Page 27 (1/2)

"They drink at some other joint"

"Because the tavern is a faht And alill be"

"Listen, Jackie--"

"I hate ‘listen, Jackie’ It alwaysto have to take off tomorrow, too"

"I’m screwed"

"No, you’re just melodramatic"

"You don’t sound that sick"

"It’s not a head cold It’s a stout, let me listen"

"Suddenly you’re a hardass"

"It doesn’t look right, the oorking the taps too ht crowd by hihtened on the cell phone "I drove past earlier His car was parked out front"

"It’s a day off for Steve, reet a temp to fill your shift, Steve ca out driving around when you’re sick?"

"I was going to a doctor’s appointive you six hours?"

"He had stuff to do before and after"

Like kill a redhead before, nail Billy’s hand to a floor after

"What did the doctor say?" Jackie asked

"It’s a virus"

"That’s what they always say when they don’t knohat the hell it really is"

"No, I think it’s really a forty-eight-hour virus"

"As if a virus knows froo in with a third eye growing out of your forehead, they’ll say it’s a virus"

"Sorry about this, Jackie"

"I’ll survive It’s just the tavern business, after all It’s not war"

Pressing END to terminate the call, Billy Wiles felt very much at war

On a kitchen counter lay Lanny Olsen’s wallet, car keys, pocket change, cell phone, and 9-ht

Billy took the wallet When he left, he would also take the cell phone, the pistol, and the Wilson Combat holster

From the items in the bread drawer, he selected half a loaf of whole wheat in a tie-top plastic bag

Outside, standing at the eastern end of the porch, he threw the slices of bread onto the lawn Thebirds would feast

In the house once un case with glass doors stood in the study In drawers under the doors, Lanny kept boxes of ammunition, four-inch aerosol cans of chemical Mace, and a spare police utility belt

On the belt were pouches for backup azines, a Mace holder, a Taser sleeve, a handcuff case, a key holder, a pen holder, and a holster It was all ready to go

Froazine He also took the handcuffs, a can of Mace, and the Taser He put those iteed presences, perhaps bats feeding on , swooped low through the yard, past Billy, and climbed When he followed the sound of what he could not see, his gaze rose to the thinnest silver shaving of a newits est, he had not noticed this fragile crescent until now Not surprising Since nightfall, he’d had little tirimly earthbound

Ralph Cottle, lior mortis, wrapped in a blanket because no plastic drop cloth could be found, held in a bundle by Lanny’s entire collection of neckties--three--did not drag easily across the sloped yard to the brush line

Cottle had said that he was nobody’s hero And certainly he had died a coward’s death

He had wanted to live even his shabby existence because--What else is there?--he could not iht be his to strive for, or to accept

In the moment when the blade slipped between his ribs and stopped his heart, he would have realized that while life could be evaded, death could not Billy felt a certain solemn sympathy for even this man, whose despair had been deeper than Billy’s and whose resources had been shallower And so when the brush and bra the body too difficult, he picked it up and hauled it across his shoulder, without revulsion or coered but didn’t collapse

He had returned ain, the lid from the redwood frame The open vent waited

Cottle had said there wasn’t one world but a billion, that his was different from Billy’s Whether that had been true or not, here their worlds became one The bundled body dropped And hit And tumbled And dropped Into the dark, the vacant into the vacant

When silence endured, suggesting that the skeptic had reached his deep rest with the good son and the unknooht to be sure the holes were aligned, and screwed it down once ain He suspected, however, that he would have no choice but to return

Driving away froo Eventually he must confront Steve Zillis, but not at once, not yet First he needed to prepare hione to churches to prepare themselves spiritually, intellectually, eht, to the humility that the shadow of the redeemer pressed upon theht, offering unconditional sanctuary

Tiht re to posted hours and locked their doors long before ht

Some withheld perpetual sanctuary because of the costs of heat and electricity Budgets truued by vandals with cans of spray paint and by the faithless who, in aspirit, caes of rampant hatred, such intolerance had been , and with the cultivation of remorse Now the clerical consensus was that locks and alarms worked better than the former, softer re their doors and finding only sanctuary by prior appointment, Billy here most modern men in need of a haven for conteht hours: to a truck stop