Looking Out For Eleanor

LOU

The gas station attendant’s name was Walter Reed, and I said I had been in a hospital with that name once, and he said, “What for?” and I said, “Malaria,” and he nodded his head as though he knew all about it. He stared past me through the window, and I turned, and we both watched Ellie get out of the car. Walter Reed squinted the way a farmer will study a perfectly clear sky, skeptical-like. Ellie does, I got to say, look too good to be true.

She was wearing faded jeans, scuffed boots, and one of my old work shirts. She was smiling as she approached us, moving with her farm-girl grace, her curly brown hair dancing like a swarm of bees. The heater on the car was out, and it had been cold last night, coming east. Now the morning sun was blazing, and if you stayed out of the wind, it was warm. Ellie always was a warm weather girl, and she’d been singing along with the radio all morning, in such high spirits that I hesitated to stop. But the gauge was reading empty, and there wasn’t any way around it.

“Your wife?” Walter Reed asked. He had his elbows on the counter. He turned and looked up at me with a sly smile—as though a good looking woman was a joke we shared.

“That’s Ellie,” I said. Then, like a fool, I said, “Don’t say anything to her. It would be best if you don’t even look at her.”

That did it, of course. “I reckon I’ll look at who I please and speak if I’ve a mind to,” he said, turning away from me. “It’s a free country.”

Then Ellie swung the screen door open and brought all her energy into the store. It wasn’t a big room, and I felt the oxygen burning out of it, and I had a vision of a lot of plastic bags full of corn chips and pretzels exploding under pressure.

“I need a Coke and a couple of Snickers,” she said to me. She was heading off down the candy aisle when Walter Reed spoke to her, to her back actually cause she had flown by him like he was invisible. He said, “Hi Ellie.”

She spun around as though he’d caught her by the shoulder.

“Excuse me?” She was still smiling. She clutched her brown leather purse against her stomach, rocked back on her heels and shot me a quick glance.

“Lou. He just said my name. I don’t know him. Honest, I don’t.”

“It’s all right.” I was speaking fast, feeling blood beat in my throat. “He don’t know the situation.”

A fool could have heard the warning in my voice, but not that gas station attendant. He opened his mouth and said, “Maybe we met somewheres and it slipped your mind, Ellie, and—”

I got scared. For a moment, I saw the truck driver again, lying in the dirt with his wide, white belly showing under the t-shirt, his arms flung out like a drunken evangelist, blood all over his throat from where the bullet had shut him up in mid-sentence.

Ellie was still smiling, but that was just because she’d forgot to stop. Her eyes told the whole story, and I figured I had about thirty seconds. I had my knife out, hooked the blade out with my thumb, and was around the counter in ten.

I caught the hair on the back of Walter Reed’s head—it was long and brown and felt dirty—and banged his forehead against the counter. His cap flew off, and he shouted something. He tried to turn, and I gave him a quick cut on his cheek just to show I was sincere and said, “Don’t move at all,” and he stiffened like a bird dog on point. I looked up and shouted at Ellie. “It’s all right,” I shouted. “This is under control, here. This ain’t no big deal.”

Ellie just stood there.

Walter Reed was one of those skinny guys that surprise you with their strength, and he made a sudden turn—like a trout that comes alive in your hands—and threw me back against the soda machine and scrambled for something under the counter. I ducked low and when he turned with the gun I head-butted him in the gut and that was the fight; he folded. Like a lot of skinny guys, he had a weak stomach.

I grabbed up the revolver and stuffed it in the pocket of my windbreaker, snapped the knife shut, and said, without looking behind me, “Get on in the car, Ellie.”

Ellie turned and ran out the door. Walter Reed was moaning now. He’d rolled over on his stomach and got up on his knees.

“Look,” I said, “It’s too bad. I told you not to say anything. I’m looking out for her, see. It’s a complicated business …” My words just ran out, and I thought: I ain’t gonna explain it—not to this Walter Reed fellow and not to the cops he’s gonna call as soon as I’m out of here.

So I took the revolver out and shot him behind the ear. I just felt sick, doing it, but I took a few deep breaths, braced against the counter, and said, out loud, “It’s a cold, old world, Lou.” I put the gun back in my pocket and emptied the register. I’m no thief, but the money wasn’t doing Walter any good.

I went back to the car. Ellie was sitting on the passenger’s side, staring straight ahead.

“Look,” I said, “I got you them Snickers. And a Coke.”

She smiled like the sun coming up on the Fourth of July. It done me good, that smile.

MALCOLM

I don’t like to lecture, and I was somewhat dismayed to hear the note of admonishment that entered my voice when Mrs. Hamilton said, “You’re sweet on that Eleanor Greer.”

Mrs. Hamilton has been working for Taylor County Department of Social Services for thirty-two years, almost as long as I have been alive, and time has eroded—assuming, of course, that such ever existed—her professional bearing. She treats her clients as though they were errant children, insists on calling them by their first names, fills out their forms for them, and gives them advice for circumventing policies that she dismisses as being “bureaucratic bullshit.” She seems to understand nothing of the boundaries that are required of a social worker.

I have been with the agency seven years myself, and I see quite clearly what has happened to Mrs. Hamilton: She has “gone native.” She has chosen, it seems to me, to abandon her professional ethics for a kind of chumminess, a camaraderie with the disenfranchised. Perhaps she has despaired, and this is the result. I suppose it may happen to me with time. But it hasn’t happened yet. I still believe in conducting myself in a professional manner and in maintaining the proper distance in my dealings with clients.

I wear a suit, and I don’t, like Bradford or Daugherty, loosen my tie, roll up my sleeves, and affect a harried, hungover air. I strive for a well-groomed, neat appearance, despite the failings of municipal air conditioning during the long Texas summers.

“I can tell you are sweet on that Eleanor Greer,” Mrs. Hamilton said.

“Mrs. Hamilton,” I replied, “I am not sweet on Eleanor Greer. Miss Greer is a client, a recipient of our services, and my interest in her is one of professional concern. I realize that you are speaking in jest, but I find the suggestion insulting. Not only is Miss Greer in need of financial help, she is also, as you know, developmentally disabled. To suggest that I would harbor romantic feelings for a woman who is, mentally and emotionally, a child is to suggest that I am a child molester.”

I had overstated the case, of course. Eleanor didn’t score high on intelligence tests, and her emotional responses were not always in context, but she was not impaired in any clinical sense. Mrs. Hamilton was, in any event, undaunted.

“She doesn’t look too developmentally deprived to me,” Mrs. Hamilton said, looking at me over the tops of her glasses. Mrs. Hamilton often resembled a dissolute Einstein, had that great scientist gained fifty pounds and taken a fancy to wearing polka-dot dresses. She continued: “And I believe I have seen your eyes assessing her developments with approval. You can say what you want, Malcolm Blair, that woman turns you on. I don’t see you rushing to get coffee for Mrs. Geller or old lady Barnes when they come in here.”

I refused to respond. Silence is often the best defense.

I thought about what Mrs. Hamilton had said. I did look forward to seeing Eleanor Greer. She was a relief from the parade of petty criminals, alcoholics, schizophrenics and pathological liars that occupied most of my time.

I wasn’t “sweet” on Eleanor Greer, but Mrs. Hamilton had, inadvertently, hit on the precise word to describe Eleanor. Aside from her extraordinary beauty, which lit up the shabby office, she had an innocence that was joyously feminine, a vulnerability that made me want to go the extra mile for her. My profession is inclined to make one cynical, and I welcomed Eleanor’s visits as a soldier must welcome news of a victory during a long, grim war. She was so sweet-natured, so cheerful.

I was worried that I hadn’t heard from her in two weeks. She was living with her brother and his wife, on a farm several miles outside of town. I went to her file and found her brother’s telephone number and wrote it down. But then I changed my mind and decided a country outing would do me good.

The drive out was over an ill-repaired, narrow road through generic Texas landscape, lots of scrub pine and twisted live oaks, their waxy leaves sprayed with fly-blown light—just a long, flat, relentless vista in which prickly pear cactus dotted the land like floral acne.

I missed the turn-off, got lost, and had to ask at a roadside grocery, where a black dog came out from behind a bin of lettuce and sniffed my crotch while making a low growling noise. “Don’t mind Horace,” the obese woman behind the counter told me. She glared at the dog, who ignored her. “He knows I’ll beat him senseless iffen he bites one more customer.”

Reassured, I asked directions and was told that I had just passed Mosely (the road I sought). I bought a Milky Way—my lunch—and left.

A grey cat, anorexically thin, slid under the porch as I approached the house. I had my first twinge of misgiving. There was a good chance my visit would not be viewed with delight, and there was always, in my line of work, the possibility of violence. My co-worker Bob Daugherty had once been forced—by a drunken man brandishing a shotgun—to attempt the repair of an ancient television. Fortunately, Daugherty’s antagonist had passed out, and tragedy had been averted. But it was the sort of thing that did happen in my business, so I was having reservations when I knocked on the door.

An unshaven, gaunt man in overalls appeared. I told him who I was and asked if Eleanor Greer was in.

“She ain’t here,” he told me. His hair stuck out oddly, as though he’d just arisen from bed.

I asked if he were Eleanor’s brother Hank, and he nodded.

“Who is it?” someone shouted from behind him.

“It’s that welfare fellow,” Greer shouted back into the room. “I told him Eleanor ain’t here.”

A woman I took to be Hank Greer’s wife appeared at his shoulder. “Hey,” she said. “Ellie ain’t here.”

“Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“You got a warrant?” the woman asked. She had short, blond hair and was pretty in a pinched, anxious way.

Her husband said, “Louise, go watch your soaps.” He stepped out on the porch, pulling the door behind him before his wife could say another word. He drained the last of a beer and threw the empty can into the yard’s tall grass.

He swayed a little, standing on the porch, and I realized the man was drunk.

“Look here, counselor,” he said, turning to me, “She’s gone.”

“You don’t know where she is?”

He studied me with disgust. “Ain’t that what I just told you?” Suddenly he zipped down his fly, turned away from me, and urinated heavily into the grass. “I’m her own brother,” he said, re-zipping his fly, “and I don’t know where she is.”

He turned back to me. “Come on.” He clumped down the porch steps, and I followed him. We walked out into the backyard, past a rusting Toronado up on cinderblocks, and he stopped in front of a charred mattress lying in the weeds.

“They dragged it into the backyard, and they set it on fire. You tell me?” He rocked back on his boot heels, hands in his pockets.

We both stood looking at the burned mattress.

“Lou Willis is a crazy sonofabitch. He was crazy back in high school, and he ain’t improved since. You don’t want to go looking for Ellie, counselor. She’s bound for hell, with my old buddy, Lou Willis.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I said.

Hank shrugged. “What’s to understand? They burned her bed and then they run off.”

I walked around the bed. It had rained since the fire, and the mattress was a sodden loaf of ashes. When I knelt down and touched it, my fingers came away black.

Hank Greer spoke behind me. He’d leaned over and the loudness of his voice startled me.

“Looking for clues, counselor?” he asked.

LOU

I’m no Vietnam vet. I don’t claim it. I got no right to it. I wasn’t there any time when I caught the fever and had to come back. I didn’t see action, and I don’t pretend I did. But I did see the jungle, and it made an impression on me. I was born in west Texas, so before I went to Vietnam, I didn’t know how green a land could be. I’d seen jungles on TV and in the movies, but TV isn’t something that happens to a person; it’s just a lot of pictures. You come from a hard, held-in place, wildness can throw you for a loop. I caught a kind of fever that wouldn’t let go—so the army gave me a medical discharge. After Nam, Texas just seemed dried up—literally. I drank gallons of water. At night I’d hear a chopper roaring overhead, on its way to the local military base, and I’d break out in a sweat. I drove into Dallas and found a greenhouse and loaded up on big, tropical plants with waxy, catcher’s mitt leaves. My mother, a thin, fierce-believing Baptist who wouldn’t have cut Jesus any slack, would come into my room and eye those plants and frown and say, “I guess you have lost your mind.” And I guess I had.

But I got by. You get used to anything. I got some training in air conditioning repair on Uncle Sam’s tab, and I started working at Sloan Air Conditioning and Heating, and I met this girl, Marlene Summers, and we got married, and we got us a house, and I guess I looked as normal as a citizen of Texas can, until I seen her in the pickup with Lenny Sawyer and then I got depressed, but I didn’t let on. I was thinking I would pull out of it. But I didn’t. Marlene asked for a divorce, and moved to Waco. And I guess that would have finished me; I guess I would have smoked myself. Why play it to the last card? But I thought I’d go see Hank—we’d been in high school together—and I done that, and he was sort of a letdown, but that’s where I met Ellie. The last time I’d seen Ellie Greer, she was just a shrimp, Hank’s skinny kid sister. I was shocked at how she’d come along—almost embarrassed, like she’d had an accident that no one talked about. She was as wild and natural as the jungle itself, and when she laughed I could hear the way the rain used to sound all silvery in the trees and I thought: Goddam but I’ve been thirsty. And didn’t even know it!

I was shaken up after the gas station business, but I calmed down once we got on the Interstate. Ellie dozed off, just closed her eyes and leaned back and was gone, easy as a child. I studied her out of the corner of my eye and thought, “Lou Willis, you keep this woman from harm.”

By the time Ellie woke up, I had thought things over. “How would you like to go to Florida?” I asked her.

“I never been,” she said, and laughed. “I don’t know about Florida.”

“We could go see my daddy down in St. Petersburg. I ain’t seen him in years.”

“Okay,” Ellie said. “It’s okay with me. Oh keeee doah keeee.” She pushed her hair back and looked out the window. “I’m gonna get a new bathing suit for the beach.”

We got a room that night in a motel outside of Beaumont. Ellie watched some MTV where all these kids wore suits that were too big and had ratty, don’t-give-a-damn haircuts. They were pissed off about something, like maybe they’d been given the haircuts while they were passed out or something. Well, they don’t make those shows for the likes of me, and I was feeling restless. I thought of sliding out and getting a couple of quick beers in the motel’s bar, but I didn’t want to leave Ellie, and I sure wasn’t taking her into a bar where a lot of horny salesmen and truckers were sitting around getting drunk and looking for trouble.

“Ellie,” I said, “Let’s turn the TV off and get some sleep now. I want to get up early tomorrow and get moving.”

“Okay, Lou,” Ellie said, immediately turning the TV off. She’s a good girl, Ellie. I walked over, kissed her cheek, and said, “You might want to brush your teeth, honey.”

She got up and went into the bathroom. I went on over to my own bed, slid out of myjeans, and quick slipped under the sheets.

I closed my eyes, pretending sleep, and I heard Ellie cut the light switch and crawl into her own bed. She likes to sleep in the raw—it’s how she was raised—and I do what I can to keep my thoughts away from that arena. There’s no sex between Ellie and me, you understand. My job is watching over her, and that requires all my concentration. It’s a dark, hungry world, in case you ain’t noticed.

MALCOLM

I believe that modern psychological thought doesn’t give boredom the motivational weight it deserves. I think that the answer to a lot of human behavior is, quite simply, boredom. Boredom drives people to bad marriages, and theft, and treachery and violence. I see it every day.

I think boredom explains my own actions following my visit with Hank Greer.

Almost as soon as I left the Greer farm, the sky darkened, and the first raindrops burst against the car windshield like overripe grapes. It rained solidly for five days, often violently. On Saturday, I decided to go to the Unitarian Church’s potluck singles supper, but the rain was still a grim onslaught that obscured the parking lot, and I discovered that I had no heart for the occasion. I sat in the church lot, turned the windshield wipers off, and watched the street lamps melt under dark sheets of water.

I drove home without entering the church, telling myself that at least I had avoided Miss Mitford’s discussion of her son’s orthodontic work and Miss Adrian Blakely’s vacuous New Age nonsense. Upon returning to my home, I went directly to my bedroom, donned my pajamas and crawled under the covers.

My mother knocked on the door and popped her head in. “You are home early,” she said.

I asked her if there was anything wrong with that. She conceded that there wasn’t, with an air of great reproach, and then retreated, leaving me to guilt and a sudden suffocating dissatisfaction with my life. I tried to read a novel I had recently purchased in which the President of the United States is revealed to be a serial killer and cross-dresser, but my mind kept drifting to Eleanor Greer.

Where had she gone?

Boredom, you see. I was massively sick of my narrow bed, my dismal circle of acquaintances, my tedious job, the incessant rain. And so I got up, went to the closet, and found—as I thought I might—the telephone number of Hank Greer. It was in the pocket of my suit coat, written on a Post-It note.

I called him. He didn’t seem surprised to hear from me, despite the hour (it was after ten in the evening). I was not surprised by his reaction either, since I’ve come to understand that most people will answer any question that someone in an official capacity asks them. People like to believe that those in charge have good reasons for what they do.

I asked Hank about Eleanor Greer’s companion. What was his name again? Lou Willis. And how, exactly, had Hank come to know this Willis?

He knew him from high school.

The next day, I drove out to their farm where Hank’s pretty wife handed me the yearbook and said, “Hank says for you to be careful with this.” I drove off with Hank Greer’s 1966 Davis High School yearbook and parked a mile down the road. Turning the pages to the senior class pictures, I found Lou Willis’ picture, looking like Paul McCartney must have looked at around the same time, a chubby-cheeked teenager of the goggle-eyed, sincere school of lying (“It wasn’t me!” his picture seemed to say). Underneath the picture, an unsung laureate of yearbook character analysis had written the three allotted adjectives: thoughtful—loyal—polite.

I studied the thoughtful, loyal, polite Willis and thought of Eleanor Greer and the charred mattress in her brother’s backyard. Lou Willis’ expression of wronged innocence haunted me.

On Wednesday, during lunch, I made some calls. Mrs. Hamilton, who is every bit as sharp as she is exasperating, watched me hang up the phone, and then said, “You are hot on the trail, aren’t you? You are like that private eye on television, only you just make phone calls while he has to drive all over town. Of course, I guess it wouldn’t make much of a show, if he was on the phone all the time.”

I smiled at Mrs. Hamilton. “The phone is mightier than the Ford,” I said, delighting myself with the brilliance of my wit. In my three days back at work, I had amused myself by trying to unravel the mystery of Eleanor Greer’s whereabouts. I justified the time spent on this matter as being job-related, although, of course, this wasn’t precisely true. If Eleanor Greer had chosen to leave the County, that was her business, not the County’s.

I realized that Eleanor herself wasn’t going to be any help. She had no relatives, other than her brother, and he didn’t know where she was. I’d have to find Lou Willis, and Eleanor would be with him.

I spent my spare moments navigating Briscoe County’s various agencies in the frail vessel of my telephone. I was overturned a number of times—numbers that did not work, clerks who seemed incapable of understanding English, and secretaries who were as tight-fisted with information as the CIA—but I was able to prevail upon a number of people to fax me documents, and I learned that Lou Willis had run afoul of the law as a teenager (public drunkenness, petty theft), had enlisted and gone to Vietnam but been discharged five months later for medical reasons, had received vocational training and obtained work at Sloan’s Air Conditioning where, according to County records, he was still employed. He was married.

I called Sloan’s and was told that Lou Willis did not work there. Three weeks ago, he had failed to come in on Monday, never called, and his phone was disconnected.

I asked the man on the phone if he had any idea where Lou Willis might have gone. He didn’t, but added, “He wasn’t worth a shit after his wife left him. He was a good worker before that—didn’t have much of a personality, but he was a good worker.”

I called the wife (“Ex,” she said, “It’s a done thing. We filed and the clock’s running.”). The ex-Mrs. Willis was living in Waco. She hadn’t seen Lou Willis either, but she gave me the name of the nursing home where Mrs. Eunice Willis, Lou’s mother, resided. “He was close to his mother,” she said. “He was always closest to her. When she had her stroke, that’s when he changed, got real distant. He blamed himself, and he blamed me too. Said I should have let her come live with us.”

When I called the nursing home, the ward clerk said, “Honey, she can’t talk on phones. You want to see her, you come on out.” On Saturday, I did just that. The day was warm and bright, and I rolled the window down and let all the promise of spring into the car, but the nursing home took the heart out of me. The building was low to the ground, and the walls were painted a pale green. I felt as though I were underwater, a queasy sensation. A nurse led me to Mrs. Willis’s room. I passed a large, dimly lit area where a dozen elderly people, their bodies formless under blankets and robes, were watching a talk show on a giant TV screen.

Mrs. Eunice Willis, a small, gnarled woman lost in a landscape of pillows, thought I was her son. I was unable to disabuse her of this notion, and when I finally attempted to leave, realizing that no information was forthcoming from this source, she refused to let me go, clutching my arm with surprising strength.

“What do you say?” she shouted. “What do you say, Lou Willis?”

I looked at the nurse for aid, but the nurse scowled and nodded. “Go on,” the nurse said.

“What?” I asked, trying to back away from the elderly Mrs. Willis without dragging her onto the floor.

The nurse rolled her eyes. “Just tell her you love her, for goodness sakes,” the nurse whispered.

“I love you, Mom,” I said, and made my escape.

This robbed me of some enthusiasm for the investigation, but I managed to stop at the nurse’s station and ask if there were any relatives other than Lou Willis.

There was, it turned out, a husband. But he wasn’t in the neighborhood. He lived in Florida. There was a telephone number.

I called the number for Roy Willis on Monday. I said I was calling regarding his son.

I was told that Lou Willis was not there. “He’s out right now,” I was told. “He’s gone to the beach with his girlfriend. He ain’t in any kind of trouble, is he? I told him he couldn’t stay here if he was in trouble. I’m too old for trouble.”

I put the phone down and said, out loud, “He’s gone to the beach with his girlfriend.”

“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Hamilton asked.

“I’m Sherlock Holmes,” I told her.

LOU

Ellie had her heart set on this pink bikini bathing suit that a good-sized cockroach would have had a hard time hiding under. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m afraid not.” I laid down the law, and she finally settled for a more modest one-piece. She sulked some.

“You are an old fart,” she said. “You don’t know anything about fashion.”

“What we are talking about here has always been in fashion,” I said. “And I know all about it, honey. Believe me.”

I bought myself some swim trunks. They were camouflage, which was kind of a joke. “I reckon I’ll be able to sneak up on any ocean-going VC.” I laughed. Ellie laughed too, not for the joke but because she found my white body, with its monkey-brown arms, a hoot.

We stopped at a drugstore and loaded up on beach stuff: a float, suntan lotion, sunglasses, towels, even a portable radio so we could listen to music.

I hadn’t been to the ocean since I was a kid when St. John’s Summer Camp had packed a bunch of us on a bus and taken us to Galveston. I felt like a kid again, and I worked the radio until I got one of those oldies stations, and lay back and let the sun blaze away, squinting through my shades at a big vacation sun.

I’d been worried about seeing Dad; didn’t know what kind of reception I’d get—although he’s the one that run off, so, logically, I’m the one with a right to a grudge. It was all right, though.

Dad’s like me, he don’t go in for big displays of emotion, hugging and that sort of stuff. But he shook my hand and hugged Ellie, and his eyes got bright, and he kept saying, “Well, there’s been some water over the goddam dam, hasn’t there?” and rocking back in his chair and shooting me one beer after another and generally making me welcome.

The old man was looking pretty good for his age. His hair was blacker than I remembered, and I guess he dyed it cause his eyebrows were as gray as frost, but he still had all his teeth and his shoulders were still broad.

The house wasn’t bad either, a two-story wood frame with a big attic fan that made a terrible clatter when you first turned it on but then settled down. It was the sort of house a real estate salesman would call a “fixer-upper” and Dad was putting new cabinets in the kitchen, and the floor on the screened-in porch was tore up.

“I’m busy as a hooker at a convention of Bible salesmen,” Dad said, and he grinned his old Irish grin, and winked at Ellie. “If you’ll excuse that comparison, Miss Greer.”

Ellie giggled.

After I got her settled in the guest room and kissed her goodnight, I went back downstairs and told Dad I was sleeping on the sofa.

He raised his eyebrows. I could see he was after more information, but I didn’t feel obliged to supply it.

“I’ll just sleep here,” I said. “If it’s all right.”

“Well sure,” he said, and he went off and came back with some sheets. “You ain’t in any trouble with the law?” he asked, and I thought then we might have an argument, but I just said, “No, the law don’t have any interest in me,” and he nodded and went off.

The next morning, I woke and smelled coffee perking, and just lay there, enjoying that hopeful smell. Hearing voices overhead, I sat up and hauled my pants on and went upstairs.

Dad was standing at the door to Ellie’s room. He was telling the story about the time our dog Samson was whupped by an opossum. It’s a good story and he tells it good, and I could hear Ellie laughing. I walked quick past him, said, “Excuse us,” and shut the door. Ellie had pulled the sheet up around her, but, laughing and all, she’d let it slip—and like I say, she sleeps in the raw.

“Better get dressed,” I said.

The beach calmed me down. There’s something about the way the ocean just goes on and on that is reassuring.

“Look at those little birds there,” I said to Ellie. “Don’t they look like windup toys? You figure if they fell over, their legs would keep on kicking.”

“I need for you to put this suntan lotion on my back, Lou Willis,” Ellie said, rolling over on her stomach. With her rhinestone sunglasses, she looked like a movie star.

I rubbed the lotion in while Ellie continued to talk. She talked about how we should go to Disney World since we were in Florida. She had picked up a brochure somewhere. “I want to meet Mickey Mouse,” she said. I didn’t say anything, and I guess Ellie took that as me saying no, because she started to pout. “There ain’t nothing wrong with meeting Mickey. There ain’t no harm in Mickey. Mickey Mouse is a gentleman, Lou Willis, and you can’t say different, and you know it.”

Ellie has a style of argument that doesn’t require my comments. I let her go on, and when she finally stopped, I said, “I guess we could drive to Disney World. Why not?”

That cheered her up right away, and she turned around and gave me a hug and a kiss. She smelled like sunlight and towels fresh out of a dryer, and I almost lost my balance and fell into her, but somehow I got to my feet.

“I’m going for a swim, honey,” I said, and I turned and ran straight into the ocean, and threw myself into the hard, cold waves, and swam straight out past the breakers, and floated on my back and closed my eyes and listened to the seagulls holler and waited for a feeling of doom to leave me. And I thought it had, but just when I thought that, I was suddenly sure that a shark the size of an eighteen-wheeler was right under me. I swam back to shore, heart beating like crazy. Every inch of the way, I felt it follow me, down there in the blackness, a big, angry, upside-down God eyeing a sinner.

Nothing happened though. I still had my legs, and it felt good, putting each foot down on the scalding sand. But the blanket was empty; Ellie was gone.

I knew I was right about the feeling then. I was wrong about the shark, but I was right about the danger. I grabbed up a towel, wrapped the clasp knife in it and jogged toward the boardwalk.

I didn’t have to think twice which way Ellie would go. It would be the crowds and the glitter that would draw her. The other direction was older folks, parents with children and old women looking for seashells. I wouldn’t find Ellie there.

The beaches were crowded. I walked past a big, pink hotel where teenagers were playing frisbee and a volleyball game was going full tilt, with lots of blonde girls screaming and laughing, like a soda pop commercial. It seemed to me that a lot of those girls were technically naked.

I was feeling dizzy and wasn’t seeing right. Too much sunlight was falling, like grain spilling out of a silo. I thought I’d have to sit down and clear my head, but just then I saw her. She was standing at a hot dog stand, eating a hot dog and talking to a big, tanned fellow wearing those Speedo swim trunks that are a joke on modesty.

“Ellie,” I shouted.

She turned and waved, all innocent and glad to see me. She stood up a little on the balls of her feet when she waved, jumped a little, and I knew she was truly glad to see me and that she didn’t know how scared I was for her.

“Lou,” she said, when I came up to her, “these are the best hot dogs.”

I looked past her at the blond boy who was wearing the dollar-an-inch bathing suit. He had what I call a squirrel-in-the-middle of the road smile, meaning it could go any way, that smile. I gave him a cold look.

“Lou, this here is Howie,” Ellie said. “He was telling me how he plays in a rock band.”

“I guess that would impress some folks,” I said.

Howie’s smile went away. “I wasn’t trying to impress anyone,” he said. I could see then that he was one of those fellows who liked a fight.

“It’s good you wasn’t,” I said. Howie frowned.

“Oh Lou,” Ellie said. “I wish I was in a rock band. You know I can sing.” She finished her hot dog, crumpled the wax paper, and tossed it in a wire trash bin. Then, suddenly, she turned. “Last one in is a rotten egg!” she shouted, and she bolted for the ocean.

I clutched Howie’s arm. “Settle for being a rotten egg,” I said. “Take my advice.”

He glared at me now. His eyelashes were too long for a real fighter. I felt tired.

“Take your hand off me,” he said.

I took my hand off fast. “I didn’t mean anything,” I said, thinking I could still stop things somehow.

“I’m going for a swim,” he said.

Fear came on me again. I was desperate. “Don’t go!” A fat lady, walking by, gave me a quick, startled look and then moved on. I wasn’t thinking, and I grabbed his arm again. I was talking fast. “Look, I was just out there. There’s a big old shark out there. I swear. I’m gonna fetch Ellie right now. It’s too dangerous.”

It was a feeble attempt, I admit. He yanked his arm away, and poked a finger at my chest. “You old fucking hayseed,” he said. “I told you I was going for a swim. Now get out of my way before I kick your ass.”

I got out of his way, watched him jog down to the surf, jog out to the first wave and dive into it. You could tell he’d done it a few times. He looked comfortable in the ocean.

I traipsed on down to the tide, keeping my head down. A lot of black, tangled seaweed lay at my feet, like something a cat would cough up. People shouldn’t go swimming in this stuff, I thought. I kept studying the seaweed, unwilling to look up, but finally I had to. Sure enough, he was out there with Ellie, the two of them bobbing up and down, not more than two feet from each other.

I threw the towel away, let the sea grab it. Holding the clasp knife close, I marched into the dirty water. I didn’t look up, didn’t give them another look. I knew exactly where they were. I swam past a couple of young boys who were horsing around. I swam with long, slow strokes.

I can hold my breath for a long time. Ma says I was a hollering baby, so maybe that’s how I come by my good lungs. Anyway, I slid under the water, and started out. I swam blind, with my eyes closed tight, and when I finally stuck my head up, I was no more than five feet from the back of handsome Howie’s head. If Ellie had been looking at him, she would have seen me, but she was swimming back toward the shore, and I thought: Now or never.

I filled my lungs and sunk back under. I flipped my knife out and frog-kicked forward.

I caught him around the waist, and he was hairless and sort of slick with suntan oil, and he leaped half out of the water, but I was expecting that, and he spun right into the knife and it opened him up. I thought I could hear the blood hissing out of him, like steam. My hands felt scalded by it. I went down with him, and we rolled like circus acrobats under a bigtop full of black water. I could feel him shrinking in my arms, and I thought: If I just wait a bit I can put him in my pocket. But I was out of air, and I had to let him go and fight for the surface. I guess, if Ellie had been there, she would have seen in my eyes what I’d done. But I was a lot farther out from shore, and I couldn’t make her out. When I did find her, she was helping a little girl build a sand castle.

“Where did your friend Howie go?” I asked.

Ellie shrugged her shoulders. “We got to make a moat for this castle, Lou,” she said.

“Maybe a shark got him” I said. “I saw a big one out there.”

That night, me and Dad and Ellie were eating supper, TV dinners the old man cooked in the microwave, making a big production of it, like he was some fancy chef. He had Ellie giggling every time he called her mademoiselle.

“You young folks should go out to a nightclub, go dancing,” he said. “That’s what I’d do.” He elbowed me and gave me that slow wink that I remembered growing up. I never did care for it. “If I had a pretty girl I’d take her dancing every night.”

“Lou don’t dance,” Ellie said.

Dad’s eyebrows went up. “He don’t. It’s hard to credit he’s my son. Maybe his momma was seeing a preacher behind my back. I’m a dancing fool myself.” He spun around, one hand on his hip. “I would dance them women dizzy.”

Dad went out into the living room, and when he came back, this old, corny rockabilly music followed him.

He reached over and tugged Ellie out of her chair. Still laughing, they danced around the kitchen. My old man wiggled his butt and shouted at me: “It’s a crime not letting this girl dance.”

I went to the fridge and got a beer. I opened it and poured its contents down my throat. I sat back down. Let them have their fun, I thought, and I did. I let them go through about four numbers while I drank another beer. Then I thought: That’s enough. I went into the living room and shut off the record player.

“Hey!” Dad shouted, coming into the room. Beads of sweat dotted his temples and his shirt stuck to him. “You are forgetting whose house this is.”

“Well,” I said, “I appreciate your hospitality. I just don’t want you to overdo it.” I walked up to him and looked him in the eyes. “The hospitality,” I said. “I don’t want you to overdo the hospitality.”

He glared back at me, like he might want to make something of it, but he decided against it, shrugged his shoulders, and went back into the kitchen. I heard him say to Ellie, “That boy has always had a briar up his butt.” I heard Ellie laugh.

MALCOLM

Ten miles south of Gainesville, I pulled the car to the side of the road, got out and vomited.

I am not a good traveler. I do not like driving for hours on end, stopping only to relieve oneself in restrooms defaced with various homosexual come-ons, and living marginally on expensive synthetic road food. I do not like having my life imperiled by amphetamine-deranged truck drivers or having to seek out some interstate gas station every hour in order to scrub the slime of a thousand smashed insects—whose guts could, no doubt, serve as the ultimate super glue—from my windshield.

These bugs were an industry. They were called love bugs because they mated on the highway, huge clouds of them. I bought this small blue and white can of stuff designed especially to dissolve their innards. The service stations also sold screens to put over your car’s grill so that the bugs wouldn’t fly into your radiator and cause your car to overheat and blow up. Never underestimate nature. I bought one of the screens, too.

Having vomited, I leaned against my car and stared out at what appeared to be water buffalo and large, white birds. Dots swam before my eyes, dots which proved to be small, malevolent mosquitoes. I slapped at them and climbed back into the car.

This was all my mother’s fault. I had mentioned to her that I might drive to Florida, and she had responded with unwarranted negativity.

“You don’t want to go to Florida,” she said. When I was away at college, my mother had gone to Miami with my father, their first vacation in years. This was a year before their divorce. Relations were already strained.

“Florida is hell,” my mother said. In Florida, according to my mother, the air conditioning does not work, the showers have no hot water, hotel room service is nonexistent, the beaches are crowded and dangerous, the heat is unbearable. An odor of dead fish hangs over the state like an Old Testament curse.

I told her I did not plan on going to Miami, that my intention was to drive down the gulf coast to St. Petersburg.

“Texas has a gulf coast,” my mother argued. “It’s closer and cleaner and cheaper.”

The argument managed to escalate until I found myself saying, “I don’t want to discuss it. I’m going.”

And so I discovered that what had been idle, out-loud daydreaming became, thanks to my mother’s adamant opposition, action.

Sick and disgusted with myself, I wasn’t about to turn back. Besides, I was almost there. A few more hours and I’d be in St. Petersburg.

What then? Well, I’d had time to think about that on the way down. Granted, discovering the whereabouts of Eleanor Greer and Lou Willis had been a sort of exercise, a test of my investigative powers. Granted, also, that I was making this trip in childish defiance of my mother’s wishes. Still.… Perhaps there was a purpose. I am not a very religious man—I am, after all, a Unitarian, and even there my attendance is erratic—but perhaps I was meant to make this trip. Eleanor Greer was an innocent; nature had not granted her those powers of discernment which other young women could rely on to keep them out of the clutches of unsavory males. There was no telling what sort of jeopardy she was in. And, being powerless and alone in this world, she would have no way of extricating herself from the situation. I could offer her help, prompted only by compassion and genuine concern for her welfare. I could approach her and say, “Eleanor, it’s me, Malcolm Blair. Are you all right? Do you want to go home?” And, if she did, I would take her back to her brother. There was a very real possibility that she would want that, that my appearance would, in fact, be her salvation.

Stopping at a gas station, I got a Coke to wash the acrid taste from my mouth. I was beginning to feel better. I was, after all, a man with a mission. Hardships were to be endured in the pursuit of a good cause. I purchased another bottle of love bug solvent and pushed on.

LOU

You can’t let down your guard in this world. Not for a minute. I came out of the drugstore—I guess I was in there five minutes—and Ellie was on the sidewalk hugging this fellow.

She saw me coming, and I guess she read the look in my eyes, because she put her hands on her hips and frowned. She was wearing a bright yellow sun dress and a Panama hat, and if she’d gone to heaven that minute Jesus himself would have caught his breath.

“Now Lou,” she said, “This is Dr. Blair, and you can just stop thinking what you are thinking, because he is my case worker at Taylor, and I won’t have your ugly thoughts.”

I didn’t say anything, and this Blair fellow, who was a skinny guy with a brown mustache, was mumbling how he wasn’t actually a doctor, was actually only a bachelor, and how he was there on vacation and wasn’t it a coincidence, you know, running into Miss Greer? I had rarely seen a person lie so badly. It made me uncomfortable, and I almost shouted, “Don’t!” He was wearing a suit. The temperature had to be in the eighties, but he had this brown, crumpled suit, and he was even wearing a tie, so that looking at him was painful.

“This is Lou,” Ellie said, and he reached out his hand to shake mine. I took it.

“Pleased to meet you,” I said, shaking his hand, which was a little like holding a dead frog.

He was going on about what a big coincidence it was, running into Ellie, how he was just looking out the window at the shops and there she was. I hummed a tune in my head to keep from listening closely and maybe saying something before I could put the brakes on it.

I shot Ellie a dirty look when she said we could all do something together, like go to the beach or out to dinner. She gave him Dad’s telephone number too, which he wrote down in a little black address book.

I was steamed, and when we got back in the car, I roared out of the parking lot, ran a red light, and gave this old geezer, who was crossing the street real slow, a reason to put some spark back in his step.

“Lou Willis, there ain’t nothing to be mad about,” Ellie said.

I didn’t listen, just hunched over that wheel and mashed the accelerator.

“You stop that!” Ellie shouted. “You just stop!”

I had the window rolled down, and hot wind, like a tarp flapping in a hurricane, crowded out her voice. I’ll drive as fast as I please, I thought.

I forgot—I guess because it had not happened for some time—that Ellie has a mind of her own.

Suddenly she screamed—my heart just stopped in the middle of a beat—and she flung her door open. I guess I was going eighty-five; I was up there somewhere where the car starts to shake, flying down this two-lane highway through weedy, scrub-pine country, cloudless and full of heat. Ellie screamed and I thought: Oh God!

I hit the brake, and we fishtailed down the highway, and the tires squealed, and the steering wheel jerked in my hands. We turned sideways to the highway, and I saw a lot of cattle standing around a pond, still as a painting, and we seemed to lift up a little in the air, and I thought: We are gonna roll.

The car kept going around, though. If there had been another car on that highway, we would have had to hit it. But there wasn’t, and I kept my foot slammed on the brake and we bounced up across a ditch and came to rest against a fence.

I cut the engine and turned to Ellie. I started in, “You almost—”

But Ellie wasn’t there. Her door was wide open, and I could see a patch of black water, a busted-up shrub, and some weeds.

I couldn’t get the door open on my side, so I crawled out the passenger side.

My throat was too dry to shout her name, and anyway, I guess I was afraid silence would come back at me. I couldn’t stand that.

I scrambled back out to the road and looked down it. There wasn’t anything but flat highway and blue sky with one high, circling buzzard.

I killed her, I thought. I fell right to my knees, like God himself had blindsided me.

“Lou,” Ellie shouted. I turned quick, and there she was, coming out of the field behind the car.

I ran to her and hugged her. Her cheek was bleeding. “I can’t find my hat,” she said.

“Are you okay?” I asked. My voice rattled like loose change.

Ellie Greer giggled, reached out and pushed my hair back off my forehead. “Did I scare you?”

“Well, I guess you did,” I said, feeling anger come over me. “I guess—”

Ellie didn’t wait for my lecture. She put her face up to mine, not more than three inches so I could see the truth in her eyes, and she said, “You just hush, Lou Willis. I just want you to remember this: I want you to remember that I am not riding in any old runaway speeding car.”

I shut up. I’d forgot what Ellie was capable of.

The engine started right up, and we got back on the highway. We didn’t say anything for awhile.

Finally, Ellie said, “I can’t make you like Dr. Blair, but you don’t have to be rude to him.”

“Well, it just seems fishy to me,” I said. “Him showing up out of nowhere. Maybe he’s trying to cut you out of some welfare.”

“You are so suspicious,” Ellie said. “Dr. Blair wouldn’t do anything like that. He is a gentleman.”

I was getting a little sick of that “gentleman” stuff. That Blair, with his sweaty suit and his slickster’s mustache, looked like the kind of a guy who would sell you a car with a busted block—and you’d deserve it if you was fool enough to believe him.

“How do you explain him turning up?” I asked Ellie. “The world ain’t that small, you know.”

Ellie considered this, frowning and studying the highway. “Maybe he’s going to Disney World,” she said, “same as us.”

“Disney World is way off in Orlando. How come he’s here?”

She folded her arms. “You said we could go to Disney World. Don’t tell me different now, Lou Willis. Don’t go telling me it is ‘way off.’”

I can’t argue with Ellie. There’s no sense trying. I can never get a handle on her rules.

For the next week, Ellie and me didn’t do anything but go to the beach and eat and watch videos on Dad’s VCR. You’d think a schedule like that would relax a fellow, but my stomach felt like it was full of rusty nails, and when the screen door would slam, my heart would jump under my tongue.

I guess the truth is, I am not a man much suited for doing nothing. Working for Sloan’s wasn’t heaven, but it kept me occupied, and there was real satisfaction in fixing a thing. Old Henke, my boss, was a bastard who would have stole the pencils from a blind man’s cup, but I was mostly out on calls, so I didn’t have to see him, and if he was shaving my hours some, it wasn’t worth an ulcer. We’d get into it once a month maybe, some kind of argument, and I’d stay away from the place for a day or two. But then I’d get restless and come back—and he’d be glad to have me. He had black hair that he slicked down with grease and parted in the middle, and I’d come back in, and there he’d be, like a dog that’s rolled in a grease pit, and he’d show his false teeth and say, “Bygones will be bygones,” and he’d slap me on the back, and I’d consider spitting on his shiny wingtips, but I’d just nod my head and say, “Yeah, Henke. Whatever you say.”

I guess I’m just a working man, and I’ll endure a lot to get on with a job.

So on Sunday, I looked through the want ads, and I circled a few of them.

On Monday, I dressed in a clean work shirt and jeans and told Ellie I’d be back in a couple of hours. She was watching morning cartoons and eating Cheerios so she just looked up quick and said, “Okay.” Dad was already out back working in the garden, and I went out to tell him I was going.

“I was wondering when you was gonna think about work,” he said. “I knew you wasn’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth.” He laughed and whacked a garden glove against his overalls, raising a cloud of dust.

I was about sick of Dad’s company. Fact is, I was beginning to understand what a good thing his running off years ago had been. Two nights ago, he had taken Ellie to a nightclub. He knew how much I was opposed to that, but he did it, bringing the subject up in a sneaky, joking way. “I am thinking of going dancing,” he had said. “Only thing is: I’m afraid some woman might take advantage of me. Sometimes I drink too much, and my judgment fails me. I was hoping you kids could come along and sort of watch out for me.”

“Ellie ain’t going to any nightclub,” I had said, and that’s where I made my mistake, of course. Ellie heard that, and it stiffened her backbone.

“I’ll do what I please,” she said.

It was downhill from there, and I lost that fight. I let them go and sat home watching a video. I couldn’t tell you what it was. They came back late, in a cloud of beer fumes, and Dad had his arm around Ellie’s waist, and neither of them was too steady.

I decided then that I’d had my limit. It was time to get a place of my own.

Pulling out of the driveway, I saw a car parked across the street, one of those silver, Jap cars. Someone was sitting in the driver’s seat. It didn’t mean anything until I got back that afternoon—feeling pretty good because it looked like Eskimo Air Conditioning was gonna hire me—and that same Jap car was there and the same dude in sunglasses was behind the wheel.

Of course, it took about ten seconds, now that the car had my attention, to notice the Texas plates.

He ain’t real clever, is he? I thought.

MALCOLM

I am, I suppose, a stubborn person. I know my mother would not hesitate to say I am the world’s most stubborn person. It is true that when I encounter an obstacle, my resolve is strengthened rather than weakened.

Arriving in St. Petersburg and checking into a motel, I immediately caught a cold. I think it was the air conditioning in combination with the brutal road trip that weakened my resistance and left me prey to the innumerable viruses that must, of course, lurk in motels and public restrooms.

The morning after my arrival, I could barely crawl out of bed, and then only to vomit and retire again. Later in the day, I managed to make it to the lobby where I was able to purchase a number of cold remedies and retreat again to my room.

For three days I felt rotten: feverish, disoriented. As is often the case when I’m ill, I had dreadful doubts regarding the course of my life. This most recent adventure seemed particularly foolhardy and was perhaps a manifestation of some real mental and emotional breakdown.

On the fourth day I was able to order something more substantial than soup, and on the fifth day I was able to go out into the sunlight and purchase a map of St. Petersburg. That afternoon I drove down the shaded street where Eleanor and Lou were staying with Lou’s father. The house number was prominently displayed on the mailbox, which was a white and grey two-story in need of a paint job. The neighborhood was, however, respectable, and I had mixed feelings about that. I suppose I had been hoping to rescue Eleanor from a ghetto.

Finding the house was enough for that day. I was still weakened by my bout of illness, and I drove back to my motel and went to bed early, setting the alarm for seven.

In the morning, I drove back to the house, parking several blocks up on the other side of the street. I had no experience in shadowing people, but luck was on my side. Eleanor, wearing a yellow dress that would have allowed one to find her in a crowded stadium, came out of the house almost immediately—as though she had been waiting for my arrival. She was followed by a broad-chested man in a white t-shirt and brown and green mottled swim trunks. I was too far away to make out his features, but I assumed, from the proprietary way in which he ushered Eleanor into the big maroon car, that this was Lou Willis.

That morning they went to the beach. For the next three days, I was unable to approach Eleanor. They were either at the beach, in a restaurant, or in some store. Willis rarely left her side, and when he did, he was never gone long.

Your true investigator, your professional, no doubt has more patience than I do. It was a mistake, I know, to approach Eleanor when I did, and I’m sure a certain furtive quality was apparent when I whispered to her: “Miss Greer!”

She gave a little squeak of surprise, and then turned. “Golly, it’s Dr. Blair!” I am not, of course, a doctor, but it is a title Eleanor persists in using, I suppose because she is used to people in authority who do, in fact, possess such titles.

Before I could say a word, before I could ask if she required my help—and ask it in a tactful and generous fashion that would put her completely at ease and so obtain her utter confidence—Lou Willis came out of the store.

Eleanor, a girl of natural exuberance, was hugging me when he came out, and the general coolness of his demeanor suggested how unhappy he was with this show of innocent affection.

No, I had no time to ask Eleanor anything regarding her circumstances. But I am a professional. Noticing the nuances of personal interaction is my job. How often have I seen couples in my office who were at cross-purposes? A thousand times. Ten thousand times. The tension between Eleanor Greer and Lou Willis was palpable. If he were not actually holding her against her will, he was certainly exerting psychological pressures which young Eleanor, a child emotionally and mentally, would have no resources for combating. I was sure, instantly, that I had done the right thing in coming.

And I didn’t like Lou Willis’s looks, quite frankly. His appearance hadn’t improved since that high school photo. The years had hollowed his cheeks and pushed his eyes back under a knobby ridge of bone. His eyes still had that surprised look, that feigned innocence, but now they held a kind of crazy, unblinking outrage that said: I’m not about to let you get away with whatever you are getting away with.

I didn’t like the way he moved, either, always shifting his weight from one foot to the other with a nervous, brawler’s air, leaning forward a little, a sly, am-I-crowding-you smile and his chin angled up. He had rope-like, hard muscles that gave no sense of physical well-being but simply seemed like flesh pushed to the limits, and although I was several inches taller, I knew I was no match for the man in any sort of physical encounter.

I don’t think he believed that I just happened to be in St. Petersburg and just happened to run into Eleanor. The story did lack credibility, and in my defense I can only say that I had never intended to tell it, hoped never to meet Lou Willis.

Obviously, I would have to be more circumspect in the future. I returned to shadowing Eleanor and Lou, waiting for that moment when I could have more time to gracefully interrogate Eleanor to say, “Eleanor, do you want me to take you back home?”

I thought I was exerting great caution in this matter, but when my car door was yanked open and I tumbled onto the street, only to be yanked erect by Lou Willis—who smelled of some pungent cologne—I realized that I had been taking a number of things for granted.

“Hey hoss,” Willis said, “This is sure a coincidence, ain’t it.”

Willis pushed me back against the hood of my car and released me. My sunglasses had fallen off. I watched Willis crush them under his boot and then pick them up.

“Here you go,” he said.

I took them and slipped them in the pocket of my shirt.

“Go on and put them back on,” he said. “It’s still right sunny.”

I put the glasses back on. The plastic lenses were still in place, but now I was looking through a spider web, sun flaring in the cracks. This broken vision brought it all home. I was in big trouble.

“Look,” I said, “I just need to talk to Miss Greer about vocational training. It’s unclear, for instance, if she intends to establish new residency or—”

Willis laughed. “Mr. Case Worker, you came all the way to Florida on my tax money? I’m delighted to see a dollar goes so far. Makes me feel good about giving it.”

“Well—” I said. I was beginning to realize the advantage of fabricating lies in advance. I was at a loss for words. Lou Willis, however, would probably not have been interested in anything I had to say.

“Just get in the car,” he said. “We are going for a drive.”

“No,” I said, “really. No.”

He pulled a gun out then; I don’t know where it came from, unless he’d had it stuck in his belt. Casually, rubbing my neck a little with his other hand, he put that gun against my forehead and said, “I won’t say it again. I will just shoot you dead and walk away and drive out of here before you have slid all the way to the ground, and that will be it. I don’t care much, and if you got any ear for the truth, you’ll know you are hearing it now.”

I believed him. I got in the car.

LOU

We drove out of town. Whenever we came to a road that looked sorrier than the one we were on, I had him turn. Pretty soon we were on this tan stretch of nothing. The only gas station we passed was boarded up and one of the pumps lay flat on its back, its hose and nozzle next to it like a dead snake. We passed two children and a dog that was bigger than both of them. And then we just drove along, with nothing but scrub pine and some of those scruffy cabbage palms for company.

“Mr. Case Worker,” I said, “what brings you all the way to Florida? I’d like a straight answer if you please.”

He was leaning over the wheel like there was a pain in his stomach, and he said, quiet so I could hardly hear him: “I can’t see to drive with these sunglasses on.”

“Well, take them off then. Goddam, don’t you have any sense? You want to get us both killed?” I laughed.

He took the glasses off and turned and looked at me. “I came to see Miss Greer because I feared she was in trouble. My fears were obviously justified.”

I shook my head. This fellow really was crazy. “Goddam if you ain’t something,” I said. “You feared she was in trouble! Did you now!” He didn’t say anything, just stiffened a little and looked back at the road. “What were you gonna do about her trouble? Were you gonna give her some food stamps?” I shook my head.

“What do you know about her anyway?” I asked.

“I suspect I know more about her than you do,” he said. He had a kind of haughty tone, there, which I had to admire. I mean, the gun was resting in my lap. He was wearing the same old suit, but he didn’t have a tie on—he was starting to let himself go, I guess.

“I bet Juvenile told you all about her. I know what they say. I’ve heard all them words you folks have to describe anyone a little different. You can call a person any name you want and not know anything.” I was working myself up. I guess I had to, really. “No sir, you don’t know shit about Ellie Greer! You ask her brother—you ask Hank Greer—to show you that big old burn scar on his back. Hank Greer got that from his daddy when that sonofabitch laid a red-hot skillet on him. And what Hank got ain’t the half of what Ellie got.”

“I am aware of Eleanor’s unfortunate childhood,” he said, starch in his voice. Oh, for a skinny, prissy sort of a fellow he had some backbone.

“Turn here,” I said, pointing to a dirt road up to the left. He turned, and we rocked along in a cloud of dust.

I kept an eye out, and when we came to a place where we could pull off the road, I had him pull off and stop. “You can leave the keys in the car,” I said; “We won’t be but a minute.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked. I marched him through a field of tall grass that was patrolled by big, low-flying dragonflies. Up ahead I saw a clump of pines and a little cow pond.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” I said. “It’s not like I have a lot of choices.” If Ma had heard me, she would have said I was feeling sorry for myself. “You got a bladder full of the poor-me’s,” she would have said.

We walked down to the cow pond. Up close, it smelled bad.

“You ever been fishing?” I asked him.

“Oh course,” he said. “I did quite a bit of fishing as a boy.”

“Well now,” I said. “You reckon there are fish in this pond?”

“Yes, I would think so. The dragonflies are a good sign,” he said. “They would indicate an abundant mosquito population, something for the small fry to feed on.”

Well, I thought, this fellow thinks we are on a field trip.

“That’s very interesting,” I said. “I wonder if you would mind stepping into the water, then. You know, taking a closer look. I might go fishing here sometime, and I wouldn’t want it to be a lot of wasted energy.”

He just blinked at me.

“You might take your jacket off,” I said. “You wouldn’t want it to get wet.”

“No,” he said.

I moved a little closer to him and said, “All right. Suit yourself.” I pointed the gun straight at his head.

“Let me get my jacket off,” he said.

I nodded, and watched him take his jacket off. He had an awkward time of it, like the jacket was too small.

He handed me the jacket, his arm coming up, straight out, and there was something else besides that brown suit jacket in his hand. A cloud of wet ammonia-stinking spray hit me in the face, and my eyes caught on fire. I staggered backwards, and that first shock of fire exploded into something that made a kind of napalm whump in my brain.

I fell back on the ground, screaming like a stuck pig, rolling around in the mud and the weeds. It had to be luck, cause I didn’t have two wits to rub together, but I got on my feet again and ran into the water, and plunged right under, like a nest of hornets was after me.

Well, these hornets could swim.

I believe some of my memories were burnt up forever. I don’t have them any more. They are gone, and they might have been important memories, info I could use in a jam, but I’ll never know what’s gone and what’s still here. Pain ate them right up.

I kept ducking my head under water, trying to cool my eyes, and I stayed there for some time. I didn’t give any thought to Mr. Case Worker until the pain had let up a bit. Then I looked around, but he was gone. I crawled back up on the bank and squinted at the world. I wasn’t blind after all. I could see, although the world hurt to look at. The fellow’s jacket was still on the ground, and so was my gun, and so was this blue and white can with the words LOVE BUG LIQUIDIZER on the side. I flung that can out into the water and lay back on the ground, letting the sun dry me off.

It was curious, but I didn’t feel any particular urgency to get up and run after or away from something. I guess I felt that whatever was going to come was coming, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

I would have laid there even longer, but some ants wanted me off their property and they lit into the back of my neck. I sat up quick, smacked them, and decided it was time to move. For some reason—I don’t know why—I put that fellow’s suit jacket on and then put the gun in the pocket and walked back out to the road. The Jap car was gone, naturally, and I walked on down the dirt road.

I figured I’d be walking all the way back to town, but a trucker picked me up.

“You look kind of poorly,” he said.

I didn’t say anything, but he was one of these fellows who has got to talk or he’ll bust.

“You look like you got the grandaddy of hangovers,” he said. “I don’t believe I seen eyes that red on a human being.”

“Well I hope I made your day,” I said.

I still had to walk a mile from where the trucker let me off, and I was beat when I hit the door. Dad and Ellie were sitting watching television, and as I walked by, Dad shouted: “Eskimo Air Conditioning called. I think they want you to go to work for them.”

“I’ll call them tomorrow,” I said, and I walked on upstairs, took a shower, and fell in bed. I slept right through till the next morning. When I woke, Ellie was there beside me, jay naked and on her back, her mouth open.

I gave her a long look, ran my eyes down the whole reckless length of her. Light shot through the blinds, golden ribbons, like an angel God had unwrapped.

I pulled the sheet up around her. She closed her mouth and rolled on her side, winding the sheets round her.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t have a clue.” I got out of bed and went into the bathroom. My eyes still didn’t look too good.

In the kitchen, Dad had something to say about my looks too, but I didn’t have time for it.

I called Eskimo Air and got the boss and he said he could use a fellow like me, but times were tight, and he wasn’t sure he could pay me what I was worth. I kept saying, “Uh huh,” and when he finally made me an offer, I said I wished I could take it but I had obligations that wouldn’t allow me to go so low, and he hummed a bit and made me another offer and I said, “Okay.”

He asked if I could start right away, and I said, “Sure.”

So I had a job. It was a load of work. I even had to fix the funky van they gave me for service calls. This place was tight with a buck, and some of the tools they gave me were a joke. I bought some tools on my own, took money out of my own pocket. There is nothing worse than trying to work with cheap or broken tools. I will gladly spend my own money to avoid that aggravation.

And the work was good for me. I could have been staying home, waiting for the ax to fall. I kept expecting Mr. Case Worker to come banging on the door with a dozen cops at his back.

“This fellow tried to kill me,” he’d say. He couldn’t lay anything on me that would stick, but I didn’t fancy the attention of a lot of cops.

I put the gun in a coffee tin and buried it in the backyard, but nobody came around. I finally went back and dug the gun up. I didn’t want some kids finding it and maybe hurting themselves.

I stopped worrying about the case worker, decided he had got the message. I liked to think he drove straight back to Texas, saying, all the while: “I got to be helping folks in Texas. That’s my true calling. Folks in Florida are out of my jurisdiction, and I’m glad Mr. Willis pointed it out.”

Of course, I wasn’t going to let the matter of my eyes just pass. The fellow had definitely done something to them. The redness went away by mid-week, but I couldn’t see things properly anymore. Things were sharp enough, but sometimes there would be holes in what I was seeing, little whirlwinds of churning, electric air. I didn’t care for that effect. You bet I had something to settle with that boy. But I learned a long time ago that letting a little time pass is the best way to handle it. I might drive through Texas in a year or two, and that’s when I’d look him up. He might be walking out of his office or even mowing his lawn on a Saturday, and I’d come right up to him and say, “You don’t remember me?” And probably he wouldn’t, at first, but I’d watch the recollection come into his eyes. I’d enjoy that.

With work, with any new job, you have to get into a rhythm. There’s an adjustment period, while your body gets used to the pace. I was wore out that first week, not so much with the work itself but with the way they had you keep track of your hours and call in all the time. It was a nuisance. I’d come home in the evenings, drink a couple of beers, and collapse.

Dad started taking Ellie to clubs. I wasn’t crazy about that, and sometimes they wouldn’t get home until I was already asleep.

“Girl’s got to have some fun,” Dad said. “She’s got to get out a little bit.”

On the weekend, I just wanted to lay back, but Ellie insisted we go somewhere.

“What do you have in mind?” I asked.

What she had in mind was that goddam Disney World. I explained to her that it wasn’t a weekend trip, that it would take longer than that. “It’s all the way on the other side of the state,” I said. We had a good fight then.

Dad surprised me. He agreed. “It’s a long way, Ellie, and that Mickey Mouse will turn your pockets inside out quicker than a Times Square whore.”

Well, Ellie wouldn’t hear anything mean about that mouse, so she screamed and ran up the stairs to her room, the door slamming shut.

I was worried that Ellie might do something rash, but Dad patted my shoulder and said, “I got a plan.”

“What’s that?” I said.

But Dad always loved a secret, and he gave me another one of those broad winks and didn’t elaborate. He went upstairs and I heard him knock on Ellie’s door.

An hour or so later, he came back down, and Ellie was with him. She wasn’t quite ready to give up sulking, but he had calmed her down. And half an hour later, he had her laughing with his imitation of Oprah.

On Sunday, I took Ellie to a movie. I asked Dad if he’d like to come along, but he said, “No, you kids need some time to yourselves.” We went and saw this movie about a woman detective with a funny name. It was about how everyone thought her name was funny and made jokes about it. I fell asleep, but Ellie said the movie was good and told me the story on the way home, and it certainly sounded interesting.

Then, on Monday at dinner, Dad sprung his surprise on me. I could see he had already talked it over with Ellie. He had got tickets for Barney Baker’s Fabulous Funland up in Bayport. The plan was to drive up to Bayport on Wednesday and stay until Saturday.

Dad explained it. “It ain’t as crowded during the week. And I got a friend runs a motel up there. He’ll give us a cut rate.”

Ellie piped in, like she’d been coached, I reckon. “They got animals and rides and those cartoon characters from the Barney Baker show and a house full of mirrors and Monster Mountain and …”

“I guess you ain’t noticed that I work,” I said.

Ellie shot right in, breathless, “You could tell them it’s an emergency.”

It wasn’t Ellie’s fault, and I knew it. I glared at my old man. “You folks have a good time. You take a lot of pictures so it’ll be just like I was there too.”

I tried not to think about it. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. On Tuesday after work, I went and talked to this fellow who had a garage apartment for rent. It was reasonable, and I told him I’d be back on Friday with a deposit. I would have my own surprise for Dad. “Ellie and me are moving out,” I’d say. “Surprise.”

Tuesday night, watching Ellie rush around packing her things, I got to feeling peculiar, like she was leaving forever, and she must have noticed, because she came over and sat in my lap and hugged me. “You just tell me not to go, and I won’t,” she said.

Well, I’m no fool, so of course I said I hoped she had a good time. But I got up real early Wednesday morning and drove off in the van before Dad or Ellie stirred. I just didn’t fancy all the excitement.

Around noon, I was drinking a glass of ice tea with an old woman who said she was originally from Albany, New York and might go back there any second. “I might go down to the bus station this very night and leave,” she told me. “The phone might be ringing, and I might walk right by it and go down to the bus station.”

“You should,” I said.

“What’s that?”

I didn’t repeat it. I didn’t care what she did, really. I’d been working at a fast pace all morning, racing from one service call to the next, and suddenly, sitting down, I couldn’t tell you why I was bothering.

“Well, I better be going,” I said. “I’m driving up to Bay-port to that amusement park.”

“Barney Baker’s. My husband and I went there once. It was great fun.”

MALCOLM

I suppose I should have gone to the police. But I am familiar with a certain official mindset, and any interview with the police would, I feared, be an interrogation. “What brings you to Florida?” they would ask.

I would be hard pressed to give them a satisfactory explanation. In these cynical times, concern for a fellow human being lacks the self-interest required to make it a plausible motive for doing anything.

I did not want to be misinterpreted.

Besides, although I was convinced that Lou Willis had intended to kill me, I knew that my certainty wasn’t enough to get any real action. All the police might do is scare Willis off, and he would take Eleanor with him.

As I lay there in my hotel room, recovering from my ordeal—and thanking God and man for the invention of love bugs and love bug solvent—I realized that I was Eleanor’s only hope. Lou Willis had demonstrated that he was a killer, and I was the only one who could separate Ellie from him. Who else knew? Who else cared?

I am not a courageous man. As I lay there in bed, I shook. I am not a drinker, but I called room service and availed myself of several stiff gin and tonics.

I grabbed the remote from the end table and turned the television on. I pushed the mute button and watched the images. Silent television has a calming affect. A foppish boy-man smirked at me from behind a desk. “David,” I said to the silent late night host, “You can believe it or not, but I am going to rescue Eleanor Greer.” No doubt the alcohol contributed to the effect; I felt a rush of righteous invulnerability.

In the morning, I felt somewhat less invulnerable, but my resolve was unshaken.

This time I would move with more caution. I would not take Lou Willis for granted. He possessed a low cunning and intelligence that I had underestimated. I wouldn’t underestimate him again.

I rented a car. If I were going to follow him, I obviously couldn’t do it in the Honda. He would recognize it. I felt a sharp pang of embarrassment when I thought of how glibly I had parked across the street from his house—with Texas plates! Did I think Lou Willis was blind?

A look at my street map showed that there was only one route Willis could take from his father’s house to the main street, and so, hunkered down in a large, nondescript rental car—the sort of faded luxury car that St. Pete’s large population of oldsters drove—I was able to pick Willis up as he left the house without watching the house itself. Indeed, I was parked a good quarter of a mile from it, in the parking lot of a supermarket, and could see Willis coming, the old, maroon Impala seeming to exude evil as it came out of the shady, oak-lined street and into the bustling sunlight.

I wasn’t going to jump the gun this time. I wasn’t going to try to contact Eleanor until I knew I could do it without fear of interruption.

Then Lou Willis got a job, and it looked like I’d be able to make my move. He was away all day—going to work in a company van with the words “Eskimo Air” on the side and a cartoon of an Eskimo outside an igloo. The van was a less ominous vehicle than the Impala, but knowing Willis was inside that van colored the Eskimo’s smile, made it seem cruel and calculating.

I waited a week. Not once did Willis come home during the day. I called my office on Friday and said I was going to have to stay out another week.

Mrs. Hamilton got on the phone—my supervisor was out—and said, “You only go around once, Malcolm. Don’t worry about hurrying back. You’re only young once!”

Mrs. Hamilton confided that she had had a few drinks at lunch that day and was thinking of leaving the office early herself. “I’d like to see them try to fire me for leaving early!” she bellowed. I told her I would see her Monday a week and hung up, feeling a little unsettled. Perhaps my presence had exerted some calming effect on Mrs. Hamilton, had compelled her to practice some restraint. No telling what shape things would be in by the time I got back. Well, it couldn’t be helped.

The next week, I resumed my vigil. Monday and Tuesday, Willis left for work at seven and returned home at six-thirty. On Wednesday, I had just pulled into the parking lot with a cup of coffee when I spied the van coming down the street. It was just six in the morning. I watched the van rattle by and waited another two hours and drove to Roy Willis’ house.

I parked across the street, took some deep breaths, and prepared to get out of the car. My heart was pounding. I had thought the scene through several times, but it never had sufficient clarity in my imagination.

Eleanor trusted me, and that, I hoped, would be all I needed. “You’ve got to come with me immediately,” I would say. Nothing more.

But what about Roy Willis? He might want something more in the way of an explanation. I had seen him several times during my first ill-fated surveillance, and he looked like a tough customer. Lou Willis was, after all, the man’s son.

I decided I would just have to hope for the best, and I started to open the car door.

The door of the Willis house opened, and Roy Willis stepped out, Eleanor following on his heels. They were both carrying suitcases. I watched them toss the luggage into the trunk of the Impala, watched Roy Willis flick a cigarette into the driveway, and watched them get into the car and pull out of the driveway.

I followed, of course.

What was going on here? Were they running away?

Roy Willis drove recklessly, changing lanes frequently, and it was all I could do to keep up with him. They got on 19 and headed north.

They stayed on 19 for an hour or so and then swooped into the right lane and shot down the exit ramp. The sign read: BAYPORT. The Impala slowed abruptly, and I was right up behind them and worried that Eleanor might turn and see me. I got in the left lane and passed, keeping an eye on them in the rearview mirror. We went along for fifteen minutes or so, down a highway flanked with billboards and souvenir shops, and suddenly the car turned left into a pink-stucco motel. I pulled into a gas station and looked back.

The motel had a big faded sign cut in the shape of a seagull. GULL’S REST MOTEL, it read. I filled the tank of my car, got some pretzels to munch on, and drove back to take a look.

I saw the Impala immediately, and before I could consider my next move, a door opened and Eleanor and Roy Willis came out and jumped back into the car. Eleanor had changed into shorts and a green, sleeveless blouse, and Roy Willis had donned a Hawaiian shirt that didn’t suit him, that made him look like some Mafia kingpin hiding out in Acapulco.

An hour later, I was eating cotton candy while three large skunks wearing sombreros played guitars and sang a song whose message was that all men—and skunks, I suppose—were brothers. This was the entertainment while waiting for the next haunted train ride up Monster Mountain. I could see Eleanor up ahead in the crowd, and I didn’t think that my sunglasses were sufficient disguise should she look my way. The cotton candy offered some cover, although I have always been partial to cotton candy and so was rapidly destroying this source of concealment.

I was in Barney Baker’s Fabulous Funland, an amusement park on the outskirts of Bayport. The place was what Disney World might have been if it had been conceived by con men and ex-carnival hucksters. You couldn’t make a move without someone selling you a ticket to something. You had to have a ticket to walk down Jungle Alley, and you had to purchase a ticket to take the ferry across Piranha River—and it seemed to me that you had to go across that river if you wanted to get anywhere.

I confess, I enjoyed Ferret Warren, where we all crawled through tunnels that undulated and changed directions while we were in them, but the Breath-Robbing Body Bouncer was not my cup of tea, and I despised the Dogs On Ice show. And I lost five dollars trying to get a mechanical snake to devour my stuffed mouse.

And, of course, none of this was getting me any closer to achieving my goal. Roy Willis stuck close to Eleanor, and I saw no way I could approach her. The funhouse atmosphere overexcited me, and I feared I might do something reckless, so I decided to leave. I needed to find a motel and register, and now seemed as good a time as any to do that. Obviously Eleanor and Roy Willis intended to stay overnight or they would not have checked into a motel themselves. My time would be better spent resting and devising a plan for tomorrow.

Still, I felt frustrated. I needed, somehow, to seize this opportunity, to take advantage of Eleanor’s separation from Lou Willis.

On the way out of the park, a large hamster asked if I had a cigarette, and I had to tell him I didn’t smoke. I know he was a hamster, because I asked. There was a querulous note in his response: “Hamlet Hamster,” he said. “I’m Hamlet Hamster, for Christ’s sakes! You been living on the moon, or what?”

I had paid money to enter this park, and I didn’t need to be abused by its employees. “If you are so famous, you can afford your own cigarettes,” I said. “Besides, studies have shown that smoking is hazardous to hamsters.”

“You are a riot,” he said. “You should get a job as a clown.” His voice seemed younger now that I’d stirred him up. I imagined a tall, surly teenager under that costume.

I spoke with dignity. “I am quite happy with my present profession, thank you.” I walked away, before he could answer.

“I am a social worker,” I said to myself as I drove back to the motel. “I am a man of action.”

And, as though saying the words unlocked the door, a plan presented itself. That boy had given me an idea. I saw a clear path to Eleanor’s rescue.

Tomorrow, Eleanor Greer and I would be on our way to Texas.

LOU

I found the Gull’s Rest Motel easy enough. It wasn’t any great shakes of a place. Dad had made it sound like his friend worked at the Ritz, but this was the sort of place that looked better if it was two in the morning and you’d been driving twelve hours.

The man at the check-in desk didn’t want to tell me anything. He looked like the kind of person my old man would have for a friend; he had a kind of jailhouse squint and kept leaning back like he had to keep as much distance between us as he could in case I tried to pull a fast one.

I convinced him that I was who I said I was, but I had to show him my driver’s license to do it—“You don’t favor your dad,” he kept saying—and then I had to listen to some stories about stuff he and the old man had done a million years ago.

“That’s interesting,” I finally said, “but I’m wore out. If you will give me a key, I will go on in the room and wait for them to come back.”

Well, he didn’t know if he could do that, because he wasn’t the owner of this establishment, and the room had been rented to two people, not three, and he might get in trouble.

I knew what he was getting at, and I didn’t want to run all around the track with him, so I just handed him a twenty and he fetched the key.

The room had two big old beds, and it was better than I would have expected, except for the wallpaper which was different kinds of fishes, realistic, like photographs. I didn’t go for the way they seemed to circle, made me feel like bait, and I would have preferred flowers or a stripe pattern.

I went and took a shower, and that perked me up. I didn’t fancy just waiting around for them to show, so I went out and found a bar.

I got pinned down in there. I don’t know just how it happened, but I couldn’t get out. It was cool and damp, with most of the light coming from an old jukebox that had lots of real country singers, folks like George Jones and Hank Williams and people who had really suffered—people who knew a thing or two about pain, and I’m not talking a trip to the dentist.

I tried to leave once (I remember) but the sunlight was like a fire that blew me back inside. I didn’t try it again until it was dark, and then I guess I wanted to be sure it was going to stay dark, so I had a few more beers, and then I forgot what was the emergency and why I had to leave right away, and then they closed the place up and I found the van and drove back to the motel.

I slipped the key in the lock, quiet so as not to wake anyone up, but, as it turned out, there wasn’t anyone sleeping.

I didn’t like what I saw, and for awhile I guess, I lost control.

I sat on the edge of the bed for what must have been an hour. I stared at Dad’s feet, which were bare and stuck out from under the sheet, but I don’t know that I thought about him, or much of anything else. I just let my brain idle in neutral.

I was aware that Ellie was talking, but I couldn’t seem to focus on her words.

Finally I heard her say, “Your daddy ain’t no gentleman, Lou.”

“Honey,” I said, “He ain’t nothing. He’s dead.”

We were both quiet, studying the old man’s feet as though they might offer up an opinion on the situation.

I felt bad about it. But Dad should have known better than to try anything with my Ellie. I guess he figured I wasn’t around so he was safe. I cursed myself for not seeing it coming. I’d felt it all along. What was that shark if it wasn’t old Dad?

“I killed old Dad,” I said. “I come all the way to Florida to visit him, and I killed him.”

Ellie hugged me then, and I was aware that she was naked under the bathrobe. “Get dressed, honey,” I said. “We can’t just sit here all night.”

Ellie and me drove to an all night supermarket, and I got some packing tape and some of those big green trash bags—and some room freshener too. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but Dad had left a powerful bad smell behind when he departed this world. We sprayed clouds of pine scent into the air. Then I pulled one of the big plastic bags over Dad’s feet and jerked another down over his head and taped them together. I went outside and opened the Impala’s trunk.

“You are going to have to help me tote him,” I said.

“Okay,” Ellie said. Ellie isn’t a girl to shirk a duty.

Together we hauled him into the trunk, and I slammed the trunk shut.

“I’m exhausted,” I said. I didn’t feel drunk anymore, not one bit, but I had that hollow weariness that seems like there’s not enough sleep in the world to feed it.

“I’m sorry,” Ellie said.

“It ain’t your fault, Ellie.”

I lay back on the pillow and I was out. I dreamed I was on a mountain, in a forest—I guess that was the pine scent working on my subconscious—and I come across this little fox in a trap. Only the fox was Ellie, and I knew that, the way you know things in a dream, and I went to get the trap off, but she bit my hand. “Ellie,” I said, “You got to stop that or I’ll never get this off.”

And then I heard something coming through the trees. It was big, whatever was coming, and I could hear the brush crackle around it, and a wind came up and shook the trees around us and I woke screaming: “It’s too much!”

“Lou Willis,” Ellie said, coming over to my bed and laying a hand on my forehead, “You have the night sweats.”

“I do.” I was shivering.

“You shouldn’t drink so much,” she said, and I agreed.

It might sound cold to some, but we went to the amusement park the next day. I wasn’t gonna have another chance at it, not soon, and it sure didn’t make any difference to Dad. Besides, if we’d just bolted, Dad’s motel friend might wonder.

I got a kick out of the way Ellie took to being a tour guide. She had been the day before, so she was a big authority on everything.

“These hot dogs are too spicy,” she would say. “Don’t bother with them.” Or: “Don’t go buying any souvenirs in Cannibal Canyon; you can buy the same stuff for half price from the drugstore near our motel.”

I had a good time. I’m not really one for rides and games and all that carnival stuff, but watching Ellie laugh, watching the way her hair would fly on the roller coaster ride or the way her mouth would open in wonder when Mr. Whistlebee popped the colored balloons and white birds flew out, all that made my heart light as a dandelion seed.

I let my guard down. The laughter fooled me. It distracted me.

I had to take a leak. I couldn’t have been gone more than three minutes. That’s how things always happen: in the blink of an eye. You hitch your fly back up, turn around, and tragedy has struck. The Bible don’t have nothing to tell me on that count.

I came back out. I had left Ellie in Cowboy Courtyard where a fellow in fancy cowboy getup was doing rope tricks. He had a little tiny dog with him that would jump around and bark. It was the kind of dog that a real cowboy would be ashamed to own, but I didn’t say that to Ellie. I was glad she was happy and enjoying herself.

I panicked when I couldn’t find her right off. I calmed myself down and thought: She’s just gone off to the restroom herself. I made myself wait. But she didn’t come back.

I started to run, first one way, then another. There were too many people everywhere, and I knocked some of them over without intending to. That got the attention of a skinny security guard, who chased after me, shouting. I didn’t have time for him, though, and I raced up the steps of this big fairy castle, taking those steps two, three at a time, and I made it to the top where a lot of people were getting a bird’s-eye view of the park, and I pushed past them and leaned out over the knobby, broken-tooth stonework and tried to pick Ellie out. And maybe I’ve got radar for her, because I found her almost immediately. She was in the parking lot. She was getting into a big old blue car, maybe an old Lincoln or another one of those luxury gas-guzzlers. One of the park’s costumed animals was holding the door for her.

Just then the security guard laid a hand on my shoulder.

“What’s your problem, buddy?” he asked.

“That’s my girlfriend,” I said, pointing at the parking lot. He squinted, following my finger. “There. She’s getting into that blue car. A rat or something is holding the door open.”

“That’s no rat,” he said. “That’s Hamlet Hamster.” He sounded surprised himself.

I pushed him away and ran back down the stairs. I can move fast when I’ve a mind to, and I got to the parking lot before they’d made it to the main gate. I jumped in my van and went after them. I gained some time by flying past the parking attendant without paying. He shouted after me.

I saw the car up ahead in traffic—it was a Lincoln—and slowed a little. I wouldn’t lose them now. I took some deep breaths. Okay, okay. Let’s just ease back, I thought, and see what the story is here.

MALCOLM

It was a brilliant plan, and it worked. I got up early the next morning—I had rented a room at the nearby Holiday Inn—and drove quickly to the park. As soon as it opened, I sought out Hamlet Hamster.

Hamlet Hamster proved to be a skinny teenager, one who had shaved his head to nubbly baldness and wore a small, gold earring. “I don’t know,” he said. “I could get in a lot of trouble.”

What he meant, of course, was that I would have to meet his exorbitant fee if I wanted to rent the costume. I didn’t even bargain, just forked over seventy-five dollars. He looked a little unhappy. The alacrity with which I produced the money made him think, no doubt, that I would have been good for even more. He was, I could see, the sort of person who always feels ill-used.

He led me to a locker room where he removed the costume. He wore nothing but his underwear, and he advised me to do the same. “It’s hot inside this muther,” he said.

I thanked him for this advice but didn’t take it. I didn’t intend to be in the costume long, only long enough to spirit Eleanor away.

Eleanor showed up at ten. By then I understood the teenager’s advice. I felt as though I were being boiled in a burlap bag. My vision was severely limited, and I was required to pat children on the head, be photographed with obese, lewd women, and wave at crowds. I realized that the last occupant may have shaved his head for comfort rather than adolescent style. My hair felt like a thicket of dirty briars, and rivulets of sweat ran down the back of my neck.

I forgot all about this when she arrived. Eleanor alone might have made me forget my discomfort, but she was accompanied by Lou Willis! Willis’ father was nowhere in evidence—but that was a small thing. Lou Willis!

The man terrified me. He seemed to look right at me and I thought: He sees me! and it was all I could do to keep from turning and running.

But, of course, he didn’t see me. He saw Hamlet Hamster. I was invisible. The plan remained a good one; I had only to carry it out. And I had, after all, already made a seventy-five dollar investment toward the success of my mission. No turning back.

My chance came when Lou Willis went off to the restroom. I followed him, and when I saw him go in the men’s room, I raced back to Eleanor.

I tapped her on the shoulder, trying my best not to scare her while still wishing to convey the urgency of the situation.

“Eleanor,” I whispered. “Eleanor.”

“Hamlet Hamster!” she shouted. She hugged me.

I whispered into her ear: “Eleanor, you’ve got to come with me. I don’t have time to explain, just follow me, okay?”

Eleanor said, “Okay.”

Eleanor kept up with me. Running was strenuous in the costume, and I thought the heat would finish me, but I ran through the main gate and out into the parking lot. Eleanor was giggling.

“There!” I shouted, pointing to my rental car. “Quickly.”

Eleanor ducked under my arm and slid into the passenger’s seat without hesitating.

I ran around to the driver’s side and got in.

I was terrified that Lou Willis was right behind us, and I had a bad moment when I realized that my car keys were in my pocket. I pulled off the hairy mittens that were Hamlet Hamster’s paws. The rest of my costume—not counting the head—was a one-piece, like those pajamas with feet that little kids wear, and I was going to have to get back out of the car and get this costume off—and Lou Willis would saunter up and shoot me.

“Eleanor,” I said. “Do you have a nail clipper?”

She stared at me, her mouth open and shook her head no.

I am in trouble here, I thought.

“I just use this to trim em,” Ellie said, producing the pocket knife.

I grabbed the knife and sawed through the threads at a seam, jammed my hand through the opening and retrieved my keys.

I heard Eleanor say, “Gosh.”

I pulled out and drove up to the parking attendant. I started to fumble in my pocket for the parking fee, but the attendant waved me through, and I realized that I was a celebrity.

The man hollered after me: “Jimmy! You better be careful. You’re gonna have a wreck if you try to drive with that mask on.”

I saw, immediately, what he meant. I was driving while looking through a keyhole, no peripheral vision. I had to turn my whole upper body, making sure my shoulders moved on an even plane, or I lost one or another of the eye holes. At the first red light, I wrenched the head off and tossed it into the back seat.

Eleanor gasped. “Dr. Blair!”

I looked at her. “It’s okay, Eleanor. I had to resort to this disguise to get you away from Lou Willis. I have every reason to believe that man is dangerous.”

Eleanor’s eyes were wide. She shook her head, raised a hand to her forehead. “Who would have believed it?” she said. “Dr. Blair is Hamlet Hamster! If I told my friends, if I told them this story … they’d say, they’d say: ‘Ellie you are taking bad drugs!’ That’s what they’d say.”

“Your brother’s worried about you,” I said.

“He is? Hank?”

“Yes, I thought I’d better take you back to Texas. I can’t make you go, of course, but I have every reason to believe that Lou Willis is a very dangerous man.”

“Well, he is,” Eleanor said. “That’s true. He’ll say it himself.”

We drove on. Getting out of the parking lot had disoriented me, and I wasn’t sure how to get to 19.

I heard Eleanor say, “I can’t believe it,” again.

Then I saw The Gull’s Rest Motel up ahead and Eleanor said: “I can’t go to Texas without my things! You got to stop!”

I was reluctant to do that, but Eleanor was insistent.

I turned into the motel. “You’ll have to be quick.”

“Sure,” Eleanor said.

I waited in the car with the engine on. The place seemed pretty much deserted. There was a cart with towels and sheets parked right next to Eleanor’s room so maid service must have been around. I decided to shed my costume before anyone showed up, and I got out of the car and wriggled out of my hamster skin. I had the costume crumpled down around my ankles, and I was leaning against the side of the car when the Eskimo Air van pulled in.

My throat closed to a pinhole. “Eleanor!” I shouted, but it was hardly a noise at all.

I yanked the costume off my feet and kicked it away. I jumped back in the car and threw it in reverse.

I crashed into the front of the van, and the collision banged me against the dash. I suppose I hadn’t closed the door properly, because it flew open, and I bounced out onto the pavement.

Lou Willis was already out of his van, and I could see the gun in his hand.

He walked over to me and looked down. “We met before,” he said.

I heard an odd, rattling noise and looked up to see the maid’s cart full of towels rolling slowly toward us.

The cart caught Lou’s attention too. He looked away for a second and shouted, “Ellie!”

I looked too. Eleanor must have bumped the cart, sending it on its jittery course as she struggled out the door. She was dragging a mattress through the door. She turned, saw us, and said, “Give me a hand with this mattress.”

“Ellie,” Lou said, running up to her, “get back inside now, you hear?”

I scrambled back in the car. It had stalled out when I hit the van, but the engine caught when I turned the key. Lou Willis heard, and turned back to me. He raised the gun. The cart was right in front of him, and he started to push it away.

I couldn’t back up; the van blocked me.

I think I screamed. I know I made some kind of noise and then threw the car in drive and stomped the accelerator.

The car leaped forward, slammed into the cart and kept going. Towels and sheets flew into the air, flapping like monstrous gulls. The Lincoln stalled again, and I climbed out. Lou Willis was slumped over the grill in a welter of white towels.

Eleanor looked up at me. There were tears in her eyes. “Help me with this mattress, Dr. Blair.”

“Eleanor, we have to leave.” I took her by her shoulder. “Do you have the keys to that car?” I asked, pointing at the Impala. I knew the Lincoln wouldn’t be going anywhere.

“Roy always keeps his keys under the seat.”

This proved to be the case.

I found them and started the car. “Please,” I said. “Hurry.”

Eleanor frowned, looked at the mattress, and then turned away, ran to the car, and jumped in.

“It doesn’t matter, I guess,” she said.

I looked in the rearview mirror as we pulled out into traffic. Someone had run out of the office and was running toward the Lincoln and Lou Willis. I thought I saw Lou Willis move.

LOU

They wrapped about ten pounds of tape around my ribs, and I was moving around like I was eighty years old. I guess it didn’t matter; I wasn’t going anywhere where speed was required.

If it had just been me, the car, and the wall, I wouldn’t be going anywhere at all. That case worker wasn’t playing games.

“The cleaning lady’s cart absorbed most of the impact,” one of the cops told me. “You were lucky,” he said.

“I feel lucky,” I said.

They thought I might have a concussion too. I had cracked the back of my head against the wall. But X-rays didn’t show anything, and so the doctor handed me over to the cops, and they took me downtown.

It was uncomfortable, sitting around with my chest tied so tight that each breath was an effort.

They asked me a lot of questions. Finally, one of them said: “You know anyone named Walter Reed?”

“No,” I said.

“He worked in a gas station,” the cop said. “Some sorry son of a bitch shot him in cold blood for a couple of dollars.”

I didn’t say anything. Then he shifted subjects, wanted to know if I knew about a truck driver killed at a rest stop outside of Temple.

He asked if I wanted a lawyer, and I said I didn’t. He started talking about fingerprints, witnesses. “We can place you at both scenes,” the cop said.

“Where’s the girl?” one of them asked.

“What girl?”

“Your accomplice,” the cop said.

I shook my head. My heart felt like someone was holding it in his fist. I couldn’t let them get the wrong idea. “It wasn’t like that,” I said.

“How was it?” he asked. So I told him. I knew I wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t know. They had me tell it a couple of times, and then the next day another fellow came around, this one in a suit, and he had me tell it all again.

I finished my piece and he said: “You shot the truck driver with this gun.”

He held the gun up, and I said, “Sure.”

“He was coming toward you, and you shot him.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Was Miss Greer with you when this happened?”

“Naw, she didn’t see it. She had run off.”

“There’s no possibility that it was Miss Greer who shot this truck driver, then?”

I laughed. “Ellie wouldn’t hurt a fly.” This was true; Ellie didn’t hold with harming flies or any kind of bug or animal.

The detective stood up. “You might be interested to know that Mr. Sterling”—that was the truck driver’s name—“was shot at close range. The barrel of the pistol was probably touching his throat when the trigger was pulled.” He turned and walked to the door. He paused. “And it wasn’t this gun. It was a smaller calibre.” He looked at me, said, “I just thought you might be interested,” and left.

They came and took me back to my cell. That detective was wrong, though. I wasn’t interested.

I had other things on my mind. I knew I wasn’t going anywhere for a long time, and I was worried sick about Ellie. That case worker proved to have some backbone, but I still didn’t think he was capable of really looking out for Ellie. She was just a child out there, and she needed a load of protection.

Who was gonna do it now?

MALCOLM

I drove north up 19 with my heart pounding. I had run a man down, and now I was fleeing the scene. I kept thinking: I’ll stop and phone the police. I’ll tell them I panicked. I’m sure it happens all the time.

But I didn’t do that. Instead I drove on up to Gainesville, got on the interstate, and kept heading north.

Eleanor reached over and turned the radio on. She found a country station and turned it up loud.

I was in shock, I suppose. The day was oppressively bright, cheerful.

Eleanor said, “I could use something to eat.”

We stopped at a restaurant where the food took a backseat to postcards and paperweights made out seashells.

I wasn’t hungry anyway, and I ate my watery hot dog without enthusiasm. Eleanor, however, devoured a hamburger, french fries, and a chocolate milk shake and said, “I could use a piece of pie.”

I don’t believe she was fully aware of our plight. The terrible events at the motel had left her seemingly unaffected. Of course, her behavior might be a defense mechanism. She might actually be in shock. I am no psychologist, and I’m not capable of evaluating such things. She did not seem traumatized. Although I was unable to follow her words closely, she seemed to be chatting easily about the various rides and wonders found at Barney Baker’s Funland.

I swallowed the last, leaden bite of my hot dog and said, “Eleanor, I believe we will have to call the police.”

“Lou doesn’t like police,” she said. I sympathized, for a moment, with Lou Willis. “Police are always telling you what to do. Lou don’t like that.”

I wasn’t looking forward to it myself. “I’m afraid we have to talk to them.” I didn’t go to a telephone though. Instead, I paid the check, and we got back into the car, and we got back on 1-75.

I was still trying to sort things out when the wail of the siren made me look up. The flashing lights in my rear view mirror told me the decision was out of my hands. The police had arrived. I was relieved.

“Do you know how fast you were going?” the officer asked.

I had been stopped for speeding.

“No officer,” I said, “but—”

My right ear exploded, my cheek was instantly scalded, and the policeman was gone from my window.

Eleanor Greer had leaned across my shoulder and shot him with a small, silver pistol which she was now demurely returning to her purse.

I pushed the door open and fell out onto the side of the road. The cop lay on his back. There was blood all over his face. His sunglasses were still on. Behind me, a big semi-truck was pulling off the road.

“Hurry!” Eleanor screamed.

I jumped back in the car and drove away.

“Take the exit,” Eleanor shouted.

I took country roads, turning whenever a new one presented itself.

Finally I pulled the car to the side of the road and threw up in a ditch. Eleanor climbed out of the car too and stood beside me. “It’s that hot dog,” she said. “I don’t ever eat hot dogs when I’m gonna be going on a trip. Car riding and hot dogs don’t mix.”

“Eleanor,” I said. “Why did you shoot that police officer?”

She smiled. “Well, I could see you weren’t going to. He had the drop on you.”

Well, I thought, well, well, well, well, well. That explained everything. I felt abandoned, emptied of all faith and conviction. It seemed of no consequence what I did next. My illusions were like so many shards of glass from a picture window some vandal has smashed. I got back in the car, waited for Eleanor to close her door, and drove off down the country road. Perhaps I would seek out the police station in the next town. Perhaps I wouldn’t.

Just then the car made a mechanical grunt and the telltale whunk, whunk, whunk of a blown tire forced me to let up on the accelerator.

“Flat tire,” I said to Eleanor.

“Lou was meaning to buy new tires,” she said. That was no consolation.

I got out and opened the trunk.

“That’s Roy,” Eleanor said.

I peeled back the plastic bag to reveal that, indeed, I was in the presence of the pale, departed Roy Willis. There was a small round hole in his hairy chest.

“I had to shoot him,” Eleanor said.

I nodded my head in agreement. I didn’t say anything. Perhaps Eleanor sensed a certain skepticism in my agreement.

“I did,” she said. “He got fresh. Lou wasn’t around, so he thought he could take advantage of me.”

“He was wrong,” I said.

I rolled the body out of the way and dragged the spare out of its well.

I changed the tire, throwing the old one in with Roy, and banged the trunk down.

We drove on.

“Good as new,” Eleanor said.

Finally, we came to a small town, its main street lined with shady oaks. It was a peaceful town, and I didn’t want to burden it with my troubles.

I looked at the map again. Eleanor peered over my shoulder.

“That’s Orlando.” She touched the map with her finger. “We could keep going on this road and we’d be in Orlando.”

“Why would be want to do that?” I asked.

Eleanor laughed. She had a wonderful laugh, so filled with reckless joy. “Silly. You know.”

I told her I really didn’t know.

“That’s where Disney World is!” she shouted. “We could see Mickey Mouse, and Donald, and Cinderella’s Castle and Frontier Town.” She paused. “Lou said he would take me, but he never did.”

Well, I thought, that’s my fault. “I’m sure he meant to,” I said.

Then I thought: Why not? Maybe it was just what I needed. Maybe I could talk to Mickey—or Goofy (I think Goofy was always my favorite). I might find Goofy there on Main Street, just standing around, and I could ask him for a minute of his time, and we could sit on the curb, and I could say: “I can’t make any sense of it. I’m frankly out of my element. What do you think? Give me your honest opinion. What do you recommend?”

It wasn’t much of a plan. I admit that. But it was the best I could do.

“We are going to Disney World,” I told Eleanor.

Eleanor squealed with pleasure and I accelerated some, blasting through brittle fields of sunlight, frightening a tattered crow from its roadside kill, and feeling, for the moment, a renewed sense of mission, however spurious, however fleeting.