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BY EVENING, the terees as a h our little patch of the Coulee Country There are no thunderstor arrives It’s born out of the river and rises up the inclined rautters, then the sidewalks, then blurring the buildings the and winter so is so makes the ordinary look alien And there’s the sully odor that works deep into your nose and awakens the back part of your brain, the part that is perfectly capable of believing in ht lines shorten and the heart is uneasy

On Su dispatch Arnold "the Mad Hungarian" Hrabowski has been sent hoe ¡ª in fact, suspended ¡ª and feels he must ask his wife a few pointed questions (his belief that he already knows the answersat the , a cup of coffee in her hand and a puckery little frown on her face

"Don’t like this," she says to Bobby Dulac, who is glu reports "It reminds me of the Hammer pictures I used to watch on TV back when I was in junior high"

"Ha up

"Horror pictures," she says, looking out into the deepening fog "A lot of them were about Dracula Also Jack the Ripper"

"I don’t want to hear nothing about Jack the Ripper," Bobby says "Youlot of the 7-Eleven, Mr Rajan Patel stands beside his telephone (still crisscrossed by yellow police tape, and when it will be all right again for using, this Mr Patel could not be telling us) He looks toward dohich now sees on Chase Street descend into this bowl Those at Chase’s lowest point are visible only from the second story up

"If he is down there," Mr Patel says softly, and to no one but hi whatever he wants"

He crosses his arms over his chest and shivers

Dale Gilbertson is at home, for a wonder He plans to have a sit-down dinner with his wife and child even if the world ends because of it He co with WSP officer Jeff Black, a conversation in which he has had to exercise all his discipline to keep fro at theand looking out Her posture is almost exactly the salass of wine in her hand instead of a cup of coffee The puckery little frown is identical

"River fog," Sarah says dismally "Isn’t that ducky If he’s out there ¡ª "

Dale points at her "Don’t say it Don’t even think it"

But he knows that neither of the ¡ª the foggy streets of French Landing ¡ª will be deserted right now: no one shopping in the stores, no one idling along the sidewalks, no one in the parks Especially no children The parents will be keeping the is the exception rather than the rule, the parents will be keeping their kids inside

"I won’t say it," she allows "That much I can do"

"What’s for dinner?"

"How does chicken pot pie sound?"

Ordinarily such a hot dish on a July evening would strike hi in, it sounds like just the thing He steps up behind her, gives her a brief squeeze, and says, "Great And earlier would be better"

She turns, disappointed "Going back in?"

"I shouldn’t have to, not with Brown and Black rolling the ball ¡ª "

"Those pricks," she says "I never liked them"

Dale smiles He knows that the former Sarah Asbury has never cared , and this ht it feels vital, as well It’s been thewith the suspension of Arnold Hrabowski Arnie, Dale knows, believes he will be back on duty before long And the shitty truth is that Arnie , Dale may need even such an exquisite exaarian

"Anyway, I shouldn’t have to go back in, but"

"You have a feeling"

"I do"

"Good or bad?" She has come to respect her husband’s intuitions, not in the least because of Dale’s intense desire to see Jack Sawyer settled close enough to reach with seven keystrokes instead of eleven Tonight that looks to her like ¡ª pardon the pun ¡ª a pretty good call

"Both," Dale says, and then, without explaining or giving Sarah a chance to question further: "Where’s Dave?"

"At the kitchen table with his crayons"

At six, young David Gilbertson is enjoying a violent love affair with Crayolas, has gone through two boxes since school let out Dale and Sarah’s strong hope, expressed even to each other only at night, lying side by side before sleep, is that theya real artist The next Norman Rockwell, Sarah said once Dale ¡ª who helped Jack Sawyer hang his strange and wonderful pictures ¡ª has higher hopes for the boy Too high to express, really, even in the lass of wine in hand, Dale a, Dave? What ¡ª "

He stops The crayons have been abandoned The picture ¡ª a half-finished drawing of whatsaucer or perhaps just a round coffee table ¡ª has also been abandoned

The back door is open

Looking out at the whiteness that hides David’s swing and jungle gy hiain, that terrible smell of raw spoiled ic circle ¡ª it may happen to others, but it can never, never happen to us ¡ª is gone now What has replaced it is stark certainty: David is gone The Fisherman has enticed hi Dale can see the grin on the Fisherloved hand ¡ª it’s yellow ¡ª covering his son’s , terrified child’s eyes

Into the fog and out of the knoorld

David

He s that feel boneless as well as nerveless He puts his wineglass down on the table, the ste when it spills and covers David’s half-finished draith so that looks horribly like venous blood He’s out the door, and although he thless sigh: "David?Dave?"

For aThen he hears the soft thud of running feet on daby shirtsoup Aface and ! It was like being in a cloud!" Dale snatches hi impulse to slap the kid across the face, to hurt hi his father so It passes as quickly as it came He kisses David instead

"I know," he says "That must have been fun, but it’s time to coet lost in the fog," he says, looking out into the white yard He can see the patio table, but it is only a ghost; he wouldn’t knohat he was looking at if he hadn’t seen it a thousand tiet lost," he repeats

Oh, we could check in with any number of friends, both old and new Jack and Fred Marshall have returned fro at Gertie’s Kitchen in Centralia when they passed it), and both are now in their otherwise deserted houses For the balance of the ride back to French Landing, Fred never once let go of his son’s baseball cap, and he has a hand on it even now, as he eats arooht’s news is mostly about Irma Freneau, of course Fred picks up the ree of Ed’s Eats to a taped report from the Holiday Trailer Park The cameraman has focused on one shabby trailer in particular A feers, brave but doole in the dust by the stoop, which consists of three boards laid across two ce, Ir mother is in seclusion," says the on-scene correspondent "One can only iht" The reporter is prettier than Wendell Green but exudes , unhealthy exciterowls, "Why can’t you leave the poor woman alone?" He looks down at his chipped beef on toast, but he has lost his appetite

Slowly, he raises Tyler’s hat and puts it on his own head It doesn’t fit, and Fred for aout the plastic band at the back The idea shocks him Suppose that was all it took to kill his son? That one simple, deadly modification? The idea strikes hiuable He supposes that if this keeps up, he’ll soon be asSawyer is as crazy as thinking hethe size of the boy’s hatand yet he believes in both things He picks up his fork and begins to eat again, Ty’s Brewers cap sitting on his head like Spanky’s beanie in an old Our Gang one-reeler

Beezer St Pierre is sitting on his sofa in his underwear, a book open on his lap (it is, in fact, a book of William Blake’s poems) but unread Bear Girl’s asleep in the other rooe to bop on down to the Sand Bar and score so on five years now Since Ale day, and lately he wins only by re himself that he won’t be able to find the Fisherman ¡ª and punish him as he deserves to be punished ¡ª if he’s fucked up on devil dust

Henry Leyden is in his studio with a huge pair of Akai headphones on his head, listening to Warren Vach&uan dreah "I Reh the walls, and to him it smells like the air at Ed’s Eats Like bad death, in other words He’s wondering how Jack ood old Ward D at French County Lutheran And he’s thinking about his wife, who lately (especially since the record hop at Maxton’s, although he doesn’t consciously realize this) seems closer than ever And unquiet

Yes indeed, all sorts of friends are available for our inspection, but at least one seeht Charles Burnside isn’t in the common room at Maxton’s (where an old episode of Fa on the ancient color TV bolted to the wall), nor in the dining hall, where snacks are available in the early evening, nor in his own room, where the sheets are currently clean (but where the air still suely of old shit) What about the bathroom? Nope Thorvald Thorvaldson has stopped in to have a pee and a handwash, but otherwise the place is e on its side in one of the stalls With its bright black and yellow stripes, it looks like the corpse of a huge dead bumblebee And yes, it’s the stall second from the left Burny’s favorite

Should we look for hi exactly where that rascal is , then, silent as a drearound floor now subh water of that ancient flood no ht On one side of it is Wisconsin Shoe, now closed for the day On the other is Lucky’s Tavern, where an old wos (her name is Bertha Van Dusen, if you care) is currently bent over with her hands planted on her large knees, yarking a bellyful of Kingsland Old-Tirinding a manual transmission In the doorway of the Nelson Hotel itself sits a patient old one back into the tavern, then slink over to eat the half-digested cocktail franks floating in the beer Fro voice of the late Dick Curless, Ole Country One-Eye, singing about those Hainesville Woods, where there’s a torowl as we pass him and slip into the Nelson’s lobby, where moth-eaten heads ¡ª a wolf, a bear, an elk, and an ancient half-bald bison with a single glass eye ¡ª look at empty sofas, empty chairs, the elevator that hasn’t worked since 1994 or so, and the eistration desk (Morty Fine, the clerk, is in the office with his feet propped up on an e his nose) The lobby of the Nelson Hotel always smells of the river ¡ª it’s in the pores of the place ¡ª but this evening the smell is heavier than usual It’s a sed checks, deteriorating health, stolen office supplies, unpaid alimony, empty promises, skin tumors, lost ambition, abandoned sample cases filled with cheap novelties, dead hope, dead skin, and fallen arches This is the kind of place you don’t come to unless you’ve been here before and all your other options are pretty much foreclosed It’s a place where men who left their families two decades before now lie on narrow beds with pee-stained arettes The scuzzy old lounge (where scuzzy old Hoover Dalrymple once held court and knocked heads ht) has been closed by unanimous vote of the town council since early June, when Dale Gilbertson scandalized the local political elite by showing the strippers who billed the a synchronized cucue (FLPD caive hio next door to get a beer; it’s convenient You pay by the week at the Nelson You can keep a hot plate in your room, but only by permission and after the cord has been inspected You can die on a fixed income at the Nelson, and the last sound you hear could well be the creaking of bedsprings over your head as some other helpless old loser jacks off

Let us rise up the first flight, past the old canvas firehose in its glass box Turn right at the second-floor landing (past the pay phone with its yellowing OUT OF ORDER sign) and continue to rise When we reach the third floor, the s is joined by the s on someone’s hot plate (the cord duly approved either by Morty Fine or George S froh the keyhole (there have never been keycards at the Nelson and never will be), we’ll be in the presence of Andrew Railsback, seventy, balding, scrawny, good-humored He once sold vacuum cleaners for Electrolux and appliances for Sylvania, but those days are behind hiolden years

A candidate for Maxton’s, we ht think, but Andy Railsback knows that place, and places like it Not for hih, but he doesn’t want people telling hiet up, and when he can have a little nip of Early Times He has friends in Maxton’s, visits the, shallow, predatory eye of our pal Chipper He has thought on more than one such occasion that Mr Maxton looks like the sort of felloould happily turn the corpses of his graduates into soap if he thought he could turn a buck on it

No, for Andy Railsback, the third floor of the Nelson Hotel is good enough He has his hot plate; he has his bottle of hooch; he’s got four packs of Bicycles and plays big-picture solitaire on nights when the sand he hashe’ll invite Irving Throneberry in for a bowl and a chat Maybe afterward they’ll go next door to Lucky’s and grab a beer He checks the soup, sees it has attained a nice sirant steao ith soup He leaves the room to make his way upstairs and knock on Irv’s door, but what he sees in the hallway stops him cold

It’s an oldaway from him with suspicious quickness Beneath the hes are as white as a carp’s belly and marked with blue snarls of varicose veins On his left foot is a fuzzy black-and-yellow slipper His right foot is bare Although our new friend can’t tell for sure ¡ª not with the guy’s back to him ¡ª he doesn’t look like anyone Andy knows

Also, he’s trying doorknobs as he wends his way along the le hard, quick shake Like a turnkey Or a thief A fucking thief

Yeah Although the man is obviously old ¡ª older than Andy, it looks like ¡ª and dressed as if for bed, the idea of thievery resonates in Andy’sthat the fellow probably didn’t co intuition

Andy opens hislike Can I help you? or Looking for soes his uy It has to do with the fleet way the stranger scurries along as he tries the knobs, but that’s not all of it Not all of it by any er There are pockets in the geezer’s robe, Andy can see theht be a weapon in one of them Thieves don’t always have weapons, but

The old guy turns the corner and is gone Andy stands where he is, considering If he had a phone in his rooht call downstairs and alert Morty Fine, but he doesn’t So, what to do?

After a brief interior debate, he tiptoes down the hall to the corner and peeps around Here is a cul-de-sac with three doors: 312, 313, and, at the very end, 314, the only room in that little appendix which is currently occupied The , but ale Potter Andy has asked both Irv and Hoover Dalrymple about Potter, but Hoover doesn’t know jack-shit and Irv has learned only a little more

"You must," Andy objected ¡ª this conversation took place in late May or early June, around the tie downstairs went dark "I seen you in Lucky’s with him, havin’ a beer"

Irv had lifted one bushy eyebrow in that cynical way of his "Seen me havin’ a beer with him What are you?" he’d rasped "My fuckin’ wife?"

"I’ You drink a beer with a man, you have a little conversation ¡ª "

"Usually, ht a pitcher, and ot the dubious pleasure of listenin’ to myself think I say, ’What do you think about the Brewers this year?’ and he says, ’They’ll suck, saht on my rah-dio ¡ª ’ "

"That the way he said it? Rah-dio?"

"Well, it ain’t the way I say it, is it? You ever heard me say rah-dio? I say radio, same as any normal person You want to hear this or not?"

"Don’t sound like there’s ht, buddy He says, ’I can get the Cubs at night on h for ley with my dad when I was a kid’ So I found out he was froht to pop into Andy’sthief in the third-floor corridor had been Potter, but Mr George I-Keep-to-Myself Potter is a tall drink of water, ood head of salt-and-pepper hair Mr One-Slipper was shorter than that, hunched over like a toad (A poison toad, at that is the thought that immediately rises in Andy’sthief’s in Potter’s roo for a little stash Fifty or sixty rolled up in the toe of a sock, like I used to do Or stealing Potter’s radio His fucking rah-dio

Well, and as that to hiood ot back was an uncivil grunt Bupkes, in other words You saw hi alone, far side of the jukebox Andy guessed you could sit doith him and he’d split a pitcher with you ¡ª Irv’s little t¨ºte-¨¤-t¨&ordood was that without a little chin-jaw to go along with it? Why should he, Andrew Railsback, risk the wrath of soruive you a yes, no, or maybe?

Well

Because this is his hoht be, that’s why Because when you saw some crazy old one-slipper fuck in search of loose cash or the easily lifted rah-dio, you didn’t just turn your back and shuffle away Because the bad feeling he got frorandchildren would have said) was probably nothing but a case of the chickenshits Because ¡ª

Suddenly Andy Railsback has an intuition that, while not a direct hit, is at least adjacent to the truth Suppose it is a guy frouys from Maxton Elder Care? It’s not that far away, and he knows for a fact that froet mixed up in his (or her) head and wander off the reservation Under ordinary circu before getting this far don ¡ª kind of hard to le slipper ¡ª but this evening the fog has come in and the streets are all but deserted

Look at you, Andy berates hiot ten years on you and peanut butter for brains Wandered in here past the eodda a azine or a stroke book ¡ª and now he’s looking for his roooddamn corridor, no more idea of where he is than a squirrel on a freeway ra a beer next door (this, at least, turns out to be true) and left his door unlocked (this, we htened, Andy comes all the way around the corner and walks slowly toward the open door His heart is beating fast, because half his erous There was, after all, that bad feeling he got just frooes God help him, he does

"Mister?" he calls when he reaches the open door "Hey,room That’s Mr Potter’s roo, because the room is empty How is that possible?

Andy steps back and tries the knobs of 312 and 313 Both locked up tight, as he knew they would be With that ascertained, he steps into George Potter’s rooood look around ¡ª curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought hier than his, but otherwise not(they made places a man could stand up in back in the old days, you had to say thatin the ht table is a bottle of pills (these turn out to be an anti-depressant called Zoloft) and a single fraood whopping with the ugly stick, but Potter must see her differently He has, after all, put the picture in a place where it’s the first thing he looks at in the ht

"Potter?" Andy asks "Anyone? Hello?"

He is suddenly overco behind hirinning snarl that is half a cringe One hand comes up to shield his face from the blow he is suddenly certain will fallonly there’s no one there Is he lurking behind the corner at the end of this short addendu around that corner No way he could have gotten behind hi like so he’s being absurd, giving in to the ha time, but there’s no one here to see hi for hi, now yellowed by age and decades of cigar and cigarette smoke

The radio ¡ª oh, excuseon the win-dowsill, unmolested Damn fine one, too, a Bose, the kind Paul Harvey always talks about on his noon show

Beyond it, on the other side of the dirty glass, is the fire escape

Ah-hah! Andy thinks, and hurries across to theOne look at the turned thumb lock and his triumphant expression fades He peers out just the sa into the fog No blue robe, no scaly bald pate Of course not The knob shaker didn’t go out that way unless he had soic trick to move the ’s inside thu

Andy turns, stands where he is a , then drops to his knees and looks under the bed What he sees is an old tin ashtray with an unopened pack of Pall Malls and a Kingsland Old-Ti else except dust kittens He puts his hand on the coverlet preparatory to standing up, and his eyes fix on the closet door It’s standing ajar

"There," Andy breathes, alets up and crosses to the closet door The fogsaid, but that is certainly how Andy Railsbackhard again, hard enough to start the pro The ic demands it Intuition screams it And if the doorknob shaker’s just a confused old soul andered into the Nelson Hotel out of the fog, why hasn’t he spoken to Andy? Why has he concealed himself ? Because he may be old but he’s not confused, that’s why No more confused than Andy is hi thief, and he’s in the closet He’sa knife that he has taken froer that he’s unwound and turned into a weapon Maybe he’s just standing there in the dark, eyes wide, fingers hooked into claws Andy no longer cares You can scare him, you bet ¡ª he’s a retired salesh tension on top of fright you turn it into anger, saht now Andy is ers around the cool glass knob of the closet door He squeezes down on it He takes one breatha secondsteeling hirandkids would sayone ood luck, and