September mornings in the Eden valley are as good as life gets, Richard Hudson thought as he stood on his porch and inhaled deeply. Tendrils of fog wafted through the trees, responding gently to air currents that were undetectable here on the porch. The sun rising over the low mountain to the east would soon burn off the fog, leaving the morning crisp, blue and cloudless.
Three years ago Richard Hudson purchased this small farm near Eden and said a permanent good-bye to Manhattan. This morning he gave that decision five seconds of thought and concluded again, for the hundredth time, that it was the best one he ever made.
The garden looked pretty good, he told himself after a careful inspection. No aphids, only a few beetles, and not many weeds. Everything had done exceptionally well this summer. He went through the rows pulling an ear of corn here, a handful of beans there, picking three or four cucumbers and placing the produce in a bag. He had been eating from the garden for a month now and had lost ten pounds. And never felt better. He put the bag on the kitchen table and returned to the garden.
As he grubbed with the hoe, Richard Hudson’s mind turned to the problems of Prince Ziad of Endor, who just now was engaged in an extraordinary duel to the death with Ka, the great champion of the bird warriors of Alpha Theta Four.
Richard Hudson arrived at a solution to Prince Ziad’s current predicament before he finished hoeing the first row of pole beans.
Ziad’s adventures were swashbuckler fantasy; Hudson could tap out two thousand words every working day in about two hours. The stories didn’t take much thought, and the writing went fast. Then the publisher slapped a scantily clad, well-endowed beauty on the cover alongside the well-muscled prince in a heroic pose, usually holding his laser gun or sword at the ready, and the books sold like tickets to heaven. There had been four Ziad books so far—Hudson was working on the fifth. The gallant prince was making Hudson rich.
He had been a full-time professional writer of science fiction for twenty years, since he was twenty-two years old. Alas, Richard Hudson books had never sold very well. Only these last few years, after his agent twisted his arm and talked him into doing the Ziad series, had he done better than barely eking out a living. Before Ziad slashed his way through the hydra-infested swamps of Endor to rescue the exotic princess Calisto in his first adventure, Hudson’s best year writing earned him a mere $24,000 even though he published three books that year. Still, regardless of the money, Ziad’s adventures were only fantasy trash, so Hudson refused to let the publisher put his real name on the covers. He wrote Ziad under the pen name of Rip Hays.
Now that money was flowing like a river, he had abandoned Manhattan and was living the good life here in Eden. And when he finished the daily Ziad grind, he was writing serious stuff, sci-fi as good as he could write it.
Good sci-fi was designed to stimulate the imagination of the reader. Consequently the writer had to do a lot of thinking before he committed words to paper. The thinking was the part of the creative process that Richard Hudson liked the best. Making words appear on the computer screen, spell-checking and editing were merely clerk work.
Just now Hudson paused in his agricultural efforts and cleaned his thick glasses. With his glasses off the garden was a blur. It didn’t matter. His mind was elsewhere. Years ago he had realized that the primary purpose of the neocortex in the human brain was probably communication with other human beings. He had expressed that idea in various ways in three of his Richard Hudson novels, but if serious scientists read them, they had given no hint.
What would be the consequences, Hudson asked himself now, if a species developed the neocortex to the point that they abandoned speech? Deceit and lying would disappear. What would society look like then? Would it be human? He turned these questions over carefully and examined them from several angles.
Ideas had always intrigued Hudson. In his younger days he had spent at least two afternoons a week reading scientific journals in the New York Public Library. His income now allowed the luxury of subscriptions. When he first came to Eden, old Mrs. Marple at the post office was stunned when he collected his monthly armload of magazines in their plain brown wrappers. No doubt she thought him some kind of pervert. She finally concluded, correctly, that he was a harmless eccentric.
His train of thought today wandered from his mercilessly honest society and lingered momentarily on the great men through the years who postulated the theories we call learning. He took comfort from the fact that most theories eventually turn out to be wrong. The universe was an extraordinarily complex place, he believed, and the quest for knowledge was not almost complete—it had just begun.
Hudson had little patience with the popular media cynics who were well paid to sneer at the human condition. That mankind was noble he had no doubt. Noble but ignorant. Yet how terrible it would be to spend a lifetime doing careful research and rigorous thinking, only to have later generations shake their heads sadly over your efforts. Noble efforts so often ended ignominiously.
He replaced his now-clean glasses on his head and critically examined the bean row that he had just finished. Something moving on the road, just beyond the fence, caught his eye.
Someone walking. A young man. Goofy. Carrying his cinder blocks. On his way to peep in a window somewhere, Hudson concluded.
The writer went back to his hoeing.
Aren’t we all peepers? Really. We peep through any window, crack or mouse-hole we can find for a glimpse of some portion of the works, then announce loudly that we know what makes the whole thing tick. Don’t we? Of course we do.
So what would human society look like if there were no curtains, no walls, no secrets, no possibility of deception about motives?
About the time he finished the beans, it occurred to Richard Hudson to wonder where Goofy was going today. He might have hit on the answer if something shiny had not caught his eyes.
There, in the dirt, something…gray, with a dull luster. He bent and reached for it. Part of it was buried and he had to pull to remove it from the soil.
An arrowhead! A huge arrowhead.
By the Lord Harry!
He sat heavily in the dirt, beans forgotten, and stared at the artifact in his hand. It was long, perhaps three inches, and so perfectly made that it appeared absolutely symmetrical. The edges were flaked with dozens of tiny serrations. He brushed away the crumbs of dirt, fingered the tiny indentations. And the point…he pressed a fingertip to the point. Needle sharp.
After all these years.
And the shaping of the stem…so perfect.
The craftsmanship—the hours and effort and skill that had gone into this—instinctively he knew it wasn’t an arrowhead. Too big. Too heavy. A spear point? Or a knife blade?
Richard Hudson looked around, at his small house, the lawn and trees…and the Faraway Hills and Blue Mountains that formed the horizon. Then he looked up into the vastness of the sky. Three years. He had lived here three years. And he had never once suspected that this stone point was right here, in the dirt, a few inches under the surface, literally waiting for him to dig it up.
How long had it been there?
The firm coolness of the shaped stone set his mind racing. Sitting in the dirt with his legs crossed, suffused with a curious sense of well-being, he fingered the stone and contemplated the enormity of time.
Finally his thoughts turned inward. He felt good. Very, very good. In fact, he didn’t know when he had ever felt better.
This stone blade was partially responsible for that. It was so perfect…and it was without a price. Money had not purchased it and he would not sell it. It was a gift from a long-dead craftsman, an artist in stone, reaching across the ages.
“Thank you,” Richard Hudson told the sky, and meant it.
Trooper Sam Neely sipped coffee in Doolin’s Restaurant, listened to the hubbub around him, and contemplated the mural on the wall. He had never seen anything quite like it. The overpowering green made beads of perspiration erupt on his forehead. He half-turned in his chair and put a hand on his brow, blocking the picture from view.
“Hey, whatcha doin’?” Junior Grimes, the son of Moses Grimes, the owner of the restaurant, dropped into the chair across from Neely. They had met several days ago. Junior was a few inches over six feet tall and had thin hips, a flat stomach and a broad chest that supported a well-formed head with a square jaw. His muscled biceps formed knots under the short sleeves of his grease-stained shirt. His forearms were brown and thick and ended in wrists that were twice the diameter of Neely’s. He looked larger than he was and strong as a bull, which was no illusion. Just in case you forgot his name, the word JUNIOR was printed on a patch above his left breast pocket.
“Sitting here drinking coffee,” Sam Neely replied, which made him feel a bit stupid. He had already heard this greeting from a dozen people and knew it wasn’t a real question. Yet it sounded so strange that his first reaction was to answer it honestly.
“What are you doing?” Neely asked Junior, turning it around.
“Oh, nothing much,” Junior Grimes said, and grinned. He had a good grin. He apparently took all his meals in the restaurant, but he lived in a house near his father’s, Neely knew. Junior owned a wrecker service and a junkyard and from time to time sold used cars, but primarily he was an automobile mechanic. His thick hands bore the scars.
“How are you liking it here in Eden?” Junior asked heartily in another effort to get the conversation rolling.
“Okay so far,” Neely said, and drained the last of his coffee.
“Uh, if you don’t mind my asking, I hear you called on Anne Harris. Is it true she’s…uh…permanently moved in with Hayden Elkins?”
Junior had a booming voice—he was perhaps the least subtle man you would ever meet—and Neely was instantly aware that the question had quieted conversation throughout the dining room.
“Nothing in this life is permanent.”
“Not that it’s any of my business, you understand,” Junior said, trying to work some deference into his voice and actually managing to insert a detectable trace. “But people talk.”
“Gossip, you mean.”
“Call it what you like. There’s sure a lot of it about Hayden and Anne. Something like that ain’t gonna slide by unremarked. Around these parts it ain’t every day a man loads up with two wives. One can usually dish out all the aggravation most fellas can handle.”
Neely was weighing an answer when Mrs. Grimes, Junior’s mother, shouted from behind the cash register, “Trooper Neely, you have a telephone call.”
Neely was relieved. “Apparently Mr. Elkins has an unusual constitution,” he told Junior as he rose from the table.
The telephone was on the counter behind the cash register. Junior trailed along behind the trooper and stood close enough to hear the policeman’s side of the conversation.
“Neely.” He listened a little bit, then said, “I can get directions here…Okay. I’m on my way.”
When he hung up both Junior and his mother were looking at him expectantly.
“No wreck,” he told them when he remembered that Junior had the only wrecker in the southern end of the county.
“Uh-huh.”
“I need directions to the Carcanos’.”
“Carcano?”
“Hmmm,” said Mrs. Grimes, her eyebrows rising. She stared over her glasses at Neely for several seconds, then shifted her gaze to her son. “June, isn’t that the new woman preacher that moved into the old Thorpe place on the Vegan road?”
“Why, I believe it is.”
“Up the Vegan road, Mr. Neely, fourth place on the right.”
“They’re new around here,” Junior said unnecessarily.
“Why do the Carcanos need the police?” Mrs. Grimes asked.
“Why would a preacher call the law?” Junior echoed.
Trooper Neely drew himself up to his full height. Half the people in the restaurant were looking at him, waiting for his answer. “No doubt they want to ask me what I’m doing today,” he told mother and son and the assembled citizens of Eden.
“Preachers have problems same as everybody else,” Mrs. Grimes said to Junior.
“I heard that,” the affable giant replied, and grinned.
Neely smiled in spite of himself. It was impossible not to like Junior.
The state policeman laid a dollar beside his coffee cup as he went by the table. He consciously avoided looking at the mural.
As he left the restaurant Neely heard Junior tell his mother and everyone within the building, “He says Elkins has an unusual constipation.”
The whole concept of women in the ministry made Sam Neely slightly uncomfortable. What kind of woman would get the call? It had been his experience that women were a pretty righteous bunch without clerical vestments, so giving one a pulpit from which to point out the failings of men looked to him like a sure way to make Sunday mornings extremely uncomfortable. Listening to some dried-up old prune thunder about the evils of the flesh, Neely mused, with the cross behind her and colored light from the stained glass windows playing across the altar, would be a religious experience that would rock you to your shoe tops. Just thinking about it made him shiver.
So it was with mild trepidation that he drove into the yard of the Carcano house this morning and parked the cruiser.
Mrs. Carcano—he took it to be Mrs. Carcano—was waiting for him on the porch. She wasn’t a dried-up old prune. Far from it. She was a lovely woman still on the right side of forty, he guessed, with brown hair fluffed up. She was wearing a nice summer frock, a sweater and flat shoes. She stood with her arms folded across her chest as he came up the walk.
“Mrs. Carcano?”
“Yes. I’m glad you came, Trooper.”
“My name’s Sam Neely.” He removed his Smokey Bear uniform hat and glanced around the neatly mowed yard, then turned back to her. “How can I be of service this morning?”
“He’s around back.” She came down the stairs from the porch and led the way toward the corner of the house. “I told him not to leave and he hasn’t.”
“What’s he done?”
“He was peeping into my daughter’s window. She is a remarkably levelheaded young woman. She saw him and left the room, found and informed me. I went outside, told him to stay there, then I called the police. My daughter has already left for school.”
The man in question was sitting on two cinder blocks, stacked one atop the other, under a window. He watched Neely and Mrs. Carcano approach without curiosity.
Neely came to a stop ten feet away. He had put his hat back on to have his hands free, but now he took it off again. He started to wipe his brow with his shirtsleeve, then thought better of it and fished in his pocket for a hanky.
“I think he’s retarded,” he muttered to Mrs. Carcano.
“I believe so,” she murmured.
“Do you know him?”
“No. We’re new here. Do you?”
“I’m new, too.”
He stowed the hanky in his hip pocket and rearranged his hat on his head. He tugged at an earlobe. Finally he approached the man, who appeared to be in his twenties, with an angular face, heavy brows and clear, vacant blue eyes. His shirt and trousers were worn and soiled. His boots lay beside him on the ground, and he was barefoot.
“This lady says you were peeping in the window.”
The man nodded slowly.
“Were you?”
His head bobbed quickly several times.
“Why?”
This question took a while to process. Finally a look of surprise crossed the angular face. “Girl in there,” he said.
Well, it was a stupid question, Neely thought ruefully. He glanced at Mrs. Carcano, who wore a gentle smile.
“What’s your name?”
“Goofy.” He had to repeat it twice before Neely was sure he had it. The words were a bit slurred.
“What’s your last name?”
This question puzzled the young man, who rubbed his arms as he thought about it. “Don’t know,” he said finally. “People call me Goofy.”
“Where do you live?”
He gestured at the road. “Ice’s.” At least, that’s what it sounded like to Neely.
“Why did you take your boots off?” Mrs. Carcano asked.
“Too hot.”
The boots were heavy leather brogans. “Well, I suspect they would be,” she said.
Trooper Neely walked away from Goofy. Mrs. Carcano followed. The sun had burned off the morning fog and the sun shown brightly.
Neely stopped and faced the minister. “Will you sign a complaint?”
“No.”
“I can’t arrest him for a misdemeanor that wasn’t committed in my presence unless someone signs a complaint.”
“I understand. Nevertheless, I will not sign a complaint against a retarded person.”
“Where is Mr. Carcano?”
“Dead.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
She looked slightly amused. “He died in a traffic accident several years ago, Mr. Neely. The Lord was kind. He died instantly and doubtlessly didn’t feel any pain. And if he were here today he would not sign a complaint, either.”
“I see.”
She brushed the hair back from her forehead. “It was a difficult thing, losing him like that. We expect life to be gentle to us, and we are sometimes surprised and very hurt when for a few moments life isn’t gentle. I found that getting over the loss was the easy part. Continuing to live a life I had shared with him proved quite impossible. When I was offered a ministry here, I decided to accept.”
Neely took off his hat again and turned it slowly in his hands.
“My daughter and I like it here. This is a good place, I think.”
He nodded.
“A very good place.”
“Even with Goofy?”
“Especially with Goofy. He is a harmless creature.”
“Who peeps.”
“Apparently.”
“Why did you call the police, Mrs. Carcano? You knew when you saw him that he was retarded and you knew you wouldn’t sign a complaint. Once you made that decision it was no longer a police matter.”
“I don’t know who he is or where he lives, Mr. Neely. You must take him home, talk to his people. It would put me in a difficult position to do that.”
Neely nodded. “I see.”
“It would be nice if something could be done to prevent future incidents of this sort.”
Neely put his hat back on and settled it at the prescribed angle. He was dubious. “Without a complaint…”
“It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Neely.” She offered her hand and a smile. “Perhaps I’ll see you Sunday morning at the Eden Chapel.”
“Perhaps.”
Neely walked over to where Goofy was sitting. “You’re going to have to come with me. Put your boots on.”
Goofy didn’t tie the laces on his boots. He stomped them on, then picked up the cinder blocks, one in each hand.
“Leave those here,” Neely told him.
“They aren’t mine,” Mrs. Carcano said. “He must have brought them with him. I don’t own any cinder blocks.”
Goofy nodded. Neely shrugged. “Come on,” he said.
“Wait,” said Mrs. Carcano. She knelt and tied the laces on Goofy’s boots.
When she straightened, Sam Neely asked her, “What time are services on Sunday?”
“Ten o’clock.”
The trooper smiled. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Mrs. Carcano.”
Sam Neely made Goofy put the cinder blocks in the trunk. As he pulled out of the driveway he was unsure of which way to turn. He paused at the road and thought about it, then turned left and pointed the car toward Eden and Indian River.
In the sheriff’s office he told Goofy to sit in a chair outside the counter. Deputy Delmar Clay was doing paperwork at the desk and frowned at Goofy. “Hey, retard. You peeping again?”
“Yeah,” Goofy said.
“Again?” Neely asked.
“Didn’t they tell you?” Delmar Clay asked. “Ol’ Goofy here is our local pervert. Ain’t got enough brains to wipe his nose, but he’s smart enough to always take two cinder blocks with him when he goes peeping because the windows might be too high and there might not be anything else handy to stand on. He did have the cinder blocks, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Neely acknowledged.
He felt so exasperated and depressed that he dropped into a chair beside Goofy. Finally he roused himself enough to ask Delmar, “Sheriff in?”
“Nope. Went over to the drugstore to get some cigars.”
Neely nodded.
Delmar Clay tilted his chair back and smiled broadly. “No use locking the retard up. They’ll just let him go.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope,” said Clay, obviously enjoying himself. “Little moron can look into any window he wants. And he knows it, too. Isn’t that right, Goofy?”
The retarded man’s face lost its permanent half grin and brightened momentarily into a smile. It was there for a moment, then it faded.
“The sheriff will be back in a bit. He can tell you himself, so he can.”
Neely couldn’t wait. He stood, adjusted the heavy gunbelt and told Goofy, “You wait here. Wait right there in that chair and don’t go anyplace.”
“He won’t. I’ll see to that.” Delmar Clay scowled at Goofy, who didn’t seem to mind. His expression didn’t change. He looked at Delmar for a moment, then gazed around the room.
Neely went upstairs to see the judge. Audrey ushered Neely into the private office where Lester Storm was reading a newspaper.
“Morning, Neely,” Storm boomed. “How’s crime?” The judge chuckled at his own wit.
Everyone in this county is nuthouse crazy, Neely told himself as he found a seat. “Got a peeping case for you, Judge. A fellow named Goofy.”
“You brought Goofy in?”
“Yes, sir. He was looking in a window at the home of Mrs. Carcano, the new minister at the Eden Chapel, peeping at her daughter. She called the police, then wouldn’t sign a complaint.”
Judge Storm shrugged. “Nothing we can do,” he said. “The boy’s retarded.”
“I understand that, Judge. But letting him go around peeping in windows doesn’t seem right.”
“Did you talk to Arleigh Tate about this?”
“Not yet. He’s over at the drugstore buying cigars and I got tired of listening to Delmar Clay.”
The judge nodded. He said, “I got tired of Delmar years ago—welcome to the club. Talk to Arleigh.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Even if someone signed a complaint, Goofy’s not mentally competent,” the judge explained patiently. “Goofy is incapable of forming criminal intent. No incompetent person is going to be convicted of a crime in this county while I’m on the bench.”
Neely accepted that, reluctantly. “Maybe he should be sent somewhere…”
“To involuntarily commit someone, the law requires that I make two findings based on a preponderance of the evidence. First, that the person in question is incompetent. Goofy is, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Second, that the person is a danger to himself or someone else. Goofy is not dangerous. To anybody. Some of these women might think he’s a pain in the ass, but dangerous? Nooo.”
“A man going around spying on women doesn’t seem right, somehow.”
“In this country we don’t lock people up for being a pain in the ass. Any woman who doesn’t want Goofy watching can draw her curtains or do her primping on the second floor. Goofy doesn’t carry a ladder.”
“Just two cinder blocks.”
“That’s right. One in each hand. He’s been toting those blocks and looking in windows since he went through puberty. Nothing you or I could do or say is going to make him less interested in girls or stop wanting to look.”
Neely looked dubious.
“Believe me,” Lester Storm added. “I tried it years ago.” The judge waggled a finger at the state trooper. “You tell Preacher Carcano that there are some things in this world that we have to accept the way they are. All the prayer and good intentions and Christian salvation we can muster aren’t going to change them.”
“I think she knows that.”
“Ain’t a solitary thing wrong with Goofy’s interest in women,” Lester Storm said darkly. “Most natural thing in the world. It isn’t dirty. Those Bible thumpers hoot and holler about sin and they don’t know the very first—”
“Mrs. Carcano isn’t like that,” Sam Neely said with an edge in his voice.
“I sincerely hope so,” Judge Storm thundered. He leaned back in his chair, adjusted his testicles and picked up his newspaper.
“Thanks for your time, Judge.”
Lester Storm grunted from behind the paper. Sam Neely closed the door on his way out.
In the sheriff’s office in the basement, Goofy was still sitting where Neely had left him. “Do you have to go to the bathroom?” Neely asked.
Goofy nodded.
“Where is it?” Neely asked Delmar Clay, who was leaning back in his chair with his feet on the desk. Delmar jerked a thumb. Goofy went.
“Sheriff’s back. In his office.”
Neely thought about it, then decided he didn’t need to talk to Arleigh Tate.
“So you went up to see ol’ Lester, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Found out that the retard can peek in any window he wants and nothing anybody can do?”
“Yeah.”
“I won’t bother to tell you I told you so,” Delmar said, and grinned slyly. “Guess you don’t believe the stuff us old hands can tell you. Must be that state police academy education.”
“Oh, can it.”
“The only way that retard can be cured is for a bunch of us to take him out behind the barn and teach him a lesson that gets through to his pea brain.”
Neely stepped over to the desk and looked down at Deputy Delmar Clay. “You ever lay a finger on that man, Clay, and I’ll smear your nose all over your face.”
“You and who else?”
“Clay, get your feet off that desk.” Arleigh Tate was standing in the doorway of his private office. “I put three summonses on that desk this morning. Go serve them.”
“Sheriff, I—”
“Right now!”
Clay went.
“You come in here, Neely. We need to talk.”
“Goofy’s in your bathroom, Sheriff. We better wait till he gets out.”
“Okay.”
When Goofy was back in his chair, Neely went in to see the sheriff. Tate unwrapped a cigar and stuck it into his mouth. He didn’t light it. “Want to tell me about it?”
Neely did.
“Goofy lives with Verlin and Minnie Ice,” Tate told the trooper at the end of his recital. “I think he’s Verlin’s illegitimate son. He’s harmless.”
“That’s what everyone says.”
“Don’t want you threatening the deputies, Neely. A thing like that will get around and make it hard for them to do their job. And Clay works the southern half of the county, shares your beat.”
“I’m sorry, sir. Clay is—”
“I know. Wish I could fire him, but I can’t.” Tate expectorated into his spittoon. “He married my wife’s second cousin.”
“Oh. Your wife likes him?”
“She can’t stand the son of a bitch. It’s politics.”
“Politics?”
“The girl he married has fifty voting relatives in the northern end of the county,” Tate explained. “She’s sort of scatterbrained, and I can’t say much for her taste in men, but she’s a nice girl and he needed a job to support her. So I promised him a job and picked up fifty votes.”
“But why do you have him working the southern end of the county?”
“Like I said, politics. If I sent him up north he’d hound his wife’s relatives and I’d lose the fifty votes.”
“Won’t Clay cost you votes around Eden?”
“Luckily my wife is from Eden. Her relatives vote for me so I’ll have a job to support her.”
For the first time since he said good-bye to Mrs. Carcano, Sam Neely grinned.
“To survive as a cop, Neely, you must learn not to take yourself or your job too seriously. You aren’t going to be able to save the world. Hell, for all I know it doesn’t need saving. Just remember that there are good people out there. They get into trouble from time to time and that’s where you come in, but these are your friends and neighbors. Always treat them as you would want to be treated if you were in their place. That’s what Delmar Clay is too stupid to understand.”
After a bit Neely asked, “Where does Verlin Ice live?”
“Past Eden, up toward Vegan. Goofy will show you. He showed me when I became sheriff.”