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THREE YEARS AGO, our old friend traveled down this stretch of 93 in the passenger seat of Dale Gilbertson’s old Caprice, his heart going crazy in his chest, his throat constricting, and his mouth dry, as friendly Dale, in those days little more than a small-town cop who his job more or less as well as he could, piloted him toward a farmhouse and five acres left Dale by his deceased father "The nice little place" could be purchased for next to nothing, since Dale’s cousins did not particularly want it and it had no value to anyone else Dale had been holding on to the property for sentimental reasons, but he had no particular interest in it, either Dale had scarcely knohat to do with a second house, apart fro it up, a task he had found oddly enjoyable but did not at allover to someone else And at this point in their relationship, Dale was so in awe of our friend that, far fro his father’s old house, he considered it an honor

As for the ht up in his response to the landscape ¡ª too caught up by the landscape ¡ª to be embarrassed by Dale’s awe Under ordinary circued his adht him a beer and said, "Look, I know you were impressed by what I did, but after all, Dale, I’m just another cop, like you That’s all And in all honesty, I’m a lot luckier than I deserve to be" (It would be the truth, too: ever since we last saw hi, with such extravagantly good luck that he no longer dares to play cards or bet on sporting events When you win alrape juice) But these were not ordinary circumstances, and in the swar to undo hihway 93, Dale’s adulation barely registered This short drive to a place he had never seen before felt like a long-delayed journey ho, a part of hi to buy the nice little place, no matter what it looked like or how much it cost, not that price could in any way have been an obstacle He was going to buy it, that was all Dale’s hero-worship affected him only to the extent that he realized he would be forced to keep his adainst the tears that wanted to fill his eyes

Fro the landscape to the right of 93 like the iers He saw only the sudden narrow roads that split off the highway and slipped into led sunshine and darkness Each road said, Nearly there The highway said, This is the way Gazing doe can observe a roadside parking area, two gasoline puend ROY’S STORE; when he looked to his right and saw, past the gas pu porch and the store’s entrance, he felt as though he had already one inside to pick up bread,of tenpenny nails, whatever he needed from the practical cornucopia crowded onto the shelves, as after that day he would do, a hundred tiray sliver of Ta into Norway Valley When Dale’s car rolled across the rusting little e said, This is it!, and the casually but expensively dressed h all he knew of farh the s next to first-class seats on transcontinental flights and in fact was incapable of telling wheat froe, a road sign read NORWAY VALLEY ROAD

"This is it," said Dale, and ht turn into the valley Our friend covered hisheart ht cause him to utter

Here and there, wildflowers bloomed and nodded on the roadside, soht, others half-hidden in a blanket of vibrant green "Driving up this road always ood," Dale said

"No wonder," our friend ed to say

Most of what Dale said failed to penetrate the ind of eer’s mind and body That’s the old Lund farm ¡ª cousins of randht over there, only they tore it doay back This here is Duane Updahl’s place, he’s no relation, thank goodness Buzz blur ain drove over Ta and calling out, Here we are! Around a bend in the road they went, and a wealth of luxuriant wildflowers leaned carousing toward the car In their er lilies tilted todistinct froht dazzled tears to the surface of his eyes

Tiger lilies, why? Tiger liliesto him He used the pretense of a yawn to wipe his eyes and hoped that Dale had not noticed

"Here we are," Dale said, having noticed or not, and swerved into a long, overgrown drive, hedged ildflowers and tall grasses, which appeared to lead nowhere except into a great expanse of h flowers Beyond the meadow, striped fields sloped upward to the wooded hillside "You’ll see oes with the house, and my cousins Randy and Kent own the field"

Our friend could not see the white two-story farmhouse that stands at the end of the last curve of the drive until thehalfway into the curve, and he did not speak until Dale had pulled up in front of the house, switched off the engine, and both men had left the car Here was "the nice little place," sturdy, newly painted, lovingly maintained, modest yet beautiful in its proportions, ree of a green and yellow meadow profuse with flowers

"My God, Dale," he said, "it’s perfection"

Here ill find our for companion, who in his own boyhood knew a boy named Richard Sloat and, once, too briefly, knew yet another whose name was, simply, Wolf In this sturdy, comely, removed white farmhouse ill find our old friend, who once in his boyhood journeyed cross-country fro, a necessary object, a great talisman, and who, despite horrendous obstacles and fearful perils, succeeded in finding the object of his search and used it wisely and well Who, we could say, accomplished a number of miracles, heroically And who re breakfast for hie Rathbun on KDCU, we at last find the foreles County lieutenant of police, Homicide Division, Jack Sawyer

Our Jack Jacky-boy, as his h Sawyer, used to say

He had followed Dale through the empty house, upstairs and down, into the base the new furnace and water heater Gilbertson had installed the year before his father’s death, the quality of the repairs he had rain of the wooden floors, the thickness of the insulation in the attic, the solidity of the s, the many craftsmanlike touches that met his eye

"Yeah, I did a lot of work on the place," Dale told hi with my hands After a while it turned into sort of a hobby Whenever I had a couple of hours free, weekends and such, I got in the habit of driving over here and puttering around I don’t know,in touch with uy, my dad He wantedinto law enforceht down the line Knohat he said? ¡®Go into far half hearted, it’ll kick you in the tail sunrise to sundown You’d wind up feeling no better than ayou into this world to turn you into a mule’ "

"What did she think?" Jack had asked

"Myline of far a mule wasn’t so bad after all By the time she passed ahich was four years before o out the kitchen door and take a gander at thetheir gander, Jack had asked Dale howfor this question, had knocked five thousand off the et Who was he kidding? Dale had wanted Jack Sawyer to buy the house where he had grown up ¡ª he’d wanted Jack to live near hi the year And if Jack did not buy the place, no one else would

"Are you serious?" Jack had asked

More dismayed than he wished to admit, Dale had said, "Sounds like a fair deal to me"

"It isn’t fair to you," Jack had said "I’ive this place away just because you like -city hotshots sure kno to negotiate All right, make it three thousand more"

"Five," Jack said "Or I’ my heart"

"I hope this is the last tiians," Jack said

He had purchased the house long-distance, sending a down paye, cash up front Whatever Jack Sawyer’s background ht, it was a lot wealthier than the usual police officer’s Some weeks later, Jack had reappeared at the center of a self-created tornado, arranging for the telephone to be connected and the electricity billed in his na up what looked like half the contents of Roy’s Store, zipping off to Arden and La Riviere to buy a new bed, linens, tableware, cast-iron pots and pans and a set of French knives, a coiant television, and a stack of sound equipment so sleek, black, and resplendent that Dale, who had been invited over for a coured it must have cost more than his own annual salary Much else, besides, had Jack reeled in, so of items Dale had been surprised to learn could be obtained in French County, Wisconsin Why would anyone need a sixty-five-dollar corkscrew called a WineMaster? Who was this guy, what kind of fa an unfao filled with compact discs ¡ª at fifteen, sixteen dollars a pop, he was looking at a couple hundred dollars’ worth of CDs Whatever else ht have been true of Jack Sawyer, he was intoway Curious, Dale bent down, pulled out a handful of jewel boxes, and regarded ienerally with instruments pressed to or in their an, Paul Desuys," he said "What is this, jazz, I guess?"

"You guess right," Jack said "Could I ask you to helppictures, stuff like that, in ato have a lot of stuff shipped here"

"Anytime" A splendid idea bloomed in Dale’s mind "Hey, you have to hbor of yours, lives about a quarter mile down the road He was married to o Henry’s like an encyclopedia of weird music"

Jack did not take up the assumption that jazz eird Maybe it was Anyhow, it probably sounded weird to Dale "I wouldn’t have thought farmers had much time to listen to hter "Henry isn’t a far, Dale raised his hands, palers spread, and looked into the ht phrase "He’s like the reverse of a faret back, I’ll introduce you to hiuy"

Six weeks later, Jack returned to greet thevan and tell the s he had shipped; a few days afterward, when he had unpacked most of the boxes, he telephoned Dale and asked if he was still willing to give him a hand It was 5:00 on a day so slow that Tom Lund had fallen asleep at his desk, and Dale drove over without even bothering to change out of his uniform

His first response, after Jack had shaken his hand and ushered hile step past the doorway, Dale froze in his tracks, unable to move any farther Two or three seconds passed before he realized that it was a good shock, a shock of pleasure His old house had been transformed: it was as if Jack Sawyer had tricked him and opened the faether The sweep fro like either the space he reression of the recent past Jack had decorated the house with the wave of a wand, it see it into he hardly knehat ¡ª a villa on the Riviera, a Park Avenue apartment (Dale had never been to New York or the south of France) Then it struck hi it was not, Jack had simply seen more in it than Dale ever had The leather sofas and chairs, the glowing rugs, the wide tables and discreet lamps, had come from another world but fit in perfectly, as if they had beenhe saw beckoned hiain

"Wow," he said "Did I ever sell this place to the right guy"

"I’lad you like it," Jack said "I have to admit, I do, too It looks even better than I expected"

"What aanized"

"We’re going to hang soanized"

Dale supposed Jack was talking about faraphs He did not understand why anyone would need help to hang up a bunch of framed photos, but if Jack wanted his assistance, he would assist Besides that, the pictures would tell him a considerable areat interest to him However, when Jack led hiainst the kitchen counter, Dale once again got the feeling that he was out of his depth here, that he had entered an unknoorld The crates had been made by hand; they were serious objects built to provide industrial-strength protection Some of them were five or six feet tall and nearly as wide These monsters did not have pictures of Mom and Dad inside them He and Jack had to pry up the corners and loosen the nails along the edges before they could get the crates open It took a surprising aretted not stopping at his house long enough to take off his uniform, which was damp with sweat by the time he and Jack had pulled froular objects thickly swaddled in layers of tissue Many crates remained

An hour later, they carried the empty crates down to the basement and came back upstairs to have a beer Then they sliced open the layers of tissue, exposing paintings and graphics in a variety of fra a few that looked as if the artist had nailed the Jack’s pictures occupied a category Dale vaguely thought of as "s were supposed to be about, although he actually liked almost all of them, especially a couple of landscapes He knew that he had never heard of the artists, but their nanized by the kind of people who lived in big cities and hung out in alleries All this art ¡ª all of these ie and small now lined up on the kitchen floor ¡ª stunned hiether pleasantly He really had entered another world, and he knew none of its land to hang these pictures on the walls of his parents’ old house Immediately, unexpected warmth flooded into this notion and filled it to the brile now and then? And wasn’t this other world Jack’s?

"All right," he said "I wish Henry, that uncle I was telling you about? Who lives right down the road? I wish he could see this stuff Henry, he’d kno to appreciate it"

"Why won’t he be able to see them? I’ll invite him over"

"Didn’t I say?" Dale asked "Henry’s blind"

Paintings went up on the living-room walls, ascended the stairwell, moved into the bedrooms Jack put up a couple of small pictures in the upstairs bathrooround floor Dale’s ar the frao in After the first three paintings, he had removed his necktie and rolled up his sleeves, and he could feel sweat trickling out of his hair and sliding down his face His unbuttoned collar had soaked through Jack Sawyer had worked as hard or harder than he, but looked as if he had done nothing more strenuous than think about dinner

"You’re like an art collector, huh?" Dale said "Did it take a long tih to be a collector," Jack said "My father picked up most of this work back in the fifties and sixties Mythat turned her on Like that little Fairfield Porter over there, with the front porch and a lawn and the flowers"

The little Fairfield Porter, which name Dale assumed to be that of its painter, had appealed to him as soon as he and Jack had pulled it out of its crate You could hang a picture like that in your own living room You could al was, Dale thought, if you hung it in your living room, most of the people who came in would never really notice it at all

Jack had said soe "So," Dale said, "your ave them to you?"

"I inherited them after my mother’s death," Jack said "My father died when I was a kid"

"Oh, darn, I’m sorry," Dale said, snapped abruptly out of the world into which Mr Fairfield Porter had welco" He thought Jack had given him the explanation for the aura of apartness and isolation that seemed always to envelop him A second before Jack could respond, Dale told hi He had no idea how so like Jack Sawyer

"Yeah," Jack said "Fortunately, her" Dale seized his opportunity with both hands "What did your folks do? Were you brought up in California?"

"Born and raised in Los Angeles," Jack said "My parents were in the entertainainst thereat people"

Jack did not invite him to stay for supper ¡ª that hat stuck with Dale Over the hour and a half it took the the rest of the pictures, Jack Sawyer reood-hu, sensed so evasive and adamant in his friend’s affability: a door had opened a tiny crack, then slareat people" had placed Jack’s parents out of bounds When the two s frorocery next to the microwave It was then nearly 8:00, at least two hours past French County’s suppertiht reasonably have assumed that Dale had already eaten, were his uniform not evidence to the contrary

He tossed Jack a softball about the hardest case he had ever solved and sidled up to the counter The marbled red tips of two sirloin steaks protruded fro His stonored the thunder roll and said, "Thornberg Kinderling was right up there with anything I handled in LA I was really grateful for your help" Dale got the picture Here was another locked door This one had declined to open by as much as a crack History was not spoken here; the past had been nailed shut

They finished their beers and installed the last of the pictures Over the next few hours, they spoke of a hundred things, but alithin the boundaries Jack Sawyer had established Dale was sure that his question about Jack’s parents had shortened the evening, but why should that be true? What was the guy hiding? And fro it? After their as done, Jack thanked hi off any hope of a last-ae Rathbun While they stood in the fragrant darkness beneath the hed with pleasure and said, "I hope you kno grateful I ao back to LA Would you look at how beautiful this is?"

Driving back to French Landing, his the only headlights on the long stretch of Highway 93, Dale wondered if Jack’s parents had been involved in so to their adult son, like pornography Maybe Dad directed skin flicks, and Mom starred in theh, especially if they kept it in the family Before his odometer ticked off another tenth of a mile, the memory of the little Fairfield Porter turned Dale’s satisfaction to dust No woers would spend actuallike that

Let us enter Jack Sawyer’s kitchen Thetable; a black frying pan recently sprayed with Paas stove’s front left-hand burner A tall, fit, distracted-lookingan old USC sweatshirt, jeans, and Italian loafers the color ofa whisk around the interior of a stainless steel bowl containing a large nu at him as he frowns at a vacant section of air well above the shiny boe observe that the beautiful twelve-year-old boy last seen in a fourth-floor rooed into a ood looks contribute only the s For that Jack Sawyer is interesting declares itself instantly Even when troubled to distraction by soht as well say in the face of that contemplative frown, Jack Sawyer cannot help but radiate a persuasive authority Just by looking at him, you know that he is one of those persons to whom others turn when they feel stuence, resolve, and dependability have shaped the cast of his features so deeply that their attractiveness is irrelevant to theirThis man never pauses to admire himself in mirrors ¡ª vanity plays no part in his character Itstar in the Los Angeles Police Departed with commendations, and that he had been selected for several FBI-sponsored progra stars (A nuues and superiors had privately concluded that he would becoo or Seattle around the time he turned forty and, ten to fifteen years later, if all ell, step up to San Francisco or New York)

More strikingly, Jack’s age seems no more relevant than his attractiveness: he has the air of having passed through lifetis beyond the scope of most other people No wonder Dale Gilbertson admires him; no wonder Dale yearns for Jack’s assistance In his place, ould want it, too, but our luck would be no better than his This aotta whisk eggs when he’s gotta have omelettes, as John Wayne said to Dean Martin in Rio Bravo

"And as my momma told ;Sonny boy,’ said she, ¡®when the Duke spoke up, everdangbody lissened up, lessen he was a-grindin’ one of his numerous political axes,’ yes, she did, them were her same exack words, just as she said ’e in Beverly Hills," and finally takes in what he is doing

What we have here is a spectacularly lonely man Loneliness has been Jack Sawyer’s faranted, but what you can’t fix eventually turns into wallpaper, all right? Plenty of things, such as cerebral palsy and Lou Gehrig’s disease, to name but two, are worse than loneliness Loneliness is just part of the program, that’s all Even Dale noticed this aspect of his friend’s character, and despite his many virtues, our chief of police cannot be described as a particularly pyschological hulances at the clock above the stove and sees he has another forty-fiveand pick up Henry Leyden at the end of his shift That’s good; he has plenty of tiether, the subtext to which is Everything is all right, and nothing’s wrong with , a small voice in his head announced I aht, and told the voice to leave hiiven up on the coppiceman business, he had walked away frohts of a carousel reflected on the bald head of a blackdead on the Santa Monica Pier

No Don’t go there Justjust don’t, that’s all

Jack should not have been in Santa Monica, anyhow Santa Monica had its own coppiceh perhaps not quite up to the standard set by that ace boy, whizbang, and youngest-ever lieutenant of LAPD’s Homicide Division, hi had been on their turf in the first place was that he had just broken up with this extremely nice, or at least moderately nice, resident of Malibu, Ms Brooke Greer, a screenwriter greatly esteeenre, the action adventure&uht, and bodily charm, and as he sped hohway below the Malibu Canyon exit he yielded to an uncharacteristically edgy spell of gloo up the California Incline into Santa Monica, he saw the bright ring of the Ferris wheel revolving above the strings of lights and the lively crowd on the pier A tawdry enchantment, or an enchanted tawdriness, spoke to him from the heart of this scene On a whim, Jack parked his car and walked down to the array of brilliant lights glowing in the darkness The last time he had visited the Santa Monica Pier, he had been an excited six-year-old boy pulling on Lily Cavanaugh Sawyer’s hand like a dog straining at a leash

What happened was accidental It was too ether two previously unrelated ele connected, and there was no larger story

He caaudy entrance and noticed that, after all, the Ferris wheel was not revolving A circle of stationary lights hung over eiant uised and biding its tie Jack could alht, an evil Ferris wheel ¡ª get a grip You’re shaken up more than you want to admit Then he looked back down at the scene before him, and finally took in that his fantasy of the pier had hidden a real-life evil rendered far too familiar by his profession He had stuation

Sohts he had seen flashed not from the Ferris wheel but from the tops of Santa Monica patrol cars Out on the pier, four unifor the circle of crihtly illuminated carousel Jack told himself to leave it alone He had no role here Besides that, the carousel aroused so, an entire set of unwelcos, in him The carousel was creepier than the stalled Ferris wheel Carousels had always spooked hiet horses frozen into place with their teeth bared and steel poles rauts ¡ª sadistic kitsch

Walk away, Jack told hiirlfriend dumped you and you’re in a rotten mood

And as for carousels

The abrupt descent of aas though pushed froh the crowd He was half conscious of taking the most unprofessional action of his career

When he had pushed his way to the front of the crowd, he ducked under the tape and flashed his badge at a babyfaced cop who tried to order hi a blues melody Jack could almost identify; the title swaht The infant cop gave him a puzzled look and walked away to consult one of the detectives standing over a long shape Jack did not quite feel like looking at just then The ed the hell out of him His irritation was out of proportion to its cause, but what kind of idiot thought homicides needed a sound track?

A painted horse reared, frozen in the garish light

Jack’s sto fierce and insistent, so at all costs not to be named, flexed itself and threw out its ar wished to break free and make itself known Briefly, Jack feared he would have to throw up The passing of this sensation bought him a moment of uncomfortable clarity

Voluntarily, idly, he had walked into craziness, and noas crazy You could put it no other way Marching toward hi disbelief and fury was a detective naelo Leone, before his expedient transfer to Santa Monica a colleague of Jack’s distinguished by his gross appetites, his capacity for violence and corruption, his conteardless of color, race, creed, or social status, and, to be fair, his fearlessness and utter loyalty to all police officers ith the progra they could get aith Angelo Leone’s disdain for Jack Sawyer, who had not gone with the prograer man’s success In a few seconds, this brutal caveure out how to explain hiuitars, attending to the details of going crazy He had no way of explaining himself Explanation was impossible The internal necessity that had pushed him into this position huelo Leone of internal necessities Nor could he offer a rational explanation to his captain, if Leone filed a co

The first words out of Angelo Leone’s fleshy mouth rescued him from disaster

¡ª Don’t tell me you’re here for a reason, you ambitious little prick A piratical career like Leone’s inevitably exposed the pirate to the danger of an official investigation A strategic sidestep to a neighboring force offered little protection fros police officials ave theooders, whistle-blowers, whiners, snitches, pissed-off civilians, and cops too stupid to accept the tiether, rammed a cherry boy of bloodletting Leone’s essential, guilt-inspired paranoia had instantly suggested to hi his r¨¦sum&u been pulled toward the scene like a fire horse to a fire nified Leone’s suspicions

¡ª Okay, you happened to walk into ation Fine Now listen to me If I happen to hear your na the next six h a tube for the rest of your life Now get the fuck out of here and let elo

Leone’s partner started to cori to do so, without thinking about it, Jack let his eyes drift past the detective and down to the corpse in front of the carousel Far more powerfully than it had the first time, the ferocious creature at the center of his chest flexed itself, unfurled, and extended its wings, its arms, its talons, whatever they were, and by e attes, the ars Hideous claws splayed through his stomach

There is one act a homicide detective, especially a homicide lieutenant, must never commit, and it is this: confronted with a dead body, he led to remain on the respectable side of the Forbidden Bile seared the back of his throat, and he closed his eyes A constellation of glowing dots wavered across his eyelids The creature, hts reflected on the scalp of a bald, blackdead beside a carousel

Not you No, not you Knock all you like, but you can’t cos, ar speck Having succeeded in avoiding the Forbidden Act, Jack found hi his eyes He had no idea how ated forehead, murky eyes, and carnivorous mouth heaved into view and, from a distance of six inches, occupied all the available space

¡ª What are we doing here? Reviewing our situation?

¡ª I wish that idiot would put his guitar back in its case

And that was one of the oddest turns of the evening

¡ª Guitar? I don’t hear no guitar

Neither, Jack realized, did he

Wouldn’t any rational person attee overboard? You couldn’t do anything with it, you couldn’t use it, so why hold on to it? The incident on the pierbeyond itself, and it led to nothing It was literally inconsequential, for it had had no consequences After his lover had sandbagged his, suffered a momentary aberration, and trespassed upon another jurisdiction’s cri mistake

Fifty-six days and eleven hours later, the ace boy slipped into his captain’s office, laid down his shield and his gun, and announced, much to the captain’s astonish of the confrontation with Detective Leone on the Santa Monica Pier, the captain did not inquire as to the possible influence upon his lieutenant’s decision of a stalled carousel and a dead blackridiculous

Don’t go there, he advises hi there He receives a few involuntary flashes, nohead, of Angelo Leone’s diste the dead center of the scene in every sense, that which above all htning bolts appear, he sends theic, good e banishment represent a form of self-protection, and if the ic reotta have an os, to quote that unimpeachable authority, Duke Wayne

Jack Sawyer has ested by a drea uttered the word "policeman" in baby talk These matters, too, he wishes he could send away by the execution of a ic trick, but the wretched matters refuse banishment; they zoom about hi so well, our Jack He is er look quite right, though he could not say why The eggs resist interpretation The eggs are the least of it In the periphery of his vision, the banner across the front page of the La Riviere Herald seems to rise off the sheet of newsprint and float toward hih; he turns aith the terrible knowledge of having brought on this Fisherman business by himself How about IN STATEN ISLAND or IN BROOKLYN, where the real Albert Fish, a tormented piece of work if there ever was one, found two of his victi hi and probably dead, body parts eaten, a lunatic who plagiarized fro him with information The details enter his system like a contaminant The more he learns ¡ª and for a man who truly wished to be out of the loop, Jack has learned an ah his bloodstrea his perceptions He had coht from a world that had abruptly turned unreliable and rubbery, as if liquefying under thereles, the thermal pressure had become intolerable Grotesque possibilities leered fro to take fors ainst nausea, so he worked without stopping, in the process solving nosis was that the as getting to him, but we can hardly blanation)

He had escaped to this obscure pocket of the countryside, this shelter, this haven at the edge of a yellow meadow, removed from the world of threat and , reood distance even from Norway Valley Road However, the layers of re to escape riots around hiain, here in his redoubt If he let himself succumb to self-centered fantasy, he would have to conclude that what he had fled had spent the last three years sniffing his trail and had finally succeeded in tracking hiors of his task had overwhelmed him; now the disorders of western Wisconsin ht, he awakens to the echo of the little, poisoned voice wailing, No more coppiceman, I won’t, too close, too close What was too close, Jack Sawyer refuses to consider; the echo proves that he must avoid any further contarets both his inability to join the investigation and to explain his refusal to his friend Dale’s ass is on the line, no tays about it He is a good chief of police, ed the politics and let the staties set him up With every appearance of respect for local authority, state detectives Brown and Black had bowed low, stepped aside, and per him a favor, to slip a noose around his neck Too bad, but Dale has just figured out that he is standing on a trapdoor with a black bag over his face If the Fisherman murders one rets He can’t perfor matters on his mind

Red feathers, for example Small ones Little red feathers are much on Jack’s ic the as he eo down to fix breakfast, a single red feather, a pluer, see at the top of the stairs In its wake, two or three others ca toward him An oval section of plaster two inches across seeht, fat colu as if propelled through a straw A feather explosion, a feather hurricane, battered his chest, his raised arms, his head

But this

This never happened

Soure it out A ard brain neuroncheht chee conduits responded to a false signal and produced a waking drea dream resembled an hallucination, but hallucinations were experienced by wet-brain alcoholics, drug takers, and crazy people, specifically paranoid schizophrenics, ho his life as a coppice the last He kneas not a paranoid schizophrenic or any other variety of ht Jack Saas crazy, you were He has complete, at least 99 percent complete, faith in his sanity

Since he is not delusional, the feathersdream The only other explanation involves reality, and the feathers had no connection to reality What kind of world would this be, if such things could happen to us?

Abruptly George Rathbun bellows, "It pains me to say this, truly it does, for I love our dear old Bre, you know I do, but there corit its teeth and face a painful reality ¡ª for exa staff Bud Selig, oh BU-UD, this is Houston calling Could you Please return to earth iregation of WIMPS, LOSERS, AND AIRHEADS!"

Good old Henry Henry has George Rathbun down so perfectly you can see the sweat stains under his armpits But the best of Henry’s inventions ¡ª in Jack’s opinion ¡ª has to be that embodiment of hipster cool, the laid-back, authoritative Henry Shake ("the Sheik, the Shake, the Shook of Araby"), who can, if in theon the day he recorded "Shoe Shine Boy" and "Lady Be Good" and describe the interiors of two dozen fa-departed jazz clubs

and before we get into the very cool, very beautiful, very sie Vanguard by the Bill Evans Trio, we ht pay our respects to the third, inner eye Let us honor the inner eye, the eye of iination It is late on a hot July afternoon in Greenwich Village, New York City On sun-dazzled Seventh Avenue South, we stroll into the shade of the Vanguard’s , narrow flight of stairs to a rooround cave The musicians climb onto the stand Bill Evans slides onto the piano bench and nods at the audience Scott LaFaro hugs his bass Paul Motian picks up his brushes Evans lowers his head ay down and drops his hands on the keyboard For those of us who are privileged to be there, nothing will ever be the saain

"My Foolish Heart" by the Bill Evans Trio, live at the Village Vanguard, the twenty-fifth of June, 1961 I am your host, Henry Shake ¡ª the Sheik, the Shake, the Shook of Araby

S pan, twice swirls theas flalected tohe needs; he can drink orange juice A glance at the toaster suggests that he has also neglected to prepare the ’s toast Does he require toast, is toast essential? Consider the butter, consider slabs of cholesterol waiting to corrupt his arteries The o he cracked way too s Now Jack cannot remember why he wanted to make an omelette in the first place He rarely eats os out of a sense of duty aroused by the ts of egg-sized depressions near the top of his refrigerator door If people were not supposed to buy eggs, ould refrigerators coes of the hardening but still runny eggs, tilts the pan to slide them around, scrapes in the ht Okay Looks good A luxurious forty minutes of freedo, he see pretty well Control is not an issue here

Unfolded on the kitchen table, the La Riviere Herald catches Jack’s eye He has forgotten about the newspaper The newspaper has not forgotten him, however, and demands its proper share of attention FISHERMAN STILL AT LARGE IN, and so on ARCTIC CIRCLE would be nice, but no, he moves nearer to the table and sees that the Fisherman remains a stubbornly local problem From beneath the headline, Wendell Green’s naes in his eye like a pebble Wendell Green is an all-around, co the first two paragraphs of Green’s article, Jack groans and clamps a hand over his eyes

I’m a blind man, make me an umpire!

Wendell Green has the confidence of a small-town athletic hero who never left home Tall, expansive, with a crinkly ers through the bars, the courthouses, the public arenas of La Riviere and its surrounding co wised-up charm Wendell Green is a reporter who kno to act like one, an old-fashioned print journalist, the Herald’s great ornareat ornament struck Jack as a third-rate phony, and he has seen no reason to change his mind since then He distrusts Wendell Green In Jack’s opinion, the reporter’s gregarious facade conceals a li in front of a mirror, but a canny blowhard, and such creatures will do anything to gain their own ends

After Thornberg Kinderling’s arrest, Green requested an interview Jack turned him down, as he declined the three invitations that followed his removal to Norway Valley Road His refusals had not deterred the reporter fros

The day after the discovery of Aed from a Chase Street dry cleaner’s shop with a box of freshly laundered shirts under his ar toward his car, and felt a hand close on his elbow He looked back and beheld, contorted into a leer of spurious delight, the florid public mask of Wendell Green

¡ª Hey, hey, Holly ¡ªA bad-boy slad I ran into you This is where you have your shirts done? They do a good job?

¡ª If you leave out the part about the buttons

¡ª Good one You’re a funny guy, Lieutenant Let ive you a tip Reliable, on Third Street in La Riviere? They live up to their nao to a Chink every time Sam Lee, try him out, Lieutenant

¡ª I’m not a lieutenant anymore, Wendell Call me Jack or Mr Sawyer Call me Hollywood, I don’t care And now ¡ª

He walked toward his car, and Wendell Green walked beside him

¡ª Any chance of a feords, Lieutenant? Sorry, Jack? Chief Gilbertson is a close friend of yours, I know, and this tragic case, little girl, apparently s, can you can offer us your expertise, step in, give us the benefit of your thoughts?

¡ª You want to knowyou can tell me, buddy