Don’t move, the male agent was saying. He had a burn scar that ran down from his neck and disappeared under his collar, only to reappear on top of his wrist. It wasn’t a stretch to guess it was a combat scar, not at all, and the scruff on his face and his hair, grown out beyond regulation, seemed to tell a story, too.
Who are you? the female agent said, directing her question to Meg. He located a slight, faint quiver in her voice. Before he could speak, Meg answered from her seat at the table, giving her name.
We’re agents from the Psych Corps, the male agent said.
There it was in the guy’s voice! A tiny trace of a stoner’s quiver, leftover desire for Trip, a need for substance and maybe a hint of enfolding around his eyes and in the way he held the gun, as if he half remembered how to maintain his aim in this kind of situation. The scar confirmed it. He’d seen action, been enfolded, taken the treatment, and was out to save the world.
The male agent tightened his grip and steadied his aim. Don’t move, he said. His hand was shaking and he didn’t sound so sure about what he was doing.
Let me soothe my old lady, Hank said. She’s frightened off her rocker, but she’s harmless. Keep the gun on me if you want. I won’t bolt or move against you. If I were a failed enfold you two would be smeared on that wall there. I would’ve had a gun at hand, of course, at all times. You know that, I know that.
Go ahead, the man said, following with the gun as he went over to MomMom, who was leaning back against the stove, her mouth wide open, shaking her head but remaining unusually quiet.
These folks are good folks who are here to take care of some business that doesn’t have a thing to do with God. God’s outside the house right now. I’ll take you out to see him as soon as we talk a little bit with these people.
Keep her inside, the man said. The woman agent had lowered her gun.
Where’s Rake?
So I was right. You’re looking for Rake.
That’s right.
It’s just the three of us — me, Meg, and the old lady. Rake’s out of the picture.
Is he in the house? the agent asked. He moved around to the doorway and glanced down the hall.
No, he’s gone. Take a look around. You probably don’t believe me, I can understand that, but when I get around to explaining it to you, I trust you’ll agree that we did what we had to do beyond the law — not that the law means a whole lot up here — and in accordance with the nature of nature, such as it is. I’m a lumber runner, you see, and Meg here is a survivor, an enfold — you probably know, I’m sure you have a file on her, I’m sure you could tell me more about her story than I could.
The two agents seemed to calm down. Window glass covered the sink, and once again a breeze came through the broken window. Hank took a deep breath and smelled a tree, a faint itch of pollen from Canada, and he thought of the roles that he and Meg had played. They’d cast them off in the past weeks, but it might be necessary to revive them now, when they were looking into a gun barrel (no darkness like that of a gun barrel). Meg was totally out of her old role, her face clear and healthy from relaxing in the open air. But there remained a chance that these were rogue agents, acting in bad faith, a couple who had their own dramatic license to play a part.
His muscles had hardened from chopping wood and cleaning around the house. He’d enjoyed relaxing with Meg, but there was still the rumble of motorcycles at night. The locals would keep away, thinking Rake was still around, but others might come flowing in from the Lower Peninsula, now that the fires had started.
I’ll go take a look around, the male agent said to the female. You stay down here but keep your gun trained. Get the old lady to sit down at the table.
Hank’s telling the truth, Meg said to the female agent. As a matter of fact, he saved my life and I saved his. A few minutes later the man with the gun came back into the kitchen and put it on the counter. No sign of him, he said. He motioned for the woman to put the gun down.
Sit down at the table, Hank said. Join us. We got nothing to hide from you, nothing at all. And we don’t have much against the Corps. As a matter of fact, we’ve both had a form of the treatment. She had the official version and I had my own version. Black market or not, the Trip is Trip. I’d like to exchange names, Hank said, if that’s all right with you. I’d like to establish an atmosphere of trust quickly because, in case you haven’t heard, all hell is breaking loose downstate and it’s heading up this way, the chaos, not that it hasn’t been here already. It’s not going to take folks out there long to figure out that Rake isn’t around. When they do, they’re gonna come to extract some revenge for the things he did and the things they imagine he did.
Where is he? the agent said.
Hank leaned back and tweezed his beard. To let them know Rake was out of action would be to open the door to a new place, and that fact would either placate them or, if they were rogue, give them a new sense of freedom and lower their fear level a notch.
* * *
In the mission report, he’d describe it as a static scene with a domestic aura. The smell of baked bread. He’d say the girl looked rested and calm, with a small scar on her face. Eyes: blue. Hair: dirty blond. Targets offered hospitality in the form of drink and food. He’d explain that he withheld trust as was warranted in this kind of field situation, assessing for hints, taking as much time as needed, avoiding any kind of interrogative stance until it was proved necessary on account of the fact that it seemed possible that information would be forthcoming if trust could be established. He’d try to describe the old lady, leaning back against the stove and shaking violently, making strange guttural sounds — and the solitude, the sense of seclusion in the kitchen — the exchange in the tension of the guns, the heated delusional space in the fear, and the sense that he had of knowing exactly how to handle it, aiming away from time to time. He’d try to explain how the big one, named Hank, had gone to his mother, kneeled down, kindly, gently, with his big hands on her shoulder, and soothed her, speaking gently, urging her over to the table and pulling the chair out for her, telling her to sit, making her sit down and getting her a glass of water from the sink. The woman was mumbling things, speaking of the end, something about the end, the beginning and the end together. (He’d summarize in the report, explain that the old lady was demented in the way of someone hearing voices that are speaking what seems, to her at least, to be the truth.)
* * *
The big burly one was trying to exude a calm. “If you take our point of view, I mean our vantage, if you can do that you’ll understand that we can’t be totally sure you’re not two rogue agents or Black Flaggers in disguise. For all we know, you two are wheeling in here to poke around and see if Rake’s really gone or not, and if we tell you he’s gone you’re gonna play it out to the end, take what you can, get your revenge on us. So I’m not ready yet to say he’s not coming back any second. He might be. He might not be.”
“We’re not rogue agents,” Wendy said. She took a sip of her drink, raising her glass as if in a toast.
“Radio reports say it’s pretty bad down there. Radio confirmed the Kennedy’s genuinely dead this time, no miss, and they say whoever becomes president next is going to walk right along in his footsteps and keep the ball rolling. They say that in theory nothing’s really gonna change and that the chain of command has been passed according to the Constitution and all that.”