Chapter Forty-Two: That Home Across the Road

Leonard Bryson looked at the sandwich he had prepared for lunch with distaste. He was eating because he must but there was no pleasure in it. The cold venison and mustard had a harsh, unpleasing flavor. The bread itself was good; sour dough baked by Sky’s brother. Unfinished work depressed him. There was weeding to be done, hoeing, tilling. That is on the few fields dry enough to plant. Winter storms had wrecked his vines and now the rain had washed away precious soil. His whole world had turned to mud, as it was wont to do. Wayward reality, the gross errancy of things! He laughed and bit the sandwich, chewed. Sasha stood up from the corner of the verandah and approached, wagging her tail. He took out a piece of venison and tossed it to her.

Sky came in carrying a book, her finger marking the page, and put her hand on his shoulder. She was with him all the time now. She looked like she had swallowed a melon. He felt the smooth skin of her belly with his fingers and lips. “Is it kicking?” he asked.

“She.”

“We don’t know.”

“Oh yes we do. Egehjih Jisdoda’sha is never wrong about these things.”

He bit off some sandwich and chewed. His teeth were sore. “These old Indian women think they know everything.”

“Well they do. About some stuff anyway. Most of what I know about midwifery comes from them.”

Leonard scoffed without aggression. “I grew up in a matriarchal clan. I know all about it. They’re as arrogant as any synod of men, let me tell you. The piss drinking, menstrual blood smearing, feather swearing, drum beating nonsense….”

“Well, she says I’m carrying low and she can tell by the heart beat.”

“Empirical, fine. Will it ever stop raining, can she tell us that? After forty days of rain even the frogs are tired of water.” He held her closer and sniffed the air. Mud. And her sweat. They had not had sex in weeks. Her blood pressure had gone up a bit and she needed to rest. He did all of the chores and hence was letting them slip.

There was a knock at the door.

“Oop,” she said.

“Put a shirt on, I’ll get it.” He watched her pull on a green tank top. Her nipples had grown wide and bumpy and her breasts were swollen. The shirt rested just above her vanishing navel.

Dennis Blanpied stood in the door, road dusty, with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth.

“Dennis. We were just sitting down to lunch.”

He pushed by Leonard and paced around the entranceway. “Your wife’s in trouble, Leonard.”

“What do you mean?”

Sky stood in the door of the kitchen.

“She called from a border crossing on old route 81. That Gayogoho:nq Militia General Black Cloth was holding her and some man. They were driving a Cadillac, a stolen car.”

Leonard didn’t understand what he was hearing. He didn’t know what to say. “What strange man?”

“Some Felix Clay.”

“Never heard of him.”

“She wouldn’t tell me what was what but she said someone named

Velodia would be coming and that she was in trouble. Said you’d know what to do. Anyway, I called back there and they had left, heading north towards Cornell. But,” he took a drag off the cigarette. “A little while later two men, an Owen Bradlee and a guy named Jacob Boyle, arrived in a hovercraft looking for them.”

“Can we sit down?” Leonard asked. It was unreal. The air around him churned. He looked at Sky and she followed them into the living room. He sat down on the couch and stared at his books, the black binders lined up evenly on several shelves, then at all the bindings of his collection, some tall, some wide, in leather, cracked paper, scrolls of electraweave. He looked out the window at the valley and the lake.

“You know these two?”

“Owen Bradlee. She works for him, I guess. The other she may have mentioned.”

“Well it was Bradlee’s car they stole. He’s some sort of DOD heavy. And I’ll tell you what. Black Cloth is no idiot but he underestimated this guy. Cause he was holding him, (he didn’t say a thing about the car by the way,) and this Bradlee fellow murders one of his men and takes Black Cloth hostage. It’s a shoestring operation there, understand? The Gayogoho:nq haven’t got much but they’re pretty fierce about hanging onto what they do have. Anyway, this Bradlee guy holds an entire outpost at bay with two guns and takes off in the hovercraft. Said he was tracking them. But Black Cloth told me they were gonna go after the men. Everyone’s on it now. If they try to escape they’ll be picked up. The Ganyegeho:nq, the

Onqdagehonq, us.”

Leonard rubbed his face and tried to think. “What should I do?”

Dennis shook his head and dragged on the cigarette. “I don’t know.”

“If they come here they can hide out with us,” Sky said.

“O.K.,” Dennis said. “That’s a start. Then we can move them up to the Hertzler’s place maybe and then on to Tganahwai. I have people there who can get them across the border into Ontario.”

“But we don’t know where any of them are now.”

“No.”

“So we’ll have to wait?” Leonard asked. He looked at Dennis and then at Sky, embarrassed by his helplessness.

“I’ll make some coffee,” Sky said.

Felix and Bryson huddled, wet and cold, in the back seat, till the rain let up, excitedly babbling about their encounter with the mountain lion.

“You seem better now,” he said. “Sleep helped. The bleeding’s stopped.”

She laughed giddily. “It’s unnatural. I feel awful. Like something the cat dragged in!”

“I guess that’s funny.”

“Did you see that thing? I thought I was dead, that he’d crushed my vertebrae. You know how they kill you? They sever your spinal cord with their incisors. Then they eat you ass first.”

“It was unbelievable. I mean, the thing was so big.” Outside was light enough to make out shapes as dawn brightened in the sky above the canopy. The birds were awake, crying, singing, squawking in the trees. He could still feel the fear and energy, still smell the fur in his head. “Leonard will be just so happy that you didn’t kill it.”

“I wanted to kill it, I could taste the blood in my mouth.”

“Why didn’t you? Were you too afraid? It literally paralyzed me at first.”

“No, not exactly. Certainly I was afraid, but I think it was awe. I’ve never been in such a powerful presence, such immense beauty, such an alien mind. Its eyes were like whirlwinds. I felt myself tracking into a void and then, killing it would have been like trying to kill life itself.

It studied me. I could feel it thinking about who I was and what I meant. We sized each other up. All I can think now is that we stumbled into its world and it let us pass.”

“If you hadn’t pulled it off of me I’d be a turd on the ground.”

“Well, I’d rather not hang around these woods waiting for what’s next.”

“Bears, wolves and coyotes,” Bryson said. “And then there’s Owen Bradlee.”

“Let’s go. I’m no Samson.”

He managed to back the car up onto the path and they drove off slowly through the mud. They reached the end of the trail at daybreak and found the road to Ganudasaga, Old Geneva Landing.

Ganudasaga was a small village laid out on either side of a dirt road at the north end of Seneca Lake. It had a weekly market, a school and a medical clinic run by two doctors and a nurse. Up the road was a sawmill. Houses and buildings were arranged haphazardly with big gardens in the back, long driveways, barns and outbuildings in states of decline. Dogs ran about behind crazy fences made of split rails, chain link, pickets and barbed wire, depending. In the long driveways, in barns and in sheds were parked boats, pedal cars, motorcycles, bikes, pick up trucks, horse, mule and ox carts, black Amish buggies. At the edge of town was a restaurant and inn, closed. The sun was just above the horizon and the valleys were filled with a white fog. Water ran in streams along the road and out of drainage pipes into creaks that emptied into the lake. The window was down and he could smell the cows and horses in the fields even when he couldn’t see them. The ground was wet and the grass sparkled between the long cold shadows cast by trees and woodpiles. Lights were on in a few houses. Out back of them people were up slopping pigs and milking cows, scattering corn for chickens. The lake was still, stretching as far as they could see, metallic dim, the warm rays of light spread out in washes of vermillion and pink.

They arrived at the front of the Ganyodae’ Bar and Grille, pulled over and stretched their legs. It was a long, low, white clapboard building with an old thatched roof. A metal chimney puffed smoke. Bryson leaned against the car, her skin and lips pale, neck and head wrapped up in bloody clothes. The cut on Felix’s cheek has clotted over. There was a smell of bacon and coffee on the air. Through the screen door Felix could see a woman at the grill and another behind the counter filling pitchers with cream, both dressed in white aprons over blue jeans and black t-shirts. He banged gently and the women looked up. When they didn’t recognize Felix they became wary. The one filling pitchers said, “Who are you? We ain’t open.”

“We’re driving through,” Felix said, his stomach growling at the smell of frying bacon. She came out from behind the counter and stood at the screen door to look them over. “Please. We’ve had some trouble.”

She was a short, heavy woman with two chins and a stoic mouth. Her hair was cut to just below her ears, a greyish blond with dark streaks and she had four hoops in each ear. She wore no make up other than mascara and pink lipstick.

Bryson came over. “I’m Dr. Ruth Bryson. My husband is Leonard Bryson.”

“Leonard Bryson’s your husband you say? Ain’t heard of him.” She yelled to the other woman, “Ginny! Babe! You know a Leonard Bryson?”

“Sure. Ain’t he that old man living down on Keuka Lake? The one they made chief of the whites?”

“Oh yeah, that one.” She turned back to them. “It ain’t like there a lot of Leonard Bryson’s running around or nothing, but I can’t remember a name. So what do you want?”

Felix said, “Just some coffee and something to eat.”

“What happened to her?” she asked, looking at the improvised bandages.

“I can explain,” Bryson said, weakly. “Please can’t we have a little coffee and food?”

The woman rubbed her chin and spent a good moment studying the question. “I suppose. We ain’t open yet. You hurt?”

“She’s hurt pretty bad,” Felix said. “A lion got us.”

“Well good lord why didn’t you say so at first?” She opened the door. “Come in, sit down then.” They sat down on padded stools at the counter. She poured out coffee into two mugs.

“We stayed the night on the Interlaken Trail,” Felix said.

“Coming up from Cayuga Lake,” Bryson added. “Cornell.”

The woman looked out the window and nodded. “That’s some car you got there.”

“Thank you,” Bryson said.

“The lion that attacked us was huge,” Felix said.

“You saw the big cat?” she asked, now genuinely impressed. “Ginni, they saw the ga:syoje:tha. Looks like she jumped her!”

Ginny pushed the bacon onto the cool part of the grill and lay out sausage links in a line. She had black hair tied back in a ponytail, was younger and thinner than the woman talking to them. She joined them at the counter, poured a cup of coffee and sipped it. Her face was long, work-battered but kind. Her eyes were dark and unhappy, with beautiful lashes. “Nice to meet you,” she said. “Don’t any cat look big when it’s on you?” They looked at Felix and Bryson suspiciously. Ginny scratched her hair. “That ga:syoje:tha ain’t killed no one yet, Fran.”

“No it ain’t,” Fran agreed. She was leaning on her elbows now, sipping a cup of coffee. “You two say you’re hungry?”

“Yes,” Felix said.

“Well, we can fry you up some fry bread if you like. And there’s eggs and bacon, or fish. Lake salmon, trout. I ain’t got home fries yet or pancakes. We ain’t open.”

“No we ain’t,” said Ginny. “But I’ll be happy to fry you up whatever you want.”

“Bacon and eggs sound great,” Felix said.

“Me too,” said Bryson.

“Well, you want fry bread or an old corn muffin with that? We ain’t got our bread in yet from the baker.”

“I got some bread for toast, Fran. Don’t be hard on them now.”

“I ain’t bein’ hard, hun.”

“You hurt bad?” Ginny asked, returning to the grill. She turned the sputtering sausage over, scraped a section of grill down, ladled on some melted butter and cracked six eggs open. The whites spread out and grew opaque. The smell rose up over the slightly sour sausage fat. She put four slices of white bread in the toaster.

“I don’t know,” Bryson said. “It bit my neck and head.”

Fran lifted her eyebrows and looked the bandages over. “You’re one lucky woman.”

Felix said, “I couldn’t see well in the dark but I think she needs stitches. And I didn’t clean it out.”

“Ts ts ts. Well, that you got to do or it’ll go septic. You up to date on your tetanus?”

“I don’t know,” Bryson said.

“Don’t mess in no woods without a medical kit. Well, we can fix you up here in town I suppose.”

The village was coming to life. Doors opened and slammed shut. The cockcrows were joined by men clearing their throats. An outboard motor revved and vanished down the lake trailing a wake of silver bubbles. An old man came into the restaurant, with white hair

clipped short, terra cotta skin and blue eyes. His lips were thin and tight. He wore blue overalls, black work boots, a red plaid shirt and a baseball cap that said Martini Time, the middle of the M shaped like a cocktail glass with three olives on a toothpick. “You’re open early,” he said, looking at Felix and Bryson. “You don’t never do that for me.”

“You ain’t an injured stranger,” Fran said, handing him a mug of coffee and an ashtray.

He rolled a skinny cigarette, lit it up and winked at Felix. “I ain’t strange enough for you Fran?”

“Shut up you old man. You strange enough all right, you just ain’t big or strong enough.”

Ginny shouted, “That little thing dangling on your nuts never made no woman cry or sing, you just stick it in and cough, same as all the rest.”

“Well I guess you’d know Ginny what all the rest does, or what they does with you.”

“They don’t do nothin’ with me no more. I don’t let ’em. I’m on gals now, you know that.”

“Cat food,” he said, grinding out the cigarette and rolling another.

Ginny put the plates down in front of Felix and Bryson and said to Fred, “And what wouldn’t you give to try some, eh? Ha.” She returned to the grill, threw some bacon and sausage on a plate, added a couple of scrambled eggs and a corn muffin. These she gave to Fred with a bottle of ketchup.

“Where you folks from,” he asked, taking bites off of a sausage speared on his fork.

Felix felt the warm yolk on his tongue. They tasted nothing like the eggs he was used to. They weren’t sulfury. It was like he had never eaten before. He didn’t answer Fred’s question but wolfed down the food. Fran laughed. “At the rate you’re goin’, them chickens don’t lay

fast enough.”

“These are just amazing,” Felix said. The food, the light, the air were like fuel. A strength, missing for so long, spread out from his stomach through his limbs. The headache was gone. He didn’t see

spots. He felt good. Not Paregane good, just good, normal.

“Ma’am,” Bryson said.

“Just call me Fran.”

“Fran then. Where can I go to clean up these cuts? I can get the

tetanus shot at my husband’s, but I’m afraid of infection. It’s already been several hours.”

Fred ate the rest of the sausage off the fork and shoveled in some eggs. “You hurt?” he asked.

“They was attacked by that mountain lion. Say it’s the big one.”

“Ga:syoje:tha. Almost killed an Amish boy a ways back.”

“That’s the one.”

“I’ll see to it. Can we use the sink, Fran?”

Fran looked wearily and then said, “I suppose you can, but it ain’t that clean.”

“Just give me some bleach and I’ll clean it out.”

Fran said to Bryson, “You go with him then. He ain’t a doctor but he done some doctoring along the way. A coot like that’s seen more injury than your big city doctors do, at least more animal bites.”

Ginny said, “He sure has skinned a lot of deer.”

“Stop that babe, you’re gonna scare these folks,” Fran said, touching Bryson’s hand. “It hurts a lot?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a good thing we ain’t open. It’s a good thing Fred come by early.”

The stainless steel utility sinks were deep. To the left was a small prep area scrubbed clean, chopping boards stacked neatly against the wall. On the floor was a bucket with a stinking rag mop and a push broom and a squeegee. Under the counter was a work stool, a 25-kilo mesh bag of spanish onions and paper sacks of potatoes. Bryson sat down on the stool and lay her head across her folded arms while Felix and Fred went about cleaning the sink and area. Fred moved slowly and deliberately. He rolled his sleeves up and flexed his fingers. His arms were strong, the muscles and sinew like ropes, and covered with faded green tattoos. He opened a utility closet and got out new sponges and latex gloves sealed in cellophane, a four-litre glass jug of bleach, and a glass spray bottle. Felix ran hot water into the two sinks and started to scrub them out with an old brush and detergent liquid. He scrubbed the drain, the plugs and the sides, washing the dented metal down with the spray hose. Then Fred carefully wiped all the surfaces with bleach. He filled the spray bottle and spritzed and sponged the faucets, spigot, plugs and the rubber gloves.

“O.K. ma’am. Let’s scoot you over and take a look.” They positioned the stool next to the sink and she straddled it, facing down. As he pulled away the crusted pants and shirt from around her head and neck she flinched, the clotted blood pulling free of the cuts. Each was about four centimeters long. Blood welled up out of the crimson slashes. Ginny waddled in carrying a giant pot of boiling water and rags. He poured in some bleach and stirred the rags with a wooden spoon, then reached his gloved hand in and wrung one out. This he applied to the back of her head and neck, pressing it. Then he threw the rag into the sink and took out another, again pressing it to the cuts. The blood soaked into the rag and the coagulated blood in her hair softened. With the next rag he started to wipe her entire neck. Then he washed it with hand soap, working up a red lather.

“Bend forward, that’s right,” he said, spraying warm water down on her neck and hair, washing the suds out and into the sink. The water swirled up and over her head, dripping down in a long bloody, sudsy stream into the drain. She was panting, gripping the sides of the sink, knuckles white. “These are deep but not so big. You’re lucky. I’m just gonna keep on washing them for a while.” He scrubbed her hair, behind her ears and carefully rinsed the soap out each time. Then he took another hot rag and put it over the wounds. Ginny handed him a razor. He shaved the hair around the cuts, wiping the blood away with the rag as he worked. Ginny left for the kitchen and Fran came in with sterile bandages and a bottle of alcohol. “Now ma’am, this gonna hurt some. I’m sorry, but I got to disinfect it and all we got right here now is alcohol. Your gonna feel like I just lit you on fire and you go on ahead and scream if you must.” Before he was done with his sentence he poured the alcohol out and she stiffened, jerked her head forward and groaned, the groan swelling larger and higher. She let go of the sink, hands shaking and pounded her fists, hissing through her teeth. She whimpered and cried then and released her fists. “O.K. We’re done with that.” He unwrapped the bandage, a thick white pad large enough to cover all four cuts and pushed in against her head and neck. “I ain’t sure how to secure this. It’s a funny spot. Well, I got no choice but to tape up around your neck. Tell me if it’s too tight.”

“Go ahead.”

He ripped the tape off of the spool and put it on as best as he could. “That’ll do then,” he said.

She sat up and hopped down of the stool. “How do I look?” she asked, touching the tape on her throat.

Back at the counter they had another cup of coffee. Felix whispered to Bryson, “This place.” He felt like a child. “These people.”

Bryson laughed. “You’d never know any of this existed, huh?”

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Ganudasaga. Old Geneva Landing. It’s just a town. There’s an ancient burial mound around here somewhere. People have lived here for twenty thousand years. In the seventeenth century they had a fortified town nearby.” She turned on the stool and faced Fred. “How do you get to Keuka Lake from here, by road?”

“That car is a beaut. You wanna be careful on the road with it. There’s plenty around here won’t mind killing you for it.”

“We’ll take our chances,” Felix said.

“Yes,” he said. “O.K. You just stay on this road. Don’t take no turns till you get to the next lake over, that’s Keuka. Make a left there, down 54. There’s a sign says South. And another buried in the trees that says 54.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Bryson said.

Fran, wiping the counter, looked up and said, “He ought to thank you for letting him wash that hair of yours.”

Fred smiled, “You ain’t told the truth till now, Fran.” Bryson and Felix stood. “Well, you folks take it easy, drive safe.”

“Thank you all, very much.” Ginny came in from the kitchen drying her hands on her apron, and pushed the hair from her eyes.

“Thank you, Ginny, Fran.”

“See you later then.”

As the sun rose the air inside the hovercraft grew warm and the clear walls steamed up. Bradlee could not remember the last time he had endured such discomfort. Probably in the Sundarbans action of 2130. He never wanted to suffer anything like it again. In the foul mood of the morning he turned once more against Bryson. She would pay for this when he caught her. They all would. But how exactly they’d pay he didn’t consider. For the moment the chase was all that mattered.

He got out and looked around. They had actually landed in a small clearing in thick woods. He pissed against a tree, lit a cigarette and walked down a little hill to what looked like a dirt road. It was actually quite wide and straight, bumpy with rocks, potholes and tree roots. The mud was rutted by wagon and buggy wheels. There were piles of decomposing horseshit and hoof prints. The road vanished into the woods. How inconvenient, he thought. He heard water and walked further. His feet sank into the mud and cold water filled his shoes. Damn! Down the other side of the road was a stream. He would have to take a chance and drink. Anything nasty could be treated later. It was cold and good. He splashed some on his face and sat down on a rock. There was no point in wandering around looking for them. He would do what he had set upon doing that evening and go straight to Leonard Bryson’s. There were clear skies. They should get there in an hour and then he and Boyle could go about making Leonard talk.

The problem with that plan was the hovercraft. No doubt General Black Cloth’s Cayuga Militia would be out looking for him. By day they’d be an easy target. They probably didn’t have missiles. They probably didn’t even intend to bring him down with gunfire. Most likely they wanted force him to crash. An unfortunate accident, not the treacherous murder of an important state citizen. That’s how he would have proceeded in their circumstances.

But then there was no taste of revenge in that. And they were angry.

He returned to the hovercraft. Boyle was slumped forward, asleep. Bradlee pondered his rumpled, sweaty, swollen form. His neck was disgusting, blistered. He nudged him but Boyle didn’t move. He pulled him upright. Boyle’s head rolled forward. He lifted it. The face was disgusting too, blistered and his forehead was cut and bruised where he had struck the dash when they crashed. He felt his pulse. It was weak but steady enough. His breathing was labored. Hm. He needed Boyle but he would obviously have to live without him. He left him a gun (it was the least he could do), took the black monitor and began walking through the woods. Alligator shoes were not great

for this kind of thing, the mud sucked at his soles. As the sun rose higher it got warm and he began to sweat. Black flies harassed his neck. Mosquitoes needled his wrists.

Why would she do it? Yesterday it made sense, her only option, but now her betrayal looked monstrous. Unmotivated evil. There was no other explanation. She was insane. They had everything going for them. It was crushing. He had never in all his life placed so much trust in anyone. But there was something else. Something difficult to possess. He had placed hope in her. The future in her. Things were going to be different. The last decades of his life he had planned on spending with her in a degree of leisure. And she seemed ready to agree to this. Or so she strongly implied. Leonard was an absurd diversion. Her idiotic midlife schoolgirl crush would have faded, at least with his death. They had both miscalculated badly.

He had never expected anything of the world beyond what he could get by cunning and wit. The truth of this approach, though, never pleased him. Nothing ever pleased him. But he did take comfort in the outward form of things, rituals observed. Even the melancholy recognition of the rottenness of existence was a comfort. And who else was able to share the savour of this sour drink but Bryson? Only she had the understanding of the unstated but omnipresent truth. Only she could chuckle over drinks at things that drove others out of windows and into walls.

It seemed he had been walking for a long a time when the horse cart approached and slowed. It was driven by a boy dressed like an old man. He was frightful, repugnant in his serious clothes, like a nineteenth century undertaker. He wore a black hat, white shirt, black pants and black suspenders. He was hauling a big mound of hay. Bradlee smiled and hailed the boy. “Excuse me young man. Can you tell me where it is I am and where it is I am headed?”

The boy whistled and pulled back on the reins. “Ja. This is the

Interlaken Trail. It goes to Old Geneva Landing,” he said in a strange accent. “Ich can give you a ride.”

Bradlee smiled some more and said liquidly, “That would be ever so helpful.” He climbed up next to the boy. The horse was quite large, a grey and brown clydesdale. Its tail swished between the hitch. The boy whistled again and the horse drew forward, the wooden cart creaking. “Tell me young man, what is your name?”

“Hertzler. Shem Hertzler. Little Shem. Mein cousin Shem is seven foot tall.”

“I see, that’s er, how many meters?”

“Can’t say.”

“Well, it’s quite tall, I’m sure. Tell me, how far is it from Old Geneva Landing to Keuka Lake?”

“Well, by buggy it’s faster than horse cart. Ich got cousins over that way.”

“The seven foot one?”

He shook his head. “Nein. Ich just come from them to haul this hay. All ours is rotted und we got to feed the horses und the cows.”

“I’m looking for an old friend. Dr. Leonard Bryson.”

The boy smiled. “Doctor? At Old Geneva Landing you can hire a ride over to Keuka Lake.”

“How far are we then?”

He shook his head. “Some time. We come out at der trailhead, then it’s a while past that. You can hire a boat or take the road down.”

It was nearly noon when they reached the trailhead. The last part of the journey, endless, hot, buggy, had been silent. The boy was not a great conversationalist. There was something maddening about his poise. Eventually Bradlee decided on what he had to do. When the town was in sight he cleared his throat and said, “Do you mind young man? I have to relieve myself.”

“What’s that you got to do?”

“Er, piss.”

The boy laughed. “Ja. O.K.” He whistled and the horse stopped. Bradlee got down, walked to a clump of trees behind the cart so the boy wouldn’t be able to see him and pissed. When he was done he returned to the cart, facing the back of the boy. He won’t know what hit him, Bradlee thought, taking out his gun. He shot him three times, in the back twice and then the back of the head. The shots panicked the horse and it raced off neighing wildly, getting tangled in the hitch and reins. The wagon tipped over, dumping out the straw and pulling down the horse, which lay on its side kicking the air. Bradlee trotted after it and shot it twice in the head, leaving them where they were, in a muddy field by the side of the road. He walked into town. It was about noon.

Bradlee was tired, hungry and thirsty. He was weary of ruminating about what he would actually do when he found them. Weary of Bryson. At a certain point words and planning come to an end. Only time would reveal the true dimensions of the catastrophe.

Bradlee surveyed the houses he passed with disdain. He disliked curs running about and half naked children. Actually, he disliked children of any kind and there seemed to be scores of them in shorts, bare-chested, barefoot, deeply tanned, running about, shouting after various balls. Barking, laughter and argument filled the air. It smelled of wood smoke and shit.

He came to the white clapboard building with old thatch, sniffed the air and resigned himself to eating whatever meal he could get there. The screen door dinged and banged behind him and he stood in the hot room waiting for someone to offer him one of the old tables by the windows.

Fran glared at him and said, “You a state cop? We don’t serve no cops from state.”

Bradlee looked offended. “Indeed not. I’ve just had some hovercraft trouble. I’ve been walking all morning looking for a town.”

“Hovercraft, huh? Don’t see a lot of those. What kind of a funny accent is that?”

He cleared his throat and smiled icily. “Never mind about that. You understand me well enough. Might I see a menu?” He sat down on the nearest stool.

“Sure. Where you headed?”

“Oh, Keuka Lake. To see my old friend Leonard Bryson.”

She sucked her teeth and said, “Uh huh.”

“You don’t know him by any chance?”

She shook her head. “Don’t know no one from those parts. My

people is up at Niagara and Ontario.”

“I’ll take black coffee and juice. Do you have grapefruit?”

Fran snickered. “Apple cider, grape or tomato.”

“Hmm. Cider, if it’s cold. And a chicken salad sandwich with fries.”

“Wheat or white?”

“Er, white.” He sipped the black coffee and felt his insides break up like pack ice in spring. The dull throbbing fatigue faded some. He didn’t know how long he had before someone discovered the horse and the boy. The clarity brought on uncertainty and loss of focus. The door dinged and a group of men in khaki took a booth by the windows. Bradlee turned away from them so they wouldn’t see his face.

“Fran,” one called out.

“Catch anything?” she asked.

“Five salmon.”

“Well, I’ll buy three.”

“Buy two and throw in lunch?”

“Deal.”

Bradlee said, when she was done, “Would it be possible to hire a ride over to Keuka Lake?”

“Roads ain’t fit for cars, mostly. The mud’s murder this time of year.”

“Would a boat be faster then?”

She thought about it, weighing the pros and cons of boats and cars and nodded slowly. “I guess so, if the boat is fast.” A bell from the kitchen rang. She went in and returned with the sandwich.

“Tell me,” he said. “Did a man and a woman by any chance come through here in a car?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? It might have been quite early, even in the middle of the night.”

“Well, most of us is asleep at night. Boys, you heard a car come through at all last night?” The men shook their heads no. “We ain’t seen no cars or strangers.”

He ate the sandwich quickly, washed it down with the cider, which was fizzy and warm and then slowly picked at the french fries, dipping them in ketchup. Fran wiped down the counter, carried a bus pan into the kitchen and set a pot of coffee down in the center of the table, giving each man a mug. She went back behind the counter and slowly got place settings together. “Is it possible then for me to hire a boat to Keuka Lake today?”

“Floyd,” she yelled.

“Ja,” one of the men in khaki said. Bradlee flinched. There was no choice but to face them now. Refusal to do so would incite suspicion. He put his hand on the gun in his pocket, found the trigger and looked up and smiled affably.

“Anyone got a boat for hire?” she asked.

“I’ll pay well,” Bradlee said.

“You need a pilot too?” asked Floyd, an elderly man with a few deep wrinkles on his face and creases around his dark eyes. His skin was like mahogany and his white hair was braided neatly, under a dirty tan baseball cap with a swordfish embroidered on the front.

“I suppose so, yes,” said Bradlee.

Floyd nodded. “Been up since four this morning.”

“A regrettable hour,” Bradlee said.

The man nodded. “Ja. When you’re done, will you need a ride back?”

“That won’t be necessary. I’m staying for the weekend. We have a lot of catching up to do, old Leonard and I.” He dabbed at his mustache with the cloth napkin and ate a few more french fries. He sipped the coffee and then lit a cigarette.

The men sat in silence. When Bradlee was finished smoking Floyd said, “I’ll take two hundred bucks then, before we go.”

The men started to mumble together and Bradlee had another cup of coffee. “Is there a rest room?” he asked.

Fran stopped counting out change and snarled. “What?”

“I’d like to wash up and use a toilet.”

“Oh. Out back’s the latrine. There’s a sink you can use in the shed next to it.”

Stoically, but with some dread and regret he was unable to repress, he headed out back. There were cans of garbage against the back of the building. Swarms of flies and hornets dove around them. He crossed a muddy yard. The air was hot now and thick. An unpainted shack stood next to an unpainted outhouse with vents near the roof. Between the two was a pile of cracked solar panels and plywood boards. As he approached it he could smell the waste. He opened the door and a cloud of black flies rose and buzzed about. The seat was clean enough but the odor was nauseating. There was a bucket of ashes and newspaper cut into squares impaled on a nail. The walls were carved with graffiti, the usual viciousness and depravity. Had he any desire to suck a big one the crude cartoons of what this entails would have squelched it. The newspaper was worse than inadequate but the flies crawling all over his ass and legs drove him out. The shed was a little better. An overhead, chain pull tank delivered cold water that smelled of rotten eggs. He washed his hands and face and patted them dry with a hand towel that was actually clean. This he threw into a laundry bag. He straightened his tie in the mirror and touched his mustache. Well, it was time to go.

Floyd was waiting for him outside the front door, and on the dock they met one of the men who had been sitting at the table, young, thin and muscular with an intense, angry look on his face. His eyes were drilled into his head, frozen and hard. He had a scraggly mustache and some growth on his chin. His hands and arms were tattooed with Egyptian hieroglyphs. He stripped off his khaki shirt and untied the ropes on a seven meter black AeroFleet hydrofoil. The muscles popped up on his back and shoulders as he worked. Floyd stood next to Bradlee and said, “My nephew, Mad Beaver. For security.” Bradlee raised his eyebrows and petted his mustache with his index finger.

Mad Beaver stood erect and looked at Bradlee. He smiled and said, “You go in the middle, I’ll ride in the bow and pops runs the engine.” They climbed in. The boat sat low in the water. Bradlee’s seat was cushioned with a comfortable back. Mad Beaver sat in the bow and swiveled around to face Bradlee. A fresh breeze rippled the blue water of the lake. White clouds drifted across the sun, darkening the lake water to purple. There were old men fishing off of a wooden pier just down the shore from the dock. Children tossed rocks at the water. Floyd started the boat and the fans roared as he accelerated out onto the lake, piloting them up the center. Bradlee didn’t relax back into the cushion but sat erect, maintaining a vigilant posture, trying to control the twitch he always got in his neck when someone was seated directly behind him. Most of the time he kept his eyes trained on Mad Beaver’s face. When they got there, he’d have to be quick. There was no room for error now.

“Where to?” Floyd asked.

Bradlee bent over the black monitor and read through maps and coordinates. “I don’t suppose I could download the location to your boat’s computer?”

“You don’t suppose right. Where on Keuka you heading?”

“Well, you just get me to the west shore and I’ll figure out where to land.” There was a red flash on the map. Felix.

Dennis Blanpied arrived back at Leonard Bryson’s place dirty, hot and tired. He got off the bike, pants legs stiff with mud and road dirt, legs buzzing and achy from the long ride, and walked up to the house through the pack of dogs. “Leonard? Sky?” he called. It was afternoon. They ought to be up from their nap. He knocked on the door. More barking. The dogs crowded his ankles, snuffed at the ground and struggled to get near him. Unconsciously he reached down to pet the nearest one. “Just a minute,” came Sky’s voice. The door opened. She was dressed in a muslin skirt and blouse buttoned to where her belly swelled. Her hair was down, unbrushed, her face was full and relaxed. “Hi,” she said. He followed her in and she shut the door on the dogs. “You stay out,” she said, and then yelled, “Leonard? He’s back.”

Leonard, in an orange sarong with purple fringe, the hair on his chest in white swirls against bronze skin came up carrying a hunting rifle in one hand and a shotgun in the other. “What do you hear?”

“There’s trouble,” he said, after a pause. The word trouble had taken on deeper and deeper meaning over the months, as attacks by state security grew more severe. Trouble meant violence. Bombings, assassinations, search and destroy operations, over flights. It meant house-to-house searches of Haudenosaunee homes and illegal detentions of young Indian men and women. Some Amish families had picked up and moved north to Ontario. Some GMZers had betrayed their neighbors out of fear and were in turn driven off their land at gunpoint. Every escalation compromised the patient work of elders, the stitching together of alliances, the give and take of the powerful on both sides, the sustaining accommodations. Trouble was a new outrage, an unacceptable retreat, a loved one under suspicion or a deal.

“They haven’t arrived yet?” he asked. Leonard shook his head no. “Well, I’ve been all over the place, on the phone, talking to people. And this is how it looks. Black Cloth and his men were in a fury. After yelling at each other for two hours they buried their man and called in an elder for a condolence ceremony. Then they sent a patrol of three hovercraft out after Bradlee and found him near Cornell. Their plan was to make it look like an accident but a storm blew up and they lost him over the woods. They figured him for dead and headed back. That was when they got word to turn around and go back to Cornell, where a professor was found shot to death outside of her office.”

Leonard opened his mouth and silently said the word no. His eyes watered up. He walked away, leaned the guns against the wall and went over to the living room windows. Sky stood by him and Dennis, following them in, continued. “There’s more. An Amish boy was murdered outside of Ganudasaga, three shots to the back and head. There was a police report just now, so my guess is Bradlee survived the crash. I can’t get through to anyone up there. I thought I should come here first and let you know what was up.”

“I’m going out to find them,” Leonard said.

“I wouldn’t do that. She’s bound to come here.” “I can’t stand this waiting, this doing nothing.” “I’m sorry. You were friends with Velodia?” Leonard turned around, his face fallen. “She was Ruth’s best friend. She and I are responsible for all of this I’m afraid. If we hadn’t encouraged Ruth to go against Bradlee none of it would have happened. She’d be downstate right now in her lab, working.”

“As far as we know she’s alive. And it doesn’t seem that difficult to take two men, even if they are armed. Just let’s get those guns cleaned and loaded. I’m gonna head out and see what else I can hear. Maybe up at Penn Yan the English will know something.”

Felix gripped the wheel of the car, the thrill of driving long worn out. Now it was hard work. His headache had returned and his vision was through a tunnel. Periodically, static and visual hiss occluded the road, but he was going so slowly, it didn’t seem to matter. Any faster than thirty miles an hour and they started to fishtail in the mud. Any slower and they couldn’t get good traction. They were on hydrogen power now. The car rolled up and down ruts and hills. To save fuel they turned off the air conditioning and rode with the windows down.

Looking at the countryside through blur he thought of how much Veronica would have loved it. The whole thing, the whole adventure. It was her country after all. Sometimes late at night, when they were young, in a certain mood, she told him stories about living on the boat. There was a tone in her voice when she spoke of her parents and the past, of summers on Lake Superior, that she didn’t have at other times. She was not given to nostalgia but the tone was one of longing.

Despite all that had happened he felt that he was heading towards something for the first time in his life. He wasn’t running from something, or drifting about following the currents of whatever. He had a purpose, survival, and a destination, freedom, wherever that would be. He was making choices. He had a sense of possibility, a sense of belonging. It was the land. He knew these hills, these farms, because he had known Veronica and in her death all of her potential resided in him. Then the headache crippled him. He winced.

“What’s wrong?” Bryson asked.

“Nothing. Headache.”

“At Leonard’s I may be able to give you something for it.”

“Aspirin did nothing. It just comes and goes, with my vision. How are your cuts?”

“Sting and ache.”

“So, when we get there, what next?” They came to a high plain, black earth on either side, with clumps of trees and a couple of Amish men working two horse ploughs back and forth. They passed a group of white houses and weathered log cabins shaded by oaks and pines at the end of a long driveway near a crossroads. There was a collapsed red barn and a paddock under water, the color of sky. Horses stood not far off on a hill above the paddock, chewing the dark grass.

“I thought you’d had it with me,” she said.

“I said that when I was mad.”

“You have every right to be mad.”

“I don’t know. What I wanted from life was to be left alone. If anything you’ve demonstrated to me the impossibility of that desire. Do you think a company man, a plain guy like me, could make it up here? I feel like I’m meant to be here, with you. This is something I’m supposed to be doing.”

“Anyone who can face down a mountain lion will do fine just about anywhere.”

Suddenly a lake came into view, a shimmering cobalt and jasper stretch of water through trees. “This is the next big lake,” he said. “I don’t see so well, so look out for that sign.” He slowed down. They rolled up an incline and started to slide a little, one wheel spinning and then catching on the brown mud. Puddles fanned out like waves on either side. The underbelly crunched on gravel and dirt.

“That’s it,” she said, pointing to a rusty, half buried sign obscured by poison ivy vines. Felix turned the wheel and they were driving along the ridge above the lake, which twinkled in the sun below. The road was drier, narrower than the other and they drove a little faster, slowing down for black horse buggies. Bryson waved to each one they passed and said good morning to the children who, in their turn, pointed excitedly at the silver car while the men and women driving them nodded sternly.

“Maybe I’ll just settle in here somewhere,” he said.

“Don’t be fooled. Life here is as heartbreaking as anywhere else. Probably more so.”

“It can’t be worse.”

“All that beautiful green you see out there? Poisonous vines and thorns. Every year you have to hack the wall of vegetation back. Things drop dead, people die of weird diseases. The insects are overwhelming and the weather sucks. Me, it’s Canada or nothing.” She began to scrutinize the land very carefully. It would be easy to miss the house. It was enough below the ridge to be invisible from the road. The fields all looked alike but she knew there was a distinct pile of rocks to mark the driveway, and the field above it had its own face, the tree line at a specific distance, the stand of locust trees within the field and the pitch of the ground and the view to the left, out over the lake. “Stop,” she cried. “Now go on a bit further. See that break in the weeds?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Go down there.”

Carefully he drove up over the sward and onto the steep, curved driveway down to the property. He eased up to the house and stopped. A pack of dogs surrounded the car, yapping, yelping and barking, charging around in circles, tails wagging.

“It’s O.K.,” she said. “They won’t bite.”

“What’s the point then?” He opened his door. A white, pink and grey pit bull and a filthy white poodle wiggled against his leg, sniffing and barking. Felix stood stiffly, pressed flat against the door hoping all they were going to do was smell him. They were seemingly vicious and they stank of offal. A mixed something or other nosed his belly, barked at him while another wiry one growled. The poodle and pit bull backed off.

“Down boys, down,” Bryson said, squatting to pet them. “Yes, yes.” She stood. “They used to drive me nuts. But then I started to feed them.” A big red chow walked slowly up and the other dogs cleared away. “Sasha!” she said.

Leonard, Sky and Dennis ran out of the house. Leonard grabbed her, looked her in the eyes. “Are you all right? No,” he said, seeing the tape on her throat. “What happened?”

She put her head on his chest and said, “Oh Leonard, they killed her, they killed Velodia.”

Sky stood off uncertainly, watching them.

“I know. We haven’t time. Sky’s to take you up to her place.”

She joined them at the mention of her name and the five stood in a circle. The dogs milled between their legs, agitated by the strong smell of mountain lion. A cock crowed. Blue jays screamed in the treetops. The sun was high overhead, hot on the skin but a cool breeze blew intermittently off the lake. Big buzzing flies started to zoom around like electrons, attracted to sweat, repulsed by swatting hands. The light stabbed at Felix’s eyes. He looked at the unfamiliar faces, the house and the outbuildings, everything washed out and drained of color. There was an old man, strong and crooked like a distressed tree, and a younger man, his own age, dressed in khaki, with a badge and two holstered guns. And then there was the woman. He looked at her, tried not to stare, but he could not help it, she filled his eyes. With time she took on color and depth. Now it was his heart that was stabbed through. He felt he was going to sob. It rolled up through him, visceral, and stung his eyes. She was still. Her blond hair fell in a tangle off of her head and framed her face, lifting in the gusts of wind. She cleared it away from her eyes and looked at him. She was so serious; they all were. He felt a radiance pierce through the pain in his eyes and head and flood his body with warmth. She smiled. The others talked rapidly, quietly, making plans, drawing circles in the dirt with their feet. She was tall, almost stately, but relaxed. The smile on her lips came and went like light and shadow on water. Her eyes were different, complicated, not the usual placid blue but changeable. Her front teeth were crooked. Her skin was tanned but she wore no makeup. He looked at her body, sheathed in a tight fuchsia blouse, breasts swelling and belly bulging out like a ball. Was she fat? No, it was taut, a hard bowl of muscle and flesh, the cross hatches of reddish hair disappearing into the muslin skirt which fell over two long, caramel legs, barefoot and unshaved. He was embarrassed to linger so long on her flesh but he could smell and taste it. He swallowed the ache he thought had disappeared with Veronica. Then, mastering himself, he tried to follow the conversation. The names were unfamiliar. And the woman would not be swallowed, she dented space. They gravitated towards each other and started to turn in orbit. She made no effort to look away.

Bryson said, “This is Felix.”

“Hi Felix,” Leonard said. “I’m Ruth’s husband, Leonard, and this is Dennis and Sky.”

They shook hands. “Let’s go inside,” Dennis said.

They sat in the living room. Leonard paced around with a rifle in each hand. Sky lay back on the couch and Felix sat down by her feet. Bryson sat upright in a chair facing them and Dennis paced about in counterpoint to Leonard, the two men exchanging comments seemingly addressed only to themselves.

“We have to get you stitched up,” Leonard said. “Let me see.” Bryson leaned forward. He lifted off the bandages. Dennis bent down to look. “My god, that cat was huge. And you didn’t kill it?”

“No,” Felix said.

Leonard grunted and looked at Felix. “Why not?”

“Don’t know. It didn’t feel right.”

Leonard grunted again. “Well, the clean up’s crude.”

Sky sat upright and said, “I can stitch her up. I just have to get my bag.”

“No, you sit. I’ll get it.”

She gave him a look like, you don’t have to do everything, and as it passed between them, the intimacy of it registered around the room. Felix looked at Bryson. She didn’t know. She wasn’t paying attention. Or hadn’t been till the look, the solicitation. Leonard left and while he was gone Bryson became conscious and stared now at Felix, now at Sky, her eyes widening and narrowing.

Dennis said, “As soon as she’s done stitching you up you three better beat it. The last place I have Bradlee is the dead boy in Ganudasaga. I’m waiting on calls to see what he did next. But we can’t risk him calling in an air strike.”

Leonard put down a large black leather bag and Sky opened it between her feet. She pulled out a suture kit, sterile paper, disinfectant and self-adhesive bandages. Then she pulled out a package of syringes. Leonard brought in a table and she set up her instruments on top of the blue paper. Rapidly she filled four syringes. Ruth looked at her work, her face set and angry. She was so tense ripples passed through her muscles and her face twitched. “I can’t stand it!” she said finally. “You’re bloody pregnant.”

“Ruth,” Leonard said.

“Do you want me to leave?” Sky asked, putting down a syringe.

“How the fuck do I know?” Bryson asked, tears starting into her eyes. “Forty years of marriage and this is what’s left?” No one answered her question. “I don’t care about the sex but this is going too far.”

“She wanted a child. It’s a beautiful thing,” Leonard said.

“It’s a bloody nasty thing!” She searched the room. Dennis drifted towards the windows.

“I’m sorry Ruth. It’s my fault. Ours–” she stuttered. “Nothing I say could be right. Don’t forgive me, hate me if you must. Do I go on?”

“What?” Bryson asked. “This?” she pointed to her wounds. “Christ. If you must.”

Leonard knelt down beside her and took her hand. She snapped it back and refused to look at him. “Please,” he said. “We can’t end things here, like this. There’s too much to do.”

“I came here to be with you, not to play grandma to some bastard.”

“No,” Leonard said. “You came to save your life and that’s what we’ll do.”

“This first shot’s an antibiotic,” Sky said. “Then I’m giving you a tetanus and a rabies shot just to be safe.” Bryson stood up and Sky pulled her pants down and stabbed the needle into her butt. Then she injected her shoulder. “Lie down on the couch and take a deep breath.” Bryson lay back and Sky took one of Bryson’s hands into hers, gripping it tight. Then she plunged the syringe into her stomach and slowly pressed the vaccine home. Bryson gasped. “That’s fine now,” Sky said. “Breathe deeply. I won’t let you go. When you’re ready, we’ll stitch you up.” Bryson stood uneasily and sat in the chair. Sky put on latex gloves and bathed her neck and head in iodine. “Whoever cleaned this did a good job.” She examined each of the cuts and quickly anesthetized each one. “If the Novocain wears off just tell me.”

It took about an hour to stitch her up. Sky worked quietly and quickly, eyes intent, hands firm but gentle. She pulled the sutures through with a forceps and tied each knot. As blood formed around the sutures or in the wound she dabbed it up with gauze. If Bryson twitched she paused. By the end Bryson sat in a relaxed daze, her breathing slow and regular. “Now, before I put on the bandages you take a hot shower and put on some clean clothes. You too Felix.”

Felix stood under the shower. The water smelled like mud. It pulsed against his head and shoulders. The grime dissolved from his skin, from his hair. Dirt, blood, bugs, seeds, grass. He inhaled the steam, stamped around, and washed himself. He never wanted to leave. Finally he conceded and stepped steaming out into the wooden bathroom and toweled off. There were a white button down shirt and a pair of grey pull on pants hanging from a hook. They were a little big. He tightened the drawstring and walked barefoot up to the living room. Sky was applying the last of the bandages. Bryson’s hair was wet, shaved raggedly in the back, hanging straight down to her shoulders, and her skin glowed from the shower. He sat down on the couch and Sky sat down next to him. Leonard picked up the bandage wrappers and wadded them up with the syringes and suture needles in the stained blue paper.

“So what’s the plan then?” Leonard asked.

“Canada,” Bryson said, glaring at him. “I’ll go alone, or with Felix.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Leonard said. “You won’t make it. We’ve got to do this right.”

Dennis cleared his throat. “Look, we don’t have time for this. Sky, you take Felix home. Go straight there and avoid being out in the open. I’ll go up to Jordan’s. He and his family will meet up with us at your place. Leonard, you and Bryson stay here to pack. You’ll need weapons, ammo, money and food for three days. Take two dogs. Drive it up in that silver car to Jason and Sky’s. From there the four of you’ll drive to Hertzler’s. Park in the barn and leave that night for Tganahwai.”

Sky stood and took Felix by the hand. Dennis left with them. In the driveway he paused for a minute to admire the Cadillac. Even caked in mud it was a beautiful thing. He put his boot up on the chrome fender and pressed his weight down on it. “Man! Look at this. Must be something to drive.”

Felix winced and said, “Out on the open road it’s like heaven. I did a hundred no problem.”

“K?”

“No, miles per hour.”

Dennis whistled. “I’ve never done that on the ground. Not on these roads. What kind of gun you got?”

Felix shrugged. “I have no idea.” He popped the trunk and took out his black duffel bag, put it down and unzipped it. They watched him move the coffin aside and pull out the revolver. “It’s this,” he said.

Dennis took the gun and turned it over, inspected the chambers and then took aim at a tree. He pulled the trigger and the report was dull, startling nonetheless. He handed it back. “That’s a good gun. Implosion rounds. Be careful with it. Don’t go sticking it in your waistband like you’re Billy the Kid or you’ll blow your dick off.” He laughed.

Sheepishly Felix put it back in the bag and put the shoulder strap across his back. “I’ll just bring it like this.”

“Good. Can’t tell you how often that happens.” He laughed again. “Sky, my brothers up at Ganaweta will see you across into Canada. You’re gonna have to keep this crew together, understand? I’m worried about them going five rounds here. If they don’t get up to your place soon, come down and get them, but keep Felix in the storm cellar.”

They could hear shouting in the house. Sky took his hand again. She had long, muscular arms and strong hands with calluses and broken fingernails. She smelled so good, grassy, of hot skin and hair. They went into the shed next to the house and she handed him a pair of shoes. “The path’s kinda rough. We should wear shoes. When we get there we have to check for ticks.”

He followed her around the house, down a steep hill and through acres of wrecked grape vines and broken trellises. The vines were unpruned and climbed up over the old wooden posts.

“What are these?” he asked. The ground was soft and wet, the air loud with insects.

“Grapes.”

“For wine?”

“Last year he made grappa, a kind of hooch made from grapes. It’s like wine but much better. Strong.”

“And they just grow here like this?”

She laughed. “These are a mess. You can’t get a good harvest off of vines like these. They need to be pruned and trained along the wire between these posts. He just let it go this year.”

The vineyard descended in terraces down the hill. They came to a dense wall of vegetation with a doorway cut into it. The path was like a hallway as wide as a mower. It was high enough to create some shade and Felix could see better. Sparks scattered on the ground and hopped up and down like popcorn. “Can we go to the lake?” he asked.

She stopped. “Dennis said not to.”

“How far off the path is it?”

“That’s not it. It’s just down there. But then we’re out in the open.”

“Well, can’t we just go and look and then head on? It’s so beautiful.”

“Why not. Come on. They’ll be at it for a while I think.”

He watched her back and shoulders and feet as she pressed forward. There was so much energy in her. It was as if she were throwing off the sparks. “Keuka’s the most beautiful lake in all of Iroquoia. Do you want to swim?”

“Sure.”

“It’s a little cold yet, but the sun is hot. It’ll be nice. We’ll take a short swim and then head up to my place. And the weeds haven’t come in yet so it doesn’t stink.” They came out onto a path through dense woods that thinned out into a bog. Here they walked side by side, under tall ferns like ostrich plumes at court. “Where are you from?” she asked.

“Uh…that’s hard to say.”

“How can that be hard to say?”

“I’ve been so many places. I guess New York. The area of New

York. I lived for years in Rockland with my wife.”

“You’re married too?”

“She’s dead.”

“Oh.”

“I could explain, but I’d rather not just now.”

“I’m sorry. That’s fine. I don’t need to know. New York. You know what the Cayuga call New York? Ganonyo, expensive place. The English say it’s evil. I’ve never been there. Is it scary?”

“Expensive place, that’s funny.”

“It helps to have a sense of humor.”

“Who are the English?”

“That’s what the Amish call us. English. But we call the christians English, not each other. The christians at Penn Yan. Those christians think everything’s evil, so I don’t believe what they say about the city. Still, I’m scared to go.”

A woodpecker tocked at a tree. A snake sunned itself on a rock and slithered away when they approached. Frogs plopped into the water. They climbed an embankment. “A snake,” Felix said.

“We got plenty of those,” she said. “They eat rats.”

“How far are we?”

“We’re here,” she said. The bog had turned into a stream and they came out on a shore lined with ancient willow trees, fat around, and leaning down into the water on huge knots of root. The lake was still. They climbed over rocks and fallen trees along the shore till they came to the boat landing. There she sat down on the ground in the sun. He set his bag down and gazed out at the water. It faded in and out, now brilliant purple, black and green, now dim, like a negative. His heart was a glissando of glass and rain. Two kingfishers, chattering loudly, dropped from the trees and raced out over the water. Felix took off his shoes. Now he was hot. She said, “See over there, across the way on the other shore?”

“I don’t see so well right now. What am I looking for?”

“A group of rocks. That’s kingfisher’s point. A hundred years ago some Seneca boys came down there to camp and fish. The English got word they were there and a company of men, all drunk, from Watkins, came up in the night and killed them in their sleep. The oldest was fifteen. Next day, when they didn’t come home, their families set out to find them. The bodies were gone but there were five kingfishers no one had ever seen before fishing right there. Well, the end of it was they went down to Watkins and killed the men and drove their families out. This is the best fishing around. I once caught ten salmon in a morning. They were this big,” she said, indicating with her hands a meter long fish. “So your cheek’s cut. The cougar got you too?”

“When I pulled her off of Bryson she must’ve swiped me.”

“Healed fast.”

“Oh, that would be the drug I’ve been on.”

“That drug that Ruth is working on?”

“Yes.”

“You were one of the guinea pigs?”

“What does that mean?”

“That’s what Leonard calls you. The ones she experiments on.”

“Well, I was a lab rat, yes.” Thinking about it darkened his mood. The sky and water spiraled together and into her eyes. Their two energies, his and hers, met and spun down. He felt her womb, the weight, the fullness, and thought of the word gravid. As he looked out over the water he saw babies rising up, nude and purple and descending all the paths to the lake. Naked bodies rose and plunged and bubbled on the water. Boys and girls swung out on rope swings over the lake and leapt-in shrieking while babies cried from the shadows for their mothers. They jumped rope and danced in circles singing nonsense songs. Future babies, ancestor babies. He looked at her abdomen, the skin with its fine white down, breathing up and down. Slowly, gently he placed his head upon it and said, “In think I’m going blind.” She stroked his head. “Is this all right?” he asked.

“Yes. I think I have to revise a few ideas I have about what kind of world I live in.”

“In what way?”

“They never included you.”

“You know all about this place.”

“I’ve lived my whole life here. And I’m a midwife.”

“Really? Is that why you have that bag?”

“I don’t do much stitching, not if I can avoid it. I was taught well. My grandmother taught my mother and she taught me. Both sides we have doctors and midwives. I get the Indian lore from my mother’s side. I’m a kind of sponge, you know? Everything I read, whatever anyone tells me, I absorb. I know stories from every hill around here. Up near our house is a hill where they killed a witch in 1803. Over there is where the fifty-year-old Mohawk woman gave birth to twins in 2142. A two-headed cow died on Yoder’s pasture three years ago because of cold. Do you want it in German?”

“I don’t speak German.”

“I don’t really either, just enough to make my Amish clients feel easy. I got some Quebecois, a bunch of Iroquois dialects.”

“You get around.”

“Birth ’em and bury ’em. It freaks ’em right out till they’re in need. I can even do the Kaddish prayers. Jewish farmers down in the Catskills taught me that. I was there for a lying-in and the grandfather dropped dead of congestive heart failure. I didn’t like the cough he had but there wasn’t time. Anyway, I stayed the week to sit Siva and learned the Kaddish. I do all right.”

They lay in silence like that for a while and the only time was of birds and clouds passing overhead. Then they stripped off their clothes and dove into the cold dark water. They splashed around, spouting water, kicking, swimming and floating on their backs. They lay back in the sun and talked forgetfully for what seemed like hours. Their words were like blossoms of a day, opening, closing and falling in such profusion they never lasted and were never gone.

The sound of the hydrofoil roaring up the lake didn’t reach them at first. It was distant, alien. But as it approached, the high loud fans drifted free of the cicadas and hornets and interrupted their conversation.

“What’s that I hear?” Felix asked, sitting up suddenly. “I can’t see a thing clearly.” He’d squint and the world would pour in on him, dense with detail, only to wash out again in blur.

“It’s just a boat.”

It was moving very fast. They had no time to react. It got larger and larger. They stood to leave but before they could go the boat had docked and Bradlee was throwing a line over the old grey piling. A body bled heavily into the bottom of the boat and Bradlee hopped lightly up onto the landing, clutching a black box and a gun.

“Ah, how convenient,” he said, aiming the gun at them. “And who is your lovely friend, Felix? You must introduce us.”

Sky bit her lip and squeezed Felix’s hand but he said nothing.

Boyle awoke several times but never to full consciousness. It was like being underwater. Consciousness was way above, refracting on the surface like sun, but unreachable. All around him was a luminous, impenetrable silence. His thoughts were like air bubbles rising to the surface, strange sounds and sensations he emitted but did not fully perceive. As the day wore on the sun charged the solar batteries and heated up the compartment. Eventually he awoke enough to realize he was not underwater but drenched in sweat and in great need of pissing. He was in pain, feverish, bleary eyed, dehydrated and alone. It was a calamitous state to be in. He staggered out into the clearing, searched about wildly, thinking he might be dead, or captured by the Cayugas. He patted himself down for gun shot wounds. There were none. Nothing apparently was broken. His face hurt badly. His throat was dry and swollen shut, like he’d been eating dust. His eyes burned. He stared out through two bloody swollen slits at the woods. Bradlee was nowhere. He’d abandoned him to wild animals, bandits and the elements.

There was little he could remember about the night before. Just pitching around in the air thinking he might vomit and pass out. He didn’t have the flu and he hadn’t been drunk, or at least he didn’t think so. He hallucinated. His dreams felt like reality and reality felt like a dream. The ground was solid enough but everything else looked flat and corpuscular. Trees, shrubs, grasses, hissed and drifted about his field of vision. He peed where he stood, all over his feet. It dribbled on his pants. Then, like a dowsing rod, he headed for water. There had to be water nearby. More than anything else he was thirsty. It led the way. He felt his pockets for his gun. It was there. Good. He was scared. The woods scared him. He had been hunting. He hated it. Killing animals to eat them sucked. It was the way they looked at you. People never looked so innocent. People were bad mostly, killers, at least the ones he shot. Even Velodia. Velodia was good but mixed up in something bad. She lost and paid the price, just as he would. But animals were just in the world. The wild ones anyway.

They crept up on you. In the woods everything watches you and you can’t tell one thing from another. In the war, if there was woods or jungles or forests they burned them down whenever they could. Fuck the greenhouse gases. Who was there to tell them what to do. But then they said it was bad and they couldn’t do it. The leaders. What did they know? After that they just conceded the woods to the enemy. The feeling was, let them have the woods then, we’ll take the towns. What good was a jungle without a town to serve? If they wanted to live like monkeys in the trees, then that was their victory. He said let them have it.

The trees scared him with their bark and high boughs. Big vegetation was still and silent and threatening. They were like soldiers who never died, the trees. All that wood, that weight, that height, darkening the sky, sucking all the air down. And then there were wolves and panthers and bears. A bear doesn’t care for explanations. It will kill you for going near its young whether you know it or not. Well, who could blame them. He would do the same thing. Fuck anyone who got near his kids. What they know doesn’t matter. In that he was like nature. Nature does. It doesn’t fuck around with why.

He turned around to see the way he’d come. Getting lost would suck. Then he was dead, even with the gun. It was a dirt road in the woods. The trees were so big he couldn’t put his arms around them. They say there used to be trees in California so big you could drive through them. These were almost that big. He looked up and down the road. There was no way to tell where he was and there was no one or thing about, no houses or huts, no traffic. There weren’t even any fucking birds singing. He walked along, trying not to lose track of time, till he heard water. Glancing this way and that, sure he hadn’t been followed, he climbed the side of the trail and saw that not far off was a stream. Without compunction he ran over soggy ground, tripping and tearing clothes on thorns and vines, oblivious to swarms of flies and mosquitoes, to the coursing water. He ripped off his suit jacket and shirt and plunged his face into the stream, splashing the cold water over his head, neck and shoulders, scooping it into his mouth. It put out the fire in his throat. It ran up into his eyes and sinuses. Breath came easier. Things cleared. He could think some. His stomach growled. Strength returned to his limbs. He still felt feverish but not like he was dying. He stretched out, took a deep breath and bent down to drink again. It was actually a pretty spot. There were moss-covered stones and plants along the banks of the stream, little orange flowers and ferns, like in a movie. This is what they say the garden of eden was like, without the bugs.

Letting his guard down made him nervous. He mustn’t be fooled. There were snakes and spiders and vampire bats. Even drinking the water was dangerous. It might have that snail parasite that eats your brains and makes you crazy.

Refreshed, he headed back to the hovercraft. Along the way he sat down to have a smoke. Once he was dry he put the shirt back on. It stank of stale sweat. The jacket he left off. He wasn’t working for anyone anymore and it didn’t matter how he looked, not here. He lit another cigarette and tried to figure out why Bradlee had left him and how long had he been there. Probably he had left him for dead. He had no idea where they were upstate but leaving him for dead was stupid. How was Bradlee supposed to make it out there alone? Whatever.

Back at the hovercraft he looked things over. It was scraped up from hitting the trees. An antenna was broken and so were the taillights, but the canister, hateful as it was, looked o.k. Maybe it was just a dead battery.

The black box was gone. He ran a hardware and software test and everything checked out. The sun had recharged the battery. Woozy and hungry as he was he had to keep moving. This was no place to be. Every instinct told him to go, so he did.

He didn’t fly back to the city. He felt he had left things undone. He ran through the destination codes and selected Keuka Lake, Leonard Bryson’s vineyard. Someone’d be there. If that’s where everyone was headed, that’s where he’d go too. The time display read 57 minutes. Airborne, he passed out again. He didn’t even awaken when he landed, gently, in the clearing below the road by the rhododendron trees.

“How can you do this to me, Leonard? How? She’s just a child.” They were in the living room. “These past few months, thinking of you has kept me going, what we had here in the fall. Was it just me who felt we found something together?’

“Of course not. I felt it too.”

“Let me finish! I wrote that report. Do you know how that felt? Signing my death warrant? Was I afraid? I was proud. I thought finally I’d done something worthy of you and Velodia. I imagined coming up here and escaping with you into the north, into Canada, a new life free of all this crap.”

Standing over her, he asked, “How was I supposed to know?” He sank down to join her on the floor. Books lay about where she had thrown them, spines cracked open, pages bent. The windows were full of blue, afternoon shadow. “It’s been a long time Ruth. And weren’t you with Bradlee? When I call, you’re not there. Tell me you haven’t been sleeping with him.”

“I can’t tell you that. It’s not the same.”

“No, it’s not the same. No two things are ever the same. What I feel for you I don’t feel for anyone else, not Sky, not anyone. I just don’t see what difference it makes if I father her child.”

“You’re in love with her. You gaze upon her, wait on her hand and foot, eyes full of wonder and pity. A heart broken old man. Did you ever look at me that way? Little pussies to play with, fine. But love?”

“I’m all talked out about love. I don’t know what it is or where it comes from or where it goes. I know it’s here now between us. If it hasn’t always been it is now. It’s the one thing we divide between us that isn’t diminished by division. The more of love there is the more of us there is. We have things to do. We have to pack up this stuff. Let’s get squared away with each other and move on. If you really must leave me, fine, my life is almost over anyway. This place is a wreck and now they’ll come in and bulldoze it. I’ll go with you to Canada and we can split-up there. But that’s not what I want. Not now, not ever. So let’s get our things packed and up to Jason’s. We’ll sort our lives out on the road.”

She stared at the floor, her eyes hard, till tears came to them and she began shake. “She was lying there, smashed to pieces, bloody and broken and alone in the dark. What was her last thought? What did she feel? Did she see it coming? Did he torture her first? Were the final moments terror and agony, time to sum the whole thing up, bitter and pointless? Her last words lost, uttered to herself or a killer standing there? Did he even look her in the eye? She was shot in the back, running for her life.”

He scooted over next to her and took her in his arms. “And what did you feel when the cougar had you in its jaws?”

“Oh, it was beyond words. Terror, and stillness. There was purity at the center of this howling tumult, and I thought…I thought of you, of all that wouldn’t be and then, nothing. I was just watching.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. Then he stood up, his knees creaking. “Have you any money?”

“These jewels, and a disc.” She patted the pocket of her tunic.

“Then can Sky have the disc you gave me? You and I can start over on what you have.”

“You would leave her?”

“Of course .” He picked up a rifle, cocked it. He rifled drawers for boxes of bullets and loaded the other rifle. These he leaned up against the red couch and approached her again. “I’m sorry I hurt you. You’ve hurt me pretty bad in the past but we’ve always stuck together. What we had this fall, that was more than I ever had before and all that I could ask for.”

She took him to her. “We’ll go together. Take care of Sky and Felix till the baby’s born, then make our way. Have you got a pistol or something for me?”

“In the hall.” They cocked and loaded three more rifles and two pistols and piled them up on the table.

Bradlee held the gun on Sky and Felix. “Let’s go, take me to the house.”

“That man in the boat,” Sky said.

“Don’t bother about him my dear, he’s had all the favors he can handle for one day. Ho ho. Now move it.”

Bradlee followed them back the way they had come. Felix could feel the gun pointed at his back, it was like a pencil pushing him forward through the blur, following the bouncing image of Sky’s shirt, sparks shooting off of things. It seemed that he had memorized the way in his ears and nose and now, on the return, every detail was familiar. He was in a different time zone. There was only the gun in his bag. Bradlee hadn’t searched him. The main thing was to not show fear. Wasn’t that what Promethea had said? He trembled like a dog in thunder and tightened his grip on the duffel bag. It brushed against his legs and swished through the grape vines as they walked up through the vineyards. He was sweating now. The handle of the bag was slippery in his hand. If his opportunity should arrive, it would be brief.

The house was within view now, three stories of weathered board with huge windows, the roof a dull yellow fading into washed out sky. She was so relaxed, walking as if nothing were happening. But he couldn’t see her face.

It was almost possible to forget that Bradlee was there, he was so quiet. It was as if he walked on a thin layer of ice in crepe shoes. His approach was like that of an August thunderstorm. When he entered a room the temperature dropped. Just looking at him made his nose run.

Sky opened the downstairs door and they were inside. The dogs out front started to yap and yowl. She mounted the wooden stairs slowly. If he could just get the bag unzipped without making a noise.

“That you Sky?” Leonard called out.

“Easy now,” Bradlee hissed softly.

“Yes,” she said, quavery but in control.

Felix swung the bag forward and held it against his chest. Sky stepped onto the second floor landing and started up to the first. Footsteps came towards them. Bradlee cocked the gun. It was aimed at the back of his head, but they were his shields as well. He wouldn’t waste them on going in. At the top of the stairs Felix opened the bag, and as they stepped into the kitchen and faced the front door, he let it swing to his side.

Bryson stared out the little windows on either side of the front door. The glass was opaque and pebbled. It was the time of day when bright shafts of sun struck the floor behind her. If Bradlee came up to the door she wouldn’t necessarily know it was him. The one thought kept going round, what does he want? There were few things she was sure of and one of them was that Bradlee always wanted something. He always had an objective one could further or impede, depending. And Bradlee had his desire too. Even if he was furious with her, he would let Felix go if she offered to leave with him. But she did not know how to do that without devastating Leonard, whom she had just promised–the door up from downstairs in the kitchen squeaked opened. She turned. Her eyes felt dark, like deep water, and still.

She stared into two rooms, the kitchen straight ahead, and the living room to the right. Leonard was in the kitchen, armed with a rifle. All the other guns were stacked against the couch and piled up on the table in the living room. Leonard strode towards the door. She didn’t want him to do that. She felt dizzy. The light in the living room was strange. It was like a luminous shadow shining in from the windows, bluish gray, and the sun from behind was creeping towards it, every second discretely closer.

Sky tripped a little and said, “Leonard, he has a gun.”

She was watching now. Everything was still. She was seeing the room the way she saw other things, ideas, structures. Something is happening.

Leonard pointed his rifle at Felix.

“No,” Felix said.

Leonard’s shoulders dropped slightly. The barrel of the gun swung away from Felix’s face and hovered for a moment.

Then Bradlee stepped lightly forward, into focus, using Felix for a shield. “Drop the gun, Leonard,” he said.

“No,” Leonard said.

She was trying to put thoughts in his head. Don’t say no. He hated Bradlee. He’d make wrong assumptions. Except, he was also a hunter.

Bradlee took aim at Bryson. She tried to comprehend the gun. Owen Bradlee had a gun on her. It was hard to take seriously, but she knew she must. The fear did not descend on her yet. She looked at the spines of the books on the floor where she had thrown them. It was a terrible, peevish thing to do. He loved his books and there they were, fighting like they were twenty. Boswell, Darwin, Gibbon, Browne, Wallace, she knew where the heart was and had hit at it as he had hit at hers. What if that’s the last–oh–but that can’t be, please no.

She walked away from the front door and through the hall towards them. Sky ran out of the kitchen and brushed by her. She squatted down by the front door and thrust her hand up to grab the knob. Bradlee said, “Stop.” Sky turned her back to the window, blotting the light.

“All right,” Bradlee yelled, “Everyone into the hall.” His pistol was pointed at her head, just beyond reach. Leonard backed into the living room, his rifle aimed at Bradlee’s head. And there was Felix, near the kitchen, clutching the bag he always carried under his left arm.

“Well,” said Bradlee. “Here we all are. Hello Bryson.”

Despite the gun, once she heard his voice, strained as it was, she felt relaxed. His eyes were pink, his hair was out of place and there was dried blood on his impeccable mustache. “Bradlee,” she said. “What’s gotten into you?”

“I should think it would be me asking you that question. Undeniably your actions today have compromised my position with Monozone. It seemed prudent to wrap things up.”

“Where the hell is Boyle? Did you kill him too?”

Bradlee thought for a moment and said, “As a matter of fact he was alive when I left him, but in a rather bad way. We had an accident in the woods.”

“So you just left him–”

“With a gun!”

“Bradlee,” Leonard said, “If you put the gun down I’ll let you escape.”

“Ah. I’m in a position to make the same offer.”

“At least let Sky go. She knows nothing about this.”

Bradlee aimed at Sky but kept his eye on Leonard. “She’s a lovely creature. Ephemeral, gossamer, glowing, fecund, full of womanly ardour. A pity to destroy her.”

“She’s pregnant,” Bryson said. “You wouldn’t shoot a pregnant woman, Bradlee. This, this is ridiculous.”

“Pregnant? How beastly. Your doing, Leonard? Didn’t know a man your age had motile sperm.” He looked at each of them. “I’ll tell you what, Leonard. Lay down your rifle and she can go.”

“Let her go first.”

“Stop your stupid bargaining,” Bryson said. She had no idea of what was happening. She tried to see it. Bradlee looked at her very closely, listening. “Bradlee, let them all go. I’m the only one who’s harmed you.”

“Ruth,” Leonard said. “Don’t–”

“I’m not saying kill me. I’ll go with you Bradlee. We can–” She was interrupted by a bout of furious barking. It startled Bradlee. The gun went off, a loud whap. She was certain the gun had been pointed at her but then she watched Leonard’s leg flinch and implode. Leonard dropped the rifle and fell to the ground, his thigh crushed. He lay there seething between clenched teeth. Bryson screamed and rushed towards him. Felix dropped to the floor and tossed his bag over to Leonard. For a moment they all looked each other in the eye. She had no idea of what was being said. Felix and Leonard looked at the bag. The dogs barked. Bradlee, almost yelling, waved his gun around to regain control. “What is that infernal barking?”

After lying slumped against the controls for a while Boyle got out of the hovercraft, stretched and looked around. Another goddamn woods. Maybe the coordinates had been wrong. He checked the chamber of his gun for rounds and walked on, the rhododendron closing in over his head. The path had to lead somewhere.

It came out on a driveway. He passed the orchard, and then her bathtub. There were the sheds. He recognized all of it from her stories. Explosive barking broke out. Shit! Dogs! He watched them charge. Maybe ditch for the tree, he thought. Then the shot was fired. He had to run now. They were almost on him. A whole pack of dogs, slathering and hackled. He looked around on the ground. There were two-by-fours piled up by the shed. He grabbed one and began to smack heads. A dog leapt up and seized his arm in its jaw, another fastened on his leg. “Arghgh!” he yelled, swinging the two-by-four, sending each one howling away with a busted muzzle, dragging the others forward with his leg. “Let go goddamn it!” In this way he made it to the front door, beating them off and cursing.

“Who’s at the door?” Bradlee asked. He turned to the door. “Sky, see who’s at the door.”

“It’s some man I don’t know,” she said, peeking through the peephole.

“Not a cop?” he sneered.

Boyle, she thought. Maybe it’s Boyle. That would alter everything.

Leonard grabbed the gun out of the bag. No! The air froze into a block. His hand was covered in blood, trembling. He could barely hold himself upright. Please don’t, she thought. She wanted to take him out of it, bring him out by the back door. They could run to the orchard and then down to the lake. The dinghy would be tied up at the dock. The water was so quiet in the afternoon. Time, she would stir up time, form an eddy and ride the swirl out of this point. Bradlee swung around. He looked at Bryson and then at Leonard, and shot him three times, twice in the chest, once in the head. The bullets imploded. They crushed him from within. Leonard collapsed into blood and bone. The door opened.

Bradlee’s face was still and grey. He slowly glanced at the door, not taking the gun off of her. There gathered in her a momentum to move, which she somehow dammed, thinking that she must be very careful. But there Leonard lay and there was nothing left of her. Whether he would shoot her or not didn’t enter into it. “Oh, hello Boyle.”

Bryson couldn’t hold back; she let out a cry and fell on Leonard’s body, the dark red blood soaking into her shirt. It was the last warmth of him, ebbing into her. She pounded the floor till her fist broke and cursed. She kicked her legs and groaned. “Owen Bradlee! What have you done?” she shrieked.

Boyle lurched into the room, breathing loudly through his nose. Oh, Boyle, she thought. His face was blistered. He was hunched over, panting. She looked for Felix. He was picking the gun up. Boyle was sweating hard. He wiped his forehead and looked around at everyone. She dropped Leonard’s hand and smiled. Boyle had a certain annoyed and confused look in his eye. He was trying to figure the angles out, but she was sure of him, he would protect her now.

“Boss,” Boyle said. “Boss, what’s going on? Why’d you leave me there for dead?”

“Don’t distract me Boyle. Can’t you see we have business here?”

“But why’d ya just leave me? It ain’t right.”

“Was I supposed to lug you out on my back? Christ, bloody hell, you ass. Look now. My car’s out front. I think it’s time we all got going. Boyle, take Felix and the girl out and shoot them.”

“He’s got a gun, boss.”

Sky had sunk to the floor by the door. Some filter had descended over her. She wept softly, trembled, but stifled her fear and tried to rest within. Her life was wrapped around this other life, satellite to herself, her moon, her always. Budding within, so close to being in the world. She couldn’t look at Bryson, at Leonard. She couldn’t look at anything. Yes, gone.

Felix licked his lips and tried to focus. Bradlee cleared his throat. “Boyle, get to work.”

Boyle aimed his gun at Felix. What? Bryson had to stop it. She stood up, smeared with blood. It was drying on her face, a smudge from her eye to her lips, on her chin. Her hands, her shirt were soaked in blood. She stood and stared at them, stark, red and white, her face crippled and bony, bent around a fury. “Boyle, let them go. Can’t you see he’ll kill you next?”

“Yeah doc. But I got no choice here. Boss, I’ll shoot Felix, but you gotta let the doc go.”

“Don’t worry about that, just get busy shooting them.”

She had to stop it, now. But the words wouldn’t come at first. She tried to say them, but her body wouldn’t let her. Finally she said, “Bradlee, you mustn’t kill anyone else. I’ll go with you. We can start over somewhere.”

“That would please you now, would it?” he asked. “As a matter of fact, I did purchase a retirement home, and until recently, considered it to be our little getaway. I didn’t bring the brochure, but it’s a gorgeous place, a mountain fast on the South Island of New Zealand.

The alps for you, and a two-island nation for me. I am sorry about Leonard. I had no reason to kill him really.”

“I can’t let you kill Felix and Sky,” she said. “I can give you things Bradlee, I have money, and I know what you like. We can have a good time.”

“This is all very tempting Bryson, but I’m afraid it’s too late.”

Her voice became cold and still. “He was all I cared about in the world. Leonard,” she said, looking at him. He was not there. Where had he gone? Who could she talk to now? Bradlee’s eyes swelled with water and turned pink. “You never loved that dodgy old man. It was always me.”

“You must be fucking kidding–”

“Boyle! Take them out of here! Everything I did for you Bryson. You’ve ruined me, and I let you. For what? My life!”

Bradlee’s face got hard and his eyes narrowed. She thought, but he was never going to shoot me. “Boyle!” she screamed. He fired the gun. The sound was far away. It bobbed on a fireball of pain. She was hit in the shoulder and she moaned, her eyes widening. She thought of her surrogate, Lena. The long white hair in her brush. Chestnut trees in the fall. Apples on the quilt and t.v. Three more times she heard the sound and the eruptions in her seemed to ripple out in time. She collapsed on top of Leonard. He was there, just beneath her. The blood filled her mouth. She wanted to lie on her back. It was always more comfortable that way.

Boyle screamed, “No!” Good Boyle, she thought. She opened her eyes and looked around.

“Boyle, get out, I said.” She was counting now. Dimensions. There was the dimension of height, the dimension of width, and the dimension of depth. Then there was time. The dimension of desire, of ascension, of grace, when the winter sun warms the back of your head.

“You killed her, boss,” Boyle said, his voice creaking and tears streaming down his swollen cheeks. She shut her eyes, for a bit. She couldn’t see Boyle now, but she heard him. “Bryson, doc,” he said gently. He was stroking her head. She wanted to tell him she was not dead but it was hard to speak. She shuttled between Penumbra and Sphere. There were no dreams in Umbra and she kept dreaming. Oh, and sometimes it was Sphere, because she could see the room, the lake, the earth entire. She didn’t want him to stop stroking her head.

“It’s o.k. doc. You ain’t alone. I won’t leave you.” He looked up at Bradlee, staring at him through his tears. Bradlee was smiling slightly, back on top of the world.

“Boyle, take the jewels and get rid of these two already, or I’ll kill you too.”

Boyle snarled. “She was a good woman, Bradlee. You didn’t have ta kill her. No one ever treated me like a man before. Look at her. What you done, it ain’t right. Fuck.” He bit his hand.

“Spare me, Boyle. Let’s move.” Boyle pointed his gun at Bradlee. “What the fuck, Boyle. Now we’re in a stand off? But you can’t win.”

“Bullshit, boss.” Boyle squeezed off six shots, hammering Bradlee to the floor. He stood up and walked over to Bradlee’s imploded body. He felt savage, like war. He wanted to eat part of him. The liver, the heart, the brain. He aimed at the grey face, contemptuously dead, smirking from the other world. He pulled the trigger and obliterated it. Then he stood and aimed at Felix and the girl. “Are we all done now, or what?”

Felix dropped the gun. “Boyle,” he said. “She’s gone.”

Boyle slowly lowered the gun and knelt down beside Bryson. “I’m sorry doc. I tried to protect you but I wasn’t good enough.” He mumbled for a while, and cried softly, touching her hair, looking at her face, trying to figure it out. 

He stood and said to Felix, “I woulda killed you but I knew she wouldn’t approve. It ain’t personal.” He gave a little sob. The air stank of cordite and blood. The shafts of low afternoon sun had crept deeper into the room. Boyle reached into Bryson’s tunic and pulled out the bag of jewels and stood. “I’m takin’ these and the hovercraft. You can have the car.” He searched for her front pocket and pulled out the disc, covered in blood. “I’m takin’ this too.”

“How will you access it?” Felix asked.

“Forget about it. I know a guy.” He turned, walked out the front door and got in the hovercraft. He punched in the coordinates to Jersey and smiled as he took off, thinking what his neighbors would say when he landed that thing in his driveway with twenty million bucks in his pocket.

Sky sat on the floor, speaking silently to her self, eyes fixed. Felix found her and said, “It’s o.k. He’s gone.” They heard the ringing bleep of the ascending hovercraft and then, a moment later, the long whiney growl of a motorcycle enter the driveway. Dennis Blanpied opened the door and stood in a halo of orange sun. “Felix, where’s Sky? No one’s up at the house….” Sky stood. Dennis looked around, saw the bodies and said, “Oh my,” very quietly. Leonard on his back, Bryson on her back draped over him, Bradlee in a slowly merging puddle of blood. There were books all over the living room floor. “Well, let’s see. Shit. Leonard.” He shook his head and walked slowly over to Bryson and Leonard. Felix stood next to him. “What the fuck happened?”

“We’d better get out of here,” Sky said. She came up behind the two men. They were staring at the bodies, rubbing their chins.

“She’s right,” Dennis said.

“We have nothing,” Felix said. “Just the car.”

Sky walked into the living room and scanned the remaining volumes of Leonard’s journal till she found the one he had shown her. She took it down and opened it and pulled out the gold disc. “He said this was money. Millions of dollars.”

Felix could barely make her out. The light was bright in the windows. He saw a smudge of fuchsia and a limb raised. “It’s a disc?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I can get the money off of it no problem, but I don’t think I can drive.”

Sky came back to his side. “I can drive anything.”

Dennis said, “Get going. Drive fast. I’ll take care of things here and join you at the border, get you across.” Two men entered from outside, Jordan’s sons. “Take the bodies out back and burn them. Dump the remains in the lake.”