(2)
Propping himself up on one elbow and watching her sleep. Crow thought that he had never seen anyone or anything as beautiful as Val looked at that moment. There was just the faintest rosy glow of sunlight painting the window and the softness of it caressed her cheek and jaw. He wanted so much to touch her face, to trace the line of her cheek, but he didn’t want to wake her.
“I love you,” he whispered.
She opened one eye, surprising him. “Good morning to you, too.”
“Did I wake you, sweetie?”
“Just the frequent heavy sighs. You sound like you’re deflating.” She was smiling, though, and bent forward, kissing him on the nose. “I love you too, you goof.”
He leaned toward her and gathered her in his arms. She was soft and warm and real and he covered her face and throat with kisses.
“Hey, slow down, cowboy,” she said, coming up for air, “before you start something you don’t have time to finish. Don’t you have somewhere you have to be?”
Still nestled in her neck, he peered over her shoulder at the bedside clock.
“It’s not even six and I don’t have to meet Newt until seven-thirty. We got loads of time.” He made Groucho eyes at her.
Val affected a yawn. “I should try and get some more sleep. I have a long day ahead of me, too. I don’t know if I should fritter away the morning with the likes of you.”
“‘Fritter’! I’ll give you ‘fritter,’ you vixen!” He began to tickle her, or tried to, but she was quicker and jammed her fingers under his elbows and got his ribs, reducing him to helpless shrieks of laughter. He tried to get away, but she wasn’t having any of that and climbed astride him, tickling him all over. There was pain—in her shoulder, her head, his wrist, his hip—but neither of them cared. Some things matter more than pain.
One minute later they were wrapped in each other’s arms and though they were both smiling, neither was laughing.
(3)
Crow was half-dozing on the hood of his battered old Impala Missy, his back against the windshield and his hands folded around a cardboard cup of Irish cream coffee that rested on his stomach. He wore six-stitch boots, faded jeans, and an insulated denim vest over a bright-red plaid flannel shirt. Eight inches of frayed thermal undershirt hung down below the rolled cuffs of the shirt. He wore white plastic sunglasses with opaque black lenses and had a Phillies cap turned backward on his head. The mangled end of a brown coffee stirrer hung from the corner of his mouth like a pool-hall Jim’s matchstick.
At 7:35 Willard Fowler Newton’s ancient Civic rolled to a squeaky stop in front of the Crow’s Nest. Newton locked his Club snugly in place and got out, dressed in a blue Eddie Bauer padded jacket, 501 jeans, and Nike sneakers that had never seen the inside of a gym. Crow raised his sunglasses an inch and peered at him under the rims, one eyelid raised. “Did retro-Yuppie come back in and I miss the memo?” he asked.
Flushing a bit, Newton smoothed his jeans, and said, “Yeah, well you look like you’re in a Marlboro commercial.”
“I’m a manly man.”
“And the sunglasses?”
“Keeps me in touch with my counterculture youth.” Crow sat up and drained the last of the tepid coffee. He slid off the hood and did a hook shot that landed the cardboard container in the waste barrel that stood beside a streetlamp four feet away. “Yes! Two points, nothing but can.”
Newton applauded ironically. “Who’s driving?”
Crow looked pointedly at the squatty little Civic and then back at Missy. He said nothing. Newton fetched his gear, and they piled into the car and Crow popped a Flogging Molly CD into player. As Crow was pulling away from the curb and into the pre-business-hour flow of traffic, Newton said, “What about your store?”
“Mike’s due in at noon. He has keys. Most of the Little Halloween weirdness won’t get rolling until this afternoon, and we’ll back by then, and by tonight all the action’s going to be at the campus or the Hayride, and no one’ll be shopping. Everyone’ll be drunk. If we get delayed and the kid gets into a crunch, Val said she’d come down tonight and help with the rush.”
“Oh.” Newton opened a pack of Big Red gum and put a stick in his mouth. “I liked Val. She seemed nice.”
A smile curled the edges of Crow’s mouth as he drove. “She is.”
“She forgive me yet?”
“Time will tell,” Crow said mysteriously.
“Have you guys set a date yet?”
“We’re thinking maybe a Christmas wedding—next Christmas, I mean—but really we haven’t done that much planning yet. A bit too soon, you know?”
“I can understand that.”
The morning had dawned clear and blue and cloudless, and there was a mildly cool wind from the northeast. Crow had his window cracked and crisp air blew into the car and made their cheeks tingle. They headed down Corn Hill to A-32, turned left, and within minutes they were out in the farm country. Groves of carefully tended shade trees gave way to acre after acre of geometrically sown cornfields, many cut to stubble that late in the season, but some still swelling toward the last corn harvest in November. There were fewer houses to be seen, most of them tucked far back at the end of winding dirt roads. Here and there a roadside stand stood fully stocked and ready for the influx of Little Halloween tourists. Barrels of peaches and apples stood in ranks; tall stands of decorative cornstalks leaned in bunches, tied with lengths of hairy twine; Indian corn hung from the rafters of the stands, cheery in their browns and reds and oranges; buckets of mixed nuts stood by the cash registers near jugs of dark, rich cider; and row upon row of pumpkins waited in patient lines, some painted with spooky or cheerful faces, some precut, some untouched and pumpkin-pie ripe in the early sunlight.
“See those pumpkins?” Crow asked, pointing with his chin.
“Uh huh.”
“Imported. Most of them are from Berks County.”
“Because of the blight?”
“Yep. We can’t let it show, so on days like today—and really for the rest of the month—there has to be the appearance of prosperity and business-as-usual. Pestilence and hardship aren’t big draws for tourists.”
They drove on, heading south.
The Bone Man sat on a hay bale by the side of the road and watched the big brown Impala cruise by. All Crow and Newton saw was a line of hay bales stretching across the field, and on the one nearest to the road there were a dozen crows loitering in the morning breeze. The Bone Man knew the men couldn’t see him. He had his guitar across his lap and he strummed a few notes as the car passed. One of the birds opened its scarred and splotched beak and cawed softly.
“Mm-hm,” murmured the Bone Man, squinting in the sun’s glare. His eyes were colorless in that light. “It’s a bad business.” The crow cawed again and the Bone Man played a few more notes, clear and sweet and sad. “A very bad business. Shouldn’t be going out there, little Scarecrow. Nossir, not out there.”
In the distance, the Impala was just a fading dot.
They rolled past several signs advertising the Haunted Hayride.
PINE DEEP HAUNTED HAYRIDE
Biggest in the East Coast!
We’ll Scare you Silly!
Newton nodded to it as they passed. “The hayride? You helped design it, right?”
“Not initially, but I’ve done all the upgrades. I redid all of the traps—the spots where monsters jump out at you.”
“Thinking of putting in a Karl Ruger trap?” When he saw that Crow’s mouth had become a tight line, Newton winced, and said, “God! That was in poor taste, wasn’t it? Sorry.”