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Raindrops as plump as chandelier crystals rapped the limo and stymied the windshield wipers until Mrs Fischer turned thehest speed Soon the droplets diminished to the size of pearls, but the fireworks continued for several minutes and with uncommon violence

When at last the heavens went dark and quiet, when the stor to drown us, Mrs Fischer said, "Quite a display I hope it didn’t "

I half knehat she intended to convey with those words "I hope it didn’t , either, ma’am"

"You still have a fix on him, Oddie?"

"The cowboy Yes,and thunder had rattled us back into the bleakwith Sandy and Chet at the cash register in Ernestine’s We rode in silence, brooding

Mr Hitchcock kept ht, the way that he had slyly inserted himself into one scene in each of his movies I returned, as well, to consideration of rats and coyotes, and to those lines from Eliot Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future / And time future contained in time past I had read the poet’s Four Quartets at least a hundred tie and concepts But I suspected that these lines kept running through my mind not because of what they meant within the poe about some threat that I intuited but could not consciously define

Strange how the deepest part of us isn’t able to speak more clearly to the part of us that lives only here in the shallows of the world The body is entirely physical, theboth the dense cohostly software running in it But the deepest part of us, the soul, is not physical to any extent whatsoever Yet the material body and the immaterial soul are inextricably linked this side of death and, so theologians tell us, on the Other Side, as well On the Other Side, body and soul are supposed to function in perfect haruess the problerace back in the day, the body and soul becahways and bridges and rivers, but each now speaking a different language froh life successfully, body and soul must translate each other correctlyBarstow, I couldn’t quite interpret that warning fro the rainswept interstate,off the pavement and into a stand of cactuses as the laws of physics would seem to have required, Mrs Fischer said, "Wherever it is these child-stealers are holed up, you can’t go in after them with just that pistol or either of the other two I have with ot to weaponize yourself better than that"

"I don’t uns, ma’auess it doesn’t"

"You do what you have to do That’s who you seem to be to me, anyway You’re one who does what he has to do"

"Maybe that’s not alhat I should do"

"Don’t double-think yourself so ood dinner of properly fried food, and if you want to live long enough to have another one, you’ve got to weaponize properly"

The rain fell so hard that, in the headlights, the entire world seeuely phosphorescent landscape shih every acre of ita drain into which to pour itself

"Ma’auns is back in Barstow And they don’t just let you put your money down and walk out ten minutes later with a bazooka or whatever it is you think I need There are waiting periods, police checks, all that"

"That’s certainly true in Barstow and in Vegas, but there’s a lot of territory between the two"

"A lot of mostly really empty territory"

"Not as empty as you think, sweetie And so periods and the like What we need to do at this particular time in this particular place is take a side trip to Mazie’s and get what you need"

"Mazie’s? What is Mazie’s?" I asked with some doubt and a little suspicion

"It’s not a whorehouse, though it ht sound like one," Mrs Fischer said "Mazie and her sons, Tracker and Leander, do a bit of this and that, and they do it all well"

"How long a side trip?"

"Not long at all Once we leave the interstate, the first road is paved but the second is just gravel, and the third is all natural shale But none of it’s bad road, and it all leads up into the hills, not into the flats, so the chances we’ll be caught by a flash flood are so small they don’t worry me at all"

"How small?" I asked

"Tiny, really"

"How tiny?"

"Infinitesiet much annual rainfall, but what it does receive tends to come all at once A lot of terrific Japanese poets have written uncountable haiku about the silvery delicacy of the rain and about how it vanishes so elegantly into thepond, rain like a maiden’s tears, but not a line of any of them was appropriate to this insane storm This was more of a Russian rain, in particular adown like ten thousand hammers on ten thousand anvils in the People’s Foundry of the Revolution

Mrs Fischer said, "Mazie’s exit is about two n didn’t say anything about Mazie Instead, it warned ABANDONED ROADWAY / NO OUTLET

When I noted this discrepancy bethat Mrs Fischer had promised and what the reality proved to be, she reached out to patonly with her left, though in her defense, I must admit that she had slowed to sixty for the exit

The two-lane paved road had been built in an age ere still going to ith European nations, and it consisted of o far before it gave way to the gravel road, which was e was so intense that I had to lean forward and squint to see the track, which seee

After we had gone no hts flared off a sign with reflective yellow letters that announced DANGER / STAY OUT / ARTILLERY RANGE / MILITARY VEHICLES ONLY

When I questioned the wisdo, Mrs Fischer said, "Oh, that’s nothing, dear"

"It seereed

"It’s not official Mazie and Tracker put that up theo, to scare people off"

"What kind of people would want to coodforsaken place anyway?"

"The kind you want to scare off"

By the angle of our ascent, I kneere driving into low hills, although in this darkness and downpour, I couldn’t see well enough to confirave way to a trail of broken shale, though I couldn’t feel any difference in the ride

Shale is brittle and over the ments can be sharp, which is why I said, "Hope we don’t have a flat tire out here"

"It isn’t possible, child"

"No disrespect, ma’am, but of course it’s possible Why wouldn’t it be possible?"

She glanced at me and winked "One-Ear Bob"

"What--you have so?"

"So," Mrs Fischer confirmed