Nancy and Anna had brought him to this, he thought. Broke, hungry, cold… and without the simple willpower necessary to hop a freight and put some miles in back of him. He knew what was happening in the town, he had not needed Nancy to tell him that; he had been down The Spur twice, spending the last of his pocket money on food, and on both occasions he had been paced out by the police. The jungle was overdue for a rousting—possibly, given the mood in Haute Montagne, a violent one. He should leave. There was nothing for him here.
But he gazed at the shack where Nancy was. Nancy and the Anna-thing.
Suppose, he thought, we do help her (posing the question aloud, though there was no one to hear him here in the tall grass)—suppose we do help her, well, what then? Where does that leave us?
Alone, he thought bitterly, broke, nowhere to go. No better off. Haute Montagne would never welcome back Travis or Nancy. Too many rules had been broken, too many borders transgressed. He shivered in his inadequate clothing and wondered if Nancy knew the kind of future she had devised for herself.
Maybe that was what was keeping him here, this remnant of what he had felt for her, this fear… but was it strong enough to draw him back inside that shack?
He thought of Anna: her moth-wing skin. Her eyes coldly blue in the darkness. His love. His fear.
He might have turned away then, might have been driven back by the terrible intensity of the vision, when he saw, far off, a figure advancing from the stand of elder trees down by the switching yards. The gait was familiar but the memory eluded him: Who could be coming here? Then the name fell into place—Greg Morrow—and with the name a tremor of fear.
Travis emitted a sort of moan and stood up, running forward without thinking about it. He intercepted Greg halfway to the switchman’s shack.
Greg looked at him warily but with an obvious contempt. Confronting him, Travis felt suddenly helpless, foolish: what could he say? “You don’t have any business here,” he managed.
It was inadequate, but Greg Morrow must not be allowed near the switchman’s shack. Obviously he had suspicions: that was bad enough; but if he knew the truth—
But Greg was smiling. “That where she is?” — nodding toward the shack. “That whore Anna Blaise? Nancy, too, maybe?” The smile became a smirk. “You fuckin’ ’em both, farmboy, is that it? You know, you smell like shit. You look like shit, you smell like shit. But, hey, maybe they like that, huh? I bet it drives ’em nuts—that stink—”
Travis balled his fists. But before he could move Greg had put his hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a knife. It was a stupid knife, Travis thought, wood-handled, with a long serrated blade; it looked like a cheap steak knife. But he guessed it could cut. Greg waved it gleefully at him, and Travis felt a wave of fear wash over him. Fear and—something else.
“Not this time,” Greg said calmly. “I won’t be screwed over this time. Stand still! I’m just gonna go over and knock on the door. No problem. Just want to see who’s home.”
He stepped forward, and Travis—hardly aware of himself—stepped in front of him. Greg stood still. The knife was motionless in his hand. Travis looked at the knife and then at Greg. Greg’s eyes twinkled, there was a hint of glee there, and his smile was the rictus of a man strapped into a roller coaster, coming to the top of the first big hump and enjoying it somehow, somehow thriving on it. Travis realized then that Greg would use the knife, would use it gladly; that if Travis were hurt, if he died, it wouldn’t matter,- Travis was a hobo now; found dead, he would be quietly buried.
“Do it,” he said aloud, and a part of him wondered where the words came from. His voice was guttural, very nearly a growl. “Do it, Greg. I’ll take the knife away from you. I vow I will. And I’ll cut your balls off with it.”
Travis waited. The knife was only inches from his belly. But he looked at Greg and saw that some of the giddy hysteria had faded from his eyes. The knife wavered; an uncertainty had crept into the equation.
Then, swiftly, Greg smiled again.
He let the knife drop. “Well, I guess I know what’s in there already. I guess you just told me.” He took a step backward. “Have fun while you can, farmboy.”
Travis watched him walk almost lazily back toward the trees, listened for the sound of the car cranking up. His own heart was beating wildly; he felt dizzy.
He thought of Nancy in the shack, of what she had so narrowly avoided. Of what she could not much longer avoid, now that Greg Morrow had come back here. Christ God, he thought, shivering, she’s consorting with demons—they’ll crucify her—
He turned back and there was the sound of her scream.
He pulled her away from Anna, and instantly Nancy stopped trembling. She looked up at Travis with a mute, enormous gratitude. “You came. …”
“Nance, what is it? What’s wrong?”
The gun, she thought. The fear, the agony… She touched her ribs, her belly, wanting the reassurance that those wounds she had felt were not really her wounds. “I can’t explain,” she said faintly. “I don’t understand it myself—”
But Anna had stopped shaking, and she sat up now, hollow-eyed, luminous with faint blue fire. Nancy felt Travis recoil; but she gripped his hand and held it tightly, needing him.
Anna blinked. Her grief had filled the room,- it was palpable, physically present, a smell like roses … a cloud … an electricity in the skin…
She looked at Nancy. “You felt it?”
“Yes! God, yes!” She pressed against Travis. “That was him, wasn’t it? That was Bone. He’s close—”
Anna said faintly, “They’re killing him.”
Interlude: Bone Loses Faith
In a little railtown called Buckton their luck went bad.
The wad of money in the right-hand pocket of Bone’s navy pea coat had grown much larger. Twice in the course of this hot summer, in towns whose names they did not know, they had committed successful robberies. “Nothing big,” Deacon said. “Nothing ambitious. Just a little money out of the till. Just a kind of income tax. A little Relief Program for Archie and Deacon and Bone.” They would locate a gas station or a general store not too far from the railway or too close to town, would approach it at dusk; Deacon, brandishing a handgun he had taken from the Darcy farmhouse, would empty the till. The proprietor or the store clerk might weep, might curse, might silently watch; but it was never Deacon or Archie he looked at, it was Bone; Bone huge and blankly pale, his pallid wrists projecting from the cuffs of his pea coat, his eyes, white and unblinking in their cavernous orbits.
This should have been the same. They had hiked away from a hobo jungle to this place, a whitewashed building with a torn screen door and the word Sundries written above it. They stood outside in the gathering dusk, calculating the isolation of the place, the chance that somebody might come by. “It’s wide open here,” Archie said nervously. “Anybody could see us.” But Deacon only favored him with a contemptuous sneer. “Cowardly talk,” he said, and reached under his coat for the big handgun. “For Christ’s sake,” Archie began—but Deacon had already pushed through the rust-hinged door. Bone hurried after.
The room inside was narrow, plank-floored, tidy. Sacks of flour squatted on pineboard shelves. Bone was engulfed in the heady smell of wood polish and grain, in the merciless yellow light of an overhead bulb. The proprietor was a barrel-shaped man who had not yet noticed Deacon’s gun, his eyes were fixed on Bone. Bone sensed the man’s distrust, not yet coalesced into fear. The proprietor said, frog-throated, “Can I help you gents?”—then paled as Deacon stepped forward, grinning.
Archie watched the door. That was his job, and he performed it flawlessly. Bone stood beside Deacon at the counter, claustrophobic in this enclosed place; Deacon held the pistol. “All we want is what’s in the till,” Deacon said coolly. “Hand it over slow.”