‌Three

Gratis

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‌1.

At first winter came on only as a figment in the nighttime. In the darkness, a blistering cold settled on the houses of Jacobyville and Norman imagined the wooden slats freezing and splintering along the warp of the grains. The nails frozen into shards of glass. The jags of windowpane like blades of ice. Norman lay on his back in his house, watching his breath manifest into fog. Outside the stars shone down cold and sterile.

Morning came and the brutality of the cold vanished. Any suffering intoned in the absence of the sun absolved with the dawn. As the sun peaked in the sky and reflected off the rock and the hardpacked earth, all became warm again. Norman did not speak of the cold to anyone. Since returning from their mission out to Dalton Wells, Norman limited his interaction with the men. If ever he confided in someone, it was Martha.

‘At first I felt like I belonged here,’ Norman said. He pressed his body against hers, trying to siphon what warmth he could from her. ‘But I keep thinkin—I mean, I cant sleep cause of the cold—and I think that maybe I’m not supposed to be here.’

Martha placed the palm of her hand against Norman’s cheek and shushed him. ‘Nothins out there,’ she said. ‘Jacoby told you as much. You cant go back. It’s a different place now. It’s all gone.’

‘I’m goin to escape,’ he said, giving voice to the idea that had been in his head for so long. He said it again. ‘Dont tell them, but I’m plannin to escape.’

In the dim light of the moon, their visages glowed bone white and their eyes looked like deep transoms revealing all they had seen—time past and time now.

‘Oh Norman,’ Martha sighed. ‘You can try to run away, but you aint never gonna escape us.’

‘Youre talkin like Jacoby,’ Norman said.

‘You want to be free,’ she said. Pity resounded in her voice when she said that freedom wasnt real.

‘You could come with me,’ Norman said.

Martha pressed her index finger against Norman’s temple. ‘It’s in here,’ she said. ‘Run away. But in here’—and she applied pressure to the soft spot of his skull—‘in here, youre a prisoner.’

The pupils of Martha’s eyes darted back and forth and Norman knew she couldnt come with him. He rolled over and felt the cold flood his body. He began plotting his escape. First he thought of the supplies he needed. In his time living with the Jacoby clan he remained in constant amazement at how little sustenance people need to survive. As far as supplies went, he’d take only what he deemed absolutely necessary.

From the time he first came to Jacobyville, he knew the one true path out of Jacobyville to be the electric lines. Eventually the lines would have to intersect with some form of civilization. It was a law of man. Years ago it was water—follow any trickle of water and eventually it would lead to a town. Then, when water became transportable, it became rail. Follow a rail line and you would end up in a settlement of some type somewhere. But rail died and so many of the train lines now ran out into the desert without terminus. Electric dominated these days—the great ropes of wire bounding coast to coast, connecting cities with sparks and buzzing.

He’d have to head out at night, walk fast to stay warm and sleep during the daylight hours. He calculated how fast he would have to walk to outrun the Jacoby clan. He imagined what he’d tell people, what his colleagues at the university would say. His parents would embrace him like their long lost son.

But Dusty. After their fight it was possible Dusty had gone to the police saying he had suspicions. They would have gone to his landlord and prowled around the apartment. Or now that his lease had expired, they would have tried to sell his furniture in an attempt to recuperate some of their unrealized profits. Someone might buy his couch and when they sat on it, theyd adjust and readjust, finally deciding to open the cushion and inspect the padding. Inside they would find the soiled pantyhose. The thought caused Norman to shudder, and Martha, half in sleep, put her hand on his chest, murmuring how cold it was.

The next day, Oz sauntered over to the door of Norman’s abode. He leaned against the doorframe with his forearm and watched as Norman used a nail to punch new holes in his belt.

‘Trim down with the life we lead,’ Oz said.

Feigning too much investment in his work, Norman didnt look up from his work. Oz continued on. ‘Jacobys called a meetin, wants everyone there.’

Norman nodded.

‘If you got a problem, you could always bring it up,’ Oz said.

For a moment Norman sat still. ‘Nothing I could say would change anything.’

Oz stood up straight and looked out across the ghost town, said he supposed Norman was correct. ‘Only one person round heres got that kind of sway with words. Maybe you should talk with Pa. Tell him what you think. Talk with him fore you do somethin rash.’

Norman stood and laced the belt through the remaining loops on his jeans. The waist rode low and bunched in parts as the belt now acted more like a cinch cord. Together they walked from the house, down the slope and around the tailing to the meetinghouse. Everyone else had already arrived.

Jacoby spread his arms wide and invited everyone to sit. Over in the corner, the children continued to play. The old man cleared his throat and said the first order of business concerned the weather. ‘Gettin cold out an we dont need anyone freezin to death.’

‘Amen to that,’ Raybur said.

Jacoby nodded in acknowledgment. ‘Means that the time of years come for us all to move into my house. I want everyone to bring their blankets, clothes an small belongings to my house right after this meeting.’ He looked directly at Norman. ‘If you need it to stay warm an survive, it should come to my house.’

‘We really got space for one more?’ Lucas Brown used his thumb to point at Norman.

‘Need someone to keep your Pa company,’ Raybur said.

Jacoby chewed the side of his cheek and before he could speak, Oz said that was the Madonna’s job.

‘Mans gotta talk, though,’ Lucas Brown said. ‘An she aint much for talkin.’

With a clap of the hands, Jacoby said the next order of business concerned a new Wyrick deal.

‘We just got done with one a month ago,’ Raybur said.

‘I know it’s a little soon for another Wyrick,’ Jacoby said. ‘But the payoff is sweet an Ive been told we’ll have lots of time between the deal an action.’

‘When’re we talkin bout this Wyrick showin up?’ Oz asked.

‘Three days time.’

‘Contact point?’

‘Use the mineshaft on the south side of the mountain,’ Jacoby said. ‘Have him meet us inside. Give Raybur a chance to check out the car an supplies.’

‘Supplies we gettin up front gonna make life easier?’ Raybur asked.

‘Aye. Winter’ll be easier for all of us. Action wont be til springtime—I already know that. I’ll get the rest of the details when I meet with the Wyrick.’

Oz and Norman climbed up the mountain, higher up than Norman ever cared to explore. When they reached the spine, the ragged edge, they traversed it. At the onset of their excursion, Gay Jim followed them, but had since turned back. The wind whipping off the desert pan jetted up the slope of the mount and flapped in the wayward’s clothing.

‘Scared of the mine,’ Oz said after his brother turned around. He raised his voice, competing against the bluster of the wind. ‘Cant blame him much, bein like he is.’

Norman asked what happened—said he knew Gay Jim hadnt always been this way.

‘True,’ Oz said. ‘As a boy he was always lively—gettin into trouble, runnin around like the fool he is now.’ Oz slowed his pace to walk next to Norman. With the constant uphill climb, his speech became labored with pauses. ‘We played round Jacobyville, same as Lucas Browns children do now. We came up here into the mountains where people used to dig dig dig.’ He panted. ‘Gay Jim, he went down into a mineshaft, opening not much wider than his shoulders. I waited for him to come out, seein what he might find; he was always findin things.’

The peak of the mount came into view and they turned off the ridge and started down the slope. Being on the leeward side of the mountain, the wind nearly ceased altogether. Farther down the slope, Norman spied a tailing.

‘We takin the long way around?’ he asked. ‘Couldve just walked around the base.’

‘Thats where the Wyrick’ll go in,’ Oz said. ‘Our job is to always make sure Wyrick is never in control of the situation, but let him think he is.’

Norman said he understood, then asked what happened after Gay Jim went into the mine.

‘Nothin,’ Oz said. ‘I waited an he didnt come out. I didnt pay it no mind cause he knowed the caves an shafts an such better than me. He liked goin in and sneakin around, tryin to scare me.’ Oz stopped and picked up a slender piece of driftwood to use as a staff. He continued down the slope, using the stick to stabilize his descent. ‘I got tired an went back home, told Pa what happened when I realized Gay Jim was still missin.

‘He grabbed me by the neck, took the rope an we ran up the slope with Raybur. The opening was too narrow for either of them, so they tied the rope round my waist, told me to scramble in there, feel round. I cant forget it—Pa held my head in both his hands and told me to hold my breath as long as I could, then to breathe real shallow like.’ He demonstrated and as he did so, he stopped walking. ‘He told me I would get confused, feel sick. Just yell when you get a handle on him, Pa said. Said he’d pull us both back with the cord, said not to fight it. The air in mines is bad—stale, no good for breathin.’

‘You found him obviously,’ Norman said.

‘Third time in, yes.’ Oz started walking again. ‘I begged the old man, Please dont put me back in there. It was dark an I was just a boy. Scared, really. Later, Pa’d tell me it was the lack of fresh air that made me act like a fool. Said Gay Jim bein in there that long, thats what made him go fool for the rest of his life.’

They came to a circle of white rocks with a wooden pallet sitting in the center. Using the toe of his boot, Oz lifted the pallet, revealing a hole like a well. Norman peered down the hole. Like the shaft outside Jacoby’s house, this one sunk down into eternity. Oz knelt by the hole. A rope secured to a stake dangled down into the narrow shaft and Oz hauled up a few feet of rope until a canvas bag appeared. After he untied the bag, he let the rope fall back into the shaft.

‘We’ll have our gear on the ready up here,’ Oz said. He unzipped the bag and sifted through the contents. ‘When we get a signal from yonder’—he pointed out past the mouth of the mine below—‘then we spelunk on down through this air shaft.’

‘This is the air shaft?’ Norman asked.

‘Yeah,’ Oz said. ‘Life’d be a whole lot different for me an Gay Jim if we’d known about air shafts an mines. Dont matter that we know how to check for movin air an such—Jims afraid all the same. Cant blame him.’

Oz handed Norman a smooth piece of metal shaped like the number eight, said when the time came, he’d lace that through his belt and wind the rope through it. ‘Whole thing works by friction, you let the rope through nice an easy an you’ll slide down without a hitch.’

He said theyd be watching for a signal from Gay Jim letting them know the Wyrick was coming. ‘Pa an Lucas Brown will be down in the mine already, Raybur’ll hide by the entrance. I’ll stay up here while you go down, let them know the signals been given. Whole thing shouldnt take but a couple minutes.’

They camped out on the mountain, keeping a small fire and huddling together for warmth. When he woke, Norman could not recall his dreams. Oz crouched over the few embered remains of their fire and stoked them into a single tongue of flame. ‘Enough to brew up some coffee,’ he said and crushed a few beans in a pan of shallow water.

They hardly spoke as they kept vigil over the desert vista. The sun climbed higher, behind the thin haze of clouds, forcing them to squint. Once the sun rose to its apex, Norman saw a glint, then another.

‘That the signal?’ he asked.

Oz nodded, tossed the long-cold dregs of coffee out and laced the rope through the figure eight. He kicked the wooden pallet aside and told Norman to step into the hole backward.

‘You have to trust me on this,’ Oz said. ‘Just step backward.’

Norman hesitated. On the horizon, dust kicked up behind an approaching object.

‘Runnin out of time here, Norman.’

Norman couldnt see the bottom; he couldnt hear anything either. ‘Why cant you go?’ Norman asked.

‘First good question you done ask,’ Oz said. ‘But I aint got an answer for you—Pa said it’s gotta be you.’ With that he pushed Norman backward so he fell into the hole. He plummeted some distance, scraping his arms and legs and face against the narrow passageway before the rope pulled tight and he jerked to a stop. He hung, suspended in the shaft for a couple moments, and then started letting the rope out little by little. ‘Hurry the hell up!’ Oz called from above and Norman let out even more rope. Cooler air rushed up past his feet and rocks around him felt slick with dew. Darkness engulfed him and he felt stone under his feet.

‘Jacoby!’ he called. ‘Lucas! Wyricks on his way.’

A faint light shone from around a corridor. After releasing the rope, Norman started for the light.

‘Just hold it,’ a voice hissed. It was Lucas Brown. ‘We want the Wyrick down here near us.’

Somewhere in the shadows, Norman heard Jacoby hum a reply of agreement.

The sound of a car’s engine grumbled down the long corridor and suddenly stopped. A car door slammed and another voice called out Jacoby’s name. The voice called out for Jacoby over and over again, drawing closer all the while. Something about the voice seemed familiar to Norman.

When a dark form came around the bend, Lucas Brown took aim at him with a pistol. Jacoby said, ‘Mister Wyrick, yes?’

The man said that he was. ‘Having some trouble seeing you in the dark here.’

‘There a reason you need to see me?’ Jacoby asked.

‘I guess not.’

A long silence followed with neither man knowing exactly how to proceed. As his eyes adjusted, Norman could see the Wyrick more completely—a taller man with hair so blond it glowed white. Norman supposed it to be a trick of the brain—perhaps a touch of oxygen deprivation, but he knew this man, this Wyrick.

When the Wyrick spoke again, outlining his instructions, Norman recognized the man as his brother. A gasp escaped his lips, audible to everyone. For the first time, the Wyrick realized more figures other than he and Jacoby inhabited this space.

‘You were sayin about the north country,’ Jacoby said.

‘You’ll be in MacKowski territory, we realize—’

This time Lucas Brown interrupted. ‘Why not use them then?’

An uneasy silence prefaced the answer. ‘Theyve been compromised,’ the Wyrick said. ‘We’re afraid the target wont be dealt with properly—theyre no less reliable, just cant be trusted on this job.’

‘Got an envelope with the information in it?’

There was the rustling of papers and the Wyrick asked if they should get the goods out of the car.

‘Already got my man unloadin your car,’ Jacoby said.

Wyrick and Jacoby began walking back toward the mouth of the mine. Norman took a step before Lucas Brown grabbed his arm. ‘We’re waitin here,’ he said. ‘Best not to let him see your face.’

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‌2.

Snow fell on the ghost town and it did not melt. The skies remained overcast and brooding, a slated expanse of gray without break, without horizon, without division between this world and heaven. At first Norman felt like the snow would pile deep and drifting as it did in the Indiana winters. But the flakes merely blew about, sifting in the wind like ashes. The powdered snow tumbled in the breezes, the pellets of ice knocking against the houses with their boarded sides and tin roofs. This alone was the sound of winter in the desert.

He pulled the collar of his shirt up around his mouth and staggered down the slope. A gust of wind cascaded up the channel between the mountains and he shuddered when it whipped through the rags of his clothes. He tottered on, trying not to bend his legs, as if the cold had paralyzed him. He’d seen the wooden slats of the houses grown brittle and broken with the cold and he felt as if the same could happen to him. The fury of the winter desert proved every bit as vicious as the summer. A drift of snow—a blanket of snow as they called it in Indiana—Norman realized would be some comfort. Aside from providing insulation as the inches accumulated, the snowfall would remind Norman of a place he once called home.

The channel in the mountain opened up as the slopes curved to either side and the wind cut sheer and unforgiving into the exposed parts of Norman’s body. He pulled up the collar to cover his neck some more, but found his hands and wrists receiving the brunt of the cold’s brutality. He craned his head sideways, hoping to deflect some of the wind.

In his pocket he cradled his pilfered goods—a box of matches and a length of twine, a stub of candle and the discarded jokers from a deck of playing cards. The hardpacked desert earth froze so hard his footfalls tapped like rocks across concrete. Twice he looked over his shoulder, back up toward Jacoby’s house where they all spent their nights. But he saw no signs of life, of movement. Norman rounded the skirt of the slope and the house slid out of view. He counted his paces, taking care to return his gait to its normal measure. At twelve paces, he stopped. A rock shaped curiously like a human head sat on the side of the slope. Norman clambered up the incline of loose rocks and reached behind the stone. The touch of stone against his fingertips felt white hot, but he knew this to be another of the brain’s tricks. The rocks themselves might have actually been colder than ice. Carefully, he lifted a few smaller stones until he found the rusted can beneath. With a single yank, he pulled the can free from its cache.

Inside the can, Norman had already stashed four one-hundred dollar bills, a green Coca-Cola bottle, a longer candle and several tissue thin leaves of paper. For a moment, the cold seemed not to exist. This can, he knew, contained all he would need to survive outside of Jacobyville—though when he would eventually leave, none of these objects served him any good. Desert living requires more of the mind than of the body.

After depositing his goods and hiding the can once again, he stood to leave. His legs somehow felt more limber—until the wind met him with full force. The air rushed around him, scorching blistering lines across his face through the thinner spots of his beard. He squinted, the wetting of his eyes stinging with the same ferocity as everything else in this forsaken environment. Putting one foot in front of the other, he bowed his head and began contemplating the task of walking out across the frozen desert pan. He wondered if Jacoby or his sons—if Jacoby and his sons—would come after him, what they would do if they caught him. He imagined what he would say to the first civilized people he met, how he would plead with them to call the police, how he could reassure them that he was not a desert lunatic. He thought of returning home and talking to Dusty, to Doctor Blanche, to the police. All he needed to do was walk out of here following the telephone poles. And when he looked up to study the telephone poles, Jacoby stood before him.

Norman followed as Jacoby had bade him to do. They walked with only the cry of the wind and their metronome footsteps, trudging up the slope of pilings toward the Jacoby homestead. The wind came at their backsides, pushing them along. Several times the wind blasted Norman so hard, the air escaped his lungs. As they walked, Norman wondered if Jacoby had seen the stash of supplies, if Jacoby knew he planned on escaping. But Jacoby said nothing and now they walked in silence.

The smoky gray clouds of dusk welled up above the mountains like the smolder of a slowly erupting volcano and a darkness unlike any Norman had ever witnessed began to fall on the world.

‘Felt the clouds comin on,’ Jacoby said. ‘Get to be my age you feel things like that. Knew it’d be gettin dark an figured I better fetch you.’

Norman nodded. The haziness of the late afternoon evaporated into night as if Norman had been struck by a sudden blindness. They stumbled the final leg of the trail to the house.

‘Watch that shaft now,’ Jacoby said.

Norman’s eyes scanned through the growing darkness and found the patch of deeper black carpeting the nighttime black. He took Jacoby by the elbow and they led each other to the porch.

Inside the house, almost everyone slept. The creak of the door roused the brothers, but no one stirred otherwise. A single candle set on the corner table flickered as they shut the door. Martha and Lucas Brown lay together; the stench of the Madonna wafted across the room.

‘Startin to get cold,’ Jacoby said.

Unsure if this was a joke being made out of the obvious, Norman sniffed.

Jacoby rubbed his palms together, blew into them and cleared his throat. His sons sat up on the floor, rubbing sleep from their eyes. Oz blinked a few times before asking if he should build up a fire.

‘No,’ Jacoby said and he sat down cross-legged and withdrew a pack of matches from his coat pocket. In the gloom of the candlelight they looked curiously like the ones Norman stowed in his can at the rock. His mind began to race. Jacoby never stepped anywhere near the rock; he couldnt have taken them. But then Norman’s thoughts turned in his head and he supposed he might have remembered incorrectly or not at all.

Jacoby struck a match, sending it alight with a pop and a hiss. Sulphur floated in the air like incense. He pulled a kerosene lantern toward him across the floor.

‘Norman,’ Jacoby said. ‘Tell us about the cold.’

Still entranced with the pack of matches, Norman sat down on the floor dumbly. He leaned back and bumped into Gay Jim.

‘The cold,’ Jacoby prompted again. He opened a hatch in the side of the lantern and trimmed the wick.

‘The cold,’ Norman said.

‘It’s the thing thats been on everyones mind—the cold, the winter.’ He shrugged.

‘You know more bout the cold than I do,’ Norman said. ‘Looks like you got winter here same as where I’m from.’

‘Aye,’ Jacoby said. ‘But your winters are not the same as ours.’

‘Colds the same anywhere you go.’

Oz guffawed and Gay Jim followed suit. The children began to climb out from a pile of bedding in the corner, asking if it was morning yet. Jacoby raised a hand to silence them all. ‘It snowed where you lived.’ It was not a question, nor was it a statement. Something in the strange intonation of Jacoby’s voice compelled Norman to answer.

‘Yes, it snowed.’

‘Not like this, though.’

‘No, not like this at all.’

‘You didnt let it bury you.’

‘Bury me?’

‘Aye.’ Jacoby leaned in close to the lantern so light cascaded over the ruts of his face from underneath and his eyes appeared as deep welled sockets without color or hint of life. The fine white hairs of his beard set aglow and what wasnt shadowed looked to be composed of flame.

‘No,’ Norman said. ‘People still need to get out and do stuff.’ A feeble explanation and he knew it.

Jacoby clucked his tongue—a sound that sent Gay Jim into a wild series of yawpings and guffaws. In the corner, the children now sat up, fully awake and watching the men. Lucas Brown grumbled about the fool and his goddamned giggling. Oz tugged at his brother’s sleeve to silence him, but even then Gay Jim could only stifle his laughter.

‘Never know whatll send that idiot off.’ The voice belonged to Raybur. No one noticed him sitting outside their circle, outside the skirt of light cast by the lantern. ‘As you were sayin, boy.’

Norman blinked and swallowed. ‘People got jobs to get to, I guess. We get snowed on and we clear it away.’

Now Jacoby shook his head. ‘All these folks all rushin round—all these folks an their jobs. Busy busy people out there in the world.’ He brought his hand up to his mouth and chewed at the skin around his middle fingernail. He spat quietly. ‘How they keep the roads clear?’

Norman’s brow twitched. ‘We plow the roads,’ he said. He was quiet for a moment, then continued, saying they had big trucks that drove around, scooping the snow off the roads.

‘They do more than plow, though.’

Norman agreed. ‘They salt too.’

‘Hows that?’ Raybur asked.

‘Salt,’ Norman repeated. ‘The plow trucks throw down salt behind themselves as they go.’

‘To melt the snow,’ Jacoby said and Norman nodded. ‘To keep the roads clear,’ Jacoby added. ‘So busy people can go to their jobs.’

As if on cue, Gay Jim guffawed. But Oz’s question cut his brother’s laughter short. ‘Howd they do it?’

Norman studied Jacoby and his face of fire, his bottomless eyes. The old man’s eyebrows raised and the dark lines of his forehead cut deep and black and cruel.

‘What do you mean?’ Norman asked.

Jacoby took over: ‘He wants to know how the salt was dispensed. Did they throw it out with shovels or pour it out a little at a time like a dump truck?’

Though he knew the answer—for he’d seen the snowplows troll the winter roads of Indiana since he was a boy—Norman struggled with explanation. ‘They got these pinwheels,’ he said. ‘Spreaders, they call them. They throw the granules in different directions.’

‘Like to scatter it?’ Oz asked.

‘Yeah, it throws it out evenly.’

Now came Jacoby’s turn to laugh, the phlegm catching in his throat and adding a moist crackle to his voice when he finally spoke. ‘If I were to go out an measure all those grains of salt, the distances between each one, are you tellin me theyd all be even?’

‘Thats not what I meant.’

‘What’d you mean by even then?’

Norman sighed. ‘Well, it’s approximately the same.’

‘So the spreader throws out salt approximately the same as… what?’

‘Approximately evenly.’

The absurdity of the conversation or perhaps the ineptness of Norman’s answer caused Jacoby to laugh more heartily. Gay Jim joined in with his whoops and hollers. Even Oz sniffed.

‘So what youre sayin,’ Jacoby said, ‘is it is even—but not even at all.’

‘I’m not sayin that at all,’ Norman protested. ‘It’s close to bein even.’

‘Like two is about equal to three.’

Fatigued with these petty arguments, Norman relented, saying sure, he guessed so.

‘But what if you were a fraction, a really small number?’ Jacoby asked. ‘If you were one one-hundredth of one, then two becomes a very long way from three.’

‘Youre not lettin me finish my story.’

‘I think you finished it already.’

‘You missed the point then.’

Jacoby rocked back from the lantern light. Suddenly his face tamped into a much darker hue, like the coals of a fire still angry from conflagration. ‘No, son.’ His voice was a measured tone. ‘You missed the point of your own damned story.’ He shook his head in mock pity. Then he pointed his crooked finger, the jag of fingernail, at Norman. ‘When the universe exploded into existence it was pure happenstance—a ball of dense matter spreadin itself out evenly, or about evenly. Those small variations, those fluctuations in the matter speedin out across the nothingness that wasnt even yet outer space, created gravity, orbits, the illusions of time an place. Particles slammed together an stuck, snowballin into planets. Our own sweet Earth was a perfect recipe of hydrogen, calcium, oxygen an every other elixir to make the cocktail of life.’ A crooked smile spread across Jacoby’s thin chapped lips. ‘Proximity to the sun superheated the fens an bogs an swamps, cookin up a primordial soup, until finally after simmerin so long, basted with the ashes an lava flows, the accident of you slithered out.’

Norman met Jacoby’s words with sarcasm and he thanked the old man for the compliment.

‘It’s a hard recipe to perfect,’ Jacoby said. ‘Harder recipe to maintain. Soon you got life squirmin all over the damn place, clingin to every rock, festerin in the cool damp places, infectin crack an nook an cranny, thrivin in hard to find places, unreachable spots. But the sun keeps bakin away and we’re liable to boil over with life. Run here. Run there. Make babies. Dig a ditch, tell a story, buy a whore, sell a whore, fuck, shit, sleep, dream, wake, think think think. But you, boy, youre just one one-hundredth of one in an infinitely big universe that only gets bigger an more crowded. You were your biggest an most important when your mother expelled you like slop from her womb an you wailed an coughed blood. Thats when your words mattered most. You end up spendin the rest of your life tryin to fight the nature of the universe.’ He shook his head again, but now he did so without mock pity, without irony. Pity could not be feigned and the old man looked truly saddened by what he had to say. ‘And you will lose.’

Norman sighed, trying not to let Jacoby’s words affect him. In the silence, where even the fool Gay Jim sat contemplative, staving off the thoughts given to him proved difficult. He shifted on the floor and looked out the window. A break in the gauze of clouds revealed a waning sliver of moon. Below, the shadowed crags of mountaintops cropped up like paper silhouettes against the night.

Jacoby followed Norman’s gaze. ‘Aye,’ he said knowingly. ‘The stars. Lookin to the stars for an answer. It was written in the cosmos some have said. Wishin on stars—the first star you see, the fallin stars. Something happens an we say the stars are all aligned.’

This time Norman let out an exaggerated sigh.

‘Sorry to have offended our resident scholar,’ Jacoby said, placing a hand over his heart. ‘You dont believe in coincidence? Of course not; youre a man of science. But what Ive just told you is that all of life—life itself—is coincidence. Stars have to line up because that is what they have been assigned to do in this giant natural order. If you look at the stars like you are now, youre lookin at the things sprayed out by the pinwheel of the big bang—and they lay approximately evenly.’

‘I know,’ Norman interrupted. ‘I know what youre goin to say: They look evenly spaced but theres actually lightyears of variation between them.’

The pity writ in the ruts of Jacoby’s face deepened. ‘Oh, my sweet boy,’ he said. ‘You didnt understand your own story despite writin an editin an revisin it. You painted the perfect image—the stars like flecks of salt spread out on the roadway. Little stones of salt on the great black expanse…’ For a moment Jacoby seemed to consider his own thoughts, the universe of his mind. Silence resonated like a singular empty note in the night until Jacoby spoke again.

‘You own a car?’

A flash of anger pulsed through Norman’s body. ‘I did until you all took it and took me.’

Unflinching, Jacoby clarified. Said he meant to ask if Norman had a car back in Indiana.

‘Got my brothers car when he left for the army,’ Norman said. ‘Same car you all took.’

‘You ever take it on the highway in the winter?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How fast you go?’

‘Speed limit.’

‘An whats the speed limit?’

‘Sixty, I guess.’

‘Sixty or about sixty?’

‘Sixty.’

‘So in three seconds you go two hundred and sixty-four feet.’

Norman blinked, staring at the old man, trying to discern if the calculation was correct, if it was a smoke screen, a test, or something Jacoby had committed to memory. ‘Sure,’ Norman agreed.

‘Lets say your granules are spread out in the fashion of the universe, according to the grand design of the almighty pinwheel—the salt trucks speed, the depth of the snow, the surface of the road an such. Your wheels spinnin over the grains of salt, poppin them into dust. I’ll admit, theyre spaced evenly from our perspective as we’re glidin over them in a car at sixty miles per hour. But then, just a few grains fall askew an you hit a patch of ice. And you lose control of your car for three seconds—two hundred and sixty-four feet—an you slide off the road into a ditch. The violence of the impact slams your head against the dashboard. When they find you the next morn, your body is cold an your blood an brains are frozen in a trail across the dashboard, the glass of the windshield cracked like a spiders web. That is the design of the universe.’

It was a trick, Norman knew, but for a long moment the world—his current predicament included—seemed to make sense. Sudden euphoria is a fleeting thing, usually reserved for those who seek respite in death. But Norman was nowhere close to dying; his life would go on for a long time—outliving his counterparts by many years. And unlike the dying man who accepts the gift of bliss as a last rite, Norman asked what it all meant.

For his part, Jacoby, the reluctant shriver, said it was writ in the cosmos. ‘What happens from here on out is the plan of forces larger than you, larger than me even. Try as we might, we cant stop what happens from here on out. It’s been set in motion since the dawn of time.’

‌

‌3.

Jacoby’s words circulated in Norman’s head, causing him to lie awake, staring headlong into the darkness of the tin roofed ceiling. He shivered. But he did not feel cold. Under his blanket he managed to stay warm enough. The thoughts Jacoby had put into his head—the dreams he had implanted—thats what produced this insomnia. Jacoby and Oz snored loudly. Raybur cleared his throat and rolled over. Every once in a great while the chair of the Madonna creaked and her stench floated from her cubby into the main room where they all slept. Norman blinked, trying to see a difference between this world and the one composed of dreams, the one holding him at bay.

He thought of going home, returning to his parents’ house as his brother never had. The police might charge him with something—they might reopen the case with Grace, examine it in light of whatever Doctor Blanche said—but he doubted it since no one stopped him from pursuing his grant research. Silently, he promised himself, promised God—and he promised Jacoby and the Madonna—that he wouldnt touch Doctor Blanche again. He imagined living as a hermit, only emerging from his apartment to teach. A life of celibacy, he decided. For a long while he considered this and why it bothered him so much—a life of no sex. Then he whispered it out loud, ‘I am a rapist.’

A second truth hit him. He could stay here forever. No one would ever find him. Like the rest of the Jacoby clan, he could give in to the wildness of the desert and let the land and Jacoby and the whole Wyrick system shape him. He didnt have to be celibate; Martha loved him just as she loved her husband. And unlike the taboos of the outside world, Norman felt no pang of guilt when she came to his abode still smelling of Lucas Brown. He felt no embarrassment when he crawled atop of her and she called out other men’s names. He relished the animalistic moments when his body surged with adrenaline and all the important things turned to a liquid mixture of tears blood bile jizzum and sweat. In the dark, Norman felt a stiffness in his cheeks from the smile spread across his face.

He closed his eyes and resolved to sleep, perchance to dream. But then a third notion infiltrated the security he had built in his mind. His brother. Their current Wyrick. In the dark Norman reconstructed their interaction in the mine. He listened to the voice so distinctly Midwestern in his memory. He traced the outline of the Wyrick’s face, how the man walked. But the chances were simply too great—his brother, a missing soldier in Vietnam, appears in the same mineshaft as him posing as a Wyrick. Life itself is coincidence, a voice told him. He thought of the Jap and his Wyrick, their bodies disintegrating in the back of a luxury car in a shack out in the middle of nowhere. The entire set up could have been Jacoby’s doing, a test of Norman’s loyalty, see if he would kill his own brother. They would pull Abner’s teeth and sprinkle them over the west, making him complicit in whatever crimes their higher power conceived. He thought of Lucas Brown’s children, the brothers, Jacoby, and the Madonna. Together they delineated the life one comes to lead in the desert world. There was no promise of life here, no promise of death either—just a withering existence. And Norman knew that living meant leaving.

Snow crunched under his foot as he stepped off the porch and out into the brazen desert darkness. The shroud of clouds had lifted somewhat, revealing the intermittent flitting of stars, the hairline sliver of moon, the occasional glimpse of the hazy red spot called Mars. Norman had become acclimated to the cold for the most part. He exhaled and watched the fog of his breath crystallize and float away like dust. For a moment he stood, half expecting the sound of Jacoby’s voice to call him back, tell him that the place he had once called home didnt exist anymore—that it perished with the rest of civilization. But no plea or argument to stay resounded and the night quaked with thunderous silence. Norman took another step. The temperature dipped well below freezing, yet he seemed not to notice. He hiked down the slope trail, around the skirt of the mountain where he hid his supply stash. As he rounded the bend in the trail the wind blew evenly and the breeze cut him to the bone. Here the wind blew occasionally—out in the desert pan Norman knew it would be relentless.

He looked out over the expanse of the empty place, the shifting drifts of snow. Air snorted from his nostrils. He found the rock shaped as a human head and rolled it aside. His bare fingers found the metal rim of the can and he pulled it out. He tucked it underneath the blanket he wore as a serape. He looked down on the path before him.

‘Yeah,’ he said out loud, and the sound of his own voice startled him as it clashed with the stillness of the night. It seemed small. He said yeah again and began to walk.

Almost right away Norman recognized his escape as a bad idea. He continued to talk out loud as if by doing so he could convince himself better than through thought alone.

‘They’ll track me,’ he said. ‘They’ll find my footprints in the snow and they’ll track me down and Jacoby wont want to talk to me anymore and he’ll kill me.’

He kept walking.

‘Thats not true,’ he said. ‘Jacoby loves me; he loves my mind. I’m not afraid of dying. I havent been afraid of dying for a long time now—I’m afraid of the things that just exist.’

As he cleared the last boulder of the mountain foothills and stepped out into the flats, the winds hit him full force. A new, brutal cold charged by a relentless and whipping wind stripped him of any warmth. He choked on the air. The soft flesh patch residing at the back of his throat behind the tongue scorched with cold, sending a metallic taste like blood through Norman’s mouth. He gingerly clenched his teeth, afraid the cold made them brittle enough to shatter. At first he thought his lungs would go cold in the same way of everything else, but he was wrong. It was the tubes leading into the lungs—the bronchials—that contracted and hardened with the cold. He numbed.

Wanting to keep his mind agile, he began calculating the risks of his escape. He had done this many times before, but now the calculations became about survival on a visceral level. First he needed to discern what time it was. He cast his gaze up at the waned moon, the white of it matching the desert. He knew nothing of telling the time according to the path of the moon. He didnt even know what day it was, what month. He gave up on trying to figure the time and guessed it to be after midnight—probably close to two in the morning.

Jacoby would be the first to wake as he always was. Right away he’d notice Norman was missing. Thatd be about six in the morning or thereabouts. Theyd mobilize quickly. Norman figured he had about four and a half hours’ head start. He resolved not to slow his pace or stop. If he followed these electric poles as he originally planned months ago, he would eventually come to some sort of town. The world is only so big after all. At first he lied to himself, saying it would be only a matter of hours. Then he sobered himself and knew it would be days. The task of living seemed too much and thoughts of Jacobyville seemed to swallow him as he walked, until he realized he came to nearly a standstill.

‘Keep moving,’ he said. His body listened and he redoubled his pace. He felt that Jacoby would be waiting for him up ahead. Without breaking stride he looked over his shoulder at the footprints he made in the snow. If the wind kept blowing, it might cover his tracks. That too was a lie. Norman knew full well each time he stepped down, the crunching sound was his foot compacting the flakes. The energy created by compaction produced just enough heat to make a paper thin layer of ice. Snow might cover it, but the divots would still be there, enough for Jacoby to follow.

Morning came on like a destination. In the distance, in front of him, the sun broke over a faint and far-off mountain range. When he left Jacobyville he figured his bearing as eastward; this confirmed it. He speculated how far the mountain range would lie from here, knowing the desert distorts distances. He picked up one foot and put it in front of the other. He could feel nothing now, except hunger. And thirst.

In his hasty departure, Norman hadnt taken any food. As he trudged on he sank his raw stiff hands into his pockets feeling for a grain of meal, a seed or kernel. But there was nothing. He considered scooping up handfuls of snow and eating them, but he knew from folk wisdom and Boy Scouts, TV shows with contrived plots, that eating the snow would dehydrate him more, lower his body temperature. He kept his lips pressed tight together. He knew each exhalation, the fog and steam and smoke pouring out of his mouth, meant less water in his body. Even with his mouth sealed shut, the snorts of steam from his nostrils spread out as clouds, the tiny ice crystals dancing in the early morning sunlight. And the cold burned up into his nose, a searing pain infiltrating his brain. The shock of it caused his eyes to water and the moisture made his retinas sting like they were stabbed with razors of ice.

He looked backward, where his footprints led back into the darker skies. But he didnt slow down this time. He didnt stop.

About midday Norman’s body began to thaw. The clouds pushing through in the night must have marked a warm front. The blanket of snow became a ragged patchwork with intact spots of snow heavy with melt water. Some divots collected pools of water. Norman looked over his shoulder and, seeing nothing there, knelt by one of the pools. He cupped his hands and drew up enough of the water to wet his mouth. His teeth clenched. As the water traveled down the length of his throat and made it into the pit of his stomach, he felt a surge of relief. And as his stomach filled with water, his hunger for sustenance amplified. He searched around for anything edible, first looking around his feet, then scanning the horizon. There was only snow, dirt, sky, and cold. He scraped at the wetted dirt by the edge of the patch of snow. He picked the pebbles from the mud, then rolled it into a ball. He closed his eyes and put it in his mouth. Slowly he forced his jaw up and down. Then he swallowed. The earthen mixture possessed none of the qualities of food; it was not nutritious, nor did it prove tasty by any means. Most of all, it did nothing to satiate the bellowing hunger twisting in his gut. There was nothing else he could do. He continued on.

Once the sun canted past the midday mark, the ache in Norman’s leg grew into a steady shake. His knees trembled and his feet landed unsteadily on the wetted ground. He cursed to himself in whispers. His pace slowed and he thought about turning back. He imagined first what Jacoby might do—if he would be welcomed.

Norman thought then of his father and of his brother. It hadnt been that long ago that the officer in full army regalia showed up at their house in Indiana, asking if Norman was the man of the house.

‘No,’ Norman said. ‘Just visiting for the summer.’

‘Whos there?’ his father called from the kitchen. He had been husking some corn and came around the corner picking at the silk strings between the kernels. When he looked up he muttered a damnation under his breath.

The officer began his statement about Abner, the words pouring out in army cadence, then halting before he said, suspected to be dead.

‘What’d you just say?’ his father asked.

The officer finished his statement without repeating the phrase and said that a representative from the United States Army would contact them with further details surrounding insurance and benefits.

‘Suspected dead,’ his father said. ‘Hear him say suspected?’

Before he climbed into his sedan, the officer replaced the hat he had kept under his arm.

Norman’s father pointed the ear of corn at him. ‘Your brother, he’ll make it back. Just wait. He’s too smart for the gooks to kill.’

‘Dad,’ Norman said. ‘When Ma gets home, are you gonna—’

‘Damn you,’ his father said. ‘There aint any news to tell your mother. And dont you breathe a word of it or I’ll skin you alive.’

And to Norman’s knowledge his father never did say a word of Abner’s disappearance. For four years they waited faithfully for some news of his whereabouts. At first they made conversation as if he’d come home at any minute. When Norman’s mother purchased a new car, she asked if they thought Abner would be confused, walking up to a house with a different car and all.

If Abner were to walk onto the long narrow gravel road Norman’s parents lived on, theyd run to the front porch and holler for him, waving their arms in the air. Whether Jacoby might take this tact with Norman remained unknown.

A clatter followed by a low rumbling pulled Norman’s thoughts back. He froze, only letting his eyes move. Another clattering resounded out to the west, closer this time and the rumbling grew more intense. It took a moment for Norman to process what he saw, but once he identified the source of the noise as a bread truck—a flat-paneled box on wheels—he began to run, arms flailing, begging for it to stop.

‌

‌4.

The truck driver was a big man, nearly hairless, except for his eyelashes and some irritated stubble on the back of his neck. He offered Norman a stick of peppermint gum, which Norman chewed three times before swallowing it.

‘Hows a young fella like yourself end up in the desert in winter?’ the driver asked. The way he posed the question Norman knew he was wondering aloud rather than searching for an answer.

Norman leaned against the window, his forehead pulling against the glass. He watched the foreground whip past in a blur of yucca and scrub, patched blobs of snow. The road—shaded the same color as the desert dirt—hummed under the steel-belted radials of the truck while the things farther off—the mountains and clouds and destiny itself—appeared stationary, barely moving except in a hulking brooding fashion. Norman pulled his leg up to his chest, resting his foot on the bench seat.

‘Look here, kid,’ the trucker said. ‘I’d like to help you out, but I think you need some time to sober up, dry out, get clean. Do what you need to do. Get right with the Lord.’ The driver kept one hand on the steering wheel and leaned over, unsnapped the glove compartment and took out a laminated card.

‘Here,’ he said and Norman took it. On one side it had the Lord’s Prayer typed out and on the reverse side it had the first verse of God Bless America. ‘Helped me through some tough times.’ The grumble of the truck engine filled the cabin before he spoke again. ‘Town up this way, about five miles. Place called Gratis.’ He asked if Norman ever heard of it.

But Norman didnt respond; he wanted to stay here forever, head against the window, trucking down a state route, stick of peppermint gum in his stomach.

They pulled into a Shell station and the driver cut the engine. Norman looked through the window at his reflection in the rectangular side view mirror. He hardly recognized himself. His once pasty skin now looked tough and craggy and his hair had grown longer than it had ever been, held in place by sweat and grease.

The truck driver looked down at the floor, at nothing in particular. Finally he said this was the end of the line.

‘You aint going any farther?’ Norman asked.

‘I am, but I cant take you along.’

‘I’m no trouble,’ Norman said. ‘I’m not a druggie or anything.’

The trucker raised his hand to silence Norman. ‘It’s none of my business. I try to do right by the Lord and give folks a lift when they need it.’ He sighed. ‘It’s hard being a trucker these days. Drugs an hookers at all the truck stops, extra money to be made on the routes if you make deals with some folks. Put the two of us together—a man tryin to do right an a man who needs to get right—an one of us’ll end up back where he started.’ He began to tell a story about a fellow trucker who, against his better judgment, agreed to take a truckload of Mexicans across the border—mostly women and their youngins trying to meet up with their pops who’d crossed on their own and sent money back home. ‘Well, he no sooner started en route to Las Cruces when he lost control of the rig an ended with an e-lectric line layin across the trailer.’

‘I’m a professor of Anthropology from Indiana,’ Norman blurted out.

The driver looked sad; he frowned and blinked slowly. ‘I knew you was in deep when I seen you traipsin all by your lonesome out there by mile marker forty-three.’ He forced a smile at his passenger. ‘Figure out whether you want to clean up an you can be whatever you want to be—professor, astronaut, congressman.’

Norman’s gaze drifted back to the figure in the mirror—haggard, tired, and emaciated. He nodded, put the laminated card in his pocket, and climbed out of the truck. Twilight ushered the daylight away, the bitter desert cold returning with the shadows. From the looks of it Gratis was not very big; Norman could see from one side of the town to the other. There might have been a neighborhood tucked away from the commerce district; still, this place was no more than a blip in the desert.

‘Hey,’ the driver said. Norman turned. The big, hairless man shuffled through his wallet. ‘Here,’ he said and took out two twenty dollar bills. ‘Its gonna get cold tonight. Try to get a good nights rest an a hot meal.’

Norman reached for the money and the man held onto the bill even after Norman had it in his grasp.

‘This moneys for food and lodging. Got me?’

Norman nodded.

‘Promise me.’

‘Promise,’ Norman croaked.

The driver smiled. ‘Alright. Sundown Motel is down this sideroad here, just a block or so. Nice diner across the street too. Might be open now—more of a morning place, but still.’

‘Thanks.’

The driver bobbed his head once and said God bless.

Norman made it halfway down the block when he saw the sign for the Sundown Motel, the word vacancy lit up in hot pink underneath. One of the rooms had its light on. People moved inside.

He looked the street up and down. Not a soul in sight. He felt his mind slowing down. Diagonally across the way, a train caboose sat stationary in a park on a bed of gravel. A sign in front said Gratis Tourist Bureau. Most of the town had gone to sleep, only a few scattered lights left on—the vast swell of the desert darkness surrounding them.

He crossed the street and looked once more up and down the abandoned lane. Then he crawled under the caboose and lay down on the gravel and the ties between the rails. He pulled his arms from the sleeves of his shirt and pulled them up to his chest and fell promptly to sleep.

The laughter of children woke Norman. He lay on his back, staring up at the rusted chassis of the caboose. Daylight warmed the earth considerably and he stuffed his arms back into the sleeves of his shirt. He crawled to the edge of the rails and peeked out from behind the giant steel wheel. A playground stood nearby—a framework with chains and swings, a mock homestead erected from timbers. A woman with a nylon jacket and a fanny pack pushed her daughter on one of the swings. Norman crawled over the rails and out from under the caboose. He stood and dusted himself off.

The woman stopped pushing her child; both stared at the stranger. Norman managed a smile, but they returned his gaze blankly. He opened his mouth to say something—anything in the way of explanation—but suddenly the weight of any words seemed too much to articulate and he walked away.

Before he came through the door of Desi’s Diner Norman could smell the food. The thick sweet batter of pancakes frying on a griddle all coated in hot lard, the crackling fat of bacon, the fruity and saccharine-laden syrups. He pushed his body against the glass door, catching a momentary and horrifying glimpse of himself.

The inside of the diner was gauche with yellow globe lights, orange vinyl cushioned booths, and faux wood veneer countertops. A waitress with her hair tied back walked the length of the counter, a carafe in hand. The cook, a lean tall mulatto, stood over a griddle, metal spatula in hand. Systematically he scraped and flipped, clanged and clattered, cursed and called out orders.

No one looked up at Norman. He showed himself to a stool at the end of the counter. A waitress with a handkerchief holding back her hair peered at the newcomer out of the corner of her eye. As she poured coffee, she turned and whispered something to the cook. The cook spun around, his thick framed glasses fogged with steam. He tucked one spatula into the front of his apron and put his hand on the counter in front of Norman.

‘Hey, stranger, what’ll you have.’

It wasnt phrased as a question and Norman knew what he meant. He reached into his pocket and took out one of the hundred dollar bills he took from Jacoby. He thumbed the bill, cleared his throat, asked if they had some sort of breakfast spread—a farmer’s feast or a homerunner, something like that.

The cook leaned back from the counter, taking the spatula from his apron and called across the diner. ‘Carla, tell this gentleman what we got in the way of breakfast deals.’

Norman didnt wait for the omelet to cool before he began shoveling it into his mouth. Chunks of ham and pepper scorched the raw spots in his throat. He chewed with his mouth open, bits of egg falling back onto the plate. He scooped up the hashbrowns soaked in ketchup and melted over with cheese and wadded them into his cheek as he took a swig of milk.

An old timer a couple seats down asked how long it had been since Norman had eaten.

‘Couple days,’ Norman said between bites.

‘A couple days?’ The cook turned from the griddle.

‘Yeah.’ Norman kept eating.

‘Well hell,’ the old timer said. ‘You could stand to slow it down. You’ll make yerself ill eatin like that.’

‘A couple a days?’ the cook asked again.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘You should be savorin that food,’ the old timer said. ‘Youre actin like this is your last meal and theys gonna send you to the e-lectric chair.’ He said it with no guile, just two eyes peering out from behind a set of smoke-lens glasses.

‘Took my chances not eating last night,’ Norman said. He swallowed. ‘Nothing round here was open. Woke up this morning and had to prioritize—eat first, then talk to the sheriff.’ He slurped down the last of his milk and pointed to the cup. The waitress took it and began refilling it. ‘Hopefully I didnt think it out wrong, otherwise this could be my last meal.’

A couple of folks in a nearby booth ceased their conversation and turned to listen to the vagrant traveler ramble at the counter.

The cook smirked. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I just escaped a kidnapping,’ Norman said. He reached for the milk and looked up when he realized the waitress still held his cup. She stared at him blankly, a small gap between her lips. In his head, he said the words again, realizing the casualness with which he spoke. Now all the faces in the diner looked toward him.

A man dressed in camouflage with a hunting vest in the back corner booth of the restaurant responded first. ‘Kidnapping here in Gratis?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Norman said. His voice cracked. ‘Out in the desert.’

‘Your car break down or something?’ the old timer asked. ‘Some colored sorts give you trouble?’ He shifted in his seat and nodded at the cook who waved him off.

‘No, I went out on a grant—like a scholarship—to study ghost towns and these people, this family, they kidnapped me.’

‘A family?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Like a mom and some kids, a husband and such.’

‘They live in this ghost town—’

The cook made eye contact with Carla. She walked by swiftly and set the check on the counter before Norman.

‘What was you doin in the desert?’ the old timer asked. It was as if he missed the complete exchange. Still the question stirred something in Norman’s mind and he thought of Doctor Blanche, of Dusty, broken beer bottles, soiled undergarments.

He took a shaky breath. He felt dizzy. His stomach churned. ‘I came out here last June to study ghost towns.’

‘June?’ The old man threw his hands up and nearly fell out of his stool. ‘June?’

Norman nodded. Then he asked what month it was now.

The man in the corner booth called out next. ‘You sayin you dont know the month?’

Norman blinked. Suddenly the diner seemed much brighter. He looked down at his empty plate smeared with grease and ketchup and syrup, yolks of egg. ‘Dont know,’ he said. ‘Guess it to be spring—March maybe.’

The old timer gave a single nod. ‘March twentieth.’

Every remaining person in the diner was now watching Norman at this moment, enraptured by this stranger in rags, amused by his obtuse manner and voracious appetite.

‘Was you a part of a commune out there, is that what youre sayin?’ the old timer asked.

‘No.’

‘I read something in the gazette about these communes, how they get kids involved, get them hooked on the weed.’

‘Mmm-hmm.’ The waitress nodded her head.

All around the diner heads nodded in agreement.

‘Sometimes kids dont know what theyre gettin into,’ the old man said. ‘They think they can live on peace an love an drugs.’ A silence fell on the diner for some times, all the eyes of the diner-goers leering at Norman. Then the old timer spoke again. ‘How you plannin to spend the rest of that century bill?’

‘I’m not a druggie,’ Norman muttered. He knew the response came off as less than convincing. ‘I’m a professor at Indiana State University.’

The cook took a step forward, laughing. ‘Alright man, thats enough. You know what—meals on the house.’ He took the check from the counter and tore it in half. Norman began to protest.

‘No, no,’ the cook said. ‘Take your smack money and get out of here.’ He smiled and wished Norman luck.

People began conversing lowly. Norman spun his stool around and searched for some support. The rest of the diner patrons did their best to ignore the crazy man at the counter. He looked back at the old man, but he just shrugged and turned his eyes down at his mug.

As Norman snatched the hundred dollar bill off the counter and stuffed it into his shirt pocket, he caught the two men in the corner booth—the men in hunting garb—giving him a sidelong glance. Their eyes darted away and one man put his hand over his mouth, feigning a cough.

With a single yank, Norman pulled open the door and a sudden chill racked up his spine. He staggered around the side of the diner and emptied the contents of his stomach. The vomit came out in one continuous stream and splashed up on his pant legs. He stood upright again, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. As he caught his breath, he looked at the town—the quiet shops, the now-abandoned playground, the peaks of roofs lined up in a housing plat out in the distance. At this moment, this place, more than any other, Norman felt, was a farce.

The Gratis police station wasnt hard to find. Like most every small town in America it sat next to a firehouse, a flagpole out in front. A six-pointed star painted on the window. Norman walked into the lobby, an area not much bigger than a bathroom stall. A woman sat behind a pane of glass with wires running crisscross through it. A hole cutout in the center for her voice to be heard.

She waited for him to speak.

‘Want to report a crime,’ Norman said.

The woman, as if activated by some magic phrase, snapped into action. ‘What was the nature of the offense?’

Norman blinked, exhaled, pursed his lips. ‘If it’s alright,’ he said. ‘If it’s alright I’d rather just tell the sheriff myself.’

‘I need to know the nature of the offense so I can match you to the appropriate office.’

Norman looked behind the woman, at the three doors behind her, the names of men painted on the smoked glass. Two rooms were dark, their trashcans sitting out for the custodian.

‘I was kidnapped,’ he said.

The woman didnt look up from writing when he said it, so he repeated himself more loudly and directed his speech toward the hole in the glass.

‘I heard you, sir.’ She still didnt look up. ‘When were you kidnapped?’

‘What do you mean, when?’

‘When did the crime occur?’

‘Last June.’

The woman set her pen down. ‘This happened over nine months ago?’

‘Ive been kidnapped—gone—for nine months. I just got away.’

‘Just got away?’

‘Yesterday. I made it here and slept. When I woke up, I came here.’ He felt dizzy.

The woman folded her hands. ‘How’d you get away?’

Norman opened his mouth and the words came as a squeak. ‘I walked out, away I mean, while they were sleeping.’

The woman wrote nothing down; she just stared, her eyelids half-closed, faint hint of amusement flicking at the corners of her mouth. The tick of the clock in the lobby became more audible. Her phone rang. She waited for the second ring to pick it up.

‘Yessir,’ she said. With her free hand she began scribbling down some notes. She stopped and looked up at Norman before saying yessir again. ‘One,’ she said abruptly. ‘Out here in the lobby.’ She nodded to whatever the other end of the phone said. ‘I’ll do that, yessir.’

She hung up and smiled at Norman. ‘That was Deputy Walsh. He’ll see you in a couple of minutes. Go ahead and have a seat.’

‘Deputy?’ Norman asked. ‘Is he a specialist in these sorts of crimes?’

‘He’s the deputy on duty. Have a seat please.’

‘What about the sheriff, cant I talk to him?’

‘He’s on vacation in Austin with his wife. Deputy Walsh will be with you shortly. Go sit down.’

Deputy Walsh came off as the quintessential western constable. He had a thick mustache, light gray stubble on his cheeks, and clear blue eyes. He sat on the edge of the desk, a mug in hand. He offered it to Norman.

‘It’s tea,’ he said. ‘Go on. Good to calm the nerves.’

Norman took the mug, but did not drink of it. The deputy walked back around the desk and sat down, clasping his hands together and resting his chin on them. A medical bracelet peeked out of his sleeve.

‘Kidnapped, huh?’

‘Yes, sir. Out in the desert, last June.’

‘Call them ab-ductions nowadays,’ the deputy said. ‘You is a little old to be kidnapped.’

‘Abducted,’ Norman said. ‘Sure, I was abducted in the desert last June.’

The deputy repeated the words to himself, shaking his head. He stared Norman down. ‘Level with me now: Was any drugs involved?’

Norman shook his head in return. ‘No,’ he said. Then more vehemently, ‘No, no drugs.’

‘Youre sure?’

‘Jesus, yes.’ He waited a moment. ‘Just because I was out in the desert and I come into town dressed like a hobo you all think I’m a doper.’

‘You all?’

‘Yeah, everyone.’

‘Everyone in this room?’

Norman glanced around the room—bookshelf, desk, grandfather clock. Otherwise empty.

‘No…’

‘Do you see other people in this room right now?’

‘I meant the other people here in town, at the diner.’

‘They thought you were on drugs?’

Norman looked into the mug. The liquid inside no longer steamed. ‘Seems to be what everyone thinks.’

‘You know I could do a drug test right now? Have you pee in a cup, see if youre lying.’

‘Thats fine. Call the university; they’ll tell you I worked there.’

‘Might try that tomorrow. Chances are nobodys at your school on a Sunday.’ The deputy took their conversation in his stride, as if he’d had this conversation a hundred times before. ‘Had a lot of trouble with drugs round here. Not just Gratis either. Small towns are becoming outposts for these drug dealers—Mexicans, most of them. Got kids shoving balloons full of LSD up their asses.’

Norman gritted his teeth. ‘Yeah, I was kidnapped—abducted. They werent into drugs and neither was I.’

Deputy Walsh sighed, reclined in his chair with his hands rested on the paunch of his stomach. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Whereabouts were you ab-ducted?’

‘Out near New Daisy, the ghost town.’

‘And did you get an ID on your, your captors? A name, distinguishing features…’

‘The main guy, his name was Jacoby. But they werent in New Daisy. We moved around a lot.’

‘Right. Where’d you move around to?’

‘All around. Cant remember it all.’

‘You cant recall?’

‘No, they kept me sedated at first. I just remember moving, but not in any certain direction.’

Walsh’s eyes went alight. ‘They kept you sedated.’

Norman’s voice raised. ‘Damn it. Drugs got nothing to do with it.’

The deputy kept his composure. ‘I didnt bring it up this time. You did.’

Norman took a gulp of the tea. When the liquid hit the back of his throat, it scorched—not from heat, but from spices. Then he felt a surge of relief. He studied the deputy. Though he had a notepad on his desk, Walsh wrote nothing down. His eyes remained focused on Norman. Norman who hadnt bathed in nine months, who dressed in rags, who was without any ID.

‘You dont believe me, do you?’

The deputy sighed and shook his head. ‘Cant rightly say I do. Seen too many of you types go through here—everyone with a story.’

‘You can call the university tomorrow.’

‘I could and I will. Chances are they’ll corroborate your story too.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You left last summer and havent been back since. It’s the gap in between thats got me worried,’ the deputy said. ‘I’d bet my next paycheck you done screwed the pooch at this university and headed out here for a break of some sorts. Maybe even thought you wouldnt come back.’

‘Youre speculating.’

‘Speculating, telling you what I know from doing this a long time.’ Walsh shrugged. ‘Same difference, sonny boy. Maybe you thought about putting a bullet through your brain. Instead you took some drugs. Got caught up in something you dont rightly understand.’

Norman leaned forward, set the mug on the corner of the desk. ‘I saw them murder people.’

‘You witnessed a murder?’

‘Yes. A young couple. They raped the woman, killed her boyfriend and her when they were all done raping. I saw an assassination too.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Something government like. Agents are sent out with contracts, only then Jacoby kills the agent too. The agents dont know theyre targets. He kills them both and buries them in shafts and shacks with lye. And I think my brother might be their next target.’

‘Your brother?’

‘Abner. He went missing in Vietnam a few years back, listed as MIA.’

‘So this is like a conspiracy?’

‘Sort of. Yes.’

Deputy Walsh sucked in the side of his cheek. He glanced down at his blank legal pad. When he spoke again his voice sounded different; he used a tone better suited for conversing with a child.

‘Son, I want you to wait right here an I’m gonna make some calls, see if I cant get to the bottom of this.’

The deputy closed the door behind himself, leaving Norman alone in the office. He could hear the deputy talking with the secretary. An eruption of laughter broke through the conversation. Norman stood, walked to the window behind the desk. It was already unlocked. He slid it open, popped the screen from the frame and stepped through.

As soon as Norman rounded the corner of the sheriff’s station he felt watched. He looked over his shoulder to see if Walsh followed him. It wouldnt be more than a few minutes before he came back into the office and saw the open window and the missing screen.

But the police didnt bother Norman. They wore uniforms and drove cars painted black and white with lights on top. They had rules—laws—to follow. Someone else watched him now. He quickened his pace, glancing over his shoulder again. A truck rumbled through a four-way stop farther down the street. He walked faster. He began to swing his arms. Then his legs moved more quickly. He ran.

He ran three blocks, to where a Laundromat shared a building with a pizza parlor. A street lamp flicked on as dusk settled over the rooftops. Because the evening air was cool and damp, the windows of the Laundromat fogged over. The blurred outline of a Hispanic woman moved inside, switching her clothes from one machine to the next. Norman felt the gaze from an unknown source focused on him. He crossed the street and crouched behind a shrub and waited several minutes. Another truck and a police car drove by, headlights on. The woman exited the Laundromat and entered the pizza parlor next door.

The clothes stolen from the dryer were still damp when he put them on in the bathroom of the Laundromat. But they felt warm too. Norman cupped some of the granule soap in his hand, mixed it with water and scrubbed down his face and hair. He used the cloth towel dryer to mop out his hair. As he left the Laundromat the cold cut through the wetted cloth and the warmth evaporated. He passed the Hispanic woman on the sidewalk without looking at her.

All the way to the Sundown Motel he felt the eyes on him again. This time he didnt look over his shoulder. He walked at a measured pace. The pink neon letters of the motel blaring hot in the bitter darkness. At the edge of the motel parking lot, he stopped and examined the structure: a row of white doors with an office at the end. Dim lights backlit the closed miniblinds in the windows. Opposite from the office a few evergreens created a tree screen for the air conditioning units and a propane tank.

The desk clerk appeared to be hardly out of high school. A kid with dark skin and shy manners. The room at the end of the row cost twelve dollars and Norman paid with the twenty from the trucker. The boy began to thank Norman, but Norman held up the other twenty. ‘If I dont get disturbed tonight this will be on the nightstand in my room come morning.’

The kid nodded.

‘If God shows up, you dont know where I am.’ The boy nodded, but Norman wasnt finished. ‘I mean it—pretend like theres fucking lambs blood on that door.’

Again, the boy nodded. He handed Norman a key on a lanyard.

On his way to the room, Norman stopped at the vending machine and bought a Coke and several bags of chips.

He kept the lights off, letting his eyes adjust to the dark as they had become accustomed to doing. He peered out the peephole at the darkened parking lot, but there was nothing. He shook the pillows from their cases and rolled up the blanket from the bed. On the nightstand he found a pack of matches, a pad of paper, and a shortened pencil with no eraser. He took those also and went into the bathroom, shutting himself in complete darkness. He tore the pillow apart and stuffed the cotton batting under the crack of the bathroom door. Only when he had every fissure in the room sealed did he turn on the light.

It took another minute for his eyes to readjust. The bathroom buzzed white and tiled, sterile and fluorescent. He worked quickly, tearing three holes in the pillowcase. He slid the sack over his head and wore it like a tunic. Then he looked at his feet. The boots had worn through in places, exposing bare flesh. He had mended them over the last couple months with twine and duct tape. He sat on the edge of the tub and slid his feet free.

On the sink counter a plastic-wrapped disposable razor sat next to a cake of soap. He used the heel of the boot to crush the casing of the razor and freed the blade. Carefully holding the blade, he cut swathes from the shower curtain to line the boots. At least they would be waterproofed. For a moment he thought about throwing the razor away. Instead he cut another strip from the shower curtain, wrapped it in the plastic and put it in his pocket. Finally he took the bottle of Coke, and being without an opener, he placed the edge of the metal cap on the bathroom counter and smacked the top of it with the heel of his hand. The bottle opened and the saccharine scent of soda wafted up, bubbles of carbonation sounding like static. Norman resisted the urge to chug down the liquid, knowing the soda would only make him thirstier in the long run. He poured the contents down the drain and refilled the bottle with water from the tap, plugging the mouth with a wad of shower curtain.

He flicked out the bathroom light and all became cloaked in darkness. He opened the door and padded over to the window facing the evergreens. Underneath, the air conditioner units sat muted. Unlike the full-length windows facing the parking lot, this one was without a curtain and the iridescent glow of the town cut out in the darkness like a portrait. He unlatched it and slid the glass and listened. Outside it was quiet—not even the whir of a distant car or the din of some social club. Just silence. A hoot owl moaned and it fell silent all over again. Norman pulled the razor from his pocket and used it to slice the screen from the frame. He pulled the loosed mesh in and let it fall to the floor. Again he listened, but heard nothing. He pulled himself up to the opening and leaned out to see what he could spy. The parking lot lamps cast pools of light down the scant few cars. Across the street a cluster of buildings sat unlit and vacant. He looked the other direction, down the street. He watched a traffic light turn from yellow to red. A junker car plowed through the perpendicular street, the sound of the engine chugging until it too, along with all else in this nighttime world, faded into nothing, nothing at all.

He tossed the pillowcase onto the ground, then the blankets from the bed. As soon as Norman hit the ground he felt the eyes again, the watching. He held his breath, thinking he could better hear without the whispers of his own breathing. But there was no sound. Whoever watched him—whoever had been following him—was looking at the door of the motel room and from where they sat his escape would be hidden by the evergreens. He lay down so he could look out under the branches. In the shadows, his body wedged between the air conditioners, he waited. He waited to see who was out there, who followed him through this world, and what they would do.

‌

‌5.

He woke midmorning to the sound of the housekeeper. She swore in muffled tones, only made audible by the open window. Norman didnt remember falling asleep. Hurriedly he grabbed his belongings—the pillowcase, blanket, and the bags of chips. He took off at a trot toward the Shell station.

An elderly couple filled their car. Norman dropped his sack by the door of the station and walked in. Above the door a bell chimed and the attendant wearily lifted his eyes from his newspaper. Norman used the money he promised to leave on the nightstand to buy a dozen sticks of beef jerky and a bottle of apple juice. He also bought the Monday paper, the Gratis Gazette.

Once outside he stuffed his purchases into the pillowcase, looked around, and approached the old man who was now securing his gas cap.

‘Sir,’ Norman said.

The man shut the metal flap to the tank and straightened up.

‘Sir.’ Norman said it a little louder this time.

The man turned around, startled.

Norman did his best to smile and look the man in the eye. Still, he darted glances left and right, sure someone was watching him. ‘Can I ask you a favor?’

‘I aint giving you money.’

Norman stood dumbfounded by the reply.

‘Got half a leftover sandwich in the car. I’ll give you that, but no cash.’

‘I was going to pay you for a ride.’

Now the man stood quietly. Unsure if the man heard him, Norman began to repeat himself, only to have the man cut him off.

‘Ride to where?’

‘Westward—if youre going that way.’

The man nodded. Inside the car, the man’s wife craned her neck trying to see the stranger conversing with her husband.

‘Need to go about fifteen miles. I could give you five dollars.’

The man spent a long time staring at Norman, like he expected a confession or a longer story. But his eyes were less accusing, less watchful, than the other hidden gaze. Norman glanced around.

‘You in some type of trouble?’ the man finally asked.

‘No sir,’ Norman said. ‘Just trying to make it westward.’

‘Why westward?’

‘Trying to meet up with my brother. He’s in some trouble.’

The old man’s eyes narrowed and he rocked back and forth on his feet, hands in his pockets. ‘Might be your brother can help you—nothing wrong with that.’ Then he asked what was in the bag.

‘Blanket, food, some toiletries. Take a look if you want.’

The station attendant stood up from his desk and peered out the glass doors.

‘Got the missus in here,’ the man said. ‘She takes oxygen and reads the Bible, so there aint any smokin and there aint any swearin.’

‘We always try an do for others like we’d have them do for us,’ the woman said. Norman nodded out of politeness. She kept talking, one Bible-based cliché after another. ‘Never miss a chance to be Jesus with skin on his face.’

Out the window, the desert passed by, neutral and ugly and forlorn. The telephone posts he had followed should be coming up soon, if memory served, but the ride into Gratis with the truck driver felt like a long time ago now.

‘What about you?’ the old man asked. The woman had stopped talking and she turned her attention to Norman. The old man’s eyes peered back at Norman from the rearview mirror.

‘I’m sorry,’ Norman said. ‘What?’

‘You a believer?’ the man asked a second time.

Norman’s eyes connected with the woman and she nodded at him as if to goad him into the affirmative. All eyes on him.

‘Raised Catholic,’ Norman said as if that were answer enough.

‘Whats that?’ the man said.

‘He was raised Catholic,’ the woman repeated loudly.

‘Doesnt tell us anything,’ the man said. ‘Knew a preachers son who went to prison for mo-lesting a little girl. Had a decent upbringing, that one. Then he promises to show her a puppy he’s got in his bedroom. When she goes with him, theres no puppy and that boy, he mo-lests her.’ He shook his head and said, ‘Belief is somethin thats in you or it’s not.’

The woman beamed at her husband, nodding as if she had never heard these words before. On the horizon, little posts like matchsticks sprouted from the earth, wire draping from one to the next. The one nearest the road canted slightly forward. Mile marker forty-two whipped by.

‘Just let me off up here,’ Norman said.

‘Up where?’ the woman asked. Her husband asked Norman to repeat himself.

‘By those telephone posts up there.’

‘Well, shoot, son. We didnt mean to offend you—’ the old man started.

‘It’s fine,’ Norman said.

The woman reached a hand back and patted Norman’s knee. ‘We just try to do for others like theyd do for us.’

The posts grew closer. Norman sighed. ‘It’s fine,’ he said again. ‘Just drop me off here.’

The man shook his head, but kept driving. The posts rushed by them. Norman turned and watched them start growing distant in a different direction now.

‘Goddamnit,’ he said.

The woman gasped.

‘What?’ the man asked. ‘What’d he say?’

Norman leaned up close and spoke loud enough for the old man to hear, his wife staring on in disbelief. ‘I said goddamnit, goddamnit. And if you dont stop this goddamn car the last thing you’ll see in your life is me fucking your wife until her cunt looks like roast beef.’

Dusk fell with a dry cold. Most of the snow, save the occasional patch shaded by a yucca or boulder, had melted away. The wet from the snowmelt seeped into the ground and froze hard. To Norman it felt like walking on concrete. He cut a straight path, deviating now and again only to pick up scrap pieces of brush, some desiccated weeds, the spare twig—anything that might be of use.

The handprint the old man left on Norman’s face felt fresh and raw in the cold, like it would never stop stinging. His cheek burned anew when he crouched in the last embers of daylight to start a fire. The flames seemed to lick at the spot, making it pulse.

The fire fueled by his findings and a roll of toilet paper glowed hot and yellow only for a minute, then lapsed into shades of red and black and in between. He added the last of the brush he collected and some strips of newspaper. He held his hands close to the flames and let the heat sear through his fingertips, until it felt like the flesh might melt and his fingernails would combust into flames. He ate three sticks of beef jerky and saved the wrappers. Then he unplugged the Coke bottle filled with water and drank down the contents. He crawled over to a nearby crescent of snow and packed the bottle full. The ice crystals scraped at his hands and he cursed himself for letting them grow so warm.

He sat by the fire—now just a single tongue of flame and some papery coals flaking in the wind. He pulled out the plastic jerky wrappers and twisted them together into a single braid of plastic. They were still slick with grease and he dipped the edge of the wick in the flame. It burned slow and steady. He set it on the ground a few feet away and placed the glass bottle next to it. He added more wrappers.

The toilet paper roll fumed dark and angry. Norman used the twig to poke at it, expose some of the unburnt tissue coiled inside. A couple yellow flames jumped to life, but only for a few brilliant seconds. Norman lifted his shirt, his tunic and coat, exposing his white underside to the flames. Then he billowed the shirts out in an attempt to capture the heat and hold it close to his body. He kicked the dying fire into ash and spread the warm soot out across the frozen earth. He stretched out on the ashes and shivered. Turning up on one side, he watched the flickering light of the other fire, how it glinted off the Coke bottle and how it melted the snow inside.

He woke. Eastward the sky washed gray and gloomy, a slight difference between the earth and heaven. But west—west broke flat and black, the stars blotted out by a matte of clouds. He sat up and ate a bag of chips, saving the wrapper in his pocket. The snowmelt in the bottle yielded little water but he drank it all down.

Before heading forth into the expanse, he stopped at a patch of snow and packed the bottle full again. He plugged the mouth of the bottle and slid it into his pants pocket, hoping the warmth of his body would melt the contents.

In the desert, there is little to do besides think. As he traipsed, putting one foot ahead of the other, Norman began to understand how a man like Jacoby came to exist. Out here there was nothing but time and space and a man could become big enough to consume everything around him. Start in a great emptiness and grow to fill it and a man could gain critical mass, swallow up the smaller men around him, the towns farther off, the countries, galaxies, life, the universe, God. With enough time a man could connect his every thought and create his own universe, larger and more webbed than the one men had collectively built with their small small minds.

Norman stopped, gauged the sun and sipped from the bottle. The day had warmed some and the sun appeared as a faint white apparition through the gauze of cloud. He thought of his time in Gratis, how the stories of his desert experience seemed too far-fetched for the people to understand—how when he recounted his past it sounded unreal to even his own self. He kept walking with the express purpose of putting distance between himself and that town. His step faltered and he felt watched again. He glanced back over his shoulder, out into the desert, and saw nothing. Each stride pushed him back toward Jacobyville, toward his brother, Martha, the things he’d lost in his last life. He redoubled his pace.

Evening came again and he made a fire much like he had the night previous. As he lay in the ashes he pondered for the first time since the graveyard in New Daisy if he might die, if Jacoby might kill him. Death felt like a power only Jacoby possessed—like the only thing keeping him alive right now was a presence in the old man’s mind and if Jacoby were to stir from a dream about Norman, life itself would wash over in a field of white waking. Everyone else in the world seemed blind, alien, dumb.

Voices carried low across the night air. At first Norman tried to recognize the voices, thinking they were his thoughts. But they came from without. He sat up. Narrowing his eyes, he peered out into the darkness and slowly turned his head.

‘Right there,’ one of the voices said.

A white light blared directly at Norman and he put up his hand to shield his eyes.

‘You weren’t shittin,’ the other man said.

The light flicked off and the two visitors drew closer. They wore hunting gear and carried rifles and canvas packs on their backs. Soon they came close enough for Norman to recognize their faces. These were the men from the corner booth of Desi’s Diner. He still lay in the ashes of his fire when they crouched next to him and lit a small lantern.

‘We follered you from Gratis,’ the one finally said.

‘Youve been tracking me.’

The man nodded. ‘Got my curiosity goin with your tale at the diner. Figured you might be truthin instead of lyin.’

‘Not me,’ his companion said. ‘I thinks youre wanted man—someone from the drug cartels. I been figurin that since I saw you leavin the sheriffs office through the window.’

‘We been watchin you,’ his companion said.

The one picked up the old Coke bottle, rubbed his fingers in the ashes. ‘Cant believe them supplies is all you got.’

Norman’s throat was dry and he swallowed hard. ‘Whatre you going to do?’

‘We’re gonna help you kill these sumbitches, hear? You just got to lead the way.’

‘Either that or youre done gonna lead us right into one of your communes or wherever it is youre growin pot.’

The lantern emitted a small amount of heat and Norman cupped his hands around it, casting huge shadows across his face. ‘It aint drugs,’ he said. ‘You’ll see that firsthand.’ Then he chuckled and the companion asked what the hell was so funny.

Norman took a moment to appraise the men’s gear—rifles with scopes, vests of many pockets, nearly all of them bulging with something, boots laced up to mid-shin. ‘If you want to kill Jacoby, the leader of this village I was talkin about, youre gonna need more than what you got.’

The companions exchanged glances—one confused, one smirking.

‘From what you said back at Desi’s, this old man an his family, theyre just a bunch of hermits, right?’

Norman shrugged and nodded. His companion asked if they had any special guns, the automatic types. ‘You know, the kind they issued in Viet-nam.’

‘No,’ Norman said. ‘Rifles, shotguns, pistols.’

‘Well, shit,’ the man said. ‘Aint nothing special then. Couple of old kooks with some muzzleloaders an hand cannons.’

‘What were you plannin on killing this Jacoby fella with?’ the companion asked.

Before Norman could answer, the man said, ‘You did plan to kill him, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Norman said. ‘I mean, hell yeah.’

‘But you aint got no gun.’

Up to that moment, Norman hadnt considered the instrument he would use to kill Jacoby. He thought of something plausible to tell the companions.

‘You come into Jacobyville, armed to the teeth like you are, Jacoby an his boys’ll shoot you down,’ he said. ‘Come in there like me, an you’ll at least get to see him, have a chance to crack a rock against his skull, put your hands around his neck.’

The man leaned into the lantern, warming the back of his knuckles. He stared into the light when he asked his next question. ‘You think this is it for ya? Youre gonna die.’

Norman nodded his head. ‘Yeah.’

‘Shit,’ the companion said. ‘Aint no one dyin except the old kook. The two of us, we been huntin everwhere—big game huntin like bears an mountain lions, got some bounties on some wolves once.’

But the man paid his companion no mind. ‘You think we’re gonna die along with you?’ he asked Norman.

The answer was simple. ‘If you follow me, yes.’

‘We done tracked an caught an escaped con out Nevada way,’ the companion said. ‘Sheriff had him listed as armed an dangerous. Came out without a scratch, didnt we?’

‘Whats so special about this old man?’

Norman removed his hands from the lantern and the light illuminated his face. ‘He knows what we’re talking about right now,’ he said. ‘He knows what I’m doing before I do it.’

‘What do you mean, he knows what we’re doing right now?’ the companion asked. ‘Is he watchin us?’

Norman shook his head. ‘Doesnt have to. Forget about sneaking up on Jacoby. Forget about playing tricks on him, being clever. He thought of everything already, seen it all already. Right now, he’s laying on the floor of his cabin, watching us in a dream, listening to this entire conversation.’

For a while, the men sat quietly as if there were prying ears out in the darkness. Finally one of the men spoke. ‘Tell you what, sonny boy, me an my partner here will take turns keepin a watch tonight. Tomorrow we’ll foller you at a distance. We wont develop no plan til we lay eyes on this ghost town of yours. Sound fair?’

‘And you’ll kill Jacoby?’

‘If he’s everything you say he is, yeah.’

Norman snorted. ‘If he’s what I say he is, that’s why you wont be able to kill him.’

About midday Norman caught the first glimpse of the ghost town—one of the beehive kilns. The crown of the kiln was crushed in and it sat precariously on the hillside. The door gaped vacant. With the sun directly overhead and shaded, the structure cast no shadows on the ground around it. He pointed to it as he passed. The companions who trailed him took note.

While the companions walked with their rifles at ready, their heads constantly turning, Norman made no such efforts toward precaution. His feet dragged across the dirt, making rough scraping noises. The old man could be watching right now—watching from the interior of the kiln, from the bouldered slope of the mount. Watching him from atop a distant mount.

The day grew warmer. He paused and took off his tunic, tossing it to the ground. The men met up with him briefly. He looked around the abandoned landscape, waiting for the impact of the bullet. None came.

‘I hope you aint crazy,’ the companion said.

The man passed a canteen between the three of them. After Norman took a swig, he assured the companion he wasn’t. ‘Crazy is believing that gun and walking extra careful through the desert is gonna protect me from Jacoby,’ he said.

They began walking again, toward the slopes of the mountain.

Cupping his hands to his mouth Norman called out. His hello echoed and died and there came no response. He stopped, squinted, shielding his eyes with his hand, looking for any movements in the folds of the slope. Further on, he knew, the homestead sat hidden from their view. He climbed. The first structures of Jacobyville came into view.

‘You werent bullshittin,’ the one said.

His companion let out a low whistle, said he’d heard there was a ghost town out thisaway. ‘Heard stories bout it when I was a tyke.’ He surveyed some of the structures, then said, ‘But damn.’

‘I’ll flank out around the side here,’ the companion said. ‘You go straight up the middle an when they poke their heads out, I’ll brain em. Got it?’

Norman tried to utter an agreement, but his mouth remained dry—his tongue stuck to his teeth, his lips gummed together.

‘Here.’ The man handed Norman the canteen.

‘That sound like a good plan?’ the man asked.

Both of the hunters fell silent, waiting for Norman’s response. But Norman had none. He stood staring at them blankly, canteen in hand, the eyes of the men studying him—that familiar sense of being watched. He shook his head—not in disagreement, but in defeat.

‘Oh, God,’ the one groaned.

‘I cant kill them,’ Norman said and he knew this to be true.

‘Fuck it,’ the man said. He turned to the companion. ‘Want to pack it in? Get out of here?’

The companion nodded once before a blast from behind Norman tore through the air. The hunter’s face spewed a font of blood. He crumpled to the ground.

The man slid off the rifle safety and stepped backward three steps. Another report ripped open the fading strident note of the last blast. A scrap of the man’s upper arm flew backward. Norman froze in place. The man cursed and attempted to lift his gun one-handed. A third shot rang out and pierced the man in the stomach. Thick oily blood gurgled out for a few seconds before he sat down on his butt. He coughed once, a mist of blood spraying from his mouth. And then he fell.

Norman stood, looking at his two fallen saviors, the stains of blood growing around their bodies on the rocky ground. Footsteps came up behind him. He felt a hand lay on his shoulder. Gay Jim crawled out of a crevasse no more than ten feet from where they stood and began hacking at the bodies with a hatchet. Norman doubled over, his stomach lurching. He coughed. Jacoby’s breath tickled his ear when he welcomed Norman home and called him son.