But before she could give voice to what Roy was reasonably certain would be some sort of threat, one of the exterior doors to the Morrison Arms flew open, and a fat, balding man dressed in nothing but a pair of threadbare briefs that sagged revealingly in the crotch bolted from the building as if pursued by the devil. The gravel parking lot was littered with shards of broken beer and whiskey bottles. Nobody in his right mind would traverse it in bare feet, but clearly that didn’t include this lunatic. He chugged past Roy and his mother-in-law with the kind of grim determination that suggested he’d weighed the dangers of what lay before him against those that lay behind and was unimpressed by the former. There was no sign of pursuit, so once he reached the sidewalk Roy expected him to stop or slow down, but he just kept churning until he disappeared around the corner onto Limerock.
Roy was first to recover. “People like you think they can read the future,” he said, “but they can’t. Not unless you want to tell me you seen that comin’.”
“No,” she admitted, “but if you told me I’d see a naked man run out of an apartment building in Bath, New York, I think I could’ve predicted which one it’d be.”
Since Roy was pretty sure they weren’t going to agree about predicting the future, he opened the door and with great care — because he really did ache all over — got out of the car. From inside the Arms came a shriek, then another. Cora, the woman he was living with, raced outside with surprising speed and agility for somebody her size. Then two more women, one holding an infant, came out squealing. Ruth had started to pull away but stopped and rolled down her window. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“There’s a damn snake in there,” Cora said. “Big one.”
Roy was interested in the possibility that what she was saying might be true, despite its unlikelihood. He knew there were timber rattlers out in the woods, but what would one of those be doing in town, inside the Morrison Arms? He supposed the smart move was to find something with a long handle — a broom or a rake, maybe — and go in and find out, but there was something else he needed to do first, something he’d told himself to remember and then forgot all about it.
“Think about my offer, Roy,” his mother-in-law said.
“I will,” he lied. Though it didn’t look like she believed him, she rolled up the window anyway and pulled out into the street.
Cora came over then. “Oh, Roy, look at you!” she said. “I heard you was hurt—”
He held a finger up to stop her. “Dummy up a minute,” he told her. “I’m trying to remember something.”
“Sure, Roy,” she said. “I was just—”
“Got it,” he said suddenly.
“Where you goin’?” she said when he turned away from her. “To Gert’s? Can I come? I got some money…”
But he’d stopped listening. Over at the curb he had a direct view of the parking lot, where he’d seen that flash of red when they got here. Seeing what it was, he smiled, then frowned, recognizing with some apprehension the approach of an impulse, the very kind that, up to this point in his life, he’d shown not the slightest ability to control. He thought of how old Bullwhip had identified Roy’s problem and told him what to do different. Well, he was one to talk. He’d gotten out a few months before Roy, and after six weeks he was right back in again. When Roy asked what happened, all he’d said was, “I saw me an opportunity.”
More agitated people were streaming out of the Arms now, but Roy paid them no mind. His whole brain was pulsing red.
Don’t, he told himself.
Then he did.
Boogie
THE BAREFOOT, HALF-NAKED MAN who’d bolted from the Morrison Arms that afternoon was Rolfe “Boogie” Waggengneckt (Boogie Woogie, his last name being unpronounceable). He fled straight up the center of Limerock Street, right past the now-three-sided mill. By then, midafternoon, the crowd had largely dissipated, but Carl Roebuck’s crew and the NiMo guys were still there, as was Officer Miller, who was providing a police presence. These men all paused to watch, slack jawed, as Boogie motored past. Though middle aged and woefully out of shape, he had run track in high school, and in his ramrod posture, churning arms and fluid stride you could glimpse the runner he’d once been. Propelled by stark terror, he made it farther and faster than anyone, including himself, would’ve predicted, though compared with youth and rigorous physical conditioning fear is a poor fuel, thin and easily burned through, even when there’s a lot of it. So when Boogie’s tank was finally empty, he stopped like a windup toy and sat down in the middle of the street, utterly spent and aware at last of the spectacular pain in his shredded feet.
Officer Miller was reluctant to leave his comfy post but reasonably certain that a barefoot man, clad only in undershorts, running up the middle of the street was the sort of thing Chief Raymer would want him to investigate. He approached the man cautiously, in accordance with best practices as detailed in the police manual, a document he’d committed to memory as a hedge against the necessity of having to think on the spot. In his mind’s eye he could actually see the relevant text, which warned officers to be cognizant of the possibility that a fleeing suspect might be carrying a concealed weapon, though in this case that seemed unlikely. Nor did the man appear to be a further flight risk. Boogie’s feet, oozing impressively, looked like someone had gone at them with a cheese grater, and his chest was heaving violently. Clearly he wasn’t going anywhere unless somebody carried him, and so Miller, his confidence growing, turned his attention to the matter of questioning the suspect. Where to begin? He might justifiably raise the issue of public nudity, he supposed, since Boogie’s dark genitals were clearly visible in the gap between his upper thigh and sagging undershorts, but opted instead to address what he considered a more urgent concern. “You can’t just sit down in the middle of the road,” he said.
Boogie, blinded by tears of anguish, slowly took in the fact that he’d been joined by a uniformed police officer, which meant his situation, already deeply embarrassing, was now officially humiliating. Having little breath with which to speak, he chose his words carefully. “They’re not my snakes,” he said.
Officer Miller wasn’t sure what sort of response he’d been expecting, but this wrong-footed him completely. Who’d said anything about snakes? Was the man on drugs, imagining himself to be pursued by reptiles? His pupils weren’t dilated. Though he reeked of stale beer, he didn’t appear drunk, just adamant. “I’m not going back in there,” he insisted. “You can’t make me.”
He was, however, willing to go to the hospital, so Miller radioed for an ambulance, which Charice told him to follow so he could take a statement. This did, surprisingly enough, involve snakes. According to Boogie, when the occupant of apartment 107 relocated for three months to the county jail, he’d sublet the place to a man who gave his name as William Smith. While he’d never actually met him, Smith had hired him over the phone at Gert’s Tavern, Boogie’s home away from home. How the man came to know about him was anybody’s guess, but he apparently had gleaned that Boogie was somebody who could be hired for minimum wage, provided the job required no actual work. Smith described himself to Boogie as a traveling salesman and an entrepreneur currently testing several business opportunities in upstate New York. He would likely require Boogie’s services for three weeks, though it was possible, if said opportunities panned out, that the employment could last well into June. Smith further explained that he himself would rarely be in residence. He meant to use apartment 107 primarily to store his inventory.