Hamlet finished with the fence, and they eased the dollies across the yard to the back door of the garage, pushed the door open, pulled the dollies inside, and closed the door. Hayk took a flashlight out of a cargo pocket and turned it on.
The van was ready, cargo doors open. They rolled the dollies up a wheelchair ramp into the back of the van, closed the doors. Hamlet and Hayk got into the van, Hayk as the wheelman, while Peck went to the door into the house, stepped inside, and looked out a kitchen window at the street.
He was looking out at a suburban neighborhood, a bunch of three-bedroom houses where everybody worked day jobs and the kids went to schooclass="underline" the houses were almost all dark, and the street was empty.
He hurried back to the garage, pulling the house door closed behind himself, and pushed the wall switch for the garage door opener. The garage door went up, but no light came on, because Peck had thought of everything: they’d loosened the garage light. Hayk drove the van out of the garage; Peck pushed the wall switch again and the door started down.
There was an ankle-high infrared safety light that beamed across the door opening to keep the door from closing on children who might be standing beneath it. Peck stepped carefully over it-he really had groomed the plan, he thought, with nothing left to chance-went to the van, and climbed into the backseat.
Hayk rolled it down to the street, took a right, and Hamlet said, “Made it.”
2
The cloudless sky was blue, of course, but the pale blue that tended almost to green, if you were lying naked in a Minnesota swimming hole on a hot summer day, looking up through the branches of the creek-side cottonwoods, thinking about nothing much, except the prospect of lunch.
Virgil Flowers was doing that, bathed in the cool spring water and the scent of fresh-mown hay. Frankie Nobles’s oldest son was windrowing the teddered hay, riding a ’70s International Harvester tractor, the all-original diesel engine clattering up and down the eighty-acre field on the other side of the crooked line of cottonwoods.
Virgil usually managed to evade the whole haying process, pleading the exigencies of law enforcement, but with this last cut of the summer, Frankie had her eye on him. All her farm equipment was marginal, and though a neighbor would be over with his modern baler and wagon, two-thirds of the bales-the small rectangular ones-would be unloaded in the barnyard.
From Virgil’s point of view, there was one good thing about this-the neighbor would keep a third of the hay for his trouble. The bad thing was, somebody would have to load the other two-thirds of the bales on Frankie’s ancient elevator, and somebody would have to stack it in the sweltering, wasp-infested barn loft.
“Why,” Virgil asked, “are barn lofts always infested with wasps?”
“Because that’s life,” Frankie said, back-floating past him on a pair of pink plastic water wings. She was unencumbered by clothing. They’d have the swimming hole to themselves until the tractor stopped running, and then the boys would take it over. For the time being, their privacy was assured by a sign at the beginning of the path through the woods that said “Occupied,” with newcomers required to call out before entering. “In the haylofts of life, there are always a few wasps.”
“I’m allergic to wasps,” Virgil ventured. He was a tall blond man, his long hair now plastered like a yellow bowl over his head.
“You’re allergic to haying,” Frankie said.
“I can’t even believe you bother with it,” Virgil said. “You have to give a third of the hay to Carl, to pay for his time and baling equipment. Whatever hay you manage to keep and sell, the feds and state take half the money. What’s the point?”
“I feed the hay to my cattle,” she said. “We eat the cattle. There are no taxes.”
“You don’t have any cattle,” Virgil said.
“The feds and state don’t know that.” She was another blonde, short and fairly slender.
“Please don’t tell me that,” Virgil said. “Your goddamn tax returns must read like a mystery novel.”
“Shoulda seen my mortgage application,” Frankie said. “One of those ninja deals-no income, no job. Worked out for me, though.”
Honus, a big yellow dog, lay soaking wet on the bank, in a spot of sunshine. He liked to swim, but he also liked to lie wet in the sun.
–
Frankie kicked past and Virgil ducked under water and floated up between her legs. “You have a very attractive pussy,” he said.
“I’ve been told that,” Frankie said. “I’ve been thinking of entering it in the state fair.”
“I could be a judge,” Virgil offered.
“You certainly have the necessary expertise,” she said.
“Speaking of state fairs… Lucas should have been killed,” Virgil said, floating back a bit. “I can’t believe the stories coming out of Iowa. I talked to him about it last night; he’s up to his ass in bureaucrats, like nothing he’s ever seen. He said he’s been interviewed a half-dozen times by the FBI. The goddamn Purdys almost blew up the presidential election. Would have, if he hadn’t been there.”
“Lucas is a crazy man,” Frankie said. “He chases crazy people. That’s what he does, and he likes it. Anyway, that’s the Iowa State Fair. I’d enter the Minnesota State Fair.”
“Probably do better, as far as getting a ribbon,” Virgil said. Frankie’s knees folded over his shoulders. “Lucas said the Iowa blondes are really spectacular.”
Frankie said, “Wait a minute, are you sayin’ that I’m not spec-”
She stopped and they turned their faces toward the path. Somebody was scuffling down through the trees, in violation of the “Occupied” sign. Honus stood up and barked, two, three times, and Virgil and Frankie dropped their feet to the rocky bottom of the swimming hole, and Frankie called out: “Hey! Who’s there?”
–
The scuffling continued for a few more seconds, then a tall, slender, wide-shouldered blonde emerged on the path and chirped, “Hi, Frank.”
Frankie said, “Sparkle! What are you doing here?”
“I’m about to go swimming,” she said. There was more scuffling behind her, and a heavyset man who probably thought he looked like Ernest Hemingway, with a Hemingway beard and Hemingway gold-rimmed glasses, stepped out of the woods. He was wearing a black T-shirt with a schematic drawing of a host and chalice, and beneath that, the words “Get Real. Be Catholic,” plus cargo shorts and plastic flip-flops.
He looked down at them and said, “Hello, there.”
Sparkle pulled her top off-she was small-breasted and didn’t wear a brassiere-then her shorts and underpants and jumped into the swimming hole. When she surfaced, Frankie snarled, “You really, really aren’t invited.”
“Oh, shut up,” Sparkle said. She looked at Virgil. “You must be the famous Virgil fuckin’ Flowers.”
Virgil said, “Yeah. Who are you?”
Sparkle frowned at Frankie and said, “You’ve never told him?”
Frankie looked like she was working up a full-blown snit. “No. Why should I?”
Sparkle turned back to Virgil and said, “I’m Frankie’s baby sister.”
Virgil said to Frankie, “You have a baby sister?”
“Aw, for Christ’s sakes,” Frankie said.
“Careful,” Sparkle said. “You don’t want to piss off Father Bill.”
They all looked at the heavyset man, who had removed his T-shirt, glasses, and watch and was now stepping out of his shorts to reveal a dark brown pelt, speckled with gray, which would have done credit to a cinnamon bear. “That’s me,” he said. He flopped into the swimming hole, came up sputtering, and said, “Gosh. Nobody told me it’d be this cold.”
“What’s the Father Bill stuff?” Frankie asked.