Sam had never realized just how terrible such an idea could be. He had seen movies where some fellow would go to see a psychiatrist and say, 'I feel like I'm losing my mind, doc,' while dramatically clutching his head, and he supposed he had come to equate the onset of mental instability with an Excedrin headache. It wasn't like that, he discovered as the long hours passed and April 7 gradually became April 8. It was more like reaching down to scratch your balls and finding a large lump there, a lump that was probably a tumor of some kind. The Library couldn't have changed so radically in just over a week. He couldn't have seen the skylights from the reading room. The girl, Cynthia Berrigan, had said they were boarded over, had been since she had arrived, at least a year ago. So this was some sort of a mental breakdown. Or a brain tumor. Or what about Alzheimer's disease? There was a pleasant thought. He had read someplace  Newsweek, perhaps  that Alzheimer's victims were getting younger and younger. Maybe the whole weird episode was a signal of creeping, premature senility. An unpleasant billboard began to fill his thoughts, a billboard with three words written on it in greasy letters the color of red licorice. These words were LOSING MY MIND. He had lived an ordinary life, full of ordinary pleasures and ordinary regrets; a prettymuchunexamined life. He had never seen his name in lights, true, but he had never had any reason to question his sanity, either. Now he found himself lying in his rumpled bed and wondering if this was how you came untethered from the real, rational world. If this was how it started when you LOST YOUR MIND. The idea that the angel of Junction City's homeless shelter was Naomi  Naomi going under an alias  was another nutso idea. It just couldn't be ... could it? He even began to question the strong upsurge in his business. Maybe he had hallucinated the whole thing. Toward midnight, his thoughts turned to Ardelia Lortz, and that was when things really began to get bad. He began to think of how awful it would be if Ardelia Lortz was in his closet, or even under his bed. He saw her grinning happily, secretly, in the dark, wriggling fingers tipped with long, sharp nails, her hair sprayed out all around her face in a weird frightwig. He imagined how his bones would turn to jelly if she began to whisper to him. You lost the books, Sam, so it will have to be the Library Policeman ... you lost the books ... you looosssst them ... At last, around twelvethirty, Sam couldn't stand it any longer. He sat up and fumbled in the dark for the bedside lamp. And as he did, he was gripped by a new fantasy, one so vivid it was almost a certainty he was not alone in his bedroom, but his visitor was not Ardelia Lortz. Oh no. His visitor was the Library Policeman from the poster that was no longer in the Children's Library. He was standing here in the dark, a tall, pale man wrapped in a trenchcoat, a man with a bad complexion and a white, jagged scar lying across his left cheek, below his left eye and over the bridge of his nose. Sam hadn't seen that scar on the face in the poster, but that was only because the artist hadn't wanted to put it in. It was there. Sam knew it was there. You were wrong about the bushes, the Library Policeman would say in his lightly lisping voice. There are bushes growing along the sideth. Loth of bushes. And we're going to ecthplore them. We're going to ecthplore them together. No! Stop it! Just . . . STOP it! As his trembling hand finally found the lamp, a board creaked in the room and he uttered a breathless little scream. His hand clenched, squeezing the switch. The light came on. For a moment he actually thought he saw the tall man, and then he realized it was only a shadow cast on the wall by the bureau. Sam swung his feet out onto the floor and put his face in his hands for a moment. Then he reached for the pack of Kents on the nightstand. 'You've got to get hold of yourself,' he muttered. 'What the fuck were you thinking about?' I don't know, the voice inside responded promptly. Furthermore, I don't want to know. Ever. The bushes were a long time ago, I never have to remember the bushes again. Or the taste. That sweet sweet taste. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. The worst thing was this Next time he might really see the man in the trenchcoat. Or Ardelia. Or Gorgo, High Emperor of Pellucidar. Because if he'd been able to create a hallucination as complete as his visit to the Library and his meeting with Ardelia Lortz, he could hallucinate anything. Once you started thinking about skylights that weren't there, and people who weren't there, and even bushes that weren't there, everything seemed possible. How did you quell a rebellion in your own mind? He went down to the kitchen, turning on lights as he went, resisting an urge to look over his shoulder and see if anyone was creeping after him. A man with a badge in his hand, for instance. He supposed that what he needed was a sleeping pill, but since he didn't have any  not even one of the overthecounter preparations like Sominex  he would just have to improvise. He splashed milk into a saucepan, heated it, poured it into a coffee mug, and then added a healthy shot of brandy. This was something else he had seen in the movies. He took a taste, grimaced, almost poured the evil mixture down the sink, and then looked at the clock on the microwave. Quarter to one in the morning. It was a long time until dawn, a long time to spend imagining Ardelia Lortz and the Library Policeman creeping up the stairs with knives gripped between their teeth. Or arrows, he thought. Long black arrows. Ardelia and the Library Policeman creeping up the stairs with long black arrows clamped between their teeth. How about that image, friends and neighbors? Arrows? Why arrows? He didn't want to think about it. He was tired of thoughts which came whizzing out of the previously unsuspected darkness inside him like horrid, stinking Frisbees. I don't want to think about it, I won't think about it. He finished the laced milk and went back to bed. 4 He left the bedside lamp on, and that made him feel a little calmer. He actually began to think he might go to sleep at some point before the heatdeath of the universe. He pulled the comforter up to his chin, laced his hands behind his head, and looked at the ceiling. SOME Of it must have really happened, he thought. It can't ALL have been a hallucination ... unless this is Part of It, and I'm really in one of the rubber rooms up in Cedar Rapids, wrapped in a straitjacket and only imagining I'm lying here in my own bed. He had delivered the speech. He had used the jokes from The Speaker's Companion, and Spencer Michael Free's verse from Best Loved Poems of the American People. And since he had neither volume in his own small collection of books, he must have gotten them from the Library. Naomi had known Ardelia Lortz  had known her name, anyway  and so had Naomi's mother. Had she! It was as if he'd set a firecracker off under her easy chair. I can check around, he thought. If Mrs Higgins knows the name, other people will, too. Not workstudy kids from Chapelton, maybe, but people who've been in Junction City a long time. Frank Stephens, maybe. Or Dirty Dave ... At this point, Sam finally drifted off. He crossed the almost seamless border between waking and sleeping without knowing it; his thoughts never ceased but began instead to twist themselves into ever more strange and fabulous shapes. The shapes became a dream. And the dream became a nightmare. He was at Angle Street again, and the three alkies were on the porch, laboring over their posters. He asked Dirty Dave what he was doing. Aw, just passin the time, Dave said, and then, shyly, he turned the poster around so Sam could see it. It was a picture of Simple Simon. He had been impaled on a spit over an open fire. He was clutching a great bundle of melting red licorice in one hand. His clothes were burning but he was still alive. He was screaming. The words written above this terrible image were CHILDREN DINNER IN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY BUSHES TO BENEFIT THE LIBRARY POLICE FUND MIDNITE TO 2 A. M. COME ONE COME ALL 'THAT'S CHOWDEDOW!' Dave, that's horrible, Sam said in the dream. Not at all. Dirty Dave replied. The children call him Simple Simon. They love to eat him. I think that's very healthy, don't you? Look! Rudolph cried. Look, it's Sarah! Sam looked up and saw Naomi crossing the littered, weedy ground between Angle Street and the Recycling Center. She was moving very slowly, because she was pushing a shopping cart filled with copies of The Speaker's Companion and Best Loved Poems of the American People. Behind her, the sun was going down in a sullen furnace glare of red light and a long passenger train was rumbling slowly along the track, headed out into the emptiness of western Iowa. It was at least thirty coaches long, and every car was black. Crepe hung and swung in the windows. It was a funeral train, Sam realized. Sam turned back to Dirty Dave and said, Her name isn't Sarah. That's Naomi. Naomi Higgins from Proverbia. Not at all, Dirty Dave said. It's Death coming, Mr Peebles. Death is a woman. Lukey began to squeal then. In the extremity of his terror he sounded like a human pig. She got Slim Jims! She got Slim Jims! Oh my God, she got all Slim Fuckin Slim Jims! Sam turned back to see what Lukey was talking about. The woman was closer, but it was no longer Naomi. It was Ardelia. She was dressed in a trenchcoat the color of a winter stormcloud. The shopping cart was not full of Slim Jims, as Lukey had said, but thousands of intertwined red licorice whips. While Sam watched, Ardelia snatched up handfuls of them and began to cram them into her mouth. Her teeth were no longer dentures; they were long and discolored. They looked like vampire teeth to Sam, both sharp and horribly strong. Grimacing, she bit down on her mouthful of candy. Bright blood squirted out, spraying a pink cloud in the sunset air and dribbling down her chin. Severed chunks of licorice tumbled to the weedy earth, still jetting blood. She raised hands which had become hooked talons. 'Youuuu losst the BOOOOOKS!' she screamed at Sam, and charged at him. 5 Sam came awake in a breathless jerk. He had pulled all the bedclothes loose from their moorings, and was huddled beneath them near the foot of the bed in a sweaty ball. Outside, the first thin light of a new day was peeking under the drawn shade. The bedside clock said it was 553 A.M. He got up, the bedroom air cool and refreshing on his sweaty skin, went into the bathroom, and urinated. His head ached vaguely, either as a result of the earlymorning shot of brandy or stress from the dream. He opened the medicine cabinet, took two aspirin, and then shambled back to the bed. He pulled the covers up as best he could, feeling the residue of his nightmare in every damp fold of sheet. He wouldn't go back to sleep again  he knew that  but he could at least lie here until the nightmare started to dissolve. As his head touched the pillow, he suddenly realized he knew something else, something as surprising and unexpected as his sudden understanding that the woman in Dirty Dave's poster had been his parttime secretary. This new understanding also had to do with Dirty Dave ... and with Ardelia Lortz. It was a dream, he thought. That's where I found out. Sam fell into a deep, natural sleep. There were no more dreams and when he woke up it was almost eleven o'clock. Churchbells were calling the faithful to worship, and outside it was a beautiful day. The sight of all that sunshine lying on all that bright new grass did more than make him feel good; it made him feel almost reborn. CHAPTER 8 Angle Street (II) 1 He made himself brunch  orange juice, a threeegg omelette loaded with green onions, lots of strong coffee  and thought about going back to Angle Street. He could still remember the moment of illumination he had experienced during his brief period of waking and was perfectly sure that his insight was true, but he wondered if he really wanted to pursue this crazy business any further. In the bright light of a spring morning his fears of the previous night seemed both distant and absurd, and he felt a strong temptation  almost a need  to simply let the matter rest. Something had happened to him, he thought, something which had no reasonable, rational explanation. The question was, so what? He had read about such things, about ghosts and premonitions and possessions, but they held only minimal interest for him. He liked a spooky movie once in awhile, but that was about as far as it went. He was a practical man, and he could see no practical use for paranormal episodes ... if they did indeed occur. He had experienced ... well, call it an event, for want of a better word. Now the event was over. Why not leave it at that? Because she said she wanted the books back by tomorrow  what about that? But this seemed to have no power over him now. In spite of the message she had left on his answering machine, Sam no longer exactly believed in Ardelia Lortz. What did interest him was his own reaction to what had happened. He found himself remembering a college biology lecture. The instructor had begun by saying that the human body had an extremely efficient way of dealing with the incursion of alien organisms. Sam remembered the teacher saying that because the bad news  cancer, influenza, and sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis  got all the headlines, people tended to believe they were a lot more vulnerable to disease than they really were. 'The human body,' the instructor had said, 'has its own Green Beret force at its disposal. When the human body is attacked by an outsider, ladies and gentlemen, the response of this force is quick and without mercy. No quarter is given. Without this army of trained killers, each of you would have been dead twenty times over before the end of your first year.' The prime technique the body employed to rid itself of invaders was isolation. The invaders were first surrounded, cut off from the nutrients they needed to live, then either eaten, beaten, or starved. Now Sam was discovering  or thought he was  that the mind employed exactly the same technique when it was attacked. He could remember many occasions when he had felt he was coming down with a cold only to wake up the next morning feeling fine. The body had done its work. A vicious war had been going on even as he slept, and the invaders had been wiped out to the last man ... or bug. They had been eaten, beaten, or starved. Last night he had experienced the mental equivalent of an impending cold. This morning the invader, the threat to his clear, rational perceptions, had been surrounded. Cut off from its nutrients. Now it was only a matter of time. And part of him was warning the rest of him that, by investigating this business further, he might be feeding the enemy. This is how it happens, he thought. This is why the world isn't full of reports of strange happenings and inexplicable phenomena. The mind experiences them ... reels around for awhile ... then counterattacks. But he was curious. That was the thing. And didn't they say that, although curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought the beast back? Who? Who says? He didn't know ... but he supposed he could find out. At his local library. Sam smiled a little as he took his dishes over to the sink. And discovered he had already made his decision he would pursue this crazy business just a little further. Just a little bit. 2 Sam arrived back at Angle Street around twelvethirty. He was not terribly surprised to see Naomi's old blue Datsun parked in the driveway. Sam parked behind it, got out, and climbed the rickety steps past the sign telling him he'd have to drop any bottles he might have in the trash barrel. He knocked, but there was no answer. He pushed the door open, revealing a wide hall that was barren of furniture ... unless the pay telephone halfway down counted. The wallpaper was clean but faded. Sam saw a place where it had been mended with Scotch tape. 'Hello?' There was no answer. He went in, feeling like an intruder, and walked down the hall. The first door on the left opened into the common room. Two signs had been thumbtacked to this door. FRIENDS OF BILL ENTER HERE! read the top one. Below this was another, which seemed at once utterly sensible and exquisitively dumb to Sam. It read TIME TAKES TIME. The common room was furnished with mismatched, castoff chairs and a long sofa which had also been mended with tape  electrician's tape, this time. More slogans had been hung on the wall. There was a coffeemaker on a little table by the TV. Both the TV and the coffeemaker were off. Sam walked on down the hall past the stairs, feeling more like an intruder than ever. He glanced into the three other rooms which opened off the corridor. Each was furnished with two plain cots, and all were empty. The rooms were scrupulously clean, but they told their tales just the same. One smelled of Musterole. Another smelled unpleasantly of some deep sickness. Either someone has died recently in this room, Sam thought, or someone is going to. The kitchen, also empty, was at the far end of the hall. It was a big, sunny room with faded linoleum covering the floor in uneven dunes and valleys. A gigantic stove, combination wood and gas, filled an alcove. The sink was old and deep, its enamel discolored with rust stains. The faucets were equipped with oldfashioned propeller handles. An ancient Maytag washing machine and a gasfired Kenmore drier stood next to the pantry. The air smelled faintly of last night's baked beans. Sam liked the room. It spoke to him of pennies which had been pinched until they screamed, but it also spoke of love and care and some hardwon happiness. It reminded him of his grandmother's kitchen, and that had been a good place. A safe place. On the old restaurantsized Amana refrigerator was a magnetized plaque which read GOD BLESS OUR BOOZELESS HOME. Sam heard faint voices outside. He crossed the kitchen and looked through one of the windows, which had been raised to admit as much of the warm spring day as the mild breeze could coax in. The back lawn of Angle Street was showing the first touches of green; at the rear of the property, by a thin belt of justbudding trees, an idle vegetable garden waited for warmer days. To the left, a volleyball net sagged in a gentle arc. To the right were two horseshoe pits, just beginning to sprout a few weeds. It was not a prepossessing back yard  at this time of year, few country yards were  but Sam saw it had been raked at least once since the snow had released its winter grip, and there were no cinders, although he could see the steely shine of the railroad tracks less than fifty feet from the garden. The residents of Angle Street might not have a lot to take care of, he thought, but they were taking care of what they did have. About a dozen people were sitting on folding camp chairs in a rough circle between the volleyball net and the horseshoe pits. Sam recognized Naomi, Dave, Lukey, and Rudolph. A moment later he realized he also recognized Burt Iverson, Junction City's most prosperous lawyer, and Elmer Baskin, the banker who hadn't gotten to his Rotary speech but who had called later to congratulate him just the same. The breeze gusted, blowing back the homely checked curtains which hung at the sides of the window through which Sam was looking. It also ruffled Elmer's silver hair. Elmer turned his face up to the sun and smiled. Sam was struck by the simple pleasure he saw, not on Elmer's face but in it. At that moment he was both more and less than a small city's richest banker; he was every man who ever greeted spring after a long, cold winter, happy to still be alive, whole, and free of pain. Sam felt struck with unreality. It was weird enough that Naomi Higgins should be out here consorting with the unhomed winos of Junction City  and under another name, at that. To find that the town's most respected banker and one of its sharpest legal eagles were also here was a bit of a mindblower. A man in ragged green pants and a Cincinnati Bengals sweatshirt raised his hand. Rudolph pointed at him. 'My name's John, and I'm an alcoholic,' the man in the Bengals sweatshirt said. Sam backed away from the window quickly. His face felt hot. Now he felt not only like an intruder but a spy. He supposed they usually held their Sundaynoon AA meeting in the common room  the coffeepot suggested it, anyway  but today the weather had been so nice that they had taken their chairs outside. He bet it had been Naomi's idea. We'll be in church tomorrow morning, Mrs Higgins had said, and the first Baptist Youth Picnic of the season is tomorrow afternoon. Naomi has promised to help. He wondered if Mrs Higgins knew her daughter was spending the afternoon with the alkies instead of the Baptists and supposed she did. He thought he also understood why Naomi had abruptly decided two dates with Sam Peebles was enough. He had thought it was the religion thing at the time, and Naomi hadn't ever tried to suggest it was anything else. But after the first date, which had been a movie, she had agreed to go out with him again. After the second date, any romantic interest she'd had in him ceased. Or seemed to. The second date had been dinner. And he had ordered wine. Well for Christ's sake  how was I supposed to know she's an alcoholic? Am I a mindreader? The answer, of course, was he couldn't have known ... but his face felt hotter, just the same. Or maybe it's not booze ... or not just booze. Maybe she's got other problems, too. He also found himself wondering what would happen if Burt Iverson and Elmer Baskin, both powerful men, found out that he knew they belonged to the world's largest secret society. Maybe nothing; he didn't know enough about AA to be sure. He did know two things, however that the second A stood for Anonymous, and that these were men who could squash his rising business aspirations flat if they chose to do so. Sam decided to leave as quickly and quietly as he could. To his credit, this decision was not based on personal considerations. The people sitting out there on the back lawn of Angle Street shared a serious problem. He had discovered this by accident; he had no intention of staying and eavesdropping  on purpose. As he went back down the hallway again, he saw a pile of cutup paper resting on top of the pay phone. A stub of pencil had been tacked to the wall on a short length of string beside the phone. On impulse he took a sheet of the paper and printed a quick note on it. Dave, I stopped by this morning to see you, but nobody was around. I want to talk to you about a woman named Ardelia Lortz. I've got an idea you know who she is, and I'm anxious to find out about her. Will you give me a call this afternoon or this evening, if you get a chance? The number is 5558699. Thanks very much. He signed his name at the bottom, folded the sheet in half, and printed Dave's name on the fold. He thought briefly about taking it back down to the kitchen and putting it on the counter, but he didn't want any of them  Naomi most of all worrying that he might have seen them at their odd but perhaps helpful devotions. He propped it on top of the TV in the common room instead, with Dave's name facing out. He thought about placing a quarter for the telephone beside the note and then didn't. Dave might take that wrong. He left then, glad to be out in the sun again undiscovered. As he got back into his car, he saw the bumper sticker on Naomi's Datsun. LET GO AND LET GOD, it said. 'Better God than Ardelia,' Sam muttered, and backed out the driveway to the road. 3 By late afternoon, Sam's broken rest of the night before had begun to tell, and a vast sleepiness stole over him. He turned on the TV, found a CincinnatiBoston exhibition baseball game wending its slow way into the eighth inning, lay down on the sofa to watch it, and almost immediately dozed off. The telephone rang before the doze had a chance to spiral down into real sleep, and Sam got up to answer it, feeling woozy and disoriented. 'Hello?' 'You don't want to be talking about that woman,' Dirty Dave said with no preamble whatsoever. His voice was trembling at the far edge of control. 'You don't even want to be thinking about her.' How long are you Godless heathens going to go on throwing that woman in our faces? Do you think it's funny? Do you think it's clever? All of Sam's drowsiness was gone in an instant. 'Dave, what is it about that woman? Either people react as though she were the devil or they don't know anything about her. Who is she? What in the hell did she do to freak you out this way?' There was a long period of silence. Sam waited through it, his heart beating heavily in his chest and throat. He would have thought the connection had been broken if not for the sound of Dave's broken breathing in his ear. 'Mr Peebles,' he said at last, 'you've been a real good help to me over the years. You and some others helped me stay alive when I wasn't even sure I wanted to myself. But I can't talk about that bitch. I can't. And if you know what's good for you, you won't talk to anybody else about her, neither.' 'That sounds like a threat.' 'No!' Dave said. He sounded more than surprised; he sounded shocked. 'No I'm just warnin you, Mr Peebles, same as I'd do if I saw you wanderin around an old well where the weeds were all grown up so you couldn't see the hole. Don't talk about her and don't think about her. Let the dead stay dead.' Let the dead stay dead. In a way it didn't surprise him; everything that had happened (with, perhaps, the exception of the message left on his answering machine) pointed to the same conclusion that Ardelia Lortz was no longer among the living. He  Sam Peebles, smalltown realtor and insurance agent  had been speaking to a ghost without even knowing it. Spoken to her? Hell! Had done business with her! He had given her two bucks and she had given him a library card. So he was not exactly surprised ... but a deep chill began to radiate out along the white highways of his skeleton just the same. He looked down and saw pale knobs of gooseflesh standing out on his arms. You should have left it alone, part of his mind mourned. Didn't I tell you so? 'When did she die?' Sam asked. His voice sounded dull and listless to his own ears. 'I don't want to talk about it, Mr Peebles!' Dave sounded nearly frantic now. His voice trembled, skipped into a higher register which was almost falsetto. and splintered there. 'Please!' Leave him alone, Sam cried angrily at himself. Doesn't he have enough problems without this crap to worry about? Yes. And he could leave Dave alone  there must be other people in town who would talk to him about Ardelia Lortz ... if he could find a way to approach them that wouldn't make them want to call for the men with the butterfly nets, that was. But there was one other thing, a thing perhaps only Dirty Dave Duncan could tell him for sure. 'You drew some posters for the Library once, didn't you? I think I recognized your style from the poster you were doing yesterday on the porch. In fact, I'm almost sure. There was one showing a little boy in a black car. And a man in a trenchcoat  the Library Policeman. Did you  ' Before he could finish, Dave burst out with such a shriek of shame and grief and fear that Sam was silenced. 'Dave? I  ' 'Leave it alone!' Dave wept. 'I couldn't help myself, so can't you just please leave  ' His cries abruptly diminished and there was a rattle as someone took the phone from him. 'Stop it,' Naomi said. She sounded near tears herself, but she also sounded furious. 'Can't you just stop it, you horrible man?' 'Naomi  ' 'My name is Sarah when I'm here,' she said slowly, 'but I hate you equally under both names, Sam Peebles. I'm never going to set foot in your office again.' Her voice began to rise. 'Why couldn't you leave him alone? Why did you have to rake up all this old shit? Why?' Unnerved, hardly in control of himself, Sam said 'Why did you send me to the Library? If you didn't want me to meet her, Naomi, why did you send me to the goddam Library in the first place?' There was a gasp on the other end of the line. 'Naomi? Can we ' There was a click as she hung up the telephone. Connection broken. 4 Sam sat in his study until almost ninethirty, eating Tums and writing one name after another on the same legal pad he had used when composing the first draft of his speech, He would look at each name for a little while, then cross it off. Six years had seemed like a long time to spend in one place ... at least until tonight. Tonight it seemed like a much shorter period of time  a weekend, say. Craig Jones, he wrote. He stared at the name and thought, Craig might know about Ardelia ... but he'd want to know why I was interested. Did he know Craig well enough to answer that question truthfully? The answer to that question was a firm no. Craig was one of Junction City's younger lawyers, a real wannabe. They'd had a few business lunches ... and there was Rotary Club, of course ... and Craig had invited him to his house for dinner once. When they happened to meet on the street they spoke cordially, sometimes about business, more often about the weather. None of that added up to friendship, though, and if Sam meant to spill this nutty business to someone, he wanted it to be to a friend, not an associate that called him ole buddy after the second sloegin fizz. He scratched Craig's name off the list. He'd made two fairly close friends since coming to Junction City, one a physician's assistant with Dr Melden's practice, the other a city cop. Russ Frame, his PA friend, had jumped to a betterpaying family practice in Grand Rapids early in 1989. And since the first of January, Tom Wycliffe had been overseeing the Iowa State Patrol's new Traffic Control Board. He had fallen out of touch with both men since  he was slow making friends, and not good at keeping them, either. Which left him just where? Sam didn't know. He did know that Ardelia Lortz's name affected some people in Junction City like a satchel charge. He knew  or believed he knew  that he had met her even though she was dead. He couldn't even tell himself that he had met a relative, or some nutty woman calling herself Ardelia Lortz. Because I think I met a ghost. In fact, I think I met a ghost inside of a ghost. I think that the library I entered was the Junction City Library as it was when Ardelia Lortz was alive and in charge of the place. I think that's why it felt so weird and offkilter. It wasn't like timetravel, or the way I imagine timetravel would be. It was more like stepping into limbo for a little while. And it was real. I'm sure it was real. He paused, drumming his fingers on the desk. Where did she call me from? Do they have telephones in limbo? He stared at the list of crossedoff names for a long moment, then tore the yellow sheet slowly off the pad. He crumpled it up and tossed it in the wastebasket. You should have left it alone, part of him continued to mourn. But he hadn't. So now what? Call one of the guys you trust. Call Russ Frame or Tom Wycliffe. Just pick up the phone and make a call. But he didn't want to do that. Not tonight, at least. He recognized this as an irrational, halfsuperstitious feeling  he had given and gotten a lot of unpleasant information over the phone just lately, or so it seemed  but he was too tired to grapple with it tonight. If he could get a good night's sleep (and he thought he could, if he left the bedside lamp on again), maybe something better, something more concrete, would occur to him tomorrow morning, when he was fresh. Further along, he supposed he would have to try and mend his fences with Naomi Higgins and Dave Duncan ...


but first he wanted to find out just what kind of fences they were. If he could. CHAPTER 9 The Library Policeman (I) He did sleep well. There were no dreams, and an idea came to him naturally and easily in the shower the next morning, the way ideas sometimes did when your body was rested and your mind hadn't been awake long enough to get cluttered up with a load of shit. The Public Library was not the only place where information was available, and when it was local history  recent local history you were interested in, it wasn't even the best place. 'The Gazette!' he cried, and stuck his head under the shower nozzle to rinse the soap out of it. Twenty minutes later he was downstairs, dressed except for his coat and tie, and drinking coffee in his study. The legal pad was once more in front of him, and on it was the start of another list. 1. Ardelia Lortz  who is she? Or who was she? 2. Ardelia Lortz  what did she do? 3. Junction City Public Library  renovated? When? Pictures? At this point the doorbell rang. Sam glanced at the clock as he got up to answer it. It was going on eightthirty, time to get to work. He could shoot over to the Gazette office at ten, the time he usually took his coffee break, and check some back issues. Which ones? He was still mulling this over  some would undoubtedly bear fruit quicker than others  as he dug in his pocket for the paperboy's money. The doorbell rang again. 'I'm coming as fast as I can, Keith!' he called, stepping into the kitchen entryway and grabbing the doorknob. 'Don't punch a hole in the damn d ' At that moment he looked up and saw a shape much larger than Keith Jordan's bulking behind the sheer curtain hung across the window in the door. His mind had been preoccupied, more concerned with the day ahead than this Mondaymorning ritual of paying the newsboy, but in that instant an icepick of pure terror stabbed its way through his scattered thoughts. He did not have to see the face; even through the sheer he recognized the shape, the set of the body . . . and the trenchcoat, of course. The taste of red licorice, high, sweet, and sickening, flooded his mouth. He let go of the doorknob, but an instant too late. The latch had clicked back, and the moment it did, the figure standing on the back porch rammed the door open. Sam was thrown backward into the kitchen. He flailed his arms to keep his balance and managed to knock all three coats hanging from the rod in the entryway to the floor. The Library Policeman stepped in, wrapped in his own pocket of cold air. He stepped in slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, and closed the door behind him. In one hand he held Sam's copy of the Gazette, neatly rolled and folded. He raised it like a baton. 'I brought you your paper,' the Library Policeman said. His voice was strangely distant, as if it was coming to Sam through a heavy pane of glass. 'I was going to pay the boy as well, but he theemed in a hurry to get away. I wonder why.' He advanced toward the kitchen  toward Sam, who was cowering against the counter and staring at the intruder with the huge, shocked eyes of a terrified child, of some poor fourthgrade Simple Simon. I am imagining this, Sam thought, or I'm having a nightmare  a nightmare so horrible it makes the one I had two nights ago look like a sweet dream. But it was no nightmare. It was terrifying, but it was no nightmare. Sam had time to hope he had gone crazy after all. Insanity was no day at the beach, but nothing could be as awful as this manshaped thing which had come into his house, this thing which walked in its own wedge of winter. Sam's house was old and the ceilings were high, but the Library Policeman had to duck his head in the entry, and even in the kitchen the crown of his gray felt hat almost brushed the ceiling. That meant he was over seven feet tall. His body was wrapped in a trenchcoat the leaden color of fog at twilight. His skin was paper white. His face was dead, as if he could understand neither kindness nor love nor mercy. His mouth was set in lines of ultimate, passionless authority and Sam thought for one confused moment of how the closed library door had looked, like the slotted mouth in the face of a granite robot. The Library Policeman's eyes appeared to be silver circles which had been punctured by tiny shotgun pellets. They were rimmed with pinkishred flesh that looked ready to bleed. They were lashless. And the worst thing of all was this it was a face Sam knew. He did not think this was the first time he had cringed in terror beneath that black gaze, and far back in his mind, Sam heard a voice with the slightest trace of a lisp say Come with me, son ... I'm a poleethman. The scar overlaid the geography of that face exactly as it had in Sam's imagination  across the left cheek, below the left eye, across the bridge of the nose. Except for the scar, it was the man in the poster ... or was it? He could no longer be sure. Come with me, son ... I'm a poleethman. Sam Peebles, darling of the Junction City Rotary Club, wet his pants. He felt his bladder let go in a warm gush, but that seemed far away and unimportant. What was important was that there was a monster in his kitchen, and the most terrible thing about this monster was that Sam almost knew his face. Sam felt a triplelocked door far back in his mind straining to burst open. He never thought of running. The idea of flight was beyond his capacity to imagine. He was a child again, a child who has been caught redhanded (the book isn't The Speaker's Companion) doing some awful bad thing. Instead of running (the book isn't Best Loved Poems of the American People) he folded slowly over his own wet crotch and collapsed between the two stools which stood at the counter, holding his hands up blindly above his head. (the book is) 'No,' he said in a husky, strengthless voice. 'No, please  no, please, please don't do it to me, please, I'll be good, please don't hurt me that way.' He was reduced to this. But it didn't matter; the giant in the fogcolored trenchcoat (the book is The Black Arrow by Robert Louts Stevenson) now stood directly over him. Sam dropped his head. It seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. He looked at the floor and prayed incoherently that when he looked up  when he had the strength to look up  the figure would be gone. 'Look at me,' the distant, thudding voice instructed. It was the voice of an evil god. 'No,' Sam cried in a shrieky, breathless voice, and then burst into helpless tears. It was not just terror, although the terror was real enough, bad enough. Separate from it was a cold deep drift of childish fright and childish shame. Those feelings clung like poison syrup to whatever it was he dared not remember, the thing that had something to do with a book he had never read The Black Arrow, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Whack! Something struck Sam's head and he screamed. 'Look at me!' 'No, please don't make me,' Sam begged. Whack! He looked up, shielding his streaming eyes with one rubbery arm, just in time to see the Library Policeman's arm come down again. Whack! He was hitting Sam with Sam's own rolledup copy of the Gazette, whacking him the way you might whack a heedless puppy that has piddled on the floor. 'That'th better,' said the Library Policeman. He grinned, lips parting to reveal the points of sharp teeth, teeth which were almost fangs. He reached into the pocket of his trenchcoat and brought out a leather folder. He flipped it open and revealed the strange star of many points. It glinted in the clean morning light. Sam was now helpless to look away from that merciless face, those silver eyes with their tiny birdshot pupils. He was slobbering and knew it but was helpless to stop that, either. 'You have two books which belong to uth,' the Library Policeman said. His voice still seemed to be coming from a distance, or from behind a thick pane of glass. 'Mith Lorth is very upthet with you, Mr Peebles.' 'I lost them,' Sam said, beginning to cry harder. The thought of lying to this man about (The Black Arrow) the books, about anything, was out of the question. He was all authority, all power, all force. He was judge, jury, and executioner. Where's the janitor? Sam wondered incoherently. Where's the janitor who checks the dials and then goes back into the sane world? The sane world where things like this don't have to happen? 'I  I ... I ... I ... I' 'I don't want to hear your thick ecthcuses,' the Library Policeman said. He flipped his leather folder closed and stuffed it into his right pocket. At the same time he reached into his left pocket and drew out a knife with a long, sharp blade. Sam, who had spent three summers earning money for college as a stockboy, recognized it. It was a cartonslitter. There was undoubtedly a knife like that in every library in America. 'You have until midnight. Then. . .' He leaned down, extending the knife in one white, corpselike hand. That freezing envelope of air struck Sam's face, numbed it. He tried to scream and could produce only a glassy whisper of silent air. The tip of the blade pricked the flesh of his throat. It was like being pricked with an icicle. A single bead of scarlet oozed out and then froze solid, a tiny seedpearl of blood. ' . . . then I come again,' the Library Policeman said in his odd, lisprounded voice. 'You better find what you lotht, Mr Peebles.' The knife disappeared back into the pocket. The Library Policeman drew back up to his full height. 'There is another thing,' he said. 'You have been athking questions, Mr Peebles. Don't athk any more. Do you underthand me?' Sam tried to answer and could only utter a deep groan. The Library Policeman began to bend down, pushing chill air ahead of him the way the flat prow of a barge might push a chunk of riverice. 'Don't pry into things that don't conthern you. Do you underthand me?' 'Yes!' Sam screamed. 'Yes! Yes! Yes!' 'Good. Because I will be watching. And I am not alone.' He turned, his trenchcoat rustling, and recrossed the kitchen toward the entry. He spared not a single backward glance for Sam. He passed through a bright patch of morning sun as he went, and Sam saw a wonderful, terrible thing the Library Policeman cast no shadow. He reached the back door. He grasped the knob. Without turning around he said in a low, terrible voice 'If you don't want to thee me again, Mr Peebles, find those bookth.' He opened the door and went out. A single frantic thought filled Sam's mind the minute the door closed again and he heard the Library Policeman's feet on the back porch he had to lock the door. He got halfway to his feet and then grayness swam over him and he fell forward, unconscious. CHAPTER 10 Chronolodgeickalee Speaking 1 'May I ... help you?' the receptionist asked. The slight pause came as she took a second look at the man who had just approached the desk. 'Yes,' Sam said. 'I want to look at some back issues of the Gazette, if that's possible.' 'Of course it is,' she said. 'But  pardon me if I'm out of line  do you feel all right, sir? Your color is very bad.' 'I think I may be coming down with something, at that,' Sam said. 'Spring colds are the worst, aren't they?' she said, getting up. 'Come right through the gate at the end of the counter, Mr  ?' 'Peebles. Sam Peebles.' She stopped, a chubby woman of perhaps sixty, and cocked her head. She put one redtipped nail to the corner of her mouth. 'You sell insurance, don't you?' 'Yes, ma'am,' he said. 'I thought I recognized you. Your picture was in the paper last week. Was it some sort of award?' 'No, ma'am,' Sam said, 'I gave a speech. At the Rotary Club.' And would give anything to be able to turn back the clock, he thought. I'd tell Craig Jones to go fuck himself. 'Well, that's wonderful,' she said ... but she spoke as if there might be some doubt about it. 'You looked different in the picture.' Sam came in through the gate. 'I'm Doreen McGill,' the woman said, and put out a plump hand. Sam shook it and said he was pleased to meet her. It took an effort. He thought that speaking to people  and touching people, especially that  was going to be an effort for quite awhile to come. All of his old ease seemed to be gone. She led him toward a carpeted flight of stairs and flicked a lightswitch. The stairway was narrow, the overhead bulb dim, and Sam felt the horrors begin to crowd in on him at once. They came eagerly, as fans might congregate around a person offering free tickets to some fabulous soldout show. The Library Policeman could be down there, waiting in the dark. The Library Policeman with his dead white skin and redrimmed silver eyes and small but hauntingly familiar lisp. Stop it, he told himself. And if you can't stop it, then for God's sake control it. You have to. Because this is your only chance. What will you do if you can't go down a flight of stairs to a simple office basement? Just cower in your house and wait for midnight? 'That's the morgue,' Doreen McGill said, pointing. This was clearly a lady who pointed every chance she got. 'You only have to  ' 'Morgue?' Sam asked, turning toward her. His heart had begun to knock nastily against his ribs. 'Morgue?' Doreen McGill laughed. 'Everyone says it just like that. It's awful, isn't it? But that's what they call it. Some silly newspaper tradition, I guess. Don't worry, Mr Peebles  there are no bodies down there; just reels and reels of microfilm.' I wouldn't be so sure, Sam thought, following her down the carpeted stairs. He was very glad she was leading the way. She flicked on a line of switches at the foot of the stairs. A number of fluorescent lights, embedded in what looked like oversized inverted icecube trays, went on. They lit up a large low room carpeted in the same dark blue as the stairs. The room was lined with shelves of small boxes. Along the left wall were four microfilm readers that looked like futuristic hairdriers. They were the same blue as the carpet. 'What I started to say was that you have to sign the book,' Doreen said. She pointed again, this time at a large book chained to a stand by the door. 'You also have to write the date, the time you came in, which is  ' she checked her wristwatch  'twenty past ten, and the time you leave.' Sam bent over and signed the book. The name above his was Arthur Meecham. Mr Meecham had been down here on December 27th, 1989. Over three months ago. This was a welllighted, wellstocked, efficient room that apparently did very little business. 'It's nice down here, isn't it?' Doreen asked complacently. 'That's because the federal government helps subsidize newspaper morgues  or libraries, if you like that word better. I know I do.' A shadow danced in one of the aisles and Sam's heart began to knock again. But it was only Doreen McGill's shadow; she had bent over to make sure he had entered the correct time of day, and  and HE didn't cast a shadow. The Library Policeman. Also ... He tried to duck the rest and couldn't. Also, I can't live like this. I can't live with this kind of fear. I'd stick my head in a gas oven if it went on too long. And if it does, I will. It's not just fear of him that man, or whatever he is. It's the way a person's mind feels, the way it screams when it feels everything it ever believed in slipping effortlessly away. Doreen pointed to the right wall, where three large folio volumes stood on a single shelf. 'That's January, February, and March of 1990,' she said. 'Every July the paper sends the first six months of the year to Grand Island, Nebraska, to be microfilmed. The same thing when December is over.' She extended the plump hand and pointed a redtipped nail at the shelves, counting over from the shelf at the right toward the microfilm readers at the left. She appeared to be admiring her fingernail as she did it. 'The microfilms go that way, chronologically,' she said. She pronounced the word carefully, producing something mildly exotic chronolodgeickalee. 'Modern times on your right; ancient days on your left.' She smiled to show that this was a joke, and perhaps to convey a sense of how wonderful she thought all this was. Chronolodgeickalee speaking, the smile said, it was all sort of a gas. 'Thank you,' Sam said. 'Don't mention it. It's what we're here for. One of the things, anyway.' She put her nail to the corner of her mouth and gave him her peekaboo smile again. 'Do you know how to run a microfilm reader, Mr Peebles?' 'Yes, thanks.' 'All right. If I can help you further, I'll be right upstairs. Don't hesitate to ask.' 'Are you  ' he began, and then snapped his mouth shut on the rest  going to leave me here alone? She raised her eyebrows. 'Nothing,' he said, and watched her go back upstairs. He had to resist a strong urge to pelt up the stairs behind her. Because, cushy blue carpet or not, this was another Junction City Library. And this one was called the morgue. 2 Sam walked slowly toward the shelves with their weight of square microfilm boxes, unsure of where to begin. He was very glad that the overhead fluorescents were bright enough to banish most of the troubling shadows in the corners. He hadn't dared ask Doreen McGill if the name Ardelia Lortz rang a bell, or even if she knew roughly when the City Library had last undergone renovations. You have been athking questions, the Library Policeman had said. Don't pry into things that don't conthern you. Do you underthand? Yes, he understood. And he supposed he was risking the Library Policeman's wrath by prying anyway ... but he wasn't asking questions, at least not exactly, and these were things that concerned him. They concerned him desperately. I will be watching. And I am not alone. Sam looked nervously over his shoulder. Saw nothing. And still found it impossible to move with any decision. He had gotten this far, but he didn't know if he could get any further. He felt more than intimidated, more than frightened. He felt shattered. 'You've got to,' he muttered harshly, and wiped at his lips with a shaking hand. 'You've just got to.' He made his left foot move forward. He stood that way a moment, legs apart, like a man caught in the act of fording a small stream. Then he made his right foot catch up with his left one. He made his way across to the shelf nearest the bound folios in this hesitant, reluctant fashion. A card on the end of the shelf read 1987  1989. That was almost certainly too recent  in fact, the Library renovations must have taken place before the spring of 1984, when he had moved to Junction City. If it had happened since, he would have noticed the workmen, heard people talking about it, and read about it in the Gazette. But, other than guessing that it must have happened in the last fifteen or twenty years (the suspended ceilings had not looked any older than that), he could narrow it down no further. If only he could think more clearly! But he couldn't. What had happened that morning screwed up any normal, rational effort to think the way heavy sunspot activity screwed up radio and TV transmissions. Reality and unreality had come together like vast stones, and Sam Peebles, one tiny, screaming, struggling speck of humanity, had had the bad luck to get caught between them. He moved two aisles to the left, mostly because he was afraid that if he stopped moving for too long he might freeze up entirely, and walked down the aisle marked 1981  1983. He picked a box almost at random and took it over to one of the microfilm readers. He snapped it on and tried to concentrate on the spool of microfilm (the spool was also blue, and Sam wondered if there was any reason why everything in this clean, welllighted place was color coordinated) and nothing else. First you had to mount it on one of the spindles, right; then you had to thread it, check; then you had to secure the leader in the core of the takeup reel, okay. The machine was so simple an eightyearold could have executed these little tasks, but it took Sam almost five minutes; he had his shaking hands and shocked, wandering mind to deal with. When he finally got the microfilm mounted and scrolled to the first frame, he discovered he had mounted the reel backward. The printed matter was upside down. He patiently rewound the microfilm, turned it around, and rethreaded it. He discovered he didn't mind this little setback in the least; repeating the operation, one simple step at a time, seemed to calm him. This time the front page of the April 1, 1981, issue of the Junction City Gazette appeared before him, right side up. The headline bannered the surprise resignation of a town official Sam had never heard of, but his eyes were quickly drawn to a box at the bottom of the page. Inside the box was this message RICHARD PRICE AND THE ENTIRE STAFF OF THE JUNCTION CITY PUBLIC LIBRARY REMIND YOU THAT APRIL 6TH  13TH IS NATIONAL LIBRARY WEEK COME AND SEE US! Did I know that? Sam wondered. Is that why I grabbed this particular box? Did I subconsciously remember that the second week of April is National Library Week? Come with me, a tenebrous, whispering voice answered. Come with me, son ... I'm a poleethman. Gooseflesh gripped him; a shudder shook him. Sam pushed both the question and that phantom voice away. After all, it didn't really matter why he had picked the April 1981 issues of the Gazette; the important thing was that he had, and it was a lucky break. Might be a lucky break. He advanced the reel quickly to April 6th, and saw exactly what he had hoped for. Over the Gazette masthead, in red ink, it said SPECIAL LIBRARY SUPPLEMENT ENCLOSED! Sam advanced to the supplement. There were two photos on the first page of the supplement. One was of the Library's exterior. The other showed Richard Price, the head librarian, standing at the circulation desk and smiling nervously into the camera. He looked exactly as Naomi Higgins had described him  a tall, bespectacled man of about forty with a narrow little mustache. Sam was more interested in the background. He could see the suspended ceiling which had so shocked him on his second trip to the Library. So the renovations had been done prior to April of 1981. The stories were exactly the sort of selfcongratulatory puffpieces he expected  he had been reading the Gazette for six years now and was very familiar with its ain'tweajollybunchofJayCees editorial slant. There were informative (and rather breathless) items about National Library Week, the Summer Reading Program, the Junction County Bookmobile, and the new fund drive which had just commenced. Sam glanced over these quickly. On the last page of the supplement he found a much more interesting story, one written by Price himself. It was titled. THE JUNCTION CITY PUBLIC LIBRARY One Hundred Years of History Sam's eagerness did not last long. Ardelia's name wasn't there. He reached for the power switch to rewind the microfilm and then stopped. He saw a mention of the renovation project  it had happened in 1970  and there was something else. Something just a little offkey. Sam began to read the last part of Mr Price's chatty historical note again, this time more carefully. With the end of the Great Depression, our Council voted 5,000 to repair the extensive water damage the Library sustained during the Flood Of '32, and Mrs Felicia Culpepper took on the job of Head Librarian, donating her time without recompense. She never lost sight of her goal a completely renovated Library, serving a Town which was rapidly becoming a City. Mrs Culpepper stepped down in 1951, giving way to Christopher Lavin, the first Junction City Librarian with a degree in Library Science. Mr Lavin inaugurated the Culpepper Memorial Fund, which raised over 15,000 for the acquisition of new books in its first year, and the Junction City Public Library was on its way into the modern age! Shortly after I became Head Librarian in 1964, I made major renovations my number one goal. The funds needed to achieve this goal were finally raised by the end of 1969, and while both City and Federal money helped In the construction of the splendid building Junction City 'bookworms' enjoy today, this project could not have been completed without the help of all those volunteers who later showed up to swing a hammer or run a benchsaw during 'Build Your Library Month' in August Of 1970! Other notable projects during the 1970's and 1980's included ... Sam looked up thoughtfully. He believed there was something missing from Richard Price's careful, droning history of the town Library. No; on second thought, missing was the wrong word. The essay made Sam decide Price was a fussbudget of the first water  probably a nice man, but a fussbudget just the same  and such men did not miss things, especially when they were dealing with subjects which were clearly close to their hearts. So  not missing. Concealed. It didn't quite add up, chronolodgeickalee speaking. In 1951, a man named Christopher Lavin had succeeded that saint Felicia Culpepper as head librarian. In 1964, Richard Price had become city librarian. Had Price succeeded Lavin? Sam didn't think so. He thought that at some point during those thirteen blank years, a woman named Ardelia Lortz had succeeded Lavin. Price, Sam thought, had succeeded her. She wasn't in Mr Price's fussbudgety account of the Library because she had done ... something. Sam was no closer to knowing what that something might have been, but he had a better idea of the magnitude. Whatever it was, it had been bad enough for Price to make her an unperson in spite of his very obvious love of detail and continuity. Murder, Sam thought. It must have been murder. It's really the only thing bad enough to f At that second a hand dropped on Sam's shoulder. 3 If he had screamed, he would undoubtedly have terrified the hand's owner almost as much as she had already terrorized him, but Sam was unable to scream. Instead, all the air whooshed out of him and the world went gray again. His chest felt like an accordion being slowly crushed under an elephant's foot. All of his muscles seemed to have turned to macaroni. He did not wet his pants again. That was perhaps the only saving grace. 'Sam?' he heard a voice ask. It seemed to come from quite a distance somewhere in Kansas, say. 'Is that you?' He swung around, almost falling out of his chair in front of the microfilm reader, and saw Naomi. He tried to get his breath back so he could say something. Nothing but a tired wheeze came out. The room seemed to waver in front of his eyes. The grayness came and went. Then he saw Naomi take a stumblestep backward, her eyes widening in alarm, her hand going to her mouth. She struck one of the microfilm shelves almost hard enough to knock it over. It rocked, two or three of the boxes tumbled to the capet with soft thumps, and then it settled back again. 'Omes,' he managed at last. His voice came out in a whispery squeak. He remembered once, as a boy in St Louis, trapping a mouse under his baseball cap. It had made a sound like that as it scurried about, looking for an escape hatch. 'Sam, what's happened to you?' She also sounded like someone who would have been screaming if shock hadn't whipped the breath out of her. We make quite a pair, Sam thought. Abbot and Costello Meet the Monsters. 'What are you doing here?' he said. 'You scared the living shit out of me!' There, he thought. I went and used the sword again. Called you Omes again, too. Sorry about that. He felt a little better, and thought of getting up, but decided against it. No sense pressing his luck. He was still not entirely sure his heart wasn't going to vaporlock. 'I went to the office to see you,' she said. 'Cammy Harrington said she thought she saw you come in here. I wanted to apologize. Maybe. I thought at first you must have played some cruel trick on Dave. He said you'd never do a thing like that, and I started to think that it didn't seem like you. You've always been so nice .  .' 'Thanks,' Sam said. 'I guess.' ' . . . and you seemed so ... so bewildered on the telephone. I asked Dave what it was about, but he wouldn't tell me anything else. All I know is what I heard ... and how he looked when he was talking to you. He looked like he'd seen a ghost.' No, Sam thought of telling her. I was the one who saw the ghost. And this morning I saw something even worse. 'Sam, you have to understand something about Dave ... and about me. Well, I guess you already know about Dave, but I'm  ' 'I guess I know,' Sam told her. 'I said in my note to Dave that I didn't see anyone at Angle Street, but that wasn't the truth. I didn't see anyone at first, but I walked through the downstairs, looking for Dave. I saw you guys out back. So ... I know. But I don't know on purpose, if you see what I mean.' 'Yes,' she said. 'It's all right. But ... Sam ... dear God, what's happened? Your hair . . .' 'What about my hair?' he asked her sharply. She fumbled her purse open with hands that shook slightly and brought out a compact. 'Look,' she said. He did, but he already knew what he was going to see. Since eightthirty this morning, his hair had gone almost completely white. 4 'I see you found your friend,' Doreen McGill said to Naomi as they climbed back up the stairs. She put a nail to the corner of her mouth and smiled her cutelittleme smile. 'Yes.' 'Did you remember to sign out?' 'Yes,' Naomi said again. Sam hadn't, but she had done it for both of them. 'And did you return any microfilms you might have used?' This time Sam said yes. He couldn't remember if either he or Naomi had returned the one spool of microfilm he had mounted, and he didn't care. All he wanted was to get out of here. Doreen was still being coy. Finger tapping the edge of her lower lip, she cocked her head and said to Sam, 'You did look different in the newspaper picture. I just can't put my finger on what it is.' As they went out the door, Naomi said 'He finally got smart and quit dyeing his hair.' On the steps outside, Sam exploded with laughter. The force of his bellows doubled him over. It was hysterical laughter, its sound only half a step removed from the sound of screams, but he didn't care. It felt good. It felt enormously cleansing. Naomi stood beside him, seeming to be bothered neither by Sam's laughing fit nor the curious glances they were drawing from passersby on the street. She even lifted one hand and waved to someone she knew. Sam propped his hands on his upper thighs, still caught in his helpless gale of laughter, and yet there was a part of him sober enough to think She has seen this sort of reaction before. I wonder where? But he knew the answer even before his mind had finished articulating the question. Naomi was an alcoholic, and she had made working with other alcoholics, helping them, part of her own therapy. She had probably seen a good deal more than a hysterical laughing fit during her time at Angle Street. She'll slap me, he thought, still howling helplessly at the image of himself at his bathroom mirror, patiently combing Grecian Formula into his locks. She'll slap me, because that's what you do with hysterical people. Naomi apparently knew better. She only stood patiently beside him in the sunshine, waiting for him to regain control. At last his laughter began to taper off to wild snorts and runaway snickers. His stomach muscles ached and his vision was waterwavery and his cheeks were wet with tears. 'Feel better?' she asked. 'Oh Naomi 'he began, and then another heehaw bray of laughter escaped him and galloped off into the sunshiny morning. 'You don't know how much better.' 'Sure I do,' she said. 'Come on  we'll take my car.' 'Where . . .'He hiccupped. 'Where are we going?' 'Angel Street,' she said, pronouncing it the way the signpainter had intended it to be pronounced. 'I'm very worried about Dave. I went there first this morning, but he wasn't there. I'm afraid he may be out drinking.' 'That's nothing new, is it?' he asked, walking beside her down the steps.


Her Datsun was parked at the curb, behind Sam's own car. She glanced at him. It was a brief glance, but a complex one irritation, resignation, compassion. Sam thought that if you boiled that glance down it would say You don't know what you're talking about, but it's not your fault. 'Dave's been sober almost a year this time, but his general health isn't good. As you say, falling off the wagon isn't anything new for him, but another fall may kill him.' 'And that would be my fault.' The last of his laughter dried up. She looked at him, a little surprised. 'No,' she said. 'That would be nobody's fault ... but that doesn't mean I want it to happen. Or that it has to. Come on. We'll take my car. We can talk on the way.' 5 'Tell me what happened to you,' she said as they headed toward the edge of town. 'Tell me everything. It isn't just your hair, Sam; you look ten years older.' 'Bullshit,' Sam said. He had seen more than his hair in Naomi's compact mirror; he had gotten a better look at himself than he wanted. 'More like twenty. And it feels like a hundred.' 'What happened? What was it?' Sam opened his mouth to tell her, thought of how it would sound, then shook his head. 'No,' he said, 'not yet. You're going to tell me something first. You're going to tell me about Ardelia Lortz. You thought I was joking the other day. I didn't realize that then, but I do now. So tell me all about her. Tell me who she was and what she did.' Naomi pulled over to the curb beyond Junction City's old granite firehouse and looked at Sam. Her skin was very pale beneath her light makeup, and her eyes were wide. 'You weren't? Sam, are you trying to tell me you weren't joking?' 'That's right.' 'But Sam . . .' She stopped, and for a moment she seemed not to know how she should go on. At last she spoke very softly, as though to a child who has done something he doesn't know is wrong. 'But Sam, Ardelia Lortz is dead. She has been dead for thirty years.' 'I know she's dead. I mean, I know it now. What I want to know is the rest.' 'Sam, whoever you think you saw ' 'I know who I saw.' 'Tell me what makes you think ' 'First, you tell me.' She put her car back in gear, checked her rearview mirror, and began to drive toward Angle Street again. 'I don't know very much,' she said. 'I was only five when she died, you see. Most of what I do know comes from overheard gossip. She belonged to The First Baptist Church of Proverbia  she went there, at least but my mother doesn't talk about her. Neither do any of the older parishioners. To them it's like she never existed.' Sam nodded. 'That's just how Mr Price treated her in the article he wrote about the Library. The one I was reading when you put your hand on my shoulder and took about twelve more years off my life. It also explains why your mother was so mad at me when I mentioned her name Saturday night.' Naomi glanced at him, startled. 'That's what you called about?' Sam nodded. 'Oh, Sam  if you weren't on Mom's slist before, you are now.' 'Oh, I was on before, but I've got an idea she's moved me up.' Sam laughed, then winced. His stomach still hurt from his fit on the steps of the newspaper office, but he was very glad he had had that fit  an hour ago he never would have believed he could have gotten so much of his equilibrium back. In fact, an hour ago he had been quite sure that Sam Peebles and equilibrium were going to remain mutually exclusive concepts for the rest of his life. 'Go ahead, Naomi.' 'Most of what I've heard I picked up at what AA people call "the real meeting," ' she said. 'That's when people stand around drinking coffee before and then again after, talking about everything under the sun.' He looked at her curiously. 'How long have you been in AA, Naomi?' 'Nine years,' Naomi said evenly. 'And it's been six since I had to take a drink. But I've been an alcoholic forever. Drunks aren't made, Sam. They're born.' 'Oh,' he said lamely. And then 'Was she in the program? Ardelia Lortz?' 'God, no  but that doesn't mean there aren't people in AA who remember her. She showed up in Junction City in 1956 or '57, I think. She went to work for Mr Lavin in the Public Library. A year or two later, he died very suddenly  it was a heart attack or a stroke, I think  and the town gave the job to the Lortz woman. I've heard she was very good at it, but judging by what happened, I'd say the thing she was best at was fooling people.' 'What did she do, Naomi?' 'She killed two children and then herself,' Naomi said simply. 'In the summer of 1960. There was a search for the kids. No one thought of looking for them in the Library, because it was supposed to be closed that day. They were found the next day, when the Library was supposed to be open but wasn't. There are skylights in the Library roof ' 'I know.' '  but these days you can only see them from the outside, because they changed the Library inside. Lowered the ceiling to conserve heat, or something. Anyway, those skylights had big brass catches on them. You grabbed the catches with a long pole to open the skylights and let in fresh air, I guess. She tied a rope to one of the catches  she must have used one of the trackladders that ran along the bookcases to do it  and hanged herself from it. She did that after she killed the children.' 'I see.' Sam's voice was calm, but his heart was beating slowly and very hard. 'And how did she ... how did she kill the children?' 'I don't know. No one's ever said, and I've never asked. I suppose it was horrible.' 'Yes. I suppose it was.' 'Now tell me what happened to you.' 'First I want to see if Dave's at the shelter.' Naomi tightened up at once. 'I'll see if Dave's at the shelter,' she said. 'You're going to sit tight in the car. I'm sorry for you, Sam, and I'm sorry I jumped to the wrong conclusion last night. But you won't upset Dave anymore. I'll see to that.' 'Naomi, he's a part of this!' 'That's impossible,' she said in a brisk thisclosesthediscussion tone of voice. 'Dammit, the whole thing is impossible!' They were nearing Angle Street now. Ahead of them was a pickup truck rattling toward the Recycling Center, its bed full of cardboard cartons filled with bottles and cans. 'I don't think you understood what I told you,' she said. 'It doesn't surprise me; Earth People rarely do. So open your ears, Sam. I'm going to say it in words of one syllable. If Dave drinks, Dave dies. Do you follow that? Does it get through?' She tossed another glance Sam's way. This one was so furious it was still smoking around the edges, and even in the depths of his own distress, Sam realized something. Before, even on the two occasions when he had taken Naomi out, he had thought she was pretty. Now he saw she was beautiful. 'What does that mean, Earth People?' he asked her. 'People who don't have a problem with booze or pills or pot or cough medicine or any of the other things that mess up the human head,' she nearly spat. 'People who can afford to moralize and make judgments.' Ahead of them, the pickup truck turned off onto the long, rutted driveway leading to the redemption center. Angle Street lay ahead. Sam could see something parked in front of the porch, but it wasn't a car. It was Dirty Dave's shoppingcart. 'Stop a minute,' he said., Naomi did, but she wouldn't look at him. She stared straight ahead through the windshield. Her jaw was working. There was high color in her cheeks. 'You care about him,' he said, 'and I'm glad. Do you also care about me, Sarah? Even though I'm an Earth Person?' 'You have no right to call me Sarah. I can, because it's part of my name  I was christened Naomi Sarah Higgins. And they can, because they are, in a way, closer to me than blood relatives could ever be. We are blood relatives, in fact  because there's something in us that makes us the way we are. Something in our blood. You, Sam  you have no right.' 'Maybe I do,' Sam said. 'Maybe I'm one of you now. You've got booze. This Earth Person has got the Library Police.' Now she looked at him, and her eyes were wide and wary. 'Sam, I don't underst ' 'Neither do I. All I know is that I need help. I need it desperately. I borrowed two books from a library that doesn't exist anymore, and now the books don't exist, either. I lost them. Do you know where they ended up?' She shook her head. Sam pointed over to the left, where two men had gotten out of the pickup's cab and were starting to unload the cartons of returnables. 'There. That's where they ended up. They've been pulped. I've got until midnight, Sarah, and then the Library Police are going to pulp me. And I don't think they'll even leave my jacket behind.' 6 Sam sat in the passenger seat of Naomi Sarah Higgins's Datsun for what seemed like a long, long time. Twice his hand went to the door handle and then fell back. She had relented ... a little. If Dave wanted to talk to him, and if Dave was still in any condition to talk, she would allow it. Otherwise, no soap. At last the door of Angle Street opened. Naomi and Dave Duncan came out. She had an arm around his waist, his feet were shuffling, and Sam's heart sank. Then, as they stepped out into the sun, he saw that Dave wasn't drunk ... or at least not necessarily. Looking at him was, in a weird way, like looking into Naomi's compact mirror all over again. Dave Duncan looked like a man trying to weather the worst shock of his life ... and not doing a very good job of it. Sam got out of the car and stood by the door, indecisive. 'Come up on the porch,' Naomi said. Her voice was both resigned and fearful. 'I don't trust him to make it down the steps.' Sam came up to where they stood. Dave Duncan was probably sixty years old. On Saturday he had looked seventy or seventyfive. That was the booze ' Sam supposed. And now, as Iowa turned slowly on the axis of noon, he looked older than all the ages. And that, Sam knew, was his fault. It was the shock of things Dave had assumed were long buried. I didn't know, Sam thought, but this, however true it might be, had lost its power to comfort. Except for the burst veins in his nose and cheeks, Dave's face was the color of very old paper. His eyes were watery and stunned. His lips had a bluish tinge, and little beads of spittle pulsed in the deep pockets at the corners of his mouth. 'I didn't want him to talk to you,' Naomi said. 'I wanted to take him to Dr Melden, but he refuses to go until he talks to you.' 'Mr Peebles,' Dave said feebly. 'I'm sorry, Mr Peebles, it's all my fault, isn't it? I ' 'You have nothing to apologize for,' Sam said. 'Come on over here and sit down.' He and Naomi led Dave to a rocking chair at the corner of the porch and Dave eased himself into it. Sam and Naomi drew up chairs with sagging wicker bottoms and sat on either side of him. They sat without speaking for some little time, looking out across the railroad tracks and into the flat farm country beyond. 'She's after you, isn't she?' Dave asked. 'That bitch from the far side of hell.' 'She's sicced someone on me,' Sam said. 'Someone who was in one of those posters you drew. He's a ... I know this sounds crazy, but he's a Library Policeman. He came to see me this morning. He did . . .' Sam touched his hair. 'He did this. And this.' He pointed to the small red dot in the center of his throat. 'And he says he isn't alone.' Dave was silent for a long time, looking out into the emptiness, looking at the flat horizon which was broken only by tall silos and, to the north, the apocalyptic shape of the Proverbia Feed Company's grain elevator. 'The man you saw isn't real,' he said at last. 'None of them are real. Only her. Only the devilbitch.' 'Can you tell us, Dave?' Naomi asked gently. 'If you can't, say so. But if it will make it better for you ... easier ... tell us.' 'Dear Sarah,' Dave said. He took her hand and smiled. 'I love you  have I ever told you so?' She shook her head, smiling back. Tears glinted in her eyes like tiny specks of mica. 'No. But I'm glad, Dave.' 'I have to tell,' he said. 'It isn't a question of better or easier. It can't be allowed to go on. Do you know what I remember about my first AA meeting, Sarah?' She shook her head. 'How they said it was a program of honesty. How they said you had to tell everything, not just to God, but to God and another person. I thought, "If that's what it takes to live a sober life, I've had it. They'll throw me in a plot up on Wayvern Hill in that part of the boneyard they set aside for the drunks and alltime losers who never had a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of. Because I could never tell all the things I've seen, all the things I've done. " ' 'We all think that at first,' she said gently. 'I know. But there can't be many that've seen the things I have, or done what I have. I did the best I could, though. Little by little I did the best I could. I set my house in order. But those things I saw and did back then ... those I never told. Not to any person, not to no man's God. I found a room in the basement of my heart, and I put those things in that room and then I locked the door.' He looked at Sam, and Sam saw tears rolling slowly and tiredly down the deep wrinkles in Dave's blasted cheeks. 'Yes. I did. And when the door was locked, I nailed boards across it. And when the boards was nailed, I put sheet steel across the boards and riveted it tight. And when the riveting was done, I drawed a bureau up against the whole works, and before I called it good and walked away, I piled bricks on top of the bureau. And all these years since, I've spent telling myself I forgot all about Ardelia and her strange ways, about the things she wanted me to do and the things she told me and the promises she made and what she really was. I took a lot of forgetting medicine, but it never did the job. And when I got into AA, that was the one thing that always drove me back. The thing in that room, you know. That thing has a name, Mr Peebles  its name is Ardelia Lortz. After I was sobered up awhile, I would start having bad dreams. Mostly I dreamed of the posters I did for her  the ones that scared the children so bad  but they weren't the worst dreams.' His voice had fallen to a trembling whisper. 'They weren't the worst ones by a long chalk.' 'Maybe you better rest a little,' Sam said. He had discovered that no matter how much might depend on what Dave had to say, a part of him didn't want to hear it. A part of him was afraid to hear it. 'Never mind resting,' he said. 'Doctor says I'm diabetic, my pancreas is a mess, and my liver is falling apart. Pretty soon I'm going on a permanent vacation. I don't know if it'll be heaven or hell for me, but I'm pretty sure the bars and package stores are closed in both places, and thank God for that. But the time for restin isn't now. If I'm ever goin to talk, it has to be now.' He looked carefully at Sam. 'You know you're in trouble, don't you?' Sam nodded. 'Yes. But you don't know just how bad your trouble is. That's why I have to talk. I think she has to ... has to lie still sometimes. But her time of bein still is over, and she has picked you, Mr Peebles. That's why I have to talk. Not that I want to. I went out last night after Naomi was gone and bought myself a jug. I took it down to the switchin yard and sat where I've sat many times before, in the weeds and cinders and busted glass. I spun the cap off and held that jug up to my nose and smelled it. You know how that jug wine smells? To me it always smells like the wallpaper in cheap hotel rooms, or like a stream that has flowed its way through a town dump somewhere. But I have always liked that smell just the same, because it smells like sleep, too. 'And all the time I was holdin that jug up, smellin it, I could hear the bitch queen talkin from inside the room where I locked her up. From behind the bricks, the bureau, the sheet steel, the boards and locks. Talkin like someone who's been buried alive. She was a little muffled, but I could still hear her just fine. I could hear her sayin, "That's right, Dave, that's the answer, it's the only answer there is for folks like you, the only one that works, and it will be the only answer you need until answers don't matter anymore." 'I tipped that jug up for a good long drink, and then at the last second it smelled like her ... and I remembered her face at the end, all covered with little threads ... and how her mouth changed ... and I threw that jug away. Smashed it on a railroad tie. Because this shit has got to end. I won't let her take another nip out of this town!' His voice rose to a trembling but powerful old man's shout. 'This shit has gone on long enough!' Naomi laid a hand on Dave's arm. Her face was frightened and full of trouble. 'What, Dave? What is it?' 'I want to be sure,' Dave said. 'You tell me first, Mr Peebles. Tell me everything that's been happening to you, and don't leave out nothing.' 'I will,' Sam said, 'on one condition.' Dave smiled faintly. 'What condition is that?' 'You have to promise to call me Sam ... and in return, I'll never call you Dirty Dave again.' His smile broadened. 'You got you a deal there, Sam.' 'Good.' He took a deep breath. 'Everything was the fault of that goddam acrobat,' he began. 7 It took longer than he had thought it would, but there was an inexpressible relief a joy, almost  in telling it all, holding nothing back. He told Dave about The Amazing Joe, Craig's call for help, and Naomi's suggestion about livening up his material. He told them about how the Library had looked, and about his meeting with Ardelia Lortz. Naomi's eyes grew wider and wider as he spoke. When he got to the part about the Red Riding Hood poster on the door to the Children's Library, Dave nodded. 'That's the only one I didn't draw,' he said. 'She had that one with her. I bet they never found it, either. I bet she still has that one with her. She liked mine, but that one was her favorite.' 'What do you mean?' Sam asked. Dave only shook his head and told Sam to go on. He told them about the library card, the books he had borrowed, and the strange little argument they had had on Sam's way out. 'That's it,' Dave said flatly. 'That's all it took. You might not believe it, but I know her. You made her mad. Goddam if you didn't. You made her mad ... and now she's set her cap for you.' Sam finished his story as quickly as he could, but his voice slowed and nearly halted when he came to the visit from the Library Policeman in his foggray trenchcoat. When Sam finished, he was nearly weeping and his hands had begun to shake again. 'Could I have a glass of water?' he asked Naomi thickly. 'Of course,' she said, and got up to get it. She took two steps, then returned and kissed Sam on the cheek. Her lips were cool and soft. And before she left to get his water, she spoke three blessed words into his ear 'I believe you.' 8 Sam raised the glass to his lips, using both hands to be sure he wouldn't spill it, and drank half of it at a draught. When he put it down he said, 'What about you, Dave? Do you believe me?' 'Yeah,' Dave said. He spoke almost absently, as if this were a foregone conclusion. Sam supposed that, to Dave, it was. After all, he had known the mysterious Ardelia Lortz firsthand, and his ravaged, tooold face suggested that theirs had not been a loving relationship. Dave said nothing else for several moments, but a little of his color had come back. He looked out across the railroad tracks toward the fallow fields. They would be green with sprouting corn in another six or seven weeks, but now they looked barren. His eyes watched a cloud shadow flow across that Midwestern emptiness in the shape of a giant hawk. At last he seemed to rouse himself and turned to Sam. 'My Library Policeman  the one I drew for her  didn't have no scar,' he said at last. Sam thought of the stranger's long, white face. The scar had been there, all right  across the cheek, under the eye, over the bridge of the nose in a thin flowing line. 'So?' he asked. 'What does that mean?' 'It don't mean nothing to me, but I think it must mean somethin to you, Mr  Sam. I know about the badge ... what you called the star of many points. I found that in a book of heraldry right there in the Junction City Library. It's called a Maltese Cross. Christian knights wore them in the middle of their chests when they went into battle durin the Crusades. They were supposed to be magical. I was so taken with the shape that I put it into the picture. But ... a scar? No. Not on my Library Policeman. Who was your Library Policeman, Sam?' 'I don't ... I don't know what you're talking about,' Sam said slowly, but that voice  faint, mocking, haunting  recurred Come with me, son ... I'm a poleethman. And his mouth was suddenly full of that taste again. The sugarslimy taste of red licorice. His tastebuds cramped; his stomach rolled. But it was stupid. Really quite stupid. He had never eaten red licorice in his life. He hated it. If you've never eaten it, how do you know you hate it? 'I really don't get you,' he said, speaking more strongly. 'You're getting something,' Naomi said. 'You look like someone just kicked you in the stomach.' Sam glanced at her, annoyed. She looked back at him calmly, and Sam felt his heart rate speed up. 'Let it alone for now,' Dave said, 'although you can't let it alone for long, Sam not if you want to hold onto any hope of getting out of this. Let me tell you my story. I've never told it before, and I'll never tell it again ... but it's time.' CHAPTER 11 Dave's Story 1 'I wasn't always Dirty Dave Duncan,' he began. 'In the early fifties I was just plain old Dave Duncan, and people liked me just fine. I was a member of that same Rotary Club you talked to the other night, Sam. Why not? I had my own business, and it made money. I was a signpainter, and I was a damned good one. I had all the work I could handle in Junction City and Proverbia, but I sometimes did a little work up in Cedar Rapids, as well. Once I painted a Lucky Strike cigarette ad on the rightfield wall of the minorleague ballpark all the way to hell and gone in Omaha. I was in great demand, and I deserved to be. I was good. I was what they call a "graphic artist" these days, but back then I was just the best signpainter around these parts. 'I stayed here because serious painting was what I was really interested in, and I thought you could do that anywhere. I didn't have no formal art education  I tried but I flunked out  and I knew that put me down on the count, so to speak, but I knew that there were artists who made it without all that speedshit bushwah  Gramma Moses, for one. She didn't need no driver's license; she went right to town without one. 'I might even have made it. I sold some canvases, but not many  I didn't need to, because I wasn't married and I was doing well with my signpainting business. Also, I kept most of my pitchers so I could put on shows, the way artists are supposed to. I had some, too. Right here in town at first, then in Cedar Rapids, and then in Des Moines. That one was written up in the Democrat, and they made me sound like the second coming of James Whistler.' Dave fell silent for a moment, thinking. Then he raised his head and looked out at the empty, fallow fields again. 'In AA, they talk about folks who have one foot in the future and the other in the past and spend their time pissin all over today because of it. But sometimes it's hard not to wonder what might have happened if you'd done things just a little different.' He looked almost guiltily at Naomi, who smiled and pressed his hand. 'Because I was good, and I did come close. But I was drinkin heavy, even back then. I didn't think much of it  hell, I was young, I was strong, and besides, don't all great artists drink? I thought they did. And I still might have made it  made something, anyway, for awhile  but then Ardelia Lortz came to Junction City. 'And when she came, I was lost.' He looked at Sam. 'I recognize her from your story, Sam, but that wasn't how she looked back then. You expected to see an oldlady librarian, and that suited her purpose, so that's just what you did see. But when she came to Junction City in the summer Of '57, her hair was ashblonde, and the only places she was plump was where a woman is supposed to be plump. 'I was living out in Proverbia then, and I used to go to the Baptist Church. I wasn't much on religion, but there were some finelooking women there. Your mom was one of em, Sarah.' Naomi laughed in the way women do when they are told something they cannot quite believe. 'Ardelia caught on with the home folks right away. These days, when the folks from that church talk about her  if they ever do  I bet they say things like "I knew from the very start there was somethin funny about that Lortz woman" or "I never trusted the look in that woman's eye," but let me tell you, that wasn't how it was. They buzzed around her  the women as well as the men  like bees around the first flower of spring. She got a job as Mr Lavin's assistant before she was in town a month, but she was teachin the little ones at the Sunday School out there in Proverbia two weeks before that. 'Just what she was teachin em I don't like to think  you can bet your bottom dollar it wasn't the Gospel According to Matthew  but she was teachin em. And everyone swore on how much the little ones loved her. They swore on it, too, but there was a look in their eyes when they said so ... a faroff look, like they wasn't really sure where they were, or even who they were. 'Well, she caught my eye ... and I caught hers. You wouldn't know it from the way I am now, but I was a pretty goodlookin fella in those days. I always had a tan from workin outdoors, I had muscles, my hair was faded almost blond from the sun, and my belly was as flat as your ironin board, Sarah. 'Ardelia had rented herself a farmhouse about a mile and a half from the church, a tight enough little place, but it needed a coat of paint as bad as a man in the desert needs a drink of water. So after church the second week I noticed her there  I didn't go often and by then it was halfpast August  I offered to paint it for her. 'She had the biggest eyes you've ever seen. I guess most people would have called them gray, but when she looked right at you, hard, you would have sworn they were silver. And she looked at me hard that day after church. She was wearin some kind of perfume that I never smelled before and ain't never smelled since. Lavender, I think. I can't think how to describe it, but I know it always made me think of little white flowers that only bloom after the sun has gone down. And I was smitten. Right there and then. 'She was close to me  almost close enough for our bodies to touch. She was wearin this dowdy black dress, the kind of dress an old lady would wear, and a hat with a little net veil, and she was holdin her purse in front of her. All prim and proper. Her eyes weren't prim, though. Nossir. Nor proper. Not a bit. ' "I hope you don't want to put advertisements for bleach and chewing tobacco all over my new house," she says. ' "No ma'am," I says back. "I thought just two coats of plain old white. Houses aren't what I do for a livin, anyway, but with you bein new in town and all, I thought it would be neighborly  " ' "Yes indeed," she says, and touches my shoulder.' Dave looked apologetically at Naomi. 'I think I ought to give you a chance to leave, if you want to. Pretty soon I'm gonna start tellin some dirty stuff, Sarah. I'm ashamed of it, but I want to clean the slate of my doins with her.' She patted his old, chapped hand. 'Go ahead,' she told him quietly. 'Say it all.' He fetched in a deep breath and went on again. 'When she touched me, I knew I had to have her or die tryin. just that one little touch made me feel better  and crazier  than any womantouch ever made me feel in my whole life. She knew it, too. I could see it in her eyes. It was a sly look. It was a mean look, too, but somethin about that excited me more than anything else. ' "It would be neighborly, Dave," she says, "and I want to be a very good neighbor." 'So I walked her home. Left all the other young fellows standin at the church door, you might say, fumin and no doubt cursin my name. They didn't know how lucky they were. None of them. 'My Ford was in the shop and she didn't have no car, so we were stuck with shank's mare. I didn't mind a bit, and she didn't seem to, neither. We went out the Truman Road, which was still dirt in those days, although they sent a town truck along to oil it every two or three weeks and lay the dust. 'We got about halfway to her place, and she stopped. It was just the two of us, standin in the middle of Truman Road at high noon on a summer's day, with about a million acres of Sam Orday's corn on one side and about two million of Bill Humpe's corn on the other, all of it growin high over our heads and rustlin in that secret way corn has, even when there's no breeze. My granddad used to say it was the sound of the corn growin. I dunno if that's the truth or not, but it's a spooky sound. I can tell you that. ' "Look!" she says, pointin to the right. "Do you see it?" 'I looked, but I didn't see nothing  only corn. I told her so. ' "I'll show you!" she says, and runs into the corn, Sunday dress and high heels and all. She didn't even take off that hat with the veil on it. 'I stood there for a few seconds, sorta stunned. Then I heard her laughin. I heard her laughin in the corn. So I ran in after her, partly to see whatever it was she'd seen, but mostly because of that laugh. I was so randy. I can't begin to tell you. 'I seen her standin way up the row I was in, and then she faded into the next one, still laughin. I started to laugh, too, and went on through myself, not carin that I was bustin down some of Sam Orday's plants. He'd never miss em, not in all those acres. But when I got through, trailin cornsilk off my shoulders and a green leaf stuck in my tie like some new kind of clip, I stopped laughin in a hurry, because she wasn't there. Then I heard her on the other side of me. I didn't have no idea how she could have got back there without me seein her, but she had. So I busted back through just in time to see her runnin into the next row. 'We played hide n seek for half an hour, I guess, and I couldn't catch her. All I did was get hotter and randier. I'd think she was a row over, in front of me, but I'd get there and hear her two rows over, behind me. Sometimes I'd see her foot, or her leg, and of course she left tracks in the soft dirt, but they weren't no good, because they seemed to go every which way at once. 'Then, just when I was startin to get mad  I'd sweat through my good shirt, my tie was undone, and my shoes was full of dirt  I come through to a row and seen her hat hangin off a cornplant with the veil flippin in the little breeze that got down there into the corn. ' "Come and get me, Dave! " she calls. I grabbed her hat and busted through to the next row on a slant. She was gone  I could just see the corn waverin where she'd went through  but both her shoes were there. In the next row I found one of her silk stockins hung over an ear of corn. And still I could hear her laughin. Over on my blind side, she was, and how the bitch got there, God only knows. Not that it mattered to me by then. 'I ripped off my tie and tore after her, around and around and doseydoe, pantin like a stupid dog that don't know enough to lie still on a hot day. And I'll tell you somethin  I broke the corn down everywhere I went. Left a trail of trampled stalks and leaners behind me. But she never busted a one. They'd just waver a bit when she passed, as if there was no more to her than there was to that little summer breeze. 'I found her dress, her slip, and her garterbelt. Then I found her bra and stepins. I couldn't hear her laughin no more. There wasn't no sound but the corn.