again, and with effort he pulled himself together.
He could just go up to the front door, walk into the living room, and embrace his parents. He felt an intense desire to do that. But he could not chance it. He knew that he looked like someone who had just crawled away from an automobile accident. That would demand an explanation, and he dared not give it. There was no need to burden Ainesley and Marcia with the horror he had just experienced. And worse: he feared that Frogman might somehow learn he had told someone and come raging out of the swamp to commit another mass murder. Raff would be an evil spirit spreading a fatal curse.
So he sat there quietly, trying to catch a glimpse of his parents through the front windshield. After a few more minutes a light began to flicker in the living room window. It meant that his father had settled in his favorite chair to watch the early evening news. Ainesley, he reflected, wasn't running around much these days. He'd suffered a mild heart attack the previous winter and was now on medication for hypertension and angina. He still went in mornings to run the hardware store, but hunting and fishing trips and evenings in the usual honky-tonk saloons had been severely curtailed. So had his consumption of cigarettes. Marcia had tried everything short of divorce proceedings to stop him from smoking altogether, but so far without success.
Raff especially yearned to see his mother now, alive and healthy. Ever since Cyrus had bestowed his gift of a college education on Raff a decade earlier, Marcia had become more content with her own existence. She had joined social activities at the local First Methodist Church, and she looked forward more than ever, with growing self-confidence, to family gatherings at Marybelle. The identity she had craved had been granted. She was more than Mrs. Cody now. She was also the Mobile Semmes who lived up in Clayville to be with her husband.
Tonight the light was on in the kitchen. She could be fixing supper about now. And once, then a second time, Raff caught a glimpse of her head in the window as she came up to the sink.
Then he turned the key and drove on through Clayville, down the main street, which was already emptied of traffic for the evening, and took the alternate, less-traveled two-lane highway to Mobile. Even on the road he wanted to be alone and hidden. Frogman and the LeBowites must not know where he was. Stopping at a liquor store just south of Atmore, he bought a quart of Johnnie Walker Gold Label, the most expensive whiskey on the shelves. Down the road he pulled into the Southern Hospitality Motel, which he remembered having passed on earlier trips. It looked quiet and cheap this evening, and its orange neon sign flashed VACANCY.
Clutching his bottle of Johnnie Walker, Raff signed in for a room. The clerk thought, He's drunk and lucky to get off the road. In his room Raff double-locked the door, stripped off his clothes, showered, and threw himself naked onto the queen-sized bed. He turned on the television and adjusted the sound to barely audible. He paid no attention to it. He just wanted the feel of normal people around him. The first thing that came on was news of suicide bombers in Pakistan. Medics were carrying broken bodies through the streets of Islamabad. He winced, and surfed through other channels until he picked up a talk show with people smiling and laughing. He uncapped the whiskey and began to drink from the bottle. He stared at the wall, trying to think about nothing at all. His physical exhaustion made that easy. Soon he was sinking into a stupor. He managed to screw the cap back on the bottle and drop it on the bed before he fell asleep.
Raff awoke the next morning just after eleven. He had a cannonading headache, nausea, and a desperate thirst. He rubbed water on his face, downed a glass of water, dressed, and walked over to the motel office. He got aspirin from the morning clerk, walked across the room to a machine advertising FREE COFFEE, and washed the aspirin down.
Three cups later, still hurting, Raff checked out of the Southern Hospitality and drove on to Mobile. Arriving there, fear-stricken to near paralysis, he didn't go to his apartment. Instead, he parked his car at the Bledsoe Street lot. From there he walked