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She pondered this "Perhaps they did not truly believe," she suggested

"Well," I said, "they do now"

We left the ce devils or devil raisers The bone yard was on the northeast edge of Griggstown, and the road which led to the interior of the country began in the center of town and cut northwest fro the top of the city The rain lasted long enough to wash most of the h to the bone I walked along shivering, and Plum ’s teeth chattered in the chill air One of those hidden blessings – the cold and wet kept us froh had no formal name It wasn’t a forstohich had occurred during the last ten years or so I couldn’t iine why it had bothered It was a suburb, and there is a saraphical distinctions It could have been a suburb of London or Rio de Janeiro It was distinguished from the Eastern European suburbs in that its houses were all painted in pastels, here a pale green one, there a pale blue one, here a pink one, there a yellow one Behind the Curtain all the houses are gray, that very gray used for the interior of every apart in Manhattan But here all the little boxes were the color of infant apparel, and all the little boxes wereand spindly tree in front, and a lawn of coarse-bladed grass, and an attached garage, and a car Every once in awhile ould see a car that wasn’t a Volkswagen

The car we stole was a Volkswagen I could have saved a lot of ti the first car we came to, but at the time I hadn’t yet decided on auto theft It wasn’t that it hadn’t occurred to s stood, ere just a couple of nuts out for a walk in the ht We were both of us under house arrest, but house arrest didn’t seestown I was also supposed to be dead, so they had probably left off looking fora car would just be asking for trouble At least it seemed that way at the tiuan talking in that irls talk when they are about to fall asleep on their feet We cae and the other parked on the street, and I took it as a sign from Providence The ht miss the one I took, but he would not be utterly discommoded by its absence

It was locked I took out the Swiss Army pocketknife, examined the various blades, closed thee of the closed knife The glass starred I hit it again and it shattered, and I reached in and opened the door and tucked Plum inside and climbed in after her I located the screwdriver blade and loosened the screws on the ignition plate, and I went around back and opened the engine compartment and found a wire to yank I picked one that looked uni to do with the directionals At least I think it did, because they didn’t work and everything else seenition terain I started the car, and Pluo on in the house to which the car belonged They didn’t, and I drove away It took a fewof the car But I had driven VWs before, and there was no one around to coears or oversteered

When I had the car e eyes were soreen and sometimes in-between Her face was dusted with freckles across the bridge of the nose and high on the cheekbones Her face was longish, the features sharply drawn, the chin strong, the forehead broad, the mouth full Her hair was almost blond and almost kinky and not quite either Like the car, she took a little getting used to

I said, "Last chance, Plum"

"No"

"You sure?"

"Yes I can help you, you know You are a stranger in my land, Evan You do not know the custon to you My assistance will smooth the way for you"

"I’stoould not be safe forforyou escape fro house arrest Or for ain, and she was asleep

It had never occurred to h the suburbs I had et her back to her house, and it was then that she insisted on co with e and her sex and the fact that Griggstoas her hoht not find it easy to return to it

None of these argu wholeheartedly She admitted that she was fifteen and festown than to get back into it But she went on to insist that it would be less dangerous for her to costoasn’t much of a ho in it "I’m neither white nor black," she said "I’ives me a funny look I make people nervous White or black, I make them nervous Even the people in the MMM They insist it’s perfectly all right for the races to interood as anyone else, but they don’t like to look at o?"

"I don’t know Once I wanted to go to Capetown There are ht I would go there and be one of them, but they seem to have the same problem, only it’s worse for them because the whole country is so involved with race Perhaps you will take me back to America"

I wasn’t sure that was the answer, but neither was sending her hoain And I couldn’t really see hoould be thatWe would just drive up into the interior of Modonoland far enough to establish that Bowman and Knanda Ndoro ith their ancestors If there was any sign that Ndoro’s treasure still existed, maybe ould have a shot at it If not, ould find a border and get over it and find civilization and think of soo next There would be a certain amount of adventure, but that e were all here for But there shouldn’t be er

Ha

Chalk it up to shock – the burial bit, the madmen with their cattle bones, the rain and the chill Or write it off as the system’s tolerance for terror; after all the various anxieties I had suffered in the past few hours, nothing as far away as the remote Modonoland hinterlands held any fear for me Besides, I was the Corpse That Walked You can’t kill a dead man, so as there for eohway running northwest out of the city I turned obliquely into it and held the car at a steady eighty kilometers an hour Alave way to stretches of open farain I hoped I hadn’t ripped out the wiper syste hypnotically back and forth They didn’t keep the windshield clean, but they did their best

Plu noises She shifted in her seat and wound up with her head against my shoulder, her little body curled up beside er and more completely innocent than it did when she ake I put a paternal arht of Kitty I removed the ar The rain stopped again, and shortly thereafter the sky lightened up and dawn broke rather abruptly I thought about food At first I just sort of thought about it, as one will, and then it began to becoht about the last meal I had eaten, and calculated the number of hours that had elapsed since then, and reredients of that last an to consider all of the meals I had eaten over the course of my life, and remembered what one after another of them had tasted like, the appearance and aroht of the cheese and the ham sandhich I had abandoned in the coffin I cursedto the grave and digging theain I was not wholly irrational – I knew that this was absurd, but I was driving on a dull road with nothing to do but think, and hts would concern food, since that hat it wanted, and there didn’t see I could do about it