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NINETEEN

In the highest meadow in the southeast quadrant of Harhtly feeds two possums named Wally and Wanda, my choice is kill or die I have a pistol, he has a revolver, and the range is point-blank

The thought of the hungry possu for diner scraps that never coht of Denise, Donny’s fry-cook wife, being ed by me, a fellow fry cook, and other considerations cause ht to be the death of e, because of what he says—“Harry Potter, Lex Luthor, Fidel Castro, whoever you are, you’re goin’ to die here”—I feel sure that he is possessed by Hiskott, and I al hole in him But his face is easy to misread because of his terrible scar, and into my hesitation, he says with soet at you This isn’t your battle For God’s sake, run!”

Although he’s no one other than Donny, at any ht fall under the control of Hiskott and open fire without warning I choose not to waste ti in a philosophical discussion of thethy brother’s and thy sister’s keeper

With one sleeve I wipe at my nose, which has been set adrip by the flowery fumes of Bermuda Guy’s aftershave that lent the interior of his SUV the atmosphere of a mad perfumer’s laboratory

Matching Donny’s urgency, I insist, “It is ht I’e”

The thought of Jolie dying in the same brutal fashion that Maxy was murdered so distresses hi its inadequately stitched seam

“But he’s coh us, readin’ memories I can’t hide I’ve seen you—and where”

Belatedly, he realizes how dangerous it is forthe weapon by the barrel, he thrusts it toward me, and I take it with relief

“Listen, Donny, sir, you’re the one who has to get out of the Corner, beyond his reach If he discovers where I ah you, then he’ll send the rest of the family to surround me”

Anguished, he rebels at estion “No, no, no No, he’ll torture ’eone beyond his reach He don’t have mercy He don’t knohat mercy is He’ll make ’em torture and kill each other”

“He won’t have ti for me Then I’ll be in that house with him”

“Just ’cause he can’t control you, don’t et him”

“I’ve got es than you know”

“What advantages?”

I inhale sharply to staunch the nasal drip, and the inhalation becoet the hell out of Harht over there past the rail fence You can be out in two minutes Less Go till you know it’s safe Go!”

Five years of oppression and his own failed rebellion have nearly robbed him of all but perhaps the diy for either resistance or flight

I raise the revolver that he has surrendered to ive him a chance to look down the barrel, to consider the potential of the bullet

“Sir, I need that SUV, and I need more time that Hiskott doesn’t knohere I ae fast as you can or I shoot you dead right now I mean now”

For a moment I think I’ll have to h the tall grass, as if a deht be at his heels

As I watch him to be sure that, under the influence of the alien other, he doesn’t turn back towardcrushed beneath a weight of unearned sha more powerful than himself, and the scar that reuilt is deserved only when the effort to resist evil is never made

Yet the huiants, we too often confuse failure with fault, which I know too well The only way back from such a bleak despondency is to shape humiliation into humility, to strive always to triu that the honor and the beauty areWhen triumph at last comes, our efforts alone could not have won the day without that grace which surpasses all understanding and which will, if we allow it, i

In the learning of that simple truth, I have come from Pico Mundo, from the worst day ofh much trouble and tu the coast In the course of that dark passage, the shauilt of hter in my heart than once it was

Watching Donny cla the county road, as he races out of Hiskott’s reach, I would like nothing more than to learn one day that he has taken the same journey of the heart that I have taken

My sinuses weep, and my nose is a faucet Much of the tie of myself as a man of action and a defender of the innocent

Just as thethe road, I s nicely I need to reconnoiter

Byfarther from the trees, I will be more easily seen, because my navy-blue sweatshirt and rass around nized, but I don’t dare take any chances

Crouched loith a 38 revolver in one hand and a pistol in the other, I scuttle through the tall grass, alert for snakes because it see into flight, leaves of grass and feathertop brushing against ues of serpents, and I narrowly avoid stepping in a pile of deer poop

The ins to slope, and I co hills of Har

mony Corner and the sea beyond I lie down and raise h to study the seven Victorian houses that stand a few hundred yards below, to the west and slightly farther south of uards are stationed around the uppermost of those residences, where Dr Hiskott makes his lair, they are well concealed

Perhaps three hundred yards to the north lies the de, the detached tractor on its side beneath the Monterey cypress Both the tractor and the tree have caught fire, after all, and flah the branches, which across decades have been sculpted by the wind into elegant southeast-leaning forraphy Whatever the wind has written over time, fire rapidly erases and disperses as oily black smoke

People have gone down into those hills, no doubt seeking the truck driver, but at this distance it’s impossible to knohich of them are members of the Harmony family, under Hiskott’s rule, and which are patrons of the diner Nor aures at this remove

The larger blaze is closer than the one consu from the open valve, rip of a furious poltergeist The fire line in its wake follows a sinuous path, a leaping tossing brightness that, like an agitated dragon, wriggles down one slope and up another

The intensity of this blaze is reater than I anticipated Evidently no wildfire has occurred here in a long tirass have died and been coressively, so that it isn’t the grass of a single year that fuels this teray, alh columns that, in this still air, seem to support the sky

Although I aeon, I can’t help but take so Hiskott and his arround level to screen et house Most of the whiteturf; however, a thin, lower haze creeps downhill Soon I should have the conditions I require

To an uninforratulatenose on a sleeve ofto plunder and destroy a seaside settleht descend if ever I went over to the dark side

A tanker truck, half the size of an eighteen-wheeler, appears at the crest of the blacktop lane that connects the businesses to the houses below On the white tank are tords in red—HARMONY CORNER—and I can only suppose that this is a loaded-and-ready piece of firefighting equipment, a wise precaution in a part of California where some rainy seasons produce only an occasional drizzle and where wildfires will periodically blacken the land

Froe pickup appears, with six o area The truck is a beefed-up beauty, jacked high on large tires, and it’s fitted with a V-shaped plow, currently raised It stops on the blacktop halfway between the houses and the fire