“Stop, you!” the woman said.
The floor began to rise in festering pieces as shot after shot missed its target.
“Give it,” Rae said. She grabbed. Clenched. Squeezed.
A piggish expulsion hit the hay.
“Now look,” the woman said.
“Doc,” Rae said.
“Look what you done,” the woman said. “Heathen.”
The old man spit in the general direction of the flame.
“Pork,” he said.
The corpse was gently oozing.
The woman blew her nose.
Rae put down the gun. “I believe we are next,” she said.
The old man squinted at Rae. He wiped his needle with a triply phlegmy-looking rag.
Rae yanked a shirt, along with the body all but unconscious inside it. “This here is Vern,” she said.
“Hell,” the old man said.
“It won’t but a fever,” Rae said.
“Won’t do.”
“Why not?”
“Can’t be of service,” the old man said.
“Why not, I said,” Rae said.
“Basically,” the old man said, “this fellow is human.”
The woman had dropped to her fearsome knees. “Killer,” she said.
“All the more reason,” Rae said.
The line pitched forward with rancor.
“This fellow,” the old man said to Rae, “is this some relation of yours?”
“Call him whatever you want,” Rae said.
At some point, something ill-defined was passed from Rae’s stained dress. Needless to dwell on what followed. Rae shut her eyes.
The old man slapped himself, said, “Good as new.”
“Vern?” Rae said. “Vern? Do you know me?”
“Cured,” the old man said.
The eye whites were stitched through with blood.
“Where is my wallet at?” he, the newly woke, demanded of Rae.
A woman with a hen in a sack came forth.
“Never mind,” the old man said. “Don’t owe me so much as a stick.”
“Let’s go,” Rae said.
“My cash,” he said. “What is that thing? It looks to have died.”
“Heathen,” the kneeling woman said.
Gnats began to congregate.
“Come on,” Rae said.
The old man said, “You’re all shook up. Go get some shut-eye, you.”
IN stations where the lighting was dusty and northern, falling through a high, stained glass — always a bench, an old stuck clock, walleyelike, always an indeterminate voice, remote, cracked: a.m., p.m., naming the cities that nobody went to; always a paper, local and disabused of news; stubs, ash, mites, a sprinkle of if-it-rains or if-it-sleets or if-it-snows or if-it-hails old salt, in churches, all denominations, better empty, dark loft, dark nave, in airless buses, qualmishly praying for a window, one clean sink, in castoff crates with room enough for outsize limbs, damp, always damp, even deep in the shadow of somebody’s dwelling, overhung and luminous, this is where they lay themselves, he and she, to rest. “Sleep,” he said. “Sleep easy.” In fields, he watched the sky, shot through, he said, with stars or with the moon, and in the morning with the planets, or the near northern lights, or with the early-morning snow. Early as she stirred, he and she were gone.
They were given to things: eating whatever whenever wherever. Of course they were. Who wouldn’t be? Rae emptied her pockets. Bit chapped lips. Hers like his. She reassessed. Reflected in the blade of a knife. Gently, she emptied other pockets. Lifted her chin. She was given to lifting a dress, a hat, a lady’s lamb’s wool coat—“Nice,” she said — some pigskin gloves, a man’s nice leather jacket. “Vern?” she said. “Look.”
He wore the jacket open.
The northern air was fierce.
A village was given to borderline criminal activity. Order in a river town was called into question. A man who was said to have called himself Phil committed a thoroughly lawless murder. Rae, over breakfast — juice, slaw, ribs — wiped her mouth, said, “Mercy.” She held up a badly doctored map. “Does this seem familiar?” she said.
He chewed.
He chewed some more.
She swallowed.
“This house,” she said, “where is it?”
“Trust me,” he said.
She was forking up drippings.
“Like I trust myself,” she said. She lifted the fork, high as his mouth, said, “Bite?”
NAILS were in evidence. So were shingles, drainpipes gagged with ice.
“Hit,” he said.
“My hands,” she said.
“Hard,” he said. “Your what?” The wind was in the trees, in the reddening gnarls of his ears. “Do you hear me?” he said.
“No,” she said.
“What?” he said. “You’re holding that hammer like a girl.”
She tightened her grip. “Lockjaw is what,” she said. “That’s what.” The nails of her fingers were gray. The ladder was feeble. The nail she was tapping was a virulent color. Between her teeth, a nasty point was stuck.
“Stop it,” he said.
She spat it, girl-like. “Likely we’ll break our necks,” she said.
“Why don’t you wear your gloves?” he said.
“No,” she said. “They’ll spoil.”
He righted a shingle, grunted.
“Some deal,” she said. “Some job you went and got us.” She was not given to working in this dangerous manner with her hands. She was not keen, she said, of hired employment.
She predicted splinters, and mutinous behavior.
The ladder shuddered.
“Rae?” he said. “We won’t die broke. Look in that window.”
Daylight was slipping.
“Yes?” she said.
“No one can see us,” he said.
“What is this color trim?” she said, regarding a grander residence some small ways north. “What do you call it?”
“Red?” he said. “Rust?” he said. “Ruby glow?”
“Too late,” she said. She was swinging the hammer with feminine abandon. Something squawked. She strangled it. She stuffed her coat, her dress, herself. “Pick out what you want,” she said.
“What’s this?” he said, in rosy, dying light.
“Glass,” she said. “A window.”
“Not now,” he said. “Not anymore.”
A woman screamed. Shards glittered like the wintry landscape. Down went the sun. To judge by the sound, the woman was probably heavily running. “Thief,” she screamed.
“Vern,” Rae said.
“Brick?” he said.
“Hurry up,” Rae said. “I think that woman wants her nails back.”
“Stop,” the woman screamed.
“Tessie,” a man yelled, “give us some peace.”
The woman screamed, “Murder! Help,” she included.
Lights snapped into life.
Rae dropped the hammer. Raced.
The voice of another woman rose: “Police!” she cried. “Police! Doctor! Officer!”
Someone cried, “Tessie! Bill! Lucette!”
There were men and there were women in the darkening road, and feathers and bed things, shards, shoes, gloves, rats, lint, tar, fleece, scraps, twigs, and indescribable splinters of trim.
“Rae?”
“What?”
“Run,” he said.
“I am,” she said.
A violent whistle.
Black. Cold black. Combustible black, ruinous foot-felt, lumpy black. Stars were in abundance. The screaming was fading. He and she were moving combustibly, blackly. “What am I touching?” she said.
“Guess,” he said.
She screamed.
“I heard that,” he said.
“Coal,” he said. “Likely.”
“I never liked a train,” she said. “Did you?”
Nighttime pounded by. He seemed to try to stand. He slumped. Whatever was beneath them both was shifting. Surely, there were smells — the smell of a thing like coal, like grain, like carbon, the smell of a lake or body of water, out of view, unseeable, or something like the liquid night itself. Night birds were shrilling. Goatsuckers, she called them. Nightjars. Drops softly fell.