball bats. I let Piney pull me back into the lane.

"My old poker buddies, I suppose," I said.

"Staggers and them." Piney moved to block me from view. "They got some ornery mothers over in Mountry."

I looked over his shoulder. "Which one is Staggers?"

"Him in the fatigue pants."

Him in the fatigue pants had the spoiled, seamed face of a man who had never recovered from the disappointment of learning that he did not rule the world, after all. He was smacking his hands together and growling orders and, despite his belly, looked as though he spent his work day pulverizing boulders with a sledgehammer.

"Seems like the boys are getting ready to break up again, take one last look around."

“I heard someone following me," I told him.

"Like I said, you're lucky. You want to stay that way, you should get out of Hatchtown, pronto."

I hurried back into Veal Yard. On its other side and to the left of Wax, Pitch Lane wound deeper into Hatchtown. I ran down it, hoping that it would lead me to the vicinity of Lanyard Street and Toby Kraft's pawnshop.

Pitch joined Treacle for the length of a listing ruin exhaling the odors of ammonia and rotting apples. I heard again the click of approaching footsteps. On the other side of the ruin, I dodged into the continuation of Pitch and jogged down dark twists and turns. The pursuing footsteps rang with a deliberation more frightening than haste. Midden intersected Pitch, but . . . forget Midden. Use your imagination. When I came to Lavender, I looked to my left. Two ragged boys who appeared to have sprung unaltered from a slum photograph ofNew York in the 1890s regarded me from the door of an abandoned building. To my right, high-pitched female laughter came through the window of a shoebox called No Regrets. From beyond it, heavy footsteps plodded forward. Whoever the first man might be, this was one of Joe Staggers's friends.

My two would-be assailants drew nearer, one approaching from behind, the other from my right on Lavender. One of the boys jerked his thumb toward his shoulder and stepped back, and I jumped through the opening into lavender-scented darkness.

Broken bands of light streamed through chinks in the front of the building. Against the rear wall a huddle of boys slept beneath tangled blankets. I prowled down the wall, looking for a gap wide enough to see through. My savior followed me.

"After ya?"

"Thanks for your help."

"Wheere's a bit o' money, den?"

I pulled a bill from my pocket, held it before a glimmering quarter-inch crack to expose George Washington's secretive face, and gave the dollar to the boy.

"Wanna hurt ya?"

I squatted on my heels and put my eye to the crack.

"You kin speeranudder dollar."

I gave him a second hill.

From the back of the warehouse, someone whispered,"Shove 'im in the Knacker, Nolly."

The lane before me was still empty, but I could hear the approach of heavy footfalls. From further away came a lightertap tap tap. The boy lay down and pressed his eye to another crack.

"The Knacker for 'im."

A T-shirted paunch and a thick arm holding a baseball bat heaved into view. The man came to a halt and looked behind him, at the building across the lane, then at the old lavender warehouse. He ticked the bat against a cobble.

"See a guy come down this way?"

The boy in the doorway said, "Seen a couple."

"A tourist."

"Ran down there," the boy said. "Puffin' hard."

The gut swung around. "How long ago?"

"Just passed by."

The man with the bat moved away, and soon my rescuer and I slipped back through the door. I asked if they lived in the old building.

"We sleeps here when it's hot."

"Sometimes we gets fetchin' money," said the smaller boy.

"For instance," Nolly said, “If you needed a certain thing, we maybe could find that thing for you."

"Can you help me find my way out of here?"

They glanced at each other.

"For a buck," I said.

Nolly extended a grubby hand, and I surrendered another dollar. So quickly that I scarcely saw him go, he set off down Lavender in the direction opposite to that taken by my pursuer. I followed him through passages called Shoelace, Musk, and Pineapple.

"Where do we come out?"

I would see when we got there.

We turned off Pineapple into Honey, a six-foot passage with a lamp burning at its far end. Plodding footsteps reached us from an adjoining lane. Nolly hesitated. A second later came the overlapping sound of leather soles ticking against stone cobbles. Nolly darted down the length of Honey. I ran after him, all too aware that the men could hear me as well as I heard them. We came out into a pocket court called White Mouse Yard, and Nolly pointed across to a dim opening. "Take Silk," he said. "Co Silk, Class, Beer, and you're out." He raced into an adjacent lane.

The approaching footsteps grew louder.

I ran into Silk. The heavy steps came toward me, and I stopped and looked back. The sound swung around through the narrow lane and appeared to come from before me. I moved ahead and heard the lighter, ticking footfalls from somewhere on either side. At the bottom of the lane I turned blindly into what I hoped was Glass, jogged toward the lamp at the next crossing of the lanes, and realized that the only steps I heard were my own. Cursing, I wrenched off my loafers.

In front of me, a broad figure shifted around the corner and filled the center of the lane beneath the lamp. The figure raised a baseball bat and charged.

At that moment, someone grabbed my collar, spun me aside, and pushed me onto the cobbles. When I raised my head, I saw himpounce— stride forward and leap like a tiger upon the man in front of me. I groped for my shoes. The baseball bat scraped against the side of the passage, flashed upward, and swung down. I heard a squashy, battered-watermelon noise. The bat landed with a heavier, softer impact. I moved back from the carnage, and the bat skittered toward me over the cobbles.

Overhead, a man leaned through a bright square of window. In the faint light, a ponderous corpse sprawled over the cobblestones. A slim figure in a blue suit sauntered to the far end of Glass and paused. A dreamlike terror made half of anticipation arose in me.

The man at the crossing of the lanes took an unhurried step into the light and turned to face me. What he was going to say made him smile. No longer dreamlike but imported in every particular from an actual dream, terror glued me to the cobbles. The thought of what he would say filled me with horror.

"Ned, never turn down a lady's invitation." His voice was mine and not mine.

My obscene double glimmered at me in affectionate, mocking contempt. For a fragment of a second, I caught in his face an echo of the sense of recognition that had vaulted me out of my nightmare. At the moment he vanished down the gauzy lane, I realized that Star had given me his name.

I felt like fainting, like falling down and weeping for a grief lodged at the center of my heart, like ascending two feet off the ground and detonating into Moody scraps. Robert had shown himself to me. Helplessly, as if to follow, I stepped forward, then turned and ran.

39 • Mr. X

• Whatcomes over me? What demon undoes me with visitations of the river-bankish state?

I bow my head in disgrace, that I questioned my Master and his Works. Who am I? Who was my true father?Those Whateleys meant to let them in, and the worstof all is left!

(While transcribing these lovely words, I was gripped by a tide of laughter from which I only now begin to recover. I wipe away joyous tears and continue.)

I here record my Breakthroughs in the order they were granted.

The depression evident in the previous entry had discouraged me from night-time rambles. As a result, I collapsed into bed beforemidnight and arose at wretched sunrise. Seated before the unsullied section of my dining table, I was searching through the rubble for a half-eaten cruller deposited there no more than a week ago, when my hand closed around the stony cruller, and a great light shone upon me from the dark, dark heavens, and an invisible orchestra released a giant chord, complete with kettledrums. The arrival of this radiant, light-filled (darkness-filled) harmony spoke of one thing only. That instant, Star Dunstan had ceased to be and given up the ghost, farewell, goombye, ta ta, amen.

Apart from the sense of revenge given me by the Star-sow's passing, my instantaneous knowledge of the event whisked the doomy clouds from the internal skies. Here, here, was proof that all was not illusion, that my Mission endured. My ferocious fathers smiled down, to the extent that such Beings can be said to smile. I tossed the fossilized cruller in the direction of the garbage pail, anyhow toward the glistening mound where the pail used to be, and leaped up to pace the open bits of floor until sufficient time had passed for the body to be discovered. After perhaps ten minutes, I dialed Edgerton's second-best hospital and experienced an uneasy moment in which my call was transferred to the intensive care unit. Even worse, one Nurse

Zwick announced that although ICU patients could not receive telephone calls directly, my message would be passed on to the patient in question. I identified the patient in question. The admirable Zwick hesitated no more than a half second before telling me in businesslike tones that Ms. Valerie Dunstan had but moments ago expired.

Even when anticipated,an event such as this blows away the cobwebs.

• Revived, I spent the day perusing the Providence Master's Sacred Texts, in the process noting a hundred speaking touches in tales I had once discounted, for instance, to give but one instance, although I had read "Pickman's Model" countless times, until this very day I had not taken in the relevance of these lines:

Ata guess I'll guarantee to lead you to thirty or forty alleys and networks of alleys . . . that aren't suspected lay ten living beings outside of the foreigners that swarm them. . . . These ancient places are . . . overflowing with wonder and terror and escapes from the commonplace. . . .

The Providence Master was describing Hatchtown!

I once again propose—envision—a Valhalla-like Museum of the Elder Gods. The Record of my adventures, opened to this very page of the Boorum & Pease journal, lies installed upon a likeness of my table alongside a replica of my Mont Blanc (medium-point) pen in a diorama-like affair a few steps or slithers beyond a representation of the Master's own desk and writing implements. An animated representation of myself rises from the desk and paces to the sink, there to stand in a speaking pose, perhaps even actually to speak some poignant lines from this Record. It would be fitting, after all...

The sympathetic reader will understand my tears.

The Sage had turned his flat, almond-shaped eye upon me andwinked. My tears were those of long-withheld, healing resolution. The wordecstasy would not be out of place.

So it was that later I seized the opportunity of a thirty-minute "break" or surcease in that humble occupation which enables me to pay the rent and keep body and soul together to slip out and partake of the night air. I was ready for anything, and with the Master's confirming periods ringing in my inner ear I went adventuring through Hatchtown's byways and hidden courts.

40•Mr. X

• I faded through the bands of tourists, sticking to the shadows out of habit, even though most of those idiots would have had trouble seeing me if I stood under a lamp post and played "Lady of Spain" on an accordion.

In my progress upWord Street, I noticed four middle-aged ruffians skulking out ofPurse Lane. Three of the four carried baseball bats, and their glances up and down the street, their investigations through the open doors of taverns, declared them hounds sniffing for a coon. Mountry's rough, backwoods atmosphere enveloped them like a fog. All hills and vales strung together with muddy roads disfigured by shacks whose weedy front yards sprouted old cars, broken appliances, and now and then a few pigs, Mountry had provided an unending supply of brutal dumbbells back in my days of art and crime. I did not suppose it had changed much over the years. I wandered unseen toward the bully-boys, and the ripest of plums dropped straight into my astonished hand.

The plum's descent began with the sight of Frenchy La Chapelle bopping on the balls of his feet as he kept a wary eye on the hound pack. Heknew about them; they made him nervous. Although alike in breaking every law they could at every opportunity, Frenchy and the Mountry boys were of different species and as instinctively natural enemies as the cobra and the mongoose. Their antithetical physical types increased the instinctive hostility, the Frenchys tending toward a rodentlike sleekness and the rednecks sharing an inclination to potato-sack bellies and beefsteak faces.

I sauntered invisible alongside the bully-boys. Their commander muttered this heavenly imprecation: "Dunstan's around somewhere. Check out the alleys and meet me back at theSpeedway."

My heart, that old warhorse, foamed at the bit.

I hastened across the street and materialized beside Frenchy. In years past, I now and again had summoned him to my service, invariably with the sense of mysteriously accommodating myself within a range of visibilities rather than anything as decisive as making myself visible. As far as Frenchy is concerned, one minute I'm not there and the next minute I am, and the process dismays him far more than he wants to let on.

When he became aware of my presence, he flinched, then twitched his narrow shoulders and pretended he was doing loosening-up exercises. People like Frenchy never loosen up, and their only exercise is running from the police. "How come I never see you sneakin' up on me?"

"You don't look in the right places," I said.

He gave a rim-shot laugh,rat! tat!, bounced up and down, and glanced across Word Street.

"Do you know those hillbillies?"

He shot me a wary look, then thrust his hands into the pockets of the leather jacket. "Might have seen 'em in the Speedway."

I raised my head to expose, beneath the brim of my hat, my left eye.

"One of 'em's called Joe Staggers," he said. “I'm kind of busy right now."

"No, you're not," I said. "Two nights ago, you were busy behind Lanyard Street with Clyde Prentiss. Tonight you have nothing to do but listen to me."

Frenchy jittered himself back into a semblance of confidence. "Clyde's only a friend of mine, all right?"

"The old Grueber warehouse," I said. "Microwaves. How many did you get before Clyde's mishap, a dozen?"

Frenchy breathed through his mouth while admiring the lighted upper windows of a tenement across the street. "Around ten. I dumped 'em in the river."

He was telling me what he should have done. All twelve of the stolen microwaves were stacked against a wall of his tiny apartment.

"Clyde Prentiss represents a threat to your freedom," I said. “If he should happen to recover, he'll turn you in for a reduced sentence. Some would say Clyde should have done his friends the favor of dying."

Frenchy tried to look unconcerned. "The poor guy could go at any moment. Bad heart. Fifty-fifty chance."

“I am going to improve those odds, Frenchy," I said. He stopped twitching. "After tonight, you won't have to worry about Prentiss. In return, you will perform a number of errands for me. You will be remunerated. This is your first installment." A fifty-dollar bill passed from my hand into Frenchy's pallid hand, thence into a zippered pocket.

He ventured a sidelong glance. "Uh, are you saying . . ."

"You know perfectly well what I'm saying. Who are thosemeat-heads after?" I wanted to learn how much he knew.

"A guy named Dunstan took some bread off 'em in a card game. They're sore."

"Would you recognize Dunstan if you saw him?"

"Yeah."

“I want you to work through the lanes. If you see Dunstan, tell him that someone wants to meet him in Veal Yard. Show him the way. If you run into Staggers or his pals, send them in the opposite direction."

He moved away, and I said, "Unload those microwaves inChicago."

Frenchy took off as though jet-propelled. I slipped back acrossWord Street and into the nearest lane. My long-delayed encounter with Master Dunstan would not occur until the brat's birthday, but in the meantime it was my ironic duty to protect him from harm, I went gliding up Horsehair with every anticipation of spilling a quantity of Mountry blood.

Though I could wish for half a dozen Horsehairs, one will do. Swelling and contracting in width, a back alley's back alley, it snakes back and forth through Hatchtown, and from within its walls the experienced listener can discern a great deal of what is going on around him. In high good humor, I awaited broadcasts from Mountry.

Hatchtown residents stumbled home, lurched into taverns, wrangled, copulated. Children squalled, slept, squalled again. I was pretty sure I heard Piney Woods humming to himself as he shambled along Leather towardWord Street, but it may have been some other derelict old enough to remember "Chattanooga Choo-Choo." I ducked into Veal Yard, and the music for which I had been searching came to me from the direction of Pitch and Treacle.

The music in question was theclick-slop, click-slop of cobblestones meeting steel-tipped boots with run-down heels, high-style footwear amongst Mountry's finest. I made my way into Wax. The yokel made pursuit all the easier by rapping his baseball bat against the bricks, producing a sharp, ringingtock! vivid as a flare. I was still unable to distinguish whether he was on Pitch or Treacle, but a little extra speed would bring me to the point where the two lanes flowed together into Lavender only seconds behind my quarry. Concentrating on theclick-slop, click-slop and the occasional, radarishtock!, I ignored the other sounds drifting from adjacent lanes. Then two different sets of footsteps snagged my attention.

To those who can hear, footsteps are as good as fingerprints. Two men of approximately the same weight walking across wet ground in identical pairs of shoes leave virtually identical impressions, but the sounds they make will differ in a thousand ways. What made me attend to the pair of footsteps coming from Pitch or Treacle was their unreasonable similarity. (They were not identical. Even identical twins do not replicate each other's tread, they cannot.) One man, the first, moved in fearfully, with an irregularity that betrayed overindulgence in alcohol. The man behind him glided along in confident high spirits, not only unimpaired but as if the concept of impairments or obstacles did not exist for him—it was the walk of anunearthly being.

I must allude now to a circumstance beyond the grasp of any mortal reader. In the stride of an unearthly being nothing even faintly like morality may be detected. A transcendent ruthlessness resounded from the tread of the second pair of footsteps drawing near the joining of Pitch and Treacle and their meeting with the more spacious Lavender.

And yet! Although the first set of footfalls contained virtually no resonance of the so-to-speak angelic or unearthly, it uncannily resembled the second.

It was like

I felt as though

I might have been standing before

You Mighty Ones, in his present euphoria Your Servant can find no better description of the emotional state induced by this impossible resemblance than the adjective most beloved of the Providence Master,eldritch. I had heard the footsteps of my son. Aware that the redneck was in pursuit, he possessed the capacity to mislead him with the false signal of, I don't know what you call it, an auditory hallucination. I could do many things, but this stunt was as beyond me as time travel. With the awareness that my adversary was more supple than I had supposed, I got myself once more in motion and hastened through Horsehair's convolutions only to arrive at Lavender after the fact.

From Horsehair's opening, I glimpsed lounging in the doorway of an abandoned warehouse one of the band of urchins who gather there at night. The bully-boy was swaggering off. After a moment of appalled indecision, I thought it possible that the wicked offspring had after all spoken to Frenchy. Back down Horsehair I flew to vacant Veal Yard.

Cursing. I rushed through the byway and heard, mystifyingly, the hallucinatory footsteps and those of a child moving down Lavender. Eventually I came near enough to recognize the child as Nolly Wheadle, whom I had betimes dispatched on harmless errands. When I realized that our journey was taking us toward Hatchtown's southern border, the exercise suddenly became clear: though my only-begotten son might have occult powers denied his father, he didn't know beans about geography. He had hired Nolly to lead him out!

Complete understanding did not arrive until after the pair in front of me reached a patch of cobbles named White Mouse Yard, where both they and I, a cautious distance behind, heard theclick-slop, click-slop of the bully trudging down a nearby lane. The next sound to reach us, the tread of unearthly footsteps, blasted all my conjectures into powder. Nolly fled, yelling directions to the tourist. My son and adversary approached, but in the destruction of every certainty I could not tell from where—I concealed myself within Horsehair. The tourist pounded into Silk, and I sped to the next lane. At the opening onto Glass, I wedged myself against the bricks, looked out at a lamplit corner, and was given the third and greatest revelation of the day.

A man in a dark suit ran forward, took off his shoes, and trotted toward my niche. Before he had come close enough to the light to expose his face, the bully-boy lumbered around the corner of an intersecting lane. The bully-boy raised his bat and attacked. I crept out to put an end to the lout. Then, bafflingly, a second form, in every way similar to the first, sprinted down the lane. One of them was my son, but which?

I drew back. A promissory music filled my ears.

The new arrival pushed the tourist aside and leaped upon the roughneck. Surely, this was my son. In seconds, he had claimed the baseball bat and was bringing it down on the roughneck's skull.

Taking in the careless beauty of his features, the darkness of his lustrous eyes, the abrupt angle of his cheekbones, I watched my scion saunter toward the lamplight. The commission of a violent homicide had ruffled him no more than it would his old man. The Adversary's radiant monstrosity utterly belied the terror, the quailing dismay of his shadow-appearances. I supposed that the little shit had grown into this self-assurance around the time I erased from the earth, as Commanded, the last of the Dunstans no longer resident in Edgerton, those barrel scrapings through whom I had moved like a plague.

But what in the world was he up to, and who or what was the replica whose life he had saved? I hugged the wall and watched the blood-soaked center of the stage.

My foe strolled glittering into the spotlight. With the self-awareness of deliberate art, he appeared to hesitate. That devil knew exactly what he was doing. He wasposing. Slowly, negligently, he turned his back to me and faced the man in first row center. After a beautifully timed delay, he spoke.

Unfortunately, he uttered only an anticlimactic sentence concerning the hypothetical male obligation to honor the sexual overtures of females. Evidently he had bedded someone the other fellow had rejected. My inner receptors continued to hum in expectation of more essential info. My formidable son and adversary vanished down the intersecting lane. As if linked by an elastic band, the other stumbled into the circumference of the lamplight.

The recognition of how close to understanding I had come while failing completely nearly made me burst into laughter. I was looking at the same face, more or less, considerably more than less. They were brothers.

Star had given birth to two boys, and while I had vainly sought the first, it was the second son, apparently named Ned, whose shadow-self had floated behind me on their mutual birthday. Star's death had summoned them both to Edgerton, and until a moment before, the dope now hovering at the edge of the light had been as clueless about his brother's existence as I. Starhad not wanted him to know. Star had protected him. Stunned, the lad moved forward to pursue his brother, shuddered back, and skedaddled.

I have been given what I needed all along.

4

HOW I FOUND MY SHADOW AT LAST, AND WHAT IT DID

• 41

• "Under the bed is not a new concept," said Lieutenant Rowley. "But you pushed that sucker wayback there. Were you afraid someone would steal your winnings?"

Lieutenant Rowley raised his rust-colored eyebrows toward his crinkly, rust-colored hair. The wrinkles in his forehead deepened, and his mouth stretched into a narrow line. Creases like hatchet marks appeared on his leathery cheeks. He was smiling. It was 4:56a.m., and Rowley had been having a wonderful time since 3:30, when he and Officer Treuhaft, a human totem pole swathed in blue, had awakened Nettie and Clark, charged into my room, read my Miranda rights, and arrested me for the murder of a man named Minor Keyes. Rowley was just getting into his stride.

“I didn't win that money. I brought it with me fromNew York."

"Do you always take along five or six hundred dollars when you go out of town?"

For the fourth or fifth time, I said, “I didn't know if my ATM card would work here. I didn't withdraw it all at once, it accumulated over the past week or so."

"Funny how it matches what Staggers and the others say you took off them. Even worse, they identified you." Some of the savagery left his face. “It's tough, Ned, but it isn't as bad as you think."

A young policeman cracked open the door, came up to Rowley, and whispered in his ear. Rowley planted a finger on his shoulder and pushed him back. "Blanks? No ridges? Will you please get the hell out of here?"

Rowley was about forty-five, roughly the same age as Stewart Hatch, but his skin looked borrowed from someone a decade older and recently deceased. “I mean that." He willed some life into his face. "Know what? Right now, I'm the best friend you have."

He hitched his chair closer to the table. "Forget the money. JoeStaggers and his friendsknow you took money off them at theSpeedway, and theyknow you were in Hatchtown tonight. Keep saying you weren't involved, you're looking at life in prison."

“I wasn't in town on the night of the card game," I said.

Rowley fixed my eyes with his. “I'm on your side, Ned. I know how it went." He thumped his hand on the table. "All ofa sudden, a guy was coming at you with a baseball bat. The whole thing went down in a couple of seconds. To me, you were a Marine in there. Probably you didn't even know he was dead, am I right?"

Rowley spread his arms. “In the twenty-two years I been on this force, I never heard a better defense. Come in telling the truth, chances are you walk out free and clear. Why don't we take your statement and put you on your way back home?"

“I didn't win any money in a card game at theSpeedway," I said. "On Wednesday night, a truck driver for Nationwide Paper named Bob Mims picked me up in Ohio and dropped me off at the Motel Comfort. In the bar, I met an assistant D.A. from Louisville who told me she could give me a ride here the next day. Her name is Ashleigh Ashton, and she's staying at Merchants Hotel. Thursday morning, she dropped me off at St. Ann's Hospital. Last night, I ran into Mrs. Ashton and Mrs. Hatch at Le Madrigal, and they invited me to their table for dinner. After that, I went to see Toby Kraft. I drank too much. On the way home, I got as far asMerchantsParkand passed out on a bench. I got back to my aunt's house around twelve-fifteen, twelve-thirty."

"Maybe twenty minutes later? A witness puts the time attwelve twenty-six."

"Why don't you call Mrs. Ashton and ask her where I was on Wednesday night?"

"We will," Rowley said. "We'll talk to Mrs. Ashton, and we'll hear what she has to say about Wednesday. It won't have any bearing on what happened attwelve twenty-six last night, but we'll check it anyhow. In the meantime, I want you to think about what I said."

“I can't confess to a murder I didn't commit," I said.

Rowley took me downstairs to a cell. I stretched out on the cot and surprised myself by going to sleep.

The clanging of the door woke me up. A gray-haired man with a pink, weary face that had a lot of miles on it walked into the cell. His belly pushed out the front of his white shirt, his sleeves were rolled up, and his tie was yanked down over his open collar. Behind him, Rowley loomed like a ferocious statue. "On your feet, Mr. Dunstan," said the gray-haired man. "We're releasing you."

I rubbed my hands over my face.

“I'm Captain Mullan," he said. "For the present, no charges will be brought against you. You can pick up your things and go back to your aunt's house. I'd like to request that you remain in Edgerton for the next forty-eight hours and inform us of any changes of address. I want to talk to that truck driver, Bob Mims, before we give youa clean bill of health."

"My mother's funeral is on Wednesday," I said. “I won't leave before that."

Mullan shoved his hands into his pockets. "You must be an old-fashioned gentleman, Mr. Dunstan." From over Mullan's shoulder, Rowley was giving me a smoky glare which suggested that he was no longer my best friend.

"Why is that?"

"Mrs. Ashton confirmed that she met you at the Motel Comfort on Wednesday night and drove you here the following day. She also tells us that you could not have been involved in an encounter with Mr. Keyes attwelve twenty-six this morning, because you came to her hotel room at approximately eleven o'clock and did not leave until exactly twelve twenty-five. The doorman and the desk clerk verify her statement." Mullan smiled at me. He looked as though he should have been pulling pints of Guinness in a Third Avenue Irish Pub.

Rowley said that I could pick up most of my property on the way out. “I'll hold the money until we talk to Mims." His face looked like a paving stone.

An arcade of fluted stone columns stood before the entrance to the big stone facade of the building alongside Police Headquarters. I thought it must have been City Hall. Down at the bottom of the long flight of steps, uniformed policemen smoked and talked in front of half a dozen angled-in patrol cars. Across the street, a fountain at the center of a grassy square sent up a glittering spray.

The policemen moved closer together. One flicked a half inch of cigarette at the bottom of the steps. I came down onto the sidewalk and saw that I was onGrace Street. Two blocks away, a pillared entrance that must have been the front of the library curved out from a row of storefronts and office buildings. The cops separated without quite spreading out.

• 42

•Clark opened the door and called back into the house, "The boys didn't rough him up too bad."

"They didn't rough me up at all," I said.

Nettie surged up from the sofa, grabbed my biceps, and stared into my eyes. “I don't know when I have been so upside-down upset in all my life."

“I'm sorry," I said. "There's nothing to worry about anymore, but for your sake, I ought to go somewhere else."

Nettie re-formed into a thunderhead.

"Joe Staggers is likely to come looking for me. I don't want to put you and Clark in any danger."

"Any Mountry knotheads turn up around here, they'll be sorry they did. I'll call May, and we'll get breakfast ready."

Nettie and May attended to my edited version of the night's events as they mopped up the contents of their plates.Clarkshoveled in his one true meal of the day and agreed that I should take up Toby Kraft's offer. "Mountry boys are stupider than mud, but they're persistent. Best pack your things and give Toby a call. When they come around here, we can say you took off and we don't know where."

I saw the box the UPS driver had delivered. Nettie followed my gaze. "About time you looked through your mother's few things."

• I set the carton on the bed and folded my clothes into the duffel before looking at it again. Star's peaky handwriting glowed up from the shipping label, and sorrow, more than sorrow, heartbreak's tremendous wallop, leaked through the taped seams. When I had run out of diversions, I pulled the carton onto my lap and ripped it open.

I took out some old paperbacks and one hardback book and sorted through the thirty or forty CDs Star had shipped home—Billie and Ella, Louis and Nat and Sinatra, and a lot of records by Duke Ellington, Lester Young, Paul Desmond, and the other musicians she liked. All of these I slid into my bag. I set aside brooches, bracelets, a couple of gold necklaces, and three silk scarves for my aunts.

At the bottom of the box lay a wallet-sized photograph and an envelope on which Star had writtenFor Ned. I picked up the photograph, at first saw only an image of a small boy in a striped shirt, then realized that the small boy was myself and the photograph had been taken on the morning of my third birthday. I gave an involuntary shudder, put the photograph in my billfold, and opened the envelope. It contained what looked likea safety-deposit key taped to an index card above the wordsIllinois State Provident Bank,Grace Street.

The idea that Star wanted me to have something she had secreted in a safety-deposit box gave me an uneasy tingle, but I tucked the key into my shirt pocket and turned to the little collection of books. I propped the paperbacks—Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Invisible Man, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Native Son—on an empty shelf and picked up the hardback.

The dark green boards of its cover seemed more crude than ordinary bindings. The title,From Beyond, had been stamped in gold on the spine and front cover. I opened the book and turned to the title page:

FROM BEYOND TALES OFTHE UNKNOWN

by

edward rinehart

I looked across the room to the closet without really seeing it. I heard myself say, "Edward Rinehart?" When I looked down again, the name was still there. I turned the page and saw:

©1957 Edward Rinehart On the facing page was the dedication:

For the Providence Master&My Great Fathers

The table of contents listed ten or twelve stories. Words like "Abandoned," "Crypt," and "Hideous" swam up at me, disconnected from whatever preceded or followed them. My numb eye took in "Blue," and I concentrated on it long enough to see that the word formed half of a title called "Blue Fire." I said something likeOh, no. The book slammed shut, and for a while I just looked at the binding. Hoping for a paragraph about the author, I opened it from the back, but Edward Rinehart had chosen to keep mum about his past. I crammed the book into my knapsack and went down the hall to stand under a cascade of hot water.

Clean-shaven, wearing a white button-down shirt, blue blazer, and jeans, I came downstairs and overheardClarkdiscoursing about the differences between murder and manslaughter. I put my bags near the door and spread the jewelry and scarves on the coffee table. "Ladies," I said, "Star would have wanted you to share the things she sent, but you'll have to come in here to do it."

While Nettie and May exclaimed over the treasures, I faded into the kitchen and called Toby Kraft. He told me to go a rooming house onChester Street. "The landlady's an old acquaintance of mine, woman named Helen Janette. I'll set it up in five minutes, get you a cheap rate."

• 43

• The cab deposited me in front of a building like a cardboard box mounted with a peaked hat. Its original pale brown had faded to the sandy yellow of old chinos. Two courses of the cement-block foundation, interrupted by basement windows, protruded above the ground, and a pitted walk led to the unceremonious front door. I went up the steps and read the names beside a vertical row of buzzers.janette, tite, carpenter &burgess, FELDMAN, a blank I supposed was for my room,BREMEN, REDMAN & CHALLIS, and ROWLES & MCKENNA. I pushed the button besidejanette, and a metallic buzz came through the window to my left. An interior door opened; footsteps rapped toward me. An economical white-haired woman in a short-sleeved safari shirt-jacket bored gimlet eyes into me from a face that made Lieutenant Rowley's seem like a powder puff.

“I suppose you're the one from Toby Kraft."

"That's me," I said.

Helen Janette backed up and watched me come in. Whatever she saw did not improve her frame of mind. "This is the deal. I'm giving you a nice, comfortable room on the second floor. You and Mr.Bremen are supposed to have exclusive access to the bathroom at your end of the hall, but the girls at the back go in there, too."

A door behind me clicked open. I glanced over my shoulder. A gaunt old man with a Neanderthal jaw, a mesh T-shirt, and a brown fedora was leaning against the opening to a darkened room. His shades had been pulled down, and a cartoon jittered across the television screen in the murk behind him.

"This is Mr. Tite," she said.

I turned around and held out my hand. He ignored it.

"The room is thirty dollars per night, a hundred eighty by the week. You get basic cable if you bring your own TV. For an extra ten dollars a week, clean linen every other day and vacuuming on Thursdays. No cooking in the rooms, no meals supplied, and no loud noises. If you can't behave yourself, out you go, I don't need the aggravation."

I said I'd be happy to pay for a week in advance, plus cleaning, if she took plastic. Helen Janette thrust out a hand and waggled her fingers. I dug out my Visa card, placed it on her palm, and followed her into her apartment. Mr. Tite lounged against the doorframe and eyed me from beneath the brim of his hat. After I signed the slip, she said, “I'll show the gentleman to his room now, Mr. Tite."

Tite straightened up, gave me a hard look, and backed out.

"There are two more rooms at the other end of the house," she said. "Miss Carpenter and Miss Burgess share the big one, and Mrs. Feldman has the other. Miss Carpenter and Miss Burgess have been with me fifteen years. I've never had a speck of trouble with Mrs. Feldman."

We began going up the stairs. "Your room is at the front, above Mr. Tite." She turned halfway around and lowered her voice. "Mr. Bremen is across from you. He's a crossing guard, and you know whatthey're like." She put her finger to her lips, then pointed upward with the same finger. "Drunkards."

At the top of the stairs, she marched to a white door on the far side of the corridor. An elderly guy with a ponderous belly and a flaring white mustache who was seated in front of his TV looked through his doorway and raised a hand the size of a stop sign. A broad yellow banner hung across the back of his room. "Hi there," he called. "This our new inmate?"

“I'm busy, Mr. Bremen." She slammed the key into the lock.

I followed Helen Janette inside. "Bed. Closet. Desk. Dresser. Your sink. I change the towels and washcloth every other day. If you want to move the phone to the table, there's a jack behind it. You pay all your utilities. I don't want to seeany hot plates in here, but coffee-makers are okay. Mrs. Frahm left behind her radio—alarm clock, so that comes free of charge."

I looked at the digital numerals displayed on the black box next to the telephone. It was8:31.

"At the back on this side are Miss Redman and Miss Challis. They're cute little things, but if you're a gentleman, you'll keep your distance. Mr. Rowles and Mr. McKenna are in the room across from them. Mr. Rowles and Mr. McKenna are pianists, and they're out of town most of the time. Do you expect to be here longer than a week?"

I put to rest the concern that I might form an unholy alliance with Miss Redman and Miss Challis.

She slid the key on top of the dresser. "Try to keep reasonable hours. Comings and goings aftermidnightwake me up."

I hung up my clothes, shoved things into the dresser drawers, and called Suki Teeter. After three rings, an answering machine picked up, and Suki's voice informed me that if I were to leave my name and telephone number she would probably call me back, unless I were looking for money. Suki was still in bed. I called Merchants Hotel and asked for Mrs. Ashton.

"My God, are you all right?" Ashleigh said.

"Thanks to you."

“I couldn'tbelieve those guys. Especially that creepy Lieutenant Rowley. I hardly believe you, either. Why didn't you tell them you were here?" She giggled. "Lieutenant Rowley has a filthy mind. I said we gabbed away like old buddies until you sobered up enough to go back to your aunt's, but I could tell he knew exactly what we were doing. You know what? You were like the way you were inChicago, sort of dangerous. Not drunk dangerous, that would have been awful, unpredictable dangerous."

My insides folded into origami. "Sometimes I surprise myself."

"They let you go, anyhow."

"About six-thirty this morning." I told her that I had moved out of my aunt's house and gave her my new telephone number.

"Am I going to see you today?"

“I don't know. Someone is going to help me track down some information. I'll call you if I can."

"This is exactly what I deserve," Ashleigh said. “I know, all right, it's okay."

"What are you talking about?"

"Would your research assistant be Laurie Hatch?"

"She knows a guy at City Hall who can do me a lot of good," I said. “It's a long story, but I'm trying to find my lather, and she volunteered to help."

"No kidding." She hesitated. “I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I want to see you again, though. All right?"

When we were done, I dialed Police Headquarters and asked a desk sergeant to give Captain Mullan my new address and telephone number.

I went into the hallway. Mr. Bremen caught my eye and beamed so widely that his handsome mustache nearly touched his ears. He jabbed a thick forefinger at his chest. In one of those spread-out Western voices evocative of endless plains and starlit campfires, he said, "Otto Bremen."

My life appeared to be turning into a movie in which I had to invent my lines as I went along. I pointed at myself and said, "Ned Dunstan."

"Drop in any time, Ned," he told me. "Door's always open."

Two blocks west of Merchants Hotel, I turned into Grace Street and walked south toward the library. A congress of sparrows huddled on the sidewalk ascended in a flutter of wingbeats and sculpted an uptilted curve in the clean morning air. Shop windows bounced back slanting sunlight. I was present and not present, still in a movie. A boy with gilded eyes and sleek, shoulder-length hair stared down from the second-story window of a hair-dressing salon. Directly across Grenville Street from the library was the foursquare brick structure of the Illinois State Provident.

A bank officer who looked about eighteen years old checked that I, along with Star Dunstan, was one of the box holders, led me downstairs, and asked me to sign a book and record the time. He let me into a chamber lined with numbered panels and indicated the panel that matched my key. I opened the panel, pulled out a wide steel container, placed it on the polished table, and worked the catch. A package wrapped in butcher paper had been wedged inside the box. From its weight and dimensions, I thought it was a photo album, and I would have opened it on the spot if I hadn't been about to meet Laurie Hatch. I signed a form and carried the package upstairs and out through the front door.

Laurie was standing in front of the colonnade on the other side of Grenville Street. She was wearing a dark green silk blouse and fawn trousers, and her perfection transformed the sunlit street and the curving row of pillars into a backdrop. For a fraction of a second, the scene before me seemed as fro/en in time as an advertisement ina magazine. Laurie broke into an incandescent smile, and I was no longer ina movie.

• 44

• “I'm glad you're early," she said. "Stewart did his usual number and screwed up my plans. He has to bring Cobbie back aroundthree o'clock. What's in that package? Did you rob the bank?"

I told her about the key in the envelope and the safety-deposit box.

“It's like a Russian doll. Inside the box is an envelope. Inside the envelope is a key that opens a box with another box inside it, and inside that box there's a package wrapped in brown paper. Maybe it's stuffed with hundred-dollar bills." She took it from me and weighed it in her hands. "However, it feels more like a photo album."

“If it turns out to be a fortune in hundred-dollar bills, I'll split it with you."

“I'd settle for a good lunch. Let's put your fortune in my car. I'm parked right across the street."

She slid the package under the Mountaineer's back seat. "Nice car," I said. "You ought to be ferrying lion hunters across the veldt."

"Myfather did things like that, but I don't. Stewart thought this was the proper vehicle for a suburban mother, so this is what I have." Laurie linked her arm through mine. "Let's see Hugh. He'll be thrilled."

"So who is this Hugh Coventry character?"

"Well, hmmm. Let me give you his short-form bio." She cocked her head. "Hugh Coventry broke from his ancestralNew England after getting his history degree from Yale by entering graduate school at Northwestern. When he discovered that a lot of history Ph.D.s were driving cabs, he transferred into library science."

She waited for the straight line. "Weird move," I said.

"You think?" We glided on ahead. "Hugh is in love with libraries. His M.A. thesis came out of a summer spent rollicking amongst the parish records of his family's church inMarblehead,Massachusetts.

He's a computer genius, he likes to work nights and weekends, and he never gets mad at anyone. Ever since he look over, the Edgerton library ticks like a Swiss clock. Hugh Coventry is practically a saint!"

One day, Coventry had wandered out of the library, down Grove Street to City Hall, and into the Records Office to inquire about volunteering. The Records Office spread wide its official arms and said, Come right in, Mr. Coventry. Within a year, the managers of every department in the building were seeking Hugh Coventry's assistance. In his second year as a volunteer, consultations with the mayor's staff had resulted in instant access on the part of His Honor to block-by-block voting records, numbers of arrests and convictions on specific charges, welfare statistics, and other matters essential to governance. Thereafter, Coventry had been given the run of the building.

Two years before, when Edgerton's upcoming 150th birthday had presented itself as an occasion for celebration, the new co-chairmen of the Sesquicentennial Committee, Stewart Hatch and Grenville Milton, asked for Coventry's aid in assembling a visual record of the city's past. The job spoke to his interest in local history, it called upon his organizational talents, it gave him yet another means of embedding himself within his adopted city. Laurie had met him when Rachel Milton had installed her on the committee, to which Rachel gave three afternoons a week. The arrangement had endured until Laurie's defection from her marriage.

“I couldn't have stayed anyhow, with Rachel scorching me with crucifixes and pelting me with garlic cloves whenever I walked in. Have you seen Town Square yet? It's kind of nice, I think."

Arm in arm, we crossed the street alongside Police Headquarters. The square and the fountain lay to our left. A bum with long red-gold hair lay wrapped in a ragged overcoat next to a guitar case on one of the benches. Half a dozen cops stood smoking and talking on the sidewalk. “I saw it this morning," I said. "While I was coming down those steps."

The cops stopped talking and stared at us in that way only cops can stare.

"You were in the police station?" Laurie asked. "Why?"

My description of having been arrested for murder made it sound like a grade-school excursion with Officer Friendly. Laurie said, "How long were you there?"

"A couple of hours."

When we had come within a few yards of the policemen, Laurie took in their stony expressions. She glared back, and the cops shuffled apart and looked away. After we bad covered another six feet of pavement, she muttered, "Assholes."

"They don't like seeing someone like you with someone like me."

"Screw 'em. They don't even know you." She shook her head. "So the whole thing wasa case of mistaken identity?"

"Exactly."

"Do those other guys know that, or do they still want to find you?"

I said I would have no trouble avoiding Staggers and his friends, told her about moving from Nettie's, and gave her my new address.

"Your life is shot full of adventure," she said, dropped my arm, and glided up the stairs like a ballerina.

We went through the columns. Laurie pulled open an immense, iron-clad glass door and led me into a dim lobby with a marble floor the size of a skating rink. An empty reception desk stood half of the way toward the center of the lobby. No lights burned behind the pebbled-glass windows labeledcounty clerk andbuilding inspector. At the lobby's far end, two marble staircases curved upward. “I'm surprised the doors weren't locked," I said.

"On Saturdays, they leave the place open for a skeleton staff. The question is, Where do we find the helpful Mr. Coventry? Let's go upstairs."

My footsteps ticked as though I were wearing tap shoes. A sudden sense-memory of running through Hatchtown's narrow lanes returned the phantom smell of lavender. We came to the end of a corridor on the second floor, and a single office door glowed yellow.

"Bingo!" Laurie said.

The light snapped off. The door bumped open. A tall, fair-haired man in a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves backed into the corridor holding an armful of manila folders.

"Work, work, work," Laurie said.

He jumped, clamped one arm over the tilting pile, and gaped at Laurie. What happened to his face was almost embarrassing. He seemed about to levitate from sheer joy. "What are youdoing here?"

“I was hoping you could help my friend dig up some information about his father. He'd like to see his mother's marriage license and his birth certificate, things like that. Ned, this is the legendary Hugh Coventry. Hugh, my friend Ned Dunstan."

Coventrywas glowing like a fireplace. "Let me, uh . . ." He deposited the stack of folders on the door and stepped forward to shake my hand. "Hugh Coventry. At your service. Sir."

I said, “I hope we're not interrupting you."

He waved at the folders. "That stuff isn't important. You're a friend of Laurie's?"

"Mrs. Hatch and I met a few days ago. She's being nice to me."

"Your name is Dunstan? You're one of the Edgerton Dunstans?"

"Don't hold it against me," I said.

Coventry's eyes lit up, and he reared back in a transport of scholarly pleasure. "Are you kidding? You're from one of the most fascinating families in this city."

I thought I could see the entire pattern of his life. Hugh Coventry was a decent guy who would always live alone in a couple of upstairs rooms lined floor to ceiling with books. His emotions were generous without being personal.

"Your ancestors, two brothers named Omar and Sylvan Dunstan, founded the Edgerton Bank and Trust, now the Illinois State Provident. At one time, they owned most of downtown Edgerton. Howard Dunstan built Merchants Hotel. I wish I knew more of their story."

"Me, too," I said.

"You must be related to Annette Rutledge. Mrs. Rutledge sent over a wonderful collection of Dunstan family photographs. I hate to say this, but they seem to be misplaced for the time being. I'm sure we'll find them in the next day or two."

Mrs. Rutledge was my mother's aunt, I said, she would be overjoyed to have her pictures on display, and I hoped he might be willing to help me.

"Of course." He looked at the stack of files. "Would you, um . . ."

I picked up half of the folders and followed him into a darkened office. On a long desk, two computers sat opposite each other, like chess players. Laurie said, "You can find marriage licenses in here?"

"Birth certificates, too. It took memonths to get this place into reasonable shape, and I'm still not done." He flipped on the overhead lights. "Next is the county clerk's office. That's going to be a nightmare."

"The county clerk's office is going to be heaven, and you know it," Laurie said. "Now, what about Ned?"

Coventry looked at me as though I had descended from a cloud. He had forgotten I was there. "You were interested in your mother's marriage license? Is there some confusion?" His eyes flickered. “I don't mean to pry, you understand."

"Confusion is probably the right word," I said. "My mother was Valerie Dunstan. She gave me her family name, although she was married. Before she died, she told me that my father was named Edward Rinehart. I'd be grateful for whatever you could tell me."

Coventry went to the computer on the far side of the desk and punched a button on the tower case. He gazed at the monitor with the fascination of a small boy watching the progress of an electric train. Laurie positioned herself behind his shoulder while he shifted the mouse and tapped keys. "Once you get here, you can access information from all these different areas."

"No wonder everyone loves you."

Flushing, Coventry looked across at me. "Do you know the year your mother was married?"

"Nineteen fifty-seven."

He pulled the mouse down the pad and double-clicked. "V-A-L-E-R-I-E?" I nodded. Laurie moved a step closer and rested her hand on his shoulder. Coventry clicked the mouse and bent forward.

Laurie frowned at the screen. "That can't be right."

Coventry looked at me. "Have you ever heard of a man named Donald Messmer?"

"Why?"

"According to this, Donald Messmer married Valerie Dunstan onthe twenty-fifth of November, 1957. Peter Bontly, justice of the peace, performed the ceremony; witnesses, Lorelei Bontly and Kenneth Schermerhorn."

"Something's wrong," Laurie said. "His father was named Edward Rinehart."

Coventrydid a lot of things with the mouse. "The birth certificate ought to tell us something. What was your date of birth?"

"June twenty-fifth," I said, "1958."

"Right around the corner." He beamed at me. "Happy birthday, in case I don't see you before that."

I thanked him.

"Full name?"

"Ned Dunstan."

Coventry blinked. “Isn't Ned generally a nickname for Edward? You have no middle name?"

"Just Ned Dunstan," I said.

"That's so sensible," he said. "However, if you feel deprived, take one of my middle names, will you? Your choices are Jellicoe, York, and St. George. I recommend Jellicoe. It has a nice nineteenth-century ring."

Laurie took her hands from his shoulders. "Your actual name is Hugh Jellicoe York St. George Coventry?"

“It was the only way to stay on good terms with the relatives."

"My father was like that," she said. "His name went on and on, like a list, but he never called himself anything but Yves D'Lency."

Hugh Jellicoe York St. George Coventry folded his hands over his belt buckle and smiled up.

"Weren't you looking for Ned's birth certificate?"

"Oh! Excuse me! I'm sorry, Ned."

“I'll take St. George," I said. “It has a nice twelfth-century ring."

He struck a key and leaned back again. "This shouldn't take more than a couple of seconds." We waited. "Here it comes." Coventry shifted in his chair, bent forward, and propped his chin on his hand.

Laurie said, “I don't get it."

"Don't keep me in suspense," I said.

Coventry cleared his throat. "Name of infant, Ned Dunstan. Date of birth, June twenty-fifth, 1958. Time of birth, three-twentya.m. Place of birth, St. Ann's Community Hospital. Weight, seven pounds, twelve ounces. Length, ten inches. Mother's name, Valerie Dunstan. Father's name, Donald Messmer. Attending physician, none. Attending midwife, Hazel Jansky." He looked back at me. "All through the fifties, midwives attended nearly half of the births at St. Ann's Community. Hazel Jansky's name turns up over and over."