box to help you. Lying in this narrow bed not far from where Hilly lay in his coma, Ev Hillman thought he saw the picture pretty well. Not all of it, mind you, but a lot. He saw it and knew perfectly well no one would believe him. Not without proof. And he dared not go back, dared not put himself in their reach. They would not let him go a second time.
Something. Something out in Big Injun Woods. Something in the ground, something on the land Frank Garrick had willed to his niece, who wrote those western books. Something that knocked compasses and human minds galley-west if you got too close. For all Ev knew, there might be such strange deposits all over the earth. If it did nothing else, it might explain why people in some places seemed so goddam pissed off all the time. Something bad. Haunted. Maybe even accursed.
Ev stirred restlessly, rolled over, looked at the ceiling.
Something had been in the earth. Bobbi Anderson had found it and she was digging it up, her and that fellow who was staying out at the farm with her. That fellow's name was ... was ...
Ev groped, but couldn't come up with it. He remembered the way Beach Jernigan's mouth had thinned down when the subject of Bobbi's friend came up one day in the Haven Lunch. The regulars on coffee break had just observed the man coming out of the market with a bag of groceries. He had a place over in Troy, Beach said; a shacky little place with a woodstove and plastic over the windows.
Someone said he'd heard the fella was educated.
Beach said an education never kept anyone from being no-account.
No one in the Lunch had argued the point, Ev remembered.
Nancy Voss had been equally disapproving. She said Bobbi's friend had shot his wife but had been let off because he was a college professor. 'If you got a sheepskin written in Latin words in this country, you can get away with anything,' she had said.
They had watched the fellow get into Bobbi's truck and drive back toward the old Garrick place.
'I heard he done majored in drinkin',' old Dave Rutledge said from the end stool that was his special place. 'Everyone goes out there says he's most allus drunk as a coon on stump-likker.'
There had been a burst of mean, gossipy country laughter at that. They hadn't liked Bobbi's friend; none had. Why? Because he had shot his wife? Because he drank? Because he was living with a woman he wasn't married to? Ev knew better. There had been men in the Lunch that day who had not just beaten their wives but beaten them into entirely new shapes. Out here it was part of the code: you were obligated to put one upside the old woman's head if she 'got sma'at.' Out here were men who lived on beer from eleven in the morning until six at night and cheap greenfront whiskey from six to midnight and would drink Old Woodsman flydope strained through a snotrag if they couldn't afford whiskey. Men who had the sex lives of rabbits, jumping from hole to hole. And what had his name been?
Ev drifted toward sleep. Saw them standing on the sidewalks, on the lawn of the public library, over by the little park, staring dreamily toward those sounds. Snapped awake again.
What did you find out, Ruth? Why did they murder you?
He tossed onto his left side.
David's alive ... but to bring him back I have to start in Haven.
He tossed onto his right side.
They'll kill me if I go back. There was once a time when I was almost as well-liked there as Ruth herself ... least, I always liked to think so. Now they hate me. I saw it in their eyes the night they started looking for David. I took
Hilly out because he was sick and needed a doctor, yes ... but it was damned good to have a reason to go. Maybe they only let me go because David distracted them. Maybe they just wanted to be rid of me. Either way, I was lucky to get out. I'd never get out again. So how can I go back? I can't.
Ev tossed and turned, caught on the horns of two imperatives - he would have to go back to Haven if he wanted to rescue David before David died, but if he went back to Haven he would be killed and buried quickly