Now is that what the word of God teaches us?' Offmike but still loud 'No!' 'HOLY JESUS!' the evangelist shouted, and now the words came in a powerful, pumping cadence, almost as compelling as a driving rockandroll beat 'When they gonna know that way is death? When they gonna know that the wages of the world are paid on the other side? Huh? Huh? The Lord has said there's many mansions in His house. But there's no room for the fornicator. No room for the coveter. No room for the defiler of the corn. No room for the hommasexshul. No room Vicky snapped it off. 'That drivel makes me sick.' 'What did he say?' Burt asked her. 'What did he say about corn?' 'I didn't hear it.' She was picking at the second clothesline knot. 'He said something about corn. I know he did.' 'I got it!' Vicky said, and the suitcase fell open in her lap. They were passing a sign that said GATLIN 5 MI. DRIVE CAREFULLY PROTECT OUR CHILDREN. The sign had been put up by the Elks. There were.22 bullet holes in it. 'Socks,' Vicky said. 'Two pairs of pants a shirt a belt a string tie with a ' She held it up, showing him the peeling gilt neck clasp. 'Who's that?' Burt glanced at it. 'Hopalong Cassidy, I think.' 'Oh.' She put it back. She was crying again. After a moment, Burt said 'Did anything strike you funny about that radio sermon?' 'No.I heard enough of that stuff as a kid to last me for ever. I told you about it.' 'Didn't you think he sounded kind of young? That preacher?' She uttered a mirthless laugh. 'A teenager, maybe, so what? That's what's so monstrous about that whole trip. They like to get hold of them when their minds are still rubber. They know how to put all the emotional checks and balances in. You should have been at some of the tent meetings my mother and father dragged me to some of the ones I was "saved" at. 'Let's see. There was Baby Hortense, the Singing Marvel. She was eight. She'd come on and sing "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" while her daddy passed the plate, telling everybody to "dig deep, now, let's not let this little child of God down." Then there was Norman Staunton. He used to preach hellfire and brimstone in this Little Lord Fauntleroy suit with short pants. He was only seven.' She nodded at his look of unbelief. 'They weren't the only two, either. There were plenty of them on the circuit. They were good draws.' She spat the word. 'Ruby Stampnell. She was a tenyearold faith healer. The Grace Sisters. They used to come out with little tin4oil haloes over their heads and  oh!' 'What is it?' He jerked around to look at her, and what she was holding in her hands. Vicky was staring at it raptly. Her slowly seining hands had snagged it on the bottom of the suitcase and had brought it up as she talked. Burt pulled over to take a better look. She gave it t6 him wordlessly. It was a crucifix that had been made from twists of corn husk, once green, now dry. Attached to this by woven cornsilk was a dwarf corncob. Most of the kernels had been carefully removed, probably dug out one at a time with a pocketknife. Those kernels remaining formed a crude cruciform figure in yellowish basrelief. Cornkernel eyes, each slit longways to suggest pupils. Outstretched kernel arms, the legs together, terminating in a rough indication of bare feet. Above, four letters also raised from the bonewhite cob I N R I. 'That's a fantastic piece of workmanship,' he said. 'It's hideous,' she said in a flat, strained voice. 'Throw it out.' 'Vicky, the police might want to see it.' 'Why?' 'Well, I don't know why. Maybe , 'Throw it out. Will you please do that for me? I don't want it in the car.' 'I'll put it in back. And as soon as we see the cops, we'll get rid of it one way or the other. I promise. Okay?' 'Oh, do whatever you want with it!' she shouted at him. 'You will anyway!' Troubled, he threw the thing in back, where it landed on a pile of clothes. Its cornkernel eyes stared raptly at the TBird's dome light. He pulled out again, gravel splurting from beneath the tyres. 'We'll give the body and everything that was in the suitcase to the cops,' he promised. 'Then we'll be shut of it.' Vicky didn't answer. She was looking at her hands. A mile further on, the endless cornfields drew away from the road, showing farmhouses and outbuildings. In one yard they saw dirty chickens pecking listlessly at the soil. There were faded cola and chewinggum ads on the roofs of barns. They passed a tall billboard that said ONLY JESUS SAVEs. They passed a cafe with a Conoco gas island, but Burt decided to go on into the centre of town, if there was one. If not, they could come back to the cafe. It only occurred to him after they had passed it that the parking lot had been empty except for a dirty old pickup that had looked like it was sitting on two flat tyres. Vicky suddenly began to laugh, a high, giggling sound that struck Burt as being dangerously close to hysteria. 'What's so funny?' 'The signs,' she said, gasping and hiccupping. 'Haven't you been reading them? When they called this the Bible Belt, they sure weren't kidding. Oh Lordy, there's another bunch.' Another burst of hysterical laughter escaped her, and she clapped both hands over her mouth. Each sign had only one word. They were leaning on whitewashed sticks that had been implanted in the sandy shoulder, long ago by the looks; the whitewash was flaked and faded. They were coming up at eightyfoot intervals and Burt read A CLOUD BY DAY A PILLAR OF FIRE BY.. NIGHT 'They only forgot one thing,' Vicky said, still giggling helplessly. 'What?' Burt asked, frowning. 'Burma Shave.' She held a knuckled fist against her open mouth to keep in the laughter, but her semihysterical giggles flowed around it like effervescent gingerale bubbles. 'Vicky, are you all right?' 'I will be. Just as soon as we're a thousand miles away from here, in sunny sinful California with the Rockies between us and Nebraska.' Another group of signs came up and they read them silently. TAKE THIS AND EAT SAITH THE. LORD GOD Now why, Burt thought, should I immediately associate that indefinite pronoun with corn? Isn't that what they say when they give you communion? It had been so long since he had been to church that he really couldn't remember. He wouldn't be surprised if they used cornbread for holy wafer around these parts. He opened his mouth to tell Vicky that, and then thought better of it. They breasted a gentle rise and there was Gatlin below them, all three blocks of it, looking like a set from a movie about the Depression. 'There'll be a constable,' Burt said, and wondered why the sight of that hick onetimetable town dozing in the sun should have brought a lump of dread into his throat. They passed a speed sign proclaiming that no more than thirty was now in order, and another sign, rustflecked, which said YOU ARE NOW ENTERNG GATLIN, NICEST LITTLE TOWN IN NEBRASKA  OR ANYWHERE ELSE! POP. 4531. Dusty elms stood on both sides of the road, most of them diseased. They passed the Gatlin Lumberyard and a 76 gas station, where the price signs swung slowly in a hot noon breeze REG 35.9 HITEST 38.9, and another which said HI TRUCKERS DIESEL FUEL AROUND BACK. They crossed Elm Street, then Birch Street, and came up on the town square. The houses lining the streets were plain wood with screened porches. Angular and functional. The lawns were yellow and dispirited. Up ahead a mongrel dog walked slowly out into the middle of Maple Street, stood looking at them for a moment, then lay down in the road with its nose on its paws. 'Stop,' Vicky said. 'Stop right here. Burt pulled obediently to the curb. 'Turn around. Let's take the body to Grand Island. That's not too far, is it? Let's do that.' 'Vicky, what's wrong?' 'What do you mean, what's wrong?' she asked, her voice rising thinly. 'This town is empty, Burt. There's nobody here but us. Can't you feel that?' He had felt something, and still felt it. But 'It just seems that way,' he said. 'But it sure is a onehydrant town. Probably all up in the square, having a bake sale or a bingo game.' 'There's no one here.' She said the words with a queer, strained emphasis. 'Didn't you see that 76 station back there?' 'Sure, by the lumberyard, so what?' His mind was elsewhere, listening to the dull buzz of a cicada burrowing into one of the nearby elms. He could smell corn, dusty roses, and fertilizer  of course. For the first time they were off the turnpike and in a town. A town in a state he had never been in before (although he had flown over it from time to time in United Airlines 747s) and somehow it felt all wrong but all right. Somewhere up ahead there would be a drugstore with a soda fountain, a movie house named the Bijou, a school named after JFK. 'Burt, the prices said thirtyfivenine for regular and thirtyeightnine for high octane. Now how long has it been since anyone in this country paid those prices?' 'At least four years,' he admitted. 'But, Vicky ' 'We're right in town, Burt, and there's not a car! Not one car! 'Grand Island is seventy miles away. It would look funny if we took him there.' 'I don't care.' 'Look, let's just drive up to the courthouse and , 'No!' There, damn it, there. Why our marriage is falling apart, in a nutshell. No I won't. No sir. And furthermore, I'll hold my breath till I turn blue if you don't let me have my way. 'Vicky,' he said. 'I want to get out of here, Burt.' 'Vicky, listen to me.' 'Turn around. Let's go.' 'Vicky, will you stop a minute?' 'I'll stop when we're driving the other way. Now let's go.' 'We have a dead child in the trunk of our car!' he roared at her, and took a distinct pleasure at the way she flinched, the way her face crumbled. In a slightly lower voice he went on 'His throat was cut and he was shoved out into the road and Iran him over. Now I'm going to drive up to the courthouse or whatever they have here, and I'm going to report it. If you want to start walking towards the pike, go to it. I'll pick you up. But don't you tell me to turn around and drive seventy miles to Grand Island like we had nothing in the trunk but a bag of garbage. He happens to be some mother's son, and I'm going to report it before whoever killed him gets over the hills and far away.' 'You bastard,' she said, crying. 'What am I doing with you?' 'I don't know,' he said. 'I don't know any more. But the situation can be remedied, Vicky.' He pulled away from the curb. The dog lifted its head at the brief squeal of the tyres and then lowered it to its paws again. They drove the remaining block to the square. At the corner of Main and Pleasant, Main Street split in two. There actually was a town square, a grassy park with a bandstand in the middle. On the other end, where Main Street became one again, there were two officiallooking buildings. Burt could make out the lettering on one GATLIN MUNICIPAL CENTER. 'That's it,' he said. Vicky said nothing. Halfway up the square, Burt pulled over again. They were beside a lunch room, the Gatlin Bar and Grill. 'Where are you going?' Vicky asked with alarm as he opened his door. 'To find out where everyone is. Sign in the window there says "Open".' 'You're not going to leave me here alone.' 'So come. Who's stopping you?' She unlocked her door and stepped out as he crossed in front of the car. He saw how pale her face was and felt an instant of pity. Hopeless pity. 'Do you hear it?' she asked as he joined her. 'Hear what?' 'The nothing. No cars. No people. No tractors. Nothing.' And then, from a block over, they heard the high and joyous laughter of children. 'I hear kids,' he said. 'Don't you?' She looked at him, troubled. He opened the lunchroom door and stepped into dry, antiseptic heat. The floor was dusty. The sheen on the chrome was dull. The wooden blades of the ceiling fans stood still. Empty tables. Empty counter stools. But the mirror behind the counter had been shattered and there was something else in a moment he had it. All the beer taps had been broken off. They lay along the counter like bizarre party favours. Vicky's voice was gay and near to breaking. 'Sure. Ask anybody. Pardon me, sir, but could you tell me ' 'Oh, shut up.' But his voice was dull and without force. They were standing in a bar of dusty sunlight that fell through the lunchroom's big plateglass window and again he had that feeling of being watched and he thought of the boy they had in their trunk, and of the high laughter of children. A phrase came to him for no reason, a legalsounding phrase, and it began to repeat mystically in his mind Sight unseen. Sight unseen. Sight unseen. His eyes travelled over the ageyellowed cards thumbtacked up behind the counter CHEESEBURG 35c WORLD'S BEST JOE 10c STRAWBERRY RHUBARB PIE 25c TODAY'S SPECIAL HAM  RED EYE GRAVY WMASHED POT 80c. How long since he had seen lunchroom prices like that? Vicky had the answer. 'Look at this,' she said shrilly. She was pointing at the calendar on the wall. 'They've been at that bean supper for twelve years, I guess.' She uttered a grinding laugh. He walked over. The picture showed two boys swimming in a pond while a cute little dog carried off their clothes. Below the picture was the legend COMPLIMENTS OF GATLIN LUMBER  HARDWARE. You Breakum, We Fixum. The month on view was August 1964. 'I don't understand,' he faltered, 'but I'm sure , 'You're sure!' she cried hysterically. 'Sure, you're sure! That's part of your trouble, Burt, you've spent your whole life being sure!' He turned back to the door and she came after him. 'Where are you going?' 'To the Municipal Center.' 'Burt, why do you have to be so stubborn? You know something's wrong here. Can't you just admit it?' 'I'm not being stubborn. I just want to get shut of what's in that trunk.' They stepped out on to the sidewalk, and Burt was struck afresh with the town's silence, and with the smell of fertilizer. Somehow you never thought of that smell when you buttered an ear and salted it and bit in. Compliments of sun, rain, all sorts of manmade phosphates, and a good healthy dose of cow shit. But somehow this smell was different from the one he had grown up with in rural upstate New York. You could say whatever you wanted to about organic fertilizer, but there was something almost fragrant about it when the spreader was laying it down in the fields. Not one of your great perfumes, God no, but when the lateafternoon spring breeze would pick up and waft it over the freshly turned fields, it was a smell with good associations. It meant winter was over for good. It meant that school doors were going to bang closed in six weeks or so and spill everyone out into summer. It was a smell tied irrevocably in his mind with other aromas that were perfume timothy grass, clover, fresh earth, hollyhocks, dogwood. But they must do something different out here, he thought. The smell was close but not the same. There was a sickishsweet undertone. Almost a death smell. As a medical orderly in Vietnam, he had become well versed in that smell. Vicky was sitting quietly in the car, holding the corn crucifix in her lap and staring at it in a rapt way Burt didn't like. 'Put that thing down,' he said. 'No,' she said without looking up. 'You play your games and I'll play mine.' He put the car in gear and drove up to the corner. A dead stoplight hung overhead, swinging in a faint breeze. To the left was a neat white church. The grass was cut. Neatly kept flowers grew beside the flagged path up to the door. Burt pulled over. 'What are you doing?' 'I'm going to go in and take a look' Burt said. 'It's the only place in town that looks as if there isn't ten years' dust On it. And look at the sermon board.' She looked. Neatly pegged white letters under glass read THE POWER AND GRACE OF HE WHO WALKS BEHIND THE ROWS. The date was 27 July 1976  the Sunday before. 'He Who Walks Behind the Rows,' Burt said, turning off the ignition. 'One of the nine thousand names of God only used in Nebraska, I guess. Coming?' She didn't smile. 'I'm not going in with you.' 'Fine. Whatever you want.' 'I haven't been in a church since I left home and I don't want to be in this church and I don't want to be in this town, Burt. I'm scared Out of my mind, can't we just go?' 'I'll only be a minute.' 'I've got my keys, Burt. If you're not back in five minutes, I'll just drive away and leave you here.' 'Now just wait a minute, lady.' 'That's what I'm going to do. Unless you want to assault me like a common mugger and take my keys. I suppose you could do that.' 'But you don't think I will.' 'No.' Her purse Was on the seat between them. He snatched it up. She screamed and grabbed for the shoulder strap. He pulled it out of her reach. Not bothering to dig, he simply turned the bag upside down and let everything fall out. Her keyring glittered amid tissues, cosmetics, change, old shopping lists. She lunged for it but he beat her again and put the keys in his own pocket. 'You didn't have to do that,' she said, crying. 'Give them tome.' 'No,' he said, and gave her a hard, meaningless grin. 'No way.' 'Please, Burt! I'm scared!' She held her hand out, pleading now. 'You'd wait two minutes and decide that was long enough.' 'I wouldn't ' 'And then you'd drive off laughing and saying to yourself, "That'll teach Burt to cross me when I want something." Hasn't that pretty much been your motto during our married life? That'll teach Burt to cross me?' He got out of the car. 'Please, Burt?' she screamed, sliding across the seat. 'Listen I know we'll drive out of town and call from a phone booth, okay? I've got all kinds of change. I just. we can don't leave me alone, Burt, don't leave me out here alone!' He slammed the door on her cry and then leaned against the side of the TBird for a moment, thumbs against his closed eyes. She was pounding on the driver's side window and calling his name. She was going to make a wonderful impression when he finally found someone in authority to take charge of the kid's body. Oh yes. He turned and walked up the flagstone path to the church doors. Two or three minutes, just a look around, and he would be back out. Probably the door wasn't even unlocked. But it pushed in easily on silent, welloiled hinges (reverently oiled, he thought, and that seemed funny for no really good reason) and he stepped into a vestibule so cool it was almost chilly. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness. The first thing he noticed was a pile of wooden letters in the far corner, dusty and jumbled indifferently together. He went to them, curious. They looked as old and forgotten a the calendar in the bar and grill, unlike the rest of the vestibule, which was dustfree and tidy. The letters were about two feet high, obviously part of a set. He spread them out on the carpet  there were eighteen of them  and shifted them around like anagrams. HURT BITE CRAG CHAP CS. Nope. CRAP TARGET CHIBS HUC. That wasn't much good either. Except for the CH in CHIBS. He quickly assembled the word CHURCH and was left looking at RAP TAGET CIBS. Foolish. He was squatting here playing idiot games with a bunch of letters while Vicky was going nuts out in the car. He started to get up, and then saw it. He formed BAPTIST, leaving RAG EC  and by changing two letters he had GRACE. GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH. The letters must have been out front. They had taken them down and had thrown them indifferently in the corner, and the church had been painted since then so that you couldn't even see where the letters had been. Why? It wasn't the Grace Baptist Church any more, that was why. So what kind of church was it? For some reason that question caused a trickle of fear and he stood up quickly, dusting his fingers. So they had taken down a bunch of letters, so what? Maybe they had changed the place into Flip Wilson's Church of What's Happening Now. But what had happened then? He shook it off impatiently and went through the inner doors. Now he was standing at the back of the church itself, and as he looked towards the nave, he felt fear close around his heart and squeeze tightly. His breath drew in, loud in the pregnant silence of this place. The space behind the pulpit was dominated by a gigantic portrait of Christ, and Burt thought If nothing else in this town gave Vicky the screaming meemies, this would. The Christ was grinning, vulpine. His eyes were wide and staring, reminding Burt uneasily of Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera. In each of the wide black pupils someone (a sinner, presumably) was drowning in a lake of fire. But the oddest thing was that this Christ had green hair hair which on closer examination revealed itself to be a twining mass of earlysummer corn. The picture was crudely done but effective. It looked like a comicstrip mural done by a gifted child  an Old Testament Christ, or a pagan Christ that might slaughter his sheep for sacrifice instead of leading them. At the foot of the lefthand ranks of pews was a pipe Organ, and Burt could not at first tell what was wrong with it. He walked down the lefthand aisle and saw with slowly dawning horror that the keys had been ripped up, the stops had been pulled out.. and the pipes themselves filled with dry cornhusks. Over the organ was a carefully lettered plaque which read MAKE NO MUSIC EXCEPT WITH HUMAN TONGUE SAITH THE LORD GOD. Vicky was right. Something was terribly wrong here. He debated going back to Vicky without exploring any further, just getting into the car and leaving town as quickly as possible, never mind the Municipal Building. But it grated on him. Tell the truth, he thought. You want to give her Ban 5000 a workout before going back and admitting she was right to start with. He would go back in a minute or so. He walked towards the pulpit, thinking People must go through Gatlin all the time. There must be people in the neighbouring towns who have friends and relatives here. The Nebraska SP must cruise through from time to time. And what about the power company? The stoplight had been dead. Surely they'd know if the power had been off for twelve long years. Conclusion What seemed to have happened in Gatlin was impossible. Still, he had the creeps. He climbed the four carpeted steps to the pulpit and looked out over the deserted pews, glimmering in the halfshadows. He seemed to feel the weight of those eldritch and decidedly unchristian eyes boring into his back. There was a large Bible on the lectern, opened to the thirtyeighth chapter of Job. Burt glanced down at it and read 'Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.' The lord. He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Declare if thou hast understanding. And please pass the corn. He fluttered the pages of the Bible, and they made a dry whispering sound in the quiet  the sound that ghosts might make if there really were such things. And in a place like this you could almost believe it. Sections of the Bible had been chopped out. Mostly from the New Testament, he saw. Someone had decided to take on the job of amending Good King James with a pair of scissors. But the Old Testament was intact. He was about to leave the pulpit when he saw another book on a lower shelf and took it out, thinking it might be a church record of weddings and confirmations and burials. He grimaced at the words stamped on the cover, done inexpertly in gold leaf THUS LET THE INIQUITOUS BE CUT DOWN SO THAT THE GROUND MAY BE FERTILE AGAIN SAITH THE LORD GOD OF HOSTS. There seemed to be one train of thought around here, and Burt didn't care much for the track it seemed to ride on. He opened the book to the first wide, lined sheet. A child had done the lettering, he saw immediately. In places an ink eraser had been carefully used, and while there were no misspellings, the letters were large and childishly made, drawn rather than written. The first column read Amos Deigan (Richard), b. Sept. 4, 1945 Sept. 4, 1964 Isaac Renfrew (William), b. Sept.19, 1945 Sept.19, 1964 Zepeniah Kirk (George), b. Oct.14, 1945 Oct.14, 1964 Mary Wells (Roberta), b. Nov.12, 1945 Nov.12, 1964 Yemen Hollis (Edward), b. Jan. 5, 1946 Jan. 5, 1965 Frowning, Burt continued to turn through the pages. Threequarters of the way through, the double columns ended abruptly Rachel Stigman (Donna), b. June21, 1957 June 21, 1976 Moses Richardson (Henry), b. July 29, 1957 Malachi Boardman (Craig), b. August 15, 1957 The last entry in the book was for Ruth Clawson (Sandra), b. April 30, 1961. Burt looked at the shelf where he had found this book and came up with two more. The first had the same INIQUITOUS BE CUT DOWN logo, and it continued the same record, the single column tracing birth dates and names. In early September of 1964 he found Job Gilman (Clayton), b. September 6, and the next entry was Eve Tobin, b. June 16, 1965. No second name in parentheses. The third book was blank. Standing behind the pulpit, Burt thought about it. Something had happened in 1964. Something to do with religion, and corn and children. Dear God we beg thy blessing on the crop. For Jesus' sake, amen. And the knife raised high to sacrifice the lamb  but had it been a lamb? Perhaps a religious mania had swept them. Alone, all alone, cut off from the outside world by hundreds of square miles of the rustling secret corn. Alone under seyenty million acres of blue sky. Alone under the watchful eye of God, now a strange green God, a God of corn, grown old and strange and hungry. He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Burt felt a chill creep into his flesh. Vicky, let me tell you a story. It's about Amos Deigan, who was born Richard Deigan On 4 September 1945. He took the name Amos in 1964, fine Old Testament name, Amos, one of the minor prophets. Well, Vicky, what happened  don't laugh  is that Dick Deigan and his friends  Billy Renfrew, George Kirk, Roberta Wells, and Eddie Hollis among others  they got religion and they killed off their parents. All of them. Isn't that a scream? Shot them in their beds, knifed them in their bathtubs, poisoned their suppers, hung them, or disembowelled them, for all I know. Why? The corn. Maybe it was dying. Maybe they got the idea somehow that it was dying because there was too much sinning. Not enough sacrifice. They would have done it in the corn, in the rows. And somehow, Vicky, I'm quite sure of this, somehow they decided that nineteen was as old as any of them could live. Richard 'Amos' Deigan, the hero of our little story, had his nineteenth birthday on 4 September 1964  the date in the book. I think maybe they killed him. Sacrificed him in the corn. Isn't that a silly story? But let's look at Rachel Stigman, who was Donna Stigman until 1964. She turned nineteen on 21 June, just about a month ago. Moses Richardson was born on 29 July  just three days from today he'll be nineteen. Any idea what's going to happen to ole Mose on the twentyninth? I can guess. Burt licked his lips, which felt dry. One other thing, Vicky. Look at this. We have Job Gilman (Clayton) born on 6 September 1964. No other births until 16 June 1965. A gap of ten months. Know what I think? They killed all the parents, even the pregnant ones, that's what I think. And one of them got pregnant in October of 1964 and gave birth to Eve. Some sixteen or seventeenyearold girl. Eve. The first woman. He thumbed back through the book feverishly and found the Eve Tobin entry. Below it 'Adam Greenlaw, b. July 11, 1965'. They'd be just eleven now, he thought and his flesh began to crawl. And maybe they're out there. Someplace. But how could such a thing be kept secret? How could it goon? How unless the God in question approved? 'Oh Jesus,' Burt said into the silence, and that was when the TBird's horn began to blare into the afternoon, one long continuous blast. Burt jumped from the pulpit and ran down the centre aisle. He threw open the outer vestibule door, letting in hot sunshine, dazzling. Vicky was bold upright behind the steering wheel, both hands plastered on the horn ring, her head swivelling wildly. From all around the children were coming. Some of them were laughing gaily. They held knives, hatchets, pipes, rocks, hammers. One girl, maybe eight, with beautiful long blonde hair, held a jackhandle. Rural weapons. Not a gun among them. Burt felt a wild urge to scream out Which of you is Adam and Eve? Who are the mothers? Who are the daughters? Fathers? Sons? Declare, if thou hast understanding. They came from the side streets, from the town green, through the gate in the chainlink fence around the school playground a block further east. Some of them glanced indifferently at Burt, standing frozen on the church steps, and some nudged each other and pointed and smiled the sweet smiles of children. The girls were dressed in long brown wool and faded sunbonnets. The boys, like Quaker parsons, were all in black and wore roundcrowned flatbrimmed hats. They streamed across the town square towards the car, across lawns, a few came across the front yard of what had been the Grace Baptist Church until 1964. One or two of them almost close enough to touch. 'The shotgun!' Burt yelled. 'Vicky, get the shotgun!' But she was frozen in her panic, he could see that from the steps. He doubted if she could even hear him through the closed windows. They converged on the Thunderbird. The axes and hatchets and chunks of pipe began to rise and fall. My God, am I seeing this? he thought frozenly. An arrow of chrome fell off the side of the car. The hood ornament went flying. Knives crawled spirals through the sidewalls of the tyres and the car settled. The horn blared on and on. The windshield and side windows went opaque and cracked under the onslaught and then the safety glass sprayed inwards and he could see again. Vicky was crouched back, only one hand on the horn ring now, the other thrown up to protect her face. Eager young hands reached in, fumbling for the lockunlock button. She beat them away wildly. The horn became intermittent and then stopped altogether. The beaten and dented driver's side door was hauled open. They were trying to drag her out but her hands were wrapped around the steering wheel. Then one of them leaned in, knife in hand, and His paralysis broke and he plunged down the steps, almost falling, and ran down the flagstone walk, towards them. One of them, a boy about sixteen with long long red hair spilling out from beneath his hat, turned towards him, almost casually, and something flicked through the air. Burt's left arm jerked backwards, and for a moment he had the absurd thought that the had been punched at long distance, Then the pain came, so sharp and sudden that the world went grey. He examined his arm with a stupid sort of wonder. A buck and half Pensy jackknife was growing out of it like a strange tumour. The sleeve of his J. C. Penney sports shirt was turning red. He looked at it for what seemed like for ever, trying to understand how he could have grown a jackknife was it possible? When he looked up, the boy with red hair was almost on top of him. He was grinning, confident. 'Hey, you bastard,' Burt said. His voice was creaking, shocked. 'Remand your soul to God, for you will stand before His throne momentarily,' the boy with the red hair said, and clawed for Burt's eyes. Burt stepped back, pulled the Pensy out of his arm, and stuck it into the redhaired boy's throat. The gush of blood was immediate, gigantic. Burt was splashed with it. The redhaired boy began to gobble and walk in a large circle. He clawed at the knife, trying to pull it free, and was unable. Burt watched him, jaw hanging agape. None of this was happening. It was a dream. The redhaired boy gobbled and walked. Now his sound was the only one in the hot early afternoon. The others watched, stunned. This part of it wasn't in the script, Burt thought numbly. Vicky and I, we were in the script.


And the boy in the corn, who was trying to run away. But not one of their own. He stared at them savagely, wanting to scream, How do you like it? The redhaired boy gave one last weak gobble, and sank to his knees. He stared up at Burt for a moment, and then his hands dropped away from the shaft of the knife, and he fell forward. A soft sighing sound from the children gathered around the Thunderbird. They stared at Burt. Burt stared back at them, fascinated and that was when he noticed that Vicky was gone. 'Where is she?' he asked. 'Where did you take her?' One of the boys raised a bloodstreaked hunting knife towards his throat and made a sawing motion there. He grinned. That was the only answer. From somewhere in back, an older boy's voice, soft 'Get him.' The boys began to walk towards him. Burt backed up. They began to walk faster. Burt backed up faster. The shotgun, the goddamned shotgun! Out of reach. The sun cut their shadows darkly on the green church lawn and then he was on the sidewalk. He turned and ran. 'Kill him!' someone roared, and they came after him. He ran, but not quite blindly. He skirted the Municipal Building  no help there, they would corner him like a rat and ran on up Main Street, which opened out and became the highway again two blocks further up. He and Vicky would have been on that road now and away, if he had only listened. His loafers slapped against the sidewalk. Ahead of him he could see a few more business buildings, including the Gatlin Ice Cream Shoppe and  sure enough  the Bijou Theatre. The dustclotted marquee letters read NOW HOWING L MITED EN AGEMEN ELI A TH TAYLOR CLEOPA RA. Beyond the next cross street was a gas station that marked the edge of town. And beyond that the corn, closing back in to the sides of the road. A green tide of corn. Burt ran. He was already out of breath and the knife wound in his upper arm was beginning to hurt. And he was leaving a trail of blood. As he ran he yanked his handkerchief from his back pocket and stuck it inside his shirt. He ran. His loafers pounded the cracked cement of the sidewalk, his breath rasped in his throat with more and more heat. His arm began to throb in earnest. Some mordant part of his brain tried to ask if he thought he could run all the way to the next town, if he could run twenty miles of twolane blacktop. He ran. Behind him he could hear them, fifteen years younger and faster than he was, gaining. Their feet slapped on the pavement. They whooped and shouted back and forth to each other. They're having more fun than a fivealarm fire, Burt thought disjointedly. They'll talk about it for years. Burt ran. He ran past the gas station marking the edge of town. His breath gasped and roared in his chest. The sidewalk ran out under his feet. And now there was only one thing to do, only one chance to beat them and escape with his life. The houses were gone, the town was gone. The corn had surged in a soft green wave back to the edges of the road. The green, swordlike leaves rustled softly. It would be deep in there, deep and cool, shady in the rows of manhigh corn. He ran past a sign that said YOU ARE NOW LEAVING GATLIN, NICEST LITTLE TOWN IN NEBRASKA  OR ANYWHERE ELSE! DROP IN ANYTIME! I'll be sure to do that, Burt thought dimly. He ran past the sign like a sprinter closing on the tape and then swerved left, crossing the road, and kicked his loafers away. Then he was in the corn and it closed behind him and over him like the waves of a green sea, taking him in. Hiding him. He felt a sudden and wholly unexpected relief sweep him, and at the same moment he got his second wind. His lungs, which had been shallowing up, seemed to unlock and give him more breath. He ran straight down the first row he had entered, head ducked, his broad shoulders swiping the leaves and making them tremble. Twenty yards in' he turned right, parallel to the road again, and ran on, keeping low so they wouldn't see his dark head of hair bobbing amid the yellow corn tassels. He doubled back towards the road for a few moments, crossed more rows, and then put his back to the road and hopped randomly from row to row, always delving deeper and deeper into the corn. At last, he collapsed on to his knees and put his forehead against the ground. He could only hear his own taxed breathing, and the thought that played over and over in his mind was Thank God I gave up smoking, thank God I gave up smoking, thank God Then he could hear them, yelling back and forth to each other, in some cases bumping into each other ('Hey, this is my row!'), and the sound heartened him. They were well away to his left and they sounded very poorly organized. He took his handkerchief out of his shirt, folded it, and stuck it back in after looking at the wound. The bleeding seemed to have stopped in spite of the workout he had given it. He rested a moment longer, and was suddenly aware that he felt good, physically better than he had in years excepting the throb of his arm. He felt well exercised, and suddenly grappling with a clearcut (no matter how insane) problem after two years of trying to cope with the incubotic gremlins that were sucking his marriage dry. It wasn't right that he should feel this way, he told himself. He was in deadly peril of his life, and his wife had been carried off. She might be dead now. He tried to summon up Vicky's face and dispel some of the odd good feeling by doing so, but her face wouldn't come. What came was the redhaired boy with the knife in his throat. He became aware of the corn fragrance in his nose now, all around him. The wind through the tops of the plants made a sound like voices. Soothing. Whatever had been done in the name of this corn, it was now his protector. But they were getting closer. Running hunched over, he hurried up the row he was in, crossed over, doubled back, and crossed over more rows. He tried to keep the voices always on his left, but as the afternoon progressed, that became harder to do. The voices had grown faint, and often the rustling sound of the corn obscured them altogether. He would run, listen, run again. The earth was hardpacked, and his stockinged feet left little or no trace. When he stopped much later the sun was hanging over the fields to his right, red and inflamed, and when he looked at his watch he saw that it was quarter past seven. The sun had stained the corntops a reddish gold, but here the shadows were dark and deep. He cocked his head, listening. With the coming of sunset the wind had died entirely and the corn stood still, exhaling its aroma of growth into the warm air. If they were still in the corn they were either far away or just hunkered down and listening. But Burt didn't think a bunch of kids, even crazy ones, could be quiet for that long. He suspected they had done the most kidlike thing, regardless of the consequences for them; they had given up and gone home. He turned towards the setting sun, which had sunk between the raftered clouds on the horizon, and began to walk. If he cut on a diagonal through the rows, always keeping the setting sun ahead of him, he would be bound to strike Route 17 sooner or later. The ache in his arm had settled into a dull throb that was nearly pleasant, and the good feeling was still with him. He decided that as long as he was here, he would let the good feeling exist in him without guilt. The guilt would return when he had to face the authorities and account for what had happened in Gatlin. But that could wait. He pressed through the corn, thinking he had never felt so keenly aware. Fifteen minutes later the sun was only a hemisphere poking over the horizon and he stopped again, his new awareness clicking into a pattern he didn't like. It was vaguely well, vaguely frightening. He cocked his head. The corn was rustling. Burt had been aware of that for some time, but he had just put it together with something else. The wind was still. How could that be? He looked around warily, half expecting to see the smiling boys in their Quaker coats creeping out of the corn, their knives clutched in their hands. Nothing of the sort. There was still that rustling noise. Off to the left. He began to walk in that direction, not having to bull through the corn any more. The row was taking him in the direction he wanted to go, naturally. The row ended up ahead. Ended? No, emptied out into some sort of clearing. The rustling was there. He stopped, suddenly afraid. The scent of the corn was strong enough to be cloying. The rows held on to the sun's heat and he became aware that he was plastered with sweat and chaff and thin spider strands of cornsilk. The bugs ought to be crawling all over him but they weren't. He stood still, staring towards that place where the corn opened out on to what looked like a large circle of bare earth. There were no minges or mosquitoes in here, no blackflies or chiggers  what he and Vicky had called 'drivein bugs' when they had been courting, he thought with sudden and unexpectedly sad nostalgia. And he hadn't seen a single crow. How was that for weird, a cornpatch with no crows? In the last of the daylight he swept his eyes closely over the row of corn to his left. And saw that every leaf and stalk was perfect, which was just not possible. No yellow blight. No tattered leaves, no caterpillar eggs, no burrows, no His eyes widened. My God, there aren't any weeds! Not a single one. Every foot and a half the corn plants rose from the earth. There was no witchgrass, jimson, pikeweed, whore's hair, or poke salad. Nothing. Burt stared up, eyes wide. The light in the west was fading. The raftered clouds had drawn back together. Below them the golden light had faded to pink and ochre. It would be dark soon enough. It was time to go down to the clearing in the corn and see what was there  hadn't that been the plan all along? All the time he had thought he was cutting back to the highway, hadn't he been being led to this place? Dread in his belly, he went on down to the row and stood at the edge of the clearing. There was enough light for him to see what was here. He couldn't scream. There didn't seem to be enough air left in his lungs. He tottered in on legs like slats of splintery wood. His eyes bulged from his sweaty face. 'Vicky,' he whispered. 'Oh, Vicky, my God ' She had been mounted on a crossbar like a hideous trophy, her arms held at the wrists and her legs at the ankles with twists of common barbed wire, seventy cents a yard at any hardware store in Nebraska. Her eyes had been ripped out. The sockets were filled with the moonflax of cornsilk. Her jaws were wrenched open in a silent scream, her mouth filled with cornhusks. On her left was a skeleton in a mouldering surplice. The nude jawbone grinned. The eye sockets seemed to stare at Burt jocularly, as if the onetime minister of the Grace Baptist Church was saying It's not so bad, being sacrificed by pagan devilchildren in the corn is not so bad, having your eyes ripped out of your skull according to the Laws of Moses is not so bad To the left of the skeleton in the surplice was a second skeleton, this one dressed in a rotting blue uniform. A hat hung over the skull, shading the eyes, and on the peak of the cap was a greenishtinged badge reading police chief. That was when Burt heard it coming not the children but something much larger, moving through the corn and towards the clearing. Not the children, no. The children wouldn't venture into the corn at night. This was the holy place, the place of He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Jerkily Burt turned to flee. The row he had entered the clearing by was gone. Closed up. All the rows had closed up. It was coming closer now and he could hear it, pushing through the corn. He could hear it breathing. An ecstasy of superstitious terror seized him. It was coming. The corn on the far side of the clearing had suddenly darkened, as if a gigantic shadow had blotted it out. Coming. He Who Walks Behind the Rows. It began to come into the clearing. Burt saw something huge, bulking up to the sky something green with terrible red eyes the size of footballs. Something that smelled like dried cornhusks years in some dark barn. He began to scream. But he did not scream long. Some time later, a bloated orange harvest moon came up. The children of the corn stood in the clearing at midday, looking at the two crucified skeletons and the two bodies the bodies were not skeletons yet, but they would be. In time. And here, in the heartlands of Nebraska, in the corn, there was nothing but time. 'Behold, a dream came to me in the night, and the Lord did shew all this to me.' They all turned to look at Isaac with dread and wonder, even Malachi. Isaac was only nine, but he had been the Seer since the corn had taken David a year ago. David had been nineteen and he had walked into the corn on his birthday, just as dusk had come drifting down the summer rows. Now, small face grave under his roundcrowned hat, Isaac continued 'And in my dream the Lord was a shadow that walked behind the rows, and he spoke to me in the words he used to our older brothers years ago. He is much displeased with this sacrifice.' They made a sighing, sobbing noise and looked at the surrounding walls of green. 'And the Lord did say Have I not given you a place of killing, that you might make sacrifice there? And have I not shewn you favour? But this man has made a blasphemy within me, and I have completed this sacrifice myself. Like the Blue Man and the false minister who escaped many years ago.' 'The Blue Man the false minister,' they whispered, and looked at each other uneasily. 'SO now is the Age of Favour lowered from nineteen plantings and harvestings to eighteen,' Isaac went on relentlessly. 'Yet be fruitful and multiply as the corn multiplies, that my favour may be shewn you, and be upon you.' Isaac ceased. The eyes turned to Malachi and Joseph, the only two among this party who were eighteen. There were others back in town, perhaps twenty in all. They waited to hear what Malachi would say, Malachi who had led the hunt for Japheth, who evermore would be known as Ahaz, cursed of God. Malachi had cut the throat of Ahaz and had thrown his body out of the corn so the foul body would not pollute it or blight it. 'I obey the word of God,' Malachi whispered. The corn seemed to sigh its approval. In the weeks to come the girls would make many corncob crucifixes to ward off further evil. And that night all of those now above the Age of Favour walked silently into the corn and went to the clearing, to gain the continued favour of He Who Walks Behind the Rows. 'Goodbye, Malachi,' Ruth called. She waved disconsolately. Her belly was big with Malachi's child and tears coursed silently down her cheeks. Malachi did not turn. His back was straight. The corn swallowed him. Ruth turned away, still crying. She had conceived a secret hatred for the corn and sometimes dreamed of walking into it with a torch in each hand when dry September came and the stalks were dead and explosively combustible. But she also feared it. Out there, in the night, something walked, and it saw everything.. even the secrets kept in human hearts. Dusk deepened into night. Around Gatlin the corn rustled and whispered secretly. It was well pleased. THE LAST RUNG ON THE LADDER I got Katrina's letter yesterday, less than a week after my father and I got back from Los Angeles. It was addressed to Wilmington, Delaware, and I'd moved twice since then. People move around so much now, and it's funny how those crossedoff addresses and changeofaddress stickers can look like accusations. Her letter was rumpled and smudged, one of the corners dogeared from handling. I read what was in it and the next thing I knew I was standing in the living room with the phone in my h8nd, getting ready to call Dad. I put the phone down with something like horror. He was an old man, and he'd had two heart attacks. Was I going to call him and tell about Katrina's letter so soon after we'd been in L.A.? To do that might very well have killed him. So I didn't call. And I had no one I could tell a thing like that letter, it's too personal to tell anyone except a wife or a very close friend. I haven't made many close friends in the last few years, and my wife Helen and I divorced in 1971. What we exchange now are Christmas cards. How are you? How's the job? Have a Happy New Year. I've been awake all night with it, with Katrina's letter. She could have put it on a postcard. There was only a single sentence below the 'Dear Larry'. 'But a sentence can mean enough. It can do enough. I remembered my dad on the plane, his face seeming old and wasted in the harsh sunlight at 18,000 feet as we went west from New York. We had 'just passed over Omaha, according to the pilot, and Dad said, 'It's a lot further away than it looks, Larry.' There was a heavy sadness in his voice that made me uncomfortable because I couldn't understand it. I understood it better after getting Katrina's letter. We grew up eighty miles west of Omaha in a town called Hemingford Home  my dad, my mom, my sister Katrina, and me. I was two years older than Katrina, whom everyone called Kitty. She was a beautiful child and a beautiful woman  even at eight, the year of the incident in the barn, you could see that her cornsilk hair was never going to darken and that those eyes would always be a dark, Scandinavian blue. A look in those eyes and a man would be gone. I guess you'd say we grew up hicks. My dad had three hundred acres of flat, rich land, and he grew feed corn and raised cattle. Everybody just called it 'the home place'. In those days all the roads were dirt except Interstate 80 and Nebraska Route 96, and a trip to town was something you waited three days for. Nowadays I'm one of the best independent corporation lawyers in America, so they tell me  and I'd have to admit for the sake of honesty that I think they're right. A president of a large company once introduced me to his board of directors as his hired gun. I wear expensive suits and my shoeleather is the best. I've got three assistants on fulltime pay, and I can call in another dozen if [need them. But in those days I walked up a dirt road to a oneroom school with books tied in a belt over my shoulder, and Katrina walked with me. Sometimes, in the spring, we went barefoot. That was in the days before you couldn't get served in a diner or shop in a market unless you were wearing shoes. Later on, my mother died  Katrina and I were in high school up at Columbia City then  and two years after that my dad lost the place and went to work selling tractors. It was the end of the family, although that didn't seem so bad then. Dad got along in his work, bought himself a dealership, and got tapped for a management position about nine years ago. I got a football scholarship to the University of Nebraska and managed to learn something besides how to run the ball out of a slotright formation. And Katrina? But it's her I want to tell you about. It happened, the barn thing, one Saturday in early November. To tell you the truth I can't pin down the actual year, but Ike was still President. Mom was at a bake fair in Columbia city, and Dad had gone over to our nearest neighbour's (and that was seven miles away) to help the man fix a hayrake. There was supposed to be a hired man on the place, but he had never showed up that day, and my dad fired him not a month later. Dad left me a list of chores to do (and there were some for Kitty, too) and told us not to get to playing until they were all done. But that wasn't long. It was November, and by that time of the year the makeorbreak time had gone past. We'd made it again that year. We wouldn't always. I remember that day very clearly. The sky was overcast and while it wasn't cold, you could feel it wanting to be cold, wanting to get down to the business of frost and freeze, snow and sleet. The fields were stripped. The animals were sluggish and morose. There seemed to be funny little draughts in the house that had never been there before. On a day like that, the only really nice place to be was the barn. It was warm, filed with a pleasant mixed aroma of hay and fur and dung, and with the mysterious chuckling, cooing sounds of the barnswallows high up in the third loft. If you cricked your neck up, you could see the white November light coming through the chinks in the roof and try to spell your name. It was a game that really only seemed agreeable on overcast autumn days. There was a ladder nailed to a crossbeam high up in the third loft, a ladder that went straight down to the main barn floor. We were forbidden to climb on it because it was old and shaky. Dad had promised Mom a thousand times that he would pull it down and put up a stronger one, but something else always seemed to come up when there was time helping a neighbour with his hayrake, for instance. And the hired man was just not working out. If you climbed up that rickety ladder  there were exactly fortythree rungs, Kitty and I had counted them enough to know  you ended up on a beam that was seventy feet above the strawlittered barn floor. And then if you edged out along the beam about twelve feet, your knees jittering, your ankle joints creaking, your mouth dry and tasting like a used fuse, you stood over the haymow. And then you could jump off the beam and fall seventy feet straight down, with a horrible hilarious dying swoop, into a huge soft bed of lush hay. It has a sweet smell, hay does, and you'd come to rest in that smell of reborn summer with your stomach left behind you way up there in the middle of the air, and you'd feel well, like Lazarus must have felt. You had taken the fall and lived to tell the tale. It was a forbidden sport, all right. If we had been caught, my mother would have shrieked blue murder and my father would have laid on the strap, even at our advanced ages. Because of the ladder, and because if you happened to lose your balance and topple from the beam before you had edged out over the loose fathoms of hay, you would fall to utter destruction on the hard planking of the barn floor. But the temptation was just too great. When the cats are away well, you know how. that one goes. That day started like all the others, a delicious feeling of dread mixed with anticipation. We stood at the foot of the ladder, looking at each other. Kitty's colour was high, her eyes darker and more sparkling than ever. 'Dare you,' I said. Promptly from Kitty 'Dares go first.' Promptly from me 'Girls go before boys.' 'Not if it's dangerous,' she said, casting her eyes down demurely, as if everybody didn't know she was the second biggest tomboy in Hemingford. But that was how she was about it. She would go, but she wouldn't go first. 'Okay,' I said. 'Here I go.' I was ten that year, and thin as Scratchthedemon, about ninety pounds. Kitty was eight, and twenty pounds lighter. The ladder had always held us before, we thought it would always hold us again, which is a philosophy that gets men and nations in trouble time after time. I could feel it that day, beginning to shimmy around a little bit in the dusty barn air as I climbed higher and higher. As always about halfway up, I entertained a vision of what would happen to me if it suddenly let go and gave up the ghost. But I kept going until I was able to clap my hands around the beam and boost myself up and look down. Kitty's face, turned up to watch me, was a small white oval. In her faded checked shirt and blue denims, she looked like a doll. Above me still higher, in the dusty reaches of the eaves, the swallows cooed mellowly. Again, by rote 'Hi, down there!' I called, my voice floating down to her on motes of chaff. 'Hi, up there!' I stood up. Swayed back and forth a little. As always, there seemed suddenly to be strange currents in the air that had not existed down below. I could hear my own heartbeat as I began to inch along with my arms held out for balance. Once, a swallow had swooped close by my head during this part of the adventure, and in drawing back I had almost lost my balance. I lived in fear of the same thing happening again. But not this time. At last I stood above the safety of the hay. Now looking down was not so much frightening as sensual. There was a moment of anticipation. Then I stepped off into space, holding my nose for effect, and as it always did, the sudden grip of gravity, yanking me down brutally, making me plummet, made me feel like yelling Oh, I'm sorry, I made a mistake, let me back Up! Then I hit the hay, shot into it like a projectile, its sweet and dusty smell billowing up around me, still going down, as if into heavy water, coming slowly to rest buried in the stuff. As always, I could feel a sneeze building up in my nose. And hear a frightened field mouse or two fleeing for a more serene section of the haymow. And feel, in that curious way, that I had been reborn. I remember Kitty telling me once that after diving into the hay she felt fresh and new, like a baby. I shrugged it off at the time  sort of knowing what she meant, sort of not knowing  but since I got her letter I think about that, too. I climbed out of the hay, sort of swimming through it, until I could climb out on to the barn floor. I had hay down my pants and down the back of my shirt. It was on my sneakers and sticking to my elbows. Hayseeds in my hair? You bet. She was halfway up the ladder by then, her gold pigtails bouncing against her shoulderblades, climbing through a dusty shaft of light. On other days that light might have been as bright as her hair, but on this day her pigtails had no competition  they were easily the most colourful thing up there. I remember thinking that I didn't like the way the ladder was swaying back and forth. It seemed like it had never been so looseygoosey. Then she was on the beam, high above me  now I was the small one, my face was the small white upturned oval as her voice floated down on errant chaff stirred up by my leap 'Hi, down there!' 'Hi, up there!' She edged along the beam, and my heart loosened a little in my chest when I judged she was over the safety of the hay. It always did, although she was more graceful than I was and more athletic, if that doesn't sound like too strange a thing to say about your kid sister. She stood, poising on the toes of her old lowtopped Keds, hands out in front of her. And then she swanned. Talk about things you can't forget, things you can't describe. Well, I can describe it in a way. But not in a way that will make you understand how beautiful that was, how perfect, one of the few things in my life that seem utterly real, utterly true. No, I can't tell you that. I don't have the skill with either my pen or my tongue. For a moment she seemed to hang in the air, as if borne up by one of those mysterious updraughts that only existed in the third loft, a bright swallow with golden plumage such as Nebraska has never seen since. She was Kitty, my sister, her arms swept behind her and her back arched, and how I loved her for that beat of time! Then she came down and ploughed into the hay and out of sight. An explosion of chaff and giggles rose out of the hole she made. I'd forgotten about how rickety the ladder had looked with her on it, and by the time she was out, I was halfway up again. I tried to swan myself, but the fear grabbed me the way it always did, and my swan turned into a cannonball. I think I never believed the hay was there the way Kitty believed it. How long did the game go on? Hard to tell, But I looked up some ten or twelve dives later and saw the light had changed. Our mom and dad were due back and we were all covered with chaff as good as a signed confession. We agreed on one more turn each. Going up first, I felt the ladder moving beneath me and I could hear  very faintly  the whining rasp of old nails loosening up in the wood. And for the first time I was really, actively scared. I think if I'd been closer to the bottom I would have gone down and that would have been the end of it, but the beam was closer and seemed safer. Three rungs from the top the whine of pulling nails grew louder and I was suddenly cold with terror, with the certainty that I had pushed it too far. Then I had the splintery beam in my hands, taking my weight off the ladder, and there was a cold, unpleasant sweat matting the twigs of hay to my forehead. The fun of the game was gone. I hurried out over the hay and dropped off. Even the pleasurable part of the drop was gone. Coming down, I imagined how I'd feel if that was solid barn planking coming up to meet me instead of the yielding give of the hay. I came out to the middle of the barn to see Kitty hurrying up the ladder. I called 'Hey, come down! It's not safe!' 'It'll hold me!' she called back confidently. 'I'm lighter than you!' 'Kitty ' But that never got finished. Because that was when the ladder let go. It went with a rotted, splintering crack. I cried out and Kitty screamed. She was about where I had been when I'd become convinced I'd pressed my luck too far. The rung she was standing on gave way, and then both sides of the ladder split. For a moment the ladder below her, which had broken entirely free, looked like a ponderous insect  a praying mantis or a ladderbug  which had just decided to walk off. Then it toppled, hitting the barn floor with a flat clap that raised dust and caused the cows to moo worriedly. One of them kicked at its stall door. Kitty uttered a high, piercing scream. Larry! Larry! Help me!' I knew what had to be done, I saw right away. I was terribly afraid, but not quite scared out of my wits. She was better than sixty feet above me, her bluejeaned legs kicking wildly at the blank air, then barnswallows cooing above her. I was scared, all right. And you know, I still can't watch a circus aerial act, not even on TV. It makes my stomach feel weak. But I knew what had to be done. 'Kitty!' I bawled up at her. 'Just hold still! Hold still!' She obeyed me instantly. Her legs stopped kicking and she hung straight down, her small hands clutching the last rung on the ragged end of the ladder like an acrobat whose trapeze has stopped. I ran to the hayrnow, clutched up a double handful of the stuff, ran back, and dropped it. I went back again. And.again. And again. I really don't remember it after that, except the hay got up my nose and I started sneezing and couldn't stop. I ran back and forth, building a haystack where the foot of the ladder had been. It was a very small haystack. Looking at it, then looking at her hanging so far above it, you might have thought of one of those cartoons where the guy jumps three hundred feet into a water glass. Back and forth. Back and forth. 'Larry, I can't hold on much longer!' Her voice was high and despairing. 'Kitty, you've got to! You've got to hold on!' Back and forth. Hay down my shirt. Back and forth. The haystick was high as my chin now, but the haymow we had been diving into was twentyfive feet deep. I thought that if she only broke her legs it would be getting off cheap. And I knew if she missed the hay altogether, she would be killed. Back and forth. 'Larry! The rung! It's letting go! I could hear the steady, rasping cry of the rung pulling free under here weight. Her legs began to kick again in panic, but if she was thrashing like that, she would surely miss the hay. 'No!' I yelled. 'No! Stop that! Just let go! Let go, Kitty!' Because it was too late for me to get any more hay. Too late for anything except blind hope. She let go and dropped the second I told her to. She came straight down like a knife. It seemed to me that she dropped forever, her gold pigtails standing straight up from her head, her eyes shut, her face as pale as china. She didn't scream. Her hands were locked in front of her lips, as if she was praying. And she struck the hay right in the centre.


She went down out of sight in it  hay flew up all around as if a shell had struck  and I heard the thump of her body hitting the boards. The sound, a loud thud, sent a deadly chill into me. It had been too loud, much too loud. But I had to see. Starting to cry, I pounced on the haystack and pulled it apart, flinging the straw behind me in great handfuls. A bluejeaned leg came to light, then a plaid shirt and then Kitty's face. It was deadly pale and her eyes were shut. She was dead, I knew it as I looked at her. The world went grey for me, November grey. The only things in it with any colour were her pigtails, bright gold. And then the deep blue of her irises as she opened her eyes. 'Kitty?' My voice was hoarse, husky, unbelieving. My throat was coated with haychaff. 'Kitty?' 'Larry?' she asked, bewildered. 'Am I alive?' I picked her out of the hay and hugged her and she put her arms around my neck and hugged me back. 'You're alive,' I said. 'You're alive, you're alive.' She had broken her left ankle and that was all. When Dr Pederson, the GP from Columbia City, came out to the barn with my father and me, looked up into the shadows for a long time. The last rung on the ladder still hung there, aslant, from one nail. He looked, as I said, for a long time. 'A miracle,' he said to my father, and then kicked disdainfully at the hay I'd put down. He went out to his dusty DeSoto and drove away. My father's hand came down on my shoulder. 'We're going to the woodshed, Larry,' he said in avery calm voice. 'I believe you know what's going to happen there.' 'Yes, sir,' I whispered. 'Every time I whack you, Larry, I want you to thank God your sister is still alive.' 'Yes, sir.' Then we went. He whacked me plenty of times, so many times I ate standing up for a week and with a cushion on my chair for two weeks after that. And every time he whacked me with his big red calloused hand, I thanked God. In a loud, loud voice. By the last two or three whacks, I was pretty sure He was hearing me. They let me in to see her just before bedtime. There was a catbird outside her window, I remember that. Her foot, all wrapped up, was propped on a board. She looked at me so long and so lovingly that I was uncomfortable. Then she said, 'Hay. You put down hay.' 'Course I did,' I blurted. 'What else would I do? Once the ladder broke there was no way to get up there.' 'I didn't know what you were doing,' she said. 'You must have! I was right under you, for cripe's sake!' 'I didn't dare look down,' she said. 'I was too scared. I had my eyes shut the whole time.' I stared at her, thunderstruck. 'You didn't know? Didn't know what I was doing?' She shook her head. 'And when I told you to let go you you just did it?' She nodded. 'Kitty, how could you do that?' She looked at me with those deep blue eyes. 'I knew you must have been doing something to fix it,' she said. 'You're my big brother. I knew you'd take care of me.' 'Oh, Kitty, you don't know how close it was.' I had put my hands over my face. She sat up and took them away. She kissed my cheek. 'No,' she said. 'But I knew you were down there. Gee, am I sleepy. I'll see you tomorrow, Larry. I'm going to have a cast, Dr Pederson says.' She had the cast on for a little less than a month, and all her classmates signed it  she even got me to sign it. And when it came off, that was the end of the barn incident. My father replaced the ladder up to the third loft with a new strong one, but I never climbed up to the beam and jumped off into the haymow again. So far as I know, Kitty didn't either. It was the end, but somehow not the end. Somehow it never ended until nine days ago, when Kitty jumped from the top storey of an insurance building in Los Angeles. I have the clipping from the L.A. Times in my wallet. I guess I'll always carry it, not in the good way you carry snapshots of people you want to remember or theatre tickets from a really good show or part of the programme from a World Series game. I carry that clipping the way you carry something heavy, because carrying it is your work. The headline reads CALL GIRL SWANDIVES TO HER DEATH. We grew up. That's all I know, other than facts that don't mean anything. She was going to go to business college in Omaha, but in the summer after she graduated from high school, she won a beauty contest and married one of the judges. It sounds like a dirty joke, doesn't it? My Kitty. While I was in law school she got divorced and wrote me a long letter, ten pages or more, telling me how it had been, how messy it had been, how it might have been better if she could have had a child. She asked me if I could come. But losing a week in law school is like losing a term in liberalarts undergraduate. Those guys are greyhounds. If you lose sight of the little mechanical rabbit, it's gone for ever. She moved out to L.A. and got married again. When that one broke up I was out of law school. There was another letter, a shorter one, more bitter. She was never going to get stuck on that merrygoround, she told me. It was a fix job. The only way you could catch the brass ring was to tumble off the horse and crack your skull. If that was what the price of a free ride was, who wanted it? PS, Can you come, Larry? It's been a while. I wrote back and told her I'd love to come, but I couldn't. I had landed a job in a highpressure firm, low guy on the totem pole, all the work and none of the credit. If I was going to make it up to the next step, it would have to be that year. That was my long letter, and it was all about my career. I answered all of her letters. But I could never really believe that it was really Kitty who was writing them, you know, no more than I could really believe that the hay was really there until it broke my fall at the bottom of the drop and saved my life. I couldn't believe that my sister and the beaten woman who signed 'Kitty' in a circle at the bottom of her letters were really the same person. My sister was a girl with pigtails, still without breasts. She was the one who stopped writing. I'd get Christmas cards, birthday cards, and my wife would reciprocate. Then we got divorced and I moved and just forgot. The next Christmas and the birthday after, the cards came through the forwarding address. The first one. And I kept thinking Gee, I've got to write Kitty and tell her that I've moved. But I never did. But as I've told you, those are facts that don't mean anything. The only things that matter are that we grew up and she swanned from that insurance building, and that Kitty was the one who always believed the hay would be there. Kitty was the one who had said, 'I knew you must be doing something to fix it.' Those things matter. And Kitty's letter. People move around so much now, and it's funny how those crossedoff addresses and changeofaddress stickers can look like accusations. She's printed her return address in the upper left corner of the envelope, the place she'd been staying at until she jumped. A very nice apartment building on Van Nuys. Dad and I went there to pick up her things. The landlady was nice. She had liked Kitty. The letter was postmarked two weeks before she died. It would have got to me a long time before, if not for the forwarding addresses. She must have got tired of waiting. Dear Larry I've been thinking about it a lot lately and what I've decided is that it would have been better for me if that last rung had broken before you could put the hay down. Your, Kitty Yes, I guess she must have gotten tired of waiting. I'd rather believe that than think of her deciding I must have forgotten. I wouldn't want her to think that, because that one sentence was maybe the only thing that would have brought me on the run. But not even that is the reason sleep comes so hard now. When I close my eyes and start to drift off, I see her coming down from the third loft, her eyes wide and dark blue, her body arched, her arms swept up behind her. She was the one who always knew the hay would be there. THE MAN WHO LOVED FLOWERS On an early evening in May of 1963, a young man with his hand in his pocket walked briskly up New York's Third Avenue. The air was soft and beautiful, the sky was darkening by slow degrees from blue to the calm and lovely violet of dusk. There are people who love the city, and this was one of the nights that made them love it. Everyone standing in the doorways of the delicatessens and drycleaning shops and restaurants seemed to be smiling. An old lady pushing two bags of groceries in an old baby pram grinned at the young man and hailed him 'Hey, beautiful!' The young man gave her a halfsmile and raised his hand in a wave. She passed on her way, thinking He's in love. He had that look about him. He was dressed in a light grey suit, the narrow tie pulled down a little, his top collar button undone. His hair was dark and cut short. His complexion was fair, his eyes a light blue. Not an extraordinary face, but on this soft spring evening, on this avenue, in May of 1963, he was beautiful, and the old woman found herself thinking with a moment's sweet nostalgia that in spring anyone can be beautiful if they're hurrying to meet the one of their dreams for dinner and maybe dancing after. Spring is the only season when nostalgia never seems to turn bitter, and she went on her way glad that she had spoken to him and glad he had returned the compliment by raising his hand in halfsalute. The young man crossed Sixtythird Street, walking with a bounce in his step and that same halfsmile on his lips. Part way up the block, an old man stood beside a chipped green handcart filled with flowers  the predominant colour was yellow; a yellow fever of jonquils and late crocuses. The old man also had carnations and a few hothouse tea roses, mostly yellow and white. He was eating a pretzel and listening to a bulky transistor radio that was sitting kittycorner on his handcart. The radio poured out bad news that no one listened to a hammer murderer was still on the loose; JFK had declared that the situation in a little Asian country called Vietnain ('Vitenum' the guy reading the news called it) would bear watching; an unidentified woman had been pulled from the East River; a grand jury had failed to indict a crime overlord in the current city administration's war on heroin; the Russians had exploded a nuclear device. None of it seemed real, none of it seemed to matter. The air was soft and sweet. Two men with beer bellies stood outside a bakery, pitching nickels and ribbing each other. Spring trembled on the edge of summer, and in the city, summer is the season of dreams. The young man passed the flowerstand and the sound of the bad news faded. He hesitated, looked over his shoulder, and thought it over. He reached into his coat pocket and touched the something in there again. For a moment his face seemed puzzled, lonely, almost haunted, and then, as his hand left the pocket, it regained its former expression of eager expectation. He turned back to the flower stand, smiling. He would bring her some flowers, that would please her. He loved to see her eyes light up with surprise and joy when he brought her a surprise  little things, because he was far from rich. A box of candy. A bracelet. Once only a bag of Valencia oranges, because he knew they were Norma's favourite. 'My young friend,' the flower vendor said, as the man in the grey suit came back, running his eyes over the stock in the handcart. The vendor was maybe sixtyeight, wearing a torn grey knitted sweater and a soft cap in spite of the warmth of the evening. His face was a map of wrinkles, his eyes were deep in pouches, and a cigarette jittered between his fingers. But he also remembered how it was to be young in the spring  young and so much in love that you practically zoomed everywhere. The vend6r's face was normally sour, but now he smiled a little, just as the old woman pushing the groceries had, because this guy was such an obvious case. He brushed pretzel crumbs from the front of his baggy sweater and thought If this kid were sick, they'd have him in intensive care right now. 'How much are your flowers?' the young man asked. 'I'll make you up a nice bouquet for a dollar. Those tea roses, they're hothouse. Cost a little more, seventy cents apiece. I sell you half a dozen for three dollars and fifty cents.' 'Expensive,' the young man said. 'Nothing good comes cheap, my young friend. Didn't your mother ever teach you that?' The young man grinned. 'she might have mentioned it at that.' 'Sure. Sure she did. I give you half a dozen, two red, two yellow, two white. Can't do no better than that, can I? Put in some baby's breath  they love that  and fill it out with some fern. Nice. Or you can have the bouquet for a dollar. 'They?' the young man asked, still smiling. 'My young friend,' the flower vendor said, flicking his cigarette butt into the gutter and returning the smile, 'no one buys flowers for themselves in May. It's like a national law, you understand what I mean?' The young man thought of Norma, her happy, surprised eyes and her gentle smile, and he ducked his head a little. 'I guess I do at that,' he said. 'Sure you do. What do you say?' 'Well, what do you think?' 'I'm gonna tell you what I think. Hey! Advice is still free, isn't it?' The young man smiled and said, 'I guess it's the only thing left that is.' 'You're damn tooting it is,' the flower vendor said. 'Okay, my young friend. If the flowers are for your mother, you get her the bouquet. A few jonquils, a few crocuses, some lily of the valley. She don't spoil it by saying, "Oh Junior I love them how much did they cost oh that's too much don't you know enough not to throw your money around?"' The young man threw his head back and laughed. The Vendor said, 'But if it's your girl, that's a different thing, my son, and you know it. You bring her the tea roses and she don't turn into an accountant, you take my meaning? Hey! she's gonna throw her arms around your neck ' 'I'll take the tea roses,' the young man said, and this time it was the flower vendor's turn to laugh. The two men pitching nickels glanced over, smiling. 'Hey, kid!' one of them called. 'You wanna buy a weddin' ring cheap? I'll sell you mine I don't want it no more.' The young man grinned and blushed to the roots of his dark hair. The flower vendor picked out six tea roses, snipped the stems a little, spritzed them with water, and wrapped them in a large conical spill. 'Tonight's weather looks just the way you'd want it,' the radio said. 'Fair and mild, temps in the mid to upper sixties, perfect for a little rooftop stargazing, if you're the romantic type. Enjoy, Greater New York, enjoy!' The flower vendor Scotchtaped the seam of the paper spill and advised the young man to tell his lady that a little sugar added to the water she put them in would preserve them longer. 'I'll tell her,' the young man said. He held out a five dollar bill. 'Thank you.' 'Just doing the job, my young friend,' the vendor said, giving him a dollar and two quarters. His smile grew a bit S 'Give her a kiss for me.' On the radio, the Four Seasons began singing 'Sherry'. The young man pocketed his change and went on up the street, eyes wide and alert and eager, looking not so much around him at the life ebbing and flowing up and down Third Avenue as inward and ahead, anticipating. But certain things did impinge a mother pulling a baby in a wagon, the baby's face comically smeared with ice cream; a little girl jumping rope and singsonging out her rhyme 'Betty and Henry up in a tree, KISSING! First comes love, then comes marriage, here comes Henry with a baby carriage!' Two women stood outside a washateria, smoking and comparing pregnancies. A group of men were looking in a hardwarestore window at a gigantic colour TV with a fourfigure price tag  a baseball game was on, and all the players' faces looked green. The playing field was a vague strawberry colour, and the New York Mets were leading the Phillies by a score of six to one in the top of the ninth. He walked on, carrying the flowers, unaware that the two women outside the washateria had stopped talking for a moment and had watched him wistfully as he walked by with his paper of tea roses; their days of receiving flowers were long over. He was unaware of a young traffic cop who stopped the cars at the intersection of Third and Sixtyninth with a blast on his whistle to let him cross; the cop was engaged himself and recognized the dreamy expression on the young man's face from his own shaving mirror, where he had often seen it lately. He was unaware of the two teenaged girls who passed him going the other way and then clutched themselves and giggled. At Seventythird Street he stopped and turned right. This street was a little darker, lined with brownstones and walkdown restaurants with Italian names. Three blocks down, a stickball game was going on in the fading light. The young man did not go that far; half a block down he turned into a narrow lane. Now the stars were out, gleaming softly, and the lane was dark and shadowy, lined with vague shape of garbage cans. The young man was alone now  no, not quite. A wavering yowl rose in the purple gloom, and the young man frowned. It was some tomcat's love song, and there was nothing pretty about that. He walked more slowly, and glanced at his watch. It was quarter of eight and Norma should be just Then he saw her, coming towards him from the courtyard, wearing dark blue slacks and a sailor blouse that made his heart ache. It was always a surprise seeing her for the first time, it was always a sweet shock  she looked so young. Now his smile shone out  radiated out, and he walked faster. 'Norma!' he said. She looked up and smiled but as they drew together, the smile faded. His own smile trembled a little, and he felt a moment's disquiet. Her face over the sailor blouse suddenly seemed blurred. It was getting darker now could he have been mistaken? Surely not. It was Norma. 'I brought you flowers,' he said in a happy relief, and handed the paper spill to her. She looked at them for a moment, smiled  and handed them back. 'Thank you, but you're mistaken,' she said. 'My name is 'Norma,' he whispered, and pulled the shorthandled hammer out of his coat pocket where it had been all along. 'They're for you, Norma it was always for you all for you.' She backed away, her face a round white blur, her mouth an opening black 0 of terror, and she wasn't Norma, Norma was dead, she had been dead for ten years, and it didn't matter because she was going to scream and he swung the hammer to stop the scream, to kill the scream, and he swung the hammer the spill of flowers fell out of his hand, the spill spilled and broke open, spilling red, white, and yellow tea roses beside the dented trash cans where the cats made alien love in the dark, screaming in love, screaming, screaming. He swung the hammer and she didn't scream, but she might scream because she wasn't Norma, none of them were Norma, and he swung the hammer, swung the hammer, swung the hammer. She wasn't Norma and so he swung the hammer, as he had done five other times. Some unknown time later he slipped the hammer back into his inner coat pocket and backed away from the dark shadow sprawled on the cobblestones, away from the litter of tea roses by the garbage cans. He turned and left the narrow lane. It was full dark now. The stickball players had gone in. If there were bloodstains on his suit, they wouldn't show, not in the dark, not in the soft late spring dark, and her name had not been Norma but he knew what his name was. It was was Love. His name was love, and he walked these dark streets because Norma was waiting for him. And he would find her. Some day soon. He began to smile. A bounce came into his step as he walked on down Seventythird Street. A middleaged married couple sitting on the steps of their building watched him go by, head cocked, eyes afar away, a halfsmile on his lips. when he had passed by the woman said, 'How come you never look that way any more?' 'Huh?' 'Nothing,' she said, but she watched the young man in the grey suit disappear into the gloom of the encroaching night and thought that if there was anything more beautiful than springtime, it was young love. ONE FOR THE ROAD It was quarter past ten and Herb Tooklander was thinking of closing for the night when the man in the fancy overcoat and the white, staring face burst into Tookey's Bar, which lies in the northern part of Falmouth. It was the tenth of January, just about the time most folks are learning to live comfortably with all the New Year's resolutions they broke, and there was one hell of a northeaster blowing outside. Six inches had come down before dark and it had been going hard and heavy since then. Twice we had seen Billy Larribee go by high in the cab of the town plough, and the second time Tookey ran him out a beer  an act of pure charity my mother would have called it, and my God knows she put down enough of Tookey's beer in her time. Billy told him they were keeping ahead of it on the main road, but the side ones were closed and apt to stay that way until next morning. The radio in Portland was forecasting another foot and a fortymileanhour wind to pile up the drifts. There was just Tookey and me in the bar, listening to the wind howl around the eaves and watching it dance the fire around on the hearth. 'Have one for the road, Booth,' Tookey says, 'I'm gonna shut her down.' He poured me one and himself one and that's when the door cracked open and this stranger staggered in, snow up to his shoulders and in his hair, like he had rolled around in confectioner's sugar. The wind billowed a sandfine sheet of snow in after him. 'Close the door!' Tookey roars at him. 'Was you born in a barn?' I've never seen a man who looked that scared. He was like a horse that's spent an afternoon eating fire nettles. His eyes rolled towards Tookey and he said, 'My wife  my daughter ' and he collapsed on the floor in a dead faint. 'Holy Joe,' Tookey says. 'Close the door, Booth, would you?' I went and shut it, and pushing it against the wind was something of a chore. Tookey was down on one knee holding the fellow's head up and patting his cheeks. I got over to him and saw right off that it was nasty. His face was fiery red, but there were grey blotches here and there, and when you've lived through winters in Maine since the time Woodrow Wilson was President, as I have, you know those grey blotches mean frostbite. 'Fainted,' Tookey said. 'Get the brandy off the backbar, will you?' I got it and came back. Tookey had opened the fellow's coat. He had come around a little; his eyes were half open and he was muttering something too low to catch. 'Pour a capful,' Tookey says. 'Just a cap?' I asks him. 'That stuff's dynamite,' Tookey says. 'No sense overloading his carb.' I poured out a capful and looked at Tookey. He nodded. 'Straight down the ' I poured it down. It was a remarkable thing to watch. The man trembled all over and began to cough. His face got redder. His eyelids, which had been at halfmast, flew up like window shades. I was a bit alarmed, but Tookey only sat him up like a big baby and clapped him on the back. The man started to retch, and Tookey clapped him again. 'Hold on to it,' he says, 'that brandy comes dear.' The man coughed some more, but it was diminishing now. I got my first good look at him. City fellow, all right, and from somewhere south of Boston, at a guess. He was wearing kid gloves, expensive but thin. There were probably some more of those greyishwhite patches on his hands, and he would be lucky not to lose a finger or two. His coat was fancy, all right; a threehundreddollar job if ever I'd seen one. He was wearing tiny little boots that hardly came up over his ankles, and I began to wonder about his toes. 'Better,' he said. 'All right,' Tookey said. 'Can you come over to the fire?' 'My wife and my daughter,' he said. 'They're out there in the storm.' 'From the way you came in, I didn't figure they were at home watching the TV,' Tookey said. 'You can tell us by the fire as easy as here on the floor. Hook on, Booth.' He got to his feet, but a little groan came out of him and his mouth twisted down in pain. I wondered about his toes again, and I wondered why God felt he had to make fools from New York City who would try driving around in southern Maine at the height of a northeast blizzard. And I wondered if his wife and his little girl were dressed any warmer than him. We hiked him across to the fireplace and got him sat down in a rocker that used to be Missus Tookey's favourite until she passed on in '74. It was Missus Tookey that was responsible for most of the place, which had been written up in Down East and the Sunday Telegram and even once in the Sunday supplement of the Boston Globe. It's really more of a public house than a bar, with its big wooden floor, pegged together rather than nailed, the maple bar, the old barnraftered ceiling, and the monstrous big fieldstone hearth. Missus Tookey started to get some ideas in her head after the Down East article came out, wanted to start calling the place Tookey's Inn or Tookey's Rest, and I admit it has sort of a Colonial ring to it, but I prefer plain old Tookey's Bar. It's one thing to get uppish in the summer, when the state's full of tourists, another thing altogether in the winter, when you and your neighbours have to trade together. And there had been plenty of winter nights, like this one, that Tookey and I had spent all alone together, drinking scotch and water or just a few beers. My own Victoria passed on in '73, and Tookey's was a place to go where there were enough voices to mute the steady ticking of the deathwatch beetle  even if there was just Tookey and me, it was enough. I wouldn't have felt the same about it if the place had been Tookey's Rest. It's crazy but it's true. We got this fellow in front of the fire and he got the shakes harder than ever. He hugged on to his knees and his teeth clattered together and a few drops of clear mucus spilled off the end of his nose. I think he was starting to realize that another fifteen minutes out there might have been enough to kill him. It's not the snow, it's the windchill factor. It steals your heat. 'Where did you go off the road?' Tookey asked him. 'Ssix miles sssouth of hhere,' he said. Tookey and I stared at each other, and all of a sudden I felt cold. Cold all over. 'You sure?' Tookey demanded. 'You came six miles through the snow?' He nodded. 'I checked the odometer when we came through ttown. I was following directions going to see my wife's ssister in Cumberland.. never been there before we're from New Jersey. New Jersey. If there's anyone more purely foolish than a New Yorker it's a fellow from New Jersey. 'Six miles, you're sure?' Tookey demanded. 'Pretty sure, yeah. I found the turnoff but it was drifted in it was. Tookey grabbed him. In the shifting glow of the fire by his face looked pale and strained, older than his sixtysix years by ten. 'You made a right turn?' 'Right turn, yeah. My wife ' 'Did you see a sign?' 'Sign?' He looked up at Tookey blankly and wiped the end of his nose. 'Of course I did. It was on my instructions. Take Jointner Avenue through Jerusalem's Lot to the 295 entrance ramp.' He looked from Tookey to me and back to Tookey again. Outside the wind whistled and howled and moaned through the eaves. 'Wasn't that right, mister?' 'The Lot,' Tookey said, almost too soft to hear. 'Oh my God.' 'What's wrong?' the man said. His voice was rising. 'Wasn't that right? I mean, the road looked drifted in, but I thought if there's a town there, the ploughs will be out and and then I.. He just sort of tailed off. 'Booth,' Tookey said to me, low. 'Get on the phone. Call the sheriff.' 'Sure,' this fool from New Jersey says, 'that's right. What's wrong with you guys, anyway? You look like you saw a ghost.' Tookey said, 'No ghosts in the Lot, mister. Did you tell them to stay in the car?' 'Sure I did,' he said, sounding injured. 'I'm not crazy.' Well, you couldn't have proved it by me. 'What's your name!' I asked him. 'For the sheriff.' 'Lumley,' he says. 'Gerard Lumley.' He started in with Tookey again, and I went across to the telephone. I picked it up and heard nothing but dead silence. I hit the cutoff buttons a couple of times. Still nothing. I came back. Tookey had poured Gerard Lumley another tot of brandy, and this one was going down him a lot smoother. 'Was he out?' Tookey asked. 'Phone's dead.' 'Hot damn,' Tookey says, and we look at each other. Outside the wind gusted up, throwing snow against the windows. Lumley looked from Tookey to me and back again. 'Well, haven't eitherof you got a car?' he asked. The anxiety was back in his voice. 'They've got to run the engine to run the heater. I only had about a quarter of a tank of gas, and it took me an hour and a half to Look, will you answer me?' He stood up and grabbed Tookey's shirt. 'Mister,' Tookey says, 'I think your hand just ran away from your brains, there.' Lumley looked at his hand, at Tookey, then dropped it. 'Maine,' he hissed. He made it sound like a dirty word about somebody's mother. 'All right,' he said. 'Where's the nearest gas station? They must have a tow truck ' 'Nearest gas station is in Falmouth Center,' I said. 'That's three miles down the road from here.' 'Thanks,' he said, a bit sarcastic, and headed for the door, buttoning his coat. 'Won't be open, though,' I added. He turned back slowly and looked at us. 'What are you talking about, old man?' 'He's trying to tell you that the station in the Center belongs to Billy Larribee and Billy's out driving the plough, you damn fool,' Tookey says patiently. 'Now why don't you come back here and sit down, before you bust a gut?' He came back, looking dazed and frightened. 'Are you telling me you can't that there isn't ?' 'I ain't telling you nothing,' Tookey says. 'You're doing all the telling, and if you stopped for a minute, we could think this over.' 'What's this town, Jerusalem's Lot?' he asked. 'why was the road drifted in? And no lights on anywhere?' I said, 'Jerusalem's Lot burned out two years back.' 'And they never rebuilt?' He looked like he didn't believe it. 'It appears that way,' I said, and looked at Tookey. 'what are we going to do about this?' 'Can't leave them out there,' he said. I got closer to him. Lumley had wandered away to look out the window into the snowy night. 'What if they've been got at?' I asked. 'That may be,' he said. 'But we don't know it for sure. I've got my Bible on the shelf. You still wear your Pope's medal?' I pulled the crucifix out of my shirt and showed him. I was born and raised Congregational, but most folks who live around the Lot wear something  crucifix, St Christopher's medal, rosary, something. Because two years ago, in the span of one dark October month the Lot went bad. Sometimes, late at night, when there were just a few regulars drawn up around Tookey's fire, people would talk it over. Talk around it is more like the truth. You see, people in the Lot started to disappear. First a few, then a few more, then a whole slew. The schools closed. The town stood empty for most of a year. Oh, a few people moved in  mostly damn fools from out of state like this fine specimen here  drawn by the low property values, I suppose. But they didn't last. A lot of them moved out a month or two after they'd moved in. The others well, they disappeared. Then the town burned flat. It was at the end of a long dry fall. They figure it started up by the Marsten House on the hill that overlooked Jointner Avenue, but no one knows how it started, not to this day. It burned out of control for three days. After that, for a time, things were better. And then they started again. I only heard the word 'vampires' mentioned once.