With his foot he lifted the canvas a little—nothing under it—dried-out flattened-down grass, dead.

  I was just a witness.

  So he got back in the car and turned it around again, just as he’d turned it around before, the same maneuver, the same anxiety that he not back into one of the trees, three separate awkward maneuvers it took him to turn that damn car around, except this time the girl was not watching him and he had not the terror, the sick dissolving terror, of knowing how she watched him calmly and how he was going to drive away while she still watched him, calmly, and he would even wave to her and she would even wave back.…

  Before dark, just before dark—and he was back at the paved road, a two-lane road running along the Black Fox River, so now he was safe, he was headed back down. He turned the lights on—fumbling for the knob—and up ahead he saw another vehicle, he saw its red tail lights— His first instinct was fear, but no, no, his real emotion was relief, that someone else was driving down from the mountains and he might be able to follow, keeping the tail lights in view.…Coming around a curve he saw a motorcyclist ahead, the man’s white helmet glowing, glaring in the headlights, for now it was suddenly dark: it had happened suddenly. The motorcyclist was driving slowly, maybe five miles an hour, and Jules would have to pass him. He saw that it was a highway patrolman—a man in a uniform— and Jules passed him carefully, in no hurry, how he feared the police! thinking suddenly that he did not own the car and could not explain it and could not explain himself oh Christ just let me get by him…but the patrolman stared at him, and made that dread motion with his gloved hand that meant Pull over, pull over ahead.…

  Jules could not believe it.

  His breath went ragged, in one instant. This could not be happening. It could not. It could not be happening. Yet he saw very clearly the man’s raised hand, he saw the man move gracefully on the motorcycle, speeding up to overtake Jules.…

  He wondered: Should he drive out of here?

  He wondered: Was there a gun somewhere…?

  But quietly, sanely, he braked to a stop at once, he knew better than to fight, he had done nothing wrong, had broken no laws, he was innocent and had no reason to feel so guilty, so sickly panicked…but the patrolman motioned him ahead, up ahead, he should drive along.…The man followed him, out in the other lane, just beyond Jules’ left rear fender. Jules was sweating freely, but his mind directed him well enough: Do what you’re instructed to do, keep your foot steady on the accelerator, oh my God now what? there must be some simple explanation for this, his mind gave a leap and made him grin, crazy with the thought Oh, the bastard is selling raffle tickets, maybe, and Jules composed his face alert and sane and uncalculating as the patrolman now drove up alongside him and indicated he should pull over. Over to the side. Over here. He flagged Jules across to the other lane.

  Jules put on the hand-brake and looked over and down, down to the river.

  He thought it was strange, that the patrolman should have him park here.

  O.K., said the officer, get out.

  Jules got out. He saw, parked a hundred yards away, a car with its lights out; it was parked in the middle of the road. No sudden movements, said the patrolman, though Jules had made no sudden movements, not even to get his wallet out of his back pocket. He was too nervous to think why is this happening? or to look down the drop-off to the river, the rocky-jutting sheer drop, no, he wasn’t looking down there but at the patrolman’s California-tanned face. The man was about Jules’ age, husky, broad-shouldered in his black leather jacket with its many buckles and flaps and its straight proud glinting zipper. He was telling Jules what the law was in this state about moving vehicles, something about after-dark driving and how both tail lights must be in good working order, and Jules stared at him, nodding dully, not comprehending.…

  The man smiled at him, a small mean cheerless smile. He asked Jules where he was heading so fast…? Jules replied that he had not been speeding; he had been driving only about twenty-five miles an hour. The man nodded, as if leading him on. Twenty-five miles an hour was it, well then what was the hurry?—around these curves, without any guard rails, most motorists drive slower than that. You must be from out-of-state, he said, glancing behind Jules at the other car. You must not know our laws.

  Jules said nothing.

  You must not know our laws, the patrolman repeated.

  Shivering, Jules glanced over his shoulder—yes, there was a car parked down the road—but why, why parked there, why its headlights out—he was aware of the noise of the river and the patrolman’s taunting-intimate voice, not a familiar voice but one which seemed to know Jules well, saying now Do you know our laws about interfering in private domestic disagreements? and when Jules didn’t answer, gone cold and sullen, he said something about the penal code, the penalties exacted under California law for conveying parties out of the county they are enjoined not to leave, didn’t Jules know about that?—and what about driving a car not his own, with no access to the registration papers, no way of proving whose car it was or whether it was a stolen car or it was a rotted canvas, a tarpaulin lying on the flattened-down dead weeds a car involved in a crime, a car used for an escape, a car belonging to someone very dangerous…and was Jules aware of this?

  The patrolman spoke in a rapid taunting manner, as if going down a list of memorized items, stray grins and twitches in his cheeks meant to inform Jules that this cannot be serious, no but Jules could not respond with a smile, no, and when a voice sounded from the other car—a faint shout—he had not the strength to turn that way, to look.

  Yes all right compensation muttered the patrolman, whose jaw shifted from side to side, disappointed that this should come to an end, we’re going to compensate for your inconvenience, it’s a very stiff penal code but aimed to rehabilitate rather than punish, we just confiscate the car and no questions asked on either side.…Here you are, for your inconvenience and for the car, the man said, taking from his pocket an envelope and holding it out to Jules.

  Jules took it.

  If you don’t trust us, look inside; count it.

  What is it? said Jules. What—

  Count it, you bastard!

  Jules opened the envelope, which was not sealed, and extracted some bills—stiff new bills, which stuck together— but his head rang, he couldn’t see the numbers on the bills, and the patrolman was already telling him to move out of the way, to get walking in that direction—which? where?—what are you going to do?

  Not what you deserve, the man said.

  Jules backed away.

  At the other car they opened a door for him and he climbed in. The back seat was empty except for someone’s raincoat, a lightweight coat carelessly folded. In the front seat, not looking at Jules, as if not really aware of him, were two men he didn’t recognize; the driver immediately started the car, turned on the headlights—the man in the policeman’s outfit did not raise his gloved hand, or smile, but stared at them, standing by the gleaming grill-work of the Jaguar—and made a U-turn, driving off onto the shoulder of the road, bouncing on the bumpy ground, and Jules’ head rattled with the What was it, who was he, which one of them was I—and they let him out early that morning on Highway 395, so that he could get a ride to the nearest town—Alturas—from there, since it was close to Reno, Nevada.

  …where he finally counted it, three thousand in one-hundred-dollar bills, and stuffed them in his pocket and

  * * *

  Is she dead?

  Dead, they muttered, dead, dead or living, what’s that? —what year is it, back there?

  Is she alive?—back there?

  Oh everybody’s alive, back there, they told him, and Jules blinked the stinging out of his eyes, the fizzing, wondering if he would soar to the surface of his pain as he had the other time in Ventura County General Hospital but no, if he could remember that other time this time could not be it, he could not even sleep this time because of all the noise, Jules himself crying What do you mean?—don’t you care?—doesn’t it mean anything, life or death?

  They’re all dead, back there.

  No, alive.

  But is she alive?—is she?

  The Chief of Medicine, a man with a pallid, creased face, leaned over Jules and put one big cool protective hand against Jules’ feverish forehead, the palm of his hand firm, solid, saying over his shoulder This one is too weak to talk, is he in shock…?

  No, Jules cried, I’m awake, I’m alive and then his mind leaped Except once I turned over something on my plate and it had a fishskin soft and black speckled like a snake and I gagged and I thought Snakes snakes we would eat them too if we had to, we’d eat anything, oh Christ anything anything.

  No sin in that, where is the sin? The Chief of Medicine held Jules’ head, fatherly but formal, remote, saying to someone This one isn’t ready for me—he’s going to tear out the tubes and make a mess—

  He felt a needle sink into his arm, his upper arm where there had been muscle he remembered but now he could not remember: Jules? Dewalene? Without their bodies were they lovers?—without two bodies could they love? But beneath the torn tarpaulin there had been nothing. He had lifted it carefully with one foot: nothing. The clearing had been empty. The sky empty. Nothing. From the mountains shadows, the faint whirring of a helicopter, shadowy confused rustlings of tree boughs, creatures in the woods, a startled deer leaping out in front of the car, Dewalene closing her eyes I was only a witness…don’t you love me? Jules had found no solution to his life in Reno, Nevada, though he spent much of the money getting drunk and throwing up on tiled floors or out in the street, where cars careened past honking horns at him or at the blazing night sky or at the young girls hitch-hiking right in the city, in blue jeans cut off at the thigh, tossing their long scissors-cut hair at him too young for him, too young and evil. No, no solution. Long ago he had argued himself into thinking that he could not be blamed, not for anything that happened to him or anything he caused to happen, not Jules, not Jules in his innocence, he could not be blamed for the consequences of his life, he was not a real person—the terrible secret of his soul, that he somehow did not believe he was real!—but in Reno or whatever it was he got to, unshaven and hollow-eyed and sick, deathly sick, sick as if he had witnessed her death, as if he had been trapped in that car pushed down into the river, end-over-end into the river, down the slope of the rock-studded bank and into the river, he could see his own hair lifting ghastly from his head and his eyes open, drowned, blank, as he sat trapped behind the wheel unmoving and Dewalene beside him with her long hair lifting, waving wildly in that fast-moving stream, he heard the sirens screaming night after night in Reno and wondered: Was it the end of the world? Fires, an earthquake, bombs? Or just another night in Reno? — and nothing happened, not even when he staggered into someone in a lavatory and the man shoved him brutally away, the man alertly vicious as Jules himself had been months before, but not as eager to strike out as Jules had been—only the shoving-back against the wall, the thump of Jules’ back and shoulders against the wall—and a gang of prowling kids, white boys, hadn’t bothered him though he had on his person more than $2000 at that time; though looking so strung-out, so wretched, that they could not have guessed.

  He walked out of a city, out into the desert, where the unrottable glass and tin cans and other metallic debris lay glinting year after year, immortal, thinking that his own body would take a long time to rot, on this hard-packed sandy earth, so dry, so unhuman. He lay flat: thinking it was like lying flat against a well, a vast architectural facade he could not see, could not imagine, like a lizard clinging to the side of an immense wall on an immense structure given a name in some language A man burning slowly in the sun, the process of his burning speeded up, all his ages crammed into one age: one final date-of-death but it wasn’t very sunny or very warm, strangely like winter, a dull-glowing sun and layers of cloud, the slow-shivering grayness, gusts of indifferent chill wind, the sound of small whirl-winds that concentrated into the sound of jet-planes high overhead, passing high above him, at such speed and at such altitude that the roar encompassed every horizon, then faded and faded into the panic of vomiting, the quick need to turn his head or it would choke him gag him Which one of them was I? What did I do to her? And suddenly he did not mind. He did not mind. Only losing her, backing the car around with that caution not even in his own nature, his own personality, leaving her, losing her: his one mistake. But his own life, his own going-into-craziness, his own death, really he did not mind any of it because he could no longer believe in it, he was too lonely, he existed out here in the desert where there were only two dimensions.

  * * *

  Calmed by the sedative he surveyed the bed and realized why he was so unhappy: his heels went an inch or more beyond the edge of the mattress, his toes were pressed down by the heavy blanket. They asked him how he felt, he was too cunning to reply, they drew nearer and observed that his eye-muscles moved therefore no injury to the brain, and cunning themselves they complimented him on his color, not parchment-color now, the dehydration no danger now and cunning they asked him Would he sign a release? And Jules knew the answer must be Yes. He knew that. Someone must have instructed him, someone he could not recall, the answer must be yes, the answer to all questions yes, Yes. But he lay silent, stubborn in his mourning. Yes was the answer he must give, to whatever was or wasn’t under the tarpaulin or crashing down the cliff to the Black Fox River, yes to his own blood drained out of him dripping into sterilized bottles to be stored in a refrigerated room O.K., this one’s O.K.—we got the Wassermann back from the lab this morning, yes to his guts yanked out of him by strangers wearing flesh-colored skin-tight rubber gloves, you must say yes in the end, you should have been murmuring yes all along, wisely a nurse had comforted him the night before while poking around for a vein Well you loved her for a while, she lived for a while, you’d better

  sign the release and Jules knew it was yes, yes, a windstorm had howled Yes over him one day or night out there, and the thunderous Pacific outside their motel room had aided them in their love crying Yes yes and his father at supper threatening to push in his smirky face had whispered Yes to him beneath all that shouting and Jules had known it, had known it, but thick and dense in him, stubborn, almost malicious in mourning, a kind of clot of a soul would not speak, lay mute, dehydrated of emotion but stubborn with the memory of it I still love her and I still want her

  One of them kicked the bed. We hear that!—we hear every word!

  But Jules kept it and the bed was kicked again, violently, kicked so that it skidded a few inches out into the aisle Go back then, you bastard

  * * *

  The sedative was wearing off. He could not locate where the pain first began but suddenly it fizzed everywhere, light and wild, like the stinging of insects so rapid and delicate that pain itself was slow to coalesce, and visions popped beneath his closed eyelids, dry, abrasive, on the very surface of his eyeballs: he saw the girl there, across the two-storey drop, he saw a man lower himself upon her and the two of them struggling, come to desperate horrible life in their struggle while he stared through the binoculars oh Christ and coldly sweating he saw himself bent over someone, a body, his naked back gleaming with sweat Yes yes that was Jules, and how maddened he was with it, pumping love into another squirming body, the skin raw, chafed, the flesh beneath the girl’s small breasts slightly reddened, heat-prickled but he cannot stop He cannot stop and now someone paws at him, yearning for him, but he is too strong and shoves the man away and feels the splatter of blood on his fist and helplessly he clambers on top of someone, he forces someone’s knees apart sobbing because he cannot stop he cannot stop his sister screams for him to stop, to get away, it is his own sister But I never did this and back again he lies in his own bed, his own room, his heart pumping pounding stiffening swelling in his eyeballs swooning back in his head with lust with the craziness of lust But I never crawled in her room and he seizes her by the ankles by her thin threshing legs and Christ help me to stop help me but the bed has been kicked cruelly off into the night, into Jules’ delirious sleep, it spins helplessly now as if borne along on a black-flowing river It cannot stop and he sees his sister’s face bruised and senseless beneath him and whispers to her No not even now I can’t stop even now and finally it is a woman with his mother’s face but no body he ever remembered but maybe he did remember it, standing before a mirror, his mother as a girl and so young! so young! and not seeing him she stares into the mirror into the future Everything is there, waiting while Jules squirms with his lust, gone mad with his lust, the universe crammed into his body and squeezing him out of shape, go back you bastard, back you go, back you go and all over again and again the strong healthy bland pretty face and the blue eyes not seeing him where he crouched, the gaze-upon-gaze of her staring, and her face suddenly expanding before him like a sky fitted curving over the earth, and again the immense warm flesh of her body, gigantic now, mountainous in his hot-staring eyes, oh he is terrified of this woman and yet he must enter her, every pore of his body craves to enter her, to enter her, the face is too enormous now to be seen and it falls away and the other faces fall away, rearing back into night, none of them have faces now, none of them know him, he knows none of them, but borne along wildly on that flood he shrivels to a pinpoint of light deep inside this woman, inside her womb, a pinpoint of light that shudders and falters but does not go out—