At the end of the dream, he would take his revolver
from the drawer of the bedside table . . . and open fire
on the men. The noise of the weapon would wake him,
but it was always a dream and in another dream . . . he
would have to kill them again.
   —Jorge Luis Borges, “The Waiting”

THE BROWN truck with the scratched gold star decelerated as it came farther up the highway toward Fourth of July Pass. Matt drove warily past flashing yellow lights and somnolent bulldozers, weaving his way in and out of construction zones and blasted rock.

Jerry Kelberg read in the passenger seat. Kelberg’s back was flat against the seat, feet planted on the glove box. At the top of the pass, sunlight touched the pages of his book as the truck shivered across a section of gravel-covered roadway. Matt glanced over. “So what’s the book about? It’s in English, not Korean, right?”

“I don’t even speak my mother’s damn language anymore,” said Kelberg. “You want to know about the book? Here’s the first sentence: ‘For seven days in the spring of 1882 the man called Shalako heard no sound but the wind.’”

“Bullshit. There aren’t any one-man shows like that anymore.” Matt snorted and glanced down. “Hey, pick up the posters—they’re getting torn down on the floor.”

“Sure, no problem.” Kelberg scrabbled on the floor of the truck. “See, only the top one is dirty—we can still use it.” He unfurled the poster. Outlined on the poster was a black-and-white face, cheekbones finely stroked under slightly bulging eyes. The mouth had a certain sensual tilt to it, as if it had been drawn unevenly. Above was a legend: “Reward Offered—Wanted for Questioning in Connection to Homicide, Kidnapping—Call Bitterroot County Sheriff’s Department 208-664-1511.”

They had come down from the mountains now—the car moved from the heights into the lowlands. They passed a distant white cross standing in a field of brown. The Cataldo Mission—the only Spanish mission in Idaho. The road slanted steeply downhill before it flattened out on the valley floor. Then they turned off the thoroughfare onto a winding dirt road. The sheriff’s truck fishtailed back and forth across the dry-pan gravel.

Matt wrestled with the wheel as the truck caught the ruts. Then he spoke again. “What a waste of an afternoon. Hanging posters up, picking up some dingleberry like Karl Avery. I’d spend my time looking for a transient—some one from out of town. Maybe one of those skinheads up at Reverend Butler’s— that’s what I should be doing.”

“There is some transient who’s been stealing,” said Kelberg. “Petty thievery. Took batteries and tools from a shed. Stole a blanket off someone’s clothesline the other day.”

“This is on another scale,” said Matt. “Not some kid picking clotheslines. This guy who beat up the professor, he’s serious. He’s not playing around. And he’s on the move.”

“So the resort guy could be in another state now, huh? Coulda gone anywhere.”

“Maybe.” Matt drummed his hands on the wheel. “But the dismemberment says to me it’s personal. I think it’s someone who knows the Valley. He’s still here.”

“So maybe he’s like those old guys that live under the 95 bridge, and always go to the shelter in Spokane for the winter,” said Kelberg. “Homeless types.”

Matt scratched his chin, at a spot he’d missed shaving. “Oh, some of them find a place for the winter here in town. There’s a kid sleeping out in our garage right now.”

“You let these people sleep in your garage?”

Matt glanced at him sharply. “Well, there’s a difference between homeless and transient. I know this kid—he’s lived here in the Valley his whole life. I found him sleeping outside on my pop’s property, he’s one of my son’s old friends.”

“So why is he still in the garage—instead of inside the house?”

In the distance, the thick line of the Sunshine minestack jutted from the mountainside. Matt downshifted. “My son can make friends with anyone, Jerry. Just because Doug’s okay doesn’t mean I’d trust his friends.”

The truck slowed as the ruts narrowed. “Get a map out, wouldja?” said Matt.

Kelberg yanked out an unwieldy armful of maps. “Here,” he said, unfolding the one on top. Then he scrabbled a moment longer in the glove box. “What’s this?” he said.

He held up a chain with a lightweight pendant, something ragged and worn.

“Huh,” said Matt. “That’s where it’s been. I had the truck at a shop over in Spokane all week, forgot about that damn thing. So you picked it up, what do you think it is?”

Kelberg pushed on the chain with his fingers. “It’s silver, with a red plastic pendant.”

Matt nodded. “But that’s not any pendant. Why’s the silver so black, bright boy?”

“I dunno—has it been in the mines a lot? Sulfur makes things black in the mines.”

Matt snapped his fingers. “Right on the money!”

“And the pendant looks rounded too—like a thing I saw in the mining museum here in town. Is this thing hanging on the chain an old-style blasting cap?”

“Right—that’s half of a blasting cap, about four seconds long.”

“Four seconds?”

“You light a spark to it, it would burn for four seconds before it lights the dynamite in the hole. Someone’s dumped out the explosive in the cap, punched a hole, hung it on a chain. And you’re right, the chain’s black from sulfur in the air. No tourist wore this thing.”

“Where did you get it?”

Matt reached out and took the chain. “That was given to me by someone who saw the murder scene before someone got in there and cleaned up some evidence. Don’t know where the other half of the blasting cap is.”

“So if you find that, you can put it all together, huh? Maybe Karl Avery knows something, huh? Something I missed, right?”

Matt shook his head and said nothing. The smokestack from the mine was so close now that it seemed to hang over the rutted road. They were moving into the empty blasted zone behind Smelterville now.

Dust rose in a cloud around the truck, as if the entire hillside were covered in loose, dry dirt. Shapes emerged through the brown fog, things beside the road. In every direction, seemingly random flotsam—broken metal steps, engine flywheels, fenders, cracked steel beams—was joined together in a grotesque mockery of life. Massive figures with eyes made of hubcaps, fantastical twisted flowers, towers as tall as an upended truck. Around the feet of the things, the grass was trimmed, as if they grazed at night.

Kelberg gestured at the hulking things. “This guy, Karl Avery, he makes these?”

“No.” Matt shook his head. “His brother does. The brother who takes care of him, makes sure he eats regularly, takes his meds, and all. He’s helpless on his own, he—”

“But he called in to confess. We’ve got the knife, we’ve got a tape of him—”

“We is just Ward Louden jumping to unwarranted conclusions. No one’s done any legitimate police work yet on if the guy who ripped the boat off is the same one—”

“C’mon, Matty—they found the knife on her dock, and they know that Karl—”

Matt gave Kelberg a sharp look, but he spoke calmly. “Sure, Karl Avery might have made something they found. But what does that prove? Karl wasn’t that bright to start with, and about fifteen years ago, he had some sort of major head injury in the mines. So he’s not capable of much now. He makes things. And the fact that he’s making pretty lethal-looking knives concerns me, but it would be hard for me to see Karl as a killer.”

One tire lifted and the dirt spun out behind them as Matt turned into a side way. Now they were surrounded on both sides by broken pieces of disjoined metal. Something that looked like a disemboweled thresher loomed over their path. Matt gently edged the truck past it. Ahead of them stood a machine shed with peeling white paint.

Matt stepped out of the car and motioned Kelberg to do the same. All around them stood huge metal things, some with grasping hands, others with horns or antennae, some with oversized, flat, large feet. Like sentinels all across the lawn.

Slicked with a thin sheen of the ever-present dust, a gray-haired man squatted in front of the tilted machine shed.

“I see him,” said Matt softly. “Just take this one slow and easy. Don’t jump to conclusions, okay? The guy’s a little jumpy. So nothing too quick.”

They got out of the truck and walked toward the man. Something glinted in the man’s hand. “Heya,” he said suddenly, without looking up. His voice was deep and gravelly. “Glad you could make it.” He chuckled, a weird uneven sound. Then he reached behind him. Matt felt Kelberg flinch, and suddenly the boy had his revolver in his hand.

The man chuckled again, sound trickling out of him like a faucet running. He breathed heavily. “Shoot me now or you can shoot me later. It’s all the same to me.”

Matt stepped forward, his voice slow and gentle. “Put that away,” he said to Kelberg. Then he spoke to the gray-haired man. “Karl? We’ve met before. My name is Worthson—”

Karl seemed to flinch back at Matt’s name. Then he stretched his arms wide and looked up at the sky. He spoke loudly, shouting at the mountains, the trees. “There’s an end to it—he’s come for me now!” he said again. “An end to it—an end to all things!”

Matt continued talking. “Now, Karl, you can just call me Matt. I grew up over in Kellogg, you might have met me or my pop there. I know your brother.” Slowly, Karl looked down from the tops of the trees, and his tone was eerily calm. “Can’t say I’ve met you before—so I’m pleased to meet you fellows, both of you.” He put the empty metal pole down flat on the railing and reached out with his right hand to shake. Matt watched Kelberg slip the gun back in the holster before he touched Karl’s hand.

“Well, I done it. I did that murder,” Karl said. “You come to talk about it?”

“Sure,” said Matt. His tone said he didn’t believe it, but he calmly motioned them onward, and then they followed Karl into the machine shed. The building was extended and narrow, made to hold three or four tractors and a thresher or wood chipper. Under the low ceiling, the building was nearly full of junk. They followed Karl through a dim corridor. Grimy cardboard boxes sat on every side.

Ahead of them, dirty wet spots of fresh blood spotted the dusty floor. They came to a doorway where a single lightbulb hung and a stack of shoes rested beside the wall and the closed door. Karl knelt down and talked while he unlaced his boots. “I cut open Father Arlen. I seen his insides. You know about that?”

“We don’t know,” Matt said evenly. “We don’t know as much as you do.”

Karl thumped his chest with the boot he held. “When I got him into the bathroom, I sliced him from the bottom up. I started down below so he would feel it all.”

Matt caught his breath. It was a loud sound in the closed space. “I see.”

“You see, huh?” Karl’s croaking chuckle broke out. “Let me show you.” Karl pushed the door before them open. Then he turned on the light.

Under a floodlight, there was a hanging figure, flayed and muscled flesh. Mounds of offal hung off the blood-soaked cloth on a small table. A large, filthy knife lay on the table. Water pipes ran down from the ceiling to the floor, and an irrigation control system took up half of the wall behind the hanging bloody thing.

Matt pushed Karl slowly in front of them. He kept Karl’s arm trapped high up on his back, and Karl turned and twisted when Matt moved, like a puppet. Matt cuffed one of Karl’s hands to the pipes and walked forward toward the bloody table.

The sharp, coppery taste in Matt’s mouth and nose rose up from the blood. Matt looked at the intestines and the knife on the table, then glanced over at Jerry Kelberg. His eyes were as large as targets in a shooting gallery.

Then Matt stood, hands behind his back, looking closely at the flayed, bloody figure against the far wall.

“Jesus Christ, Karl, stop wasting our time. What is this dead thing?”

Karl paused uncertainly, his uncuffed hand still up in the air, holding a boot. “It’s another body—I swear it is. I did a murder. Now you’re gonna try to take me in for it, and I’m not going. I’m gonna escape, and you might try to shoot me, you should shoot me down in cold blood, like the murderer I am. I got the body here.” Karl grinned.

Matt sighed. “Karl, we are going to take you in. But don’t get your hopes up.” Matt pointed at the figure that hung from the ceiling. “Because that’s a deer. That’s a nice side of venison that I’m betting Thomas shot, maybe yester day. And he was gutting it, and had to go someplace, but you got it out of the freezer, and you’re playing sick little games with it, trying to scare us. When did you last take your meds?”

Karl staggered, as if from a blow. “There’s nothin’ wrong with me. Nothin’ . . . ” His crying sounded like the chuckle—high and croaking.

“Here, I’ll take him to the car,” said Matt. “Jer—why don’t you put the deer in the refrigerator, before we get out of here. Thomas might want the damn meat, after all.”

The freeway traffic slowed as the truck came into old Wallace, where the brick buildings built after the fire of 1910 leaned shoulder to shoulder. The only stoplight on I-90 was working today. Matt coasted slowly to a halt as the light went yellow. He pointed ahead, to a half-built metal figure of a miner holding a drill made from a V-8 engine.

“Sculpture?” said Jerry. “Looks more like a traffic accident. Why are we here?”

“Common courtesy—let his brother know we’re taking him in.”

Up ahead, a shape was bent over the sculpture. A flash of white light, a welder’s mask. Streaks of dirty sweat ran down his face and his shoulders.

When they came close, the small man pushed the welder’s mask back on his forehead. Matt was always surprised at his eyes, how young Thomas Avery looked. After he pushed a pair of black-framed glasses onto his face, his eyes were suddenly older. He took one large glove off and slapped it against his thigh. The color of the dirt on his hand was the same as the color of the glove.

“Tommy,” said Matt. “How goes it?”

“Mr. Worthson, what can I do for you?” He glanced at their uniforms and their guns and grinned uncertainly.

“We’re giving Karl a little trip to the jail. For observation.” Matt shook his head sadly. “We just picked him up at the house.”

Thomas lifted the welder’s mask off his head and set it down on a bench. His head was covered with black hair. When he ran his hand through it, it stood up in spikes from the sweat.

“You can’t just release him into my custody?” Thomas looked at the ground.

“Not this time,” said Matt. “I’m sorry—he made a phone call, with a threat too.”

Thomas glanced up at them. His eyes were full of tears.

“Dammit, Mr. Worthson, he won’t take his meds. We took him to Spokane, got him a good doctor. But it doesn’t do no good. I mean, my little hobby here is beginning to pay.” He gestured at the half-made miner. “I got a commission out in Missoula. Even had some art gallery in Portland asking. I’d like to take some of these opportunities, you know?”

Thomas took off his other glove and pushed it into his overall pocket. He looked up at the sky and blinked rapidly.

“He hasn’t ever hurt anyone, has he?” Matt reached out awkwardly, he touched Thomas’s shoulder.

“Oh no,” said Thomas. “He’s afraid of everything. A while back, I accidentally stepped on a cat’s tail while I was moving something. The cat was fine, but Karl cried for hours. He’s not violent, couldn’t hurt a fly.” Thomas tore off his glasses and rubbed vigorously at his eyes with one hand. He shrugged Matt’s hand off his shoulder.

“So what’s it about this time? Did the postman complain about him again?” “No, Luecke hasn’t complained about him since the mailbox incident.” Thomas looked off in the distance.

“Nothing like that.”

There was a pause.

“Let me tell you what this is all about.” Matt stepped a little closer to Thomas and looked into his reddened eyes. “A month or so ago, you remember that murder over in Coeur d’Alene, in the resort?”

“Yeah, I remember that. What does that have to do with us?”

“Nothing, I hope. It’s just that Karl must have read the story in the paper, and while you were gone, he called into the sheriff’s office and confessed to the murder.”

“Oh my God—you don’t really think that—”

Matt held his hand up, like a stop sign. “No, I don’t really think so. But his fascination worries me—he tried to tell us a deer was a dead body. He liked the idea.”

“Jesus, that deer I shot yesterday? He pulled that out? I got a license, you know.”

Matt nodded. “Are you sure that he hasn’t hurt anyone? He said something at the house, made me think he knew what he was doing, like he wanted to kill someone.”

Thomas spread his grimy hands out in front of him. “You know, I don’t know what goes on in Karl’s mind anymore, I really don’t. But you’d have to talk real hard and real long to convince me that he could change into someone violent. He’s not a bad man.”

“I know,” said Matt.

“I mean, it took me months to teach him how to use a welding torch. It would take a lot of work to teach him anything. Arlen wasn’t killed with a welding torch, was he?”

“No,” said Matt. “Like I said, he was cut in many pieces. It took a lot of work.”

“Well, there you have it,” said Thomas. He took a glove out of his pocket and put it on his hand. “I don’t think that constitutionally Karl could do something like that.”

Matt looked across at Kelberg. “Last thing—Karl have any visitors lately?”

“Well, there’s one guy who’s been around lately. Name’s Curtis—Karl says he knows him from when he used to be a miner, when he could still work. But I didn’t ask too many questions. Just figured someone who wanted to see him, that’s a good thing . . .”

“Would you recognize him?” said Matt sharply. “Pick him out of a lineup?”

Thomas shook his head. “I only ran into him once, in the machine shed. Karl said he’d been around a bit, but I wasn’t sure if he was making up the other visits—the old friend. You know . . . he makes things up.”

“Yeah.” Matt sighed, looked away. “Don’t you worry about Karl. I’ll make sure he’s taken care of—I’ll make sure he comes back home safe and sound, just as soon as they’re done talking to him.” Matt shook Thomas’s rust-darkened hand. “You have my word. He’ll be all right.”

“Hey, thanks, that means a lot to me.” Thomas tore off his glasses and rubbed at his damp eyes. “And Matt—I hope you win your next election. I’d vote for you again.”

“I’ll keep it in mind. Thank you.” Matt motioned Kelberg back toward the truck. As they left the town of Wallace, the sky filled with fog. The day was gray now. On the road back to the highway, Matt thought of the sculptures that had loomed out of the woods at the Avery place. Now they seemed like lost sentinels looking for something long since past, abandoned by everyone they’d ever known.

Above the car, the sky seemed to draw closer for a moment. They could feel the weight of it, thick with moisture, sinking into the Valley, saturating it with heavy cloud.

Then as it began to rain, the foothills echoed with the sound, as if there were myriad tiny fish jumping. The shoreline disappeared as the falling water swept across the lake. Far out, above the deeper parts, the surface simmered and hissed as the drops hit.