Second Day of the Full Moon

“Lookee all them Walmart bags,” was the first that either of the lawmen said.

“I got a receipt,” Denny said back.

“Yeah, I just bet you do.”

“Leave it,” Sheriff Goddard said to his young deputy, a kid with too much testosterone for his own good. The kid, Travis was his name, was always looking to turn a conversation into a confrontation, a situation into an event. He was spoiling to use those big muscles he acquired in the gym; he was itching to pull his gun, and one of these days he was going to, and that would be the end of Travis. Sheriff Goddard had told him more than once to cool himself, and he figured he would be telling the same thing to Travis in another ten years. Kids like that just flat-out don’t cool down until they’re in their forties.

“Nasty bruise you got there,” the deputy said to Denny, ignoring his superior’s comments. “How’d you get a bruise like that?”

“Leave it,” Sheriff Goddard said again. Travis was going to burn himself out. Or maybe the sheriff would end up pulling his gun on him before it was all over. Damned punks watching all that gun-happy television with all those macho big-city policemen shooting people in the streets gives kids ideas that even the police academy can’t wash ’em clean of. It was a problem. It was a problem for Travis, and that made it a problem for the sheriff.

The sheriff walked down to where York was yawning and stretching and climbing out of his bed. “Morning, York,” he said. The two other men in suits followed him, leaving Travis to try to stare Denny down.

“Morning, Sheriff. What brings you down here so early?”

“Hey, yeah,” Sly said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “How come you guys ain’t out eating your weight in donuts?” He looked the other two suits up and down and was about to ask what it was that they ate, when the sheriff spoke again.

“Heard tell of a dead guy, York. You know anything about a dead body around here?” The radio on his belt squawked and he turned it down.

“Can’t say as I have, Sheriff,” York said. “Dead guy? Think I’d have heard about that.”

“That’s why I come to you first, York. You and me, we’ve always been square with each other.”

“Always will be, Sheriff. This here’s a clean place. No dope, no booze, no crime.”

“Awful lot of Walmart bags here,” the deputy said, and poked one of them with his shoe.

The sheriff looked around, nodding, and smiling. York did run a clean camp, and Sheriff Goddard took all the credit. “These here guys are from the railroad.”

“Nice to make your acquaintance,” York said, and took his time standing up, his old joints creaking, his bones aching. Once he was upright, he held out his hand, and each of the two men shook it in turn.

“Samuel Greening,” one said, and his handshake was firm, dry, and crisp.

“Mark Tipps,” the other one said, and his handshake was too brief, as if he didn’t want to touch York. Mark Tipps was not to be trusted, but the Green one was a-okay. So was the sheriff, but York knew that one of these days that idiot deputy would come on down here and make big trouble if he didn’t get his hand slapped hard enough and often enough. That Deputy Travis was the type of kid who’d never been spanked. And should have been. Regular and furious.

“You boys hear about any deceased neighbors?” York called out to his camp mates.

“Nope,” Sly said.

“Nope,” Denny said.

“What’s this?” the deputy said and poked a toe at the wad of blankets that was actually Ed.

“That’s Ed,” Sly said. “He’s tired.”

“Is he dead?”

“Nope,” York said. “He snored all night long.”

“There you are,” Clover said, and all heads turned to see her, makeup perfect, hair glossy and pinned back behind her ears, smiling and carrying two bags of donuts, wearing a fresh pink uniform. “Missed you this morning, Sheriff. This here is day-old, but I believe there might be one of your favorites in there.”

Her eyes naturally went to Denny, and her mouth fell open as she took in the knot on his forehead and the bruise around it that was sliding down and blackening both eye sockets. She gasped and put her hand to her mouth.

Denny smiled at her, winked, and just nodded slightly as if to say, It’s okay—we’ll talk about it later.

“Why, thanks, Miss Clover,” Sheriff Goddard said, reached into the bag and pulled out a maple cruller. Clover tore her eyes from Denny and handed the sheriff a napkin.

“Bring coffee too?” the deputy said, pulling a chocolate donut out of the bag.

“Sly here’ll make you a good cup of coffee,” Clover said, giving Deputy Travis a disdainful look. Clover didn’t like the deputy any more than anybody else did. He was always trying to touch her with some sleazy sleight of hand.

“No thanks,” the deputy said.

“No thanks,” Sly said.

“You men here to see about the dead guy?” Clover asked.

Old Ed wasn’t as asleep or as tired as everyone assumed, because as soon as Clover said that, there was a flurry of activity under that hump of blankets, and then it rose up on itself and took off running, that dirty gray blanket flapping behind.

He needn’t have run; nobody chased him, but he never looked back. They all just watched. Deputy Travis didn’t even twitch his gun hand.

“Ed have anything to do with the dead guy?” Sheriff Goddard asked.

“No,” York said. “Dead guy fell off the train yesterday.”

“He was pushed,” Sly said. “Murdered.”

“Now how come you didn’t come to me with this news yesterday, York?”

“Didn’t want no trouble,” York said.

“Well, too bad, old man,” the deputy said. “You just made yourself a whole new package of trouble by not reporting this.”

The sheriff shook his head in disgust. The deputy always acted as if he were in some kind of a movie. The sheriff looked at Sly. “Want to show us?”

Sly led the way around the little walls built up of stacks of old newspapers that defined their camp, over the heap of ties and along the tracks, following the mashed-down trail in the weeds where they’d all gone to gawk at the deceased intruder the evening before. Poor weeds hadn’t even had a chance to recover before Sly, Denny, two cops, and two railroad guys tramped over them one more time on their way to gaze at the corpse. Soon there’d be the medical examiner, ambulance guys, doctors, more cops, more railroad guys and only God knew who else.

Clover stayed back with York. She didn’t need to see it all again; she was fairly certain any change in the guy’s condition had been for the worse.

“Looks like Denny went shopping,” she said casually. “Wonder what he bought with all that cash. Wonder how he got that bump on his head.”

But York had his mind on other things, one of them being the parade of people through his little personal hometown and how he, as unofficial mayor, was going to receive them. How does a hosting dignitary act? Ought he put out some red carpet, or haul up a banner? “Welcome to Yorktown,” it would say, “home of the dead guy.” Maybe there ought to be a wine tasting and craft fair to boot. Jeez. Just exactly what he didn’t need.

And more of what he didn’t need was about to show up in the person of the mayor of West Wheaton, California, the real town that Yorktown was unofficially attached to. That mayor was all about big business, and there was no doubt in York’s mind that he and his little crew of unsightly good guys was a burr beneath the saddle of Mayor Milo Grimes. The mayor had his fingers in lots of real-estate-development pies, or so York had heard over the years, but the mayor was way too crafty to let any of his conflicts of interest show. Digging for dirt was one thing; pushing it in the faces of the townspeople was another thing.

And one of the things all his soccer moms would like would be for him to get rid of the damned bums living down by the railroad tracks. They were crazed on drugs and ate babies for breakfast, the diseased, vermin-laden scum. The white-toothed, sandy-haired, clean-cut children of West Wheaton had to give that nasty area of town a wide berth, but of course, all kids were curious, and the moms were forever worried that one of their precious ones would be overcome by their own lack of good sense someday, and go on down there by the tracks to see what all the fuss was about. Everybody knew that those kids would never be seen alive again. It hadn’t happened yet, in all the decades York had been at his camp, but somehow, generations passed in town and the rumors, true to their nature, never got smaller.

And now it had happened. A dead guy had been found in the hobo camp.

Life was about to get messy indeed.

“York?” Clover said.

“Hmmm?”

“Think y’all’re gonna have to move?”

“Hope not, missy,” York said, impressed again with her intuition, but he did indeed think they were all going to have to move. He’d been meaning to go down to the county records place to find out just exactly who owned this property so that he could get permission to camp on it, but he had never got around to it. Probably belonged to the railroad. He never really thought he’d still be here, all these years later. But as his sight failed and his world narrowed, well, all that was left for him was to go on the public dole and live in some old fart’s home. That wasn’t for York. He had to be out under the moon until the day he died.

“It wouldn’t be so bad, you know,” Clover said, as if she sensed his mood of impending doom. “We could get us a house together, all of us. Ed could even stay there when he came through town. Sly could work now and then, and with my wages and your pension . . .”

York knew she meant well, but it sounded like death to him. Worse than death. Torture. Her voice trailed off as if she thought about the reality of it and it didn’t sound all that great to her, either.

“I know what,” Clover said. “Let’s go to the post office. It’s time for your check.”

“We ought to wait to see what happens over yonder,” York said.

“They’ll be at that all day long, York. C’mon. Get yourself up. Get your blood moving. Let’s go shopping. That always makes you feel better.”

He didn’t jump at the offer, but he didn’t refuse it, either, and Clover knew he just needed a little coaxing.

“I’ll help you put your shoes on.” She reached into the bag, pulled out a reasonably fresh cinnamon-raisin bagel and handed it to the old man while she rooted around looking for his boots. York had a sturdy pair of lace-up leather boots that still had most of their soles on. He didn’t do a lot of walking. His socks had holes in the toes. “After all these folks are out of here,” she said, watching him munch the bagel with his store-bought teeth as she laced up his boots, “we’ll do some laundry. Your socks are about to knock me out.”

“Don’t know what I’d do without you, girl,” York said around a bite of bread.

“You’d get by, just like you always have,” Clover said, “but there’s no need to be thinking along those lines, because I’m here today, and today’s all we’ve got.”

She grabbed him by both hands and planted her feet next to his boot toes, and hauled on him until he stood full up. He would never stand straight again, but he could get vertical. She smoothed over his hair in the back, and tugged at his clothes to make him look a little more presentable, then she grabbed his arm and got him moving up the path toward town. York was sliding backwards, health-wise. Seemed as though he had lost a little of his will, and was content to just sit and shout orders, but if he didn’t move, he would die. Sly and Denny never seemed to figure that out, so it was up to Clover to make sure York stayed healthy.

“Laundry and a bath, York,” she said from behind him, a hand on his back. She didn’t exactly push him up the path, but she kept him leaning uphill.

“Yeah, I know,” he said between wheezing breaths.

Clover had to be very careful about where she drew the lines in her ministry work with these hobos. She was tempted to take them back to her place, and cook for them and do their laundry and let them use her shower, but that wasn’t a good idea. It was bad enough, according to her mother, that she took vitamins, dental floss, and day-old down to them. “That’s a bad element down there, Clover,” Eileen would say while she squirted raspberry filling into those donuts. “You’re wasting your time.”

But Clover didn’t see it as a waste of her time at all. She liked these guys, and they needed her. Maybe she was wasting something by sleeping with Denny all the time, having that deliciously slurpy sex like they did, but that couldn’t be bad—it only made her feel pretty.

“Someday you’re going to wake up and you’ll be forty years old,” her mother said. “You’ll be used up and have nothing to show for it but a drawer full of dust rags that used to be donut-shop uniforms.”

Clover thought her mom ought to know about those things, in that that’s exactly what Eileen had to show for her life. Never married, one illegitimate daughter, and worked in the same damned donut shop almost her whole life. First as early-morning cook, then as a waitress, and now she managed the bakery in the back. The shop had changed hands twice in the five years since Clover started working there right out of high school, and had been sold more times than her mother could count since she’d been there right out of high school, but even new owners knew good workers when they saw them. And every time the minimum wage went up, they each got a raise.

Clover wasn’t doing anything important at the donut shop, besides flirting for tips. But she was doing important stuff down by the railroad tracks. It didn’t matter to her what the future held. That was something for the old people to be thinking about. She knew she’d never end up living down by the tracks. Not when she could waitress as good as she did.

She made small talk with York as they walked slowly, laboriously, up the hill. The path was only wide enough for single-file walking, so Clover put her hands on York’s back and kept up the steady pressure, alerting him to any rocks or holes that might make him stumble. On both sides of the path, blackberry brambles rose up much higher than Clover’s head. York kept an old pair of rusty garden shears and throughout the summer, somebody—Sly or Denny or Clover—would grab those shears and go whacking on the brambles, but it was a never-ending job. Tendrils were always trying to bridge the gap and trip anybody who ventured down to the tracks.

Clover and York made it to the top of the hill, waited a moment for York to catch his breath, then moved slowly toward town, stopping frequently to rest. Clover chattered on about the shop, catching him up on all the soap-opera news of her coworkers. Then she moved on to thinking about what they were going to buy at the store that would keep, and not be too heavy to carry, and would be healthy and yet a little bit of a treat for the guys. Clover always threw in five or ten dollars a week to help tide them over between York’s monthly pension checks.

York, Sly and Denny were her project, and it was a work in progress.

“You’re going to have to see a doctor pretty soon, Daddy,” she said. She only called him Daddy when it was just the two of them, privately together. It made her feel good to be able to call somebody Daddy, and York didn’t seem to mind. In fact the first time she did it, it just popped out natural-like, and it stopped York in his tracks. Then he smiled, and that was all there was to it. Now and then she called him that, and it was a nice little thing they shared that made them both feel good.

Once in a while Clover wondered if York had any daughters, but if he wanted to talk about that kind of stuff, he would. She didn’t want to ask. One of the reasons they lived the way they did was because they wanted to erase their histories, and Clover was a bright-enough girl to have figured that out first thing.

“No doctors for me,” York said. “When the lord wants me, I’ll just go.”

Clover didn’t know too much about much, but she figured he had bad lungs, probably a bad heart, and it wasn’t going to be long before York couldn’t make it up the hill at all. She wondered if he’d make it through the next rainy, cold winter, and she got a shiver at the thought of tripping down that trail some morning and seeing that the dead guy with flies on his face was York.

They picked up his check at the post office without any fanfare. Clover made a mental note to find out what it would take for her to pick up his government check when he was no longer able to do that. Then they went shopping, but they were only able to do a little bit before York was ready to give out. He grew faint in the produce section, so she left the cart mid-aisle and walked him out of the store. She sat him down on the sidewalk, feet in the gutter, and though she didn’t like to see him there like that, she needed to finish her business inside and get back to him. When she had more than she could comfortably carry, she fetched him and they began the slow walk back toward the tracks, York complaining between wheezy breaths that he ought to be shouldering the load instead of making the lady carry his stuff.

“I’m going to the Goodwill to get you some new clothes,” she said. “I’ll take Denny. And maybe we’ll get you a new cooking pot to boot.”

He nodded, and bumped up against her in appreciation. That was all the pay Clover needed to keep her going for another season.

The coroner’s car was sitting at the top of the hill when they rounded the last corner, along with a couple of other cars. And a local television news van.

York was beginning to see black globes float around the dull gray of his vision, and he wanted to make it down to his bedroll before he passed out, fell, and hurt himself permanently. He took it slowly and carefully, despite his impulse to hurry and get down there, and he made it down the path to his great relief. Maybe next time he wouldn’t go to the store. He’d get his check and have somebody else do the shopping. Or maybe he’d fashion up some kind of a mailbox and get the mailman to deliver that damned check. Or something. He had a month to figure out something.

A lot could happen in a month.

A lot had happened in the hour or so that they were gone. Pieces of yellow tape with black lettering on it were strung up around the place, and suits with walkie-talkies wandered around.

York didn’t have the energy to deal with it. He slowly lay down on his bed, instead of collapsing on it as he’d like, listened to Clover stash the food, and concentrated on breathing. It was all he could do, damn this worn-down body anyway. Even when Sly came running up, jumping over the railroad ties and all, out of breath with excitement, York had no energy to give to him. He lay quietly breathing and listened as Sly filled Clover in on all the details of what they’d missed.

And York was right. The mayor was there, supervising the removal of the dead guy’s carcass. The mayor was not smiling in front of those TV cameras.

York closed his eyes and watched the colors swirl around his oxygen-starved brain as he tried to think of a Plan B. He had no Plan B. If he was evicted—and sure as the sun rose in the east he would be—he had nowhere to take his merry band of freedom-loving friends.

“They’re leaving,” he heard Sly say, and he heard the slamming of car doors, and the starting up of engines. Then he heard footsteps, big footsteps from two big men, coming down the path, and he didn’t even have the energy to open his sightless eyes as a courtesy.

“Going to have to ask you to take your show on the road, York,” the sheriff said.

York had no answer for that.

“He okay?” the sheriff asked someone.

“We just got back from town,” Clover answered. “He’s pretty worn out.”

“Can you get him up to the mission or something for a couple of days? The mayor and the railroad guys aren’t happy about a murder down here, and, well, I’d just like it if you all found another place to be for a week or so. I don’t want anybody to get hurt, if you know what I mean.”

York knew exactly what he meant, and it wasn’t a threat, it was the truth. The railroad guys who weren’t thugs knew a few thugs, and they could definitely do some midnight harm to three bums living in the weeds, and nobody would ask any questions after, either.

“I’ll try,” Clover said.

“The mission,” Denny said, and spit in disgust. Nobody liked the mission. It was dirty.

“I’ll hear a little respect out of your face,” Deputy Travis said, “or I’ll take a look at all those Walmart bags there under your blanket. Something tells me that you, that lump on your head, and that broken Walmart skylight all have something in common. So don’t give me no lip, you hear, ace?”

Denny didn’t respond.

“We’ll vacate,” York said. “Might take me a little while.” Just saying that made the colored globes float around again.

“Take your time, York,” the sheriff said. “I’ve got no trouble with you. But there’s bound to be some vigilante talk in town. Besides that, whoever killed that guy might be back to make sure there weren’t any witnesses, and I’d like you to be well gone before that happened.”

“I’ll see to them, Sheriff,” Clover said, bless her heart.

There was a long pause, long enough for York to open his eyes and look around out of habit. He couldn’t see anything but vague shapes in the grayness. “Walk me up to the car, Clover,” the sheriff said, and one pinkish shape moved toward the two brownish shapes and they all disappeared behind the wall of brambles.

“The mission,” Denny said again.

“I ain’t going to no mission,” Sly said. “I hate that fucking place. It’s full of fools and assholes. The food’s bad, the preaching makes me itchy, and the beds are lumpy. I’m not going.”

“Whatcha got in those bags, Denny?” York asked.

“Presents for you guys,” he said, “but there ain’t no joy in it anymore.”

“You steal that stuff?”

“You don’t ask me that, York. You never ask me that.”

“See what’s happening here?” Sly said. “We’re suspicious of one another. You know that Denny steals, York, you don’t have to ask. Don’t be asking. Don’t be knowing. It’s these people, casting all kinds of suspicions around, left some lying here on the ground. Don’t be picking them up, neither one of you.” He looked up the path, knowing the sheriff and Clover were having a conversation at the door of the cruiser. “I wonder what they’re talking about.”

“Her virtue,” Denny said, and spit again. “What are we going to do, York?”

“We could move on down the line,” Sly said. “Or maybe I’ll just go to the beach for a while. I’ve been marooned here too long as it is.”

“That’d be just like you to abandon York and me when the shit hits the fan,” Denny said. “Fuck, my head hurts. This whole damned thing makes my head hurt.”

“Shhh,” Sly said. “Here comes Deputy Dawg.”

Deputy Travis was escorting the girl back down the pathway, and he was talking and gesturing, but the words didn’t reach, just the sounds of emphasis.

York put his head down and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to know what the deputy had to say. He never had anything worthwhile to say.

“Hey, York,” the deputy said.

“He’s tired,” Sly said.

“I’ll kick his ass until he’s tired,” the deputy said. “Hey, York.”

York opened his eyes.

“Move on out, you hear? This is a warning, and it’s the last one you’ll get.”

York nodded and closed his eyes again, worried. Worried.

“You getcherself home now, Miss Clover, and don’t be trucking with rail rats like these.”

Footsteps receded.

“I’ll kick his ass until he’s tired,” Denny whispered.

“You better listen to him,” the girl said. “I don’t trust him. Not at all.”

“What did he say to you?” Denny asked, grabbed her hand and pulled her down to sit on his blanket.

The girl was silent enough to make York really nervous. “Just don’t trust him,” she finally said.

“Don’t trust nobody during the moon,” York said. “People ain’t what they normally are.”

“So, York,” Sly said again. “What are we going to do?”

“Stay and fight,” Denny said. “We ain’t done nothing. They can’t run us out of our home and off our land for no reason.”

“Ain’t our land,” York said. “Probably belongs to the railroad.”

“So what?” Sly said. “I think Denny’s right. We should stay and fight. We’ve been here long enough to have rights. Squatter’s rights. We should secure the perimeter. We could plant a few antipersonnel mines, get us some firepower, and just fucking hold the line.”

“You’re nuts,” Clover said, and touched the blue bulb on Denny’s forehead.

“No,” Denny said, pulling away from her feminine touch. “He’s right.”

“Listen,” York said, sitting up and fixing them with what he hoped would be a riveting stare, only he wasn’t exactly sure where they were, so he had to kind of imagine where they were and take an average of their various positions. “The good lord has a plan for our lives, and the book is already written. We do what’s asked of us to do, no more, no less. If it’s time for us to up and vacate this terrain, that’s exactly what we’ll be doing. We’re innocent men, we know that in our hearts, and God knows that, too. We do what he asks of us and that’s that.”

“I buy that, York,” Sly said, “but I don’t think Sheriff Goddard and the railroad guys are speaking for God. I’ll do what God says, but I’ll not do what Deputy Travis says.”

“Yeah,” Denny said. “I’d like to kick his skinny ass.”

“You’re the one with the skinny ass,” Clover said, then laughed. And she was right, of course, Deputy Travis’s ass was pumped full of steroids. His muscles threatened the seams of his uniform.

“The key to life is accepting what comes down the chute,” York said.

“Not from those assholes,” Sly said.

York felt his face growing flushed. He felt his blood pressure rise. All his life, he’d spent going with the flow, as it had been said, accepting life on life’s terms, never asserting his will over that of others.

And what has that got you in the end, old man? Stinking socks and a dirt bed by the railroad. What have you got to lose by putting up a bit of a fight?

“Some things are just worth standing up for, York,” Sly said. “I learned that in the Army. There are things to fight for and things to let pass on by. This may not be our land, but by God, it’s our home, and we live clean, upstanding lives here. I work now and then, and bring home a fair wage for my work, you deserve the pension you get every month. Denny’s the only one who doesn’t have a legitimate way of earning a living, but I haven’t seen anybody down here arresting him, so I guess he’s discreet. Anyway, that isn’t the point. The point is, we’ve done nothing wrong, and if it was okay for us to live here before the dead guy, then it should be okay for us to live here after the dead guy.”

“What about guys like Ed?” Denny asked. “What would happen to him if he came down here and you weren’t here to feed him and preach the good kind of stuff to him—not that Bible-thumpin’ shit you get at the mission—think he’d be okay?”

“Ed’s not the only one,” Sly said. “Think about the guys who bunk here on an annual basis. Hundreds. It’s your ministry, York, it’s your calling. That’s what God wants you to do, not to dance to Mayor whatshisass’s whim.”

The boys had a point.

“I’m tired,” York said, lay back down and closed his eyes against the smoggy glare of the sun.

“I’m going to draw my line in the sand,” he heard Denny say, and then there was some scuffling about as Sly did the same, and for all York knew, the girl drew a line, too. But York was too tired to fight, too old to mix it up with the powerful men in town. He was just a sick old bum, and he didn’t want to spend the last of his God-given energy on some ridiculous fight that he could never win.

Maybe he ought to move to the mission, and add a little common sense balance to the hellfire and brimstone preaching the poor guys who lived there had to endure for their soup.

Not that he could stand that for more than a minute. He had to be outside. It was in his nature.

Maybe they ought to move on down the line.

But the thought of hauling his old carcass up into an empty freight car one more time was too much. Riding the rails was for the young. York and Ed were too old for that game anymore, only nobody had told Ed that yet. He was still clinging to an old way of life, and it was just about to catch up with him. York doubted he’d ever see Ed again.

If York moved away, then for sure he’d never see Ed again.

There were a lot of people who depended upon York’s hospitality, his good sense and mild advice. What would happen to them? Well, they’d be cared for, just as they’d be cared for by somebody after York was dead. When York first threw down his bedroll on this land, he knew he’d live like the lilies in the field, just like the promise in the Bible. The lilies didn’t have to grapple for their sustenance, neither did the birds nor the gophers. Nobody did, and he had been proving that all these years. He got what he needed, and if he wasn’t there to help God give to the others what they needed, somebody else would. God had a plan for those needs after York was dead, didn’t he?

But York wasn’t dead yet, because that wasn’t God’s plan. He still had work to do, and if he wasn’t going to do it here, then he was going to do it somewhere, but here is where he’d always done it, and he saw no good reason to move.

Denny was right. They hadn’t done nothing wrong.

And yet, what if they fought the system, and won the right to stay there, but God’s plan would have them on down the line, to meet up with some unforeseen destiny? What then? What opportunities would York miss? Would his life turn to gristle because he was rubbing on the outside edge of the container of God’s grace?

It was a horrible problem, a decision of unimaginable consequences. He couldn’t begin to figure what would happen by simply acting or not acting.

He was too tired.

The concepts tumbled around in his head like laundry in a dryer while he vaguely listened to the sounds of the young ones talking. Their voices were conspiratorially low, and York knew that they were including him in whatever plan they were making. He could always bow out, but the truth was, Denny and Sly seemed to have more on the ball than he did at times, and certainly more than Deputy Travis did. Add Clover’s smart compassion to the mix, and he was certain that everything would be all right. He heard himself begin to snore, and dropped right into rest.

When he woke up, he was ready for a battle. It just might be God’s battle.

The Western Express breezed by, sounding its horn, and York opened his eyes. He smelled fresh coffee. “Sly?” he called, sometimes disoriented at first, a little bit afraid because he couldn’t see who was there and what was happening.

“Sly’s in town,” Denny said.

“What did you all decide?”

“To hold fast.”

“I’m with you,” York said, with a strange certainty that made him suspect that work had been taking place in his mind while he slept. Holding fast was indeed the higher road to take, and so for better or worse, for the greatest good of all concerned, he was going to stand fast with them, and see if the righteous would indeed win out. How could he imagine that he could do anything other than God’s will? He wasn’t that strong. “Hold on to your hat,” he said.

“We’re all holding on to our hats,” Denny said. “Want some coffee?”

“Yeah,” York said with the excitement of a new adventure growing in his belly. “I don’t want no conflict, though.”

“We’ll take what we get,” Denny said, and York thought that was pretty true about life in general.

~ ~ ~

“They’re harmless,” Sheriff Goddard said. “They’re relics from another time. I know York, he’s been there since I was a curious kid. There’s never any booze or drugs down there. He runs a clean camp.”

“I want them gone.” The mayor stood in the sheriff’s office with his legs spread and his arms folded across his chest. He meant to be taken seriously, and if anybody held the keys to the sheriff’s reelection campaign, it was the politically hefty mayor. He wanted to summon the sheriff to his own office, but thought that might be a little bit too heavy handed. Goddard didn’t like to be pushed around.

“Sit down, Milo,” Sheriff Goddard offered. “Let’s talk about this for a minute.”

The mayor was no fool, and knew that it would be expedient to turn Goddard’s mind around until cleaning up that homeless dump was his own idea. Then he’d be motivated. If it was just taking an order from the mayor, there was no telling if and/or when the task would be accomplished, and Milo wanted those bums out of there, right now. He sat. “I don’t know what there is to talk about, Sheriff.”

“They had nothing to do with the murder of that sleazeball, and you know it as well as I do.”

“But the townspeople . . .”

“The townspeople will know it as soon as you and I tell them.”

Mayor Grimes decided to take a different tack. “That place down there is a disaster waiting to happen, Steve.”

The mayor hardly ever used the sheriff’s first name, and the ingratiating effect of it was not lost on the sheriff.

“I’ve got my priorities,” the sheriff said.

“I need you to rearrange them. Cleaning up the scene of a crime and its scummy, disease-ridden neighborhood should be one of your top priorities.”

“There’s no disease down there.”

“Where do those guys shit, Steve? Can you tell me that? When was the last time this blind friend of yours took a bath? You know that whole place is a major health violation, and for the life of me I can’t imagine why you’re giving me such a hard time about this.”

Steve Goddard knew all about the effective latrine system Sly had designed, dug, and maintained down there, but there would be no telling the mayor about it. Steve Goddard had learned a long time ago to pick his battles, especially with the mayor, and this was not one he was going to win. He only had a certain amount of political credits in his account and as much as he liked York, he didn’t want to spend all his political cash on him. He looked at the stack of paper in his in-box and sighed. “Give me a couple of days, okay?”

“What’s the big deal? Go down there with a bulldozer and give them thirty minutes to vacate. Need a dozer? I know a contractor–”

Sheriff Goddard stood up, ending the meeting. “I’ll take care of it, Mayor Grimes, but I won’t do it with any bulldozer. Keeping the peace is my job. Now, you can just cross this item off your list and let me handle it the way the townspeople elected me to handle things like this.”

“I know you will,” Milo Grimes said. “Thank you for your time.”

The two men shook hands, and Grimes left, leaving a bad taste in Sheriff Goddard’s mouth. He didn’t like the mayor, didn’t like his politics, didn’t like his sleazy way of lining his pockets at the public expense, just flat-out didn’t like his way of doing business. But politics makes strange bedfellows, and both of them had to compromise their would-be steadfast positions in order to serve the people of West Wheaton.

Goddard would move the hobos. But he hated like hell to do that, especially at York’s advanced age, and he wondered what kind of a dangerous element would take their place down there in that hole. Or would a new railroad shopping center go up on that land, owned by one of the corporations that seated Milo Grimes on its board?

What the hell. Maybe it was time York went to an old-folks’ home, where he’d be cared for anyway. Regardless, it seemed to be out of Goddard’s hands.

He looked out the window at the nice park across the street and all the kids who were playing on its bronze dinosaur sculptures. Milo Grimes had donated that land, and one of his corporations maintained it. Nothing there for the townspeople to pay for; they just had to enjoy it.

The mayor was a wily one for certain.

Everybody liked Grimes’s big-budget way of running the city. He funded all the social programs, kept taxes down to a decent level and showed up at all the fund-raising events for all the school kids. Parents liked that, and they didn’t care that his behind-the-scenes personal financial structure was fueled by their tax dollars as well. They turned their heads, and chose not to see, electing him over and over and over again. Some people talked of paving his road to the state legislature, but Mayor Milo was no fool. His bread was buttered right nicely right there in West Wheaton, and he wasn’t about to take his show on the uncertain, ungreased highways of Sacramento. Nope, he’d fight his little battles and fill his little savings account right there in town.

Steve Goddard looked back down at his stack of paperwork and decided he needed caffeine fortification to tackle it. He picked up his coffee cup and walked out of his office, just in time to see Milo Grimes shake hands in the lobby with Deputy Travis.

That was not a good sign. Whatever they’d been talking about, it wasn’t good.

Just before Grimes turned to leave, he glanced back and saw the sheriff standing there, watching, coffee cup in hand. Their eyes met, then the mayor left the building.

The gauntlet had been thrown. The sheriff had been challenged. Take care of this, or I’ll have your deputy take care of it for you. Doing business that way didn’t set well with the sheriff. He didn’t like being given that type of covert ultimatum.

Don’t fuck with me, Milo Grimes. Don’t make me do something I don’t want to do.

Deputy Travis swaggered in, and Goddard hated the sight of him. He filled his coffee cup and went back into his office, closing the door behind him.

It’s just about three bums, he told himself, trying to believe it. This is nothing to jeopardize your career for. Not worth bringing down City Hall over. Relax, take care of today’s work today, and think about York and his buddies tomorrow.

But the finely tuned intuition of a more-than-competent lawman told him that Grimes was setting a lot of metronomes, pendulums, and ticking bombs into motion as he swept through town, and the sheriff better be either following along behind diffusing them, or else taking care of the mayor’s business, and on Grimes’s timetable, at that.

He looked down at the big calendar on his desk blotter and filled in the four of the date, July fourteenth, with his pen. That’s when he noticed. Tomorrow was the full moon.

Great, he thought. Just what I need. Full-moon lunacy on top of it all. He doodled a few arrows around the full-moon symbol and then threw his pen down in irritated frustration.

He had been proud indeed when first his eldest, and then his second son left for the University of Oregon to major in criminology. Troy-the-idealist wanted to be police commissioner in some crime-ridden sewer of a city, where he could make a real difference. Zach-the-realist was studying criminal law, and would probably end up a rich trial attorney. Regardless, they had both been inspired by their dad’s ethics, and his belief in the system.

But that pride in his boys had slowly turned to pressure. When there were certain things Steve could do to expedite matters, he kept thinking of those boys, and what opinion they would have if they were to discover his not-quite-above-board actions. And how that opinion would shape their love for him, and how they would one day sit around, the two of them and their baby sister, all grown up, and they would talk about their dad, the sheriff, and the way he dealt with things. Would they be proud of his entire record, or would one tiny black mark overshadow all the good he’d done, the way those things sometimes unfairly happened?

This was just exactly one of those situations. He could do as the mayor insisted, infringing upon those men and their civil liberties. Their freedoms. The owner of the land had no complaint; the men weren’t doing anything but camping. There was no reason for them to be uprooted like that, especially since York . . .

Well, especially since York had been there for so many years. He was practically an institution.

Steve and York had had some pretty intense, in-depth conversations when Steve was a youngster, and York, although not yet blind in those days, had seemed just exactly as old as he was today.

York was the one who got through to Steve that he ought to be treating people the same way he’d like to be treated. His mother had tried to tell him that a million times or more, but when that concept came from York’s mouth, Steve heard, and he understood. Years later, it was York who told Steve that a gentleman always wore a condom. No lectures on morality or sexually transmitted diseases or the life-ruination of an unplanned pregnancy with a high-school girl. A gentleman always wore one, period. Plain and simple.

Steve heard that in a way he’d never heard his parents talk about such things, on the rare occasions that they did talk about such emotionally charged things.

One night, when young Steve Goddard had been restless with hormones and wanderlust, he climbed out of his bedroom window and by the light of the full moon, wandered around town until he found himself down by York’s place. A freight train was slowly screeching itself on by, and a little fire was lit under that dented and bent-up coffeepot that York still used to this day. They sat together, Steve and York, in comfortable silence until the train passed on by, and the two of them talked about the wildness of the world and the untamable human spirit while some blanket-covered soul snored and more stars looked down on them than Steve had ever remembered seeing.

That night, York talked of hopping freights, and the danger and the peace. He talked about the freedom and how addictive it was until it was its own prison. He talked about the fence of morality that contained behavior and gave life meaning, direction and rules to abide by. When the sun came up, Steve was foggy from lack of sleep, but he had a completely different view of the universe and his small, yet not insignificant, part in it.

And now what would his sons say if they found out that in the interest of being reelected, he’d thrown York out of his home? Just because he could.

Power corrupts, that’s what they’d say.

Unless it was for York’s own good. York was old. York had been old thirty years ago.

Steve wondered if his wife would let York stay in their behind-the-garage apartment for a while.

Probably not.

He ran his hands through his bristly gray crew cut and thought about going down and having a little chat with York and the boys and see what they could come up with together. York had always been a fair-minded guy. He might have an answer that Steve could hear.

But then going to York for his advice was a stupid thing to do, particularly since York had a serious interest in the advice he would give, and not only that, but Steve already knew the right thing to do.

Shit.

~ ~ ~

“Stupid government’s got their fingers in everything, know that?” Sly opened with that announcement as he came down the path toward camp. “You got to go to one government agency to find out one thing, and another agency to find out another. You think about the fact that all the schoolteachers are government employees, and that ought to make you sick to your stomach. Teaching all those little kids. It’s no wonder the world’s in a pickle.”

“So what’d you find out?” Clover asked as she brushed Denny’s hand off her breast. He was feeling frisky, and she was interested in just exactly what “holding fast” meant.

“I found out that the railroad owns this land we’re on.”

“That’s all?” Denny asked. “Jesus, we all kind of figured that.”

“What else was I supposed to find out? Who owns the railroad? Probably the government. They own everything. Besides, I didn’t want to get too nosy. Soon they’d be asking for my ID, and saying, ‘Your papers, please,’ like in the old Nazi movies and then they’d start a file on me. I don’t want a file on me, least not anything added to the file they’ve already got. I don’t know how you expect to beat those–”

“Shhht,” York said. “Someone’s coming.”

A long pair of legs, too old for the tiny shorts at the top of them, and too long for the high heels at the bottom of them, were stepping gingerly down the path. Above the blue shorts was a red-and-white-striped top full of boobs, and on top of that was a face too full of makeup and hair that was too red and too fried at the ends.

“Denny?” she said when she saw them all looking up at her.

Clover felt a red-hot flush come up her chest, over her neck and fill her face. She moved a little bit away from Denny, but not before he moved away from her.

“Hey, Brenda,” Denny said, stood up and brushed off his jeans. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see about your head,” she said.

“Oh, thanks, it’s okay.” Denny fingered the bump on his forehead. He felt uncomfortable, and it showed.

“Introduce me?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah, sure. That’s York.” York smiled and waved. “That’s Sly.”

“Hi,” Sly said.

“Hi.” Brenda felt shy, or coy, or something. She hoped she didn’t look it.

“And this is Clover.” Clover stood up, brushed dust off her uniform and gave him a look that would kill. “Clover’s my girlfriend,” he said.

Clover smiled and held out her hand.

“This here’s Brenda,” Denny said as he watched the two women shake hands. “Brenda saved me the other night when I got whacked by a pool cue.”

“We owe you thanks,” Clover said.

“Wasn’t nothing. He was trying to help a friend of mine when her old man came in and started giving her grief. It was the least I could do for a good Samaritan.”

“And I still owe you for that dinner you paid for,” Denny said. “I ain’t forgot.”

Brenda smiled at him and nodded.

There was a long pause, as nobody seemed to have much to say about anything to each other. Clover looked directly at Brenda, not with a challenge, but with the territorial stare of a vixen, and Brenda looked at Denny with a desperate, help-me-I’m-out-of-my-element-here look, but Denny was looking at the ground. Sly was grinning as he viewed the situation, and York’s brow furrowed as he tried to grasp the psychic vibrations of the situation at hand.

Finally, Brenda said, “Denny, could I talk with you for a minute?”

“Sure,” he said, and together they walked up the path.

“Nice to meet y’all,” Brenda said over her shoulder.

Clover stood still, watching them go. At the top of the hill, they stopped and faced each other. Brenda spoke while Denny kicked dirt. Then Denny talked for a minute, looking intently up at Brenda. Then Brenda spoke, and Denny nodded. Then she kissed him on the cheek, turned, and walked away. Denny kicked dirt some more, then turned and came back down the hill.

Clover never moved, not knowing who she was anymore. She didn’t know what she thought, or what she felt, or what she wanted. The identity that Clover considered hers had up and vanished, and in its place stood a stranger. A scary stranger. The intense jealous rage that flared up in her and made her want to strangle the redhead was as foreign an emotion as any she’d ever had. She had no idea she felt that way about Denny. But she knew one thing, and she knew it suddenly and for absolute certain: She had given Denny the power to hurt her, and to hurt her in a big, bad way.

“Brenda’s brother works for the railroad,” Denny said when he came back down. “Railroad guys are fixing to evict us.”

“What else did she say?” Clover asked.

“That Christine and her dumbass husband, the one who cracked me on the head, they took the six hundred bucks they stole from me and sucked it right on up their noses. Or something.”

“Anything go on between you two?” Clover asked.

“Did it look like it?” Denny was secretly a little bit pleased that this was getting a rise out of the girl. He didn’t mind having two women square off over him.

“I don’t know.”

“I introduced you as my girlfriend,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, stifling a smile. She sat down on his blanket and pulled him down with her. “That was kind of nice. You’ve never done that before.”

“Evict us?” Sly said. “What does that mean?”

“Well, you are,” Denny said to Clover, and poked at her playfully. “Aren’t you?”

Clover giggled. “I guess.”

“What did she mean, evict us?” Sly asked again.

“She meant baseball bats under the dark of night,” York said. “I seen it in a dream.”

Sly looked over at Denny, panic rising, but Denny was smooching with the girl, and Sly knew that once a man’s whanger got the best of him, there was no talking with him until it had had its way with him.

“We need weapons, York,” Sly said, and visions of his creepy lieutenant came back into his head. He crouched down next to York and whispered urgently to him, while out of the corner of his eye, he saw Denny pull the girl up and take off with her somewheres on down the track. “We need to secure the perimeter, stand watch, defend ourselves. We could use a couple of semi-automatic weapons, some booby traps, some intelligence about the movement of the enemy troops.”

“Don’t want no conflict,” York said. “Don’t want no violence.”

“Well, conflict is just exactly what we got, and violence happens if they start it. We’re just standing fast. Holding the line.”

The good thing was that Denny wasn’t much for basking in afterglow, and in about ten minutes, they were back. He kissed the girl long and hard, then whacked her on the butt and sent her off to home. The men had work to do.

“I’ll be back in a little while,” she said. “In case you need me for something else.” He lunged at her, and she parried, giggling, then tripped on up the path.

“Did that woman say when the railroad guys were coming?” Sly asked.

“Nope,” Denny said.

“We’ve got to prepare.”

“With what? How?”

“No violence,” York said. But over York’s head, Sly looked at Denny, Denny looked back at Sly, and they both smiled.

~ ~ ~

As Clover lightly made her way uptown, she idly wondered how a day could turn so dark and stormy and then so beautiful, all within the space of a few moments. She felt in love with the world, and for the first time, started to think about someday maybe putting on a white dress and standing with Denny in front of a preacher.

Her mother would like that, and then she could move out of her dinky apartment, and they could set up housekeeping in a sweet little house. Maybe her mom could live in the attic, or over the garage or something. Clover would fix nice, healthy food, and maybe York and Sly could sleep over sometimes. They could come for a good, hot meal occasionally, and they could take a bath now and then.

Or maybe Clover would want to move Denny away from there, away from her mother, away from York and Sly.

But then that’s the kiss of death, isn’t it? Marrying a man and then being determined to change him. All the women’s magazines said so.

Nope, Denny wasn’t all that good a deal, as husbands go. Clover was a good deal, because she was bright, shiny, loyal, a good worker and a devoted friend. She was sympathetic and nice and not too emotional, for a girl.

But Denny. Denny was a bum, that’s all there was to that. And Clover needed to watch herself real careful so she didn’t get knocked up and end up like her mother.

Maybe York knocked her mother up when they were both about twenty-four years younger, and he really was her daddy. That’s why her mother didn’t want her hanging around down there by the train tracks.

By the time Clover got to her apartment, her nether parts were all sticky, her panties smelled like Denny had just had a go at her, which he had, and she was ready for a bath, not marriage.

She was glad she’d the good sense to reason these things out instead of acting on them.

Still, it was nice to feel loved. And Denny loved her, she knew it.

She walked around the back of the house where Mrs. Fine lived with Charlie, her Down’s-syndrome son. Clover had her own little yard, but the yard man mowed it for her, so she only had to take care of what flower beds she chose to keep and tend, and make sure all the birdfeeders were full.

It was a hot, dry July, and the grass looked tattered and exhausted, though the flowers, well mulched, were abundant and glorious. Clover promised the lawn some water after she took her bath, and promised herself some cut flowers for the coffee table. She checked the feeders and found they were all still full, so the birds weren’t having a problem staying fat and sassy this year.

Her apartment, though tiny, was its own separate building. It probably used to be some kind of a shed or something, but it had its own bedroom with a twin bed, a nightstand and a dresser, a living room with a couch, a television, a Formica table, a teeny stove and fridge, and a bathroom with a little plant area next to the tub that got both morning and evening sun through well-placed windows on both sides. She started the tub water running, threw in some Mr. Bubble, and then turned the radio on low to listen to some soft country music.

It felt good to get out of that uniform. She smelled like donut grease, burnt coffee, and Denny.

She lowered herself gently into the hot, sudsy water with a sigh, and started going over the mental agenda she had worked out for herself.

First: laundry. She’d take care of that right after her bath, because she only had one clean uniform left, and Clover didn’t like to be that short on things. She could spill something ugly on it right away on her next shift, and then she’d have to look trashy all day long. Second: her mother. Clover worried about Eileen, the way she drank and smoked and ran around at night. If Clover had behaved that way when she lived at home, she’d get a slap for her trouble. But that had never been necessary, because Clover behaved herself. But Eileen—that was how Clover was beginning to think of her, instead of as Mother—was looking older by the minute, and Clover was certain she’d get herself either sick or into trouble soon.

Eileen was due at the bakery at three a.m. every day; Clover’s shift started at five. Most times, Eileen looked as if she hadn’t even gone to bed yet. Clover thought she’d pop on by Eileen’s apartment to see if she could do her mom’s laundry while she was doing her own. Maybe that would be a good time for them to talk. Clover was beginning to feel like the adult, and that was a shame, because her mom wasn’t even forty yet.

Something ate at Eileen, something Clover couldn’t even begin to imagine, but someday, she’d find out what it was.

Okay. She’d pop by her mom’s apartment, offer to wash her uniforms, and see where that took her.

Denny. Nothing to think about there. He was on her agenda automatically, because she liked thinking about him, about his shy smile and his nice hazel eyes, his brown hair and his reddish eyebrows and beard.

Clover smiled and dunked herself down in the soapy water. He would not be the father of her children, but she was certainly becoming fond of him. One of these days she’d give him up, she supposed, but she really hoped he’d change from his own wanting to, and then they could make a life together. That weird jealousy was not something she was interested in experiencing again, but that had been her own fault; Denny was blameless. And he’d called her his girlfriend.

Clover grinned into her soapy washcloth. She was somebody’s girlfriend.

Okay. Last agenda item: Railroad guys evicting Denny, Sly and York. She didn’t like the sound of that, and she didn’t like the sound of those guys fighting back. That bump and bruise on Denny’s forehead had scared her half to death, and maybe it would even be worse with those tough guys. They’d break him like a twig, probably.

Okay, Clover, she thought to herself, you’re so clever, figure something out.

She closed her eyes and lay back in the warm water, feeling the anxieties of the day soak out of her as Clint Black crooned softly.

Maybe Eileen would have an idea.

Maybe Clover could go talk to Deputy Travis. Deputy Travis seemed pretty interested in whatever Clover had to say, as long as the top button of her uniform was undone. Maybe Clover should put on a pair of short-shorts and a tight T-shirt and go pay a little visit to Deputy Travis.

The thought made her blush. Shame on you, Clover, she scolded herself, for thinking like that even as you’re washing your boyfriend’s essence from your body.

She felt like a sexy little thing, there was no doubt about that. And that was Denny’s fault.

And she was doing this for Denny, right?

Right.

She dunked her head back into the warm water, then began to lather up her hair.

~ ~ ~

With a cigarette in her mouth, and hair that looked as though it might have mice living in it, a scruffy, worn-out-looking Eileen opened the door. “What are you doing here?” she asked, her makeup-free face looking gray and haggard instead of fresh-scrubbed as it ought to look. It had been over a year since Clover had seen her mother without the thick makeup she wore, and the aging that had been taking place in that time was amazing.

“Just came to visit,” Clover said. “Is this a bad time?”

Eileen sneered, and Clover thought she might be sneering at her daughter’s youth as much as anything. She stepped aside, and Clover stepped up into the trailer that was coated with a thin patina of nicotine and smelled like food gone bad. “Why do you live like this?” Clover asked as she pushed up her sleeves and began running hot water in the sink.

“Why do you come over here?”

“I came over to talk, but you make me worry about you.”

Eileen snorted. “Don’t waste it.” She adjusted her bra, then flopped down onto the worn cushions in the settee. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Where’s your dish soap?”

“I’m out.”

Clover sighed in exasperation, then decided that a sink full of dirty dishes wasn’t going to spell the end of her mother, but she could spell the end of their relationship if she didn’t ease off. She turned off the water, dried her hands, and sat down on the orange chair with a blue-striped beach towel covering the seat.

“You got man problems?” Eileen asked. “I can help with those.”

Yeah, right, Clover thought, as if she’d take advice from her mom about men. Eileen, the queen of relationship disasters. “How’s your love life?”

Eileen smiled in spite of herself, stubbed out her cigarette. “Ain’t bad. I’m seeing someone. Someone cute, who treats me nice.”

“Good, Mom, I’m happy about that. He work?”

A cloud came over Eileen’s face. “Smart mouth, of course he works.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean anything.” Clover picked at her cuticles and noticed that her bath had failed to get her nails completely clean. “Everything okay for you at the shop?”

“Why are you here, Clover?”

“I’m going to do laundry. Thought I’d take yours along.”

“It’s in the hamper.”

Clover thought she could smell it from where she sat. “Okay, I’ll do it for you.”

“Good,” Eileen said, then stood up in dismissal. “I’ve got other things to do today besides laundry.”

“What?”

Eileen lit up another smoke, took a deep drag, and then struck a pose, looking down at her daughter. “What’s this all about?”

“I don’t know,” Clover said. “Life is just confusing, that’s all. Sometimes I wish we were closer.”

“Life is confusing, sweetheart. That’s why it’s life. We’re not supposed to understand it, we’re just supposed to do it. And keep on doing it, day after day after goddamned day until something happens.”

“Like what?”

“Fuck if I know, sis. I’m still waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” Clover felt as though there were clues here, but it was difficult, pulling out the tiny fibers of wisdom from Eileen’s experience.

“Either to be saved or to die, I guess,” Eileen said. “Between here and there is just daily stuff, you know?” Eileen sat back down and leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “What’s happening in your life, darlin’? You got mysteries? You got problems? You want to confess and make it all go away?”

“Not really.”

“Good, because that doesn’t do anything. Confession just makes everybody feel bad. Just keep your knees together and be a good girl on a daily basis.” Eileen snorted again and took another drag on her cigarette. “Why am I telling you all this? You’re the most perfect little twit I know. Don’t drink, don’t smoke, pay your rent on time—the only thing I know about you that’s weird is that you hang down by the tracks. That’s mighty weird, Clover. Why don’t you go to school or something? Make something of those good looks and big brains?”

“I will,” Clover said, but that plan was floating farther off into the distance.

“Deputy Travis stopped by today.” Eileen said, then hauled herself out of the little sofa and took the two steps it took to get into the kitchen. She poured two inches of vodka into a dirty jelly glass and added a short splash of orange juice from the small refrigerator. “Want one?”

“No,” Clover said, and then waited. There was no pushing Eileen in any direction for any reason. Eileen had a mystery, she had a secret of her own, and left to her own devices, she’d eventually spill all knowledge in order to impress her daughter.

Eileen leaned against the counter and gulped half her drink, then closed her eyes as it went down. Clover watched her face very carefully, and it didn’t look as though Eileen liked the taste, nor did she like the way it went down or the way it fell into her probably-empty stomach. For the first time, Clover realized that her mother was an alcoholic, and she wondered how she had managed to avoid that knowledge all these years.

That thundering realization and all the ramifications, responsibilities, and puzzlements that the knowledge brought with it almost caused her to miss the next few things her mother said, and she had to stop and rewind the unconscious backup tape that her mind always made when she was distracted.

“He said there was going to be trouble down at the hobo place because of some murder and that you ought to keep clear,” Eileen said.

“Travis came here?” In no way did Clover want to know how Travis knew where her mother lived.

Eileen smiled around her cigarette. “Yeah. I think he likes you.”

Clover grimaced.

“You could do worse, missy. He’s got a job. With benefits.”

“What kind of trouble, did he say?”

“You involved?”

“No,” Clover said.

“I don’t know who’s got bail money if you are.”

“I’m not.”

“Then take the deputy’s advice and steer clear.”

“They’re my friends,” Clover said.

“You need a higher class of friends,” Eileen said, then sucked that cigarette right on down to its filter.

You could use some better friends yourself, Clover thought, but didn’t dare say. “Well,” she said. “I better get to the laundry.”

“Yeah, thanks. You know where the key is hid.”

“You going out?”

“Got a date.”

Clover smiled. “That’s nice. Yeah, I’ll put your clothes away.”

“Pick up some dish soap while you’re out?”

“I’ll try.”

“Thanks, kiddo,” Eileen said, pecked Clover on the cheek, then went into the bathroom and closed the door.

Clover lifted the lid on the clothes hamper in Eileen’s tossed bedroom and almost closed it right back up again. Instead, she stripped the bed, dumped the hamper full of moldy towels and stinking uniforms into the middle of the sheets, and hauled the bundle out the door without saying good-bye.

Clover’s heart was heavier than the bundle of laundry, though. Her man was in trouble and so was her mother. Something had to be done, and it was probably going to be up to her to do it. For both of them.

While the three washers were going, Clover realized that being a man and being a drunk absolved people of their responsibilities, and that wasn’t fair.

While she folded the fresh clothes, she wondered if girls were always the responsible ones. That seemed to be the way it went, women running around cleaning up after their men. Maybe that was the natural order, and those who kept doing it stayed married. Those who refused, got divorced.

Did that mean that she’d have to clean up after Denny?

Did that mean that her mother needed somebody to clean up after her? Who would? What would happen if nobody signed on for that job and her mom grew old and sick by herself?

But that wasn’t something Clover needed to think about today. Today she just needed to finish the laundry.

After she put away her mother’s clean laundry and washed the sink full of dishes and then picked up around the place a little bit, feeling weird about being in her mother’s trailer alone, she realized that while she was there cleaning up after her mother, she didn’t really have to be there, and perhaps she wouldn’t do it again. She didn’t have to be responsible for either her mother or Denny. If she had to choose, she thought she just might go to bat for York above everybody else. York seemed to be pretty self-sufficient, and so was Clover. Needy people ought to hang together, and self-sufficient people ought to hang together, but maybe that isn’t exactly the way God made the world. Maybe he meant for opposites to attract in that way as well, so there was always somebody to look after the needy ones.

Ugh.

Oh well, Clover thought, there’s nothing to do about all of that today. Just do the laundry and be as good at life as she could. That lightened her mental load, and doing the laundry lightened her physical load. She felt ready for some adventure, and decided to go on back down toward Denny’s place and see if anything interesting had developed.

She looked around for a piece of paper and a pencil so she could write a little “I love you” note to her mom, but she could find neither pencil nor paper.

Cleaning the place up is a love note all in itself, Clover, she told herself. With a sadness she was afraid to define, she closed and locked the door, and replaced the key under the pot of plastic geraniums.

~ ~ ~

“The time will come,” Tecumseh Gittens had said to his protégé, “when God will test your mettle as a man. You’ll recognize that time, too. There will be no doubt. It will come in one swift and devastating realization, and you will know, just as will God, forever after, whether you are a man or a coward. You won’t see that moment coming, son, so prepare yourself, and make every decision a courageous one.”

York found it hard to believe that it had probably been some fifty years since he’d left behind a heartbroken Reverend Tecumseh. At times, when the evening was coming on and the dust was settling after a long day of busyness, doing whatever it is that dust did to justify itself, that York thought about him, thought about that particular pronouncement that York could recite to the word, with every inflection intact, where they were when he’d said it and the profound effect it had had on himself as a lad. They used to have some talks together, about things that mattered, usually just about twilight.

But York had just about decided, all these years later, that either the reverend had discovered that he, himself, was a coward, and placed way too much significance or blame on whatever it was that helped him come to that conclusion, or else he was just flat-out wrong. No life-determining, profound moment had ever had its way with York, not that he had always paid attention, but if it was to happen the way Tecumseh said it would, then it hadn’t happened yet. Unless it was that moment that he walked away from the reverend, but that didn’t seem all that courageous.

But then again, he was still alive, so maybe it was yet to come. Maybe that’s why he was still alive—the jury was still out on old York’s internal mettle, and when it had been determined once and for all whether York was a man or a coward, well, then God could have him or not.

All of this was moving around through York’s mind as the day dwindled and York became concerned about the next few days. He’d always been in charge of the camp before, but now he wasn’t. Forces greater than he had taken control, and those forces were called Ego, Fear, and Pride. This was Denny and Sly, two loose cannons, against the railroad guys, and nobody had a clue as to their agenda or who was poking them in the back with long pointed sticks. Deputy Travis probably had a hand in it, a loose cannon hisownself, and York wouldn’t be one bit surprised if Mayor Grimes held the spear that was poking Travis in the back. Travis was a suck-up, and might go to great lengths to impress the mayor, when the truth was, the mayor was just a small-time politician out for his own gain who would think nothing of slapping Travis away if he got to be too pesky after this whole thing was settled.

Obviously, York never read the newspapers or watched television. He wasn’t political, and he wasn’t in on the community affairs of West Wheaton, but a man couldn’t be breathing within the city limits for as long as he had without having at least a passing idea of its politics. Besides that, Clover brought the news of the day down to them more frequent than not.

Yep, this was a political problem, and York felt on the verge of war. He wished he had someone pretty, soft and nice smelling to talk it over with, but then, that had been a wish of his for many years. It had never come true before, mostly due to York’s lifestyle. Women came through camp now and then, but they were roughened and hard and not the type of woman that York would like to unburden himself to. The soft, sweet-smelling type would never live in the dust. Maybe the women York knew started out that way, but the dust got into their pores and their souls and solidified them into crusty, brittle creatures that were unafraid and therefore unresponsive to the miracles of life and the majesty of its details.

He worried about that happening to Clover. Now there was a sweet one, and she always smelled good, even after a sweaty shift in the hot donut shop, when she smelled like raw woman mixed with powdered sugar and scorched coffee. But, of course, all the men lifted their noses when she came trotting down the hill after a shower, when she smelled like powder and perfume and little-girl sweet. That Denny. He had no idea what he had.

Then again, maybe he did. He seemed to treat her with great respect, and that’s the only reason York allowed their dalliance to continue. If Denny ever raised his voice or his hand to that girl, York would kick his ass all the way to the other side of the Mississippi and make sure he never came back. But Denny had never mistreated Clover, and York discovered that aside from a personally felt twinge of envy, he had no objections to their young love. He hoped for Clover’s sake that Denny stopped the stealing and became a righteous man, but York held out little faith that that would happen. More likely, he’d knock Clover up, get arrested for grand theft, and go off to prison, leaving Clover destitute and heartbroken.

Wasn’t much York could do about that, if it happened.

And there wasn’t much York could do about what was about to happen to himself, either. This land belonged to the railroad, and if they wanted him evicted, well, they would flat-out evict him. York felt bad about his prospects, but he didn’t want to dwell on any bad news until it actually came about. A pot of coffee was a far better idea.

“Sly?”

“Yeah.”

“Coffee?”

“Yeah, okay.”

York heard him pour water from the big jug Denny or somebody filled up every morning from the hose at the gas station up the road, shake the last of the coffee out of the can and set the whole works on the fire. York could see the low flame grow a little brighter as Sly fed it some bits of fuel. York pulled a bag of beef jerky from under his pillow and broke off a piece to suck on, his teeth being store-bought and not much good for things like jerky, though he loved the taste of it, and offered the bag to Sly.

Sly sat down next to York, took the beef, and they both chewed in silence while they listened to the poor coffeepot begin to boil, and then, to perk.

“Denny thinks we ought to fight them off,” Sly said.

“He’s a hothead,” York said. “I’m saying no violence.”

“You want to just lie down and let them beat us to death with baseball bats?”

“If they come down here bent on violence, then I guess we ought to try to defend ourselves,” York said. “Sometimes I think turning the other cheek isn’t prudent in this day and age. But if they say ‘get on out,’ then I think we should get on out. It’s their land, after all.”

“We didn’t do nothing. It’s just a farce. They’re just throwing their weight around. Government-like.”

“Don’t matter. We’ve been living here rent free for a lot of years now, and that’s more than we’re entitled to.”

“Seems to me that if we’ve been here this long that we ought to have some rights.”

Footsteps sounded on the path, and York knew by the cadence that it was the girl. “Ask her,” York said. “She’s the one with the library card.”

“I’ll ask around,” Clover said when she heard their idea. “It’s sort of like common-law marriage. You live long enough on a piece of land, it ought to be yours.” She poured coffee.

“But that don’t help us tonight,” Sly said.

“It might,” York said. “You better go on home, girl. It’s getting dark.”

“I’m staying.”

“There’s going to be trouble, and you oughtn’t be here.”

“I’ve gotta be here, otherwise it’ll get ugly.”

“You being here ain’t going to keep it from getting ugly,” Sly said, and bit off another hunk of jerky.

“We’ll see.”

Denny showed up about an hour later, with a high-powered slingshot in his hand and a pocket full of ball bearings. He let Sly inspect the weapon, kissed Clover, accepted the cup of hot coffee she poured for him, and the piece of jerky that York handed him.

“Man,” Sly said, handing him back the slingshot. “That’ll do damage.”

Denny frowned at him and tipped his head toward York, who pretended not to have heard.

“I ought to have something,” Sly said, and he got up to go look for something he could use to defend himself and his territory. He came back moments later with a hefty, evil-looking splinter from one of the black, creosote-soaked railroad ties.

“You shouldn’t be here, honey,” Denny said to Clover.

“Too bad,” she said. “I’m staying.”

“No women in combat. It ain’t right,” Sly said. “The kid there will be thinking of you instead of tending to business.”

“No combat,” York said.

Sly nudged her, but she crossed her arms and held firm.

Denny wished she’d leave, but admired her grit. On the other hand, maybe somebody fixing to do them harm would think twice when they saw that a woman was among them.

“Ain’t nothing going to happen anyway,” she said.

“You work tomorrow?” Denny asked.

“Nope,” she said. “So I can stay all night long.”

“Good,” he said. Then he scraped a little hole in the dirt by the fire and emptied his pocketful of steel peas into it.

“I’ll take the first watch,” Sly said. “You all get yourselves some rest.”

Denny nodded and scooted around until he was lying down, his head on a stack of old newspapers they used to kindle the fire on the rare occasion it went out. He wanted to be comfortable enough to nap, but not comfortable enough to sleep sound. Clover lay next to him, her head on his shoulder. But there was no sleep in the camp. Sly might be taking the first watch, but it was early, and Sly was overly dramatic anyway, military history and all. Denny still had an aching leftover in his head from the crack of that pool cue, and wasn’t eager to repeat any sort of a performance that could get him hurt. Or Clover. He didn’t want anything to happen to Clover while she was under his care. Nobody would hurt York, and Sly could take care of himself. Denny had to worry about himself and this woman, and that was plenty.

He looked down at her. She looked like a child, her hair over her eyes, her little orange sweatshirt glowing in the fading firelight. She’d taken off her sneakers, but had her jeans on, and her socks had little kittens on them, he’d noticed earlier. He felt an astonishing surge of affection, and kissed her forehead. She smiled and nuzzled his shoulder.

Silently, the four of them sat thinking about their pasts and their futures, as they awaited their destiny.

~ ~ ~

“Gotta go, babe,” Travis said. “C’mon.”

“No,” she whined. “More.”

“Later, you insatiable wench. C’mon. Get up.”

Reluctantly, Eileen reached for her drink on the deputy’s nightstand, plumped up a pillow, and sat up to drink and watch him dress. She liked seeing him in uniform, but she liked seeing him in those tight, faded jeans even more. It was hot, and he wore a cotton plaid shirt that had the sleeves ripped out of it, a few ropes of tangled threads hanging down the back of his bicep. He tucked the shirt in and hooked a wide belt with a big buckle. “C’mon, Eileen. Get dressed.”

She knew she better hustle, or he’d turn on the light, and she wasn’t certain how old she’d look in this light, but didn’t want to chance it. Deputy Travis was a good fifteen years her junior, and she knew he was a little lusty for her daughter. Clover need never know Eileen was having a fling with him. It was nothing serious, of course, it was just one of those things that made her feel like a woman every now and then. Travis had been kind of a steady lover, if infrequent, and if Eileen thought about it, she could get mad at the idea that he was using her for sex when he couldn’t find somebody else. So she didn’t think about that. She chose to consider their relationship in other terms. She chose to believe he liked her company. She certainly liked his. He needed someone young, like Clover, and she needed someone more mature. But for now—well, for now, he always seemed to carry her brand of vodka in his cabinet, and he usually had some type of flavored drink or fruit juice that hadn’t gone sour, and he had a cock that would not quit. She liked all of those things.

“You talked to Clover, right?” he asked from the bathroom as he inspected himself in the mirror.

“Yeah,” Eileen said as she hoisted her breasts into a bra. “How come you’re not wearing a uniform?”

“This ain’t official. This is unofficial. A favor to the mayor and my friends at the railroad.” He turned out the bathroom light and came out to fit his off-duty .38 in the back of his jeans, then threw on a light jacket to cover.

She didn’t want him to watch her dress, but she had dawdled too long, and now she had no choice. She stepped into panties quickly, to cover her sagging stomach, and as she did, she saw his eyes travel the length of her in the dusky light. Then he turned away, and with a woman’s intuition, she knew that he hadn’t liked what he saw.

Maybe she’d join a gym.

Anyway, while he was looking the other way, she stepped into her pants, and pulled her cotton sweater on over her head. Then she made a couple of quick steps to the bathroom.

While sitting on the toilet, she saw that there wasn’t any toilet paper. A roll of paper towels stood on the floor beside the filthy tub. She ripped off a sheet, moistened a corner of it in her mouth and rubbed at the skin under her eyes to remove mascara smudges. Then she poked at her hair with her fingers, finished on the toilet and that was about all the time Travis was going to give her. He was understandably edgy; he had a mission tonight, and he wasn’t sure how it was going to go. She admired the fact that he was brave enough to venture into territory like that.

“Don’t forget,” she said as she exited the bathroom. “Clover dates that guy.”

“I would never forget that,” Travis said. “C’mon, let’s go.”

He preceded her out the front door of his house, then looked both ways, up and down the street, to make sure nobody was going to see them.

“See ya,” he said, and skipped down the stairs, leaving her there, no good-bye kiss, no idea of when they’d talk or see each other again. It was a small point to her, as she knew he’d be at the donut shop in the morning, puffy-eyed and ready for caffeine, but it would have been a nice gesture to give her a kiss or at least the promise of a date in two or three days. Or something.

But that wasn’t the shape of their relationship, and Eileen had to staunch that little drop of blood that leaked out of her heart as he dismissed her so readily. She was just a convenient lay for him, and she knew it, and to think anything else was to set herself up for certain disappointment.

Still, a girl could dream, couldn’t she?

“Bye,” she said, and resisted the impulse to touch him. They got into their respective cars and drove off, she to her cold, lonely, stinking trailer, and Travis to his side job for the mayor.

Eileen wondered if she should stop and check on Clover, to make sure she was home safe.

Nah, she thought. Clover’s probably in bed, tired after doing all that laundry. And Eileen needed a shower and an early night to bed, too. The bakery never slowed down, and her three a.m. shift seemed to come earlier and earlier. Before shower, before bed, she also needed a good, stiff drink, made with something other than grape Kool-Aid, which was all she could find at Travis’s place. She needed to get right with herself about the way that Travis treated her. Either that, or dump him. Maybe it was time to give that some serious thought.

Who else would she get to bed her, if not Travis?

Somebody, certainly. If she joined a gym.

She started the car, trying not to attach significance to the fact that Travis never touched her in public, ignored her at the donut shop, sped off into the night before she got her rattletrap car started, and didn’t stick around to make sure that it did start, never mind seeing her to her door, and . . . and . . . and he always went first out the door, and if someone was on the sidewalk, he pushed her back in and closed the door until the coast was clear.

She knew. She was no dummy. But all those fantasies she entertained about the two of them making a future together were just that. Fantasies. No basis for reality, no possibility of coming true. They gripped her the strongest after they’d made love, when she was awake as he slept next to her. She’d resist the temptation to touch his face, to smooth his hair, to stroke the muscles in his back or on his arm. She’d want to kiss him with affection, but he hated that, and he’d brush her off. So she learned not to do that, but to just look at him with affection and heartfelt desire and wish things were otherwise. She wished she didn’t drink as much or smoke, so he could respect her a little more, she wished she were a widow or something honorable, rather than having never been married, yet owning up to an adult daughter.

A daughter that was only a couple of years younger than her lover. And someone her lover had his eyes on, too.

No, Eileen and Travis were not to be for long, but for now it was okay. It was good, sometimes, even, when they’d had decent sex and sometimes Travis forgot himself and wanted to cuddle her afterwards. That’s when she felt like a woman, small, soft, and feminine.

Those times were worth all the rest. She ignored all the bad stuff—Travis was a jerk, after all, and everybody knew it.

Life included lots of tradeoffs. He was one of them.

Her trailer was dark, but when Eileen turned on the living-room light, she noticed that Clover had cleaned the place up. And hung fresh uniforms in her closet.

That Clover. Wasn’t she something?

Eileen had done something right in raising Clover, although she had no idea what it was.

She poured herself a glass of vodka, splashed in a little bit of orange juice and gulped down half of it. “I’ll shower in the morning,” she said to nobody, took off her clothes, put on the T-shirt she’d stolen from Travis a few months ago, and slipped into her bed. She picked up a paperback that was on her nightstand, opened it to the mark, but she couldn’t remember the characters or what they were up to. She’d have to start reading it all over again, and she had no patience for that.

So she put the mark back in the book and the book back on the nightstand, turned out the light and sipped her drink.

She thought about calling Clover and thanking her, but decided instead to thank her in the morning.

If morning came.

She drained the glass and set it on top of the book.

Morning would come. Life was too cruel to cancel morning and let her off the hook.

~ ~ ~

Just about the time Travis met Sonny Topolo, the Samoan heavy he planned to take with him down to the hobo camp as extra insurance, York was thinking about the man who had died not twenty yards from where he lay, Denny was thinking about the fact that he had introduced Clover as his girlfriend, and what exactly that meant to her and more importantly, to him, Sly was beginning to panic and think about sailing, and Clover was busy picking names for their third child, the first son being Denny Junior, the second one being York, and the third, sure to be a girl, would have a name a little less strange than Clover, but something equally as old-fashioned. She enjoyed being a Clover. Maybe her daughter would be Violet. Or Lily. These were thoughts she’d keep to herself, though, because they were certain to scare Denny away. There were some thoughts that she had to keep to herself: Thoughts about children, of commitment and marriage, and the thoughts that came right along with them about Denny sleeping indoors in a bed with her, and especially the biggie: the job Denny was going to have to get to support her and the three little ones she wanted to lavish love upon. Nope, there would be time for all of that, because they were young yet, and as things they wanted became as apparent to him as they were to her, he would move in those directions. She just had to be patient.

Introducing her as his girlfriend to another woman was a big leap. Things were progressing.

She sighed the contentment of a woman with an unencumbered mind.

Denny heard her sigh and wondered if what he was doing was fair to her. It wasn’t, he knew it wasn’t. She ought to be finding herself a man she could settle down with, a man who could give her the kids she wanted, someone stable, with a job and a house and all the rest. Denny was probably going to be a roamer, footloose, for the rest of his days. The fact that he hadn’t moved from this one spot in the last two or three years didn’t mean anything to him. He still felt like a transient, and lived a transient’s life, with no roots, no belongings, and no ties. Sometimes he caught himself in a daydream, where he and Clover had a bunch of rug rats running around the yard, playing on the swing set, and he read bedtime stories to them, and she had her own donut shop and he spent time . . . doing what? Nothing legal, for certain; he could never toe the line for some boss. He knew what the right thing to do would be, and that was to stop building up Clover’s hopes. He wasn’t good for her.

But every time he thought about her coming down that path, smelling so nice and giggling like a girl, and bringing donuts and seeing to York the way she did, and he thought about not touching her, or worse yet, having to know that somebody else was touching her on a regular basis—Deputy Asshole, for example—it made him a little bit crazy, and he knew that he’d never be strong enough to break it off with her.

Nope, she’d have to be the one to end it, and he hoped she’d do it soon before he had to feel guilty about sucking away her best years.

He felt her little head on his chest, and listened to her girlish little breaths as she floated on the edge of dreamland next to him, and his mood turned surly. Being responsible is the shits, he thought.

~ ~ ~

Before the clouds came to cover them, the stars appeared, and Sly looked at them and thought they looked mighty tropical. There wasn’t any jungle vegetation around him, but in the warm dark he could easily imagine himself in Vietnam. His nerve endings told him he was preparing for a raid and a firefight, and he was wound tighter than he had been in thirty years. He kept reaching for his M16, always within reach, but it wasn’t there, of course it wasn’t there, they weren’t in Vietnam, they were in California, for Christ’s sake, Sylvester, get a grip on yourself.

But he was no child, and he knew that life had its ups and downs, and that it had been too much of a cruise for him lately. For the last ten or twenty years, in fact, and it was time for some shit to hit the fan. There was nothing too fun about life; it was serious business. Even living like they did was serious business. Most people had no idea. Life was just the same, whether you were on the corporate fast track or living in a hollowed-out dump by the train tracks. You still had to find food to eat, and maintain a latrine, and deal with the weather and all kinds of people in the process. All the time dealing with people. Must be a part of the divine plan, because it was fucking inescapable.

Well, if everything he heard was accurate, they’d be dealing with some people this evening, and it would be no joke.

Stand firm, he told himself, and be there for your buddies. This was not a time that Sly could go sailing and either live or die by the hand of God and the Viet Cong. This was not a time where his foxhole mates could cover for him or take a bullet for him or continue the firefight whether he had been hurt or put out of commission in some way or just flat-out went sailing and left them all to their own devices. No, these buddies were damned near helpless. This was York, an old blind man who might as well be Moses or Buddha, as far as Sly cared. He loved York as much as he loved any other human being. York would give no resistance, York would not defend himself. And Denny was still young: the little rat had his whole life ahead of him. Nope, this was Sly’s job. He was the one who had been combat trained, had at one time been a fine-tuned fighting machine, though his mind went to the brisk and balmy Caribbean breezes every time the fight came his way. Still, he knew how to do all those things, and this, the fatalist in him reasoned, had been the reason all along for that wretched experience. He needed to defend York and their perimeter. Well, he could do it. He would do it, and he would do a good job of it. It might redeem his soul for the cowardice he had displayed in real combat. Nobody knew about any of that but him and his God, because the rest of the platoon sure as shit never talked. He was the only one who’d survived.

He reached his hand down for the M16.

It wasn’t there, of course.

~ ~ ~

Travis and Topolo drove to the railroad yard, which seemed eerie and uncharacteristically abandoned in the night. The two railroad guys waited there, smoking and shuffling their feet. Travis parked in the dark lot, and wordless except for a quick greeting, the four of them got into a green van owned by the railroad. In the backseat were two baseball bats. Travis tried not to balk when he saw them, their polished wood illuminated in the harsh interior lights. He and Sonny climbed in the backseats, and the railroad guys climbed in the front for the four blocks or so to the place where they had vermin to eliminate, exterminate, or otherwise induce or persuade to thrive elsewhere.

This was not Travis’s favorite job, and he hoped to almighty God that the bums would go quickly, quietly, and without a problem. He knew he could trust himself, but he didn’t know about these railroad goons. He resisted the temptation to look more closely at those two baseball bats, to see if they had blood on them or anything.

Maybe one of their kids was on a Little League team.

Maybe not.

~ ~ ~

York was worried over the dead guy. He knew that the mayor and the railroad wanted him off their land, but that was nothing. There was something else afoot. Someone had been murdered, and that was a far more threatening thing to have been brought into their world than a little dispute over squatters’ rights. There was a murderer at large.

He felt an unfamiliar agitation over the approaching evening. He wasn’t worried about Sly; Sly was a lot of talk and no action. York had been hearing about Sly going to the coast for ten years, and nothing like that had ever really approached happening. York had no doubt that Sly had been in the military, because occasionally he traded on his veteran status, and always to good advantage. But all that talk about defending the perimeter was a lot of hokey. York was glad that he didn’t need to depend on Sly for much of survival value. He came through at the right times with the right stuff, though, like medication when York needed it, and the occasional paycheck when there was too much month left at the end of the money. But battle? Never. Not Sly.

Denny. Denny was the impetuous hothead that had York worried. Denny and that slingshot. Those ball bearings could probably kill a man if powered out right and hit in a crucial spot.

But even Denny’s arrogance and disrespect for the law and those men who were coming to evict them tonight weren’t the real thing that worried York. It was whoever killed the guy and pushed him off the train. That guy wasn’t going to be finished with his business until he knew for certain that nobody could finger him.

York hoped that Sheriff Goddard was keeping Deputy Travis busy with that part of the investigation, and leaving to the railroad the whole question of whether York could stay put. Those guys had other, more important things on their minds than a couple of old guys living harmlessly in their weeds. But that Deputy Travis. He was another hothead who acted before he thought.

Travis and Denny going toe-to-toe would be something to see. They were both too ornery to let their fight flash to an instant conclusion. More likely, it would be like a giant anaconda fighting a gator, a slow-motion grind to the death of them both.

Denny and Sly both knew how York felt about violence and disturbing the peace of their little village. If they wanted to beef, they needed to take it somewhere else. York was in charge here, as far as that went, and he, in accordance with his heartfelt beliefs, would do what the powers asked of him, rather than initiate any nastiness.

If they wanted York to move, he would. He just hoped to hell they moved him to a nice place, with good-smelling women and not where he’d have to worry about getting his throat slit in the night by an icy-eyed killer on the train.

Sly had the watch, whatever that meant to Sly. To York it meant that Sly had something to keep his mind occupied, and York could relax. Sly had a tendency to go off the deep end when it came to military stuff sometimes, and his actions and reactions worried York a little bit. But Sly wasn’t a young man any longer, and those fighting hormones tended to diminish over time.

Everything seemed quiet and peaceful. York could hear Clover’s soft, girly snoring. Insects sang in the weeds, and a minimum breeze blew the smell of those creosote-soaked ties over York’s face. All seemed right with the world.

He relaxed, settled his head down on the sofa cushion he used for a pillow, and let himself drift off to sleep.

Next thing he knew, there was a hand squeezing his foot.

“What?” he said. Adrenaline shot through him as he remembered that they were anticipating some kind of nastiness, and that Sly was on watch.

“Shhh,” came the whisper from Sly. “Enemy approaching.”

York’s heart began to pound big and strong, and he found it heard to breathe. He tried to calm himself, to tell himself that there was nothing to worry about, there wasn’t going to be any trouble, but to be wakened in the middle of the night by someone who was himself scared, well, that just put too much tension in the air.

York was happy his heart worked so well, but he wasn’t so sure about his lungs. He kicked away from Sly’s hand, and heard Sly move around. Denny and the girl were no longer snoring; York felt them wide-awake.

He heard footsteps coming down the path, only one set of light footsteps. He knew that walk, that shuffling cadence. “It’s Chris,” York whispered.

“Hey,” Chris said in his pre-puberty voice.

“What the fuck you doing out here this time of night?” Sly said.

“Came to see York,” Chris said. “Why?”

“This isn’t a good time, Chris,” York said. He sat up and found it much easier to breathe.

“What’s going on?” Chris sat down on the edge of York’s sofa cushions and lit up a cigarette.

“You shouldn’t smoke,” Sly said. “Kid like you’ll ruin yourself by smoking.”

“I can’t sleep,” Chris said.

“It’s the full moon,” York said. “People get restless under the moon.”

“Can’t see no moon,” Chris said. “Clouds.”

As long as York had lived under the stars, youngsters had come around. He never put them off, or put them down. Kids, mostly, who needed somebody to listen to them, and York guessed he could listen sometimes better than their parents, and different from their friends. They rarely came in a crowd, although sometimes two came together for the first time, kind of daring each other, egging each other on, and then acting embarrassed and giggling and shuffling their feet, not knowing what to say. Within a couple of days, though, one of those boys would be back, just to sit and be in the company of men. Men who were different. Men who were free.

Sometimes York had company, and on the occasion when a traveling man came through, a man with not such a great reputation, York would chase off the young’uns. Last thing he wanted was for something bad to happen to one of the kids who was seeking out his company, his counsel or just a safe place to smoke a butt pilfered from his parents, and watch the stars. As long as York had been a bum, there had been kids coming around to talk to him about life.

Chris was one. Clover was another.

“There’s been trouble, Chris,” York said.

“Yeah, I heard about the dead guy.”

“We think they’re coming tonight to try to evict us,” Sly said.

“Evict you? At night? What kind of—oh, I get it.”

“You ought to be home,” York said. “It wouldn’t be good for somebody to find you down here.”

“It isn’t even late,” Chris whined.

But before he could finish that cigarette, before he could stop whining, before he could stand up, give his good-byes and get on his way, a van stopped at the top of the hill. York heard the two doors and the sliding door slam, and he knew they’d come.

“Get out of here,” he whispered harshly to Chris, and the boy lost no time scampering off down the tracks.

The first thing Sly noticed was that they had baseball bats, or at least two of them did. The third was Deputy Dawg Travis Twit. Asshole Supremo.

Sly stood up, and as he did, the clouds parted and the moon shone down on the whole scene. For a brief moment, in the black-and-silver light Sly saw their camp as everybody else must see it. It was a dump. It was a roofless house with little rooms, the short walls separating them made out of found materials, newspapers, chunks of concrete and dirt. The ever-present campfire glowed in the common area, and that’s also where York slept, without walls. It looked like trash. No wonder the railroad guys and the city fathers wanted them out of there. Who was in charge of policing up this area?

Just before one of the intruders spoke, Sly had a flash of gratitude that his mother wasn’t alive to see him live like this.

“Thought you were going to be vacating these here premises,” one of the guys said, and he swung his baseball bat like a pendulum by his side.

The other one had his bat resting gently on his shoulder.

“I’ll handle this,” Deputy Travis said. “C’mon, York, we don’t want no trouble, do we?”

“York’s got nowheres to go,” Clover said, and stood up.

“Clover? What the fuck you doing here? Why aren’t you home? Didn’t your mother tell you to stay away from here tonight?”

“She did, but I’m here anyway. Let one of your gorillas there take a swing at me with that big honkin’ bat.” She took a taunting step out. “C’mon, tough guy.”

“Hey, hey,” Travis said, stepping between them. He took her arm and handled her back toward Denny.

“We don’t want no trouble,” the other guy said. “We just need you to vacate the premises, and we need you to do that nice and quiet, and right now.”

“Or?” Sly asked.

“Why does there have to be an ‘or’?” The other one said. “This is railroad land, and you’re trespassing. It’s our legal right to shoo away trespassers. It’s our right to defend our land.” He let his bat swing down and crunch into Denny’s bedroom wall.

“Hey!” Denny jumped up and lunged at him.

“But we don’t want to have to do no defending. Right, guys?” Travis was quick to jump in front of Denny and put a hand on the offending bat. He turned back to York. “Help us out here, York. Can you guys find somewhere else to live?”

“Right now? This minute?” York said. “Doorway at City Hall.”

“We ain’t hurting anybody,” Denny said. “Y’all can just leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone, and we’ll all just live in peace.”

“The way it’s been for the past twenty years,” York said. “I don’t know what all the fuss is about. I don’t know why suddenly, after all these years, you want to evict us.”

“Because we can,” one of the toughs said, wound up and took a swing at the coffeepot. It was a direct hit, and that little pot sailed into the dark, trailed by sparks from the poor fire. The clouds moved back over the moon again, plunging everything into relative darkness.

“It’s the mayor,” Travis said, and York heard the desperation in his voice. Travis didn’t want violence, either. For the first time, York felt a kinship with the guy. “The murder. It’s just flat-out trouble, and we don’t want any more of it.”

“That wasn’t our trouble. Not our fault, and we shouldn’t be punished,” Sly said.

“Take that up with the mayor,” Travis said. He walked over to Clover. “You oughtn’t be here, honey.”

“Don’t honey me,” she said. “You go on home and leave us. We ain’t hurting nobody.”

“Okay,” Travis said, positioning himself in front of the two dudes with the bats. He was taking charge, and because he had a badge, he could. “This is the deal. Consider this fair warning. Tomorrow night, I want this place empty. Bulldozers are coming in the morning after, and we’re cleaning up this place. Tomorrow night, we’ll be back, and you best not be here, because all three of us will have these persuaders greased up and ready for evicting.” He spread his legs and put his hands on his hips. “Don’t make us use ’em.” He turned to Clover. “And you, little lady, you keep out of this. You have a nice mama and a nice apartment. You go on home and take care of that stuff and leave these here bums to the law.”

“You ain’t no law,” Clover said. “Not with those clothes on. Not with baseball bats. You’re just a bully for hire, and you ain’t fooling anybody, Travis.”

For a second, Sly thought Travis was going to raise his hand to Clover, and he tensed, ready to jump on the asshole the second he did it. But apparently, Deputy Dawg thought better of it because he took a step back toward the goons.

“You need help finding a place, York,” Travis said, “I’ll send social services down. You want me to do that?”

“No, he doesn’t want that,” Clover said. “And he doesn’t need any help from you. You just get your ass out of here. We’ll figure out what to do. Just go.”

“You got some mouth on you, girl.”

“Go away, loser,” Clover said.

Travis tore his eyes from her and her hurtful words and laid them back onto York, the pitiful old man. Along the way, he surveyed the sad little domain he had been sent to dismantle. “Tomorrow night,” he said. He jabbed Sonny Topolo in the ribs, and they turned and filed back up the pathway. He turned back, just to make certain he got the last word in. “Tomorrow night,” he said. “Be gone.”

Nobody said anything until the van doors had slammed. The van started, flashed its headlights, and drove off.

“Fuck you,” Sly said to nobody and everybody.

“We got rights,” Denny said.

York was quiet for a long time. “Clover?” he asked quietly.

“Hmmm?”

“Would you call social services for me tomorrow?”

“Sure, York,” she said.

Sly kicked at things and cursed under his breath. Denny remained quiet. York thought his life had ended, and reminded himself that it had been a long, wonderful ride, and maybe it was time. Clover started to cry.

And then it started to rain.

~ ~ ~

Bully for hire. The words echoed through Travis’s head all the way back to the railroad yard, and then he wordlessly shook hands with the toughs, got into his own car, and headed home.

Bully for hire. That wasn’t who he was when he was in uniform, but that’s exactly who he was when he was working his nose up the mayor’s ass, that was for certain. He pulled into the driveway of his house, turned off the ignition and sat there, his guts burning.

Is this who he intended to be? Is this what he wanted for his life? To strong-arm old men out of their well-worn rat holes? To push little girls around? To threaten harmless old fools with a baseball bat? He hadn’t carried one, but he might as well have. And now what was going to happen the following night? He’d given them an ultimatum. Now he had to follow through. He and the railroad guys with their baseball bats. He had to follow through.

He didn’t want to follow through.

He rested his hands on the top of the steering wheel of the Pontiac muscle car he couldn’t afford and he looked at his house. It was a typical, no-personality, cookie-cutter ranch house that he couldn’t afford. No furniture to speak of inside. No food, no dishes. No pots and pans. One sofa, one coffee table, one television. In the bedroom was a cheap bed and an even cheaper dresser, and the only thing on any of the walls was a poster of Janis Joplin in his bedroom. If he remembered right, he was still out of toilet paper, and the roll of paper towels he had been using for the task was about empty as well.

His life was headed the wrong way. He didn’t have enough money to make his car payment and his mortgage payment. He was bullying the innocent guys down by the railroad, and he was doing it for some future favor from the mayor, not for any immediate gain, but immediate was exactly what he needed. He was in deep trouble, borrowing from his credit limit on his credit cards to cover his ass every month. Sure, the mayor would probably back him when it was his turn to run for sheriff, but that wasn’t anytime soon, and the mortgage company wasn’t patient.

Bully for hire. Loser.

Boy, she’d nailed it right on the head. He was a loser.

Raindrops started dotting the windshield as he sat in his driveway.

Funny thing about Sheriff Goddard. He was a man that Travis had always looked up to, but Travis was acting exactly the opposite way that the sheriff would. It was as if Travis was still a teenager, with that authority thing—that pissy, don’t-tell-me-what-to-do thing. He thought he’d gotten over that a long time ago, left it behind him when he left home and joined the force, but he still felt that way about Sheriff Goddard. Maybe because Sheriff Goddard was so much like his dad. Smart, authoritative, respected, right. He was right. He was always right, and Travis rarely was right, and that’s what pissed Travis off. So he kept pushing it, waiting for a time when he’d be right and the sheriff would be wrong, and then he’d feel good about himself.

Maybe.

He wasn’t feeling so good about himself at the moment.

He needed something and he didn’t know what.

Yes, he did. There was one thing that made him feel good about himself, only it was just a surface bandage and he knew that. Still, it worked. She liked him, she liked him a lot. She made him feel like a king at times, and if the light wasn’t too bright on her aging face, and she didn’t breathe cigarette breath in his face, for a few minutes, he could make her sigh and squirm and he could pretend that he was king of the world.

It was late. She’d be mad.

He looked again at the solitary porch light over the door to his house, his albatross, then he punched in the clutch, turned the key, and backed out of the drive.

~ ~ ~

Steve Goddard watched the slatted light from the moon slide across the sheet that covered the contours of his sleeping wife. He sat up, pillow against the headboard, knee raised, sweaty and sleepless, and worried about York and the boys down by the tracks. He had a bad feeling about Travis and those railroad guys and that slimy mayor, and he wanted to go down there just to check on them, just to make sure that one broken-necked dead guy didn’t turn into a blood bath on his turf.

He had watched the red digits of the clock click by for over an hour, and there was no way he was going to sleep without going down there to make sure things were all right.

He slid his hand along Athena’s muscled rump, up across her back, felt the “Hmmm?” of her sleepy question as to why he was waking her up while the full moon was still high.

“Honey?” Married to a sheriff, Athena was used to being roused in the night, but it was always prompted by the ringing telephone. “Baby?” He rubbed harder until she began to make a little whining noise. “Honey, I’m going to go out for a while.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. “You okay?” she asked, her voice clear.

“Yeah, but we’ve been having trouble down by the train tracks, and I’m worried about York and those guys.”

“They can take care of themselves,” she said, and reached an arm around him. He slid down the bed and she fit snugly into the space that God had made for woman next to man, under his arm, her soft hair on his chest.

“I can’t sleep,” he said.

“Want to make love?”

“I think I better go check on those guys. Travis and the mayor are up to something, and I don’t like the sound of it.”

Athena’s muscles tensed a little bit as she came more into awareness. “Maggie Sweeney’s son Chris hangs down there a lot, and it worries her.”

“I used to hang down there a lot,” Steve said.

“I know, but I think Chris is more . . . malleable, maybe. More easily influenced than you were.”

Steve doubted that.

“Anyway, she’s going to get up a petition or something to get those guys out of there.”

“Well, that’s the way to do it. Nice and legal and safe. York needs to go to a place where he can get medical care.” He moved her arm away. “Anyway, I’m going to take a run down there.”

“Hurry back,” she said.

“Okay,” he said and kissed her cheek.

~ ~ ~

Everything was quiet when he got to Yorktown, but it looked as though there was a little town meeting going on. The fire was blazing in the drizzling rain and he could see people sitting up around it. He donned his rain slicker and carefully walked down the hill toward them. For a moment he felt like a little boy again. He wished he could be Chris Sweeney, young and innocent, trying to figure out what made a man a man. At forty-six, Steve Goddard wasn’t old, but he felt creaky and jaded. And he hated like hell to do what he felt he had to do.

“Guys,” he announced as he tripped down the path.

“Sheriff,” Sly said, jumping up and throwing off the sheet of polyurethane that he’d wrapped around himself. “Travis was just here with railroad guys and baseball bats. They gave us until tomorrow night to be gone, or they’d be back to beat us all to death. Isn’t there something you can do about that?”

Steve wasn’t surprised to hear it, but he was saddened just the same. Tomorrow night. Next to Denny sat Clover, who sat next to York. They all shared a plastic sheet over their heads. “Miss Clover, now what are you doing here at two o’clock in the morning?”

“I’m going to take York to social services in the morning, Sheriff,” she said.

Steve nodded. If York were safely out of the way, well then Denny and Sly could do whatever they wanted to. It might be best if they went back on the road and settled someplace else. “You okay with that, York?”

“Hell, no, he’s not okay with that,” Sly said. “York in some old fools’ home? Can you see it, Sheriff? Huh? Can you see it? He’ll die of suffocation in a week. York needs to live out here with us.”

“York?” Steve said again.

“I’m old,” York said. “Not much fight left, so I’m paying attention to the signs. And they all say to go.”

“Ain’t there something you can do about Travis, Sheriff?” Denny asked. “He’s turned into a goddamned goon.” He scuffed his foot in the dust and then spit. “Goddamned goon.”

“I’ll handle the deputy,” Sheriff Goddard said. “You just make sure you don’t give him reason.”

“Gonna handle the railroad guys, too?” Denny asked.

Steve Goddard looked at the little group around their little campfire in the night, the stars breaking through the clouds in the dark black night, the train tracks behind. The moon ought to be coming out of the clouds soon, he thought. Another full moon and here I am, witnessing the end of an era. Wild things become extinct because civilization encroaches. It’s a cryin’ shame. “C’mon, Clover, I’ll take you home.”

Clover stood and dusted off the back of her jeans.

“The rest of you ought to get a little sleep,” he said. “Looks like the rain is stopping. Tomorrow might be a big day for all of us.”

“Thanks for looking in on us, Sheriff,” York said. “Good night, Miss Clover.”

“Good night, guys,” she said. “York.”

The men chimed their good-byes, and Steve walked Clover up to his truck. Might want to drop her by Eileen’s place, he thought. Clover needs to have a chat with her mother. The hour was late, but knowing Eileen, she’d be up. She’d be up getting ready for work, if she had even been to bed.

“Don’t be wasting your life,” he said as they got their seat belts buckled and he started up the truck.

“I know,” she said. “But, Sheriff, they need somebody to look after them. You know they do.”

“Yes, honey, I know that, and everybody knows the contribution you make to their health and well-being, but it doesn’t have to be you. There are agencies for that type of thing.”

“Useless,” Clover said and crossed her arms over her chest.

“I’m worried about you and that Denny.” Steve said. “You’re not going to go and do something stupid, are you?”

“Like what, get pregnant like my mama?” She snorted. “I don’t think so.”

“He’s not the settling-down type, Clover,” Steve said, feeling like a father. It was a good feeling. He and Athena should have had a few more kids. Maybe they’d have had a little girl. “You need yourself a good man who will treat you right and feed and clothe and educate your babies.”

“I know,” she said, sounding a little petulant. “He tells me that all the time. But I’m young. I’ve got time. I can devote some money and some energy to those poor guys down there. I don’t need no husband and family just yet. Hey, where are we going?”

“Thought I’d drive by your mom’s place, see if she’s up to talking with you about this whole mess.”

Clover snorted again. “I don’t need her advice. Look at her. Who’d take advice from her?”

Deputy Travis, that’s who, Steve thought as the deputy’s muscle car came into view, parked big as day, right in front of Eileen’s trailer. A quick glance at Clover showed him that she was looking at her hands, and he made a quick U-turn.

“What?”

“It’s too late to be knocking on anybody’s door. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Good. I’d just as soon go home.”

“Working tomorrow?”

“Day off. You?”

“I work all the time.”

He pulled up in front of her house, cut the lights, put the truck in park and turned toward her. “It’s not going to be pretty down there, Clover. The railroad doesn’t want the boys down there anymore, and the mayor is going to see to it that all evidence of their camp is erased, and soon. Please steer clear, okay?”

“York . . .”

“I know, and I think it’s wonderful that you’re going to take York in to social services tomorrow. But then let things shake out as they will, okay? Sly and Denny will probably go on down the line a bit, and that’ll be good for everybody.”

He heard the ragged breath she took, but didn’t back down in the face of female emotion. “I want you to promise me, Clover. Let those guys do whatever they will. It’s time you started thinking about Bonita Community College anyway, and putting your extra time and money to better use.”

She nodded, and wiped her face, then opened the truck door and hopped out. He waited, watching in the dark, until she disappeared into her dark cottage, then he put the truck in gear, turned on the headlights, and slowly idled into the street and back toward his warm bed and his willing wife.

~ ~ ~

York had just settled down on his rearranged and soaking-wet couch cushions, wondering if he’d be sleeping in a real bed the following night, one with sheets and a pillow. He wondered if he’d be taking a regular bath and eating regular meals. Maybe he could get some spectacles of some sort that would help him see, and maybe he could get himself some better store-bought teeth. There was no use in dreading the future, he’d learned long ago. The good lord had a strange plan in mind for everybody, and it was best to just go along with it. Fighting the lord never got nobody anywhere.

Denny was still rustling his Walmart bags or something, and Sly was muttering to himself some type of obscenities, when York heard footsteps on the train tracks. He listened quietly. Coyote, probably.

“York?”

It was Chris, whispering too loudly.

“You better get on home, Chris,” York said.

“Can’t,” Chris said. “My mom threw me out.”

York sat up. “What?”

“I’ve got no place to go, York. I thought I’d stay with you tonight.”

“You know what’s going on here?”

“Yeah,” Chris said. “I heard.” He sat on the end of York’s cushions and lit up a cigarette. York heard the strike of the match, smelled the sulphur, heard the inhale, heard the burn of the tobacco as the fire consumed it, then smelled the smoke on the wind as Chris breathed it out.

“Smoking get you kicked out of home?” he asked.

“Partly, I guess.”

“School?”

“Stupid. I stopped going.”

“That’s what’s stupid, Chris,” York said.

“I thought you’d understand. I thought you would be the one person who didn’t judge me.”

“I’m not judging you, I’m judging your actions, and they’re stupid. Dropping out of high school is just plain dumb. Smoking will ruin your health. You want to do something good in your life? Quit smoking, go back to school, become a productive member of society. Hanging out in places like this isn’t good for a kid.”

“What about you, York?”

“I’m not the brightest pup in the basket, boy, and neither are the others who hang out down here. But you are. You’re a smart kid with a good brain. You’ve just got a little teenage rebellion, is all. You could have a wonderful future. You could be rich. You could have beautiful women looking at you all the time, but not if you’re down here. Look at us. We’re bums, and we’re getting throwed out of here tomorrow. They’ll put me into one a them places where I’ll have to pray and sing gospel for my food, and who knows what’ll happen to Denny and Sly. What’s the attraction, anyway?”

“I like you guys. I like your freedoms.”

“Ha! Freedoms. Listen to me, boy. Freedom is where you can do what you want, and you know who has freedoms? Those with money. We’ve got no freedoms down here. We can’t go anywhere, or do anything. I can’t get to a doctor; I can barely get to the post office to pick up my disability check. We don’t have freedoms, Chris, and don’t you ever forget that. Education buys you freedom. You go on back to school now, and you make something of yourself.”

“Can I stay here the night?”

“You going back to school tomorrow?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, that’s better than a no.” York said. “I think there’s some extra blankets under a tarp over there by Sly. Help yourself.”

The boy rustled around until he was settled, but York’s blood was hot and getting hotter. “You’d have to be a lunatic to want to live this kind of life, boy. It’s nothing but heartache and more heartache.” He felt his fists ball up and the sandy grit grind between his toes, and he felt a scowl etch itself into his face so deep it would probably be permanent. “You go on back to school, and you go on back to your mama, and you go on back to church and make something good of yourself.”

“You wish you had?” the boy whispered in the dark.

“We all have our paths,” York replied.

Soon he heard a little snuffling, and he knew the boy was crying for his youth, even though it was not yet lost.

I ought to be the one cryin’, York thought. But cryin’ only fixes things for women and little kids. Cryin’ never did a damn thing for a grown man.

York lay quietly listening to the rustle of the breeze in the weeds, listened to the boy trying to disguise his heartbreaking confusion, listened to the voice of the moon that seemed to call him. He listened to the blood run in his veins, pumped there strongly by a case of righteous indignation that initiated the squeeze of his tired, old worn-out heart. He felt the flush on the inside of his face, felt the cool of the moon on the outside of it, and he tried to put all other feelings and emotions aside and concentrate on what it was that the moon was trying to tell him.

Instead, he kept hearing his own words over and over again. “We all have our paths,” he’d said to the boy. We all have our paths. Including, presumably, Deputy Travis and the railroad guys.

And just exactly what is my path? York wondered. He thought he’d known, all these years, being out here, ministering to lost souls, but to end up in an old-folks’ home run by county money just didn’t sound right. The good lord always seemed to provide for York’s minimal needs, and while he thought this nursing home nonsense could be just a little bit more of the same, he couldn’t reconcile himself to that thought. If the lord was going to put me inside, he thought, he’da done it long ago.

Then again, maybe paths change. Maybe he was to be outside with the lost ones, with the travelers, the wanderers, and to learn his trade. Maybe now he was to be inside with the sick ones, the old ones, those ready to meet their maker.

Nope, he thought. It ain’t true. That ain’t the way. That is not where my path lies, and that is not the path I will tread.

“God,” he whispered out loud, “my work is too important here. You know it and I know it, and I ask that you look out after us and help us find a way to keep this ministry afloat. There’s evil people in this whereabouts, Lord, and while I don’t want to fight them, I will, if that’s what you’ve got in store for me. Me, and Sly, and Denny and Miss Clover, and maybe this here Chris, too, and the sheriff, if he’s the good-hearted man I believe he is. Draw them all to our side, Lord, and help us find a way. I believe with all my heart and soul that this is your will. If it is not, then tell me now, or tell me soon, before we all make fools of ourselves or end up in jail.”

“You mean it, York?” Sly’s voice came across crisp and clear.

“I’ll look out after them, God, and keep them all in line. Nobody’s going to get hurt, but we will fight, if that’s what you want, because that sure is what I want. I’m too old to end up in some bedpan place. Let me die out here in my own hometown, please, Lord.”

“You ain’t never gonna die, York,” Sly said.

York tried to concentrate to hear God’s message back—he always tried to hear the answer to his prayers, but by the time Sly disentangled himself from his bedding, and Chris sat up, sniffling and wiping his nose and eyes on his shirt sleeves, and then Denny was banging on the coffeepot, trying to fit the dented lid back on the caved-in body after it had taken such a heroic whack from a ball bat, York couldn’t concentrate on any message that might be coming through from above.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“There’s no time for sleeping now,” Sly said. “We’ve got work to do. Strategy to plan.”

“We’re going to kick ass,” Denny said. “And this is to help us,” he said, laying something on York’s stomach.

It was a box. York sat up, smelling the coffee as Sly threw a handful in the pot to boil. He fumbled open the box and inside were a pair of shoes. Tennis shoes. Nice shoes.

“Here, York,” Denny said, and handed him a fresh pair of socks, still with the sticky paper wrapper around them.

“Thanks, son,” York said, touched by the gesture. “I’d surely like to bathe before putting these on.”

“No time for that,” Sly said. “We’ve got work to do.”

“Can I stay?” Chris said.

“Shit, yeah,” Sly said. “We need foot soldiers. Cannon fodder. Ha!”

York wasn’t entirely certain that foot soldiers or cannon fodder was what they needed, but he let Denny take off his old boots and socks and wipe his feet clean. Sometimes the girl helped him to the Mission where he took a bath, and when that happened, she found him some fresh clothes, shaved him, trimmed his toenails and such. He reckoned that wasn’t more than two weeks ago, so he was okay with putting on some new socks and the new shoes. And they felt good on his feet. Felt gooood on his feet. He wanted to walk around, but figured that could wait. For now, he was content to wiggle his toes inside fresh cotton and a nice cozy envelope of fresh shoes. They even smelled fresh.

“Fine gift, Denny,” he said.

“Compliments of the dead guy,” Denny said. “Sort of.”