7

The Weeder was squirming at an execution taking place in his imagination. He tossed on his hammock of a bed listening to the dull hum of traffic on the highway beyond the motel. A toilet flushed somewhere on the floor above him and the water spilled through pipes in the wall near his head. He heard the sound of the tires of a slow-moving car crunching on gravel in the motel driveway. His heart missed a beat. He leapt from the bed and checked the door to make sure it was double-locked, then parted the curtains the width of a finger. The Weeder expected to see the Admiral pointing at the door of his room. He expected to see the burly man with the enormous handgun held at present arms, and the woman with the veil start toward it. But the only thing he saw was a dozen parked cars. He watched for a long while but there was no sign of life in any of them. Had he imagined the wheels crunching on the gravel? Had he imagined the Admiral, the burly man, the rail-thin woman? Had he imagined the attempts on his life?

If only he had. But he could still feel the heat of the flame from the fire breather on the back of his neck. He could still see the burly man sighting over his finger and mouthing the words “Bang, Bang! You’re dead!”

Feeling not the slightest bit sleepy, the Weeder slipped back into the hammock of a bed. He closed his eyes and tried to empty his head of thought. He had a vision of himself skating between thoughts, avoiding them as if they were patches of thin ice. The patches were marked by warning posts planted in the ice. One said Rods. One said Hair triggers. One said Wedges. He skated safely past the posts toward images vaguely visible on the horizon. In his mind’s eye he could see one of them—it was Nate Jumping barefoot from a longboat into the shallow water off a North Shore beach, wading ashore in the darkness and sitting on a rock to put on his stockings and the shoes with the silver buckles. He thought he could make out Molly, her dark hair cut short, walking toward Nate with an imperceptible limp, her eyes wary of a new ambush—only it wasn’t Molly he was seeing, it was the woman named Snow, washed by currents of melancholy, too lucid to be passionate, always aware of herself being aware of herself.