"What was you saying about her burning her boyfriend?" Tommy asked, pushing her off him and rolling onto his side.
"Did I say anything about that?"
"Well, yes, Rae, you did. Just about the time you was tugging down my shorts. I guess you forgot about it because you found the salami."
Rae giggled and slapped his shoulder. In the past she would have blushed like a beet and hidden her head. Old Rae was blossoming all around.
"A good salami makes a hungry woman forget all kinds of things,'-' he said.
"You," she said, prodding him again.
"So how did this boyfriend take to being burned alive is what I want to know."
"I don't think he appreciated it much."
"I wouldn't think so. How come Aural ain't afraid of him coming after her and tying her to a stake with a can of lighter fluid and a bag of briquettes?"
"Aural says he's too dumb."
"Too dumb to want to get even?"
"Too dumb to find her," said Rae.
"Uh-huh."
"Although why you'd want to be with a man who was that dumb in the first place… heavens."
"Not all women have your intellectual interests in salami, Rae," he said.
Rae tittered and reached between his legs.
"It ain't all intellectual," she said.
He removed her hand. Did she think he was a machine?
"Even if her boyfriend can't find her, ain't she worried that the cops might?" he asked.
"Why would the cops find her?"
"Why? Well, Rae, I may be wrong, but it seems to me that setting a human being on fire is probably a felony of some kind."
"In North Carolina."
"Hell, anywhere."
"I mean, she did it in North Carolina. She's in West Virginia now.
Doesn't it have to be an interstate crime or something like that?"
"What the hell is an interstate crime?"
"Honey, I don't know, but I don't think North Carolina police can just drive up here and arrest her for something she did down there unless it's a federal crime, and then it ain't their job."
"Whose job is it?"
"A federal crime? Well, that would be for the FBI, wouldn't it?"
"Would it?" asked Tommy. He got up on his knees so he was over her for a change. "A case for the FBI, huh?"
"I think so," Rae said. She toyed with the hair on his chest, twisting it into strands. If he didn't stop her he would end up looking like he was wearing corn rows.
"You know what?" he asked.
"What?"
"I think Aural had better be careful who she tells her stories to because somebody might take it into their mind that she should be reported."."Who would do that?"
"You never know," said the Reverend. "Human nature is a very curious thing. Very curious.
A truck passed Cooper as he walked along the highway, its brake lights on as it decelerated rapidly. A heavy mist had lifted only minutes ago, leaving the pines coated with moisture that sparkled in the early morning sun as it broke through. At times the reflection was blinding, and drivers heading east drove with their visors down and sunglasses on.
Cooper watched them, some shading their eyes with their hands and squinting against the glare. Ahead of him, a slight bend in the road coincided with the solar angle in such a way that drivers were blinded for several hundred yards and the traffic there had slowed to a crawl.
As Cooper approached, the sun's angle changed enough of a fraction of an arc that the glare was even worse and people were actually stopping their cars, a few of them pulling to the side. Cooper walked beside them, marveling at the sight of dozens of cars behaving as if a stop sign had suddenly materialized in the center of the highway.
The drivers looked so stupid to him, immobilized by the sun, blindly creeping after the rear ends of the cars in front of them like elephants in the circus linked trunk to tail, while the traffic in the westbound lane raced by at normal speed.
"Idiots!" Cooper yelled. Those closest looked around, gawking, trying to find the source of the voice. Some of them insisted on putting their heads out their windows and looking up, staring into the sun, as if they had heard the voice of God.
"Dummies!"
A man two cars away leaned out, his necktie dangling outside the car.
"What?" he asked. "What is it?" The man was looking in the direction of Cooper, but not at him. Cooper thought about grabbing that necktie-one of the currently fashionable eyesores with a flock of herons against a background of green and orange-and yanking on it until the man's head fell off.
"You're a dumb shit," Cooper said.
The man just kept squinting, looking more puzzled than threatened.
"What?" he asked again, as if the sun were affecting his hearing as well as his sight. "What?"
It was then that Cooper realized the extent of his invisibility. Nobody could see him. Which meant nobody could stop him, nobody could report him. He felt suddenly omnipotent. He could do anything he wanted to any one of these people in any of these cars and no one could stop him. No one would even know that he was the one who did it.
Walking farther, Cooper passed a young woman who glanced up at him as he came abreast of her, then away, towards the backseat. Cooper got to her blind spot and turned and studied her. She looked good, small and clean and neat, and there was something about her mouth that reminded him of that other girl. Her hair was cut close to her head, which made her look like a girl pretending to be a boy. He didn't know why, but Cooper liked that, he felt his excitement growing. He could reach right in there and grab her, he thought, and no one would know. Right in the middle of a crowd and no one would see because he was invisible. He could do what he wanted-he could make her do what he wanted-surrounded by dozens of cars and people and no one would know anything about it.
Cooper laughed in anticipation and the woman lifted her eyes in his direction. She had been studying the floor of her car, trying to avoid the sun, but now she looked up, shielding her eyes with her hand.
She looked stupid, too, squinting at him that way and not seeing him.
They were all stupid, Cooper realized with surge of superiority, stupid as a herd of cows. Only he could see where he was going, only he was invisible.
The doorlatch on her car was up, so Cooper yanked the door open and pushed into the car, propelling her into the passenger seat.
At first she was too frightened to speak and her mouth moved open and shut as silently as a fish. Stupid, Cooper thought.
"What…" she finally sputtered. "@who are you?"
"I'm Invisible Man," Cooper said. He grabbed her by the arm and she gasped and tried to pull away, but of course it wasn't possible to pull away from Cooper.
"Please," she said. "Please," and she thrust her purse at him.
She wasn't trying to get out the other door as he had thought she would.
The woman seemed to be trying to climb into the backseat instead. Cooper glanced back and saw the infant in the car seat for the first time. The baby stared back at Cooper, its big blue eyes as curious as Cooper's own.
The mother was panicking, but her fear hadn't transmitted itself to the baby yet and it studied Cooper calmly.
"Hi," Cooper said, reaching his finger towards the child.
The mother tried to pull Cooper's hand away from the baby, so he jerked her back onto the front seat. She bit into the hand that held her, sinking her teeth as hard as she could. The infant was reaching for Cooper's.finger, but he had to snatch his free hand away in order to club the woman.
The baby seemed to sense that something was wrong and its face wrinkled in preparation for a scream. Cooper wiggled his finger before the baby again but it was too late and the child let out an anguished cry.
The woman had slumped onto the seat, so Cooper was free to reach for the infant with both hands, but the crossbar on the car seat confused him temporarily. Suddenly horns were blaring and Cooper heard someone yell,