Outside waited Kurt’s version of man’s best friend (he hated dogs; they made him sneeze and left odd things in the yard for him to step in). It was a blue-white ’64 Fairlane two-door. The Ford was the one possession he treated with respect, always tuned and well maintained, always shining. It had long since achieved bonafide antique status; he got offers for it all the time, some preposterously high, but the thought of selling it seemed obscene, like selling part of himself. It hummed, glittering, as he sped down 154. First thing’s first, he thought. He pulled into the local Jiffy-Stop, favoring it over the town High’s and 7-Eleven because the Jiffy offered free coffee to police officers. (Judging by the taste, however, sometimes even this price was no bargain.) Immediately he bought two packs of Marlboro Box and breakfast, a microwaved burrito. He frowned lighting up, even as the nicotine rushed happily to his brain. If he had three wishes, one would be to quit. Hypnosis was a farce, sixty bucks per session to wonder how long he could contain laughter. Once he’d tried those smoking suppressant tablets, but they only helped because it was impossible to smoke and throw up at the same time. He’d also gone through every brand of water filter; they hadn’t helped him quit smoking, but they sure came in handy when he was low on golf tees. He’d tried virtually everything, every fad, every gimmick, and after so many years now and two packs a day, he could admit the reality of his addiction. He could no more quit smoking than quit pissing. He’d worry about payback when the time came.

  As Kurt headed back to the Ford, Glen Rodz’s blue-and-mud Pinto wheeled in to the other end of the parking lot. Glen was a human stick, blackish-brown hair always too long, permanent dark circles under his eyes, and so thin as to almost be alarming. Five or six years of nightshifts as Belleau Wood’s security guard had rewarded Glen with a starved physique and the skin tone of a peeled potato. He and Glen had been close friends for about twenty years.

  Kurt waved him over to the Ford.

  “Hey, Kurt,” Glen greeted, fine hair falling into his eyes. “How’s my favorite town clown?”

  “Great, but I’m still trying to figure out who swiped my rubber nose… Say, I didn’t get a chance to talk to you last night at work, but I guess you’re wondering who chopped your chain.”

  “Damn right. Willard went on the rampage when I told him about it; he goes nuts whenever someone’s been trespassing. Do you know who did it?”

  “I’m positive it was Stokes. I caught him on your property late yesterday afternoon.”

  Glen swore. “It figures. He’s always coming out there at night to poach deer, goddamn redneck buttocks. What did he need so bad that he had to go and cut my chain?”

  Kurt chuckled. “He and a lady friend decided to check out one of those old talc mines. A little henry job with a new twist.”

  “Must’ve found a new wood pile. Who’s he running around with this week?”

  “What’s-her-tits, that girl from the Anvil. Joanne Sulley.”

  “Oh,” Glen said, pulling the acknowledgment. “Now I understand. What else can you expect from a girl whose only goal in life is to suck tennis balls through a garden hose. I’d like to give her a sewer pipe to suck on, the fickle shit. She blows every guy in this town but me.”

  “And me,” Kurt added, “though I think I’d sooner put my junk in a Le Chef… Come on, let’s go shoot some pool at Hillside.”

  Glen fidgeted, as if off guard. “Like to, but I gotta go home and get some sleep. You forget, I’ve been working all night.”

  Past his friend’s shoulder, Kurt noticed someone sitting in the passenger side of Glen’s Pinto. He didn’t recognize the figure, couldn’t even make out any details; he was only sure that the person was female. This needled Kurt’s curiosity; Glen didn’t exactly have girls chasing him down the street, and when he did manage to find a date, Kurt was always the first to know. “Hey,” Kurt said, “you keeping secrets? Who’s the chick?”

  Glen’s expression hardened. “Oh, her? Just someone I picked up, no big thing… If you got time before the end of your shift tonight, stop by Belleau Wood.”

  “Yeah, I will.”

  Kurt watched Glen hurry into the store, then glanced again to the Pinto. Eventually he shrugged and got back into the Ford. Now that was odd. Why doesn’t he want me to know who the girl is? he thought. Is he embarrassed? Maybe that’s it, maybe she’s got a face like the backside of a baboon, and he doesn’t want to be seen with her.

  Kurt let it go; Glen’s romantic pursuits were his own concern, but Kurt still somehow felt cheated. The Jiffy-Stop behind him, he headed north up the Route, letting the fresh air pour over his face. But scarcely out of the bend, he made out a second, less pleasant, reminder of spring, a field day for slaughter. He couldn’t help but notice all the dead animals in the road. It happened this way every spring; animals lay heaped and crushed along the shoulder and at the yellow line, heads flattened, spines snapped, bodies squashed to almost comedic misshape. Squirrels, rabbits, dogs, but mostly possums, which Kurt thought of as not only the ugliest creatures on earth, but also the least intelligent. The fat-bodied things would waddle into the road as they pleased, oblivious to any oncoming car. At night they would just stand there staring into the headlights, too stupid to even consider getting out of the way. Then, thud, crunch, and splat, another candidate for possum heaven. Kurt had seen so many mangled, rotting possums that he now harbored a deep, psychological aversion to the things. He would have to call animal disposal at first opportunity. Now there’s a good job, he thought.

  Annapolis seemed as good a place as any to kill time, but just as he began to open up on 154, the Stokes house appeared at the height of the next bend. Lenny’s big ’66 Chevelle wasn’t there. Aw, why not? he thought. He hadn’t seen Vicky in weeks. And since Lenny wasn’t here… He parked in the driveway and got out.

  Stokes’s house always seemed odd to him, something about the design and the way the trees kept it out of the sun. It was a small house, but so narrow that it appeared taller than it should, as if it had once been a normal house compressed at both sides. Slim, clean, white shutters and trim made the overall dull green paint seem duller and the small, queer windows darker. The word lonely came to mind—the house was lonely, sitting there tall and strange on its own little lot, dwarfed by the Nordman firs and scrub pines of the forest wall beyond.

  He mounted the front porch, paused a second, then knocked on the door. A dangling, uncomfortable moment passed, a feeling that he shouldn’t be here, but then a slice of Vicky’s face appeared when she opened the door a crack. “Kurt,” she said.

  “Hi. Haven’t seen you in awhile, so I thought I’d stop by.”

  She looked at him with one eye through the gap; then her lips turned to a half smile. She took off the chain and showed him into the living room, which was dark in the shaded daylight and very quiet. “Lenny’d have a fit if he knew you were here,” she said. “You and him never did see eye to eye, I guess.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. Had a bit of a run-in with him yesterday, as a matter of fact.”

  Vicky closed the door behind her, the light smile turning higher. “You know, last night he actually suspected that you and I were having an affair.”

  Baby, don’t I wish. He sat down lazily on the sofa. She wasn’t stupid; she must’ve known that Lenny was seeing other women, but he decided it best not to relate to her the details of yesterday’s fanfare at the mine. Instead, he began with an original, deeply introspective question. “So how have you been?”

  “Okay… Brutus died, though.”

  Then it hit him why the place was so quiet and still. The dog was gone, and he hated to think of the blow it must’ve been to her. For most of the years he had known her, Vicky and the big, droopy collie had been inseparable. The dog’s death came as a true shock. “Jesus, Vicky. I’m sorry.”

  “Brutus was old,” she said. “You know that. I’m lucky to have had him this long. No dog lives forever.” She squinted at the wall, lightly teething her lower lip. “I buried him in the backyard.” He knew how terrible she must feel; she was just trying not to show it. “Let me get us something to drink,” she said, scooting away.

  He took a few seconds then to think back, unfocused memories began to shift. As with Glen, he and Vicky had been friends since elementary school, best friends for a considerable segment of that time. But Kurt, more than anything else in the world, had always wanted it, and still wanted it, to be more than that, not friends but lovers. It never happened, though, and it obviously never would as long as she was married to Stokes. His fondness for her was more than just rampant fascination, more than a particularly insistent crush. To this day he would go out with other girls and it was never any good because in every case he wished, even pretended, that the other girl was Vicky. A quirk of repression perhaps, or a defect on his part, but somehow the friendship thing had obstructed the truth—that for all these years and even now he loved her, but had never known how to tell her. In their friendship, they’d come no closer than dancers.

  After high school, the friendship began to fog. Kurt went on to college for an Associates degree in law enforcement, while Vicky lapsed slowly but certainly into the wrong crowd, the hard-knocking, hard-drinking T-ville crowd. Stokes’s crowd. A year and a half ago she’d become Stokes’s wife, and Kurt was lost to all the things he’d never said.

  His eyes were bright and as she came back from the kitchen with two bottles of beer, he could’ve melted. She was the sweetest, cutest, prettiest girl he’d ever known. That was the word. Not sultry, and not beautiful, but pretty. Even dressed as she was now, in old jeans and a dingy white blouse, he could feel that prettiness she projected to him so completely. She was slender and compact. Trim, long legs. Sleek curves of her hips and waist subtle yet striking. Satin blond hair shined clean and mysteriously, perfectly female. When she looked at him with her big, luminous gray eyes, he felt helpless.

  “I know it’s a little early for alcohol, but what’s the harm? Besides, it’s all I’ve got at the moment.”

  He wondered at the marvel of her breasts, her body, and her soul, the feminine mystery spanning further, touching him like a ray of sun.

  “Hey, Morris, remember me?” She waved her hand across his eyes, smile turning crooked. “Or have I lost you to the twilight zone?”

  “Huh?”

  “You look spaced.”

  “Oh, yeah. I was just thinking.”

  Now the smile grew blatant. She handed him the beer, then sat down and reached for her cigarettes without taking her eyes off him. “Thinking about what?”

  About how much I love you and what I wouldn’t do for you and all that and, Jesus Christ, Vicky, why did you have to ruin everything by marrying that grimy, ass-faced son of a bitch? “Just things. Like the time when we were real little and we went on a field trip to Hershey Park. Remember that? I made you get on the roller coaster with me and you screamed and held onto me for dear life, and then threw up all over the both of us.”

  “Me!” she nearly shouted. “What a liar! You’re the one who screamed and cried and upchucked!”

  Kurt sat back in the cushions and laughed. “I know. I just wanted to see if you remembered.”

  “How could I forget that? It’s the only time in my life I’ve had to wear somebody’s breakfast. And, remember? Glen was laughing so much you punched him in the nose.”

  “Well, I didn’t see anything funny about it,” he said, the recollection sharpening. “Speaking of Glen, I just saw him a few minutes ago. Want to hear something strange? He was with a girl, and he didn’t want to tell me who she was.”

  “Now that is strange. I don’t think I’ve seen him with a girl more than two or three times in my whole life.”

  “Yeah, Glen never was much of a ladies’ man. I’m beginning to wonder how much he had to pay her.”

  “I don’t think he’s that hard up, a little weird maybe, but that’s all. I’m sure the right girl will come along for him one day. Glen’s all right, I just think that maybe all that night work has bent him a bit. Sometimes he comes into the Anvil for a beer looking like the walking dead. A normal job with normal hours would work wonders for him.”

  “That’s what I keep telling him,” Kurt said. He guzzled down a third of his beer, belly shriveling. Nothing like a cold tall one first thing in the morning. “Chief Bard offered him the morning shift on the police department a couple of times. Told me he just didn’t want to be a cop. I guess that Willard guy pays him well.”

  “Who?”

  “Charles Willard, the guy who owns Belleau Wood. Glen tells me he’s really touchy about trespassers on his land. Why I don’t know. There’s nothing out there but woods and hills and a couple of wasted mines. Must be pretty boring for Glen to drive around there all night long.”

  “Pretty spooky, too.”

  They both lit cigarettes, partners in habituation. Kurt swigged more of his beer, ashamed to be drinking this early. Next I’ll be carrying a flask, he thought. Vicky’s eyes seemed to lose some of their shine. “To get on to more interesting things,” she said, “who was Lenny with?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said you saw him yesterday. He told me he was hunting all day, but you and I both know he only hunts beaver before dark, if you get my meaning. I don’t even have to wonder if he’s cheating on me; the problem is guessing who. So, out with it. Who?”

  “Joanne Sulley,” he confessed, because there was no way around it except to lie.

  Vicky seemed nauseated at the name. “Of all the whores and tramps at the Anvil, she’s positively the worst. Some of the stuff I’ve heard about her—”

  “I’m sure I’ve gotten all the same stories.”

  “And it figures Lenny would go for her. The kinkier the better.”

  Kurt could see that the conversation was turning rapidly sour. It would be better just to leave. He cringed for a polite way to suggest the most obvious solution to her marital problems—to divorce Stokes, or to just pack up and walk out. He couldn’t guess why she hadn’t done it months ago, and he didn’t dare bring up the other matter—the beatings. All he could hope for was that one day she would leave him.

  “I better take off,” he said, and stood up. “Got some errands to run.”

  She led him to the front door, looked at him in a way that might have been forlorn. “Thanks for stopping by, Kurt. Come by the Anvil some time for a beer.”

  “Sure will,” and just as he had opened the door, Vicky’s face seemed to go flat with dread. Kurt turned. Lenny Stokes came through the doorway, looking Kurt straight in the eye.

  “What the fuck are you doin’ here?” Stokes said.

  “Just saying hello to your wife.”

  “Yeah, well now you can say good-bye to my wife, ’cause I don’t want you in my house, I don’t want you near my house.” Stokes turned his poison glare to Vicky. “If I evah catch you lettin’ this puss in here again, I’ll—”

  “I’m going, Stokes,” Kurt said. “You don’t have to make a federal case out of it.”

  “No, I don’t guess I do, so get in your fuckin’ jalopy and get the fuck out. Hell of a thing to come home and find Porky Pig parked in my driveway.”

  “Lenny!” Vicky snapped.

  “Shut up,” Stokes said back to her. Then, to Kurt, “Instead of sittin’ here makin’ time with my wife and drinkin’ my beer, how come you ain’t up at Beall Cemetery with the rest of the pigs?”

  “What’s going on at Beall?”

  “Bunch of cops up there right now, your bunk buddy Higgins, and that fat no-balls walking feedbag Bard, county fuzz, too. So get your police ass out of here and go earn your pay.”

  Kurt stepped out to the porch and turned to say good-bye to Vicky, but the door had already slammed shut. He got in the Ford and backed out, annoyed with himself for coming here in the first place, causing a scene. Hillbilly scroat, he thought. One hand on the wheel, he opened the already cold burrito and took a bite, which he promptly spat out. He let the burrito fall out the window and was delighted when he glanced in the rearview and saw the car behind him run over it. But what had Stokes been babbling about? He hadn’t heard of any other deaths in the area, and he couldn’t imagine what the county police would be doing at Beall.

  Another mile north on the Route, and he saw what Stokes had meant. Parked on the left-hand shoulder, all in a line, were five police cruisers, four of them P.G. County cars, and the mud-sprayed town cruiser. There was another car there too, Chief Bard’s mahogany-brown Thunderbird. A cluster of uniforms stood round the spiked, black-iron fence which encompassed the small cemetery. Kurt parked the Ford behind the town squad car and got out just in time to see the four county officers part. Chief Bard and Mark Higgins, the morning-shift cop, stood facing each other at the gate. As the departing county men made their way back to their cruisers, Kurt was able to pick up random bits of talk. “What in blue blazes would anyone—” ”—weirdest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.” “No tire tracks, though, Frank, so without a vehicle, how—” ”—the hell do you expect out here in the goddamned boonies?” The car doors slammed in a barrage, engines started, and the four cruisers pulled off the shoulder one at a time and drove away.

  Kurt didn’t bother trying to figure it out; he couldn’t even imagine. Chief Bard and Mark Higgins turned their heads quickly when Kurt’s own car door slammed. Their faces seemed pinched together, like calculative rodents, yet their eyes were wide and dull. Was it just fatigue? Or shock? Kurt had never seen the two men look so strange.