The Backwoods

(I)

Looks like she’s sleeping in, Patricia realized. It seemed understandable. Patricia had risen early to the sound of cicadas and chirping finches. She’d left her window open last night, a luxury she was beginning to enjoy—the fresh night air flowing over her as she slept, and no police sirens and ambulances, like at home. And unlike yesterday morning, she didn’t waken feeling guilty and embarrassed. She recalled snippets of intense sexual dreams, but this time her frolics didn’t involve making love to Ernie in front of her husband. Simply strangers this time, and dreaming of strangers didn’t constitute infidelity. Just a bunch of silly, dirty dreams, she dismissed them. Everybody has them. Byron has them. I’m not going to feel guilty. It was a solid resolve to begin the day with.

But at one point during the night, had she awakened and imagined herself being watched by a peeper through the window? She even recalled masturbating again, to a delicious climax, but that had to have been a dream too.

And dreams are harmless, so I’m not going to stress over it.

After she’d dressed for the day, she noticed Ernie’s door open, and when she peeked inside she found it empty. That was when she went upstairs to check on Judy—to find her still heavily asleep. Last night she’d eventually passed out, but maybe now that Dwayne’s ashes were officially scattered, Judy could put her despair behind her and focus on pursuing the positive things in her life. I can only hope, Patricia thought, and gently closed the door.

Back downstairs, she rejected the idea of making herself breakfast, and instead headed out to the backyard. Something she couldn’t identify seemed to be pushing her out of the house, and she could only suppose she was ignoring what “home” had always reminded her of, and, in place of that, she was enjoying the beautiful natural environment here. This was opposite of the city; this was refreshingly different from what she’d grown so used to looking at every day in D.C. She stepped out onto the fieldstone path and stood stunned for a moment. A cloudless sky hung overhead, the clearest blue, which only made the sun seem more vibrant. The patches of grass between the flower beds almost glowed, they were so green, and the flowers themselves were explosions of razor-sharp reds, yellows, and violets. Yeah, I guess coming back home this time isn’t going to be as bad as I thought. . . . Perhaps she was evolving past her trauma, and was proving Dr. Sallee wrong in his insistence that she should avoid Agan’s Point at all costs. Racy dreams, an inexplicable burst of sexual awareness, masturbating far more than usual? This was so unlike her, but today she was feeling better and better about it.

She kicked her sandals off to stride barefoot across the more expansive tracts of grass farther off in the backyard. I don’t know where I’m going and . . . I don’t need to know, she realized. Finally a day without an agenda.

Then she thought: The Point.

Why not? She’d spend the morning walking around the Point.

More stretches of deliriously green grass took her away from the house. Stands of high trees seemed to funnel her down. If anything the Point appeared more beautiful than she could ever remember it, and it seemed much larger. Agan’s Point could be described as a wedge of verdant land that shoved itself out into Virginia’s widest estuary off the Chesapeake Bay, while the other edge of the wedge was determined by a sprawling river. She hopped over several meager creeks, noticing salamanders and toads, then found herself wandering the path that marked the river side of the Point. Across the water, next, she could see several office trailers and what appeared to be foundation molds for the construction project that would hopefully instill the local economy with more money from a new, well-heeled community of residents. Nothing seemed to be going on at the project today, though: ce- . ment mixers sat static, tractors and backhoes unmanned. When a door on one of the office trailers opened, a man walked out toward a parked pickup truck, and Patricia could tell by the short, bright-blond hair and purposeful gait that it was the man she’d met last night at the reception, Gordon Felps, the executive of the entire construction endeavor. Not quite sure what to make of him, she thought. Her sister clearly found him enlivening, but Patricia’s own first impression was one of suspicion. He’s a businessman trying to throw money at Judy, to get her land, she reminded herself. I don’t care how much money he’s got . . . I don’t trust him. She half frowned and half smiled at herself. But then again, I’m a lawyer. I’m not supposed to trust anybody, because nobody trusts me. Across the river the distant form of Gordon Felps paused at the open truck door, spotted her, and waved. Patricia put on her best fake smile and waved back.

A flock of crows squawked overhead, and at the crest of the riverbed she noticed butterflies sitting idly atop tall blades of grass. Down here near the water the always-heard but seldom-seen cicadas flew to and fro in dramatic numbers. Patricia felt staggered by this outburst of raw nature that she’d banished from her mind long ago. But then she frowned at the dichotomy. Nature untouched right here . . . and another condo project over there. It was the way of the world, she supposed, and as a real estate attorney she was as much a culprit as Felps.

She dawdled on, the sun in her face. A half mile of ambling through the woods eventually brought her to the widest spur of the Point—Squatterville was the area’s nickname. There, surrounded by trees, was their little plantation; so to speak, a crude but close-knit community of shacks, tin sheds, and age-old trailers. Set in the background stood the Stanherd house; it was the oldest dwelling on the Point, and it looked it, dating back to the original plantation days when Virginia broke from the Union. A rickety wraparound porch defined the home’s shape of sloping angles and high, peaked rooftops. A century of periodic whitewash left its wood plank walls more gray than white, shingles blown off in storms had been replaced with cedar slats and tar, and most of the functional shutters had long since been nailed shut. Judy had no use for the house, so she let Everd Stanherd and his wife live there for nothing, along with several other elder couples of the clan. Judy, in fact, charged no rent of any kind to any of the Squatters; nor did she charge for electricity—which was wired to every dwelling—nor water or sewage, which was provided by the communal washhouse where Squatters could shower, get water for their homes, and go to the bathroom. It wasn’t much, but it was better than welfare, and the Squatters themselves couldn’t have seemed more content with their lives here, however unsophisticated those lives were.

Looks like happy simplicity to me, she mused, looking down at the ramshackle community. Women were taking laundry out to hang on myriad clotheslines, chatting, laughing amongst themselves as they worked. Patricia thought a moment then. Was it really happy simplicity, or ignorance and oblivion that milled before her? It was easy for an elitist attitude to dismiss the Squatters as subcitizens with no education and unable to achieve anything more in life. Maybe this happy simplicity is just holding them back, blocking them from any real achievement.

It was an idealistic concern, to say the least. You’re a metropolitan lawyer, Patricia, she told herself. Don’t pretend to be a sociologist. . . .

She saw no men down among the quiet network of trailers and shacks, but of course she wouldn’t. Most of the male Squatters would be out on the water right now, hauling in today’s take on the crabbing boats Judy provided. Maybe it’s just like anything else, she considered. Give and take. Judy gives them a free place to live, and they work to keep her company profitable. Judy owned the boats, the land, the processing plant and warehouse and delivery trucks—everything. And. the Squatters worked it all for her.

A closer look showed children prancing around their mothers and/or grandmothers, squealing with innocent exuberance as they played tag amid the sheet-flapping labyrinth of clotheslines. Older children emerged from the woods with armfuls of wild berries, edible greens, duck eggs, and even rabbits and squirrels they’d caught in traps handmade by their fathers. Other children returned with stray firewood they’d culled from the forest; though the shacks and trailers all had electricity, the Squatters often preferred to cook their family meals outside in cauldrons braced over communal fires and long barbecue pits. What Patricia was looking at now seemed like a hidden crosshatch commune that gladly let the modern world slide over them without notice. Primitive yet undeniably efficient, tribal yet organized. It was a system that worked.

She traipsed down the hillock toward an outer footpath, and when she turned the corner around the washhouse, several Squatter boys—ten to twelve years old, they appeared—broke off in the opposite direction the instant they noticed her. What was that all about? she wondered without much interest. It was as though she’d surprised them; they ran off the way children did when caught doing something bad. But what? She made her way along the white-painted brick wall that formed the rear of the washhouse. The long, clean wall stood unblemished, except . . .

Hmm . . .

A squint showed her there was a blemish of sorts. She walked up closer. What is that? The wall seemed to bear a single pock; the closer she got, the more she thought she heard something. A steady hiss.

And voices?

Patricia wasn’t sure.

She looked right at the “blemish.” It was a hole, not even a half inch wide, drilled into the mortar between two of the wall’s cinder blocks.

And she realized the hiss was a running shower.

A peephole, she knew. She put her eye to the hole and looked in. Three hardy Squatter girls in their late teens stood in the long shower room, sudsing themselves with soap, and chatting and giggling obliviously. This would explain the fleeing youngsters; Patricia had caught them spying on the older girls inside, and though she didn’t know the boys at all, she was certain they knew who she was: the sister of the woman who gave them a place to live and provided jobs for their parents.

No doubt this peephole had been used for some time for such shenanigans; she couldn’t help but notice what could only be tracks of dried semen streaking the wall beneath the hole. She smiled to herself then, amused. Boys will be boys, she realized.

She walked on, but for some reason felt distracted now. By what? The thrumming cicada trills seemed to wash in and out of her head, and in some strange way urged her to recall the hiss of the shower.

Peepholes. Peeping. Voyeurs.

It was harmless enough, sure—just a few boys about to enter puberty, following their hormonal curiosities. So what was bothering her?

My dream, she remembered then.

Last night she’d dreamed of being spied on herself, hadn’t she? Only slivers of the dream seemed vivid, while most of it had turned to fog by now. I dreamed that someone was watching me from the window, she remembered, while I was touching myself. The more she thought about it, the more clearly it came to mind. She remembered being even more turned on when she’d realized someone was watching; her voyeur remained unidentified, yet the longer she knew he was watching, the more aroused she became, and it hadn’t taken long for her climax to overwhelm her.

The only thing that remained unclear was the sequence of events. Was I masturbating in the dream, she asked herself, or was I masturbating for real, after I woke up from the dream?

Probably the latter, she suspected now. The spate of dirty dreams? Sex with Ernie while her husband watched (more exhibitionism)? Sex with strangers? The sudden flux of heightened sexual moods since she’d arrived ? To the most secret part of herself, she admitted it all now. She couldn’t recall a time when she’d felt so sexually stoked than over the last two days, and it only reminded her of the senselessness of it all. Agan’s Point symbolized her rape—the ugliest and most unarousing thing to ever happen to her. So why don’t I feel unaroused now that I’m back?

Her musings stretched. She couldn’t help it; she couldn’t get it out of her head. Now she imagined herself in the Squatters’ shower room, alone, and somehow knowing she was being watched from the peephole. That knowledge made her desire burn harder. The fantasy cocooned her; she could not only see herself standing naked in the stark-white, brick-walled room, she could feel her hand gliding the bar of soap between and around her breasts, then down her belly and up between her legs. Soon she was dressed in a suit of lather, her pink nipples and the tuft of soft red pubic hair the only things breaking the surface of the soap’s white froth. She stared fast at the hole in the wall; some ethereal force seemed to emanate from it like a wizard’s totem. Now her hands were sliding all over herself—she was no longer washing; she was making love to herself, her nerves winding up, her nipples en-gorging. Then she stepped back into the cool spray, the lather sloughing off her skin down into the drain between her feet.

In the hole she could see the unblinking eye. . . .

Come in here, she panted to the hole. She parted her legs. Her hands splayed her sex. Whoever you are, come in here. . . .

She closed her eyes, waiting, her fingers teasing herself. She was almost there already. Her breasts felt hot, twice their normal size. The bladelike sensations between her legs nearly toppled her over, and then from behind the large calloused hands of her unseen voyeur slipped around under her arms to her breasts, and when they squeezed she began to—

“Howdy, Patricia. You’re sure up early.”

The fantasy snapped like a broomstick across someone’s knee. Patricia spun in place, bristling in stifled shock. Ernie was striding across the grass, jeaned and workbooted, a toolbox in tow.

“Ernie. I didn’t see you coming,” she faltered.

He hoisted the box. “I was just cuttin’ across. Judy wanted me to go to Squatterville to turn the electricity off on a few of the shacks.”

Patricia had barely recovered from her startlement. That was the most vivid daydream of my life! She brought a stray hand to the bottom of her throat. I hope I’m not blushing. . . . The fantasy hadn’t lasted long enough for her to see the face of her imaginary peeping Tom.

Had she hoped it was Ernie?

He chuckled, looking cockeyed at her. “You okay?”

“Daydreaming,” she muttered back. “What were you saying? You had to turn off the electricity?”

“Just to three of the Squatter shacks. No point in electricity going into an empty place.”

“What do you mean?”

He set the toolbox down and crossed his arms. “Well, things ain’t changed much since you moved outta the Point. Back then, a’ course, there weren’t quite as many Squatters. But unlike back then, it seems that a lot of ’em are leavin’.”

“Leaving—as in leaving the Point?” she asked.

Ernie nodded. Somehow the streak of sweat going down the center of his tight T-shirt struck her as sexy, and the way his long hair was slightly disheveled, like he’d just gotten out of bed. “Three of ‘em have left just in the past week, and eight or ten more since the beginning of the month. Kinda strange . . . or maybe not, really. Just ’cos I love livin’ on the Point don’t mean everyone does. Look at you.”

“But where did these Squatters go?” she asked the logical question.

Ernie shrugged his strong shoulders. “They didn’t leave forwardin’ addresses, if that’s what you mean. Most a’ the folks who left was younger Squats, late teens, early twenties. Growin’ pains and all that, I guess. It ain’t unusual for kids to wanna leave home to check other pastures.”

No, it’s not, she realized.

“But me?” Ernie continued. His long hair gusted in a sudden breeze. “I love it here. Cain’t see myself ever leavin’. The city ain’t for me. I went to Roanoke once, couldn’t believe it. The air stank, the traffic was awful, everything was expensive. I don’t know how you stand it in D.C.”

“It has its ups and downs,” she said. “But I’m actually liking it a lot here this time. I didn’t last time I was back.”

“Oh, yeah. When Judy‘n’ Dwayne got married. Well, that’s all over ‘n’ done with. I’m hopin’ Judy gets out of her funk soon.”

“Me, too.”

“She got drunk as a skunk last night, but you could tell—even as heartbroke as she was—there was a lot of worries and hassles gone from her life.”

That was good to hear.

“You just out for a mornin’ walk?” he asked her.

“Yes. It’s been so long since I’ve had a good look at the Point. It’s much more beautiful than I remember.”

“I gotta head down to the pier to check ‘n’ see if the new crab traps got delivered. Why don’t’cha come with me?”

“Sure,” she said, and followed him down the trail. They went in and out of several stands of pine trees. Around them the fields behind Squatterville blazed green in the sun. The scenery lulled Patricia, but not enough to take away all of that irritating sexual edge left over from the daydream. As she walked behind Ernie, she had to consciously force herself not to look at him: the toned, tan arms, the tapered back, the strong legs. This damn place is becoming an aphrodisiac, she thought, and there’s no reason why. She tried to clear her head, following on.

“I love that smell off the bay,” he observed. “Salty, clean.”

“Mmm,” she replied, taking a breath herself.

“No pollution, like everywhere else on the bay. Christ, most other places think the bay’s just a place to dump their garbage.”

Yeah, like D.C., Patricia had to agree in her thoughts. Now, through breaks in the trees, she could see the mirrorlike shine off the water, and, high in the sky, the finches and crows were replaced by seagulls and pipers. Another few minutes of walking took them down to the town dock, where a dozen piers jutted out into the water. Some wooden buildings stood up front, where several Squatter men looked up, nodded briefly, then resumed their tasks of sorting rigging ropes and stacking bushel baskets. Ernie briefly walked to one of the dock buildings, grabbed a clipboard, and began counting what looked to be several dozen brand-new crab traps that had been stacked there: simple chicken-wire boxes dipped in black latex to prevent rust. A cylindrical compartment inside each trap held the bait, and then each trap was dropped out in the bay, marked by a floating buoy. The boats would all go out as early as four in the morning, drop their traps, then dredge oysters and clams for a few hours, after which they’d haul up their traps, empty them, and size the crabs. Almost all of the boats were gone now, but Patricia did notice a few moored to the piers—long, wide, shallow. dingies with little motors at the back.

She walked over to Ernie, who was still busy counting traps. “I’m always reading in the papers about how bad the crab harvest is in the bay. What’s so special about Agan’s Point?”

Ernie pointed outward, where the bay stretched several miles across. “Out there? The current’s too strong, not many crabs.” Then he pointed to a series of sand berms that could be seen just breaking the surface a mile or so out. “But those berms cut the current way down in the Point, which is ideal for blue crabs. Then there’s the freshwater runoff, keeps the water cooler and lowers the salinity. That’s why Agan’s Point crabs are bigger ‘n’ heavier than crabs anywhere else. The perfect environment.”

“So why don’t the big commercial crabbers come out here?”

“It’s not worth their time or money. They have to come too far, and their boats are too big. Agan’s Point waters are too rocky ‘n’ shallow for their big rigs. So they all go south ‘n’ leave us alone. The Squatters use flatboats to get around these shallow waters, and they always bring in the same number of bushels a day, and not one more than that, ever. The rest of the bay’s been fished out, but not Agan’s Point. The Squatters stick to their daily haul limit and never break it; that way there’ll always be plenty a’ crabs. We only sell our meat to the better restaurants and markets in the county, and that’s it, and because Agan’s Point crabs taste so much better than the other stuff, our buyers pay more per pound.”

“What makes them better?” Patricia asked. Now she was sitting at the edge of the pier, waggling her feet in the cool water.

“The meat’s sweeter ‘cos the salinity’s perfect and the water’s cooler ’n’ cleaner. It’s that simple.” Ernie hung up his clipboard, apparently satisfied with the trap delivery. “And another reason the company’s got a higher profit margin per pound is ’cos of the lower overhead.” He pointed to another pier, where several men sat down at tables next to some large picnic-type coolers. “Most crabbers use chicken necks fer bait, but what ya need to know about the Squatters is that they don’t waste anything.”

Patricia didn’t get his meaning; she leaned up higher from where she sat, squinting at the men. Now she heard a continuous series of thwacking sounds. . . . “What are they doing?”

“Like what I was sayin’,” Ernie went on, leaning against a stack of traps. “The Squatters live off the land like nobody’s business; they don’t spend a dime on food unless they need to.”

Patricia’s bosom jutted as she leaned more urgently to see what the men at the tables were doing. “I still don’t—”

“It ain’t just crabs the Squatters trap; it’s everything. Rabbit, possum, muskrat, squirrel. When they’re done guttin’ and trimmin’ what they catch to eat, they chop up what’s left. Scraps, guts, feet, ‘n’ tails. And that’s what they use fer crab bait.”

Patricia shuddered a moment when she finally realized what the men were doing: chopping up animal scraps and innards with butcher knives and then depositing the portions into plastic jars punctured by holes. Each jar was then put into a cooler.

“Them jars there?” Ernie explained. “When the boats go out tomorrow, they put one a’ them jars in each trap. Best crab bait ya can get. And it’s free.”

It sounded very practical—but grisly. “I can understand rabbits and squirrels—I ate plenty of that when I was growing up,” Patricia noted. “But you said the Squatters even eat muskrat and possum?”

“Oh, sure. I do, too. Muskrat’s tough to dress, but it tastes like ham, and on a possum the only thing ya eat is the back strap. Tastes like the best pork tenderloin ya ever had if ya marinate it right, and the Squatters know how to do it.” He tapped her on the shoulder, looking down. “You’ll be able to try some. This weekend is the Squatters’ celebration feast. You’ll think you walked into the county fair, and they’ll be cookin’ up everything. These people know how to cook.”

Her feet in the water relaxed her. She looked up at him, frowning. “Ernie, I don’t mind eating a little squirrel and rabbit, and crabs are fine too, but now possum and muskrat? That’s roadkill, if you ask me.”

“You’ll try some,” he assured her. “One thing I remember about you from way back is that you were always adventurous.”

“Not that adventurous,” she declared. It occurred to her in the briefest moment that her position—sitting down at the pier’s edge as he stood over her—afforded Ernie a considerable view of her cleavage and possibly even her nipples, given the leeway of her loose ivory blouse. Again, she hadn’t put a bra on, and she’d been oblivious to that fact until just this second. But when she glanced back up at him to say something, he was looking out at the water, not at her. What the hell is my brain up to now? she asked herself. It’s almost like I want him to be looking at me . . . but if he’s not, I’m disappointed. I’m so screwed-up! Then her original question resurfaced. “You said they’re having a celebration feast?”

“Yeah. Every month—every half-moon, whatever that means. They got some weird ways.”

The Squatters were notoriously superstitious but . . . Half-moons? she wondered. “So what are they celebrating?”

“Life, I guess—in their own way. Nature, the crab harvest, the food they get from the woods. But when ya think about it, it’s the same thing as our Thanksgiving.”

Patricia supposed so. All societies, even today, seemed to have some ritual of giving thanks for the abundance of the land. “What religion are they, though?” she asked next. “I never quite got it.”

“I asked Everd once, and he said they’re worshipers of nature and love, or some such, and left it at that. But then ya see a lot of ‘em wearin’ crosses along with all those knickknacks and stones around their necks. Their own kind of Christianity, I think it is, mixed with other stuff.”

How interesting. Like Cuban Santeria and the obia of the Caribbean, these religions amalgamated old African folk magic with traces of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Even Haitian voodoo borrowed patron saintdom and idolatry from Christianity. And now that Ernie had mentioned it, she looked back at the men chopping up the crab bait and noticed that one of them wore around his neck what appeared to be a cross made from small animal bones.

“See, right out there,” Ernie said, and pointed out to the bay

Patricia focused out on the water. At the end of the berm, near the inlet’s mouth, she spotted a wide plank sticking up out of the water; on its face someone had painted a cross.

“Everd supposedly blesses the Point every morning,” Ernie said.

But Patricia was still looking out. There were actually two planks, she noticed now, the second sunk directly into the sand berm. But it wasn’t a cross painted on it; it was some sort of a squiggly design. “What’s that second one there?”

“Some kind of clan good-luck sign,” Ernie said. “Don’t rightly know exactly.”

More superstition, Patricia realized.

One of the Squatters approached them, a knobby-kneed man in his fifties, with a sun-weathered face and the trademark coarse, jet-black hair of the Squatters. He seemed to be bearing the lid of a bushel basket as a waitress would with serving tray.

“Howdy, Regert,” Ernie greeted him.

Regert, Patricia thought. What a strange name.

The man kept his eyes downcast, the way servants wouldn’t look directly at their masters, another thing that had always struck Patricia as strange. “Miss Patricia, Mr. Ernie.” He returned the greeting with a curt nod. He set the basket lid down on a dock table. “We made ya both a clan breakfast. Hope you like it. It’s a blessing from the land.”

“That’s mighty nice of ya, Regert,” Ernie said, then to Patricia: “This is great; come ‘n’ have some.”

Patricia got back up to look. Two tin tumblers of liquid sat on the tray, along with a plate of shucked oysters and a bowl of . . .

What are those? she wondered. Prunes? Figs?

“Try our home-brewed ald, miss,” Regert said, passing her one of the tumblers.

“Thank you, Regert,” she said, mystified. Ice cubes floated in the tumbler full of a thin pink liquid.

Ernie took a glass for himself. “You could almost call it a Squatter highball.”

Patricia rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to have a cocktail at nine in the morning!”

But Regert sternly responded, “The clan do not imbibe, miss. Our bodies are gifts from on high, temples of the spirit. Everd the sawon says so, and we follow his word. The clan will not disgrace our bodies with alcohol, the elixir of the devil.”

Patricia was amused. This guy sounds more like a Southern Baptist.

“There ain’t no booze in it,” Ernie assured her. “It’s stuff they make from roots ‘n’ bark, stuff like that.”

It didn’t look terribly appetizing. “Well, you’re the one who said I was adventurous,” she dismissed, and took a sip.

Her lips pursed at once. It doesn’t look good, and guess what? It tastes like it looks.

Ernie laughed. and downed his in one swig. Patricia elected not to offend Regert’s hospitality, so she just said, “It’s . . . very interesting.”

“Tastes like chalk at first, but give it a minute.”

Patricia would give it more than that. Then she noticed that Regert, like some of the others, also wore a cross pendant, which appeared to be made from tiny vine twistings, and a dark stone hung from a second pendant. By now she had to ask, “That’s an interesting cross, Regert. So you’re a Christian?”

Regert nodded, still not making eye contact. “Yes, miss, the clan believe in God’s only Son, and in the earth that He has bestowed and in the deliverance that He has promised, and in the earth and in the water and in the holy universe.”

Now that’s a mouthful, Patricia thought, nearly bidden to laugh. The holy universe?

“And earlier you referred to Everd as—what did you say? Asawon? That means he’s, like, the governor of the clan, right?”

“No, miss. Only God is our governor. Everd is our seer.”

The comment piqued her. “You mean like a psychic person, a visionary? He sees the future?”

Regert seemed on guard for some reason, less enthused to answer. “No, miss. The sawon sees the paths that God wants us to travel in life, and he shows us those paths.”

Patricia was about to ask him to elaborate, but he quickly nodded again with the same downcast eyes, and excused himself. “Good graces be with you both, but I must return to my work, which is a gift from on high.”

And then he was walking away.

“Thanks, Regert,” Ernie said after him.

Patricia watched the man amble back to one of the dock sheds.

“Yeah, they definitely got their own ways,” Ernie commented.

Patricia agreed. “They’re very gracious people, but . . .” She slid her tumbler away. “I can not drink any more of this.”

“You’ll have some oysters, though,” Ernie said, eyes alighting on the plate. “Remember how you ‘n’ me used to see who could eat the most when we was kids?”

Patricia felt touched by the memory. “Of course.”

“And you always won them contests, if I remember right.

“Yeah, I guess I did.” But oysters, like crabs, she’d always loved; she’d practically been raised on them. “These are huge,” she remarked, looking at the sprawl of six-inch shells on the plate.

“The Squatters dredge a couple a’ bushels every morning.” Ernie slurped three in a row raw off the shell. “Then we sell ’em to a few of the local markets for two bucks a dozen; then the markets resell ’em for about four.”

Patricia sucked one down, curling her toes, it was so fresh and briny. “In D.C. they’ll charge close to twenty dollars for a dozen oysters in a restaurant. And these are ten times better.” When she turned up the next shell to swallow the oyster meat, a gout of juice ran down her chin and neck. Great. Now I’ll smell like oysters all day.

Ernie ate a few more. “I never did figure out if it was true what they say, though.”

Patricia stalled over the comment. Earlier she’d been abstracting that Agan’s Point seemed to be working some obscure aphrodisiac effect on her, and now here was Ernie—whom she’d already had a sexual dream about—mentioning the same supposed effect of oysters. But did he mean anything more? He had a crush on me for years, she thought. And we never did anything. We never even kissed. “I think that’s just an old wives’ tale,” she finally said. Her next oyster spilled more juice on her. “Jeez!”

“Gettin’ more on yourself than in your mouth.” Ernie laughed.

This time the juice ran down her chin and continued right down into her cleavage. She felt spaced out for a moment, and suddenly she was fantasizing again: Ernie pulling her blouse off without a word, and licking the delectable juice out from between her breasts. Next she imagined herself fully naked, right here on the dock, more and more juice running salty rivulets down her stomach, filling her navel, trickling down. . . .

And Ernie licking it all away.

God, she thought, feeling flushed.

The oysters were gone now, and Ernie addressed the last object on the bushel lid. “Naw, I don’t know about oysters, and I don’t know about these, neither. But just ask any Squatter. They’ll tell ya these are the best aphrodisiacs in the world.”

Patricia was glad for the distraction; she looked at the bowl. “Figs?”

“Naw. They’re pepper-fried cicadas, and the ones we got here are the biggest of ‘em all. They dust ’em in wild pepper, then fry ’em in oil.”

Patricia simply shook her head. “Ernie? There’s no way on earth I would ever eat one of those things. They’re bugs. And I don’t eat bugs.”

Ernie grabbed a handful from the bowl, munching on them. They crunched like fried wontons. “Aw, don’t chicken out. Believe it or not, they taste kinda like asparagus, but crunchy.”

“Bugs don’t taste like asparagus; asparagus tastes like asparagus,” Patricia said. “I’m not eating bugs.”

Ernie ignored her. “You grab one by the wings, like this. . . .” His finger plucked one up. “Then pull it off with your teeth. But don’t eat the wings. They’re like wire.” He demonstrated, eating another, then plucked one up for her. He held it right before her mouth.

Patricia shook her head with vigor, insisting, “No!” Then she closed her lips tight.

“Come on. Like the Squatters say, it’s part a’ God’s bounty. Don’t be a chicken. Won’t kill ya to try somethin’ new.”

Patricia smirked. Shit. I can’t believe what I’m about to do, she thought, then ate the turd-looking thing off his finger. It crunched between her molars, but actually tasted interesting, not repulsive. “Not bad,” she admitted.

“Good. Have another.”

“No! One bug’s my limit. Now let’s go!”

Ernie chuckled as they walked off the pier, the sun beaming on the water behind them. “What’s that building there?” she asked of a long white-brick structure just up from the dock. “Another washhouse?”

“Naw, that’s the line.”

“The what?”

“The new pickers’ building. We call it the line.”

Patricia noticed small windows and a number of window-unit air conditioners. “It looks new.”

“Three, four years old. In fact, I think Judy told me once that it was you who lent her the money to fix things up. So she had that built. You remember the old pickers’ shack that your daddy built, don’t ya?” “Yeah, and now that you mention it, it was . . . a shack,” she said, thinking back on the old rickety open-aired building. Squatter women would sit together at long wooden tables inside, monotonously picking the meat out of hundreds of crabs each per day. “Can we look inside?”

“Sure. In a way, it’s yours.” He opened a metal door, after which cool air gusted out.

A peek inside showed Patricia why they called it “the line.” Like a production line, she thought.

Over a dozen Squatter women—from eighteen to sixty—sat at long wooden tables. Cooked crabs would be dumped in the middle of the tables, and from there the women would dismantle the spiny, bright-orange creatures and begin to pick the meat out of them. Each woman wielded a small, unsharpened knife with which she’d tease chunks of the white meat from intricate inner shell channels. The meat would be flicked into plastic one-pound containers, which, when filled, would be scurried back to a walk-in refrigerator by a younger Squatter girl. Another girl would hurry back and forth, removing the shell debris.

“They do it so fast,” Patricia remarked.

The women’s hands pried apart and demeated each crab completely, in only minutes.

“They get a lot of practice,” Ernie said. “I can pick a pound pretty quick myself, but nothing like them. Couple of our girls can fill a pound tub in ten minutes. We wanted to enter ‘em into the annual pickin’ contest up in Maryland, but they wouldn’t go, and that’s a damn shame, ’cos they woulda won.”

“Why didn’t they want to go?”

“They said it was ungodly, or some such. To them, crabs, like all food, are some kind of gift from the heavens, and shouldn’t be turned into a sport.”

More weird philosophy, Patricia thought.

She couldn’t imagine more tedious work. Picking crabs all day, every day? But as she looked inside, the women couldn’t have appeared more content, chatting quietly amongst themselves as their hands and fingers blurred through the process. In the background—barely audible—an evangelical radio station murmured oral missives from God.

“Just wait’ll the Squatter cookout,” Ernie promised. “They got their own recipes for crab cakes, Newburg, and cream a’ crab soup that’re better than anything you’ve ever had, even in them upscale D.C. restaurants.”

Patricia believed it, and she could even remember a bit of it from her childhood.

Ernie closed the door and showed her back to the path. “Guess we better be headin’ back to the house— er, I should, at least. Gotta cut the grass. What’choo got planned today?”

“Nothing, really. I’ll go back with you, check on Judy. Then I might go into town, or maybe go for a walk in the woods.” This was another refreshing aspect of being back: not having to follow any agenda. But she knew she should at least check her e-mail and give the firm a quick call. Then she thought: And Byron! I haven’t called him in a day and a half! In fact, she’d actually spoken to him only once or twice since she’d arrived. He’ll be worried. . . . But when she patted the back pocket of her shorts, it occurred to her that she’d left her cell phone back in her room.

The tree-lined path wended further upward; spangles of heat draped across her face and chest from the sun pouring in through leafy branches above them.

“There’s another one,” Ernie said without stopping. He pointed to a tree as he walked on.

But Patricia paused.

A small plank, painted white, had been nailed to the tree in what appeared to be a crude decoration. But out here? In the woods? It seemed so peculiar. A simple but ornate drawing adorned the plank, some squiggles and slashes; they seemed symmetrical, in some disordered way

“Another one of their good-luck signs?” she asked.

Ernie had stopped just ahead of her, looking back. “Yeah. Ya see ’em every now and then out in the woods. The woods are blessed land to the Squatters.”

Patricia peered closer at the design. “It just looks so . . . unusual, doesn’t it?”

“I guess,” Ernie said without much interest. “It’s more creepy than anything, if ya ask me.”

Creepy . . . Yes, she supposed it was. The color of the paint used to form the design was odd, too: a tannish slate. Is it even paint? she wondered, touching it. Her finger came away smudged almost black. Doesn’t feel like paint. More like crayon.

Then she realized what it reminded her of. Last night . . . The note she’d found in the garbage, addressed to Dwayne. Since then she’d paid no mind to the weird sheet of paper she’d found, the sheet with one word written on it. . . .

Wenden.

Was it a name? She could look in the phone book but . . . Why? There was no reason for her to care, so why did it seem to bother her now? The word looked as though it had been written in some kind of thin-lined chalk, similar to this good-luck sign on the tree.

“What’choo doing?” Ernie asked with a smile. “Hopin’ some a’ that Squatter good luck’ll rub off on ya^?”

“Maybe,” she said, and broke away.

But Ernie was right. The design was . . . creepy.

A narrow creek broke the path, its crystal water burbling. Ernie stepped over it in one easy stride; then Patricia hopped across herself. She sighed as her mind cleared—a rarefied luxury for a city attorney—and concentrated only on the cicada throbs, the babbling creeks around them, and the steady crunch of Ernie’s boots as he strode onward. This odd sequence of sounds and sensations seemed to tran^quilize her as effectively as a low dose of Valium.

Ernie stopped and turned around. “Well, here’s a problem.”

“What?”

Another creek crossed the trail, several yards in girth and full of jagged, algae-covered stones.

Then it occurred to Patricia that she was barefoot.

“You don’t wanna cut’cher feet all up on them rocks,” Ernie said.

Patricia laughed. “Ernie, I don’t think I’m quite the city priss you take me for. It won’t kill me to walk barefoot through a creek.” She grinned, about to take her first careful step onto the stones. “Of course, you could always carry me.”

She’d said it as a joke, and was completely taken by surprise when he grabbed her and picked her up. “I was only kidding!” she exclaimed.

“Ain’t no trouble.” He chuckled, hefting her. “Us country boys’re strong. Feels to me like you don’t weigh much more than a bag a’ peanut shells anyway.”

“You say the sweetest things, Ernie,” she joked back. “Now, if you’d said I weigh more than a grand piano, I’d know it was time to join Weight Watchers.”

He carried her easily with one arm bracing her back, the other under her thighs. Her feet jounced in the air with each step, while her own arm clung fast to him around his shoulders.

“I hope there’s another creek,” she kept joking. “Then we can try piggyback.”

“Don’t’cha be teasin’ me now.”

But the rocking motion that came with each step lulled her more. She let her head rest against his shoulder. He seemed to grip her tighter under her rump, which increased the friction between her legs—a pleasurable but aggravating sensation—and the position caused her right breast to rub against his chest.

Did the cicada sounds begin to drone louder? She felt deceptively relaxed in his grasp, rocking, rocking, as he stepped over more rocks; she could’ve fallen asleep. Some strands of his long hair brushed her face. The vee of her blouse looped up; then she drowsily realized that one nipple was showing.

She pretended not to notice.

Oh, God. The thought moaned through her mind.

She felt so strange, burning up with pent-up desires but lazy, slothlike. The cicada drone continued to fill her head, and the rocking motion continued to stimulate her sex, her breasts. But he remained the perfect gentleman; he couldn’t have not noticed her nipple. It tingled, felt like it was swelling. . . .

“Here we are. Ten cents for the ride . . .”

On the other side of the creek he set her back down on her feet, and she wasn’t even aware of what she was doing when she pressed right up against him, reached around and squeezed his buttocks, and kissed him, and it was no friendship kiss. It was a famished one, a kiss incited, even crazed by desires she couldn’t identify, just some sexual arcana that had swept her sense of reason away and left nothing but cringing nerves and raw, animal impulse.

Ernie seized up in the sudden shock and leaned back against a tree, his opened hands out—the roots of some moral reaction, perhaps: that though this was a woman he’d been in love with so long ago, she was married now, off-limits. But Patricia only pressed closer, slipping her tongue into his mouth and squeezing his buttocks with even more deliberation. Finally, threads of his resistence began to slacken. She moaned into his mouth, put her arm around his waist, and squeezed her groin to his.

Patricia’s mind raced in a desperate delirium. The suction of her kiss drew his tongue into her mouth. She was never even aware when she unbuttoned her blouse and bared her breasts. It was almost violent then, when she grabbed some of his long hair and urged his head lower.

His lips attached to an already swollen nipple and sucked. “Harder,” was the only word she uttered. She was cringing, like someone in a prickly heat desperate for relief . . . but the prickly heat here wasn’t rash; it was an agonized desire, the crudest horniness that blocked out all thoughts from her mind and simply demanded to be tended. Her groan was barely even feminine when her earlier whimsy came true: after sucking each nipple to a beating soreness, he licked up and down her throat, sucked lines in between her breasts, tonguing off the oyster juice she’d dribbled.

She moaned more, deeper in her throat. Then she grabbed his strong hand and coaxed it down the front of her shorts, beneath the panties, pushed some more and made him feel her there. Without hesitation, her own hand roved his crotch, her fingers testing the already throbbing rigidity. . . .

Then she prepared to haul his pants down and drag him to the ground, make him take her right there in the blazing sun.

She didn’t know what she was doing.

She was out of her mind. . . .

If this sudden departure from her traditional monogamous values could be thought of as a thing, that thing fell apart a second later, just as she was getting his pants open.

Her hand froze; then her eyes vaulted wide and her mouth shot open in a silent scream of self-outrage.

Oh, my God, oh, my God! What am I doing?

She quickly backed away from him, almost tripping over a tree root.

Ernie glared at her. “What the hell?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she blurted. “I-I-I . . . can’t!”

He stood there appalled, his pants open. “You’re shittin’ me! What the hell’s wrong with you, pullin’ such shit!”

Patricia’s shoulders slumped. Her face was beet red in shame. She fumbled to button her blouse. “I’m sorry,” she peeped.

“Damn it!” He refastened his jeans, clearly outraged. “Patricia, you cain’t be comin’ on to guys like that ‘n’ then changin’ yer mind!”

“I know. I’m sorry,” she said yet again.

His glare sharpened. “What, thought you’d git your kicks by gettin’ the big dumb country boy all worked up ‘n’ then pullin’ the plug?”

She shook her head desperately, fighting tears. “No, no, I’d never do something like that, not to you or anyone.”

“What then? What the hell’s your problem?”

“I’m . . . I’m married—”

“Married? Yeah, I know you’re married! And you were married a minute ago when you grabbed my hand ‘n’ put it down your pants! You were grabbin’ me by the hair to shove my face in yer boobs! Don’t sound to me like you were all that worried ‘bout cheatin’ on your husband!”

More embarrassment flushed over her. She struggled for something logical to say, but what could be logical about this? She was mystified at herself. I was about to have sex with him right here in broad daylight. I had every intention of doing that. . . . “Ernie, I don’t know what to say. Something just . . . came over me.” She rubbed her eyes. “I’ve just been . . . weird lately, for some reason. Since the day I got back. I haven’t been myself, and I can’t understand it for the life of me. For those last couple of minutes, I wasn’t even thinking. It’s like I was out of my mind.”

“Well, you are out of your mind for playin’ around with a fella like that,” he grumbled. But at least his frustration appeared to be abating. He sat down at the base of the tree and just shook his head.

Patricia stood in frustration of her own. Her breasts, nipples, and sex seemed to throb in objection, as though her mind had betrayed her body. All that desire building up, building up, about to be relieved, and now this guillotine of last-second morality. “I’m really sorry, Emie,” she kept apologizing.

His own frustration urged a laugh as the moment cooled down. “Well, at least we know now.”

“Know what?”

“That it is true what they say about oysters and fried cicadas.”

She shook her head, smiling. “Come on; let’s go back. I promise not to accost you.”

But Ernie had already stood back up; he didn’t seem to hear her. “I wonder what that’s all about. . . .” He was staring across the hill.

“Huh?”

“Look.”

Her eyes followed his finger.

The town police car was parked at the Stanherd house, its red and blue lights flashing.

“Never seen nothin’ like it,” Sergeant Trey was telling them in the foyer of the old Stanherd house. It had been so long since Patricia had been inside the dilapidated plantation house that seeing it now refreshed no memories. Nothing had been replaced, just repaired, however expertly, such that she could’ve just walked through a time warp, back to the 1850s.

“And I guarantee there ain’t never been nothin’ like it, ever, in Squatterville before, and not in Agan’s Point either,” Trey finished. “Except for Dwayne last week, we ain’t never had a murder in these parts. And like that?”

It was too much information too fast. She and Ernie had jogged up to the house upon seeing the cruiser’s flashing lights, when Sergeant Trey had told them that two of the clan’s elders, Wilfrud and Ethel Hild, had been murdered. Patricia thought she remembered the name, but simply couldn’t place faces that far back.

“Craziest thing I ever heard,” Ernie murmured.

The old house smelled of incense, potpourri, and handmade candles. It stood in dead silence, like something watching them in disapproval. Wide, bare-wood stairs led up into darkness at one end of the foyer, but Trey showed them through a sitting room full of throw rugs, faded, intricately patterned wallpaper, and sunlight filtering through dusty bay windows.

“Is the house empty?” Patricia asked.

“Only one here’s Marthe,” Trey said.

Everd’s wife, Patricia remembered. “So the Hilds lived in the house too?”

“Yeah, along with some of the older couples. All the men are out on the crabbing boats. That’s why Everd ain’t here. And the women are all out gatherin’ for the picnic comin’ up. Ain’t gonna be much of a picnic now. Shit.”

He took them deeper into the house’s first floor, and more sun-edged darkness. No pictures hung on the walls, which seemed strange, but instead all kinds of inexplicable handmade decorations: corn-husk flowers, oyster-shell mosaics, and crosses, of course, some that appeared to be made of small-animal bones. In frames, she also noticed more of those squiggly designs, their mystical good-luck sign.

In the room farthest in back, Chief Sutter was grimly taking pictures with a Polaroid, and making notes. From his face he looked like a man experiencing stomach pains.

“You tell ’em?” he asked Trey.

His deputy nodded.

“Damnedest thing. Murders. In Squatterville, of all places.”

Patricia frowned her confusion. “Chief, I don’t understand. The Hilds were murdered? Where are the bodies?”

“No, no, they weren’t murdered here. Couple miles away, on the Point’s where their bodies were found. Old Man Halm came across ’em doin’ his morning walk. So me ‘n’ Trey checked it out.” He put his notebook down next to the camera, then sat down on a big poster bed that must have been fifty years old. A purplish stone hung above the bed from a piece of red yarn, and on the nightstand sat a jar of what appeared to be pickled eggs.

“What’s that in the jar?” she asked. “Eggs?”

“They call ‘em creek eggs,” Ernie said. “Just regular hen’s eggs that they bury in a creek bed for a coupla months, turns ’em black. Supposed to ward off sickness, more clan superstition.”

“Rotten eggs,” Sutter muttered. “What a bunch of loonies.”

“Stinks something fierce if ya open that jar.”

Gross, Patricia thought.

The rest of the room stood as sparse as the house: a cane chair and small walnut table for a desk. A closet full of clothes. A claw-foot dresser and some candles in metal holders. Above the bed hung a cross made of acorns glued together, and below it, yet another of the good-luck designs.

Guess it didn’t bring them much in the way of luck.

“Shit, poor Marthe’s sittin’ in the other room practically in shock.” Sutter rubbed his big face. “Couldn’t get nothin’ out of her when I was questionin’ her. Trey, go in and see if she’s all right.”

Trey nodded again and left the room.

“You were taking pictures,” Patricia pointed out.

“Yeah, evidence. We’re just a small-town department, Patricia, so whenever something happens here that qualifies as a major crime, we write up the report and collect whatever evidence there is, then turn it over to the county sheriff’s. They’ll be doin’ the investigation. Right now, the county coroner’s office is out on the Point, pickin’ up the bodies.”

“But if the Hilds were murdered several miles away . . . why are you treating this bedroom like the crime scene?”

“‘Cos it is, now that I looked around.” His hand tiredly gestured the closet and some open dresser drawers. “The Hilds were murdered like a city drug execution. Are ya squeamish?”

“Try me,” Patricia said.

“Ethel was stripped naked and chopped in half at the waist with an ax. Wilfrud was tied to a tree and knifed. And he had a couple bags a’ crystal meth in his pocket.” He pointed again to the closet and dresser. “Then look what I find in there.”

Under some linens in the dresser drawer, she noticed dozens of little plastic bags containing either yellowish granules or yellowish chunks of something that looked like pieces of rock salt.

“Crystal meth,” Sutter said. “Redneck crack. In the city where you live, crack is the big drug, but out here in the boondocks? That stuff’s the ticket. They snort it, smoke it, shoot it up—one of them little bags costs a couple bucks to produce; then they sell it for twenty. It’s superspeed, keeps ya high for eight hours. And it’s just as addictive as crack.”

Patricia looked at the bags, astonished. “The Hilds were using this stuff?”

“Not using, selling, it looks like. See all that other stuff in the closet?”

A large plastic bag sat on the closet floor. When Patricia opened it, she couldn’t have been more bewildered.

“Matches?” Ernie said when he looked in too.

There must’ve been a hundred of them in the bag: matchbooks. Just plain old everyday books of matches. “What does this have to do with—”

“It’s part of the process. Meth-heads soak the matches in some kind of solvent to get some chemical out of it—not the matches themselves, but the strike pads on each book. Then, up there on top, that’s the main ingredient.”

On the closet shelf sat about a dozen bottles of store-brand allergy and sinus medication that could be purchased over the counter in any drugstore.

“They soak the cold medicine in alcohol, then boil it and filter it,” Sutter informed her. “That becomes the base for the crystal meth. Then they mix it with the stuff from the strike pad and add some kind of iodine compound, and cook it all down and distill it. I don’t know the whole process—it’s pretty complicated. But any cop in the world’ll tell you that’s what Wilfrud and Ethel Hild were into.”

“Cain’t believe it,” Ernie said. “I known Wilfrud ‘n’ Ethel all my life. They were weird, sure. But drug dealers?”

“More than dealers,” Sutter reminded him. “Producers. It takes all kinds, Ernie, and sometimes—a lot of the time, actually—people ain’t what they seem.”

Patricia supposed he was right about that. Sometimes people changed, became corrupted, and not much else could corrupt a person’s values more effectively than poverty. But this was utterly shocking. With all her education, and all her experience living in a large modern city, Patricia was inclined to think that she knew a lot about human nature and the world in general. But now she felt oblivious, even ignorant.

This was a different world from hers.

Chief Sutter rose, walked his girth to the open window, and what he said next provided an eerie accompaniment to what Patricia had just been thinking. “There’s a secret world out there that folks like us either don’t see or just forget about’cos it don’t affect us.” He was looking out at the fringes of Squatterville, the ragtag tract of Judy’s land covered with tin shacks and old trailers. “And the world of crystal meth is right out there somewhere, right under our noses. The shit’s been poppin’ up more and more in our country over the past few years. Shit, just the other day me ‘n’ Trey caught a couple of punks from out of town tryin’ to sell this selfsame shit down here. Crystal fuckin’ meth.” Then he pointed out the window. “And all that out there is why they call it redneck crack. Any one of them little shacks or trailers could be a meth lab.”

Patricia knew she couldn’t not believe it; that would be naive. And what’s Judy’s reaction going to be when she learns that some of her Squatters are selling hard drugs?

“So you say Wilfrud and Ethel were murdered by other drug dealers?” Ernie asked.

“Had to have been,” Sutter answered. “That’s how these people do it—real psycho. The Hilds’ operation must’ve been cutting in on someone else’s territory.”

“The same thing happens in the city with the crack gangs.” Patricia at least knew that much. Just a month ago in the Post she’d read about how drug dealers would kidnap and dismember the girlfriends of rival dealers. “In the corporate world you buy out the competition, but in the drug world you kill the competition.”

“Sure.” Sutter knew as well. “Old as history. The Hilds were probably movin’ in on someone else’s turf, and now they got themselves killed for it.”

Car doors could be heard thunking from outside.

“Now the fun starts,” Sutter muttered. “You two better git on back to Judy’s. County sheriff’s just pulled up, and when they see all that shit in the closet, they’ll be callin’ the state narcotics squad.”

“Do you think they’ll get warrants to search all the

Squatters’ homes?” Patricia asked.

“Oh, I’m sure. Let’s just hope this is isolated. If there was a whole lot of other Squatters workin’ with the Hilds, we’re all in for a big headache.”

Patricia and Ernie walked back out to the foyer with Sutter. The door stood open in another room; inside, Sergeant Trey could be seen quietly questioning a very shaken Marthe Stanherd. The thin, elderly woman looked like a bowed scarecrow as she murmured answers to Trey’s queries.

Trouble in paradise, Patricia thought. Serious trouble . . .

She and Ernie slipped out, leaving Chief Sutter to brief the incoming county officers. As they walked back across the rising hill—the sun beating down, and the cicadas out en masse—Patricia took another glance back at the humble sheds and shacks of Squatterville, and wondered if last night’s brutal murders were a fluke, or a new beginning for Agan’s Point.

The fringes of Squatterville were marked with small, uneven vegetable patches that the clan’s children would tend, mostly spring onions, soy beans, radishes. Patricia thought of Marthe Stanherd once more when she spied a genuine scarecrow mounted at the field’s edge: old straw-stuffed clothes and a grimacing potato-sack face beneath a corroded hat. The crucified thing seemed to reach out to them with skeletal hands fashioned from twigs.

Around its neck hung, not a cross, but a small wooden board acrawl with elaborate squiggles. . . .

“Patricia! Goodness!” Judy called to her the instant she stepped into the kitchen. Despite last night’s overindulgence with liquor, and the mental aftermath of her husband’s funeral, Judy looked peppy, vibrant, her grayish-red hair flowing in a mane around her face. “Byron called and he’s worried sick about you! Shame on you for not calling him!”

The exclamation caught Patricia totally off guard. “Byron called the house?”

“Yes,” Judy sternly replied. “A little while ago. He said he’s been leaving messages on your cell phone since yesterday.”

Oh, God . . .

Judy wagged a scolding finger. “Don’t you dare neglect that wonderful husband of yours—”

Ernie stepped up, interrupting. “Uh, Judy, lemme talk to ya a minute. The police are at the Stanherd house right now. There was some bad trouble last night. . . .”

Patricia edged away, leaving Ernie to make the grim report of the Hilds’ murders to her sister. She was back in her room in a few seconds, then retrieved her cell phone and called Byron.

“Oh, God, I was so worried, honey,” he expressed. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, Byron, I’m fine—”

“I left messages and you never called back, so I thought—”

“Everything’s fine, honey,” she said, feeling like a complete lout. What could she say? “Things were just so busy here with the funeral service and the reception, and all the people. There’re so many people here who remember me—I didn’t really expect that.”

“But that was all yesterday, right?”

“Well, yes—”

“So why didn’t you call me this morning?”

Patricia stalled. She looked, horrified, to the clock: it was almost noon. “I’m so sorry. I slept late—I was so exhausted. Then I went for a walk to get the gears turning. But I was going to call you when I got back, and I just got back a minute ago.” She frowned at herself. Now she was simply lying. How could she tell her own husband that she’d completely forgotten about him? That she’d been out “for a walk,” all right, with a man she’d been having sexual fantasies about and . . . and . . . And whom I practically just screwed in the woods? she finished for herself.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I’m overreacting. I know how that place distresses you. Plus, I just . . .” There was a pause on the phone. “I guess I’m just a big, whiny, insecure pud, but I had a horrible dream last night that you were having sex with another man.”

Someone should’ve given Patricia an Oscar for the skill and immediacy with which she next tossed her head back and laughed and said, “Oh, Byron, you’re so ridiculous sometimes. There’s not one solitary man in Agan’s Point who isn’t a redneck hayseed with a busted-up pickup truck. At least have enough respect for me to dream that I’m getting it on with Tom Cruise or Johnny Depp, someone like that.” But even through her recital, she was thinking, Holy, holy, holy shit!

Now—to Patricia’s relief—Byron laughed. “Yeah, I guess it was a pretty dumb dream. I’m just glad everything’s okay.”

Finally she had the opportunity to change the subject but to something not so okay. “Actually, there was a big shocker just this morning. The police have been here—”

“Police?”

“—and evidently two of the Squatters who live on my sister’s land were murdered last night.”

“What!” he exclaimed.

“Yeah, it’s the craziest thing. There have never been murders here ever; then all of a sudden Dwayne gets killed, and now this.”

“I want you out of there right now,” Byron insisted. “Sounds like that backward boondocks place is boiling over. Get in the car right now and come home!”

“Byron, now you are overreacting. It was drug-related, the police said, and it happened miles away out in the woods. Judy’s just finding out about it now, but even though it’s tragic and all that, it’s nothing for us to get all worked up over. A Squatter couple were secretly dealing drugs, and they got murdered by a rival drug gang—that sort of thing. It’s not like there’s a serial killer prowling Agan’s Point.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” Byron affirmed. “The funeral’s over and done with, so there’s no reason for you to stay. You hate the place anyway.”

“Byron, the whole reason I came in the first place was to give my unstable and fairly heavily drinking sister some support in her time of need. I’ll be back next week, just as we planned.”

“Well, all right. But I still don’t like it. And you need to call me—”

“I will, honey,” she promised. “Most of the commotion’s over now, so there won’t be any more distractions. And once I got Judy back on her feet, I’ll be home in a flash.”

“Good.” He paused. “I really miss you and I really love you. You’ve only been gone for a few days and I’m already realizing how important you are to me. I guess I don’t show it much. . . .”

“Byron, of course you do, so stop it.” She truly did love him—more than anything—and she did want to get back to be with him. Her little mishap in the woods with Ernie was just a fluke brought on by the stress of being back; it was simply a loss of control in a moment run amok. I do love Byron, she attested to herself. Ernie was no more than a man in a magazine ad whom she’d happened to notice.

On the other hand—and as loving and genuine as he was—Byron did have his moments of insecurity. He was an overweight middle-aged man, and Patricia was still a well-endowed, beautiful woman. She knew it must be hard for him to deal with sometimes.

“You never have to ‘do’ things to prove your love to me,” she continued. “Just being you is the proof. Please remember that. And I love you too, very much. Remember that too.”

“I will,” he replied, a bit choked up.

“I’ll call tonight, and every night I’m here. And I haven’t forgotten. I even have a cooler.”

“What?”

“Your Agan’s Point crab cakes, silly!”

“Good. And the minute you get back here, I’m going to eat them off your beautiful, naked body. That’s a promise.”

“Byron, nothing turns me on more than culinary sex,” she said, laughing, and then they bade their final “good-byes” and “I love yous” and rang off.

Patricia lay back on the bed and let out a great sigh. The conversation left her relieved and ashamed at the same time, not a good combination. She had lied to him—little white lies, but lies just the same—and she had offered invented excuses, and maybe that was good, because it helped her confront something important about herself.

It’s all me. It’s not Byron. There’s nothing wrong with my marriage, and there’s nothing wrong with him. So . . .

And the coincidence jolted her. He’s been having dreams about me cheating on him, and I’ve been having dreams about me cheating on him. And today, with Ernie, I almost did cheat on him.

It was with a total spontaneity that she roved through her cell phone’s address book and found herself looking at Dr. Sallee’s number, and before she knew what she was doing, the line was ringing.

He probably doesn’t even remember me, she thought. She’d seen him only once, when she and Byron had returned from Agan’s Point after Judy’s wedding. When the receptionist answered, she said, “Hi, my name’s Patricia White. I had a session with Dr. Sallee several years ago. I was wondering if I could arrange a phone consultation. I could give you my credit card number over the phone.”

“Is your home address still the same?”

“Yes.”

Keys were heard tapping. “Yes, we still have it on file.”

“Great. Then if possible could you give me a time to call back for a consultation?”

“One moment, please.”

As Patricia waited, she didn’t even know what she would say once she got the consultation. I don’t really even know why I called. . . .

“Dr. Sallee is available now,” the receptionist told her. “I’ll put him on.”

“Thank you—”

“Patricia White?” the next voice asked.

“Yes, Doctor. You probably don’t remember me but—”

“The real estate lawyer with blazing red hair—of course I remember. How are you?”

She was flattered he remembered her. “All in all, I’m fine, but . . . I’ve been having some problems for the last several days.”

“When you came to me last time, we’d nailed your problem in general as a reactive symptom of monopolar depression. You’d left town to attend your sister’s wedding, at a place called . . .”

“Agan’s Point,” she helped him.

“Yes, the crabbing town. Your depression was activated by memories of a sexual trauma—a rape—that you suffered at age sixteen. We agreed that this depression was entirely location triggered, and decided that as long as you kept your distance from Agan’s Point, the depression would not recur. I presumed this theory worked, because I never heard from you again. Am I wrong?”

“It did work,” she said. “I felt fine after that and have for the last five years. But for the last few—”

“Where are you right now, exactly?” he interrupted.

“Agan’s Point,” she slowly admitted. “This time for a funeral—my sister’s husband.”

Dr. Sallee’s voice came after a long pause. “That’s regrettable. So your depression has recurred. . . .”

“No, that’s the surprising part. It’s almost the opposite. For the days I’ve been back in Agan’s Point, I haven’t felt depressed at all. I’ve felt great; I’ve felt enthused.”

“Strange,” the doctor said, “but considerable.”

Now Patricia mulled over words in her mind, trying to choose the right ones. “I don’t really know how to say it, but—”

“Just say it,” Dr. Sallee suggested.

The words leaked out slowly: “Something about coming back has made me feel more sexual than I’ve felt in years. It’s actually scaring me, and I’m beginning to feel out of control.” In spite of the miles between them, her face reddened. “I’m . . . masturbating much more than normal, and every night I have very intense sexual dreams, which is unusual for me—”

“Sexual dreams? Masturbation? There’s nothing abnormal about that,” the doctor told her. “This is all an aspect of passive sexuality. There’s nothing out of control about it.”

Passive sexuality, she thought. She was even more embarrassed to tell him the rest. Her throat choked up. “I’m almost ashamed to continue. . . .”

“Patricia”—he chuckled—“I’m your counselor. We’re essentially strangers, not to mention the fact that everything you say to me is in professional confidence. My rates are high, so you might as well get your money’s worth. Make me work for it. I can’t help you unless you tell me everything that leads you to think you’re out of control.”

It made perfect sense. So she said it: “I almost cheated on my husband about an hour ago. That’s never happened before. And I was going to do it. . . .”

Dr. Sallee didn’t seemed the least bit fazed. “Is there trouble in the marriage?”

“None,” she said. “It’s the best marriage any woman could ever ask for. I’ve never not been sexually fulfilled with my husband. We’re perfectly compatible in every way, even sexually—especially sexually.”

“Was the person you almost cheated with a stranger?”

“No. A boy—er, I should say a man my age—whom I grew up with. We were best friends since childhood.”

“Any sexual experiences with him in the past, before your marriage? A high school romance, perhaps, experimentation when you were younger—playing doctor, and the like?”

“No. I know he wanted that, but I was never interested back in those days. I was always very goal-oriented as an adolescent, and even through college.” Ernie, Ernie, Ernie, she thought. I never really noticed you over all those years. So why now? “I’ve seen him maybe three times since I left Agan’s Point over twenty years ago. But this time, when I came back for the funeral . . . something happened. I just all of a sudden find him very attractive.”

“Hmm,” came the counselor’s response. “From a clinical standpoint—so far, at least—this all sounds very good.”

The-remark astonished her. “Good? I’m in total turmoil!”

“I said from a clinical standpoint. In the past, whenever you returned to Agan’s Point, you’d become clinically depressed. Today you’ve returned to Agan’s Point, but you’re not depressed at all. You feel great—to use your own words of a moment ago. You feel enthused. Your depression is gone, so that’s a good thing.”

Now she saw his point, but he still wasn’t seeing hers. “Yes, I feel enthused, but I also feel very, very sexual—”

“To the point that you nearly committed an infidelity,” he added, “and this is what’s bothering you now.”

“Exactly. It doesn’t make sense. It makes me feel like I must be sick or something, because—”

“Because,” he kept finishing for her, “it doesn’t seem right for you to feel sexual in the very place that has always reminded you of the worst trauma of your life, which just so happened to be a sexual trauma.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” she said, sighing in relief that he’d made it easier for her.

His voice almost sounded bored as he continued. “In my job, I’ve had many patients who were victims of sexual abuse, multiple rape, sexual torture, and worse. You’d be surprised how many women, for instance, will go years or even decades without ever telling anyone—even their counselors—that they experienced orgasms during their trauma, because in their minds it seems wrong, it seems shameful, it seems sick to experience pleasure during a revolting ordeal. In truth, quite a considerable percentage of rape victims experience a sexual release, and it doesn’t mean they’re sick at all. It’s just their body reacting to a primordial function. It’s not sick, it’s not shameful, and its not abnormal.”

Patricia calculated this with a reserved interest. She, too, had experienced orgasm during her rape—the first orgasm of her life—and she’d never told anyone for the same reasons the doctor had just cited. I never even told Dr. Sallee, she realized, and now I guess I know why he never asked.

Suddenly there was a tear in her eye, but it was a quietly joyous one. “You have no idea how good that makes me feel.”

“I’m glad,” the doctor said. “And you should be glad, too, of a lot of things—at least based on what you’re telling me today. Most rape aftercare revolves not so much around psychotherapy, medication, and group counseling, but around the evolvement of the individual, coming to terms and dealing with it. It’s clear to me that you’ve done this.”

This was good to know, but it still didn’t solve her problem. “It’s like the old problem is gone, but now there’s a new one.”

“But is it a grievous one?” he asked, already knowing the answer. “Is it a debilitating one? No. In fact, it’s got nothing whatever to do with your trauma of so many years ago. Let me allegorize. Are you computer literate?”

She frowned at the question. “I think so. We have a network at the office, and I do all right.”

“Good, then I’ll use my favorite comparison on you.” He chuckled. “Lawyers tend to be objective thinkers; they deal in black-and-white terms. But this is not a black-and-white issue, is it? The human brain is the most sophisticated ‘thing’ in the world. Ten trillion brain cells, one hundred trillion synaptic connections. . Think of it as a computer. That computer is programed by the experiences of life, good and bad. Well, sometimes the files glitch; sometimes they get viruses and have to be cleansed. A rape, for instance, can be thought of as an infected file, a file gone bad, a file that’s no longer functioning in synchronicity with the other files it’s been programmed to operate with. When we can’t delete a bad file, we try to quarantine it, and sometimes we can’t even do that because the file is so out of sorts. Your rape experience is a bad file, Patricia. You’ve been quarantining it for years, which has worked, but now the computer is appending that file, to make it more serviceable to the system—rewriting the file. This is a sophomoric analogy, but it might help you understand. As far as your rape is concerned, the file has been rewritten; it no longer has a negative effect on the system.”

Dr. Sallee’s simile did let her see the problem in a clearer light. “But what about—”

“An unexplained heightened sexuality in a nonsexual setting?” he finished for her yet again. “Same thing, different program. Only in this case there was never a bad file. Think of it, instead, as a scheduled maintenance activation. The way a calendar program will flash reminders on your screen at a preset time?” Another chuckle. “You’re approaching your mid-forties, Patricia, which is the actual sexual peak for most women. Consciously, you’ve been groomed by your social and professional environment—a very specific environment. You’ve never wanted children, for instance, because it doesn’t suit the course you’ve chosen for your life, and part of the reason you chose your mate is because he doesn’t want children, either. Some people simply don’t, but all people—all mammals, in fact—have an inborn instinct to reproduce. It’s in our genes whether we like it or not. It’s in our brains, our computers, so to speak-it’s one of the operations programs. . As we get older—women, especially—that program begins to run faster, to try to become the priority over other programs. It’s trying to beat the inevitability of still one more program—one called menopause—an infertility program. In ten years—less, perhaps—your body knows that you will no longer be able to reproduce, so it’s lighting up your sexual awareness, going for that last chance of reproductive success. It’s all genetic, subconscious. It exists independent of your values and domestic and personal desires. What I’m trying to tell you, Patricia, is that an inexplicable sexual spike at your age is perfectly commonplace. It has nothing to do with your rape, and it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. It doesn’t mean that you’re a tramp or a cheat or a deceptive person. All it means is that you’re a perfectly healthy middle-aged woman. For your entire adulthood, you’ve excelled in everything, and you’ve been in total control of yourself. You still are. The reason it’s happening now is simply because you’re in a different place, away from your spouse, and your subconscious mind is selecting ‘targets’ of sexual opportunity. Almost every single female patient I have in your age group is experiencing the same thing. It’s normal, Patricia. And you won’t cheat on your husband even when it seems that your body and your mind want to. What’ll happen instead is you’ll return to your home soon and probably have a lot of great sex with your husband.”

Now Patricia was the one chuckling.

The doctor began to finish up. “But until you do return home, you’ll still experience this, so just be ready for it. It’s okay to masturbate; it’s okay to have sexually vivid dreams. It’s all part of your sexuality. The important thing is not to worry about it, and don’t get yourself worked up. Nobody knows you better than yourself, Patricia. You know you’re not going to cheat on your husband, don’t you?”

It was with every confidence now that she answered, “Yes.”

“In that case, I can say that I’m happy to have gotten to talk to you today, and unless there’s anything else bothering you, then we should hang up now so I won’t have to erroneously bill you for therapeutic services that I haven’t earned.”

The man was a hoot. ″Thank you very much, Doctor.”

“And thank you. The disappearance of your depression proves that . . . I must be a fairly good doctor.”

“That you are. Have a great day.”

Patricia hung up, feeling exuberant. I’m not a cheating, conniving sex maniac after all. And he’s right. I’m cured of my Agan’s Point depression. This knowledge was an optimal way to commence with the rest of the day.

With that off her mind, though, she was reminded of more serious matters. Judy, she thought. Just when she gets over one tragedy, she gets hit on the head with another one: the murder of the Hilds. By now, she was sure Ernie had explained what he knew of it, and Patricia supposed she should check on her soon to see how she was taking the news. But first . . .

She started up her laptop and went online. Her mailbox remained free of anything from the firm, so next she took to Googling around a little.

Crystal meth, she thought. She’d heard of it, of course, just errant pieces sometimes in the news, but she really didn’t know anything specific about it. In a moment, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s official Web site opened before her. A highly addictive Class II narcotic as defined by the Controlled Substances Act, she read. A superstimulant that produces long-lasting euphoric effects. When she added the word ingredients to her search, other, more obscure pages came up. Active ingredients: pseudoephedrine.

Never heard of it, she thought, until she read on and discovered that the chemical was derived from a complicated distillation and filtering process that began by dissolving over-the-counter allergy medications in certain types of solvent. She’d seen the cache of allergy remedies in the Hilds’ bedroom.

The next primary ingredient listed was a phosphorous compound called RD, something else she’d never heard of, but more recognition bloomed when she read the first few lines: that the easiest way for “guerrilla meth-heads” to obtain this compound was through another complicated distillation process using striker pads on paper matchbooks. Chief Sutter mentioned the same thing, she recalled, and she also recalled the veritable garbage bag full of matchbooks in the Hilds’ closet.

It’s hard to believe, she thought. The Hilds? But it didn’t matter how hard it was to believe; it still must be true. Judy wouldn’t believe it either, but she had a tendency to be naive. The Squatters are like her children, even the older ones. Nobody wants to believe their “children” manufacture hard drugs in secret.

And now they’d been brutally murdered by outside drug dealers.

Patricia read on. Crystal meth was a man-made stimulant; it didn’t occur in nature. Even small doses could last up to twelve hours, and the street price was relatively cheap: twenty dollars per dose. Clinical addiction rate? Around ninety percent, close to that of crack, and like cocaine it could be administered effectively several ways: snorting, injecting, smoking. The smoking form was called “ice,” (small crystalline chunks were placed in a pipe); the inhaled form was called “tweak” on the street.

Patricia was nearly amused when she came across the next street term: “redneck crack,” something Chief Sutter had mentioned. It was all logistical, she read. Cocaine was typically transported to large urban centers for the already existing market. It was harder to get, and riskier, because the base form for any type of cocaine was derived from the tropical coca shrub, which grew only in Africa and northern South America. But since crystal meth was synthetic, it could be produced anywhere, and didn’t require constituents that needed to be procured from other countries. Many a trailer park contained secret meth labs—hence the nickname of redneck crack. A thousand dollars’ worth of equipment and ingredients—all available at drugstores and hardware stores—could generate five to ten thousand in profit, if the person knew what he was doing. Crystal meth, in other words, was the perfect illicit drug for remote areas. . . .

Like Agan’s Point, Patricia deduced.

And, according to the government Web sites, crystal meth use was growing, reaching into society’s less accessible nooks and crannies. It was considered an epidemic in the drug culture, and like all narcotics it piggybacked HIV, hepatitis, and crime right along with it.

Jesus. And now this stuff is here. . . .

Patricia went back to the living room, dreading her sister’s reaction. Judy looked drawn-faced now, partly confused and partly infuriated. Ernie was pouring her some coffee as she mused: “I guess that’s the modem world. In the old days, people used to have stills in the woods and make their corn liquor. Now they’re making this stuff . . . this crystal stuff. And not just any people. My people. My Squatters.”

“It’s probably just isolated, Judy,″ Patricia said when she came in and sat down. She wanted to sound optimistic, but didn’t really know if that was honest or not.

“It was probably just the Hilds doing it.”

“You think you know people,” Judy said, oblivious. “You like them, you help them, and they seem perfectly normal, perfectly decent, hardworking folks. Then one day you find out the truth. I give ‘em a free place to live; I give ’em work when they ain’t really suited for work nowheres else. And they do this to me. They been takin’ the money I pay ’em to make this drug stuff. And we got a lotta Squatters on the Point. I’d be plumb stupid to think it was just the Hilds.”

“Aw, Judy, you don’t know that,” Ernie said. “I think it was just the Hilds. They was always a bit strange any-ways, more’n most of the Squatters. And may God forgive ‘em, but it looks to me like they got what was coming. Ain’t no way I believe there’s a whole lotta this goin’ on at the Point. These people are crabbers, for Christ’s sake. Everd’s got ‘em cowed like he’s Jesus Himself. The Squatters don’t even drink. I ain’t never even seen one smokin’ a cigarette or chewin’ chaw. They all think it’s a sin to drink ‘n’ smoke, so makin’ . hard drugs is ten times worse. The Hilds was bad apples, is all. Every basket has a few.”

Judy leaned backed in her chair, brushing hair from . her eyes as if exhausted. “But that’s all I been hearin’ lately. Squatters gettin’ in fights, Squatter’s turnin’ lazy at the line, Squatters leavin’ the Point ‘cos it ain’t good enough for ’em no more, like the work I give ‘em ain’t good enough. I’m hearing all the time these days that somea’ the prettier clan girls’re sellin’ theirselves—whorin’—but all Chief Sutter ‘n’ everyone else says is the same blamed thing. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Judy. They’re just a few bad apples.’ Well—Christmas!—it’s startin’ to look like we got the whole orchard goin’ bad.”

Wow, she’s really riled up, Patricia realized. This was rare. “Judy, I think you’re overreacting. It’s inevitable. Anywhere you go, bad elements can work their way in and have a negative effect on otherwise good people.”

“She right,” Ernie agreed. “You don’t need to be worryin’ about this, ‘specially after what’cha just been through.”

Judy’s large bosom fell as she sighed. “I guess things do change, no matter how bad we don’t want ’em to.” Her eyes sought out Patricia’s. “Mom and Dad never had problems with the Squatters, but the world ain’t the same place as it was back then.”

“No, it’s not,” Patricia said. “As society progresses, good things come with the progress, but so do some bad things.”

Now Judy’s eyes seemed to be looking more at herself than anywhere else. “I don’t know, Patricia. Maybe I really should just up ‘n’ sell the company, the Point, everything. Maybe it’s time.”

Oh, Lord. Here we go . . . The image of Gordon Felps flashed in her mind—and it was a shifty image. “You don’t need to be thinking about anything of the sort just yet. Things will probably be back to normal in no time.”

Another long sigh. “Gracious, I hope so. Ernie, will you get me a glass of wine, please? I need something to relax.”

“Sure.”

Great, Patricia thought. She’s going to get drunk again. “I’ll go fix lunch,” she offered, if only to keep things active. The day had turned sour fast: first notice of two murders as well as drug activity on her sister’s property, and now Judy all wound up again. At least one good thing happened, she thought with a slight smile. Her talk with Dr. Sallee left her feeling much better about her recent dreams and behavior. There’s nothing wrong with me, thank God. . . .

But when she headed for the kitchen, Ernie cast a quick glance at her when she passed. Was it a neutral look? Or did his eyes brush over her breasts? Just my imagination, she insisted. He’d been quite a gentleman in the aftermath. But she couldn’t shed the reminder. Dr. Sallee or not, she was attracted to him, and—

I almost had sex with him today—in the woods. . . .

She busied herself over cold cuts in the kitchen, preparing sandwiches. A simple cross hung by the bright window—a normal cross—but for whatever reason she was reminded of the much stranger crosses used by the Squatters, and their bizarre good-luck charms. She truly did believe that the Hild tragedy was isolated, but somewhere deeper in her spirit she feared that something else just as bad was about to happen.