LITMIR.BIZ

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rest of the world – had been too dazzled to recognize it.

      ‘Does he need help?’ Howie asked.

      ‘I think it’s better we let him go.’

      ‘Jo-Beth!’ somebody called. A middle-aged woman was striding towards them, both dress and features plain to the point of severity.

      ‘Was that Tommy-Ray?’ she said as she approached.

      ‘Yes it was.’

      ‘He never stops by any longer.’ She had come to a halt a yard from Howie, staring at him with a look of mild puzzlement on her face. ‘Are you coming to the store, Jo-Beth?’ she said, not looking away from Howie. ‘We’re already late opening.’

      ‘I’m coming.’

      ‘Is your friend coming too?’ the woman asked pointedly.

      ‘Oh yes … I’m sorry … Howie … this is Lois Knapp.’

      ‘Mrs,’ the woman put in, as though her marital status were a talisman against strange young men.

      ‘Lois … this is Howie Katz.’

      ‘Katz?’ Mrs Knapp replied. ‘Katz?’ She removed her gaze from Howie, and studied her watch. ‘Five minutes late,’ she said.

      ‘It’s no problem,’ Jo-Beth said. ‘We never get anyone in before noon.’

      Mrs Knapp looked shocked at this indiscretion.

      ‘The Lord’s work is not to be taken lightly,’ she remarked. ‘Please be quick.’ Then she stalked off.

      ‘Fun lady,’ Howie commented.

      ‘She’s not as bad as she looks.’

      ‘That’d be difficult.’

      ‘I’d better go.’

      ‘Why?’ Howie said. ‘It’s a beautiful day. We could go someplace. Make the most of the weather.’

      ‘It’ll be a beautiful day tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. This is California, Howie.’

      ‘Come with me anyway.’

      ‘Let me try to make my peace with Lois first. I don’t want to be on everyone’s hit list. It’ll upset Momma.’

      ‘So when?’

      ‘When what?’

      ‘When will you be free?’

      ‘You don’t give up, do you?’

      ‘Nope.’

      ‘I’ll tell Lois I’m going back home to look after Tommy-Ray this afternoon. Tell her he’s sick. It’s only half a lie. Then I’ll come by the motel. How’s that?’

      ‘Promise?’

      ‘Promise.’ She began to move away, then said: ‘What’s wrong?’

      ‘Don’t want to … kiss … kiss me in public, huh?’

      ‘Certainly not.’

      ‘How about private?’

      She half-heartedly shushed him as she backed away.

      ‘Just say yes.’

      ‘Howie.’

      ‘Just say yes.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘See? It’s real easy.’

      In the late morning, as she and Lois sat sipping ice water in the otherwise deserted store, the older woman said:

      ‘Howard Katz.’

      ‘What about him?’ Jo-Beth said, preparing herself for a lecture on behaviour with the opposite sex.

      ‘I couldn’t think where I knew the name from.’

      ‘And now you remember?’

      ‘A woman who lived in the Grove. ’Way back,’ she said, then turned her attention to wiping a ring of water from the counter with her napkin. Her silence, and the effort she gave to this minor mopping, suggested she was happy to let the subject drop if Jo-Beth chose not to pursue it. Yet she’d felt obliged to raise the issue. Why?

      ‘Was she a friend of yours?’ Jo-Beth asked.

      ‘Not of mine.’

      ‘Of Momma’s?’

      ‘Yes,’ Lois said, still mopping, though the counter was dry.

      ‘Yes. She was one of your momma’s friends.’

      Suddenly, it came clear.

      ‘One of the four,’ Jo-Beth said. ‘She was one of the four.’

      ‘I believe she was.’

      ‘And she had children?’

      ‘You know, I don’t remember.’

      This was the closest a woman of Lois’s scrupulousness came to lying. Jo-Beth called her on it.

      ‘You remember,’ she said. ‘Please tell me.’

      ‘Yes. I guess I do remember. She had a boy.’

      ‘Howard.’

      Lois nodded.

      ‘You’re sure?’ Jo-Beth said.

      ‘Yes. I’m sure.’

      Now it was Jo-Beth who kept her silence, while in her head she’d tried to re-evaluate the events of recent days in the light of this discovery. What did her dreams, and Howie’s appearance, and Tommy-Ray’s sickness have to do with each other, and with the story she’d heard in ten different versions of the bathing party that had ended in death, insanity and children?

      Perhaps Momma knew.

      iii

      Buddy Vance’s driver Jose Luis waited at their agreed rendezvous for fifty minutes before deciding that his boss must have made his way up the Hill under his own power. He called Coney on the car phone. Ellen was at the house but the boss wasn’t. They debated what was best to do, and agreed he’d wait with the car the full hour then drive back via the route the boss would be likeliest to take.

      He was nowhere along that route. Nor had he got home ahead of his ride. Again they debated the options, Jose Luis tactfully avoiding mention of the likeliest: that somewhere along the way he’d encountered female company. After sixteen years in Mr Vance’s employ he knew his boss’s skill with the ladies verged on the supernatural. He would come home when he’d performed his magic.

      For Buddy, there was no pain. He was thankful for the fact, but not so self-deceiving as to ignore its significance. His body was surely so messed up his brain had simply overloaded on agony, and pulled the plugs.

      The darkness that enclosed him was without qualification; expert only in blinding him. Or perhaps his eyes were out; dashed from his head on the way down. Whatever the reason, detached from sight and feeling, he floated, and while he floated he calculated. First, the time it would take for Jose Luis to realize his boss wasn’t coming home: two hours at the outside. His route through the woods would not be difficult to follow; and once they reached the fissure his peril would be self-evident. They’d be down after him by noon. On the surface and having his bones mended by the middle of the afternoon.

      Perhaps it was almost midday already.

      The only means he had of calculating time’s passing was his heartbeat, which he could hear in his head. He began to count. If he could get some sense of how long a minute lasted he’d be able to hold on to that span of time, and after sixty, know he’d lived an

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