Called Out
by
A.G. Mojtabai


A. G. MOJTABAI is the author of five previous novels:

Autumn, A Stopping Place, The Two Eels of Sigmund Freud, Mundome,

and Ordinary Time.  Her nonfiction work,

Blessed Assurance, won the 1986 Lillian

Smith Award for the best book about the me rican South, and in 1993 she
received i Academy Award in literature from the me rican Academy of
Arts and Letters.

le lives in Amarillo, Texas, and teaches the University of Tulsa.

JACKET PHOTOGRAPH BY CARL ]. TRAC1E

JACKET DESIGN BY WHITNEY G. COOK MAN

Printed in the U.S.A.

BY A. G. MOJTABAI.

Mundome.

The 400 Eels of Sigmund Freud.

A Stopping Place.

Autumn.

Blessed Assurance: At Home with the Bomb in Amarillo, Texas

Ordinary Time.

Called Out.

A.  G. Mojtabai.

NAN A. TALE SE

DOUBLEDAY

New York

London

Toronto

Sydney

Auckland

PUBLISHED BY NAN A. TALF.SH

an imprint of Doubleday a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing
Group, Inc.

1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036

doubleday is a trademark of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday
Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-m-Publication Data

Mojtabai, A. G."  1937Called out/A.G. Mojtabai.-- 1st ed.

p. cm.

1. Aircraft accidents--Texas--Fiction.  2. Community life--Texas
Fiction  I. Title.

PS3563.0374C35 1994

813'.54--dc20 93-32776

GIF

isbn 0-385-47430-x

Copyright 1994 by A. G. Mojtabai

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

June 1994

First Edition

10 98765432

For Genevieve O. Miller, Postmaster, Dawn, Texas

And to the memory of Sammie Parr.

Acknowledgment.

A LONG-AGO CONVERSATION with a Roman Catholic canon lawyer is situated
at the heart of this book.  The subject was the sacrament of the
anointing of the sick.  My questions concerned a disaster situation in
which a priest cannot ascertain the religious affiliations of the
victims and proceeds to anoint and grant conditional absolution to all
the dying.  I wanted to know what sacrament is effected when the victim
anointed happens to be a Muslim or an atheist.

Monsignor James C. Gurzynski's reply was instant and unequivocal.
"Wasted oil and a wistful prayer .. ."  he said.

His words continued to echo for me during my long labors on this book.
If I heard him correctly, it was an answer put forward in the spirit of
challenge.  Correctly or not, I have taken it as such.

Contents.

part I

one First Witness 3

two Second Witness 27

three Third 36

four Hannah's Field 43

five Eyewitness News 51

six Triage 57

seven At the Tick Tock Lounge eight Picture This 73

part II

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

Voices 83 Unofficial 91 Earthen Vessels twelve Tracking 105

thirteen What the Black Box Said 113

fourteen Stories 122

xii Contents.

part III

fifteen Visitors 137

sixteen Letters 151

seventeen At the Tick Tock Lounge 160

eighteen Recap 166

nineteen Cannot 172

twenty Journeys 178

twenty-one Death Makes a Township 197 twenty-two Last Visit 204

"We aren't like a township, old chap.  We have no ties of shared
experience or blood or memory.  In a plane, nobody knows his neighbor.
No one belongs to the same Rotary Club or garden society as the person
across the aisle.  We're just a slice of the history of the world,
grievances and all.  My old son, this solidarity you urge is purest
bloody fantasy .. ."

--Thomas Keneally, Flying Hero Class.

"Do you see everything at once?  My own house is full of things waiting
to be seen."

--Patrick White, Riders in the Chariot.

ONE.

One.

First Witness.

THE CLOUDS were thick and moving fast.  I'd picked up a weather
bulletin some minutes back--I would have kept the radio on in hopes of
catching another but I was going through the Fort Worth mix master at
the time, heart of downtown, trying to keep my mind on the road.  Even
then, well before rush hour, that was ever a rigorous span.  I kept my
eyes on the cars ahead, taillights flaring up each time a foot touched
a brake; I wasn't the only nervous

driver.  The weatherman had said something about precipitation, a
percentage of probability, not what kind of precipitation.  Could have
been anything--rain, sleet, hail' All across the top of Texas," I
remember him saying.

Minutes before, I'd noticed some flakes of snow flashing by, testing
the air.  They were slanting in, salting the windshield.  I doubted
there'd be any accumulation, though.  The wind was too wild, too
scattering, for that.

Yet there were planes crossing overhead, as there always seemed to be
in and around Fort Worth.  One about every three minutes.  Military,
most likely.  I could hear them, I couldn't see them.  I had to
assume--I could only hope-that planes overhead meant that the cloud
cover was low.  I've always liked flying--climbing, shedding the earth,
then the cutoff, lifted above confusion, all the little theme parks of
our clusterings laid open to view.  But there'd be nothing to see
today.

Soon as I was clear of the city, I loosened my death grip on the wheel.
It wasn't that weather conditions had improved.  If anything, the wind
seemed to be freshening, the sky loomed darker, but traffic was easing
up.  Ordinarily, I'd set the motor on cruise from here on out and,
except for the last stretch, pretty much let the car take itself home.
Not this time.

Thinking back on it later, the whole day seemed to be unfolding with a
tilt, a relentless downslope towards something I couldn't yet see but
was, all the while, hurrying to meet.

I'd set out for Dallas early, hoping to visit Tom O'Shea, a classmate
from seminary.  I'd been feeling restless again.  This happened from
time to time.  Nothing serious right

yet, but if I ignored it I was afraid the tensions would mount until
I'd come to feel my collar was, literally, choking me, an impersonation
turned deadly.  The mood could be sudden and severe--convulsive.  Once,
years back, I'd acted upon it and taken leave, but that had led to
nothing else.  I thought I'd learned a few things since; I'd been
monitoring myself, making it my business to talk things over with a
friend at the first sign of chafing, the least little lurch of longing.
Day before yesterday, I'd called Tom, asking whether he'd be in and
arranging a tentative meeting time.  Tentative--because I'd promised to
look in on the daughter of Martha Gibbon first.  As it turned out, my
get-together with Tom was doomed; my visit with Jenny Gibbon, futile as
it was, lasted longer than expected.  Then came the worsening
weather.

Martha--Jenny's mother--I didn't know well.  She'd moved from Hardesty
to Bounds back in early summer, but the first time she showed up in
church was in February, wanting her throat blessed at the feast of St.
Blaise.  Her daughter had run away from home two years back; that was
before the mother came to town, so I'd never set eyes on the girl.  My
assignment was to see if I couldn't persuade her to come back, or at
least to start her talking.  No one else in the family had been able to
get through to her.  Same old story: the parents come to me as a last
resort.  It's always way too late.  I didn't promise anything, though I
told Martha I'd give it a try.

"Oh, another thing," Martha added, as if in afterthought.  "Jenny was
pregnant when she ran away.  And she kept the child.  He's with her at
the shelter now."

It was hopeless from the start.  "I don't know you" were

the first words out of Jenny's mouth.  I've never been comfortable
with teenagers anyway, barely surviving that phase in my own life.  Add
to that the single motherhood factor--Mary notwithstanding--and I was
already way out of my depth.  I jangled the change in my pocket and
hoped the visit would go quickly.

Eighteen years old, but she looked years younger, not much more than a
child, herself--sullen, defiant, scared.  We set out for a nearby
cafeteria.  She straddled the infant on her hip, then settled him on
her lap while I went through the line for the three of us.  I chose
rice pudding for the baby.  He was old enough to dabble in it with
spoon, fingers and fist, making a real mess of himself in the process,
and a lot of noise.  Shaped noise--not words, but almost, well along.
When whatever it was he was trying to say failed to communicate, he'd
start to scream with frustration.  Then Jenny would slap him around a
little and call him stupid.  "You shouldn't call him that," I said.
"His name isn't really "Stupid," is it?"

"Why not!"  she was quick to reply.  "He acts stupid.  And, anyhow, he
doesn't know the difference.  He's too young to know what it means."

"What's his real name?"

"Sam--why?  What's it to you, Mister?"  A string of abusive four-letter
words followed.  It was a performance calculated to shock--I'd been
through this kind of thing before.  What do they think?  Where do they
think we've been all our lives?  That we've simply fallen out of the
trees to earth?  I'd heard those words often enough--I knew them.  They
had no shock value left.  I waited in silence for her to finish.

A social worker at the shelter had filled me in on Jenny's history
before I'd been allowed to meet her.  Three months pregnant, she'd
hitched a ride from Hardesty.  Detoured off in some of the bigger towns
like Abilene, making her way, eventually, down to Fort Worth.  In her
many months of wandering, she never got farther than Tarrant County.
That's pitifully close if your aim is to see the world.  She'd made a
little vertical progress, briefly, moving up from Wendy's to a fancy
stockyard cafe in Fort Worth, until her pregnancy began to slow her
down.  Then she'd found a protector--what looked like a protector--a
man old enough to be her father.  He'd set her up in a small apartment
on the outskirts of the city.  When she started to get restless again,
he turned her out into the streets.  But not without beating up on her
first.  Finally, she'd come to this shelter.  She was restless here,
too, but unwilling to go back to high school and finish up, or to make
any sustained effort towards learning a marketable skill.  Anybody
could see the turmoil: fingernails gnawed to the quick, her forehead
and cheeks blotchy with angry spots no makeup could hide.  She never
looked me in the face; it was all sly, sidling glances, quick left to
right and back, over me and past.  Sam, on the other hand, persisted in
giving me a full frontal stare.  His eyes seemed all pupil.  He had a
brooding look, deeply serious, taking my measure.

Then, all of a sudden, he reached for me with moist fingers, seized
hold of my thumb and locked onto it.  He tugged with unexpected
strength, I tugged back, a conversation of sorts--and one of those
zigzags I have to watch out for.  In another life ... is how it begins.
One of those moments.  My pull--your pull, back and forth, we

rocked with it; I was captive--captivated; the baby crooned, his mouth
glistening with smiles.  I don't know how long we might have gone on
with this had Jenny not interrupted, "Boy, time sure flies when you're
having fun!"--jolting him back to herself.  Sam yelped once, then
dropped me; the game was over.  My face flooded with heat, even my
ears--I embarrass easily.  And I'd come, after all, on business.  So I
launched into it: "Your mother asked me to see you.  She could help you
out with Sam-she's eager to.  Why not give her a chance?  She misses
you.  Come home."

"To Bounds?"  She paused, as if actually giving it a moment's thought.
"To Bounds?"--laughing now--"No way!  Dullsville, you mean?  Besides,
you forget, I never lived there."

All the while I was saying it, I remember thinking: it's poetic justice
I'm the one who's been asked to call her back, when here I've been
wanting to leave, myself.  Wanting to leave Bounds or my role in it--I
couldn't tell which, and assumed I was boxed in by both.  After I'd
delivered my prepared speech, I tried the gifts I'd brought along--a
woman's magazine, a tin of brownies, a note from her younger sister.  A
cardigan, gift-wrapped.  She trashed the wrapping, making a loose,
crumpled ball of it.  Sam batted the thing with his fists while Jenny
examined the sweater at arm's length, refolding it carefully, without
bothering to try it on.

Adolescence!  Supposed to be the best years of our lives.  Did nobody
recall how it really was?  The misery, sheer misery of it?  Jenny
brought the mess of mine back to me.  The boorish ness anger over
spilling at the slightest touch,

the fractured dreams, my skin boiling up.  Voice breaking,
unpredictable from one moment to the next.  A bunch of us getting
together in an abandoned shed to compare our "equipment."  Humiliating,
but I passed.  But it was no relief.  Images coming to me unbidden,
dredged up from darkness.  Sins of impurity--radiant.  Searing.
Confessing and falling again.  Confessing with firm purpose of
amendment, and falling again' How long you been in Bounds?"  Jenny
asked on our way back.  "Going on six years," I told her.  "And you ask
me why I'm not coming back," she said.  "If you don't know, Mister, I
can't tell you."

I hadn't worn my collar.  My day off, for one thing; for another, the
more I thought about meeting Jenny the more I suspected the collar
would prove a handicap.  It would be a trade-off, I figured; what I
lost in the way of authority, I'd gain in humanity.  I'd mis figured
badly.  That was a deliberate, calculated "Mister" she called me,
loaded with venom.  And she did it two or three times.  I'd introduced
myself as "Father Mark," and I realized she was flirting with me when
she said with a kind of leer, a certain slide of tongue over lip, "I
don't believe you're really a priest."

Some believe it, some don't.  I shrugged.  Didn't bother to answer
Jenny.  I've questioned it myself, often enough.  Yet it wasn't by
accident that I'd become a priest.  Not the best of reasons maybe.  I'd
backed into it somehow, fleeing and seeking.  Still--it wasn't by
accident.  I'd been called to it.  Summoned.  There was a voice, my
own.  And one word.  I could feel the air clench in my throat, though
nobody else heard it.  The word was: No.  But God never

spoke to me about what He wanted me to do.  Not a word, not a
whisper.

Nobody pushed me into the Church.  Day like today, I had to keep
reminding myself of that fact.  Dad was sitting at the dining room
table playing solitaire when I announced my intention of going to
seminary.  I could still see his hands deftly shelling out cards, not
missing a beat, all the while I was speaking.  That's the image that
stays with me--his hands, nothing of his face.  Then there was only the
rapid patter of cards, the heavy beating of my heart.  At last he
spoke: "So you won't be bringing any money in."  His business, a repair
shop for small machines, wasn't doing well; he could have used a
contribution from me.  "Have you spoken to your mother about this?"  he
asked.  I had.  Mom said simply, "If that's what you really want."  She
was far from overjoyed, I knew, for this meant that I wouldn't be
marrying and filling the house with grandchildren.  There was only
me--an only child.

I couldn't blame my parents for being puzzled; nothing had prepared
them for my taking such a step.  As a tot, I'd never played
priest-at-the-altar with my little friends, as so many of the other
seminarians had.  My wish list had been the same as any other boy's
growing up in West Texas.  What I wanted most was to own a hunting
knife; once I had the knife, I wanted a gun.  It came, finally, on my
fourteenth birthday: a Stevens single shot .22 caliber rifle; I doted
on it, cleaning the barrel and oiling the stock over and over.  I shot
a few rabbits with it, then wounded a cat and had to put the creature
out of his misery.  Then I lost all interest in guns.

I'd turned fifteen and it was happening to me--what

ever happens when you turn that corner.  I'd learned to social dance
the spring before, fox-trot, I remember, I forget what else.  Slide,
slide, clomp, clomp, slide and supposed to be graceful.  It was all an
agony of embarrassment for me.  I couldn't look girls in the eyes,
couldn't imagine what in the world to say to them.  I overheard my
mother telling one of my aunts, "Mark is going through a phase."  I
didn't like that at all--the idea of my going through predictable
phases, as if the course of my life had been charted in advance.  A
generic life--not mine, not willed, not shaped.  Not chosen.

"To Bounds?"  Jenny had stared, her eyes wide with astonishment, when I
asked her whether she wouldn't consider coming back.  I wanted to let
her know that I, too, swore at her age never to return to my hometown,
to leave and never look back, but she never gave me a chance.  The
story is familiar enough, happens in all these little towns; it's the
young and the old, the moving and the fixed.  See it all the time.

The place I grew up in was a lot like Bounds.  Typical High Plains
town.  Named Windy--and for good reason.  One minute you'd see wheat
fields ripening peacefully in the sun, seized in the next by wind,
dust, flash flood, hail.  There wasn't a whole lot going on except for
the wind, the beating sun, the blowing dust.  Wind and weather, weather
and wind.  A sea of grass as far as the eye could reach Strange the way
that spaciousness began to draw in It was after I'd had my gun for a
while.  October--I was fifteen.  Up to then, I'd loved the place, had
grown up one with it.  West Texas grit and grind, tough and proud of
it--that was the tradition.  Life had been hard in Windy

from the start.  It wasn't written in our catechism, but it was taught
along with it, how the first Catholic settlers celebrated Palm Sunday
using bear grass for palms.  Things grew a little more comfortable
after that.  Then came the dust bowl days they loved to tell about,
people barely scratching along, then recovery and almost comfortable
once again.  Then depressed.  That year when things turned round for me
was hard for everyone in Windy.  The harvest was poor that fall; worse
was on the way.  But we didn't know that yet and looked forward to the
annual Oktoberfest, same as every year.

I'd always enjoyed the spectacle of it, our one real mixer.  Everybody
came, from the mayor on down, even the derelicts from the Calvary
Mission shelter.  And there were three other drifters who showed up
that year; they weren't affiliated with Calvary, or anything.  I saw
one of the young mothers aiming a finger in their direction: a perfect
example, I suppose, of what children who didn't eat, wash, or obey
properly, grew up to be.  "You see what I'm seeing?"  she said.  "Take
a good look."  They were living scarecrows, with gap-toothed smiles,
grizzle, matted hair, stinking clothes.  Young men, but they seemed
ancient, already earth-bent from scavenging.

They'd started out at the back of the tent, draining beer dregs and
abandoned pop bottles, pocketing chunks of pretzel, raking the trash
bins for cigarette butts.  They inched forward to watch the German
dancers, moving front and center for the Vienna waltzers, and staying
put for the rest of the display--the Polish dancers, then the Mexican
dancers.  I overheard them talking: it was all "polka" to them; they
loved it, all of it.

When the call came, as it always did, for the chicken dance, nearly
everybody joined in.  All ages and sizes.  It would go on and on for
fifteen, twenty minutes, speeding up as it went.  "Waggle, waggle," the
caller would sing out.  And they'd flap their fledgling wings (arms
folded at the elbows, hands in armpits), then "quack, quack" and
"wiggle, wiggle," and they'd flutter their tail feathers (smiling
lasciviously, shaking their bottoms).  Then they'd start circling--two
circles, inner and outer.  Whenever the music stopped, the dancers
froze, and the person facing each of them--man, woman, or child,
whoever it chanced to be--was the new partner.  And then--with a "swing
your partner round and round"--the music would strike up again.

As soon as those scarecrows entered the circle, that chicken dance
began to look like nothing so much as a dance of death.  They swung
their partners hard to their own fast, jagged rhythms--nothing to do
with the music.  You'd see their partners arcing their backs away from
them, straining away, yet helpless, reeling, cinched at the waist.  One
of the drifters had coupled up with a kid.  She was maybe six years old
and he was giving her a twirl, a wild ride, her feet dangling inches
from the floor.  I could still see her face: a tiny fright mask with
tight mouth, and wide, glittering eyes.

When the music ended, the three scarecrows retreated to the edge of the
tent, back to their cadging for butts and beer, and some of us--the
spectators, at least--we missed them.  They'd been a diversion.

Members of the band were starting to pack up with many a phony "auf
wiedersehn" and "ach zo!"  They were

a bunch of rednecks just like us, even though they'd come all the way
from East Texas.  Oktoberfests were their specialty.

The master of ceremonies was doing her frantic best to distract us from
the fact that the band was getting ready to leave.  Anything to hold
the crowd together.  In her Tyrolean cap with its red feather, peasant
blouse and skirt, embroidered apron, and clogs, she, too, was acting a
part.  In real life, I knew her as Mrs.  Owens, a local farmer's wife,
who, far as I knew, had spent all her days in Windy.  Maybe she had a
German grandmother or great-aunt or something.  Nobody could fault her
for effort.  She dreamed up one distraction after another: a Swiss
watch was auctioned off, a pair of wooden clogs, a pitcher of beer.
Then she started a beauty contest for the men--roll up your trousers if
you thought you had a good leg and come on up to the dance floor.  Four
came, all young, but not a looker in the lot: fat, lean as a rail,
bulging with calf, yet-to-be-seen--there was one of each.  The one
still covered up was wearing long Johns and boots and having a time of
it.  "How about it?"  Mrs.  Owens urged.  "Show us some leg!"  He did,
finally, but it was hardly worth waiting for.

Then one of the scarecrows threw himself into the ring.  He became
number five.  Mrs.  Owens challenged him to show us some leg.  He did,
and we all clapped.  "Why don't you tie some knots in those legs and
give us some knees!"  she taunted.  He did that too--rolled up his
jeans to mid thigh and crooked his stick legs to give us some knees.  I
hooted and clapped as he did so.  It looked like a real comedy shaping
up, live and unrehearsed, and nobody

knew where it would lead.  Prancing, lifting his knees high, the man
was playing to the crowd.  He shifted to bumping and grinding across
the dance floor, elbows flapping-shades of the chicken dance.  Then
gave us a burlesque of a Vienna waltz, a belly dance, an Irish jig.  He
was plastered, shameless--we loved it.  I hollered along with everybody
else, laughing so hard I could taste it.  Water streamed from my
eyes.

No question who the winner was.  Only then did Mrs.  Owens ask for his
name.  He told her it was Billie.  "Billie!"  we echoed, delighted to
hear it, and we hooted and hollered some more.  The prize was an
oversized T-shirt with some beer company logo emblazoned across it.
Billie grabbed it and, waving it high overhead, started to dance with
it--a stripper's dance.  Off with the old shirt!--he twirled it round
one finger.  We cheered as he bared his chest, so shallow you could
count the staves of his rib cage.

I was laughing hard as anyone when the air backed up in my throat.  The
word was No--I nearly choked on it.  Suddenly Mrs.  Owens was trying to
push Billie offstage.  She meant business.  Not a trace of her former
smile.  She gave a high sign to one of the sheriff's men standing in
our midst--I guess because she thought Billie's disrobing act might not
end at the waist.  And because there were children watching.  The
officer lost no time in trundling Billie off.  The crowd began to
trickle away.  It was no longer amusing.  Only after I left did I begin
to wonder why it had ever seemed amusing.

That was in the fall, the first No.  I didn't dwell on it.  The season
passed.  Soon after, the cold closed in.  Even in

winter, you'd still see men standing on the sides of the road,
carrying signs that said work for food.  Spring came

--no better.  Came summer, one of the driest on record.  Oil, gas,
cattle, wheat, and milo (we called it "maize" back then) were what we
depended on, and oil was down, gas was down, rainfall not even a rumor.
Tumbleweed piled up on our porch fronts a fire hazard.  The mayor
recommended we burn it before it burned us.  Most of our lawns were
bleached out--there was water rationing in town.

Fifteen going on sixteen!--that dry, desolate summer.  Why did I think
of it then as my last summer?  I still do.  That going-on-sixteen
summer was the last of something, childhood's end, fateful.  I was
restless as the wind.  Maybe it was the pain of being stretched out too
quickly, too tight in every bone and tendon.  I'd grown tall and
weedy

--six foot one and still shooting up.  Seemed like the stretching would
never stop.

Days, I'd be working at Dad's shop.  Evenings and days off, I spent
riding my bike around town, going nowhere, just riding.  I didn't own a
car yet--didn't expect to for years to come.  Les Miller, my best
friend up to then, had taken over his older brother's car.  It was low
and sleek.  Ben Honea had a jeep he'd worked two jobs to save up for.
He'd painted it electric blue and boosted it high above the wheels, so
you couldn't miss it coming down the road.  Low riders, high riders, it
was all the same--all pointless

--to me.  The dream then was of owning a pickup with a rifle rack and a
couple of guns to hang on the rack.  Then roving along with a girl,
well stacked, in shorts and halter, on the seat beside.  That summer,
most of the girls were wearing halters without straps, so the big item
of discussion was what, if anything, the girl was wearing underneath,
and how to find out.  Ben and Les would talk about girls' halters and
calf cuttings with the same half-murderous rasp of excitement.  The
pickup truck, the rifle rack, and the girl had almost been my dream,
too, but, for some reason, when the moment came, I never launched onto
them.  I'd missed a step, someway.

Instead, I'd spend my free time by myself, riding my bike around.
Setting out, I'd cast a backward glance at the driveway hoop where I'd
spent the summer before shooting baskets--overhand, underhand, hooks,
spin-and drives, endlessly, compulsively, getting better and better at
it.  As if any of it mattered,

I hadn't touched a basketball in months.  I rode my bike in circles,
from one end of town to the other, round and round, as though I were
caught in a maze and well and truly lost.  Downtown after banking
hours, there'd be only a few remaining cars and pickups parked with
their noses snub up to the curb, ranged along it like cattle at a long
feed trough.  But the cars were fewer and the trough emptier than it
had ever been before.

Usually, I'd stop in at the library.  I didn't so much read as eat
books in those days.  And I wasn't particular: I'd read through almost
anything I'd started.  It was an escape for me.

That summer, even the library reading room was a mirror of our woes. It
looked like a bus depot, full of passengers who'd been stalled for one
reason or another.  But these people were going nowhere.  Farm and
ranch hands, pipe-welders, roughnecks from the oil crews, vagrants
they taken over most of the soft browsing chairs and the tables closest
to the electric fans.  Most of them were fugitives from Calvary Mission
across the street; they'd sung for their supper at the afternoon
service but, once fed, weren't about to get themselves conscripted for
the evening service.  The librarian had posted a new set of rules in
the foyer, a long list of prohibitions: no soliciting, no loitering, no
sleeping, no staring, no touching No staring It was a mean summer in
more ways than one.

After the library, I'd pedal slowly back home, circling our church at
least once, nearing it, and veering away.  When I was tired of
circling, I'd head for home.

We had a boarder living with us at the time--Dan Hawkins, a retired
blacksmith and welder, who'd owned the shop my father had taken over
and converted to small machine repairs.  Mr.  Hawkins hankered after
large machines, the hand-tooled kind.  Coming into the house, I'd hear
him going at it--his theme song about the good old days of drag
farming, of steel lug tractors, one-way discs and lister shares, golden
days before the state and federal men walked the turn rows sniffing for
herbicide residues.  He was stuck on the old ways, and his talk was all
has be ens bygones, betternots--all stifling.  "Spittingly boring," I
called it.  I minced no words back then.

When Mr.  Hawkins wasn't holding forth, we ate in silence, a silence
broken only by the clashing of forks and knives and the single question
my father asked at least once a day: "How long can this keep up?"  He
meant the heat and the drouth, but I took it as a none too subtle

reference to my ceaseless roaming and said nothing in reply.

The evening of the day it happened--the day that changed everything for
me--I ate quickly, then took off.  I had plans, for once, and was
already late.  I was going to meet the old gang--Les Miller, Ben Honea,
Pete Graff, and Tom White.  Why, all of a sudden, after steering clear
of them for weeks?  I wanted to try and make amends, I guess.  Or, if
that didn't work out, to remind myself why I'd been keeping away.  They
usually gathered at Simmons's field before dark.  The field had been
ours to roam for a number of years, ever since Mrs.  Simmons had
retired to a nursing home.  There was a small playa lake in the middle
of it, where we used to splash around and cool our heels.  I expected
the playa would be dry, or almost, that summer, but still hoped there'd
be a dab of water when I got there, enough to rinse the sweat from my
face at least.

There were two different stories about the playa: one, that it was an
ancient buffalo wallow; another, that it was a depleted natural gas
sump.  Depending on which you believed, you were typed as romantic or
practical.  I'd always opted for the buffaloes.

Something else on Simmons's field had always excited our curiosity--an
old Burlington Northern boxcar, ancient and rusted, a leaning thing.
Most of the time, we avoided getting right up to it for fear it would
fall on us, but every now and then, we'd hear stirrings and knew there
was somebody taking shelter there.  The latest was a deaf-mute,
feeble-minded, or maybe out of her mind.  Nobody knew where she'd come
from, or when exactly.  I'd

caught my first glimpse of her back in April.  Les had named her
"Rosie" because her hair had red lights in it.  She had the palest
skin, unnaturally white.  Impossible to tell her age; we never got that
close.

I hid my bike in a tangle of weeds near the fence.  Everywhere I
looked, Johnsongrass was taking over, crowding the banks of the road,
obliterating the bar ditches, standing nearly as tall as I was.  And
everything else dry as a bone.  There was a saying in our part of the
country that certain things were as hard to kill off as Baptists and
Johnsongrass.  They were fierce, both of them--unstoppable.

I spread the wires and climbed through the fence.  The field was full
of ancient milo stalks they'd forgotten to plow under; they sliced at
my shins as I passed.  The playa was in a deep depression, but the land
sloped gradually down to it, so I paid little mind to my descent.

Nobody around, except for some small rustlings underfoot.  I was way
too late.

Then, coming closer, I wasn't sure.  I could see grass churning ahead.
I heard, thought I heard, wings thrashing.  I blinked: made out some
clumped shape crouched at the edge of the playa.  The sun was level
with my eyes, I remember.  The animal was large.  I moved forward
quietly as I could.

It was no animal, of course.  I knew who it was.

It was pretty strange .. . Here I was, decades later, driving through
deepening fog and wind, minding the few traffic signs, paying
reasonable attention to the gasoline truck bearing down upon me from
the rear, and trying not to swerve for thinking of her.  Of Rosie.  I
kept seeing her, sharper, more real than the truck overtaking me,
etched as

indelibly in my mind's eye as if I'd been staring straight at the sun.
She climbed to her feet; I came no closer.  I remember nothing in
sequence after that.  Only the blackness of her open mouth in the
whiteness of her face.  A sound came from the blackness--a bleat. Lambs
bleat like that.  I must have made some motion, wanting to disappear,
to evaporate on the spot.  She fell to a crouch again, turned and
crawled back to the boxcar.  I never saw anything human crawl that
fast.

I knew what had happened.  Her face was scratched, her blouse torn--one
breast exposed.  I knew what had gone on as surely as if I'd been part
of it.

I'd never seen a breast before.

I could never think of it again without remembering how it felt to claw
my way up out of that playa, that sinkhole.  The rest of that week,
month, however long it took, was featureless--event less  Next thing I
knew, I was staring at a door, St.  John's rectory, summoning up my
courage to knock, then old Mrs.  Williams, the housekeeper, waving me
on into the foyer.  Father Fogarty was hard of hearing, so I couldn't
help knowing what she said.

"Young man to see you," she began.

"Is he a gentleman?"  Father Fogarty asked.

"He's much too young to tell, Father."

"Guess you better show him in."  He sounded none too delighted.

Father Fogarty was settled in an easy chair, reading the evening paper,
when I entered.  In his civvies and house slippers he looked quite
domesticated--much like my father might ten years down the road.  His
living room was a fussy one with large, heavily padded armchairs,
covered in

dark flocked velvet.  Tatting like cobwebs--those lace doilies that
ladies liked--all over the place, defending each spot that flesh or
hair might touch.

"So .. ."  Father Fogarty greeted me.  He sighed, as I recalled, folded
up the paper carefully, centering it on his lap.  "So what can I do for
you?"  he asked.  Like any shopkeeper.

I'd rehearsed this scene before knocking but, when the crunch came,
forgot all my lines.  I still can't recall how I broke the silence,
what the first words were.  Just a total blank there.  He told me to
sit down.  I did.  He leaned forward.  "Let me make sure I heard you
right," he spoke slowly.  "You want to be a Trappist, that correct?"  I
nodded.  "Where'd you ever come by such a notion?"

I don't know what I said.  It was a wild guess, a stab in the dark. I'd
read a book.  Merton, I suppose.  It had something, not a little, to do
with the utter predictability of my parents' conversations and with Dan
Hawkins's interminable monologues.  I wanted silence--not empty
silence, not the wounded silence that sometimes fell over our dinner
table like a pall, but perfected silence.  Silence, or psalms.

"When I was your age, I wanted to join the circus," Father Fogarty
said.  "First things first."  His eyes were small with laughing.
"Before you run off and join the Trappists, do you mind telling me what
makes you think you have a calling to the religious life?"

I stared at the floor; I had no good answer to that.  I'd made, at
best, a lurch towards something, delivered myself over.  "I came to you
to find out" was the most I could say.

"We will," he said, completely serious now.

When I thought of all the miles I'd put in, cycling around town--all
that circling!  At another time, in another place, I might have dropped
out of school and hit the open road, built a tree house, or boarded
ship.  I might

--I might have--but I hadn't--and now, up ahead bounds--60 miles.  The
first sign for it.  Nearing the homestretch.  That's when I tend to
grow careless.  Back to the present: I needed my wits about me.  I
fiddled with the radio dial, caught the tail end of the news

--the financial report.  The prime was up; the dollar was down against
the yen; a certain brand of hardware beat the competition cold.  I
waited for a weather report.  Wheat and cattle prices.  The cattle
trade was closing on a very slow note.  I didn't like what I was
seeing.  The fog seemed to be thickening, or maybe I was moving deeper
into the thick of it.  No precipitation, but I had to gear down to
second and hold tight to the wheel again to keep from veering.  The
wind had a mind of its own, or, rather, several minds--that was the
problem.  Still no weather report.  Futures, instead: sorghum,
soybeans. An ad for an antibiotic against shipping fever and
blackleg.

Futures continued: milo, oats, spot silver, crude oil, a steady stream
of numbers trickling into my ears, then something poured--the opening
trumpet strains of the "Welcome to Glory" show.  The sky was bleak,
soot colored, far from glorious.  They must have given the weather
earlier--I'd missed it.

"Joy Unspeakable" was the first hymn.  I cracked open the window a few
turns and took a taste of the air.  Half a minute told me all I wanted
to know, nothing I didn't already know.  Head home--Get there--fast
Easier said than done, of course.  I still had a stretch of country
road to go.  "Welcome to Glory" paused for an announcement. Aha!  Small
bells chiming--then a siren.  "Severe thunderstorm watch, possible
hail, deadly lightning" A travel advisory: "If you don't have to
travel, don't," the weatherman said.  "Sit back and stay in Clemence
County."

The Glory Hour resumed.  It was "message time" with Pastor Mort
Willigis, of what church I didn't catch.  Lutheran, I guessed, Missouri
Synod, something of that stripe.  "You can't work your way to
salvation," he proclaimed, "no way you can earn it!"  Lutheran, yes,
still hammering away at works and indulgences .. . "All our
righteousness is filthy rags"--he sounded quite pleased about it. There
followed chapter and verse.

Why listen?  To keep abreast of the competition, I suppose.  I'm still
curious about what's out there.  Besides--I needed some voice outside
me, even if I wasn't entirely attending to it, simply to keep me from
drifting off.  Country music or easy listening never kept my attention
for long.  The biggest challenge on this last leg of the journey is
keeping awake.  Sometimes it's fifteen, twenty minutes or more between
cars--not a sign of human life except for a few pump jacks nodding,
mile upon mile of wire fence and scattered clumps of cattle grazing
behind the wire.  Every now and then I'd spot a coyote lashed to a
fence post, nose-diving--looks like he's flying into the ground-his
tail looped back over his spine.  Signifying what?  Scarecrow?  Totem?
Trophy?  I've seen this all my life but never have been able to figure
it.  I heard Willigis saying, "Paul is lifted from prison, the
paralytic from his bed, the young

man from his tomb, yet the prison, the bed, and the tomb remain ..
."

Just amazing .. . how the mind strays.  I never did take in how Pastor
Willigis wrapped it all up--the prison, the tomb, the filthy rags--nor
anything much else of what followed the Glory Hour beyond a welcome
battering of noise.  Could half an hour have passed?  I was moving
along pretty slowly, still in second, struggling with diminishing
visibility and the buffeting of the wind.  It had been a long drive and
it wasn't over.  A long, fruitless day.  I'd done nothing for Jenny.  I
pressed on, ticking off a list of what needed doing the next day,
making a mental note to add the girl's name to my Mass intentions.

BOUNDS--24 MILES.

Look sharp.

I seemed to have lost my radio reception.  I fiddled with the dial
again but only got a few blurts of static.  It was just then, anyway,
that I noticed something overhead.  It wasn't alarming at first.
Strange maybe, but I stared at it for what must have been a mile or
more.  One of those long jets with sleeked-back wings, the engines
rear-mounted.  Nothing out of the ordinary in that, but it seemed
suspended, making no forward progress, only rocking a little in the
air.  And it was way too close to the ground.  So close, you could see
the little porthole windows.  You could even count them if you wanted
to.

Took my breath away for a moment there.  For a split second, I even
thought of taking cover--as if anybody could.

Caught myself whispering, "Help them!"--too shocked to even cross
myself, when the plane yawed to one side,

recovered, and lifted straight up, as if a string had been pulled on
high.  Higher and smaller, until the red light on the underbelly of the
fuselage was no more than a spark.  Then the whole thing vanished,
making me wonder whether I'd seen it or dreamt it.

Two.

Second Witness.

I WAS ABOUT to call it a day.  We close up at two at the post office
here in Bounds.  We'd had no phone and no lights for the past hour or
so.  The wind must of taken down a power line.  My heater's electric,
too, so I'd been wearing my coat indoors.

My weather vane, my little right finger--the one that's cocked--had
been achy and swollen from the start.  Steady blowing, the sun in and
out.  Then--out, the sky lowering.

The cold seeped in.  And something else, I felt it, like coming close
to a power station or a great big tuning fork, something thrumming in
the air, hearing it not in my ears, but up and down my whole skin,
churning all around me.  Then a little click--I'm pretty well sure
that's what the sound was--and the power died.

I didn't mind the fact that I was closing the day with no customers. It
was a respite, really.  Everybody'd been acting a little crazy.  The
kind of crazy where people keep asking, "How long can winter last?  Can
I stand it one day longer?"  Keep forgetting how it's like this every
year round about now.  What did they use to call this time-crocuses
coming up, frost chilling them down, everything cracked with cold,
spring and income tax on their way, right around the corner?  Eyefuls?
Idles?  .. . Hides?  Something.  Ides!  Ides of March is what.  That's
where we were, in the wild middle of March.

The office looked shipshape, as tidy as ever you'd find it.  No
unfinished business, far as I could see.  Closing up was all, fixing
the postmark stamp, tweezing out the old day and squeezing in the new.
I do that last, usually, after putting out the mailbags and tending to
the flag and such.

Most of my work was finished now, and not only at the post office, I
realized.  What with the kids grown and married and settled all over
the state.  Nothing more to do there.  Except for Rob's baptism, which
nagged at me every now and then.  I disliked mentioning it, but last
night I couldn't hold it in any longer.

Rob's the new grandbaby, Al and Mary's.  They've only got the one
child.  Al's my baby, my youngest.  Only saw Rob once: he was a bare
month old, but already the image

of his gran dad--the image!  Troy never lived to see him, but I guess
he would of figured that, someday, one of his grandkids or
great-grandkids or great-greats would take after him.  Sooner or later
all things come round.  It's too bad they live way down in Corpus
Christi--grandkids sure do spice up our later lives.  I'd see them
again in June-I had a whole two weeks coming to me in June, but the
days really yawned out till then.

Just couldn't hold myself back when I called Al last night.  "Dreamed
about your father, couple nights ago," I said.  "In my dream-Are you
listening, Al?"  Something told me he wasn't.  "I'm fine, Ma," he said,
so I knew he wasn't.  There wasn't any stopping me then.  "Al, this is
important.  Now listen, you hear!  In the dream I had, your father told
me we were all 'licensed and insured'--except for Rob."  Al was
listening then.  "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"  he asked.
"What else could it mean but baptized?"  I said.  "Your father's
worried about Rob's baptism."  Al was listening hard then.  I could
tell because his foot was waggling with impatience; I could hear him
clearly, toe-tapping on the waxed wood floor in Corpus Christi all the
way to Bounds.  Al and Mary don't have rugs--it's the fashion in their
circle not to, to buff up the old wood instead.  None of my business, I
know, but when I think of all the years Troy and I had to wait, saving
up for our first rug!  And Al and Mary have the money for it .  But
it's none of my business.

I didn't mean to nag.  Which is why I didn't mention how long it'd been
since I'd last gotten a letter.  "Write when you can someday," I say.
Well, of course, kids don't write letters anymore.  It's all phone and
fax, drive-in, fast

food, what-have-you--not one minute to spare.  Those answering
machines, now!  Al's got one, too.  I always leave the same message:
"Hello, machine.  I'm calling to speak to somebody live."  But my brand
of humor seems to be out of date, along with everything else.

Al's the baby of the family, the last to leave home and, of course, one
part of me didn't want him to leave.  Not ever.  I admit I favored him,
spoiled him maybe a little bit.  The point is--I know his every mood, I
knew full well what was coming.  "You're chewing on me again, Ma," he
said.  "I told you, me and Mary are tending to it.  We mean to do it.
Soon as we find the right place."  They've been shopping around for the
right church for I don't know how long--it's always something.  I
mentioned that.

"Ma, this is just ridiculous!"  Al said.

"It isn't to me," I said, "nor to your father."

I admit it was kind of a peculiar dream, because Troy wouldn't of
minded one way or the other.  Except for my pushing him, he never was a
churchgoing man.

Another thing about that dream I hadn't mentioned to Al: Troy had
passed on some personal advice to me.  "You oughta travel," he said.
"Now--while you're still able to."  I couldn't see Troy speaking in the
dream, no face behind the words, no lips moving, but there'd been no
mistaking his voice--gravelly and slow.  He said more: "The days are
soon coming when dizziness powders your head."  I patted my hair.  In
the dream, I could see myself from the outside: my hair bled white, all
white.

For a fact, though, the gray's only threaded in.  Coming along, but
there's still some color left.  One more day like today, though, and
I'd be solid white forthwith.  It had

been a day of solid pettiness, with the power blackout coming on top
of it, and here I was sitting in my coat indoors, chilled through and
through, feeling sorry for myself.  I do have arthritis pretty bad in
my hands, hip, and knees; the damp doesn't help.

And--I'd been hours standing and taking it.  Nobody liked the new
stamps, the ones with the rock stars on them.  And they didn't want to
use the old love stamps for paying bills.  They'd never taken to
twenty-nine cents for first-class postage to start with.  Too
complicated is the complaint on that.  It's more trouble for me than
for them, so I always ask: "Would you rather pay out a penny more and
round it off even?"  No, they wouldn't.  Well, then?  I tell you what!
You'd of thought the U.S. Postal Service had declared it National
Complaints Day.  Wayne Hollis didn't like the new linoleum--Joy Major
did.  If you don't like the color, look elsewhere, I say.  Add to that,
some of the old folk taking the occasion to fret about their new
postboxes being too high or too low--we'd gotten key boxes finally, but
nobody stopped to appreciate that.

It only takes three or four to start a fuss and the rest all chime in
and nobody knows where it began or how to end it.  I'd reassigned the
postboxes after the renovations.  By lot--I thought that would be
fairest.  Way it turned out, some had to stoop and some had to stretch
up, while a few others had it easy at arm's level.  That was the luck
of the draw.  I was ready to do some swapping for real hardship, like
Geneva Wilson's arthritis, or Carla Simms's varicose veins, but most of
the fuss was just scrapping, petty, plain and simple.

Why not get away for a while?  Sitting there in that ashy

gray light, I kept coming round to my dream and back into that
conversation with Troy.  It was true that we'd saved up over the years.
I could go to Palm Beach or L.A. or New York City, cities I'd never
seen.  But I wasn't eager to.  I'd never hungered for the new and
strange--not in foods, people or places.  First time I ate Mexican, I
flashed hot and cold all night long.  Who needs it?  Now I'd gotten
used to it and liked my hot sauce el scorcho, but who needed it to
start with?  Stick with what you know, I say.  With who you know.
Strangers are more so east of the Mississippi, I've been told.  I
really wasn't eager to budge from Bounds, vexing as people here can be.
I was more ready to wrap my house around me and go on inside forever,
if the truth be known.

It was one of my "hello, Nothing" moods coming on--I recognized it. The
weather wasn't helping, of course.  I knew they would pass, mood and
weather together, in a day or two.  What I needed was a hot cup of tea
to perk me up, and a bite of something.  And to rest my feet.  Day like
today, retirement sure looked tempting.  Problem was, the minute I
retired, the government might take the opportunity to shut us down;
we're only a fourth-class post office, after all.  Call it cost-cutting
or streamlining, and force everybody in Bounds to travel miles up the
road to the county seat in Hardesty to pick up their mail.  So that was
my worry there.

It was going on two--close to it.  Just a couple of things to do before
calling it a day.

Outside, it was hard to keep upstanding, no exaggeration.  I commenced
taking down the flag, wondering whether I'd have to give up and leave
it to be blown to

shreds out in the weather, but then came a moment's slack, and I
hauled, mightily, bundling it in the crook of my arm, quick as it came.
The flag's supposed to go up briskly and down slowly.  Mostly I
try--and do--but, right then, I'd defy anybody to.

It was then that I heard something toiling overhead.  I glanced up: a
big jet.  It was hanging there--not going anyplace--just hanging there
in some sort of stall.  Then it started to shake--its tail only a
flutter, but its nose dipping and rising in a wobble, like nose and
tail were dealing with different kinds of weather.

We're not on anybody's overflight path, so we tend not to see a whole
lot of traffic up there.  Most of the time, it's nothing but crop
dusters.  Piloting a crop duster's not too bright of a future from what
I've heard.  Nobody wants to insure them--they fly too low and flirt
with too many power lines.  Anyway, it was flying too high for a crop
duster, but way too low for a big jet the size it seemed to be.  I
puzzled over it, little bit, then ducked back inside.  Right quick!  My
wonderment took no more than half a minute.  It sure was bitter
blowing.

I'd have to face the weather getting home, though.  No way to avoid
it--the only path into the arms of my lounge chair was walking back out
through that air.  So I braced myself.

Nothing prepared me for stepping outside again.  That wind!  It was
steep, high, mountainous, by the feel of it.  A solid wall of wind.  I
could see Jim Titus going by, bowing as he walked on into it, his
jacket bellied out behind him.

"Having weather today!"  he shouted.

Starting up the car took me some minutes.  The motor

was cold.  I kept grinding until it took hold, and, even then, I
waited, running it in place to make sure it wouldn't quit on me.  Even
with the windshield wipers going I couldn't see much, so I swiped at
the inside fog with my hands--a little better--then shifted to second
and eased out onto the road.

The road was near empty, and no wonder, the wind-chill as an arctic
blast--mean and meaner as I went along.  I'd rolled up my window tight,
but it still got to me, shaking the car from side to side and, once,
making me swag sharp to the left.  Like somebody--actual hands--took
ahold of the steering wheel.  Everything was bent and twisted with that
wind, the prairie grass, the few trees, the mesquite--but mesquite
always looks like that, snarled and trying to slither free, like it's
in a mess of pain.  The sight of it brought my morning mood back to me.
Sometimes, when I was feeling old, achy and cranky as I did then, I
thought a fast emergency would be better than this long dull time.  I
was ready to go.

Soon as that thought crossed my mind, I regretted it.  Because what I
saw next numbed me to the bone.  Like that very idea took flesh from my
thinking on it.  Had to draw up sharp, side of the road, turn on my
hazards and slow my blinking breath.  That plane I'd wondered at only
minutes before, it was coming down--slamming down-in yonder field. Must
of spun--one wing touched first.  Must of tumbled--a great big
bucketing noise.  Then I couldn't see to tell.  Something burst--spewed
out--fire and smoke rushed to swallow the ground.  It all happened so
quick.  So quick, I heard myself trying to talk it back up-"Wait wait
wait--"

Didn't call on the Lord, or anyone.  Nobody to call on.  Couldn't
think.  People, live people inside.  Freeze and look on.  Smoke so
clotted I didn't know how anybody could make it out alive.

It was my field where the plane had come down.  We'd named it "Hannah's
field," for Troy's mother.  Half a section north by northwest,
furrowed, pre-watered, ready for seeding.  Meant for milo, any day Bud
Pearson saw fit now.  That was the only thought I could go on with.
Couldn't get over it being my own field--the rest was too much for me,
so I fixed on that.  The plane had barely missed my stubble field, and
my set-aside, which I'd planted to love grass, all dry now.  Crashing
down in either of those would of burnt up everything twice, plane,
house, shed.  It was like I'd laid out that field and delayed planting
it for knowing something like this would come along.  Like the field
had been just waiting.

Three.

Third.

MY DAY OFF, as it happened, I was heading north.  Hunting for some easy
listening on the radio, I remember saying to myself, must be getting
old--can't tell the music from the static anymore.  But maybe it was
the weather.  Crazy to be out in it if you didn't have to be. 
Normally, I wouldn't, but I'd sniffed out a bargain.  It was too good a
deal to wait.

So I was on my way, hoping to get a jump on the competition.  My
destination, I thought, was Hardesty, and my aim was to follow up on
this ad for a power drill set, slightly used but in mint condition. The
owner and I had gone over most of the details on the phone.  I'm an
amateur carpenter.  I like building things--birdhouses, doghouses,
swing sets, tool sheds you name it.  It's a hobby, one of my few
pastimes, and I don't mind selling a thing or two on the side.  Selling
isn't the point, though.

I guess, too, it was the idea of getting out, getting away.  Nothing to
beat home for.  I was at the end of one thing and not so sure it was
the beginning of anything else.  I'd done my share of playing around,
but this was the first time since my divorce that I'd been seriously
involved with a woman, the third time in my life--counting
marriage-that I'd ever laid myself open to real hurt.  Then the whole
living-together, playing-married thing had suddenly, silently, fizzled
out, as if nothing had ever been.  She'd finished packing by the time I
came in from work, and was in a tearing rush to be gone.  Said
something on the stairs I didn't catch, something about explaining
later, getting in touch soon.  I thought I was entitled to know more:
"What does that mean--soon?"  I stood on the landing and yelled down
the stairwell.  Needn't of bothered.  She mumbled something under her
breath, sounded like "tomorrow, this weekend, whenever."  She'd left
behind the milk-frothing pan from her cappuccino machine and her
curling iron.  That was two weeks ago.  Not a word since.  I'd be
damned if I'd call her.  I had a certain pride, after all, and I've
never liked games.  So much for the "free and easy" life-where's the
easy in it?

I'm from Philadelphia originally.  "Damnyankee," as

they say in Texas.  (That's one and the same word.) Most people here
can spot the strangeness right off the bat, even after all these years.
What brought me out to this part of the country was not so original: it
was job opportunity, I'd researched it.  Fort Worth is city, not great
big or great anything, but trying to think well of itself.  Far less
hassle than any city of comparable size I knew of in the East.  So I
stayed, stayed on--what?--going on fourteen years now.  A stretch ..
.

I always get spooked out by long country drives anywhere north or west
of Fort Worth.  So vast a nothing-mile upon mile upon mile with only
the wind for company.  The wind, and maybe a bunch of box-headed cattle
clumped nose to nose along the fence wire, taking note of my passing,
eager for events.  I like long views, like being able to "see out," as
they say, but in moderation, not being able to see out forever.  No
place to hide is the feeling.  Unsheltered--no hills or coves to hood
yourself with, no place to take cover.  Wherever you'd run, it'd be the
same: empty land sinking under its load of sky.  Even on a sunny
day--and most of our days are sunny here--I get spooked.

Anyway ... it sure wasn't sunny out then.  It was utterly cheerless,
dark, dank.  "Falling weather" the locals call it--something, no
telling what, waiting to fall on us.  Visibility was minimal.  Couldn't
put a measure to it, it varied, but there wasn't much of any kind of
view.  Every time the wind struck up, it crossed my mind how crazy it
was to be venturing out on a day like this.  But I'd committed myself,
I was nearly thereAt that moment, I was getting set to pass an
ancient

driver, who was blundering along in a vintage pickup.  Looked like
something out of The Grapes of Wrath, except it was empty.  Why they
permit antiques like that to circulate on public highways is a mystery
to me.  He was lazing along at tractor speed.

I only remember something so trifling now because of what came
afterwards.  I sped up a little, fuming to get free of him.  Checking
the rearview mirror before returning to my lane, I saw something that
drew me up sharp onto the median.  Good thing it was grassy!

What I saw in the mirror was a plume of black smoke.  By the time I'd
turned my head to get a better look, it had thickened to a funnel. Four
stories high, I'd say, and rising.  Coming from someplace a little
north, northwest of town.

Slow as it was, that pickup must have passed me while I was gawking;
there wasn't a trace of him when I started up again.  I drove on ahead
about a quarter mile, took a U-turn at the first crossover, then headed
back the way I'd come.  I kept that cloud, still rising, in my
sights.

Kept wondering which of the few poor industries in Bounds could put up
a blaze like that.  Damned if I knew.  I could tick off the local
industries on the fingers of one hand, actually.  There was livestock
trucking, a pet food factory, couple of seed and feed companies, what
else?  Windmill blades--I should have thought of that first.  I'd once
written a feature on that, on the importance of windmills to ranching
on the high plains .. . And there was salvage--combine, tractor, hot
rod--plenty of salvage sold in Bounds.  That shouldn't really count as
industry,

though; they didn't convert salvage into anything else--all they did
was sell it.

Anything more?

Along with ditching and irrigation pit cleaning, I couldn't think of a
thing.  None of those industries, short of a bomb, could have caused an
explosion like this.  The cloud was taller than the grain elevator by
then, and that elevator was the only high-rise in Bounds, a
good--what-five, six stories?

I'd been in Bounds before, spent nearly half a year in the area as a
regional reporter in my cub days.  I was a kid on my first beat, still
milky behind the ears, and everything was new.  I worked hard.  Got to
know every cat and dog in town on a first-name basis, yet never had any
idea what the people in Bounds thought about to themselves all day
long.  No idea!  Did they think?  You had to wonder.  Did they still
list each and every pallbearer in their obituary notices like they used
to?  Most likely--what other news had they besides funerals and
weather?  There surely wasn't a whole lot doing in Bounds back then,
except for the Oktoberfest, the Baptist fish fry, 4-H showmanship at
the County Fair, or the Girl Scouts having a manicure party and who
sold the most Golden Yangles.  Dan Lutes, one of the local boys, played
for the Dallas Cowboys--a tackle back in the early '80s.  He was the
town's only claim to fame.  And--speaking of the devil There it was,
still standing.  Same old sign in front of the town hall, a bit faded
but the same: bounds, texas--home of dan lutes of the dallas cowboys.
What a crock!  Dan left town after high school, hadn't been back since,
and the rest of his family moved out a couple years after he did.



The power lines were cut on Bowie, one dangling low, a live-wire
hazard.  The stoplight whipped on its cable, the poles that held it
tethered rocking and groaning in the wind, everything unstable.  The
big old elms looked shredded: a litter of small branches scattered over
the road like the palsied spill from a matchbox or a wild throw of
fortunetelling sticks.  No way to avoid them and spare the tires.

Corner of First and Long view, all the traffic lights were down.  What
to do?  Look three ways and go, only thing to do.  I passed the site of
the old Gilbreath place.  There'd been some changes, I noticed.  The
building was now a senior citizens center.  Gilbreath's was the general
store in my day.  Used to advertise: From the cradle to the grave, we
meet all your needs.  Can't get much more general than that.  They sold
everything.  Then got sold, apparently.  Must be a lot of senior
citizens here now, I reflected, and not a great many cradles.  The
young move on.

I was on my way out of town.  Got the feeling I'd passed a wrong way
sign back there somewhere--quite a number of wrong way signs.  Nobody
around, nobody stirring, everything with its back turned to me. Heading
north on a southbound lane was the feeling, like a bad dream. All alone
and ass-backwards.

No hope of asking directions either.  I didn't want to lose a minute,
so I kept on moving, heading due north.  When I passed the church with
a peeling roof and a short ladder of bells for a steeple, I had my
bearings.  This would be Blessed Redeemer on Eighth and Long view.  You
can always recognize an R.C. establishment by the statues, this one no
exception.  Some stone saint posted out in

front, his raised hand rigid in benediction.  No, no-thanks, but no--I
scooted on by.

Bounds used to have about twelve hundred households, going by the gas
meter count.  When I asked people what the population was, they'd
usually say: "Depends on whether you're coming or going."  And they'd
laugh, though it wasn't a joke.  For a fact, the numbers on the signs
standing at the north and south city limits didn't match.  I'd have to
ferret the figures out.

I kept moving in the direction of that cloud.  It was looser and
broader at the top now, starting to lean a little in the direction of
the prevailing wind.  The road ahead continued to be deserted.  I
jumped a stop sign--daring, wishing, somebody would challenge me, I'd
of welcomed the police, but they, along with everybody else, seemed to
be inside--"weathered in," as they'd say--or busy elsewhere.

Already, I was making mental notes.  Even then, I could see the story
in my mind's eye: cut line, lead line, inches allotted.  I'd have to
phone it in, assuming the phones were working.  Call Mo to summon the
troops.  But first I'd have to get there myself, see what was what.

Soon as I turned into the old Farm-to-Market Road, I didn't have to
keep my eyes on anything but the faded yellow line in front of me.  If
I'd been walking, I could have made it there blindfolded.  My eyes
stung and blurred as I pressed on into the thick of it.  Couldn't miss
it.  All I had to do was to follow my nose.

Four.

Hannah's Field.

NO PLACE you can go nowadays, howsoever far, without the world raining
in on you!  And I don't mean the television only, or hometown boys
called up to service half the world away, but right here.  Take a
little small place nobody ever heard of, like Bounds.  Right here in
Bounds in my own backyard--the whole world raining in!

I'm none too proud of it, but that was my next long
thought--furious--watching the smoke pour out of my

field, watching the clouds thick up, the smoke blacken.  Maybe it was
a respite from asking myself what on earth I could do for them and
knowing it was nothing, not one blessed thing for now.

Then I picked up car sounds, slow and grinding, in the distance. Coming
my way.  I thought I knew whose pickup that would be, could of had
rescue blazoned all over it, my heart warmed so.  Sure enough, it was
Jim Titus.  He drew up behind me and got out.  I cranked down my
window.  He stood alongside, gazing ahead as I was.

Finally he said, "Why don't you go on ahead.  Be careful, keep your eye
on the wind.  You should be all right.  I'll meet you over there in a
little bit."  He started away, then halted and called over his
shoulder, "Might be a good idea to gather up all the blankets in the
house."

"I'll do that."

"Oh, and Glenna"--he turned again--"you might fetch a hatchet while
you're at it."

Hatchet?  I wondered about that, but nodded.  Had to use my left hand
to un peel the fingers of my right off of the steering wheel and onto
the ignition, that's how clenched they were.  How numb.  Shifting gear,
I missed, hit the windshield wipers instead.  Sat back stunned for a
moment--unable to break the chattering spell of it, and nothing else
but that sweeping and canceling, that dry scraping, in my mind.

Coming up to the house, all I could see was this huge, rolling fire in
the middle of the field, smoke streaming, and, closer to the edge,
little pointed blades of flame.  The house was safe for the time being,
but here, too, the electricity was down--phone dead, lights out.  I
busied myself

searching for flashlights and a kerosene lamp, and set them out on the
foyer table where I'd be able to find them in the dark.  Then I
gathered up my spare blankets and stashed them under the table.  I
fetched the hatchet from the basement, trying not to picture what it
was for.  When I ventured out of doors again, I didn't get far.  There
was still too much smoke to be able to see much, wind-driven smoke and
the wind wild, no telling which direction from minute to minute.  I
started coughing, my eyes filled and wouldn't stop.  Best wait for Jim
inside, I told myself.  But, back in the house, I couldn't sit.  I
stood behind the door where I had a small lookout window.  I paced.

I was thinking on my number four well, three hundred and fifty gallons
per minute, how, if I could reach Bud Pearson, we could make a set and
flood the field.  Would that help, or just make a mess, the mud running
like slush underfoot?  Maybe the fire department would rather use the
well as backup.  I needed to ask somebody, but there was no sign of Jim
Titus yet, nor the help he'd gone after.  Couldn't of taken but
minutes, yet felt like forever.

Then I spotted Jim's pickup with the county sheriff's car in tow, and
the Bounds fire department, our one yellow truck, not far behind.  Not
long after that, the ambulance from Hardesty County Hospital raced up,
with lights, sirens, everything blaring.  They all parked snub up to
the fence line, real close to one another, so I knew they were making
room for more to come.  They didn't glance in the direction of the
house, but I decided to brew some coffee for when they did.  When it
looked like they wouldn't be coming inside anytime in the next few
hours, I filled a big

thermos with coffee, took up my bundle of blankets, and went out to
them.

The smoke was still pretty fierce.  I kept my head down.  Ahead was a
dark oily billowing that set my eyes to stinging.  Our little fire
wagon from Bounds was working, best it could, on the biggest and
loudest blaze--part of the passenger cabin.  They churned up a lot of
spray. Wherever the water gushed, steam spouted up, then flame again. 
You couldn't hear anything but roaring--wind, water, blaze.

I stood with the ambulance crew from Hardesty.  They were waiting for
the fire department to give them a sign to go forward.  "Will you loo
kit there!"  one of the nurses pointed, "See them?  And that
there--take a look at him!"  When the wind caved a clearing in the
smoke, I tried to make out what she was seeing--people who'd crawled
out of chinks in the cabin wall, or jumped somehow.  Or been thrown
like rag dolls, and now lay sprawled out all over the field.  A few
were upright, stumbling around, and one man was actually walking.
Imagine: walking!  He was moving fast.  We hailed him--one of the crew
jumped the fence and ran after him.  "What in hell do you think you're
doing?"  someone standing close to me hollered, "You've gotta wait--"
But the man he was hailing seemed not to hear; he stopped halfway to
the cabin and made a sign to the rest of the crew: three fingers, held
high.  Three or four, who could tell?  It was a count, I suppose, a
body count.  He waved the others to come forward.  Nobody budged. 
"Wait till it cooks off!"  a nurse yelled to him.  Cooks off!  --what a
thing to say.  There was a sudden waterfall of

flame, then smoke gushed from the cabin and gusted over the
field--covering people, rubble, earth--you couldn't see a thing.  It
was hard to breathe.  We all turned to face the house till it
cleared.

I wish I'd turned for good and gone back into the house.  Instead, I
lingered on.  There was the passenger cabin, what was left of it,
slowly caving in on itself.  The Bounds fire truck was backing up to
get clear of it.  Beyond the sounds of water pounding, metal twisting
and grinding, the hissing of steam, I thought I could make out cries,
faint cries.

Then I wasn't sure.  There seemed nothing human left in the field. Only
mineral, metal, cuttings, shreddings of things--and the wind.

Must of been bitter cold standing there at the fence, but somehow I'd
clean forgotten to notice.  Or maybe the heat from the fire was
drifting to us.  More ambulances came wailing in, from Story and
Fescue, and another town, a name I didn't catch.  A helicopter alighted
in a far corner of the field, yet more noise--it hardly mattered--added
to the din.

The first out-of-town newspaper reporter was already on the scene,
shifting from one person to the next.  Before long, he was onto me.  He
started asking me what I'd seen and when, and jotting it down.  I can't
imagine I said as much as he seemed to be writing.  Passing time, I
guess, till the smoke cleared and he could angle in for a closer look.
I offered him coffee and he seemed glad of it.  Jim Titus joined us.  I
mentioned flooding the field, using my number four well, but Jim
advised me to wait until I was asked.

We were still just mainly waiting.  The reporter inquired of Jim
whether there wasn't a minister to be had in town.  Only two full-time,
Jim explained, the rest coming and going.  Jim took the hint, though,
and went off to fetch whichever one of them happened to be on hand.
Another ambulance blazed in, another fire truck--bigger than anything
I'd ever seen in the county.  The firemen had taken down most of the
fence by then, so they drove right up onto the field.  They straddled
along the furrows, getting in as close as they could.

The smoke had thinned out.  I could see the cockpit with its roof blown
away, sucked full of earth, a jagged ditch sawed deeply in the
ground--I tried not to think of it as my field or Hannah's field.  Or
my shed--the tailpiece standing slap up against the wall of it.  Not
far from the tailpiece was a wing, what was left.  Wasn't a trace of
the other wing from where I stood.

The passenger cabin came to three chunks.  The biggest of them had
melted down into itself.  Nothing left now but the bare blackened frame
of it.  I'd seen that happen with my own eyes.  Those openings were
windows once.

Somebody--looked like an officer from the State Highway Patrol--ordered
me to stand back.  "This area is off bounds to visitors," is what he
said.  "How about it being my land and off bounds to trespassers!"  I
let him have it then.  "Can't stop you if that's the case," he said,
"but you'll wish I had."  I stood my ground at the fence line.  I
didn't step forward, though.

Now that the smoke had cleared, the ambulance people were out there in
force.  They'd put down blankets, my

four among them, and were laying people longwise, one on each.  And--I
wasn't imagining this--quite a number of passengers were walking.
Couldn't mistake who they were: they were staggering, lurching off in
all directions, their clothes in shreds, their faces streaked with
blood or oil.  "In shock," a nurse explained to me.  "They must be made
to lie down.  Lie down or pay later.  They must."

One of the ambulances started unloading backboards and neck
braces--must of been a hundred of those things.  Then came the
television crews with all their lights and gear, then more police cars
from out of town, flashers whirling.  The tiredness got to me finally,
end of my second wind.  I was just taking a peek at the shed before
starting back up towards the house when I heard somebody dogging my
steps.  I jolted around, surprised The others too busy to notice, I
guess.

He was an old man in a good suit and a neat blue tie, the stub of it,
sheared off maybe an inch under the knot.  He was padding along in his
sock feet.  Nothing about him seemed touched or shaken, nothing but a
thumbprint of kerosene, a little mark like a badge, on his cheek.  "Bit
the," he said.  Or "Bitter"--I wasn't sure.  He said it again, but more
like a question, "Bitter?"  He was breathing hard, his face flushed
with effort, and his eyes were roaming, wild.

"Should you be walking around just yet?"  I asked.  He had this dipping
walk, or maybe it was from making his way across the furrows.  He
didn't take any notice of my question, so I gave him the answer myself:
"I don't think so--I don't think it's wise."

He stopped and stared at me then, like I was somebody he knew well
whose name he had mislaid.  "Don't worry," he said to me.  He had an
accent--German, foreign, something; the way he said "worry," I could
tell.  "Baggage is no problem now," he said.

Five

Eyewitness

News.

THIS IS WHAT the eyewitnesses said they saw;

--"It was going along real quiet.  Low, I thought, but quiet, then the
engines got real loud.  Then quiet again, like they'd shut off.  Damn
thing slammed into the ground, then exploded."

--"It just hung there and exploded in the air."

"The plane was burning when it came down, streaming black smoke.  It
nose-dived right fucking smack into the ground.  Couldn't believe my
eyes!"

--"I'd say it pancaked.  Sinking, more than diving.  You know?  Didn't
see any fire till it hit."

--"It was banking right when it plunged.  On fire?  I could swear to
it!"

--"I was standing at Allsup's looking south when I saw it.  It was
flying level as I recollect, then all of a sudden it disappeared.  It
was just 'crump!"--this little small sound.  And that was it.  It was
gone."

I could swear to this--I could swear to that--"with my own eyes, I saw
it!"  That's how it always is with one event seen through different
windows.  My job is sifting it.  I figured the stall was probably
right; there'd been time enough for a lot of people to see whatever it
was they saw.  I hadn't a clue as to whether the plane was in flames
before it fell: I'd only become aware of things after the aircraft was
down, a huge arrow of smoke pointing to the spot.  Anyway, most people
get the impact-fire sequence backwards, I've learned since.  They tend
to see fire first because it's what they expect to see.

I borrowed a cellular phone from a county official and got through to
Mo Burns, my bureau chief.  "Where are you?"  he asked.
"Bounds--Bounds, Texas," I repeated; the reception was hit and miss.
"Refresh my memory-where is that?"  he asked.  So I did my best to
place it on the map.  "Okay, got it--got it, so you're out in the
boonies, but you've got a big-time story, could be one

helluva story, and you're the first reporter on the scene.  It's our
scoop!  So talk--talk it in--tell me what you see.  Let me just-Okay,
I'm ready.  Shoot--"

I wasn't able to see anything much right yet, I explained.  There was
still too much smoke.

"Send a photographer," I urged him, "send two."  But Mo was already
onto that, I felt sure, his adrenaline surging, figuring how to keep an
edge on the media people with their sound cameras and live, up-to
the-minute, transmission capacities.  They were sure to arrive soon,
and, soon as they did, we'd be playing second fiddle.  Yet, for the
moment, it was, like Mo said, our scoop.  I fancied I could hear Mo
ticking off a mental list of assignments: Sue to the Dallas-Fort Worth
airport.  Bill to the county morgue in Hardesty.  Cubs to the area
hospitals with burn units.  Somebody would be writing a backgrounder,
one of the interns, most likely.  Major Crashes in North
Texas-something along those lines.  We have quite a file in the
library, waiting around for occasions like this.

Mo wanted figures--injuries, fatalities, survivors.  Walkaways, if any.
And he wanted impressions: fire, smoke, debris, human interest angles,
the feel of the scene.  The space for that would only come after the
factual news briefs were in place, but he wanted me to start jotting
things down now.

Mo didn't have to tell me what to notice.  I'd never covered an air
crash before, but I'd done countless auto collisions and a bus crash.
And plenty of fires.  Anyway, I'd been a reporter long enough--I'd
"been around."  My mind works the same way as his.

Still, Mo kept harping on the numbers.  The way he

carried on, he made a mystique of it.  "There are exact numbers," he
insisted.  "The airline officials are going to fudge them, do
everything they can to hide them.  You've got to hound those people,
keep after them."

Actually, the number Mo most wanted didn't exist yet.  Not the fatality
count--or, if it did--only in the mind of God.  Meanwhile, there'd be
all kinds of other numbers to ferret out.  I jotted down a quick list.
First off--and even that wouldn't be easy--was a count of passengers on
board.  Sue, or whoever was assigned to the airport, would be better
placed to press the airline officials for that figure.  There'd be the
number of survivors, injured, feared dead, confirmed dead.  Then the
missing and unaccounted for But there were no numbers to be had that
afternoon.  If any officials of the airline were on site, they didn't
declare themselves.  I did as well as I could with the little I had for
the first two stories.  Since I couldn't make out what I was seeing
with any clarity, I stuck to the barest facts.

I filed the first story at 3:45 p.m.:

BOUNDS, TEXAS--A jet described as a 727 plowed into a field outside of
Bounds.  Texas and burst into flames shortly after 2 p.m. this
afternoon.

Glenna B. Wooten, an eyewitness, said she had noticed the plane "flying
too low for a big jet" shortly before the crash.

There was no immediate word on casualties.

By five, Sue's report from DFW had come in.  We still didn't have even
a tentative survivor and casualty count and, of course, no names yet,
but the carrier company had

acknowledged the crash and claimed to be at work trying to ascertain
the numbers.  Since the figures Mo wanted weren't forthcoming, the
paper ended up doing a recap of an earlier crash of a plane from the
same carrier company, same make aircraft, and trotted out the numbers
on that.  He's a nut on numbers, Mo is.

Our combined report, Sue's and mine, looked like information.  It came
to six inches, double column, with a sidebar on 727 crashes, and
graphics.  They ran it front page on the late evening edition.  It
looked like information, but we still didn't know a damn thing.

BOUNDS, TEXAS--A Maxim 727 jet crashed thirty minutes after takeoff
from the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport this afternoon.  Maxim
officials said the plane was Flight 582 en route to Kennedy Airport in
New York.  It carried 92 passengers and 7 crew members.  The flight
originated in San Diego.

"There appear to be a number of survivors," said Maxim official Jeff
Loring.  He was unable to give a casualty count at this time.

Several eyewitnesses said that they had seen the plane in apparent
trouble shortly before the crash.  "It was flying way too low and
seemed to be in a stall," said Jim Titus, an electrician in Bounds.

The plane plowed into the dirt of a pasture and exploded in flames.

"I was heading home from work when I saw the plane coming down," said
Glenna B. Wooten, postmaster of Bounds.  "It was too slow before--then
too fast.  It came down flat in the middle of my field."

"You hear about this on the news, but you never think it will come home
to you," Mrs.  Wooten said.  She farms a section and

a half of land on the outskirts of Bounds.  The field where the 727
crashed is furrowed and ready for planting milo.  "We were a little
late this year, on account of the frost," Mrs.  Wooten explained.

The accident is the second for Maxim since its founding last year.

On September 17, 1990, Maxim Flight 323 crashed on takeoff from Tampa
Bay, Florida, killing 113 people, including 4 crew members.

Investigators of that crash determined that birds sucked into the right
engine disabled the plane, depriving it of lifting power.

Six

Triage..

TURNING UP THE ROAD to Blessed Redeemer, I wasn't thinking about the
plane.  All I had in mind during the last lap of the drive was getting
home, and how happy I would be indoors, out of the weather.  I
was--plenty happy.  Grateful to have arrived without incident.  I
stooped for my mail in the foyer.  More of the usual: a heap of
catalogs, religious supply, publishers.  A bill for utilities I wasn't
eager to face, but nothing could touch my mood.  Or so I thought .. .

The electricity seemed to be out.  No problem: I fetched the kerosene
lamp from the kitchen and lit it.  It was warm enough in the living
room--I'd left my gas heater on since the night before.  I was about to
settle down in comfort, when I heard someone pounding on the door.

It was Jim Titus.  He's not Catholic, but everybody knows Jim.  "Better
come along with me, Father," he said without preamble, "no time to
explain now."  So I reached for my coat again; I'd only had time enough
to toss it over a chair.

"Better bring all your gear--whatever it is.  It's a pretty big
accident," Jim added.  "Other pastor's out of town.  You're the only
one on hand."

"Take me a couple of minutes," I told him.  "Why don't you come on
inside and warm up?"  But he only motioned over his shoulder to his
pickup.  Said he'd be waiting for me in it--he'd left his motor
running.

I made my way back to the sacristy for the oil.  Jim hadn't taken the
trouble to spell out what the appropriate "gear" might be.  It wasn't
necessary: I knew he meant last rites.

The fire was down to smolderings when we arrived.  It would gust up in
scattered points here and there, then subside.  Smoke poured from the
field--yellow, gray, black and oily brown--from plastics, metal, fuel
burning.  The smog of their blending set us to clearing our throats and
rubbing our eyes.  The fences were down, I noticed.  We followed the
bright orange edge-markers laid down by the police, driving right onto
the field, across the furrows--a rugged ride.

We were stopped a ways off from the main wreckage by a man in uniform.
State Highway Patrol--I guess they were using everybody they could
find.  I explained why I'd come and how I'd be wanting to get in close
as I could.  "Plenty of work for you right here, Father."  The officer
opened both arms wide.  "Okay," I agreed, "I'll start here."  I could
make out seat stuffing, wires, shredded metal, paper money blowing, mud
darkened with oil.  A clutch of fur--looked like a cat caught in a
combine; a plastic comb.  I stepped gingerly, watchfully; there were,
as I feared, human fragments, clumps of human meat, underfoot.  An arm
or armrest so charred I couldn't tell which.  What to do?  You don't
anoint or absolve fragments.  You don't let them simply lie around for
the bulldozer, either.  So I stood there in the mud, making the sign of
the cross and speaking into that smoke-fouled air the words of general
conditional absolution.  "If you are disposed, I absolve you .. ." Then
riffled through the pages of the ritual for a blessing specific to the
scene before me, struck for the first time by how white, how unstained,
those pages were.  Where was the blessing, prayer--any prayer at all
that might remotely apply to this?  Guide and provision them . Protect
.. . restore .. . relieve .. . Nothing--it was all bruise balm, mild,
bland, skin-deep Shelter .. . enfold .. . enclose .. . nothing doing.

But I stared at the one that followed.  It would have to do:

Lord, hear our prayers and be merciful to your son (daughter) N."  whom
you have called from this life

Welcome him (her) into the company of your saints,

in the kingdom of light and peace.

(We ask this) through Christ our Lord I saw bright hair--a woman's
head, tumbled like a melon, in a ditch--even the hairs of your head are
counted-a man's shoe, a new loafer, elegantly tasseled, the foot still
in it.

I said what I could:

"Father, these were human beings.  You made them.  You loved them.  You
alone know who they are.  Gather them up.  Be merciful.  Welcome them
.. ."  On the words "light and peace" I faltered, though.

Then I headed for the triage area, where paramedics were busy laying
out passengers on colored blankets.  The rule of triage is to abandon
the dead and set the dying aside, the better to tend to those with a
fighting chance of recovery.  It didn't sound merciful, but I knew it
was, a way of distributing mercy, medical mercy, as efficiently as
possible.

I was the inefficient one, tending to the dying first.  They were
unaware; most of them would never know that I'd been there beside them.
I had no idea how many of them were Catholics, and God alone knew how
many of the Catholics among them were fit to receive absolution and the
sacrament.

God knew--I didn't.  I didn't presume to know.  I anointed anyone who
stirred, trembled, breathed or seemed to breathe.  Anyone and everyone.
Err on the side of lavishness, I'd been taught.  Anoint conditionally.
Leave it to the Lord to sort it out.

One of the nurses called over to me to get gloves on; they were all
wearing them.  I pretended I hadn't heard.  I'd read about a priest
once who'd administered last rites with tongs.  It had been a bad case,
to be sure, but I couldn't ever see doing that.  Anointing, it seemed
to me, had to be done with living hands, with hands of flesh.

Nothing I'd ever encountered before had prepared me for what I was to
meet here.  I'd seen death often enough, but this was a battlefield.

"If you are alive, I pray--" This was the formula.  He was a young man,
living or dead, I could not tell.  His face and arm muscles still
moved, but he wasn't breathing that I could see.  If in doubt, anoint.
I did.  "Through this holy anointing may the Lord in His love and mercy
help you."  When I touched his forehead, his mouth opened.  I glanced
away--not soon enough.  How black it was, gob bed with mud, or blood--
"With the grace of the Holy Spirit .. ."  I needed that grace, too.

There was a child, a pretty thing with dark curls.  Unspotted --not a
mark on her.  She was warm yet, but motionless, absolutely still.  No
one's found out so far, was my first thought.  But, no, more likely,
someone had and, unable to concede death, left her among the lingering.
I anointed her as well.

A woman after that.  A ring on her finger caught the light, shone with
a fractured brilliance.  But her face was clouded, drawn, her eyes
shut.  She was making no sound.  I tried to tell her that she had
permission to speak, to weep, to scream, anything she had the strength
for.  No response; I assumed there was no strength to spare.  When I
touched her hands, though, she shook mine off with a

force that surprised me.  I persisted, anointing the backs of her
hands, her forehead, speaking the words of absolution: "May the Lord
who frees you from sin save you and raise you up."  Before leaving, I
touched her shoulder lightly, the way friends do.  She opened her eyes
at that--I don't know what she was seeing then.  "That you, dear?"  she
asked.  "Joe?  That you?"  Then her eyes froze.  I put my face close to
hers to check for breathing, but she was gone.

My hands unsteady, I had to pause before going on.

After I'd worked over the triage area, I wandered around some more in
the muck.  There were medics everywhere, moving slowly, four to a
litter, stooping for vital signs, saying the same words over and over:
"Easy there.  Lie still.  I'm coming.  Breathe nice and easy now, nice
and easy"--a litany of sorts.  I headed for the far edge of the field,
searching for anyone they might have missed.  I spotted what I was
looking for pretty quickly.

He was sitting there, off a little to one side, squatting on the
ground, his back up against the tail of the plane.  Strangely, no fire
had touched that part of the tail, its long flank clean and cool, its
crosspiece, shaping the letter "T," standing perfectly plum.  Out of
range of the emergency lights, and all the motion and commotion in the
center of the field, the scene here was dim, almost peaceful.

I could make him out as clearly as if there'd been a spotlight on him,
a halo of distress maybe, a spiky radiance.  As close to inanimate as a
breathing thing could be --flesh masquerading as chunk of metal or
stone.  Posttraumatic stress syndrome, I think they call it.  As if
that could explain a thing.

Coming closer, I noticed he was moving ever so slightly,

nursing his cheek with one hand.  I waved to him as I approached.

Nothing.  He didn't blink, even.  I was only a few yards off by then,
and there was still no sign that he was aware of me, not the faintest
tremor.  His eyes stared straight ahead, fixed on my approach, but
seemed veiled.  I advanced slowly.  At least he hadn't warned me
off--I'd given him ample time for it.

A man in his sixties or seventies.  Didn't look to be a scratch on him.
He was listening intently to something, one hand cradling his cheek.
Mouth-speaking-to-ear is what it looked like.  His other hand remained
inert, loosely capping one knee.

"Hello there!"  I called over, maybe too brightly.  "You all right?"

He was trying to cover his mouth with his cheek hand.  It occurred to
me that he might have broken his jaw or lost some teeth.  "You all
right?" I raised my voice.  "Anybody tended to you yet?"  I stooped
forward, maybe two feet from his face.  He couldn't mistake who it was
I was talking to.

He coughed--a long thick monosyllable.  I noticed the forced lift of
his collarbone, and imagined he was straining to clear his throat.

"Cough drop?"  I offered.  I fished in my pocket for the box I usually
carry in winter.  "Here, take this--" I tapped out a lozenge.

To my amazement, he moved, released the hand from his knee, and
stretched it out to me.  Took and ate.  A great loosening followed: he
flexed one foot, then the other, he unclasped his hand from his cheek.
Made a fist, then

opened it, curling and uncurling his fingers.  He performed these
motions with painstaking slowness and attentiveness, as though working
out the logistics for the first time.  Then he coughed again, releasing
his voice.  It was whispery, gruff, at first.  Hard to make out what he
was saying.  "See, no," was what it sounded like.

"Please?"  I said.  "I didn't catch--"

He cleared his throat, shaking his head this time, and blurting out, "I
didn't die then?"

I assured him that he was most certainly alive.

"Well, I'll be damned," he said.



Seven

At the

Tick Tock

Lounge

FIND YOUR OWN FUN or do without is how I get along in Bounds.  I make
my time pass, as best as possible.  Sometimes I like to take a break
from my dogs and get off to a place where I can study human nature. Not
mix with it-study it.  I don't get thick with anyone.  When trouble
pops open, I'm not there.

Any honky-tonk would do, but Tick Tock Lounge is closest, not but six
miles over the county line.  Bounds is in

Manifest--a dry county, so you gotta get cross that line.  Whitney
Olsen opened up Tick Tock to fill the need.  He knows me, Whitney does,
he's bought a number of dogs off of me over the years.  I raise Blue
Heeler pups for herding, German Shepherds and such--working dogs,
mostly, but also a few recreational types.  I gave Whitney one of those
for a pet he keeps back out at the house.  That's Salsa, a Mexican
Hairless with hair, the one out of four in the litter that's got more
than fuzz.  I prefer them without hair, myself.  Why?  Just do.

Anyhoo--Buck, one of my stud dogs, had died on me about an hour before.
I'd taken him to the vet with what I thought was worms, and ended up
having to put him to sleep in my lap.  I wasn't in the finest of moods
and I thought a couple of beers would help.

Whitney reads me pretty good.  He says, "Hi, Chip," and I say, "Hey,"
and he says, "What d'ya know?"  and I say, "Not a whole bunch."  And
that's it--I'm off the hook.

Then I find myself a booth and order a pitcher of fresh draw.  I settle
in.  Sit there, real quiet, slowly getting buzzed, till I've had enough
(beer and eavesdropping) and I'm ready to go back to my dogs again.
That's what I was intending to do the afternoon Buck died.  Afternoon
of the crash, but I didn't know that yet.  It was right after the
electricity came back on.

Old Jack Henderson was sitting on one of the high stools, his nose
buried in a newspaper already out of date.  Jack wasn't drinking
anything and hadn't so much as blinked when I came in.  Whitney was
hassling him about it, trying to snag his attention.  "Anything new?"
he asked.

Jack shook his head.  "Anything good?"  Jack shook his head again.
Jack's a welder, use to be, but he's been retired for some time now. He
lives down the street from the lounge.  Comes in for company since his
old lady passed on.  You'd never know it from the sound of him that
he's here to be social.  But look who's talking--he's about as gassy as
I am.

The electricity had come back on around four, a little after four.  The
television screens up above the bar were still blank when I came in,
though.  I found my booth and settled.  Whitney was busy tending.  Then
he went up to the sets, lifting his remote to one and the other,
igniting the screens.  Somebody clapped.

It was Channel Four news.  "High wind events" were top of the list.
Downed power lines, power outages.  "We've had wind blowing down lines,
wind blowing debris onto lines, wind knocking trees into lines"--it was
somebody from the utility company speaking.  "Keep the kiddies
indoors," he warned.  "If you see anything dangling, assume it's live.
Thing to do is stay away from it.  Don't touch it, and don't touch
anything it's touching."

More on the wind--they were reporting gusts of up to sixty miles an
hour north of Hardesty.  Man on the news was saying he'd heard of a
stop sign chasing a dumpster down the main street in Tattle, Texas.
Must of been a sight-a stop sign that wouldn't stop.  Or tall tale, I
bet.  There weren't any pictures.

The news all seemed to be about weather--weather related.  A pile-up on
the Interstate.  A closeup of that.  Some loose steers--"cattle on the
lam," the announcer called it, trying to be cute.  They gave us a shot
of that--of rear ends

bumping along Farm-to-Market Road.  Nothing too unusual there.  When
the wind blows really hard and the electrified fences go dead, cattle
walk over the wire and take off for themselves.  Happens in blizzards
quite a bit.

Paul Plemons, the brand inspector, was reported to be tracking the
steers back to their owners, but the county sheriff, who should of been
in on it, was somewheres else on call.  I didn't wonder about the
missing sheriff much as I might of at that moment.

It was early yet.  The lounge was pretty well near empty.  Besides Jack
Henderson, there were a couple of regulars from the feed yard drinking
beer at the other end of the bar, and somebody I didn't recognize, some
hippie-dip type with long hair, shooting pool by himself in the back.
There were two total strangers in the booth ahead of mine, a man and a
woman.  City people, from the looks of them, people passing through.
Must of come in out of the weather.  Separate cars probably.  They were
more than strangers to each other, less than friends.  Might of met up
right here on the parking lot.  Come in out of the wind and killing
time, I guessed.  They weren't traveling together and wouldn't grieve
if their paths never crossed again-that was my reading of it.  They
were sipping coffee from beer mugs.

I just let my ears hang down and listen.

"St.  Louis is where I'm from but, you name it--New York, Chicago,
Detroit--I've been there," the man said.  "I've been to Europe, too.
Rome.  Paris.  London.  The Near East.  The Far East.  Even been to
Tibet, but you can have it.  Everything there smells of yak butter."

Seemed like they'd been talking for a good long while.

Or the man had--sort of petting his own hair with talk.  He was on a
roll, the woman listening, or pretending to, nodding and putting in a
word edgewise now and then to show she was awake.  I missed the thread
of what he was trying to say.  That happens often but, if I stay tuned,
I usually catch on sooner or later.  Tick Tock is the perfect place for
listening in; they don't have a jukebox to drown everything out, and
the high backs of the booths give me good cover.  The man from St.
Louis was telling about somebody he knew way back when, somebody who'd
been a heller in the old days, then got saved.

"Soon as he got the baptism of the Holy Spirit with evidence of
speaking in tongues, he made the Lord a partner in his business. Called
it Mason, Latham, and Lord-it was a coin business, gold Krugers, Latham
never existed, and Lord, well--the Lord was a silent partner. The whole
deal was nothing but a confidence game.  Just what I'd always thought
it was, the religion business, I mean.  All smoke and mirrors, take my
word for it.  Holy moly, I know--I was born Catholic."

"Say what you will," the woman said.

"He thought he was sitting there with his ass in butter, but the Feds
are no dopes .. . Stewie Mason's a guest of the government in the
Federal Pen to this day.  Been saved four or five times, maybe more.
Maybe this time it will stick.  Maybe, this time, he's really
repented--"

The woman sounded startled.  "Repainted?"  she said.

"Repeated!  Repented!"  The man laughed.  "Jeez--" he said.

There'd been a loud commotion--a siren, then a broken

sound like a rattling down of Venetian blinds, huge ones.  Then,
quieter.  A chuff of wind was all.

One of the feed yard men went to the door, opened it and looked out.
"Sounded like a chopper to me," he said.

"Better close that!"  Whitney yelled.

"Business is business.  They're in it to make money," the woman said,
"don't kid yourself."

Once the door was closed again, we could really appreciate how snug it
was inside.

Whitney was busy putting out chips in bowls when the phone rang.  He
turned his back to us and leaned over the bottles, clapping a hand over
his free ear to hear better.  Then he stepped out from behind the bar,
trailing the cord over his shoulder.  "Anybody seen Bud--Bud Pearson?"
he asked.

Nobody had.

An ad for orange juice was flashing over Whitney's head.  Dumb, but
full of color--a relief from traffic and weather.  Sunshine juice ...
It was really dumb: a man and a woman side by side, plunging red and
white candy striped straws into oranges.  Two screens, so four of
everything.  The man's straw had a normal gauge, and his orange was the
usual tennis ball size, but the woman had a straw I'd never seen the
likes of, the size of a muffler pipe, and she was trying to plunge it
into this withered-up orange no fatter than a golf ball.  She was
mashing that poor orange pretty good.  I remember it well because of
what followed.

A news bulletin, and it had my full attention from the start.  The
first picture was angled in from the edge of a field.  Bare, but
furrowed, maybe just seeded.  Littered with

rubble now, big chunks of what must of been a good-sized jet.  Parts
of it were still showing red, though there was a bunch of trucks out
there drowning the field, and one of them was slab bering foam over the
wrecked cabin, lathering the whole deal with shaving cream, what it
looked like.

The hippie who'd been playing pool by himself stepped up to the set for
a closer look.  He aimed his cue stick at the screen.  His arm made a
dicing motion.  "Butcher's meat," he said, "you seen that?"

I missed it, whatever it was looked like chopped meat to him, but I
recognized Mr.  Titus talking to the county sheriff.  The priest from
Bounds was there, too, with a purple ribbon drooping from his neck.  He
was kneeling alongside of somebody on the ground.  The camera zoomed in
close as it could.  It was a woman, gray-headed.  She kept lifting one
hand like she was swatting flies.  Or maybe--couldn't blame her--trying
to shoo the priest away.

"Hocus-pocus.  He breathes on their eyes, see," the hippie explained.
"They open on the other side."

Whitney was listening with one hand up, shading his eyes.  "Why, that's
Miss Wooten's place .. ."

"Looks like the end of the world to me," said the man from St. Louis.

Jack Henderson lifted his face from the paper.  "What's going on?"  he
asked.  He stared at the screen; his mouth hung open.  "Will you loo
kit that--" He pointed to the priest.  "He's basting them all in oil,
the better to roast in hell.  Catholic, now!"

Next thing they showed was the DFW airport.  Planes landing and taking
off, landing and taking off, same as

every day.  An airport official inside the terminal, pinned up against
the wall by a reporter with a mike in his fist.  "There were ninety-two
passengers, and seven crew members on board," the official said. Didn't
bat an eyelash.  He was saying those numbers, but he was outside the
saying of them.  I can tell those things.

"Lord have mercy!"  said the man from St.  Louis.  And I bet he was
crossing himself, too.

The reporter on the screen shoved the mike forward again.  "And how
many casualties?"  he asked.

"We're not for sure," the official said.  The camera zoomed in closer.
"There's been no word yet on casualties."

No word?  If ever a barefaced lie!  That really got next to me.

"How come you didn't hear it, Chip?"  Whitney turned my way.  "Big
plane like that going down?  You're not that far from the Wooten
place."

Don't answer.

"Musta been all those dogs yapping," old Jack Henderson put in.
"Yipping and yapping night and day, so what's the difference?"

Couldn't deal with it.

I don't play their games.  I wiped my lips with the back of my hand and
went on wiping.  Just then came a big blare of light and noise--the
electricity quit again.  Somebody shouted, "Hell's bells!"  and
somebody knocked over couple of glasses trying to duck down under the
bar.  Didn't last but ten seconds.  By the time everything was back to
normal, I was reaching for my jacket.  I stood up.

I wanted to see this shit for myself.

Eight.

Picture This.

FRANCIE AL RED HERE.  My name's Frances, but Francie's what I go by.  I
have to say right off that I never was a witness to the crash--unless
visions count.  That's my only piece of the picture for now.  Fact is,
I was way too late catching onto any facts.  So let me just say a word
about this dream I had, and the meeting afterwards that seemed like an
echo to it, then I'll hand the story on.  The first thing about the
dream was its coming when it

did, the night before the crash.  I'd heard the wind, the whanging of
the windmill, all night long, but I'd yet to step outside to realize
how severe it was.  Even that afternoon, when the electricity quit in
town, I had no inkling of it, since I live on the Mastersons' property
and they have their own generator.  I knew it was cold but not how
bitter.  What I had most on my mind was this dream .. .

Soon as I woke, I knew it meant something.  No saying what, though.  I
take all my dreams seriously.  Most people here do, and anybody who
lingers in the area usually gets in the habit of it.  We don't have
many distractions, so we attend to our dreams.  Drop by the post office
of a rainy afternoon and Glenna Wooten will try out her latest on you.
And, goodness, Brother Pipes regularly broadcasts his every Sunday at
nine on KVUZ, a station that pretty well covers the county!  Dreams and
weather are our main events.  While I don't always talk about my
dreams, I do mull over them.  I'm not superstitious, don't claim to be
psychic, and even though I was born and raised in the Bible Belt, I'm
pretty much immune to religion.  But I do believe in dreams, even if
they seem to make no sense.  I'm absolutely convinced that if you see a
number in a dream, then you better bet on it, better put some money
down on it.  Dreams are like vapor trails, Vanishings: they point to
real things.  Things just beyond the rim of sight.

Like most dreams, mine was one thick snarl.  Somewhere along in the
middle of it, I heard a voice calling out, then something else
happened--I can't for the life of me recall what--and then comes the
part I do remember: seeing the old man.  His hair was white.  He was
stooped over a burning barrel.  It was bitter cold in the dream, as it
was

in waking fact.  The old man was lighting up.  Cigarette, I guessed, I
couldn't see to tell; his face was bent so low it seemed to be grazing
the flame.  Then he straightened out, and, waving or blowing, sent a
big billow of smoke in my direction.  He was generating this
just-incredible volume of smoke.  I rushed at him, hollering at him to
quit.  Next frame: the old man leaning against the wall of a shed,
smoking two cigarettes; they jutted out like tusks, one on either side
of his nose.  I asked him why: "Why two at once?"  His answer--and here
I recall every word: "It saves time."  Then I woke up.

Sounds crazy, I know.  My alarm was ringing--I'd forgotten to unset it
for my day off.  It could have been blasting away for some seconds
before I reached out from under my warm covers and shut it off, so I
probably had time on my mind.  The alarm put me in mind of fire alarms,
and the fire alarm very naturally suggested fire.  So maybe it wasn't
all that strange a dream .. . But then how to explain what came later
in the day?

I was getting ready to leave the house when I heard a commotion
outside.  Sounded like it was coming from Chip Parker's place: a lot of
yelping.  Prowler?  Couldn't tell, but decided to hug the house for a
while.  You can't fool dogs.  So I tiptoed around, checking everything
was tight, then sat myself down close to the phone.  I was riding high
on fear by then.  Hearing a faint click, I froze to it, before
realizing it was only the latch of my breath lifting.  That's how
intent I was.  I waited maybe half an hour, sitting there in semi-dark,
my ears cupped to the least stirring.

There wasn't any noise to speak of while I waited.  Except for the
wind, which I'd gotten used to.

Until I heard a loud sigh.  Seemed to be coming from close by, inside
the house.  The kitchen, I thought, and somehow my fear was played out
by then--too long a wait, I guess, with nothing to show for it.  So I
got up to see.  And, sure enough, there was the source of it: plaster
sifting down from a gash in the ceiling.  This lazy, whispery, sifting
down, like loose flour.  Nothing major but, again, puzzling.  No point
sweeping up yet; I'd give it time to settle, or develop, whatever it
was.

We weren't on any fault line that I knew of.  Besides-everything else
in the kitchen looked solid, unshaken.  I decided it best to steer
clear of that particular room, though.  Then the phone rang and I had
to do an about face; it's on the wall next to the stove.

Hard to tell who was calling at first, the line so full of static and
the hum of other voices.  Then it cleared: I recognized Whitney
speaking.  He was wanting to know whether I'd be willing to work this
evening.  He mentioned something about an accident and expecting a big
bunch of people coming into town.  "Coming from all over," he
predicted.  "Wait," I said, "back up a little.-what's this about an
accident?"  He said, "Francie, where are you?  What world are you in?"
then told me what he knew.  And I promised to be there.  I'm not
pinched, but I'm not so flush, either, that I can afford to sneeze at
the extra income.

Soon as I stepped outside, I heard the dogs growling again.  And now I
thought I saw the cause of it: somebody trapped inside the fence,
struggling to slip through.

I forgot all about my fear beforehand.  A corner of his jacket was
snagged on one of the barbs--he'd been thrashing around, making it
worse.  "Hold it!"  I shouted as I moved towards him.  "Let me help
you--"

One glance told me he'd been through something drastic.  He was wearing
only half a tie.  No shoes.  There was a smudge on one cheek, or some
skin barked off of it.  He'd been part of the accident Whitney had been
talking about, I felt sure.

He stared at me with the blankest eyes I've ever seen.  Eyes crusted
with some muck--old tears, maybe.  "How about if you try slipping out
of your jacket?  See--" I showed him how to stoop to the level of the
wire, to pull out one arm at a time, slowly, with me holding the sleeve
taut.  "There you go."  I lifted the jacket free and clear.  Only a
small rip that I could see, one easily mended.  I handed the jacket
back to him.  He turned the thing over, lining side out, inspecting it;
his hands moved like crabs, fingers crawling along the seams,
fluttering into the deep sockets of the armholes, baffled.  Like he'd
never seen armholes before.  I guess if you hadn't--to a Martian, for
instance-they'd look pretty strange.  He was no Martian, though.  It
was biting cold but, try as I might, I couldn't persuade him to put his
arms back in.  He turned to me and asked, perfectly serious, "What is
the business you are in?"

I gave a little hoot to that.  What a question!  It's a good one: what
business am I in?  This happens to be one I've been putting to myself a
lot lately, but he went right on asking things without waiting for
anything from me.  "Are you from Lubeck?"  was next.

I heard him, all right--it sounded like "Loobeck," but for a second I
thought he meant Lubbock.  Anybody here would.

"Lubbock?"  I answered.  "No, why?  Are you?"  That was only to be
saying something.  I knew he wasn't.

He took off without answering--he'd spotted the gate and was headed for
it.  I argued with him to hold it for a minute.  Words just seemed to
lose themselves in the air, though, so I ran to catch up with him.  He
was going at a clip and it was all I could do to keep alongside.  Once,
when he started to pitch forward, I reached out and grabbed his arm,
but he twisted himself away.  That cautioned me about getting forward
with a stranger.  I kept on talking, didn't matter what, anything to
keep him from slipping away.  He made a remark to the ground: "Some
pisk!"  I didn't know what that meant, but I knew he meant me.  His
walk was wobbly, like he had one foot in a furrow.

Even so, he was too fast for me.  He kept on spurting ahead, I kept on
pursuing.  The wind was mean, cutting, but I was in a fizz--I no longer
felt it.

I didn't notice the woman till I was practically on top of her, my
focus so set and centered on the old man.  I guess she'd been crouched
all that time, poking through a patch of shinnery, as she was when I
came up to her.  "Did you see an old man passing this way?"  I hailed
her.  She must have.

"What?"  She raised herself, glancing east and west.  Seemed to be
having some difficulty locating me.  I asked again.

"Never met the guy," she said.  "What's the hurry?"

"Explain later," I promised.  "You lose something?"

"My keys."  She looked very worried.  "I've got everything on the one
ring.  Stupid!  Can't think where I dropped them .. ."

"I'll be back," I said.  I meant to be.  I kept on moving, though,
never breaking my stride.  Don't know why, but I felt the old man was
my first responsibility.

In fact, I lost sight of him long before giving up.  Only on my way
back, registering the cold afresh, thinking on the uselessness of my
chase, did I recall the woman looking for her keys.  She'd been in city
dress and she hadn't been wearing shoes--it only struck me then--she'd
been one of them.

But she, too, had vanished.

I was winded.  All I could do was beat a retreat to the house and ring
up the sheriff's office.  I was scanning the horizon one last time
before stepping inside when a piece of paper blew right up to me as if
addressed and flattened against my shin.  I peeled it off: a scrap of
newspaper from somewhere--words broken off--nothing whole on it.  None
of this made sense.  Time to quit!  I'd make my phone call to the
sheriff, catch my breath, then haul myself over to Tick Tock Lounge.

i

TWO

Nine.

Voices.

"ANYBODY ELSE from Golden Tours?"  I could hear somebody with a
bullhorn calling.  "We've got a van waiting.  Follow my voice--your van
is waiting ..."  I wasn't dreaming, that's what I heard.

Looked like every kind of contraption on wheels had pulled up by the
time I actually started on back to the house.  Ambulance, flatbed
truck, closed van, police cruiser.  I'd seen an empty tractor trailer
for carting who knew-what stationed behind my shed.  Add to that, the
cars and vans parked every which way between the house and the field,
stacked up onto my lawn, even.  A police officer from out of town was
standing in the middle of my tomato patch, head tucked into one of
those portable phones.  He was discussing the crash, and he was talking
in code, nothing I could follow.  Then my ears pricked up.  "It bought
the farm," he said.  "You should see it.  It really bought the farm.
Half a section, I'd say."

That roused me.  They'd occupied, no disputing that, but they hadn't
bought it yet!

I was so done-in, filthy with tiredness.  Too tired to go to my own
funeral, as they say.  Too many mixed feelings too fast.

Even after I stepped inside and shut the door on them, I could still
hear the rescuers, still see the scene in my mind's eye.  The foam
trucks had arrived a while back.  They'd started out in one spot,
covering the big pieces of wreckage, the last shreds of smoke,
blanketing even the puddles where oil had seeped.  They'd "neutralized"
the field--I'd heard the firemen say so.  Another one said "sealing."
Or maybe "sealant," my hearing's not what it was.  Anyway, the ground
was all lathered up.  What those chemicals would do to the soil was
something I didn't want to think about.

There'd be no crop from it this year.

Times I want to just run--tear up my roots and run.  This was one of
those times.  The hail-out last year was another.  I'd given Troy my
word, though, and I knew I wouldn't go back on it, come hell or high
water.  And that was what I had--hell and high water.  But I'd
promised

Troy that I'd hold on to the land long as I lived for the sake of the
kids.  I knew they didn't want it, and the grandkids wouldn't, but I
was bound by my word to hang on.  And, most times, I wanted nothing
more than to be bound.  Tear up your roots, your sworn promises, and
you'll scatter in the first gust--that was the way of things.  Look
what was happening in the big cities, all you had to do was look
around.

Then I thought about how nobody would want to buy the field after this.
My next thought was nothing to be proud of, either.  It was: count your
blessings.  Be glad it missed the house.  Be glad it missed the
set-aside.  Be glad it missed the stubble field--imagine if it
hadn't!

But I was too tired to feel anything by then.

I was standing in the hallway all this while and what I saw next gave
me a start.  Must of been some kind of afterimage or something, some
trick of tired sight.  Seemed to me the fridge door was open, somebody
standing there, his back to me, half-blotting out its light.  He was
studying the food situation, hunting down a bedtime snack--Troy's old
habit.  I thought I heard him speak, too, without ever once turning
round.  "I'm home," he said, but his voice was just a blowing sound,
low, soft, so low-spoken, "ho-ohm"--no body to it at all.  The fridge
door was shut tight when I got to it.

I was hollow of a sudden, faint.  I hadn't ever gotten around to eating
supper, so no wonder.  I needed something to keep up my strength.  When
I turned on the stove, the gas jet bloomed out like a circle of blue
crocus--it startled me.  Almost forgotten that fire could be so tame.
So pretty.  I started off with soup and toast, then, still

feeling shaky--but no more voices or visions now--I fried an egg and
perked that up with white pepper and a side serving of pickled beets.
Heartless?  Maybe so.  I ended with a slice of Alma Hudson's lemon pie.
Kept telling myself that I needed energy, that food would steady me,
but even after I was full, I felt as shaky as before.

It was the same thing I'd done after Troy's funeral.  The neighbors
urged me to it, of course, heaping my plate with this and that, and all
but raising my fork for me.  I commenced eating and kept at it till I
was well stuffed.  Trying to remind myself that I was still alive. Same
thing."  then and now.

When I was done eating, I was still tired and still unready for sleep,
so I washed and stacked the dishes.  Soaking my hands in dishwater,
after all that chill outside, felt right good to me, but I needed
something else to busy me after the dishes were done.  What would that
be?

I decided to dust in the parlor.  It was crazy, but it helped.  Took my
mind off other things.  I steered well clear of the windows.  I did the
whatnot and most of the bric-abr ac in it, then the end tables on
either side of the couch, then the piano.  Then I turned to the framed
photographs top of the piano.  Whole row of pictures telling me who I'd
been.  The wedding ones were biggest.  I stood there holding the one of
Troy and me up to the lamplight and staring hard like I'd never laid
eyes on us before.  Then I took in the whole picture: it's a double:
Troy and me, his brother Wayne and Anna.  We couldn't afford but the
one wedding in those days.  There we were in our new-bought finery, you
could see how unaccustomed.  Me and Anna are seated, the grooms (both
passed on now) flanking us like

dark pillars.  I'm showing off my new ring, my fingers rayed out to
display it.  Nothing to brag on, but I was proud of its three bright
stones.  They come out like little lead specks in the picture, though.
I'm in a white linen summer dress with a shawl collar.  Can't see what
shoes-my legs only go up to the knees.  Anna's wearing all lace with a
high neck and princess sleeves.  Must of been hot, but she doesn't show
it.  The men are dark-suited and stiff, close-lipped, grim.  Like their
teeth are clamping down on the word "forever"--starting to get the
savor of it.  Look again: not a one of us is smiling.

So different from the kids at their weddings, all wide lipped, laughing
or saying "cheese" for the camera.  "Cheese" or "whiskey,"
lighthearted. Theirs are all in color; ours black and white, for hard
choices.  For us marriage meant forever.  Theirs are for right now, so
long as it pleases.  The difference shows--Mike already on his second
go-round, Audry quarreling with Norbert, talking of a "trial
separation," though they happened to be together as of last week.  Al
was sticking; they'd only been married a few years, him and Mary.  No
saying how long that would last.  It's a whole new world now, I
reminded myself for the umpteenth time, but I couldn't agree that new
meant better.

After dusting, I might of started in vacuuming, if I hadn't felt ready
to drop on the spot.  So, at last, I let myself stretch out on the
couch.  My spare blankets were outside--in use--and I had barely enough
energy to fetch a couple of coats from the closet to cover myself with.
No strength to make my way upstairs to a real bed, just

enough energy left to turn out the lights.  It was shadowy with the
lights out, but not dark.

Laying there on the couch, away from the press of people, the chill
crept deep into my bones again.  All done-in yet I couldn't fall
asleep.  My eyes refused to close, I was too balled-up inside.  I'd
always thought of my house as a capsule, walled off from cold and pain.
Even during the dust bowl days, no matter the howling outside, I'd kept
steady and gone around stuffing damp towels and washcloths under the
door and into the window seams until I felt we were sealed safely in. 
Funnel clouds, lightning, hail--I still thought the same thing. But
this crash had gotten to me.  Felt like it split the roof wide open.  I
could hear the wind close at hand and, even with the windows closed, a
never-ending commotion from the field.

There were bullhorns, sirens blaring, choppers chopping, car motors
gunning in the cold.  I could make out each separate sound and map its
position.  It's my land, after all, nobody living knows it like I do. I
know it by inches.

I even thought I could hear them hacking and sawing away at the
passenger cabin.  It was cool enough now to start.  With my right mind,
I knew I was too far off to hear them if they really had started, but
I'd seen the rescue crew laying out their tools, so I knew what kind of
work lay ahead.  There were hatchets, big ones--they had no need of
mine--and cutting torches.  Chisels and harness cutters.  Ladders,
ropes, pliers, crowbars.  And saws--electric-powered, double-bladed.
They called them "rescue saws."  They'd asked to use my shed as a
temporary morgue.

The things I'd witnessed today--a whole world in

pieces!  I pictured Troy at my side, helpmeet, how I wished he were
here to help me through this, all the while knowing he wouldn't of had
the strength for it.  Not in his last years, and maybe not for years
before that when he must of been failing and trying to hide it.

He'd been falling for months.  Always some excuse: his shoes not
fitting right--they didn't make shoes to fit properly anymore, an
uneven step that tripped him up, hiccups, heart cough, a patch of floor
I'd over waxed--till he fell from his chair, fell from his bed, and we
knew it was no accidental thing, it was more like the earth was drawing
him down.  He fought it.  I think he knew well what it was.

How I fussed and schemed for his last birthday!  Roused myself at the
crack of dawn, even though it was a Sunday, to lay out the new sweater
I'd knitted for him and his favorite kind of cake, apple spice, fresh
baked.  And he pushed it all away from him.  Wouldn't even try on the
sweater, wouldn't touch the cake.  Didn't say ten words to me all that
morning.

Al was visiting at the time, all three of us sitting together at the
table, the silence so thick you could taste it.  Finally, I turned to
Al.  "Ask your father what he wants," I said," 'cause I don't know
anymore.  Nothing I make for him."  So Al blurted out: "What's eating
you, Pa?  What is it you want?"

Troy answered right away, didn't take a minute to think it over.
"Everything," he said.  That was his last birthday.  He knew.

I was thinking back on that birthday for a reason, asking what it was
those passengers wanted, and knowing the

answer was: everything.  Everything!  Who wants less?  I saw the plane
again, speeding down, down to nothing, saw Troy again, stumbling-Sat up
sharp then, tossing my head from side to side, trying to shake off what
I'd seen.  It was no dream, I was still awake, too weighted with
eating, I thought, eating and other things, to drift off.  When I
stretched out again, I could hear the wind, still battering away.  I
saw Jim Titus being blown backwards by the wind.  That wasn't how it
was, so I thought maybe I'm starting to dream now, maybe I'm drowsing
at last.  Strange .. . for I was growing heavier by the minute, so
swollen with holding in ... I could hear old Dr.  Porter saying,
"You've got to dilate one more inch," but I couldn't take it anymore
and I cried back, "This is it--as far as I go!"  And Troy's there
standing side of my bed.  "Hon .. ."--he's bending close--"hear what
the doctor says" and he holds to his chest a present a basket something
red.  Cherries of all things darkly red

Ten.

Unofficial.

I STOPPED back at the house to look in on my dogs and feed them.  The
Blue Heelers were on the prod, jumpy as could be, but there wasn't a
one of them, breed or no breed, who hadn't picked up on something. They
all knew there'd been one hell of a ruckus nearby and that Buck hadn't
come back with me.

And then I split.  I recalled Whitney saying as I was leaving the
lounge, "I wouldn't mess with it, Chip, if I was

you.  They'll close off the area first thing."  I knew he was probably
right, but I had to see for myself.

All along the sides of the road leading to the Wooten place, for a good
quarter of a mile, they'd set down flares.  But the field itself--you'd
have to be blind to miss it.  Lights on tripods everywhere, camera
floodlights with their own portable generators.  Police barricades, to
keep anybody unofficial out.  Bunch of officers propped up by those
boards.

"Sorry, son, this is out of bounds to visitors," is the friendliest
greeting I got.  "But I'm in Bounds," I said, trying to make a joke of
it.  "Born and raised here--never have been out."  He wasn't smiling.
"You know what I'm talking about," he said, "don't get smart-mouthed."
He was nobody I'd ever seen before.  Must of come from Hardesty or
farther yet.  "I mean unofficial," he said, "that's what you are."  I
offered to let him use some of my dogs.  "They're good trackers," I let
him know, "might be somebody got away or something."  No thank you very
much, was his answer to that--they had their own dogs for tracking if
they needed them.  I'd heard about rescue dogs going into action with
two-way transistor radios latched onto their harnesses, special dogs
taught to bark into microphones when they came on whatever it was they
were trained to look out for.  My dogs are plenty smart, but none of
that.  So I backed off.

I knew my way around better than they could.  So I prowled around the
back road that runs between the Wooten set-aside and Darrel
Richardson's field.  And, sure enough, I spied my opening and snuck in
easy.  What was left of the passenger cabin and some parked vans gave
me

good cover.  Plus, there was this curtain of smoke between me and the
lighted area of the field.  I crept along, following the wreckage
trail.  The soles of my boots felt paper thin, crunching.  Too much
metal underfoot, everything cut and cutting.  Like a great big can
opener had run over the ground, going berserk.  Then there was jet fuel
seeping along or squishing out of the mud.  And foam.  Thorny or boggy,
didn't know which was worse, there was no ground you could trust.  Slab
of wing up ahead, broken off, bent at the tip, aluminum skin crumpled
up like real skin.  I was stepping careful, close to it, when it
started to hum and sizzle like bacon on a fry pan.  Or a swarm of bees
Jumped clear of it--you bet, quick!  The sound was coming from some
shredded wires in the wing.  Could be stepping on mines, I thought,
most anything could explode yet, so I veered away sharp from it, moving
quick as I could.

Spotted something bright out behind the shed--bright in its own light.
I went after it.  Suitcase ripped wide open, what it was.  Stuff
scattered all over--clothes--bright clean new ones.  Nighties, they
call them, naughty nighties.  They were slinky--I stooped to pick up
one of them and let it go.  It was slimy.  Gross!

Thought I saw a gold coin.  Too good to be true, it was only a cigar,
fancy kind, the foil ring had caught my eye.  Turned out to be sopping
wet, so I let it go.

I turned around back of the shed.  Noticed a lady sitting there,
strapped to her chair, and went up as close as I could.  She might of
been just resting there--except for the torched hair and a wide-open
look of astonishment in her

blue eyes.  The chair was right side up, but stowed at a crazy angle.
She'd dressed for this--frilly blouse, pink fingernails --a party
wilder than planned.

It was weird--horror show terrific.  I felt sorry for her, sure,
but--hey!--hey, I didn't do it.  I spotted a peaked blue cap with gold
braid.  That was something I really wanted to pick up, but knew the
airline officials would be looking for it first thing, they'd know it
was missing.

Anyhoo--then I saw something even better.

A hand.  I'm flipping out.  A man's hand, all there is to it.  Size of
my own, about.  Chopped off, neat, at the wrist.  Weird!  I stoop down
close to make sure, my mind whizzing along at this dizzy speed: ninety
some passengers and each of them has, what, three-hundred-sixty
bones-heard that someplace--so ninety times three hundred is zero times
zero is zero times nine times anything is zero six times nine is
fifty-four four carry the five three times nine is twenty-seven plus
five that's thirty-two-thirty-two-thousand--four-hundred bones!  A heap
of bones, one big bundle of sticks spewed out over the field.  And say
they broke off between the joints every which where in between,
billions and zillions of bits in between what I'm thinking my hand
sliding down for his hand tucking it a little cold a little clammy into
my hip pocket, my right-hand loose-change pocket.  Keep going.  Doing
okay, great, hey--everything cool, everything interesting, so
interesting, nothing getting to me as I walk along sort of blinkered
now sort of strolling-through scouting along whatever turns up next
diamond ring coke maybe smugglers' stash when my hand goes back to my
pocket forgetting for a sec and--yowl--which hand is

which?  Some other mouth not mine starts up.  I'm so spaced.
Howling--I can hear it--me?  That me?  Yowling-like a bitch in heat!
Can't be me!  Split--gotta split-So I start running--can't see anything
it's a blur--gotta get outta here--gotta get out--but it's hard-going
shredded metal, filaments--the word comes to me filaments hooks
everywhere trying to catch--and catching--a tall thorn in my foot.  And
worse--worse yet--that hard hand jouncing- Five dead fingers hooked to
my hip!  And somebody else yelling, grabbing ahold of my hair by the
root Eleven.

Earthen Vessels.

DO NOT BE AFRAID of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. A
little darkness would have been soothing.  Instead, they'd made a
circle around the wrecked passenger cabin, stringing up klieg lamps.
Klieg, or strobe--like stage lights--garish, unreal-making.  Do not be
afraid .. . This would be it: the final act.  They were using acetylene
torches on the cabin now, going in for the last of the bodies.  Human
cargo.  I had to face

away for a moment, lean against the hood of a car.  The moment passed;
I tried to pick up the passage where I'd left off.  Are not two
sparrows sold for a small coin?  Yet not one of them falls to the
ground without your Father's knowledge--guess my head wasn't buried
deeply enough in the text.  I could still see a corona of light over
the page's rim, gibbering shadows moving across the light.  One shadow
separated out from the rest, grew dimensional, grew bright.  It was no
one I recognized.  He was resolutely heading my way.

I guess he took my glance as a greeting, because he started up right
away.

"You're the priest, right?"  I nodded.  He introduced himself--a
reporter, I forget which paper.  I realized then that he'd introduced
himself earlier.  But that had been hours before.  It had been a long
night.

"You've"--he fished around for the right word--"been working with the
dying, I noticed.  "Extreme unction'-that what you call it?"

"Used to call it.  I've been anointing them, yes."  I didn't want to
get into a long discussion.  He wasn't content to leave it at that,
though.

"You see," he persisted, "and this is strictly off the record, for my
own benefit--but I can't understand what you've been doing.  I can't
help noticing that you've not been very discriminating.  Between
ourselves, Father, haven't you been anointing everybody?  I mean, but
every body?"  He didn't wait for an answer.

"Saints and sinners.  Moslems.  Jews.  Mormons?  Atheists, too, I
bet."

"Would you have me take a census first?"  I asked.

He rubbed at something on his sleeve.  "So it's for consolation," he
said.  "Just kindness."

"Kindness?"  The word was one of those warm fuzzies I didn't much
trust.  "It isn't social work I've been up to."

"I don't understand," he said.

How to even begin to explain?  Did I understand it?  Officially, only
the baptized, the catechized, the prepared, the shriven, were really
blessed by such a gesture, only for these was the anointing a
sacrament.  For others, it was neither sacrament nor sacramental.
"Well, but look .. ."  I said, and ground to a halt.

"What would the Pope have to say about it?"

"The Pope?"  I must have sighed.  This wasn't the place .  How could he
not see that?

Maybe he did, though.  "Sorry," he said, "it's my job to ask questions.
Gets to be a habit, I'm afraid, even when I'm off the job."

He really wanted to know.  I tried to think, but it's hard to find the
right language for someone who isn't steeped in the traditions.  Lots
of things are second nature to us.  I gave it one more stab.  "For a
Catholic," I said, "a Catholic who's spiritually prepared for it, the
anointing is full of meaning--layer after layer of meaning.  For
others, this wouldn't be the case.  But I can't tell who's who in a
situation like the one we've got.  Obviously."  I tried to make clear
how the anointing, and the absolution that went with it, were
conditional, how we do it, just in case, when we don't know the facts
of the case.  Better to err on the side of lavishness if you don't
know--that's what we'd been taught.

And that, apparently, cleared me with the Pope.  He didn't ask me what
I, personally, thought.  They never do --assuming that the Pope does
all our thinking for us.  What did I think?  Right then?  To be honest?
I saw only the denominations of pain: Burns, Breaks, Bleeds.  And one
Lord of Suffering over all.

"One last question, Father?"

"Okay," I agreed.  But I made him promise it would be the last.

"Let me check that I've got this straight.  What I'm hearing is: in
most cases, going by the book, the anointing doesn't stick.  Doesn't
take.  Like an inoculation that doesn't take.  You said 'conditional,"
right?  Only conditional.  So ... if they don't meet the
conditions--say they're not Catholic, or they are Catholic but not in
the right condition to receive it, then it doesn't work.  So it's
mostly--don't misunderstand me, Father, I don't mean to be
disrespectful--but if you look at it that way, then it's got to be, in
a lot of cases, just wasted oil and a wistful prayer--"

"Not wasted, no," I hastened to reply.  "Not wistful."  What, then?
There was a gap in the rubrics, something unexplained.  He stared at me
fixedly, waiting.  I had to say something, so I temporized: "Look, I
wouldn't put it that starkly.  If you're really interested, swing by
the church sometime, and we'll sit down and have a long talk about it.
I'd welcome that.  Only, not tonight.  Okay?"

"Got news for you.  It's morning, Father."

So it was.  You could see an opening in the grayness to the east, some
long clouds trailing like streamers.  "We'll talk again sometime," I
promised, "if you're interested."

"You bet.  Appreciate it," he said.  "Enjoyed visiting with you."  He
started to walk off briskly, then turned, put his finger to his lips.
"Strictly confidential!"  he said loudly.

Gazing out over the field, I could see ribbons of gauze fluttering in
the rubble.  Smoke, thin and forceless now, drifted over the ground,
clinging low.  The rescue squad was still sawing away at the crumpled
cabin wall.  Except for the methodical grinding of metal on metal,
relative quiet reigned: there were no more shouts or cries.  The dying
and the injured had been evacuated first.  Then the walk-aways.  Then
the dead--except for those trapped in the cabin--my thoughts kept on
circling back to them.

So there it was: a new day.  The yellowing, too-cheerful light grated
me.  I'd started out wearing my coat, the air temperature close to
freezing, but, as the evening wore on, I'd grown strangely warm.
Shivering into warmth, maybe.

Told myself I ought to be praying.  Words came to mind, a long drumroll
of words .. . afflicted, but not constrained .  struck down, but not
destroyed .. . Only one phrase resonated for me--earthen vessels.

Seemed like only a bare couple of minutes, for I'd only begun to catch
my breath before I spied someone else headed towards me.  Turned out to
be a deputy sheriff from Hardesty I'd had dealings with before.
Eandrum, I think his name is--I couldn't get his badge into focus to be
sure.  "Got a case for you, Father," he said.

"What kind of case?"

"Souvenir hunter, I guess you'd call it."

Took me a minute, making sense of that.  "You mean people gather up
pieces for fun?"  I asked.

"You'd be surprised," he said.  "All kinds of fun in this

world.  And looting, it's a regular business.  It's also a crime,
destroying evidence at the scene of an accident.  This young fellow we
caught--you figure this one out-had a hand in his pocket."

"So?"  I didn't get it.

"Somebody else's hand--a piece of the evidence, see?  Maybe you could
speak to him, Father.  We can't seem to get through to him.  He's been
bawling nonstop, like a lost infant.  Dry tears--the worst kind.  He's
in big trouble."

"That him?"  I was surprised when it turned out to be Chip Parker. Last
person in the world I would have expected.  The bawling part, I mean. 
Couldn't ever imagine Chip showing emotion in public.  It wasn't in
character, and he'd worked hard to establish his character--flinty,
indifferent--choosing to spend more time in the company of dogs than
people.

If he'd been overcome with emotion before, it was well past by the time
I got to him.  They'd roughed him up: he looked chalky, shaken, his
lower lip cracked, one cheek swollen and striped.  I thought I could
read the print of a hand in those stripes, of fingers outstretched.  I
asked that we be allowed to talk in private.

He'd been "stressed-out, freaked-out," was how Chip explained it.  Only
hours before, he'd had to put one of his dogs to sleep.  Once he
learned of the crash, he'd ventured out to the site to see what was
what, and all the carnage "got to him."  Not very informative, and I
wasn't sure whether the dog's death or the human carnage had hit him
hardest.  Nothing he said did much to explain why he'd chosen to
appropriate another man's hand, but Chip

quickly lapsed into wordless ness and I knew it was hopeless to press
for more.  Something claps shut in him.

Afterwards, I did my best to embellish the story for the arresting
officer.  I carried on quite a bit with the little I knew, surprising
myself at it.  Told him how Chip had been as law-abiding as the next
citizen before this incident.  No record that I was aware of, but I
expected he'd check that out for himself.  And then I handed on a
little of his history, how he'd been raised by his only known kin, an
elderly bachelor uncle, an unsociable man--or maybe a little
deaf--anyhow, a man disinclined to make conversation.  How Chip had
grown up in all that silence, on his own, pretty much foraging for
himself.  And how--this struck me as important now--there'd been two of
them-he'd been one of a set, a twin, his brother crushed in a baling
accident when the boys were toddlers.  I didn't know exactly how old
Chip would have been at that time, but I knew it was very young.  I
recalled what I'd heard from others in town--that Chip had been earning
his own keep since he turned seven, killing rats at so much a head and,
later, rabbits.  Collecting hangers and selling them to the cleaners,
things like that.  He wasn't Catholic, but he'd done odd jobs in my
parish; his story was well known in Bounds.

About the twin part, it occurred to me afterwards, it's as though he's
been running away from somebody all of his life, and that somebody
might be a full half of himself.  He wasn't "all there," in the
judgment of most people in town.  I hadn't mentioned that.

"We'll release him this time on your say-so," the officer granted after
I was done making what case I could.  "But

not the next time.  Make sure he understands that.  He likes to act
deaf, I think.  Tell him we've got our eye on him, got all the vital
statistics.  Tell him to start marching.  Out this way"--pointing to an
opening in the barricades--"not the way he came.  No funny business."

I was whipped.  Unstrung.  I stood on after Chip left, rocking a little
on my feet, my eyes half-closed, unable to quit the spot.  The field
was quiet, near empty now.  Only shadows, revenants, moved--a dreamlike
figure, in a silver body suit and helmet, gently poking a pile of ash
with a long steel rod.  The sun drifted out, partway, from behind a
cloud; the widening light was grating to eyes as tired as mine, an
obscene gilding of a scene of unspeakable horror.  My eyes were
painfully dry.  Tears would have helped, would have been cleansing, but
no tears were forthcoming.  When the sun broke free of the cloud, I
realized that it was going to be a beautiful day.  Yet, wherever I
looked, there was a smudge, a shadow, an afterimage, as if I'd been
staring too long at the sun.

It was already after seven.  Too late to make my usual early morning
Mass.  Given the circumstances, my daily communicants would understand.
I had no idea what I was waiting around for, but I wasn't yet ready to
quit the field.  Too tired to move.  So I lingered, useless, still
upright though half-asleep, trying to keep my eyelids pried apart
--straining.  Images flared up, like dreaming on my feet.  Same scene:
I'm gazing out.  Near the ruined passenger cabin, there's a peaceful
lagoon of seeped kerosene.  Oily gleams.  There's ash still sifting
through the air and, in the smoldering rubble, a hand.  A hand rises,
the bones in candescent, the fingers--wicks, little spouts of flame at
each fingertip .. .

"Can you pray like that?"

"What?"  I felt myself pitching forward--jolting awake.  "How do you
mean?"

"Like you were doing just now--eyes closed, standing up.  Looking like
you're about to keel over?"

It was one of the nurses.  She held out a plastic cup to me: steaming.
Afraid I'd spill it--one knee was quaking and I didn't feel steady at
all--I reached for it with both hands.

Twelve.

Tracking.

"DEE O BEE?"  the officer said.

"What?  What did you say?"  The daughter of the man they were searching
for sounded angry, close to tears.  The least little thing touched her
off.  She'd survived the crash --so had her father, to hear tell--then
she'd lost him.  Her left hand was heavily bandaged but she kept on
forgetting, trying to smooth her hair with it.  It was one big ball of
bandage, like a boxer's mitt.  Aside from that, her face was a little
scratched, that's all.  Not much, considering.

"Date of birth?"  the officer explained.

"Oh, hell, I can't."

"Well, about then.  Give us an about."

They went on that way with height, weight, hair color.  Somewhere along
in there I realized they were talking about the old man I'd run into,
the one with the smudge on his cheek and only half a tie.  I spoke up
then, and the daughter brightened.  "That's him," she said,
"definitely."  So I invited her into the house to help pass the time
while she was waiting.

Before we took off, the officer wanted to know if she had any photos
with her.  She fumbled in her purse for one, wedging it open with her
mitt and poking around with her good hand till she found something. She
passed it to me first, and I nodded, "the same."  Gray face, smudge of
hair, bitter line of lip, thin as a thread.  A man of years, unpleased
by growing old.  Not much help in a photograph like that, I thought;
could of been Troy, my father, anyone.  The officer pocketed the thing
without comment, then handed around the notice he'd been drafting for a
final check.  Within hours, you'd see it on the walls of most public
buildings in town.  I'd be tacking one up in the post office if he
stayed missing till tomorrow.

ALZHEIMER'S VICTIM

MISSING

SIMCHA WEISS

description: 5'6" medium weight, 79 years old, gray-haired, brown eyes,
suffers from diabetes and memory robbing Alzheimer's.  Known to be

wearing a gray suit, white shirt, blue tie.  Wears glasses for
reading.

last seen: Bounds, Texas, survivor of an air crash.  He may have
accepted a ride out of the area.  Though able to carry on a limited
conversation, Mr.  Weiss would not know his way home.  Born in Germany,
he has lived most of his adult life in New York City.  He speaks with
an accent.

IF SEEN PlEASE CONTACT .. .

Then the sheriff's number was listed.  And URGENT in big bold letters
after that.

We settled at the kitchen table, the daughter and me.  There wasn't a
whole lot between us, nothing in common, really, but the crash.  That
didn't give us much to go on.  She said her name was Rachel, and I said
call me Glenna.  She told me her father's name was "Simcha," but I'd
read the notice and already knew that.  The name "Simcha," she said
tearfully, meant "Joy."  A man named Joy!  Never in my life have I
heard of a man with a name such as that --one or two girls, yes, but of
course I didn't say so.  On the way, I tried to distract her by showing
off my vegetable garden-to-be, my tomatoes and early-bird peppers in
cups on the windowsill, but she only mumbled some being-polite sounds
like "mmm" and "mm-hmm" and I knew her thoughts were elsewhere.  She'd
noticed the sundial before that, even paused to read the inscription on
it: i count none but sunny hours, mouthing the words in wonderment.
She's still in a daze, I thought, urging her on into the kitchen.

Inside, I warmed up two thick slices of my apple cake and brewed a
fresh pot of coffee.  She pecked at the cake and took maybe two sips of
the coffee, dawdling until it was surely chilled.  True, she had only
one hand with that big mitt of hers.  I offered to hot up her cup for
her.  "Better not, thanks," she said; she didn't know how caffeine
combined with her pain medication.  I'd resolved to say nothing more of
the crash unless she brought it up, and that didn't leave us a whole
lot else to talk about.

Still--I'd been upholding my end of the conversation with precious
little to work with, blat ting on about Bounds and the postal business,
if only to keep something going, when she started to weep, these
strangled, clotted sounds that stopped me cold.  I reached over, patted
her good hand, and waited for words.  A minute or two and they
came--"Everything's slipping away from him"--in a rush.

"Wasn't so long ago he could still explain how he felt trying to recall
the names of things and failing.  "Like trying to count the doors in a
dream," he said.  Now he can't explain anything.  Like, he used to say:
"We Jews are in the business of remembering."  When I was growing up, I
didn't want to hear about it, about his growing up Jewish in Berlin.  I
was sick of being reminded forever.  Now I want to know and he can't
tell me.  He was such an intelligent man.  A brilliant man--"

"Is--is," I reminded her.  "I saw him.  He was quick, let me tell you.
But not so quick that they won't be able to catch up with him."

"You don't know how humiliating it is."  She was still harping on his
forgetfulness.  "All the time I've spent waiting at the doors of men's
rooms, not knowing if he's going to come out.  Standing there and
everybody noticing .. .

"The thing is, in a crazy way, he's still on top of certain things.
Like he didn't want to fly today, he didn't trust the weather.  Looking
back, knowing what I do now, that showed a lot of good sense.  I wish
I'd heeded him, but I couldn't see it then.  He did everything he could
to dissuade me.  He even tried to make out he'd been reading his
obituary--his own obituary!--in the paper.  Can you imagine?  He
rattled the newspaper in my face until I agreed to read it."

"Well, then?"  That sounded pretty purposeful to me.

"And I did, and I laughed at him.  There was no similarity at all
between the man who'd died and Pop, no possible resemblance.  Pop
wasn't laughing along with me, so I tried to reason with him.  "Look,"
I said, 'he's got an Oriental name--see--' It was Dan Ban Phang, or
something.  Sounded like somebody banging pots and pans--you know?--one
of those names.  That didn't stop Pop, though.  He pointed to the man's
picture and I had to laugh.  "So he's got glasses, big deal, you both
wear glasses!  You don't look a bit like him.  The man's not even
Jewish, Pop.  He's Chinese--' He jabbed at the paper again, so I
scanned the article, trying to find the least shred of sense in it, the
least connection with my father.  Couldn't find a thing.  But I'd
gotten one thing wrong, so I corrected myself.  "Okay, he's
Vietnamese," I said.  "So?  You know anybody Vietnamese?  Even one
person?  He comes from a whole other world!"  Then Pop pushed his chair
away from

the table, stamped to his feet.  I knew he was really angry.  Actually
hurt.  "What am I--tata or schwatte?"  he said."  The daughter glanced
up then, taking me in, maybe for the first time.  "Don't know why I'm
running on like this," she said.  "I keep forgetting you wouldn't
understand.  "Am I tata or schmatte?"  means: "Am I a father or a
rag?"" She searched my face for my reading of that.  I didn't know what
she wanted me to do, laugh or cry, had no idea what sort of face I was
supposed to give back to her.  Must of just looked muddled.  "Guess
that's lost in translation," she said.  "Anyway, the thing is--I knew
then that he remembered he was my father.  At least ... as long as he
was saying it, he remembered.  Most of the time now he doesn't have a
clue ..."

"Use the napkin," I suggested, supposing it was a hanky she was after.
She'd started sniffling and poking around in her purse.  She shook her
head, no, it was something else-- a pillbox--she wanted.  One of those
long ones that mean business.  She popped it open with one hand and
pointed out seven dividers, one for each day of the week--she'd laid
out a whole week's worth of medication before the flight.  "He needs
these."  She fingered the different colors.  "The little one is the
most important.  He's a whole day late on everything."

"He'll come round," I promised.  "You'll see."  She made a sound--of
air trapped behind teeth.  I knew then how desperate she was.  "You'll
see," I repeated.  "Take my word for it, I've lived a lot longer than
you."

Might as well of been talking to the air.

"Sometimes," she went on, "he seems like less than one person.
Sometimes like a whole crowd in one.  You know?

I haven't heard him call me by my name in--don't know how long.  Has
he forgotten that, too?  What about his own name?  Will that be next? I
don't dare to put him to the test.  When he signs a check, I can tell
he's not really writing.  He's drawing a picture of his name, that's
all, and that picture's going to be the next thing to go--"

"You have children?"  I asked, hoping a change of subject might perk
things up.

"Daughter"--she sighed--"and she's going through a very difficult
adolescence.  So I'm pulled--torn--in two different directions."

"Don't I know it!"  I said.  "We call them 'the taffy years."" No way
of telling whether she heard me or not, but I persisted.  "Caught
between the generations-stretched near to breaking between them.  Like
taffy."  I was making a serious point, I wanted her to know that.
"Anybody my age--we've been there."

Then I heard gravel churning on the front drive and I thought none too
soon .. . My welcome to Matt McKee, our deputy sheriff, was warm and
hearty--I couldn't help showing my relief.  "Almost good news," he
said; he was expecting it soon, and had come to fetch the daughter.

There'd been a couple of leads.  A motorist passing by a salvage yard
north of the city had spotted an old man standing and staring."
"Looking kinda lost' was his impression."  By the time the motorist
picked up the Alzheimer's Victim Missing bulletin at a gas station
fifteen miles down the road, it was too late to turn back, but the man
had paused to place a call to the sheriff's office, and Matt had gone
out to look.  He found the place deserted.

There'd been a second sighting on Long view and Hale; it hadn't
matched the first, and hadn't led to anything, either.  But Matt
thought it best to have the daughter close at hand for when the next
call came in.

She all but leapt to her feet, so eager to be gone.  Thanked me in a
big voice and asked where she could freshen up" her mind already on the
next thing.

I wanted to press Matt for more details while she was in the bathroom
but held back, fearing she might overhear.  All he'd volunteer on his
own were a few generalities.  "I'll be glad, right glad, when this is
over," he said.  "Back to the usual--speeders, DUI's, stray cattle, a
rape maybe or a wife-beating, a little Saturday night brawling .. .
Normal life."

Thirteen.

What the

Black Box

Said.

IT'S ME AGAIN--Francie.

I never did catch up with that old man who'd been snagged on the fence
wire, the one who asked me if I was from Liibeck.  He must have
wandered around for quite a while, finally coming to rest at the Dairy
Queen half the way between here and Hardesty.  He'd caused a stir at
the DQ, trying to order "crept locks" or some such, repeating himself,
growing louder and angrier each time the girl at

the counter said, "Please?"  Then she'd hailed the manager.  The
manager had never heard of any such dish either, but he'd noticed the
shape of the man's tie and the fact that he wasn't wearing any
shoes--those things tipped him off.  He slipped the counter girl a note
about what number to call, and somehow sweet-talked the old man into
sitting down with him over a cup of hot chocolate.

The sheriff had arrived shortly, with the old man's daughter in tow. It
had been a strange reunion, to hear tell: she'd hugged him and wept;
he'd stared at her and inquired what sort of business she was in.  And
so--so to speak--they'd connected.

That old man had been my only real link with the crash.  I hadn't gone
out to the Wooten place to hunt for souvenirs or spilt money.  Most of
the people I worked with had at least tried to.  I wasn't even curious
to take a gawk at the field.  Only one crash in anybody's life, I
figure; I'd had mine when my folks were killed.  It was hit-and-run;
for hours, nobody noticed--a drunken teenager plowing into them with
his pickup, flinging them out onto the blacktop like things thrown
away, and racing on.

Today's Sunday.  A day I never liked, and here I was with a cold on top
of it, and it was raining on top of that --so misery upon misery.
Couple of late nights filling in at the Lounge, plus all the wild
weather we'd been having lately--going from winter to spring to winter
again in the space of hours--must've done me in.

Normally I'd be playing the piano at Senior Citizens from noon to
three.  It's a pretty beat-up instrument, but surprisingly well tuned,
well enough for what's needed,

and I'm free to rove the keyboard while the seniors are busy eating,
before the supervised singing begins.  I don't really object to going
there--I earn something, and it gives a little shape to the long day. I
take the opportunity to improvise while they're sitting at the long
tables, stuffing their faces with food and talk, not paying the least
attention to me.  When I run out of ideas and need coasting time, I'll
summon up the old standbys, the primer stuff, "Fur Elise" and
"Chopsticks," so I'm never really at a loss.  After the meal comes the
sing along  They'll be sitting in classroom rows around the piano,
raising their hands for their favorites, "How Great Thou Art," and "One
Day at a Time"--my least favorite, it's so plodding.  And, nearly
always, they'll want "Listen to the Mockingbird."  Jim Titus joins in
with his riddle on that one, playing it close to the bridge, trilling
on the bird chorus, and taking lo-ong glides up and down the
fingerboard, ending on a double stop each round.  Pretty fancy fiddling
for an old man and hard to forget.  The sound is piercing, in the
highest register.

And, every so often, Maggie Campbell will rise up with her walker and
start strutting in time to the music, with Jim Titus swaying and
high-stepping alongside, so we've got us a dance.  Then, chances are,
there's a birthday, and we do the traditional for it.  It's when they
start up with the likes of "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now" and I gaze
out over those ranks of gray heads that I begin to wonder: Is this for
real?  Have you flipped your lid, Francie, or what?  But it is real, so
help me, and they tend to lead here, with the piano only following
along: "I wonder who's kissing her now ... I wonder who's teaching

n

it '

her how .. ."  It always amazes me, the way their frail voices swell up
on that one.

But I wouldn't be playing there today, not with this cold, or low-grade
flu, or whatever.  Too much effort and I might be contagious.  Besides,
I'd be slurry and miss notes --I was all doped up.

Like I say, Sundays tend to be pretty slow for me-church being the only
show in town.  So I have to admit I missed the Senior Citizens just a
little bit.  Just a twinge.  I was curious to know what they'd be
wanting to sing this particular Sunday, and whether they'd be talking
up the crash or politely sidestepping the subject.  A dreary day, the
rain wasn't stopping, and I thought of all the preachers going at it
right this very minute.  Plenty of opportunity in the crash--for them.
Plenty of fodder there.  Brother Pipes came to mind.  Only a minute or
two late if I wanted to tune into him.  I was kind of wondering .. .
Not that I ever expected to be surprised by anything Brother Pipes
chose to say: he'd been around too long.  Still--I'd be interested to
hear his account of the crash.  I'd been told he was out of town when
it happened--he'd missed it by a day and a night.

He'd already started--but one thing about Brother Pipes, you can pick
him up anytime, anywhere, and land at the same place, exactly where he
means for you to be.  Impossible to get lost--in the hearing of it, at
least.  He didn't sound too far into the message part, still moping
along at cruising speed, and nowhere near weeping yet.  Fast, loud,
gnashing and weeping's how he usually winds up.

"You ask me, Brother Pipes, will we ever get back to

normal in Bounds?  Will we ever be the same as we use to be?  Brothers
and sisters, I pray not!  Not the same old mountain of satisfactions!
Not the same old careless life!  No more business as usual.  Not after
this!  God's pointing a finger.  One day you're not going to see the
sun come up.  Flight 582 was God's pointing, the fiery furnace, the
place of testing, the sevenfold heat, the writing on the wall, the hand
of God writing on the wall!  It's coming to you--by cancer, by blood
pressure, by falling out of the sky.  Doesn't matter who you are--the
hand of God is writing on the wall.  Read it and weep--mene, mene,
tekel-ME-NE--God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it.
TE-KEL--thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.  The hand
has written, watch the hand!"

Another thing about Brother Pipes is--you may not like him or agree
with him, but he sure does get your attention.  Like two people combing
your hair at the same instant!  Maybe it was my cold, this nasty head
cold, that made him especially chilling.  In the pauses, I could hear
the rain ticking on the glass.  It was a slow soft rain .. . made me
sleepy to listen to.  Truth to tell, I'd been in sort of a doze ever
since the crash, ever since that dream .. . Caught out between two
worlds maybe.  Between the voice of Brother Pipes and the rain ... it
was like drowsing off and being yanked awake, drowsing off and .. .

"Stricken by your love, Father--"

That roused me.  I reached over and turned the volume down.  I never
watch television preaching--none of the preachers in Bounds had gotten
on television yet--though I thought Brother Pipes would be the first
to, if ever that came to pass.  Him and that church he built!  People
passing on the road always gawking at it.  That's exactly what he
planned on.  It's different, that I'll grant.  Suppose to look like a
covered wagon--one of those hooped ceilings, flared at the front end.
Always looked like a great big bullhorn to me.  A bullhorn pointed at
the ear of God.

And that was something Brother Pipes wouldn't ever have any need of, in
my opinion, with that big voice of his, full of almighty soundings and
re soundings  All those whoso evers and "the Lord saiths"I  I never
trusted him for a minute--the way he claps your hand in two of his,
like a man that wants your vote.  That extra pressure of the palm,
inclining his head and winking with smiles: "How about it, Francie? How
about singing in my choir?"

He's got all the answers to all the questions you'll ever ask and then
some for the questions you'd never think to ask.  It's all one big ball
of yarn, unraveling as foretold.  Creation and Fall, the Ark and the
Tower, the Law and the overcoming of the Law, the crash of Flight 582
wrapped in there, somewhere in between the Resurrection and the Rapture
of the saved.  The Tribulation of the Earth would come after the
Rapture, and the White Throne Judgment after the Rapture.  As it was
written in the beginning of time, and unfolding as foretold.  "Look up!
Look up for the biggest trend!"

I knew in advance how it would go from here--the trump, the scrolls,
the vials poured out--I'd only get furious, so why bother to listen?
Yes, but I didn't know all the details.  I was curious to know if he'd
mention Glenna Wooten's field--just whatever sense he made of that.  I
guess none of us had really gotten over the plane's coming down in
Bounds.



"You say, Preacher, you're too hard!  No, I'm not.  You just think on
this: seven crew members, ninety-two souls on board--on a pleasure
cruise, many of them.  There was a lottery winner on board, you know
that?  She won big-over a million dollars.  I won't tell you her name
or the name of the state she won it in, it doesn't matter.  Let me
mention only that she was traveling first class.  She won-she lost.
First class to where?  You think a minute on that' So there they were,
going along, on a pleasure cruise, the lottery winner going first
class.  Think of all that pleasure!  Imagine--forty-three dead, our
lottery winner among them.  Twenty-seven injured, many of them
critically.  Twenty-nine saved.  Call that pleasure?  Some pleasure!
Consider the hell over which you hang.  You say, Preacher, who you
talking about?  I'm talking about you, brother.  I'm talking about you,
sister.  I'm talking about first and last things.  And I'm talking
about God' God is alive and Jesus is the only begotten son of God.  He
is God.  Without question.  Without comment.  Turn to Him--turn to
Him!

"Think about it--while you've still got a minute to think.  Did you
ever wonder--what were they thinking, what were they talking about,
what were they hoping, those passengers on Flight 582?  What were they
thinking about when the plane went down?  Playboy magazine?  Their cash
flow?  Their pretty things?  Think so?  Well, I'm here to tell you
there wasn't time for any of that.  Their watches stopped.  On the
instant.  Know what time it was?  I'll tell you.  Their watches stopped
on that instant: it was



two-sixteen post meridiem--it was too late--it was call
on-the-Lord-in-vain time.  The skies were as granite.

"No time to change!  No time to compromise!  We better live every day
like that.  We better live every single hour of every single day like
that!  But, no, we've got our own pews and we're gonna sit in them and
not get up.  We're fat, increased with goods, satisfied and needing
nothing-- Laodicea, lukewarm, and ready for the big heat.  Well, Flight
582 is the big heat, the writing on the wall.  The moving finger writes
and having writ .. ."

The rain hushed, then gusted up, then hushed again, as if it, too, was
listening.  Brother Pipes was on to explaining what the black box was,
how it wasn't really black but bright red or orange or yellow, and how
the cockpit voice recorder was stowed inside it to tell the tale after
the plane went down.

"Know what the black box says?  It says, "Whoop!  .. . Whoop!  .. .
Pull up!  Pull up!"  That's a recorded voice, the last warning voice
before the pilot shouts, "Position doubtful!"  or "Mayday!"  or
"Sinking .  , ."  Five times out of six, the last words, the last words
of the pilot before the roaring begins, before the sounds of impact
deafens all, are curses.  Four-letter curses!  Time and again!

"Know what the black box said--the one they found in Bounds?  "We've
lost it!"  Brothers and sisters, we've lost it!  Fall on your
knees--we've lost it--" His voice swelled, boomed out, crowded the
kitchen.

"God makes His power known--"

And that was it.  Brother Pipes had gone on for too long.  His theme
song, "Are You Washed in the Blood?"  covered his voice.  Must have
been pre-recorded.  I knew Brother

Pipes had been cut off because I'd heard him enough times to catch on
to the rhythm of his service.  He'd been only warming up for the end.
There was the altar call yet to come, then the special hymn of
invitation for the day, then his closing "Amen and Amen and Amen
again!"--pounding in the tent stakes, as he liked to say.

I stood up and stretched in the pause that followed.  Peeked out the
window: the rain was coming down faster now, blistering the glass. When
the opening announcement of Skyview Apostolic Assembly came on, without
music, offering "the sincere meat of God's word," I reached over and
clicked the radio off.  I'd had my dose of religion for the day.  After
brimstone--sincere meat!  Is it any wonder I can't stomach it?

Fourteen.

Stories.

WE WERE MOVING ALONG nicely.  At least, the mayor was.  My last
interview in a long go-round, and it was all I could do to keep from
nodding.  Too much high-density time.  I was avoiding coffee by then,
trying to keep my hands from shaking.  One more cup, I thought, and
they'd have to dry me out on a detox ward.  I was still functioning,
though, checking over old facts and stumbling on a few new ones.  Try
as I might, my notes tended to slope steeply downwards--looked like the
words were about to

 slide off the page--but my handwriting was remarkably legible under
the circumstances.  Not much new, so far.  I wrote: John Bounds
surveyed site 1885--in corp  1893.  The mayor smiled.  "October
seventeenth is the centennial.  Try and come round for it.  Enjoy
yourself and give us a little ink.  We could use some good
publicity--after this--" He made a creaking quarter turn in his swivel
chair.  "Let me make sure I got this straight--you're from the Fort
Worth, not the Dallas, paper, that right?"

"Right," I said.  "You're not from these parts?"  he added.  "Right
again," I said, tapping my pen, hoping to signal my disinclination to
go on with this particular subject.

He took the hint, shifted tracks, and soon was droning on like a
chamber of commerce brochure.  "Count seed-you count the future," he
declared, quoting somebody or other.  "We grow wheat, hay grazer milo,
triticale ..."  I asked him to spell it, that last one; he did, and I
wrote after it: hybrid--rye and ??  Just trying to stay alert--it
wasn't a detail I ever planned on using.

"Soybeans, native grasses for forage .. ."  The mayor was on a roll.
"Bet you never saw grass growing in drill rows like any other cash
crop!"  I hadn't--or hadn't known I had.  He went on to praise the
climate--"two hundred-five days between killing frosts"--the work
ethic-"nobody keeps bankers hours in Bounds."  No unions, so no
feather-bedding, deals done with a handshake, low crime rate,
churchgoing folks by and large, no pollution yet--I'd heard this sort
of recital before.  Couple of fifty acre industrial sites, waiting for
the right customers to come along.  "You might give us a plug on that."
Utility



rates hard to beat, and there'd be some tax abatement as a sweetener.
It was all more or less standard, the mayor's line, but then, abruptly,
he'd about-faced.  Clamped shut.  Leaned well forward, over the tiny
Texas flag on his pen stand.  The silence--it was pretty
disconcerting.

"So," I said, "where were we?"

"Tell me again exactly what you're after--" he said.

"A little background," I reminded him.  "Anything you think we ought to
know about Bounds.  Anything you want to tell the world--here's your
chance."

Maybe I was too direct.  "Some chance!"  he said.  "Some opportunity!"
Then he seemed to recollect himself.  Back to the theme of what a nice
town it was.  "We've got a prayer chain going," he wanted me to know.
"For the victims and their families.  That oughta tell you something
about us.  We won't be selling T-shirts to advertise the crash, unlike
some other towns I could name.  They'd be cashing in on all the
publicity--T-shirts, bumper stickers, buttons for the tourists.  You
know, you've seen those things, how they print them right up.  We're
not like that."

He ran on a bit then about a single exception that proved the rule--a
woman in Bounds, name of Judy Miller, who claimed she'd foretold the
accident.  She'd written a prediction on a scrap of paper--something
about a misfortune coming in the spring--and baked it into her annual
fortune cake at the county fair.  That was way back in September.  This
Miller lady, it seemed, planned on writing a magazine article about the
crash and how she forecast it.  But she was the only one thinking of
cashing in.

"Right now," he said, "with all the television people

 and emergency crews here and everything, there's a run on goods and
services.  We don't object to that--I'd be lying if I said
otherwise--but there's also litter, noise, congestion-those things we
can live without.  Another week or two, all you temporary people will
be gone and things will start getting back to normal.  We like the
company--not the occasion for it.  We like the attention--not all of
it--but a certain amount of it from time to time, I expect we'll feel
slow for a little bit, but--"

And then he blew the interview.  Just exploded.  I don't know what
sparked it.  I might have been looking momentarily cross-eyed at him;
I'd been trying to bite back a yawn.  He pitched forward, stabbing the
air with his forefinger, aiming straight for my heart.  Talking fast;

"Don't think for one minute that people in Bounds don't know where we
stand with you people coming in from the city.  We're the old folks,
still back on the farm-we're--how do you put it?--quaint, salt of the
earth and don't know where you'd ever be without us, but you're always
much too busy with your important lives to give us the time of day.
Unless something like this happens.  Or you want to dump something
toxic on us!  Don't think we don't know.  Any day now we could dry up
and blow away without anybody down in Austin or Dallas or Houston ever
turning a hair or even noticing we're gone.  Not that there aren't
compensations for that, compensations aplenty--peace and quiet and
old-time values--but I want you to know that we know where we stand.

"You just tell them about how many people in Bounds have offered to
give blood and help out with food and blankets and transportation and
such.  Just whatever ways

 we could.  That's the kind of town we are: we pull together.  Got
to--to survive.  You tell them that.

"We may be small and off the main road, but we're a nice town.  Soon as
we recover from this and everybody outside forgets about us, we'll be
nicer yet.  We'll be just fine.  Come by and see."

I'd touched a nerve, all right.

After the interview, I was still too keyed up to sleep.  What I needed
was to slow down gradually, so I turned in at the first place.  The
sign said Nick of Time Lounge, something like that.  Or Tick of Time,
maybe.  Whatever .

I took a booth to myself, hoping to unwind over a couple of Buds.  The
place was only half full, but couldn't have been noisier.  I recognized
one of the grips, a cameraman, and a few of the technical people from a
Dallas television crew.  And some of the locals looked vaguely
familiar.

The waitress was a hefty dishwater blonde.  Corn fed and
freckled--peasant legs.  Strictly local variety.  She wore a nametag,
but I was so cockeyed, even before I'd started on beer, that I misread
it as "Raunchie," sounding like "raunchy."  "Are you?"  I winked,
pointing to the badge, making a dumb joke of it.  "That's Francie," she
said icily, "for Frances.  You ready to order yet?"  No smile, no
nonsense, not one word to spare beyond "You want chips with that?"--the
bare functional minimum.  Don't know why I was so stressed by her: she
was the type of woman I wouldn't ordinarily have touched with a
ten-foot pole.  No ring on her finger and no wonder.  She set the bill
down beside me soon as she brought the beer.  It was neatly

 totaled, tax included: she'd finished with me.  Never bothered to
look my way again.  So I knew I'd triggered a nerve, same as with the
mayor.  Foot in my mouth, or face in my foot--I'd kicked myself.

It seemed to be growing noisier by the minute.  Words crackling in the
air all around me.  I remember a woman saying, "It doesn't make sense,"
and a man answering, "What does?  Shit happens--every day."  What I
couldn't get out of my mind was this image--a thing that hadn't really
registered at the time--a kid's toothbrush, pale blue, laying out in
the field.  I thought of how strange it was, how I never actually cry.
Just get a prickling, this crawling sensation, in my scalp.  My scalp
weeps, maybe .  why I'm half bald.  That was the level of my thinking
right then.

I was whipped, wasted, my tiredness as hard to ignore as thumbs on the
eyeballs.  The beer wasn't helping.  When I walked out onto the parking
lot, I tripped on the speed bump and was thrown to my knees.  Nothing
broken or torn, but I was shaken by it.  I reminded myself to drive
very slowly.  Best to creep along in second all the way.

For miles up the road, the motels were taken.  I was pretty close to
the Hardesty town limits before I found one with a vacancy.  I recall
swinging into a numbered parking space and cutting my headlights--then
blot to  Threw myself on the bed without trying to undress, and slept
for ten hours solid, waking only once to stagger to the bathroom and
take a leak, an all-time record for me.  Before eight, I got up for
good--not nearly enough shut-eye but a substantial first installment.
I'd have to catch up gradually.

I had the television going in the bedroom while I shaved.  And fretted
over the hair I'd lost in the past few days!  The program was onto
weather.  All I could make out was that "friendly skies" were coming
back, not how long they'd stay.  Another strange thing, I thought,
staring at myself through a half mask of lather: how quickly you slip
back into the humdrum normal.  I'd seen people with whole swatches of
skin peeled off, and here I was worrying about millimeters of scalp
exposed.  Could you beat that?  But I knew it was only a distraction.
In an hour or two, I'd be back on the scene.

Mostly, I love my job.  There'd be no point in putting up with what I
have to put up with if I didn't.  The pay is pitiful, considering all
the hours I put in, the daily wear and tear of getting places and
getting there fast--a deadline every minute.  Not to mention the stress
of editors like Mo Burns--"there's a number, an exact number"-breathing
down your neck.  Mo has a motto from Harry Truman framed on his desk: i
don't give them hell, i just

TELL THEM THE TRUTH AND THEY THINK IT'S HELL.  Isn't easy,

working for a man with a motto like that.

Still .. . there are compensations.  Curiosity has always been a
passion with me.  Reporting gives me a license to ask questions, and to
meet up with all kinds of people I wouldn't otherwise.  And, good
grief, I even love the smell of newsprint, the way it dirties your
fingers--the smear of big ink news.

When I was a cub starting out, what I liked best about my job was the
endless variety of it, my sense of boundless expectation, starting over
each day afresh.  But lately, before the crash, it seemed like the
chances of something

 new turning up were definitely diminishing.  Maybe there weren't so
many stories, after all.  I thought of that priest, making the same
gestures over everyone, motions bounded by some ancient template handed
down.  For him, I thought, there's only one story in the world: born,
suffered, died.  With an epilogue for the faithful: raised and
redeemed.  Or, for those of doubtful faith: the story made whole.  But,
as for me, I still believed the world was full of stories--maybe not an
endless supply, but plenty of really different ones, most of them
destined to remain incomplete.

I never did grasp what the priest was up to that first night, but by
the time I got to him, just before sunup, he looked as exhausted as I
felt, and I cautioned myself: don't press.  I still couldn't figure it.
Anybody ever do anything without motive?  Not that I've noticed.  I
have to admit that my first thought when I saw him dabbing them all
with oil and blessing them, making the sign of the cross over them,
was: he's making them all Catholic.  I'm still not convinced that
wasn't what he was up to.

Me--I'm Presbyterian--Sunday school for a couple years, on my mother's
side, and nothing on my father's side.  That makes me--what?  Guess I'd
have to say: nothing, really.  And I guard that nothing pretty
zealously.  So the priest made me nervous.  What did he know that I
didn't?  Anything?  Where was God when the lights went out?  I'd like
an answer.  People always say that seeing something like this crash
makes a believer out of you, but a believer, I ask, in what?  In the
god of cycles, maybe, the god of ruins.  No expectation but to be
crushed, sooner or later.  Only other sense I could make of it was that
maybe

all the gods who'd ever been thought of were true and were slugging it
out with one another--the barking gods, the bleating gods, you name
it.

I'd been thinking I might do a follow-up with the priest later the next
day.  Start all over from scratch when we were both wide-awake, but, as
it turned out, it was one thing after another from the first night
on--I never did manage to get back to him.  The cold took over soon as
the fire died away, and I had to keep moving, if only to keep my blood
circulating.  It was cold, cave cold, the fillings in my teeth ringing
with the chill.

Somewhere along in that first shift, I'd snatched a few hours of sleep
in the back of my car--enough to give me a second wind.  Then I worked
two days straight, plus the night in-between, before my replacement,
Matty Langer, arrived.  Matty's our farm and ranch reporter; he'd been
wanting a change of pace, and here it was.  He'd brought along fresh
clothes, too--his own.  I was touched by it.  Matty's a little heavier
than me, but not that much--his old togs would do.  I'd given him a
quick rundown on what to look out for, told him I'd cover the mayor
before turning in, then hit the ground running, like the first of those
survivors.

Simply luxurious .. . the feel of fresh clothes after a shower.  My
only change in the past few days had been into the work clothes I kept
in the trunk of the car.  Everything I'd worn was stiff with filth,
giving off a thick musk of fuel and scorched earth; sweat and body odor
were the least of it.  I doubted they'd ever wash out, and ended up
chucking the whole mess, shirt to socks, into the giant dumpster out
back of the motel.

 After breakfast and a call to my chief, I'd be taking over again.
Along about nine, give or take five, I should be back in the field,
ready to wind things up.  Before that, I made it my business to scout
out as many newspapers as I could.  I spread them out on the bed and
dove in.

The big story in USA Today was a feature interview with three
passengers who'd walked away from the crash unscathed.  They were using
some of my quotes--without attribution.  I'd scooped the story and
others were building on it.  It irked me, but that's the name of the
game.  You have to keep moving just to stay alive in my business.  I
don't stew about it overmuch, at least, not like I used to.  And,
anyway, the copy desk would be cutting me down to a couple of
paragraphs in a few days.  Then it would be on to the next thing--and
the next.

The Fort Worth paper had a front-page feature on natives of the
metroplex who'd been passengers on the flight.  The paper was still
printing passenger lists--names of those hospitalized and in what
condition, names of those treated and let go, names of the deceased. By
now, "missing" or "not accounted for" meant: presumed dead.  The
process of identifying remains would never be chronicled-too grisly.  I
located Matty's account of the mop-up in Bounds.  It wasn't bad.
Alongside it was a national news feature on mixups in the fatality
count.  I'd contributed to that, but A.P. had claimed the full account,
crediting it to their own man.  So, anyway.  The byline read: Ross
Turner.  Did I know him?  This bit was new: seems it wasn't only the
toddlers riding their mothers' laps and not being listed in the flight
manifest that caused an error in the count, there was some suspicion of
a stowaway as well.  Another

thing, in a box, four inches of print--an appetizer, really-offering
some informed guesses as to damage settlements.  In the weeks and
months to come, this story would move to first place.

There was a neat little item in the Dallas paper on flight and terminal
operations at DFW, including the resumption of the normal run for Maxim
Flight 582, San Diego to New York, now back on schedule.  And a
backgrounder, kind of late in my view, on the aircraft itself.  Vital
statistics: crew, payload, horsepower, fuel capacity, maximum speed,
cruising speed, cruising altitude.  Hard to believe they hadn't covered
most of this before, yet everybody assumes that Fort Worth is the poor
stepsister of Dallas.  There was a mention of the number of flights our
particular plane had accomplished before the crash.  Again, that was
something we'd covered early on.

The best story of all about Flight 582 hadn't surfaced in print.
Chances were, it never would.  I'd done my damndest to track it down
and would do more if I could, but there were only two witnesses able to
give testimony, and one of them really wasn't a witness--she'd heard
the other, the only real witness talking about it.  So I had one direct
testimony and one hearsay report, not enough to go on.  It had all
happened in "a split second."  Exactly how long is a split second?  I
suppose what he meant was: not enough time to think or take
responsibility.  The witness-- I'll call him Joe Blow--had been the
last person out the emergency exit before flashover occurred.  Everyone
standing behind him was trapped in the flames and perished, and he, Joe
Blow, knew he should have perished along with them.  He'd been pushing
forward--they all had

and he'd nearly knocked over the gentleman in front of him.  The
passengers had formed what he called "a line."  From what others said,
it must have been more like a free for-all with everybody bunching up
at the exits, Joe Blow trampling along with everybody else.  He'd
shoved the gent in front of him who'd turned aside, then saying, "Oh,
excuse me," and given up his place to Blow.  The old man had spoken as
casually as if he'd been keeping a seat or a coat for someone, only
holding on to it until the owner showed up and then, why naturally .. .
Joe Blow never did get a good look at the man whose place he'd taken.
The cabin was thick with smoke.  He--Blow--had an impression that the
gentleman was old, his hair whitish, but he wasn't sure.  Maybe it was
easier to think of him as being old.  Beyond that, all Joe Blow could
remember was that the man had been wearing some sort of muffler or
scarf.  But there was so much confusion in that "split second" before
flashover, he couldn't even be sure of the scarf.  Joe Blow, the man
who escaped, was haunted by the man who stayed behind, a man whose name
he didn't know.

That was one story I'd love to have snared.  I doubted I ever would,
though.  A sentimental tale, old-fashioned.  Not a bit fresh.  For all
I know, there might be a tale like this for every crash.  I didn't know
if it was true or not, but it might have been--it ought to have been. I
wanted for it to be true.

Fifteen.

Visitors.

IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING, we tried to move on.  The smell of burning
lingered over Bounds for much of the first week after the crash. School
was called off that first Tuesday so that mothers could be with their
children and offer what comfort and understanding they could. Janet
Callahan came to me in tears after morning Mass, wanting to know what
to do about Susie.  Only five, she'd seemed to take in nothing when her
older brothers talked

up the crash in vivid and gory detail but, not long after, she started
throwing her Cabbage Patch doll out the window and laughing as it fell.
This was the same precious doll she'd waited for all summer and fall
and had finally come to her with toy adoption papers at Christmas.

Susie wasn't the only problem.  Don Bateson mentioned in passing that
he'd taken his son Arthur over to a doctor in Hardesty, who said the
boy needed tranquilizers and prescribed a low dose of barbiturates for
him.  Arthur, who's a bright, outgoing eleven-year-old, the last child
you'd expect to be causing trouble, had to be practically dragged out
to the car these days.  Not only that--he'd refused to board the school
bus, and resisted leaving the house for any reason.  When Don finally
forced him to go to the doctor, the boy started crying and wouldn't
stop until his father promised to drive very slowly.  They had to creep
along.  Each time Dan moved a sliver over thirty, the boy would break
into hysterical weeping.

Actually, we're all jumpy.  Only the other day, as I was taking my
usual walk, a feather fell out of the air and brushed my forehead.  I
jolted back as though I'd been stabbed.  Only a feather!  For two
weeks, I couldn't preach on the crash at all.  We had a rosary on the
evening of the first day, and the church was full to bursting.  On the
days following, I leaned heavily on the lectionary and the prescribed
Lenten readings.  I did offer intercessions for the victims--asking
that mercy, pity, peace, and love dwell with them and with their
families. This called for no real thought on my part.  I invited
prayers of petition from the congregation.  There was a groundswell of
response. Left to myself,

 though, I could not pray over what I'd seen.  I spoke to my tape
recorder about the crash--a sort of "debriefing"-but I wouldn't, by any
stretch of the word, have called this praying.  I listened to my
parishioners and to the visitors who stopped by.  Listened and consoled
with whatever was needful.  I didn't attempt to fathom--I had no
idea-what God was up to.  Quite a few folks in Bounds had no doubt
whatsoever that the crash of Flight 582 had been a judgment of some
kind.  I'd picked up Brother Pipes on the radio a couple of times; he
was getting considerable mileage from the disaster.  For him, it was
clearly "the hand of God at work," "God speaking in power."  I was not
at all convinced of this.  On the cross over the altar at Blessed
Redeemer was another God--the stricken God whom I professed to follow.
He'd spoken seven words of lament, and then no words at all--how then
could I presume to speak?  The possible existence of some master
equation able to account for the havoc I'd seen was chilling to me--
I've never, in my heart of hearts, prayed to the God of gravitation,
the God of the melting of metals.  Not even to the moral bookkeeping
God, the God of the balancing of ledgers.  So I avoided telling people
what God was up to-- I had my hands full explaining what we were up to,
what I was up to, with this devastation in our midst.  Naturally, I
talked it over with my confessor.  His advice was sensible: he warned
me in no uncertain terms of the likelihood of burnout, and urged me to
take time off.  I agreed to let things sift, but I couldn't take time
off.  Not now.  Leaving struck me as unthinkable now.  I had work to
do, even if it wasn't clear from day to day what it



would be, or how I would manage it.  I was mostly in the dark.

In the newspaper photographs taken that first night, I am and am not
there.  My face never comes into definition.  It's as though I'm
wearing a mask.  In one photo, I'm only a silhouette, could be a
knobbed and leaning tree, backlit by fire.  In another, just this:
three elements: stole, hand, and forehead.  Mine is the stole and the
hand extended. In persona Christi--that part seems right, that's what
we were taught--acting not in ourselves, but through Christ.  And, it's
strange .. . it's almost as if the camera picks this up.  In more ways
than one, I am mostly in the dark.

One of the FAA.  investigators, a new one, stopped by yesterday to go
over, for a second time, what I'd seen at the crash site.  I wish I
could have been more helpful.  He recorded our conversation, and
interrupted on points of fine detail whenever I seemed careless or too
casual in my choice of words.  He had some charts, sketches of planes,
slanted in different angles of descent.  I was supposed to pick out the
angle that best matched the descent of Flight 582.  I had to remind him
that I hadn't actually witnessed the plane going down, only the stall
beforehand.  When I'd told him all I could remember, I tried to turn
the tables on him and find out what they'd been able to piece together
so far.

He wasn't permitted to reveal that, and could only speak in the most
general terms.  There might not be a verdict for months, or years, to
come.  And, even then, the most they could ever presume to uncover was
"the probable cause, or causes"--they'd never be absolutely sure.

"It's quite different from the kind of certainties you

 must be used to," he said, and I didn't bother to contradict him.

What I gathered from his extremely guarded account was that all the
obvious signs pointed to the weather, extreme turbulence, and possible
wind shear.  That deaths by flailing were evidence for this.  On the
other hand, the shreddings from limb to limb and certain bendings of
the metal suggested possible disintegration within the plane-an
explosion or structural defect.  There were no signs pointing to
sabotage, but much remained to be sorted through.  Injuries were being
cataloged and coordinated with seating arrangements.

I also gathered--from someone else, a conversation overheard in the
field--that the tailpiece was somehow suspect.  The man spoke of "a
sting in the tail."  It was curious--that particular section being so
wholly intact, shaped so perfectly like the letter "T".  And it was a
little scorpion-like, once they'd mentioned it, such is the power of
suggestion.  For some reason, the tail assembly was the last of the big
pieces of wreckage to be cleared from the field.

I was relieved that my duties in Bounds excused me from having to speak
at the big memorial service for the next of kin.  That was held in
Dallas at a church near the airport.  Far better that somebody else
speak, someone who hadn't actually been at the scene of the crash.
Lately, I've had very short nerves for proclamative clatter.  I knew
they'd be intoning from First Corinthians somewhere along the
line--"glory" and "imperishability" sure to be worked into it.  Given
the images that haunted me, words like those would have made me
cough.



But I wasn't excused from the follow-up.  Since I'd been present at the
last moments of many of the deceased, their relatives kept stopping in
at Blessed Redeemer, seeking a word with me.  "Stopping in" makes it
sound more casual than it was.  Turns out, the airline, the carrier
company, had provided the transportation in nearly every case.  Most of
the relatives stayed over in Bounds for at least one night.

I kept the church open night and day, and I'd stumble in, only
half-awake for my early Mass, to find the sanctuary full to cloying
with the too-sweet smell of hothouse flowers.  The steps leading to the
altar would be heaped with roses, carnations, and lilies.  Sometimes,
framed photographs appeared among the flowers.  Happy faces mostly,
smiling out of an earlier time.  When the photographs failed to
disappear, I decided we were meant to keep them, so I put up a table in
the vestibule and placed them on it.  I added a visitors' sign-in book,
which filled up rapidly in the weeks and months to come.

Not everyone seeks me out.  But those who do always ask to visit the
field--"to see the place."  What they really want, I guess, is to share
in those last moments of flight.  Glenna Wooten gave me permission to
bring people out.  "Won't be growing anything on that field for a long
while," she told me.  "What good is it to me now?  Any use it might
have, any comfort it might give them to have a look, I'd be glad
for."

Usually the sun is shining when we get there.  The field looks barren
and scarred, with only a trace of the original furrowing at the edges.
Yet, here and there, small patches of mud are already greening up.  Our
skies, these days,

 tend to be bright and cloudless, purged of all evil humors.  We could
still see chunks of the wreckage at first, then less and less as the
days wore on.  The crash investigators were reconstructing the plane,
connecting the fragments and webbing the empty spaces with chicken
wire, was what I'd heard.  But that was going on in one of the hangars
at the old Love Field Airport in Dallas.  Only a few members of the
FAA.  team remained on site after the first week, one of them staring
at the ground and taking notes, and one moving, slowly clockwise, round
the field, trailing a leaf bag over his shoulder and stooping, from
time to time, to retrieve a shard of something too small to see from
where I stood.

"So this is where it was.  This was the last thing he saw .  If he was
conscious .. . was he?"  All of the relatives say pretty much the same
thing.

"It looks so peaceful."

"Yes," I say, remembering.

It doesn't matter where they come from--Bangkok or Tucson,
wherever--the heart's in the same pocket.  They all cling to the same
hopes.  A Japanese father wanted to find the exact spot where his son
died.  If the boy had fallen from the roof, he argued, there'd be a
mark in the pavement.  He had to find that spot to be able to pray
properly, to be able to say that he'd laid his son's spirit to rest.
This was the only sense I could make of his long outpouring, phrase
book English garbled with tears.

It was, of course, impossible to stand on that spot even if,
conceivably, we could have found it.  The field itself was still off
limits to everyone except the investigators.  So I stood, and he knelt
at the fence line.  Not wanting to embarrass

him, I left him to it, withdrawing a few yards off.  Then I began to
feel awkward simply standing there.  I might have gone back and knelt
alongside him but, by then, it seemed too late, an afterthought.  I'd
missed the natural, the graceful, thing, and anything after that would
have been clumsy.  And, to tell the truth, whatever it was that had
first prevented me still dragged at my feet.

Later, he asked me to go back to the field with him; he wanted to place
a funeral wreath on the fence.  Other wreaths soon followed.  When one
of them, a ramshackle bunch of silk roses and paper leaves, seemed
ready to fall and scatter, I noticed Glenna Wooten out there, securing
it with wire.

So many questions, so many hurts .. . "We waited for hours and they
told us nothing.  Just kept changing the arrival time.  Then they
removed the flight listing from the board.  All along they knew and
told us nothing."  This became a familiar story.

Catholic visitors would come and sit in the back pews during Mass.
During an unscheduled hour, I'd often find them in the forward pews,
praying silently or saying the rosary.  They were clearly more at home
on the church premises, but I couldn't say they seemed less troubled
than the others.  One of the Catholics, a young man from Tucson, left a
note in the visitors' book indicating that his father had perished in
the crash, but he never dropped into the office or tried to get in
touch with me.  He showed up at our main Sunday Mass.  He genuflected
and made the sign of the cross in all the right places, but he didn't
come up for Communion.  Didn't open his mouth once that I noticed, not
for the profession of faith, not even for

 the great Amen.  I learned later that he'd placed a fifty dollar bill
in the collection plate, but he'd wadded it up so tightly it was about
the size of a pill.  An offering, and a generous one, to be sure, to a
church like ours, but mixed with so much anger that the creases would
not come out.

A surprising number of the people who stopped by to visit with me were
Asians of one kind or another.  We communicated, with many fumblings,
over the divides of language and creed.  One of the later visitors--a
certain Mr.  Adab from Karachi, whose first name I didn't catch-was
quite Westernized.  His English was impeccable, though a bit formal; it
was all "to be sure" and "very" and "bloody well" and "quite!"  His
dress matched his diction, startling for here--pin-striped suit, snowy
white shirt with double cuffs and cuff-links, and what I assumed was a
school tie.  He was "England-educated.  Oxford-not one of those
red-brick rugby colleges."  He wanted me to know this.  It struck me as
an odd occasion to insist upon such distinctions, though I tried to
seem properly impressed.

I'd noticed a certain coolness and composure in him from the first and,
sure enough, he turned out to be a somewhat distant cousin of the
deceased.  Since he had business in the States, he'd been delegated by
the family to visit the site.  He spoke calmly of "destiny" and "fate."
I drove him over to the field where he added his wreath to the others.
By now, there was a long string of wreaths ranged along the wire.  He
said what they always say: "How peaceful .. ."

It was.  And in the following days, it continued to be nearly always
peaceful.  The afternoon I took Mr.  Adab

out to the field was one of those lustrous blue days.  A mild breeze
welling up every now and then, a sort of brimming.  I want to say
brimming and blessing, that was the feeling.  The struggles of winter
seemed long over.  It was an illusion, of course, only a reprieve, but
we basked in it, standing there.  The blackened topsoil had been carted
off; the exposed earth was iodine-colored, freshly dozed, and the green
was poking up.  Weeds, I suspected, pepper weed and the first shoots of
Johnsongrass, but even weeds were welcome now.

Back in my office, the conversation became pointed.  "Did you bless
him?"  he came at me abruptly, then softened, "if I may ask .. ."

"I blessed and anointed each and every one."

He was silent for a moment and seemed to be studying the clock on the
wall.  I couldn't read his face, only the inquisitorial jut of his
head.  He had his back to the light; the window behind him was flooded
with brightness.  "So," he resumed, "that is good," sounding not at all
convinced of it.  "And did he--could he--tell you about himself?"

I couldn't recall that.  "There were many," I reminded him.  "Some--a
few--were semiconscious.  Most were beyond all telling.  He was a
Moslem and died a Moslem, if that's what bothers you."

He sighed and said softly, "Aacha," something like that, like a soft
sneeze.  "So you blessed him in--how should I say--some sort of
Esperanto?"

"Wrong," I said emphatically.  "I blessed him in the language I know. I
trust the translation will be taken care of."

Mr.  Adab sighed.  "I once thought pluralism might be possible," he
said.  "I thought of Lebanon as a model.  And now look at Beirut!  Hell
on earth, wouldn't you say?"

"From what I've heard," I said, "but there are other factors--"

"Let us agree not to disguise our differences."

"By all means," I agreed.  "Whatever's on your mind."

He went on a bit, predictably, I thought, about Christian
intolerance--the Crusades, the Inquisition; I recited my mea culpas,
said we'd come along since then.  I mentioned that I hadn't seen all
that much in the way of tolerance from the Islamic regimes lately.  He
shifted back to the deceased.  He recalled the young man's
charitableness, his mildness of temper.

I knew that wasn't the end of it, but I didn't anticipate the
discussion that followed.  It was no part of my training; he was the
first Moslem I'd talked to, ever.  He started briefing me on Islam,
assuring me of his love for Mary-- Mariam, he called her.  He reminded
me that Abraham was his father in faith, too.  That done, he launched
directly into his difficulties with the Trinity.  His argument was
hedged with politeness, prefaced "with all respect" and "if I may be
frank," but sharp, plenty sharp.  Why turn qualities into
entities--into persons?  That was the gist of it.  And that was only
the beginning.  His main difficulty with the Christian faith he put
down to "temperamental differences."

"Oh?"  I was curious to hear more.

"It is a very beautiful religion, the Christian.  Beautiful, but so
very sad.  Romantic, I would say."

"We tend not to call it sad."

"No?  Not so?  I read this in a book--'the religion of the broken
heart'--is it not aptly said?"

"Well, but wait a minute," I put in, "that's too much."  I was speaking
over noise and glare.  The fact that I couldn't make out his face was
beginning to bother me.  I walked over and shut the window, drawing the
shade partway down.  Better.  From the rectory grounds, I could still
hear Mike Vaught, our sacri stan hammering away loudly at something, I
couldn't think what.  One-TWO, one-two-three-FOUR--it was getting to
me: a semaphore of reproach.  More than once during the past week Mike
had interrupted my conference with a visitor by creating one kind of
noise or another.

"Sorry--what were you saying?"  I asked, resettling."  "The religion of
the broken heart' .. . the faith of the beautiful failure," Mr.  Adab
resumed.  I'd heard him right the first time.

"A Christian wouldn't think of it in those terms," I cautioned him.

"A Christian--a twice-born Christian--wrote this book!"

"I'd like to know who--" I broke in, the soul of orthodoxy suddenly.  I
was surprised to hear myself.  Then, more calmly, I tried to explain.
"We think beyond the cross to the resurrection, you see.  Resurrection
is the very heart of our faith.  Death is not the last word for us, the
story is not finished there.  By no means."

He sniffed, took out a handkerchief, unfolded it, dabbed it to his nose
and the corners of his mouth, then refolded it into fourths.  He said
with a little sadness, "I see you do not believe me."

 I protested that I did.  I didn't doubt that he'd read this
somewhere.

"I am too blunt, perhaps .. ."

"I'd like to see the whole passage--to understand the full context," I
said.

We parted politely enough.  He promised to send me the citation,
chapter and verse, and I fully expect to find it in the mail one of
these days.  It doesn't matter who said it, though.  It's a mistake, a
misunderstanding.  In the meantime, while I wait for Mr.  Adab to check
his sources, I dream about him.  He's only one of a crowd, a long
procession of passengers and next-of-kin, passing through the numbered
gate, entering the boarding tunnel, that horn of silence.  Then, still
in silence, leaving the tunnel, crossing a long stretch of apron to the
waiting plane.  And there he is--I spot him--my Moslem inquisitor. 
He's lagging a few steps behind the others.

Then he's waving to me.  I think so.  A wave, or some gesture of
parting.  I must be at the window, inside, while watching this, but
can't be because of what comes next.  Maybe I am, though,
doubly--magically--placed, at once inside and outside, in that curious
way that spectators are positioned in dreams.  It's all so still, but
not because of the glass, there's no glass between them and me, I'm
sure of that.

They're mounting the ramp, the last steps.  Now they're filing into the
passenger cabin.  It's huge.  I'm closing in, running or
zooming--camera, mind's eye, coming in close-this big jet shape, the
wings sleeked back.  There are no engines, fore or aft.

I've had this dream twice and each time wakened

abruptly, heart pounding, at the same place.  Right here: somebody
racing, running hard--a last straggler, racing to catch up with them.
See how he runs!  Faces darken the porthole windows, gazing out.  He's
tearing across the tarmac, late, but not too late It me--I'm almost
there--there's something I've got to tell them That when I wake up.

Sixteen.

Letters.

I WAS BACK at my post.  The central post office in Hardesty had made up
a stamp for me, so I set to work on all the sacks of mail that had been
stuffed into the cargo bay of the plane.  I had to interrupt for
dusting and sweeping as I went along--flakes of ash kept falling over
everything.  Even after I'd swept, the air was so thick I could hardly
breathe and I had to keep opening my window, chilly as it still was.
The stamp said: damaged in air accident, but the



damage was as much from rescue operations as from the accident itself,
as much from water-spotting as from scorching.  Some of the mail seemed
to be untouched; I sent those things quickly on their way.

Soon as I'd laid by our local mail, Francie Aired stopped in wanting
some forwarding forms.  Francie's a touchy one --she's never been real
warm or friendly.  She went off looking for fame and fortune; now she's
back, no husband, and I can't say I didn't see it coming.  She's one of
those new women doing without men.

What else new?  Chip spoke to me this morning.  That's somewhat of an
event.  Only long conversation I ever had with him was years ago.  He'd
been gone for nearly a week and Cindy Bonner, who lived up the road
from the Parkers, and needed help with her lawn, had come by day after
day asking for him.  When Chip finally turned up, I put it to him. "You
shouldn't go off alone," I told him.  "I wasn't alone," he said, "I had
my dog with me."  "A dog's not a person," I said to that.  But Chip
disagreed: "To me, he is."  And that was that--our longest discussion
ever.

Reason he came in this morning was to send back one of those free first
offers.  He wanted to make sure he wouldn't get charged for it.  It was
a wilderness book, from a club that aimed to make him a subscriber.
Can't imagine how they happened on his name.  He's got a driver's
license, so I guess he reads, however barely.  Wasn't so long ago, I
recall one of his teachers telling me how it was a waste of time and
paper keeping him in school, even trying to pretend to teach him to
read and write, he was so far behind.  That same summer, I saw him

standing at the side of the road, selling potatoes.  He was thirteen
or fourteen, his uncle had just passed on; the sign said potos, the
most mournful shaky strands for letters-all but the O's, he could do
circles--but I thought, for sure, he'd never make it.

It's a marvel he talks at all.  For years, he didn't, and we thought he
was simple.  Simple, or deaf.  He'd be running around near naked like
some cedar-chopper's kid, half wild, till the neighbors stepped in.  We
donated a heap of clothing and somebody must of dressed him; he started
looking a whole lot more decent.  It was after that he started in
jabbering.  There were things he wanted, I guess, and the best way of
getting them was to name them.  I'd always said he wasn't slow--only,
somehow, gripped He never did warm to anyone, though.  I don't remember
when exactly he started raising dogs, but it seems to do well for him.
He's easier with animals than with people, that I do know.  He's
perfectly polite--it's all "Miss Wootens" and "Ma'ams" when he talks to
me but, today as before, he never says much.  Then I learned he'd
gotten a new stud dog since Buck died.  "That's good, Chip," I said.
"I'm sure he'll work out."

"Hope so."

People say Chip's shaken since the accident.  Maybe.  I couldn't see
much of a change, myself.  Of course, it was much too quick of a
conversation to judge.  I heard he had a run-in with the law on the day
of the crash and got slapped around some.  Nobody would tell me what
for.  "Don't ask," Jim Titus advised, "believe me, you don't want to
know."  I told Jim that I liked to be the judge of what I do and do not
want to know.  "Trust me,



Glenna, on this," he said.  But there's no point sparing me, to my way
of thinking.  Sooner or later, everything--from that plane and
everything else--comes into the light of day.

Geneva Wilson hasn't changed one whit, that's clear.  It's the same old
same old.  She arrived six minutes before closing time, wouldn't you
know it, when my hands were tied tallying up for the day.  What now?
She was toting a canary in a cage.  "It's the Eye-rainians," she
announced, "terrorists--" Her theory of the crash, I suppose.

Geneva's semi-deaf; she can hear a ring but not a knock, you never know
what's getting through for sure.  So I wasn't about to start up with
her on anything but business--and that, fast.  I leaned over the
counter and raised my voice.  "What can I do for you today, Geneva?"  I
asked, bracing myself.

She swung the cage up to the counter.  That done, seems like she clean
forgot whatever it was had brought her in.  Like it flew out of her
head.  She tried patting her hair, which was ratted up on top, but her
hand shook so it just made lace in the air.

Then she recollected: the canary was to be sent off to her niece in
Wellington.  She wanted the cheapest way.  "That would be parcel post,"
I said.  Turned out--no surprise to me--that she hadn't enough money
for it.  Geneva rarely has two nickles to click together.  "I could
loan it to you, Geneva," I suggested.  Well, she raised up on that!  "I
don't take charity," she answered, testy.  "A loan's not charity," I
said, but she'd quickened at the very mention of the word.  "Lemme see
that again," she said.  So I placed

the cage on the scale yet again and read off the weight a second time.
Same thing, coming to seventy-three cents over what she had.  "I don't
believe that scale for one minute," she declared, and commenced fanning
the cage with one hand, fluffing and ruffling the air till the poor
creature hopped off his perch and fluttered a little on its cramped
wings.  "Look again!"  Geneva said, so I did and--still don't believe
it!--the weight was lessening, an ounce for every wing beat, I swear!

"I'll take charge of it, Geneva," I said.  "This'll do nicely."  I
scooped up the change she'd poured on the counter.  "I'll have to wrap
it now."

One thing about Geneva--she never went to charm school.  She went off
grumbling, "I don't take charity, never have.  Never."  And, soon as
she'd closed the door behind her, I started laughing to myself, first
time in a long while.

Coming up the driveway to the house, I saw a car parked at the edge of
the field.  It was one of the airport rented cars, I'd seen enough of
them to know.  Fathers, mothers, children, spouses, cousins, friends ..
. They come unannounced, walk, stand, stare out, clutter my fence with
wreaths, and sometimes messages--note cards wedged into the plastic
leaves.  There's no way those cards can be permanently affixed.  They
blow off, and I gather them and tack them up again, never knowing which
belongs where.  Does it matter, really?  They're all the same message:
Missing you .. . Dearest .. . Loved, Remembered, Longed for always .. .
Then some in languages I don't know, don't even know the letters to the
words.  But



I bet they say the same things.  Same handful of phrases the world over
is what I'm coming to believe.

This man, this new visitor, was weeping into one hand and gripping the
fence post with the other.  He looked like one of the Asians.  Come
from God knows how far away.

I jammed on the brakes soon as I spotted him, thinking maybe I'd back
out for a little bit and wasn't there something I forgot to pick up at
the grocer's.  Ketchup!--I was short on ketchup.  I don't like to
intrude.  But he must of heard me: he straightened, and I had to move
forward.  Coming closer, I waved.  He stared right through me.

If I come upon them and they seem to want to talk, I talk, and
sometimes I invite them in for a cup of coffee.  If they want to be
left alone, I let them be.  This one, I left.

Shutting the door on myself, it was different than before.  No matter
what room I was in, I didn't feel any privacy.  Felt like the walls had
ears.  Eyes, too, so help me.

The crash inspectors were gone.  They were still puzzling it out, would
be at it for months, but they'd gleaned the field to their
satisfaction.  Some machinery had been sent over to scrape off the
topsoil, then a bulldozer to turn the soil over.  How long does it take
to replenish topsoil?  Sixty years an inch?  Nobody knew how far those
chemicals had seeped.  There'd be no crop from Hannah's field this
year, that was the only thing for sure.  I'd been officially informed
by letter that I'd be compensated for all damages.  "Compensate"--that
was their word.  Same word they'd used to the families of the victims.
Meaning: "to make up for."  As if anything could' It be--better be--a
bunch of money," Jim Titus said

to me.  "There are lawyers that specialize in this, if you want to go
that route."  I didn't want to mess with lawyers, though, not if I
could help it.

After the dozer was done, I was thinking of letting the grass take over
for a season.  It would cover the bareness, at least, and give visitors
something nicer to look at.

I could never get away from the crash, though.  Evenings after the
news, I'd sort through more letters.  I called them "letters" because
that's how I read them.  Like they'd been addressed to me personally.
Telling me something somebody wanted me to know.  Once in a while, not
often, it's a real letter.  Like this one:

Dearest--dearly invented,

The foolishness train has gone, my kind of good spirits, and here

And here--nothing It nobody's letter now.

Mostly, they're nothing more than scraps of things--a bunch of tattered
cocktail napkins with the Maxim logo, a blackened baseball card, a list
of batting averages--all the light little bits of paper that the crash
investigators missed and the wind turned up.  I gather in the scraps,
reading over what's in English, then bundle them up in a manila
envelope.  When the batch gets sizable, I send it off to an address
I've been given.

It's the ones from the children that really get next to me.  This one,
I found out by the shed.  A homework assignment from the looks of it.
I'm judging from the ruled paper, the eraser smudges.  The pained
neatness.



Last time in class we learned about the heart and its chambers.  We
learned about the need of many valves.

Then there's this drawing--speckled with oil, but the colors still
bright.  It's of a house, boxy, with smaller boxes for windows and a
door nested inside it, a corkscrew of black smoke twisting out the
chimney.  There's a band of bright blue running across the top of the
page, the way little kids do sky--a lid, not an atmosphere.  Don't know
why it is kids always draw it that way, even out here where the sky
sweeps right down to your feet.

Sometimes I find documents, official documents, like this vaccination
certificate from Karachi, Pakistan.  It's got stamps for yellow fever,
cholera, and smallpox.  I imagine it's for a man.  No telling by the
name, though, never heard the like.  If he's alive, this man--or
whoever--will need this.

Here's a travel agency receipt.  Part of a page from what looks like a
time-and-expense log.  A vacation photo, overexposed, of a not-so-young
woman at the beach, standing in a swimsuit too short for her, cocking
her hip and smiling, trying to look hopeful.

This one, I found tangled in a mess of baling wire.  It's AA."  I
believe, one of the twelve steps: We admitted that we were powerless
over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable .. . The card's
pretty well thumbed, pretty well frayed, but not from being caught up
in the wire.

Some of it's a puzzle.  This page, from a book:

I wish I could afford to keep a horse.  I wish I knew.

So do I with all my heart.

I wish you knew.

I would that all the world knew.

Never in my life have I heard anybody say "I would that the whole world
knew."  But it's English, from a book on learning English, I guess.
There are funny-looking words like bet bekostigen printed in pencil on
the margin.  And la ten wachten.  Sounds like somebody talking with a
wooden spoon, or maybe a heavy piece of dental equipment, crammed
between his teeth.

This last, I could of picked up anywhere.  It's from some
fortune-vending machine, advising the best time for investment, love,
and travel.

How does it all add up?  I ask, and I tell myself it doesn't.  Why
should it?  But maybe it does.  One thing I do know: these people, all
of them, were busy with plans.  They were planning on living.

SO HERE I WAS, same bar, same booth in same bar, same time nearly two
weeks later, sitting by myself with the same pitcher of fresh draw in
front of me, busy eavesdropping, same as before.  The man from St.
Louis was gone, and his lady listener, and most of the newcomers that
blew in with the crash.  Juanita and Francie were waiting on tables,
helping out.  There was a big racket just a moment ago; both television
sets were going: some sort of

Seventeen.

At the

Tick Tock

Lounge.

game show with gongs, lots of clapping, and a blond woman in a long
gown, spotted with golden spangles, jumping up and down.  Two gongs,
two jumping blondes, double spangles, every damned thing twice.  Nobody
was paying attention and Whitney lifted his remote and killed it.

I still hadn't actually gotten me a new stud dog, but I'd lined up a
good prospect.  I wasn't rushing into it, I guess, out of respect for
Buck.

Up at the bar, somebody was talking cars.  Engine problem.  There was
some discussion about his particular trouble.  A rod knock was the
verdict.  Somebody else mentioned how he'd seen the rescue squad using
grappling hooks to take out the last of the bodies from the passenger
cabin, then he glanced around quick, case anybody from the passengers'
families might of been here visiting with us.  That wasn't likely,
though.

There'd been whole bunches of relatives bussed over from the
Dallas-Fort Worth airport since the crash.  Seems like all those people
had in mind was the one thing: getting themselves out to Miss Wooten's
field to see for themselves where the plane went down.  From time to
time, I'd pass some of them moving slowly down Long view Street.  They
weren't working, shopping, or window-shopping; you couldn't miss who
they were.

Anyhow, these people at Tick Tock were different.  My guess is they had
something to do with the press or television --the last ones to leave.
They were drinking Dr.  Peppers and beers, and snacking on things.
Three in the forward booth, two in the other behind it--woman woman
man, man woman--talking amongst themselves in each

booth, but not over the booth dividers.  I was sitting across from
that row of booths, so they were in my full view.

They'd been complaining about the quality of everything.  "What do you
call these sandwiches--'pre-made'?"  one of the women in the forward
booth grumbled.  If Whitney heard, he didn't let on.

It was a little bit strange.  You tend to think of all outsiders
--specially Yanks, like these seemed to be--as coming from the same
Yank town, and thinking the same Yank thoughts.  I know I do.  But the
ones in the forward booth hadn't said pip to the ones in the booth
behind them.  Then--wham!--they connected.  One of them must of
overheard--something.  Before I knew it, one lady had popped her head
over the high back of the booth dividing them.  "Excuse me," she said,
"you're talking about the Tarrytown Hunan, aren't you?"

"How'd you know?"

"I don't believe it--we must be neighbors!  I'm from New York,
too--Pleasantville.  It's the only decent Chinese restaurant for miles
around."

"Tarrytown Chicken, Happy Family, and Buddha's Delight are our
favorites.  And the three-meal deal that goes for four."

"I don't believe it!  Those are my favorites, too.  My name's Gloria,
by the way."  She was the one who'd started it.  The names went back
and forth, a regular sing along, and soon enough there they were, all
five of them squeezed into one booth, spouting away "oh when?  you're
kidding!"--shit like that.  They'd moved on from Chinese restaurants to
dentists, how none of them could be trusted.

Who cares?

Time for a station break; I tuned them out.  Nothing much else
happening so I sort of drifted back to Miss Wooten's place; a rerun: me
roving through that field, gliding along so sweetly I knew I was only
sightseeing in my mind.  Ground's edgy as a case of knives; but I'm
dancing along, feet just tickling as I go.  On past the wing all blown
to kingdom come, the blue cap writh the neat gold braid, the lady
dolled up for a party, still strapped to her chair, still awaiting for
it.  Keep on keeping on, loping along .. . Then whoa!--backing up
sharp, stumbling-- I've stumbled on that hand So enough, I quit--back
to eavesdropping again.  They were talking dreams: it was more
interesting now.

"I dreamed I died.  I'd been shot between the eyes, then I woke up.  I
felt wonderful."

"I never can remember my dreams," piped the one who called herself
Gloria.

"I dreamed I was dreaming and I woke up, but my waking was also in the
dream.  I was standing in a shop window, stark staring naked--"

"I've had the same dream!"

I dreamed that skylab was falling.  And that was no dream.  I dreamed I
was drinking muddy water from a ditch ... I was drifting again.  Plenty
of words flying through the air, but they didn't add up.  Somebody
said, "Caught the nicest springer of bass," and somebody else kept
breaking in with "What I'm saying is ... Right, but what I'm saying is
.. ."

Then they started chatting up the crash--I knew they'd get round to it
eventually.  "No rhyme of reason," said old

Jack Henderson.  Andy Pearson disagreed.  "When your time is up, it's
up," he said, "don't matter what you do, whether you fly or go by mule.
Heard there was a lottery winner on board, some lady, I believe from
Selma, Alabama, riding first class to New York City.  She'd only become
a millionaire a couple months back.  She was just starting to enjoy
it--"

"I've never won anything."  It was that lady, Gloria, from
Pleasantville, again.  The one who'd never dreamt anything either.

"Win one--lose one," said Whitney.  "It's all a lottery."

The people from Gloria's booth began disputing the millionaire story.
"Out-and-out untrue," one of them said, "nothing but rumor.  That was
checked out some time ago."  According to them, the lottery winner
never did get on board.  She'd changed her flight at the last minute.

"Oh, well, then--win two!"  said Whitney.  "Talk about luck!  Only goes
to prove my point: it's all one big wheel of fortune.  Blind chance."
Then--all of a sudden--Whitney turned on me.  "Love to have Chip's
opinion on it."  Back stabbing: "Chip was there.  On the scene--"

Don't do this.

"Looks to me like Chip got snake-bit."

Don't look up.

"Too bad we can't all be so free-flowing," Whitney blatted on.  "It's
the great Parker chill-out, Chip's way of telling me to get lost."  I
stared at the table in front of me, the damp circle print of a glass,
my fingers smushing the circle.  Whitney went right on: "They call it
an 'act of God' --that means nobody can explain it.  No known
motive."

Might of been a speech he'd prepared for.  "I say you don't have to
explain it.  Don't even bother to try.  It's all numbers, all there is
to it.  A wild throw of the dice.  That's just my personal opinion, but
nothing ever happened to convince me any different.  It's scary,
really, when you think of it.  Everything, everybody, chancing along.
But I sure would love to know what Chip thinks about it--" "Lay off,
Whitney!"  It was Francie butting in.  "Will you lay off for once?"

Chant to myself how I usually do--he says she says it says .. .

Keep my head down--hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing.  Be nothing.
That hand against my hand is all I'm thinking.  Won't ever be free of
it Eighteen

Recap.

"WHY DON'T YOU go on along home, Francie?"  Whitney urged.  "Nothing
but slack till closing time now.  Bundle up and get going--"

Only one boothful of beer drinkers left, and the party there was
winding down.  Juanita, Whitney, and I were all sitting, enjoying a
little respite.  Whitney was smoking, Juanita filing her fingernails.
She'd hay stacked her hair: it was still standing up, a good five
inches from her scalp,

don't ask me how.  I was doing nothing but metabolizing the air and
staring--something Chip likes to do--down at the tabletop, at a cluster
of cigarette scars in the corner of it, wondering whether they'd been
put there on purpose.  Less than half an hour to quitting time.  Like
Whitney said, the need was over.  But I couldn't seem to rouse myself.
Instead, I sat on while Juanita started lining up the different
nozzles, brushes, and scoops, uncoiling the vacuum cord and wheeling
the ancient Hoover out of the closet.  Why not get going?

I dreaded the late drive home, for one thing, and, for another, I
wasn't in the nicest of moods.  I still had one honey of a
headache--the aftermath of the cold or low grade flu I'd just been
through.  And I was somewhat pissed.  Royally pissed, if the truth be
known.  The way the people from the television crew or newspaper, or
whatever, had been staring at us for days on end now.  Losers .  not
too many smarts--I knew what they'd been thinking--why would anybody
live here otherwise?

I was heartily sick of being a curiosity.  That man with the camera,
who came traipsing in after most of the reporters left, really was the
last straw.  It wasn't his job or anything, he hadn't that excuse. He'd
been on the flight that went down, survived it without a scratch, and
wanted a record, he told me, something to show his grandkids in days to
come.  He'd started out at the Wooten place, naturally enough, then
roamed around shooting wheat fields and windmills, picking up on what
he called "local color" --the elevator, town hall, Home of Dan Lutes
sign, Brother Pipes's church, and finally, for no reason I could
fathom, Kehoe Seed and Feed.  At Kehoe, he'd latched on



to me.  He kept rummaging a hand through his thin hair and saying, "I
must've been spared for some reason-what could it be?"  I confessed I
couldn't help him there, then mumbled something polite about hoping
he'd find out before long.  Then he asked about me, how long I'd been
working in the seed business, and whether I'd lived anywhere besides
Bounds.

"Dallas .. . Chicago ... St.  Louis .. . New York ."I rattled off the
names.  His face!  The look on his face.  "And you came back--here?" he
said.  "City too much for you?"

"You better believe it!"  I cut him off.  I didn't say: too much and
too little.  Didn't mention that I'd chosen to come back; it's hard
enough getting anybody here to believe it.  "Came back licking her
wounds" is the official version of it in Bounds, I'm sure.  Nobody says
it to my face, but .. .

And I'm sure they all say they saw what was coming ages and ages ago.
Growing up in Bounds, it was no secret that I couldn't wait to be gone.
Anybody with ambition felt the same way, though they might not have
publicized it top of their voices, way I did.  Another thing different
in my case--I wasn't pining for romance, whatever that might be.  I
knew I wasn't built for it.  And I wasn't thinking marriage, either.
There was absolutely no inspiration for it on the local scene, to start
with, and I'd never bought the idea of dying into peace, the
dead-to-yourselfbutall-alive thing that I'd been taught was the secret
of womanly success.  I'd seen a whole procession of women going that
way--Lazelle Post, Glenna Wooten, my great

aunt Alma--a whole generation.  All of them fretting themselves to
death trying to please everybody.  And nobody pleased.  I'd seen them
baking up a storm, trying to sweeten, to prettify everything.  It's a
wonder we aren't all diabetic!

I wasn't blaming anyone--I'd done what I resolved to do.  I'd set out
to seek my fortune, like they say in the old fairy tales.  Whatever
happened, I'd learn for myself what was what.  I had.  I'd come back
from all my plans of making a name for myself--pianist, program notes
editor, programmer, marketing researcher--I'd had my fill of hustling.
I'd been in such a desperate hurry to make things happen, to leave an
imprint.  What was it all about?  Hard to even imagine now.  Here, the
only imprints are plow cuts, and only for a season.  And the only
mirror is sky.

One of the first things I did when I got back was to make a list.
Double columns: What I Want on the left; What I'm Going to Get on the
right.  Only place where right and left columns matched was on the
first item-what I wanted most.  That was stand ability I wanted to
"acquire stand ability as my father used to say of a promising crop,
and I thought I might actually achieve it in a hard place like Bounds.
Then I wrote not much variety on the right.  But I'd had variety
aplenty where I'd been.  There'd been too many shops in too many cities
and I'd wanted everything.  Everything, and nothing.  There was nothing
in them I wanted.  I'd be in a department store, gazing round at
blushers, eye shade, perfume bottles, lingerie, silk scarves and
whatnot, seeing myself reflected in a million mirrors, the winking,
glittering lights of appetite,



and I'd freeze, couldn't move a muscle.  I'd be standing there, my
mouth working, no sound coming out, looking like the yokel I was.  I
was gaping with hunger-hunger for nothing I could name .. .

Juanita had finished, and Whitney was swabbing down the counter for the
umpteenth time--his last.  The last customers were at the door.  It was
so quiet I could hear a motor gunning in the back lot, and a cattle
truck, heavy laden, rumbling down the Interstate, a lone steer, mouth
pressed to the slats, bellowing as he went, bleat after bleat, like a
trailing banner.

There were a lot more people on their own in Bounds since I'd gone away
.. . Widows rattling around in big old houses that used to be crowded
and cozy.  And, sure, we'd had them always--a full share of oddballs,
loners, losers.  A maverick like Chip who needs a lot of space, who
jumps out of his skin if you come up too close behind him, wouldn't be
able to get by anywhere else.  That teasing business tonight--Whitney
ought to know better.  Chip won't be pried out, ever, though it's
always tempting to try to.  Only human to want to know his slant on
things. He's always listening and not saying.  If you wait and watch
real quietly, you can catch him out laughing to himself, or saying
things behind locked teeth.  But you'll never really know what he's
thinking. I say, leave him be.  Maybe keep an eye out for him.

Then I did something I've never done before.  I was beat, near
bow-legged with weariness, but I staggered onto my feet, and lugged
myself up to the tap.  Poured out a glass of beer.  This one for me.
Half a glass, really, half air; I raised

a nice tall head of foam on it.  "To peace and quiet," I said, holding
the glass aloft.

"Amen to that," said Whitney, "for a couple hours, at least."  Then he
added: "I guess you've come home, Francie," and I heard myself saying:
"I guess."

Nineteen.

Cannot.

FIRST LIGHT.  No colors yet no lines.  Only zones .. . shadings of a
monochrome.  The thread-end of a dream .  Can't catch it.

This morning's mantra: Let live.  Say it softly.  Again.  It's so quiet
I can hear the small bones of my neck turning, eyelids lifting.  I
don't want to get up.

Shadows loosening .. . Landmarks: Bureau.  Chair.  Bed table.  Inlets
between .. . The long arm of the crucifix,

arrowed at the ceiling.  It's that other arm, across--the wide,
stretched arms--they're forgetting, they keep on forgetting-What's this
about "sweet stalks"?

There it goes: the old digital clicking into action.  Six-o what?
Missed it.  "Moisture-wise we're doing well."  Soil temperature:
thirty-seven degrees six inches down.  How about temperature above the
soil?  Must have just missed it.  Damp and chill, my bones tell me.
Daily Mass at seven, coming right up.  I'm more or less awake, I will
get up.  But no point rushing couple minutes yet .. . How's that? 
"Cows steady to firm .. ."  No small feat in this shifting world.

How about it?

Couple minutes yet .. . Livestock reports: cattle .. . feeder cattle ..
. light choice boxed beef, heavier choice, light selects, heavier
selects .. . Futures: hogs .. . April live feeders, May pork bellies.

More numbers, a litany of numbers: wheat, grain sorghum, corn, cotton.
Soybeans, oats.  The sound logo--a mournful radio cow honking--for
Wiggins Used Cow Dealers, a rendering company offering free dead stock
removal.  Enough Radio off, I sat on the edge of the bed, bare feet to
the bare floorboards, soaking up the rawness.  The chill.  I reached
for the breviary on my bedside table and rested my hand on the cover
for a moment.  No use praying this morning.  Besides, I was late--six
twenty-four--time to be up and about.  Get with it--make the motions!

I nicked myself shaving, and the memory I'd been steering clear of
swept over me in one fast wash--Mike Vaught



and Tom Steen chanting almost in unison: "Whose church is this,
anyway?"  I dabbed at the cut with styptic and there I was, back at the
parish council meeting last night, the burble of the coffee machine and
small talk in the background--the usual warming-up sounds.  Finances
were on the agenda, my least favorite subject, best handled by Tom
Steen who's a CPA.  High on the list was the utility bill, this past
month an all-time high.

Everybody agreed that heavy weather accounted for some of the increase.
"But there's another thing, Father" a small cough, and Tom launched
into it.  My recent practice of leaving the church open at all hours
had clearly contributed to rising costs.  And, while he was at it: how
much extra time had I been devoting to strangers lately?  Judging from
Tom's composure, and the way the others were sitting--eyes shuttered,
heads piously downcast-he wasn't alone in his views.

It still rankled.  The time issue was none of their concern; it was my
spare time.  Time added onto all the usual things.  I let them know
this.  I tried to say something, too, about the relatives of the
victims who'd been coming to me to talk about their loved ones, or to
pause a moment at Blessed Redeemer, people coming from immense
distances, called out by the crash.

"All very well to say, Father."  Tom sighed.  "The next question is:
who's going to pay for this?"  And then, in chorus, Tom, Mike, and
another voice: "Whose church is this, anyway?"  I had to excuse myself
before blurting out something I'd regret later.  I delegated George
Swanson for the closing prayer and walked stiffly to the door, trying
to

contain myself.  "Save souls, Padre" was Mike Vaught's parting shot.

It stung me, even now.  Slapping cold water on my cheeks did nothing to
moderate it.

The sacristy was empty--no sign of Pete, the kid who's supposed to be
my altar server on Wednesday mornings.  There's a pattern, I decided:
Pete must wake with the light; clouded mornings, he can't be counted
on.  I'd managed without him before, though.

My hand was on the hanger.  I had every intention of going through with
the scheduled Mass, same as every morning.  I would give thanks, bless
the bread, break it, and share it.  I touched the alb, No.  Too angry.
Too narrow a sharing.  I tried my mantra--let Hue.  Now.  And again. It
wasn't working, an empty wire hanger clattered to the floor.  They were
waiting for me, my daily communicants, they were not to blame.  I
stooped to retrieve the fallen hanger.  Blood rushed, scalding, to my
face.  No.  I didn't want to hear their alleluias and amens, their
kingdom comes.  Couldn't make the little ceremonies of crossing and
blessing, of chalice and veil.  And surely not the great gestures.
Couldn't lift the bread or the cup.  Not this morning.

Nearly seven.

I turned then, out of the sacristy, out the back door of the church and
followed the muddy footpath around to the front entrance.  I guess it
was raining lightly: thinking back on it later, I wasn't sure.  I had
no recollection of my feet moving, or of mounting the front steps,
entering the vestibule--nothing.  Until I arrived at the door.  I stood
on



the threshold as a passerby--a stranger--might, wondering: Who are
these people?  What are they about?

Quiet inside: a votive candle jittering in the draft; a rosary tapped
wood.  They all sat in their coats.  A decision on the heating must
have been made last night after I walked out.  I could smell the wool,
the thin, sour dampness, through the drenching sweetness of the
flowers, the heaps of flowers our visitors persist in bringing.  They
were sitting so far apart from one another that they seemed to be
praying at separate altars.  From the backs of their heads, I could
call them by name: Mary Ward.  Amy Pote.  Loyd Winders.  Chris Brenan.
Sady and Mary Grimes.  Wayne Gruver.  In the chill, I imagined their
prayers clumped in little cloud captions, one hovering above each head.
There was no mingling.

I don't know how long I stood there.  Probably not very, but it seemed
long.  It was almost perfectly quiet now, yet I felt as though I stood
at the ear of a wind tunnel.  Heads turned as I moved down the aisle.
Not a word was said, but I knew I had their attention.

I didn't try to reach the pulpit.  Standing between the first pew and
the altar steps, I began without preamble.  "I'm sorry"--no need to
project my voice--"I cannot celebrate Mass this morning."

A teachable moment, maybe, but I was much too churned up to teach. They
sat on, unmoving, waiting for more, but there was nothing I could add
to what I'd said.  My throat seized up--the word clotted in my
throat:

"Cannot."

They lingered for some minutes after I left--a little stunned, I'm
sure--while I waited, also shaken, leaning

against the sacristy wall, eyes closed, ears ringing.  "Hear me out!"
I breathed.  But who was stopping me now?

When I heard the kneelers folding into place, the shuffling of feet,
and the first words blurred in passage, I knew it was over.  Only then
did I move on to my office and some semblance of my normal day.

The Grimes sisters were waiting for me in the corridor.  I waved them
into my office, but they remained standing on the threshold.  "We won't
be staying," Sady said gently.  "Just came to ask, are you ill,
Father?" It was a way out she was offering me.  I might have taken
it--I had not been kind.  I regretted that.  But I could do no other.

"No"--I was firm on this--"my health isn't the issue."  I promised to
explain when I could--some other time.  That didn't slow Sady down for
a minute.  "I'll pray for you, Father," she said.  I thanked her,
automatically; it would take more than prayer.  What I needed, for a
start, was to take a long walk around everyone.  Around the church,
several times.  A long walk around myself, too.

Twenty.

Journeys.

SOME PEOPLE at Blessed Redeemer still don't get it.  Worse--they've
started a whispering campaign.  Rumors abound.  I caught wind of the
most vicious of them only last week--a wild fantasy about one of the
visitors removing our best chalice from the sacristy and using it in
some sort of satanic rite, then returning it, neatly polished and
desecrated, to its usual place, ready for our use.  In fact, the
chalice has never strayed from its cupboard in the sacristy; Mike
Vaught and I are the only ones who have a key.  I denounced the story
in ringing tones from the pulpit, but rumor has a life of its own and I
doubt we've heard the last of it.  In the meantime, I go about my usual
business of ritual and encounter and begging for funds.  Three members
of the parish council have resigned.  They've threatened to write a
letter to the bishop concerning the high cost of my policy of unlimited
hospitality.  The letter will also mention my refusal to say Mass the
morning after our last parish council meeting.  It will be meant
sincerely and signed "sincerely in the names of Jesus, Mary, and
Joseph," and will stress its sole concern for the welfare of Holy
Mother Church.  Let them write it.  Many such letters are written to
chancery offices.  Let the bishop call me in.  I am equally sincere.
I'm not backing down on this.

Mike Vaught and a couple of others on the parish council are in the
habit of referring to our new visitors as "outsiders" or "strangers." I
persist in referring to them as "neighbors"--distant neighbors called
out, and brought close, by calamity--I seem to be stuck on this way of
speaking.  These visitors have come to Bounds, to us, and I, at least,
have to be here to receive them.  It isn't always pleasant or easy.
Often, I don't know the first thing.  There are so many languages, and
I don't have the grammar books, the customs-of-the-country guides, not
to mention the liturgical rubrics, to cover the case before me.  All I
can do is to listen, and gesture from time to time.  To be present.
That doesn't sound like a whole lot, yet, with these visitors, I've had
little uncertainty about my calling.  It's curious: no rubrics, no
maps--fewer doubts.  Of course,

there wasn't much time for reflection at first, but there is now. Even
if I can't put a ready name to it, I don't question my usefulness. It's
as if, late in my career, I'd found my vocation, or confirmed it, or
fitted into it, at last.  It's been a long and winding road I've
traveled.

What Father Fogarty saw in me that day I barged into his rectory, three
decades ago in Windy, I still can't figure.  Even at the time, I sensed
what a mishmash of motives had drawn me to his door.  Part of it, I'm
sure, was simply impatience to break free from the confines of family
and too-small town.  But there was more to it than that: something to
do with girls and guns and hellish laughter.  It was part
longing--sexual beckoning, part fear, part pride, with some hungering
for righteousness, for meaning, some vague yearning for a peaceable
kingdom thrown in.

And I can't say I had it sorted out by the time my ordination day came.
Talk about nervous!  I'd fasted that morning, and the day before as
well; I put it down to hunger that everything seemed so unreal.  The
lamps flickered and faded, part of the perishing world, near and far
seemed equally faint and far, the very walls seemed to de substantiate
before my eyes.  My mother's face, the path I followed down the central
aisle to the altar, the rising smoke of the censer, the bishop's miter
(shaped so curiously like the open mouth of a fish!) .. . none of it
seemed familiar.  Of course, the bishop was a fisher of men.  I'd been,
as he put it, "called out from among men."  As I prostrated myself
before the altar, before bishop and priests, before my bewildered
parents and the members of my home parish, as I stretched out to my
full length, face to the floor like something slain, I felt myself
being drawn

slowly upright, a strange fish out of the depths, into a fog of
incense, of clabbered, unbreatheable air.  "He now belongs to all the
people," said the bishop, "and his work takes him into your midst, to
bless, to exhort, to console, to administer the sacraments, to bring
God's peace."  I would try, I would do my best--it seemed next to
impossible, even then.

I thought the sense of strangeness would pass, that parish work would
help set my feet on the ground.  Little did I guess.  In short order, I
was commissioned and sent forth to St.  Boniface in the town of Hopper.
Hopper's out between Two Tree and Anson's Gap--not exactly a blooming
metropolis.  Not that much bigger than Bounds.  But it wasn't the place
that made this assignment so out of this world, so little likely to put
earth under my feet; it was the pastor, Monsignor Engelbrecht.

He was a short man with immaculate white hair, a perpetually red face,
and a habit of exclaiming, "Gosh, my!"  when anything surprised him,
and a great many things did surprise him.  He had a well, like a
clouded tear, beneath his left eye--I don't know why I remember this.

Off hours, you'd find him either smoking or eating celery --to cut the
bite of his pipe.  He was a passionate pipe smoker; as far as I could
tell, smoking was his only vice.  There wasn't much I could tell,
really.  He had such difficulty talking to me face to face that he
often used his dog, an old terrier called "Soldier" as a go-between.
"Soldier, would you please ask Father Mark to take the seven-thirty
Mass tomorrow?  ... I wonder, Soldier, whether Father Mark remembered
the second collection today?"  Soldier's ears would perk up each time
his name was mentioned.

There I'd be, at the same table, sitting face to face with the man.

He was very good with children, and had few problems with people in
serious trouble, but normal adult conversation seemed beyond him.  At
the pulpit, he'd turn hoarse with stage fright, although he'd been
preaching for more than fifty years.  He read all his homilies from
frayed, handwritten notes, without looking up from the page to the
faces in front of him.  Yet his parishioners made allowances for all
his idiosyncracies, for his kind heart and ineptitude in practical
matters.  They called it "unworldli and would not have him change a
thing.

ness

Foolish, but harmless, I thought.  His homilies were recycled every
three years; I doubted whether he'd cracked a theology book in decades.
Communion wafers were "the bread of angels--our passport to heaven."
The frequent reception of Communion was not only for the spiritual
nourishment of the soul, but also for the "lessening of concupiscence,
preservation from mortal sin, forgiveness of venial sin, and
strengthening against temptation," His themes were few, concupiscence
and death always in the foreground.  He believed that salvation was
contained in the sacraments as water in a cup, and that we were saved
one by one, a quantum a sip.  His arms, when he raised the chalice,
were vaulted straight to heaven.

"He means well" was my most generous assessment of Monsignor
Engelbrecht.  I had assumed that there was in him a certain closed
smugness, a finality of folded hands but, towards the end of my term
with the man, I began to suspend judgment.  There were layers to him.

One night, passing his bedroom on the way to my own,

I noticed his door, usually shut by the time I went up to bed, now
ajar.  I spied the shank of an iron bedstead, a knitted blue cover.
Soldier was already settled on a far corner of the bed; he pointed one
ear as I slipped by.  The old man had been kneeling, lost in prayer,
but his hands weren't pressed together as I'd imagined; they were
spread the length of the bed, his arms stretched out.  He was making
the sign of the cross with his entire body.

My second assignment was an altogether different case.  Father Glimm,
the pastor at St.  Thomas in Bradley, had no difficulty looking me in
the eye or telling me exactly what he thought.  He was an enormous man,
well over two hundred pounds--a man of dramatic moods, by no means
always jolly.  A great dissipater of what he dubbed "pious piffle"--he
could detect it instantly in any and all forms.  Directness was Father
Glimm's strong suit.  The first day of stewardship week he billed as
"Give-a-Damn Sunday."  A certain compulsive communicant, who was in the
habit of receiving the Host and walking out the door, was "getting his
fix"--Father Glimm had little patience for that kind of devotion.  Only
two kinds of people in the world, in his view: "light givers and
obstructors of the light."  Most people--he included himself in this
category-were something of both.  "Take my word for it," he said.  I
didn't, back then, but, more and more lately, I've been coming round to
his way of seeing things.

Listening in on my preaching, Father Glimm was lavish with homiletic
advice.  "Better steer clear of the Trinity," he warned, "but if you
feel you must, give it no more than three minutes.  More than three and
you're bound to be in heresy."  When I tried to reflect on the human
side of



things, I fared no better: "What's this I hear you talking about?  Your
'life experiences'?  Please!  When did you ever have life
experiences?"

Yet, for all his crankiness, he was a very solid priest, and he'd been
at it for over thirty-five years.  Looking back on it, I think I needed
Glimm and Engelbrecht both.  Neither one of them alone would have given
me a fair picture of the balancing act that most parish work
requires--an impossible act, really.  In addition to the usual
infighting of any institution, we've got two churches, pre- and post
conciliar, tethered together, chanting together "one holy, catholic,
and apostolic" and slugging it out with one another.

My troubles had not yet begun, though.  I was still an associate
through my next two assignments; the senior man bore the brunt of
anything I stirred up.  Then came the first church of my own: St.
Agnes, in a suburb of Wichita Falls.  Built only two years before, and
already the parish was debt-free.  Why this plum assignment fell to me,
I'll never know.  It was an altogether "tasteful" church, high-toned,
rich, and cold, and my job was to change nothing, but simply go along
with them and tend to the sacramental business.  I put it cynically--I
felt it that way.  There, at St.  Agnes, I was kept mindful of the
political coloration of my homilies by the rise and fall of the Sunday
collection.  I began to feel like a hired manager, expected to please
those who paid my hire.  Like a kept man.  It was clear to me then that
serving had nothing to do with pleasing, and everything that's gone on
since, including the recent rumblings in Bounds, has only strengthened
that conviction.

St.  Agnes had irked me from the start.  Even the look of the place,
statues and images banished for a sleek, ultramodern effect, the
crucifix clean-cut, unburdened, minus the Suffering Servant.  I missed
the Corpus.  Resurrected without a pang is what that sanitized crucifix
said to me.  Again--not my idea of what our story's about.  At parish
council meetings, the burning issues were decorum, finances, litter,
and how to keep youngsters from trampling the flower beds.  What went
on beyond the parking lot never came up, unless I forced it.

On Holy Thursday, kneeling to wash the cleanest feet in the parish, I
wanted only to flee.  I saw it through, though --from Holy Week to
Easter, Easter to Pentecost, Pentecost to Ordinary Time.  I moved in a
tight daze.  Evening after evening, I'd return to my plush rectory--a
cocoon, if ever there was--and sink into torpor.  Couldn't seem to lift
myself from the Ea-Z-Boy armchair.  When I finally did, and stretched
out on the bed, I was unable to sleep.  My lethargy seemed connected to
my lodgings with their perfect temperature control and the prevailing
numb atmosphere of that church, a sort of wraparound spiritual
carpeting.  For months I'd daydreamed of breaking out of the cocoon, of
leaving everything I knew behind and hitting the open road.  Of meeting
life on its own terms at last.

I was suffocating.  I had to go.  I'd developed blinding headaches
and--I had it in writing--"stress-related cardiovascular
abnormalities."  I'd visited two doctors, and ended up in the hospital,
having taken both sets of prescriptions at once.  So I had no choice;
the diocese had no choice.  A "vocation crisis" was the official name
for what I suffered.  "A year of discernment" was the remedy I



sought.  In my case, added to St.  Agnes, there was the matter of
adolescence, the one I'd missed, long postponed and overdue.

Part of my daydream involved boarding a bus and setting forth for an
unknown destination.  When the place was right, I'd know it and step
off.  Simply pull my suitcase off the bus and walk into town, a
stranger.  Start over, completely fresh.

I did board that bus, but not in the bright spirit of those ads for
"See America" passes.  Those turned out to be the most aimless weeks of
my life.  That awful summer I'd spent hiking around in circles as a
teenager was beautifully focused in comparison.

I disembarked in a number of towns, bearing steadily eastward.  I'd
hole up in a motel for a few days, walk the streets, then return to my
cell, my solitary reading.  That's what those motel rooms were--cells.
There were few regional touches and, except for the scuff marks and
stains, the stale, unexpungeable odors of cigarettes laced with
Airwick, no traces of the lives passing through those rooms, no
signatures.

The ironies were not lost on me.  I'd broken out of the cocoon of
parish life and here I was out in the world, leading a nearly enclosed
life.  Free--and, at the same time, entombed.  Except for settling my
bill or exchanging a few words with strangers at the ice machine, or a
"how do!"  to the girl with the clean-up cart, I didn't speak to a
living soul.  Once a day, I'd ask the woman who worked at the front
desk whether there'd been any mail or messages for me, but, after three
or four days, I'd become so predictable that she'd greet me with
"nothing again!"  the minute I cracked open the door.

Motel nights are long.  When I couldn't sleep, I'd listen to toilets
flushing, to doors opening and slamming shut.  I'd follow the slow
glide of headlights across the ceiling.  Sometimes a couple would party
or fight in the room next door, the woman usually shouting, "What do
you take me for!"  before it was over.  Sometimes there'd be other
sounds coming through, intimate words and noises I didn't think I ought
to hear.  Then I'd stuff my ears with toilet paper to drown them out.
This magnified the sound of my own heart beating.

My money was running out when I left the bus in Frederick, Maryland.
Why Frederick?  I liked the look of the place, those old stonework
houses.  And somebody on the bus had mentioned a school for the deaf
there.

Seeking employment in Frederick, I was reminded of just how
unemployable I was.  What, after all, were my special skills?
Confecting the Eucharist--turning bread into Flesh, wine into Blood?
Try mentioning that!  Naturally, I didn't.  I did have some experience
in counseling, minus the crucial social work degree.  I also had some
knowledge of books and a few ancient languages, so I started out
cataloging in a library, a temporary position.  I rented a small
furnished apartment close by.  The apartment was only a little more
personable than the motels I'd been frequenting.  Working again was an
improvement, though.  I started to make friends, a woman among them.

A moment of truth started us off.  The lunchroom was crowded; single
diners were sharing tables.  She asked if she could share with me.  I
said, "Sure," hardly glancing



up from whatever it was I was reading or pretending to read.  I
expected silence or a smattering of small talk, but she battered my
barricade of newsprint down, asking point-blank: "Are you lonely?"  I
must have simply stared back in silence, uncertain whether I'd heard
her aright, for she asked again, "Would you like somebody to talk
to?"

I startled myself by answering, "Very much."  I didn't even recognize
the voice in which I said it, a full register below my normal voice.
And that was only the first surprise.

She was one of the reference librarians.  I must have seen her in
passing any number of times before that lunch, but I'd never paused
long enough to notice.  A tall girl, gracefully built, with dark hair
foaming around a rather thin face.  She was altogether generous, eager
to please, and her face showed this, her smile going right up to the
gums.  Good to look at, if not outright beautiful.  "Easy on the eyes"
I believe is the expression.  But nothing else was easy, nor could it
have been, for me.

Soon we were eating lunch together as a rule; then, when that wasn't
enough, we added on suppers--a progression.  I was, as they say,
"falling in love."  The words are partly right: it was a fall. Whatever
it was that started off--friendliness, frankness, loneliness, curiosity
us seemed innocent enough, but soon grew obsessive, as relentless, as
monotonous, as any addiction.  I began to brood over certain words
she'd said and how they were said, the exact shading of her voice, the
meaning of a glance, the way she filled the hours we spent apart, what
she looked like when she slept, breasts, thighs, et cetera et cetera
trying not to think about it, thinking about it,

picturing things, mind-movies that ran wild.  And then-they weren't
movies, I wasn't brooding or dreaming, but wide-awake.  I felt
shredded, shipwrecked--swept under a breaking wave.

Skin to skin, we were farther apart than ever before.  I wanted to
kneel by the side of that tangled bed and spread my arms wide across it
and beg for forgiveness, but only sat in the midst of it, hugging my
knees.  "You did fine," she said to me.  When I tried to apologize, she
stared at me, stricken.  Then she took my hand.  "It's nothing to be
sorry about," she spoke softly, putting her face close to mine, as you
would to a child.  "Really," she said, "it's no big deal."  But it was
for me.  A very big deal, indeed.

We were careful with each other for the few days remaining after that.
Within the same week, my mother called with bad news.

Dad was in the hospital.  "Since when?"  I demanded to know.  There was
a short spell of silence on the other end, before she admitted the
operation was over--"it had to be done fast."  They'd tried calling me,
but I was never in.  "Anyway, it's over now.  It's done.  He's going to
make it-he's doing fine."  A double heart bypass; he could have died
and I hadn't known.  "The important thing is--when are you coming?" she
asked.  "Soon as we're done talking," I promised.  I knew I wouldn't be
coming back.

It was unreasonable, I knew, it was wildly simplistic, but I couldn't
stop asking myself whether there wasn't a connection between my actions
and my father being struck down right then.  Pure coincidence,
probably--no meaning.  But, sure, I could trot out some meanings,
starting with the most obvious natural one--that it's all a matter

of linked life cycles.  Fact of nature: it's how the generations fit
together.  But I wasn't trained to act according to nature.  Not first
nature, anyway.

Mercifully for all of us, Dad recovered without incident.  And I tried
to be attentive and go more than halfway in any argument with him after
that.  He died last year-nothing to do with his heart.  By then, we'd
had time enough to work through many things.

Back in the clerical fold, I led a probationary life, doing office work
at the chancery until reassignment time came around.  There were to be
no more plum assignments for me; I was sent out instead to aging
country parishes, low budget holding operations, first in Slater, then
Bolton.  A way of putting me out to pasture?  I wondered about it now
and then, but didn't fret.  I'd had my upscale parish experience and it
was not for me.  It was after Bolton that I came to Bounds.

Nothing in my training, or experience (I'd had some since Father
Glimm's day), had prepared me for the continuing visits after the crash
in Bounds.  One afternoon on a day that was simply a white space in the
calendar, a day without a single saint tacked on to it, I entered my
office to retrieve some baptismal records.  I thought I heard something
stirring in the sanctuary, so decided to take a look.  I noticed a
fresh batch of wildflowers scattered across the steps to the altar, and
made a mental note to gather them and do them up more presentably.  But
nothing else was out of place.  No one about.  Yet I kept on hearing
something, some faint, worrying movement.  Whenever I paused, the sound
trailed off, as though someone were

listening.  But where?  I made a rather self-conscious reverence as I
passed the tabernacle--I felt watched--and made my way into one of the
back pews.  All quiet.  I thought I might pray, or try to, and closed
my eyes, the better to concentrate.  Nothing came to mind but the
nagging strain of my intention.  I shaped the word "Father .. ."  and,
as if in echo, heard a voice whispering.  Then, quite distinctly, the
rustle of cloth.  It was coming from the vestibule.  I sprang to my
feet and went after it.

And there it was--a woman crouching in the corner.  Correction: not
crouching, but kneeling, at a precise angle.  I was reminded then that
our narthex faced north by east, and it occurred to me that she was a
Moslem.  She was wearing some sort of Asian dress, all white.  I
withdrew as quickly as I'd come, but clumsily, beating a retreat back
to my office, leaving the door open in case she wanted to visit with me
after she was done, I hoped, fervently, that our sacri stan was nowhere
in the vicinity or I'd never hear the end of it.

Even with my door wide-open, she knocked and waited.  I rose and
beckoned her forward; she remained where she was, asking something.
Directions, probably.  "Please?"  I said.  All I could make out was
"double you see"--a perfect conundrum, perfectly articulated.  Her
glance roved up and down the hall, so I hazarded a guess.  "W.C. You
want the water closet?"  She affirmed this with a clear "thank you very
much," and I pointed the way.  I thought she might come by again on her
way out--as she did.

I don't know how we got through the preliminaries, she had so little
English.  Her name was Shirazi--her surname, I assumed.  I never caught
her first name if she offered it.



From what I surmised, Mrs.  Shirazi had lost a son in the crash.  A son
who lived with her and who may or may not have held a job.  Who may
have been in trouble.  Or maybe this was another son still alive, still
living with her.  I couldn't be sure.  How she found her way from
Lahore to Blessed Redeemer in Bounds with a scant handful of English
phrases remains a puzzle to me.  I guess other relatives of Pakistani
victims mapped it out for her; there must be a network by now.  And I'm
certain the airline helped out with travel arrangements and lodging.

But I knew so little beyond what I saw in front of me.  She was very
dark.  A middle-aged woman--could have been anywhere in her forties or
fifties.  Her hands looked rough and callused, and she walked with a
stoop; it was clear she hadn't had an easy life.  She wore some sort of
native dress: loose, flowing trousers with a dress over them; a long,
gauzy scarf covered her hair much of the time, though, when it fell,
she let it lie draped over her shoulders like an academic hood.  She
never varied from white--I came to see it as a color of mourning.

For the rest of the week, coming into the church at odd hours, making a
reverence, I'd move quietly, wondering if she were present.  I
surprised her at her devotions only once more.  To say that she was
"kneeling" wouldn't be accurate: she was face to the floor.  I noticed
that the indentation --what looked like a dimple or pockmark--in the
middle of her forehead came from pressing her brow to a tiny, figured
piece of red clay she set on the ground in front of her.  She had a
rosary, too, of the same unbaked clay.

She visited with me twice more.  It puzzled me how she

managed to get herself around in Bounds.  Except for "thank you very
much," her speech remained Pen ra; ble to me, and I'm supposed to be a
trained listener.  I had to wander through a thicket of strange sounds
before I caught a glimmer of the path-a single English word or a
cluster of words I thought I recognized.  It was the tone, it

anything, that guided me.

She talked-I listened.  Maybe she thought I understood.  Maybe I did.
She looked me in the eyes as though it were a real conversation and
there were no question of my not understanding.  Somewhere along into
it, the lamentation began.  This always happened.  The particular words
were beyond me, but I knew grieving when I heard it.  I'd be sitting
there facing her, nodding, or venturing a few consoling noises, waiting
for the first tuck in the flow, the quaver, the breaking off from
words.  Then the tears-a language we all know.  At the end, she'd wipe
her eyes with the corner of her scarf and rise, making a perfunctory
bow to me.  I'd stand also and nod-a nod that might pass for a bow, if
that were appropriate.  I refrained from patting her shoulder or
shaking her hand; I knew enough to assume that these gestures would be
laden with other meanings for her.  She thanked me in English again,
that formula she'd mastered.  I thanked her for her trust in me.  I
spoke slowly, summoning up three words for trust and hopes of her
recognizing one of them.  Each time she visited, we exchanged formal
good-byes-I had no way of knowing which time would be the last.

Then she disappeared, leaving a photograph of her son on the table in
the vestibule.  We've got quite a little gallery



there by now.  From time to time, I wonder what it was that transpired
between us.  Something.  What was it?

There were no impediments of language between myself and my most recent
visitor, a young woman from Spokane, Washington.  The woman wasn't
related to any of the passengers on board, but she'd met a young man on
the connecting flight from Spokane to San Diego and she'd been trying
to trace him ever since.  He'd been scheduled to board Flight 582 for
the long leg back East.

"I'm looking for a close friend" was how she began.  But when I asked
her the logical next question, "Who might that be?"  she confessed that
she didn't know his last name.  His first name was William, she was
sure of that.  He'd told her that he was studying economics at Yale. 
"I realize Yale is a big place," she said, "but when I phoned, they
didn't even try and help me.  They were quite rude, if you want to
know."

"Tell me a little more about him," I suggested, already doubtful that
it could be much.

"Well .. . he's twenty, very, very bright, and graduating this
semester.  This semester or next, I'm not real sure.  He was going from
Spokane--I think it was his cousin he'd been visiting there.  Going
from Spokane to San Diego by American Airlines.  In San Diego, he
changed over to Maxim for the flight east.  Maxim wouldn't give me a
copy of their passenger list for that flight.  I tried every way I
could think of to get my hands on it.  Nothing doing.  They said they
were bound by law, one of those invasion of privacy things.  I
should've lied and told them I was his cousin or something.  His name
never came up in the newspaper listings--at least, none of the ones I
read.  I've

never met anybody like him.  He was so friendly--the nicest
personality.  I miss him so--"

I took out my master list.  Together, we pored over the names of the
injured and the dead.  There was a young man listed, a certain John W.
Stinnett from Bridgeport, Connecticut.  That sounded close to me.  The
middle initial "W" very likely stood for William.  Stinnett was twenty
one years old.  Deceased.  He sounded like the young man she was
seeking, close enough in age and probable destination.  The logical
next step would be to determine whether John W. Stinnett joined Flight
582 after a connecting flight from Spokane.  I offered to inquire for
her.

"Oh, no"--she shook her head vehemently--"don't bother.  But thanks.
That couldn't be him, see, because he didn't have a middle name.  We
happened to discuss that.  I mentioned that I'd always hated mine: it's
Cynthia Prudence Washburn.  I go by Cindy, just plain Cindy.  It drives
me crazy if anybody calls me by my middle name.  He told me he never
had any problems like that since he didn't have a middle name.  So it
couldn't be him."

I agreed to display the small hand printed poster she'd brought along
with her, posting one on my office door, one in the parish hall, and
one on the wall in the vestibule, on the bulletin board over the table
with all the photographs and the visitors' sign-in book.  It looked
something like one of those wanted notices you find tacked up on the
bulletin boards in most post offices, wanted and most wanted that the
F.B.I, puts out.  Minus the mug shot, though.

I invited her to sign the visitors' book.

"Could I read it?"



"Sure," I said, "but it will take you a while."

I went back to my office while she had a go at it.  When she was done,
she came around to let me know that she was really leaving this time.
"Any luck?"  I asked.  She didn't answer; one glance at her face and I
knew there wasn't.  I promised once again to let her know if I heard
anything.  "If I don't find him this way, I never will," she admitted.
"He means so much to me."  I think she realized then how slim her
chances were.  I escorted her to the front door and lingered there,
watching her make her way down the street.  At the corner, she waved
once over her shoulder without looking back.

The visitors don't come in droves any longer and I don't always see the
ones who come in and sign the book, or who stop by to light a candle or
leave flowers.  Sometimes they're hothouse flowers in expensive formal
arrangements, but, more often these days, they're wildflowers gathered
from the side of the road and mixed with what we tend to think of as
weeds--copper mallow, henbit, senna, or mustard weed--telling us that
outsiders have left them.  The parish council may grumble over the mess
but the circle widens.

The circle widens .. . On my way out, I always pause to read the latest
entries in the visitors' book.  There are two new ones.  A woman from
Kansas City, Missouri (Pray for Robert) is followed by a man from
Syracuse, New York (Just to look).  The page is only one line short of
full, so I turn it over and leave the book open for the next person
coming in.

Twenty-one.

Death Makes a Township.

WE WERE PAST SPRING, by the books, but not really there yet.  Given
notice of arrival is all.  It was up and down, bleary then fine, never
knowing from one day to the next.  Time of year I call "green-feed
season."  You could taste it in the milk--a green taste--dank, chill, a
smidge oniony.  The cows eating too much new grass, what it was, and it
wasn't only the cows.  If you'd happened along First Street to that new
Allsups on the corner, you'd see a sign in the window:



Eggs from Happy Hens on the ground, plenty of Green Feed, with
Rooster

And you'd notice "Green Feed" underlined twice.

But--about the cows--my friend Cloteal will take one short swallow of
our new milk and say, "They've been eating flowers again."  Now I doubt
that altogether, flower-tastes being too pale to mention.  What I taste
is wild onion--and earth.  CloteaPs a poetess and inclined to flower
things up.

Me--I've always prided myself on being down to earth, what they call a
"realist."  Especially lately: I've been spring cleaning.  I started
out last week at the post office, then tackled the closets at home on
the weekend.  Today, it's been scrubbing windows and taking down the
curtains to wash.  Did two big washes and vacuumed all the rugs.  I'm
still struggling with mashed-in raisins and popcorn the kids spilled
decades ago; dropped things keep on turning up.

The garage was next on my list.  First off, stacking things in piles,
finding out--facing--what I've squirreled away out of sight over the
years.  I made three piles: Keep, Give or Sell, Dump, then had to start
up a fourth for Undecided.  Of course, it was Undecided that got to be
the biggest heap.  Useless, vexing things with memories attached: there
was the extra board for the big dining room table--the table I sold
when I knew Al was gone for good, and the giant stew pot that grew too
big for a household of one and sometimes a little company.  There was a
pole lamp minus the wiring, two folding lawn chairs needing to

be rewove, and a heap of old plowshares.  The plowshares I'd surely
keep; they were Troy's first set.

I'd started cleaning well before seven in the morning, and hadn't
stopped for lunch, so round about noon I decided enough was enough.  It
was one of those spur-of-the moment things.  I called Cloteal to see if
she might want to join me, and she did.  She wanted "something
special," so we thought of K-Bob's near Hardesty.

My lucky day, it so happened.  I'd never won anything in my life--until
that lunch.  It was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the restaurant and
they were celebrating.  We were sitting there, Cloteal and me, all
decided on what we were going to order and nobody coming to take the
order, when we heard a bell clanging.  It was one of the waitresses and
a fellow along with her carrying a milk pail, making the rounds of the
tables, hailing, "A winner!  A winner!"  I caught the eye of the other
waitress; she rushed past us, promising, "I'll be with you, just hold
on."  But she never came; it was the pair with the bell and the bucket
who--after a little ceremony--finally took our orders.  Turned out I
was the winner they'd been making the ruckus about, their twenty-fifth
customer since noon.  They'd been coming to our table all along.  So I
drew a slip of paper from the pail and read it out loud as they asked
me to.  Said I'd won a chef salad for a dollar twenty-five, the 1968
price, but I had to claim my prize no later than the end of this
month.

Doesn't sound like much, maybe, but it gave me a boost.  I did feel
lucky--and energetic--for hours afterwards.  I returned to the garage
and decided some of the

Undecided things, and gathered a big bundle of work clothes for the
Bounds summer sale.

Near five, I decided to call it quits.  It was still sunny, though I'd
missed the best of it.  I needed to be out in the air after all those
dark corners and dust, so I set out for a stroll, my usual stroll down
Memory Lane, which at my age happens to be the cemetery.  Death makes a
township, I thought, and for me there'll soon be more in it than
outside it.

It's a pretty place, Bounds Cemetery.  There's a white gate that stays
shut most of the time, and a short stretch of picket fence on either
side of that.  The fence is mainly for decoration, because the place is
wide-open on the other three sides, where a hardpan road sweeps around
it.  It's really one of the nicest spots in town with a
well-established lawn, a few salt cedars, a little shinnery oak, and
some--not too many--mesquite.  Those things take over like weeds if you
let them.

Thinking back to the days before the crash, I was filled with
wonderment.  Seemed like I'd lived in a fish tank till then, a fish
tank full of sky.  A sky bleary or bright or blowing, but never an
unimagined thing.  There were the drouths, the dust storms, the
hail-outs, but, through it all, I remained in the fish tank, in Bounds,
the walls hard and clear as glass.  Then came the crash, and something
shattered.  Seemed like the whole world poured in ... I turned west by
the Blackwelder family plot, the way I usually go.  Six stones, Bruce
was the last.  Their plot always looks a bit unkempt--no Blackwelders
left to tend it.

The Moseleys are neighbors to the Blackwelders.  A strip of
concrete--like a yard fence, but low--marks off the

boundaries.  Most of the Moseleys lived normal lifetimes, except for
Ben--he never made it to twenty.  Single vehicle accident.  Most people
know what that means.  Life is a voyage that's homeward bound is what
his stone says.

We hoped so.  We surely did hope.

Crawleys next.  They aren't the best-loved family in town.  "Lots of
little Crawleys in the ground," kids like to tease.  For a fact, they
don't live long.

There were a lot of little Crawleys there before me, and stacked up
pretty close, cheek by jowl, hip by haunch.  Not much in the way of
summing up, not by words, anyway.  Only their names scratched on a bit
of concrete.  Some not even that.  A couple of them had figurines of
china glass; a rooster was leaning against one stone that had only a
pair of dates on it; the stone next to it, with a cocker spaniel that'd
been broken and glued back together, had a name but no dates.  Then
there were the grown Crawleys, the brothers Rick and Birch: two
concrete slabs stuck full of pebbles.  Rick had fishing tackle set in
the concrete for his --fishing was his favorite thing.  Birch had spark
plugs in his.

That set me to wondering what my favorite thing would be.  It wasn't
postage stamps, or embroidered pot lifters, or biscuits with cream
gravy, though I liked all those things.  Our pastor, Orville Stemm, put
that very question to us last Sunday.  Told us this story about a
potter who made cremation urns in the shape of the departed's favorite
thing.  Young man, who doted on his motorcycle and perished when it
crashed, got a motorcycle urn.  Old man who liked to chew got a
spittoon ... I wasn't at all sure what my favorite thing would be.  How
to choose?  I liked

Twenty-two.

Last Visit.

I WENT BACK once more.  That was last week, and nothing official.  My
paper had closed out the story some weeks before.  Except for the
results of the crash investigation, which wouldn't be announced for a
long time, possibly years, and lawsuits, which might go on even longer,
there was nothing further my editor felt our readers wanted to know
about the crash or the town.

The big area story now was of a mixup in a sperm bank

in Dallas--light mischief with unforseeable consequences.  The big
national stories were on flooding in the Midwest and drive-by shootings
in D.C.

By next week, or the next, we'd be tiring of these stories, too.  But
there was sure to be something else to take their place--a big
financial swindle or a new sex scandal.  Variety is what we're after.
So why bother going back to anything?  To Bounds?  That's what I kept
asking myself.  I'd long since lost my bid on that power drill set in
Hardesty--my reason for happening to be in the vicinity of Bounds on
the day of the crash--and there was no other good reason to venture out
this way.  I simply wanted to see the field where the plane went down
one last time.  I guess I needed some final image to round off the
story in my mind.

It was one of those shimmery days in May--a little windy.  A single
raft of clouds drifting across the blue.  The night before, we'd had a
good, long, soaking rain, the kind farmers pray for, and everything
glistened green.  That's one thing about a semi-arid region like
this--growing things respond quickly, grateful for the least little bit
of moisture--you can see the stems and leaves actually drinking it
down.

The flatness I'd forgotten, the patience of it.

I drove right to the fence.  The place was deserted, far as I could
see.  Unless you knew what had happened here, there was really nothing
much to look at.  The earth was starting to heal over.  There were deep
patches of weeds and, even in the barest spots, you could see a haze of
green rising, some kind of leafy cover--what I'll call "prairie grass."
I still don't know the names of the different kinds.



a fence in Bounds.  Here--in Bounds, Texas!  Who could figure it?

She invited me up to the house for a cup of coffee.  "Stay a little
minute," she urged, but I knew it would be more like half an hour, so I
thanked her, tapped my watch, and told her I'd have to be running
along.  "Some other time," I said.  Before I set out, I'd thought about
dropping in on the priest, but I didn't know whether he'd be in and, if
he were, how long it would take to pick up our conversation from where
we'd left off.  So I decided to let that slide.  It's only one story, I
reminded myself; it's time to let go.

I took a last glance over the field.  The cover was uneven, yet I felt
certain it would green over in a month or two.  By next growing season,
she'd have a crop--wheat or sorghum, whatever it was she'd planned on.
I wished her well.  She shook my hand warmly and urged me to swing by
again.  I promised I would, knowing I probably wouldn't.  I'd seen what
I set out to see, and had a long road ahead.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

Since leaving New York in 1983, A. G. Mojtabai has lived on the High
Plains of Texas.  Her understanding of this region and its ways informs
Called Out, as well as her last two books, Ordinary Time and the
nonfiction work Blessed Assurance, which won the Lillian Smith Award as
the best book about the American South in 1986, The author has written
four other novels, Mundome, The 400 Eels of Sigmund Freud, A Stopping
Place, and Autumn, and has twice won awards from the American Academy
of Arts and Letters: the Rosenthal Award in 1983, and an Academy Award
in Literature in 1993.

A. G. Mojtabai has taught at Hunter College, New York University, and
Harvard.  Currently, she teaches at the University of Tulsa.

(continued from front flap)

Called Out is a novel intricately voiced, with character and sense of
place.  In plo ring the impact of disaster on a little ,vn and on those
people, near and far, died out" by the crash, it reminds us of 2 small
personal worlds we all inhabit, their limits challenged, pushed toward
growth, by collision with what lies beyond.

CO

A. G. MOJTABAI is the author of five previous novels: Autumn, A
Stopping Place,

The 4QO Eels of Sigmund Freud, Mundome,

and Ordinary Time.  Her nonfiction work,

Blessed Assurance, won the 1986 Lillian

Smith Award for the best book about the me rican South, and in 1993 she
received i Academy Award in literature from the me rican Academy of
Arts and Letters.

le lives in Amarillo, Texas, and teaches the University of Tulsa.

JACKET PHOTOGRAPH BY CARL ]. TRAC1E

JACKET DESIGN BY WHITNEY G. COOK MAN

Printed in the U.S.A.