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But even there, even after death, the bodies seereasy stains-volatile fatty acids leaching out of tissue as it liquefied-pooled around the bodies, just as the sweat pooled and soaked my shirt One body, which Miranda and I had laid in the sun at the edge of the clearing just two days before, had actually burst like a balloon, the gases in its abdoer contain the pressure What had been a ed entrails I stared In all these years of research experiments, I’d never seen a body pop Scientifically, it was fascinating; e that ere gripped by a torrid plague of biblical proportions I took a few photographs to document the event-without them I wasn’t sure anyone would believe my description-and then fled for the shaded, air-conditioned corridors beneath Neyland Stadium

I had been wishing for a serious rain, to clear the air and cool the blasted earth By ri, when I drove horound was still parched, and I decided it was just heat lightning toying with my hopes

I rong By the time Ioaks in the front yard hipping around like palm trees in a hurricane The sky turned purple, then black, in alit the world, followed by the tearing crack of thunder, and sheets of rain-torrential, horizontal rain-lashed the west-facing s of my house

Often I liked to sit out onthunderstorh, when I stepped out the door, a soaking mist-rain shredded but not stopped by the wireinside for protection and dry clothes

One of my favorite features of the house was the bank of s lining the all of the living rooh to read in until after eight Tonight, seven o’clock was dark as , which lit the rooe onto my retinas Reflexively, ever since childhood, I’d been in the habit of counting the seconds between the lightning’s flash and the thunder’s boom: “one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi…” If I got to “five Mississippi” before the thunder rolled overwas a ’s storh “one Mississippi”; soh the “one”

Then caht, accompanied by a boom so loud, that I was sure the house itself had been hit dead on When my vision returned, I saw a brief shower of sparks from a utility pole out by the street, and I knew that part of the boom was the sound of the electrical transforlanced at the face of one dark I figured it ht be a while before the power came back on, so I felt erator, and fished around until I felt the box of wooden one to the bedroohtstand instead, but the idea of the flashlight beam, harsh and impersonal, made me choose the matches They were the old-fashioned strike-anywhere kind-the kind you can strike on a stone fireplace, or a zipper, or even with your thu and dexterous I’d always preferred the to choose where to strike them, maybe, or liked the look of the redharder and harder to find this sort these days The grocery store had stopped carrying them; the only place I knehere to buy them anymore was Parker Brothers, an old-style hardware store run by old-fashioned guys-guys likeof careening through freeway traffic at ninetyin and out with a foot of clearance between their bu as risky as strike a wooden match on a fireplace brick

I felt lass chiri the chimney free of the metal clips that held it in place, I set it on the mantel beside the base, then slid open the matchbox and rehtly against the surface of a brick above the ed the ave off a s flower of yellow and blue Once the flame shrank to a small teardrop of yellow, I touched it to the lamp’s wick, which took the flame and amplified it

I tucked the box of led the lamp’s chimney back into position and lifted the la it aloft before e, actually, or the Statue of Paranoia-I made my way back to the kitchen and set the lamp on the table The kitchen had always felt safer, so than any other rooht even the kitchen seemed perilous

Leaves clawed and slapped at the s like hands-like Garland Haain Another flash split the darkness, and for a blindingrain and shuddering hedge Then the night went black again, and the afteriure loohostly shape in white on a field of black, the edges fringed by the bleached-bone fingers of tree branches When the afterie faded and e reflected in the kitchen , the oil la ominous shadows in the hollows of my eye sockets I did not look like someone I’d want to meet in a dark alley

I sat down at the table, close to the laled my head to dispel the shadows around one, I turned aze to the lamp itself Its cotton wick nestled just below a slit in a sonal knob extended fro the knob I could roll the wick up or doith gears that were hidden within the doradually disappear, like sand edging doard into the neck of an hourglass as tie threatened to vanish through the slass chi the charred edge of woven cotton I twisted the knob in the other direction, and the wick slowly rose, the flae as sharp and solid as the edge of a fullas nebulous as burning oil can look so solid? Why isn’t it ragged and flickering, like the flames of a fireplace or calow? And why can’t ed, anymore?

I lifted the oil lamp by its narrow neck, where the lass base Halfway up the base, at its widest part, oil sloshed within the clear container The wick-a flat ribbon of woven white cotton-undulated within the liquid, like a tapeworm preserved in alcohol The larasp, and I forced rip, lest it snap in lass base and its fla onto the kitchen’s tile floor I ht, like so each outside door to be sure it was dead-bolted Then I went into ainst the headboard I set the oil la its useless electric cohtstand drawer and took out the handgun Steve Morgan had loan

ed me I studied it-the tiny blue-black pyrarip, the matter-of-fact words and numbers etched into the barrel, the small, precise button of the safety, which I clicked back and forth, off and on, in a hypnotic pattern that was nearly as regular as the ticking of a clock

I told tih the , gradually erasing the reflection of the la it with the shapes of raindrops and bits of shredded leaves on the outside of the panes