When they spoke, however, they spoke not about the children's shabby trailer, the unwashed baby grandson, their stringy-haired son-in-law's disappearing act into the trash-filled backyard to sneak Jack Daniel's. No, they talked only about the weather and unusual road signs they happened to pass.
"We'll get rain this fall. Floodin'."
"Might."
"Something 'bout the trout in Minnesota. I read that."
"Trout?"
"Bad rains I'm talking. Stuckey's's only five miles. Look there. You wanta stop?"
Harriet, their daughter, had made a dinner that could be described only as inedible – woefully overdone and oversalted. And the husband had found what he was sure was some cigarette ash in the succotash. Now they were both starving.
"Might do that. For coffee only. Lookit that wind – whooee! Hope you shut the windows at home. Maybe a piece of pie."
"I did.'
"You forgot last time," the wife reminded shrilly. "Don't want to lose the lamp again. You know what three-way bulbs cost."
"Well," the husband said. "What's going on here?"
"How's that?"
"I'm being stopped. A police car."
"Pull over!"
"I'm doing it," he said testily. "No point in leaving skid marks. I'm doing it."
"What'd you do?"
"I didn't do nothing. I was fifty-seven in a fifty-five zone and that's not a crime in anybody's book."
"Well, pull off the road."
"I'm pulling. Will you just settle? There, happy?"
"Hey, look," the wife offered with astonishment, "there's a lady officer driving!"
"They have ' em now. You know that. You watch Cops. Should I get out or are they going to come up here?"
"Maybe," the wife said, "you oughta go to them. Make the effort. That way if they're right on the borderline of giving you a ticket they might not."
"That's a thought. But I still don't know what I done." And, smiling like a Kiwanian on Pancake Day, the husband climbed out of the Nissan and walked back to the squad car, fishing his wallet out of his pocket.
As Lou Handy drove the cruiser deep into the wheat field, cutting a swath in the tall grain, he was lost in the memory of another field – the one that morning, near the intersection where the Cadillac had broadsided them.
He remembered the gray sky overhead. The feel of the bony knife in his hand. The woman's powdery face, black wrinkles in her makeup, dots of her blood spattering her as he drove the knife downward into her soft body. The look in her eyes, hopelessness and sorrow. Her weird scream, choking, grunting. An animal's sounds.
She'd died the same way that the couple in the Nissan just had, the couple now lying in the trunk of the cruiser he was driving. Hell, they had to die, both of the couples. They'd had something he needed. Their cars. The Cadillac and the Nissan. This afternoon Hank and Ruth'd smashed the fuck out of his Chevy. And tonight, well, he and Pris couldn't keep driving in a stolen squad car. It was impossible. He needed a new car. He had to have one.
And when Lou Handy collected what he was owed, when he'd scratched that itch, he was the most contented man on earth.
Tonight he parked the cruiser, which stunk of cordite and blood, in the field, fifty yards from the road. It'd be found by tomorrow morning but that was okay. In a few hours he and Pris'd be out of the state and flying over the Texas-Mexico border, a hundred feet in the air, on their way to San Hidalgo.
Whoa, hold on tight… Damn, the wind was fierce, buffeting the car and sending the stalks of wheat slapping into the windshield with a clatter like birdshot.
Handy climbed out and trotted back to the road, where Pris sat in the driver's seat of the Nissan. She'd ditched the trooper's uniform and was wearing a sweater and jeans and Handy wanted more than anything else at the moment to tug those Levi's down, them and the cheap nylon panties she always wore, and fuck her right on top of the hood of the tinny Jap car. Holding her ponytail in his right hand the way he liked to do.
But he jumped in the passenger's seat and motioned for her to get going. She pitched her cigarette out the window and gunned the engine. The car shot away off the shoulder, hung a tight U, and sped up to sixty.
Heading back in the direction they'd just come from. North.
It seemed crazy, sure. But Handy prided himself on being as off-the-wall nuts as a man could be and still get on in this life. In reality their destination made sense, though – because where they were going was the last place anyone would think to look for them.
Anyway, he thought, fuck it whether it's crazy or not. His mind was made up. He had business back there. Lou Handy was owed.
The Heiligenstadt Testament, written in 1802 by Beethoven to his brothers, chronicles his despair at his progressive deafness, which a decade and a half later became total.
Melanie Charrol knew this, for Beethoven not only was her spiritual mentor and role model but was a frequent visitor to her music room, where he, not surprisingly, could hear as well as she could. They had had many fascinating conversations about music theory and composition. They both lamented the trend away from melody and harmony in modern composition. She called it "medicinal music" – a phrase Ludwig heartily approved of.
She now sat in the living room of her house, breathing deeply, thinking of the great composer and wondering if she was drunk.
At the bar in the motel in Crow Ridge she'd poured down two brandies in the company of Officer Frances Whiting and some of the parents of the hostages. Frances had gotten in touch with Melanie's parents in St. Louis and told them she was fine. They would return immediately after Danny's operation tomorrow and stop by Hebron for a visit – news that for some reason upset Melanie. Did she want them to stop by or not? She had another brandy in lieu of deciding.
Then Melanie had gone to say goodbye to the girls and their parents. The twins had been asleep, Kielle was awake but snubbing her royally – though if Melanie knew anything about children it was that their moods are fickle as the weather; tomorrow or the next day the little girl would drop by Melanie's cubicle at school and sprawl out upon the immaculate desktop to show off her latest X-Men comic or Power Rangers card. Emily was, of course, in an absurdly frilly and feminine nightgown, fast asleep. Shannon, Beverly, and Jocylyn were the centerpiece of the action. At the moment, coddled and the center of loving attention, they were cheerful and defiant and she could see from their gestures that they were recalling aspects of the evening in detail that Melanie herself could not bear. They had even dubbed themselves "the Crow Ridge Ten" and were talking about having T-shirts printed up. Reality would hit home later, when everyone began to feel Susan's absence. But for now, why not? Besides, whatever misgivings she'd shared with de l'Epée about the politics of Deafness, the members of its community were nothing if not resilient.
Melanie said goodnight to everyone, refusing a dozen offers to spend the night. Never before had she signed "No, thank you" as often as she had this evening.
Now, in her home, all the windows were locked, all the doors. She burned some incense, had another brandy – blackberry, her grandmother's cure for cramps – and was sitting in her leather armchair, thinking of de l'Epée… well, Arthur Potter. Rubbing the indentation on her right wrist from the wire Brutus had bound it with. She had her Koss headset clamped over her ears and had Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto cranked up so loud the volume was redlined. It was a remarkable piece of music. Composed during what music historians call Beethoven's "second period," the one that produced the Eroica, when he was aware of, and tormented by, his hearing loss but before he had gone completely deaf.
As she listened to the concerto now she wondered if it had been written by Beethoven in anticipation of future years when the deafness would be worse, if he'd built in certain chords and dynamics so that a deaf old man might still make out at least the soul of the piece – for though there were passages she could not hear at all (as faint and delicate as smoke, she imagined) the passion of the music came from its emphatic low notes, two hands crashing down on the bass keys, the theme spiraling downward like a hawk falling on prey, the orchestra's timpani and low-pitched strings churning out what for her was the hopeful spirit of the concerto. A sensation of galloping.