She didn't turn around but a hand snaked between her legs and gave me the finger. "How'd it go?"

There was a small table under the only window in the kitchen and I sat at it and picked up an apple from the wicker bowl. "They were polite. No one refused to take a resume but no one promised me the stars and the moon. Family businesses and mom-and-pop shops."

She pulled her head out and breathed deeply. There were spots of grease on her forearms and chin and the smell of oven cleaner was strong. "What the h.e.l.l did you expect?"

She dropped the rag she was holding and came over and jumped into my lap. I shrugged and rested a hand above the comforting swell of her hip.

"I don't know, baby. I've never had a job before."

She pushed herself back a bit and looked into my face. "Are you serious?"

"Yes. Really. I've either stolen or been in jail. I've never had a job-job."

She laughed softly and then took my hand and put it down the top of her shirt. "Well, you know what will make you feel better?"

I didn't but she did. We would have done it a second time there on the kitchen table if Fred hadn't woken up and started to cry.

12.

The next day I was up at 7:00 and headed down Main and hit thirty more businesses before taking a break around noon to go back to the bakery for a bagel. It was almost, but not quite, as good as the Danish, and the cream cheese was a little too bland to be really top notch. The baker lent me a copy of the local Yellow Pages so I wasted time in the cool spring sun with a second cup of coffee and made notes on the back of one of the resumes.

"More coffee?"

"Please."

The baker stood there for a few seconds and read over my shoulder. "Looking for a job?"

"Yes."

He waited, I guess for me to add more but I didn't, and he sniffed loudly. "It's a good time of year."

He glanced at the clouds but when I still didn't say anything, he sniffed again and walked back into the building.

In a few seconds the anger faded. It was odd, in prison you wouldn't think of prying into someone else's personal s.p.a.ce, they might kick the s.h.i.t out of you, shiv you, or f.u.c.k you. In the real world the interference seemed like a fairly common occurrence, and no one seemed to care or give it much thought. I also suspected that kicking the s.h.i.t out of someone for reading over your d.a.m.ned shoulder would be frowned upon. The wind shifted a little and brought a dirty smell off the river and I realized that going straight was going to be hard. There were no referents, no signposts, no maps to how to behave.

There were lots of businesses listed nearby in the Yellow Pages: garages, groceries, convenience stores, five-and-dimes transformed into dollar bargain stores, bars, restaurants, and so on. All those needed untrained workers and I certainly qualified for that category but they also paid very little, about $7.25 an hour for minimum wage, according to the call I'd made to the labor board. I did the math on the corner of the resume and came to a total before taxes that would leave us with four hundred a month to live on (after rent). That's if I could get forty hours a week.

"That's not right."

I did the figures again and then looked around. There were two old men sitting solo at the counter and one turned slowly and looked at me so I stared back. He was small, just over five feet tall, with long arms and a shock of white hair that swept down and blended into gray eyebrows. He was wearing khaki pants and a white b.u.t.ton-down shirt about three sizes too big for him. His skin was deeply tanned and his eyes were small and brown with very fine lashes, like those of a young girl.

"Can I help you?"

"Depends. You looking for work?"

I folded the resume up and took a sip of the coffee. The old man didn't look like he had a job of his own, much less that he could hire anybody, but I could be wrong.

"Sure."

"I don't need a lot of help but I need some. Maybe an hour's work once a week and I'll pay you ten under the table."

He carried his coffee over to my table and sat down before going on. "I own an archery shop down the street and I'm getting a delivery in. I have to watch the door while someone else brings in the boxes. I'm also too old. The f.u.c.king driver won't touch anything once the truck stops. What do you say?"

Ten bucks would cover yesterday's coffee and today's, so I agreed.

The old man's shop was called The b.u.t.tes and I tried to make a joke of it.

"It's an old English term for where you shoot a bow."

"Oh."

"Bet ya feel pretty stupid."

I ignored him and he showed me where the truck was going to come up behind his place and where I should stack the boxes. Then he led me around to the front of the place and let us both in with a big ring of keys. Once inside, he took down a laminated sign hanging in the door and put it on a post with several others. As he went to turn on the lights, I read the signs. One said "Deer Season!," another said "Gone Fishing," and the last two said "Coffee at the Greek's, be back soon" and "Lunch, be back later," respectively.

"Ya gotta tell your customers straight what's going on."

I hung my coat and vest on a circular rack of odd-looking bows in the middle of the room and looked around at an incredible mess. Along one wall were racks of bows for rent, along another were more for sale, and several large machines full of rollers and counterweights sat near the cash register. Shelves in the middle of the room held racks of camouflage clothing, bags, accessories, quivers, and a bewildering variety of arrows and other equipment. The back end of the room was given over to two ranges about twenty yards long that ended in a wall lined with several hundred sheets of pressboard stacked on top of each other and held down by industrial-sized clamps attached to the ceiling and floor braces.

"Nice place, huh?"

"I do not have the words. Is there really this much need for archery supplies?"

The old man was checking the answering machine and making notes on a clipboard attached to the wall. "Yep. I get hunters, Olympic wannabes, target freaks, schools, and clubs. h.e.l.l, these days I even get couples coming out on dates. I do fine."

He scratched his nose and then continued. "Now, don't get me wrong. Business could be better. It could always be better, betcha even Izzy Asper said that. Before he died. Here, I'll open the back door for you."

He walked down the lane to where an old, pocked target was still pinned to the wall. Inset near one corner was a steel door with a complicated latch, which he opened and then propped into place with a stop carved from a piece of two-by-four.

"The truck should be here any time. My name's Frank, by the by, yours is ... ?"

"Oh. Sam Parker. Glad to meet you."

We shook hands and then he scratched his nose again. "Well, when he comes, unload the stuff into the middle of this range here and then we're square and I'll pay you. Okay?"

The bell that announced customers rang in the front of the store so Frank headed off while I waited for the delivery. In twenty minutes the driver showed up, pulling a five-ton diesel truck into the back lane and sc.r.a.ping the buildings on both sides. The driver hopped out, bringing with him a cloud of smells, dried urine and testosterone, flatus and halitosis, and coming towards me with a rolling gait like a sailor. He was a short man with a big belly and a wart right at the corner of his left eye.

"Where's the old man?"

I could hear archers talking inside along with the regular thud of the arrows into the target. I pointed over my shoulder. "He's in the front. Does he have to sign for something?"

The driver pushed a battered clipboard into my hands and belched. "Yeah."

As I took the delivery sheets back to Frank, I idly flipped the forms back to reveal that the driver had taped a centerfold to the clipboard itself. The picture was of a fat, ugly woman with bad teeth who had both hands locked into her v.a.g.i.n.a and was pulling it apart with what looked to be satisfaction at a job well done. I shuddered and flipped the pages back into place and let Frank sign.

"You look spooked."

"Never mind."

"You looked at the picture, didn't ya?"

"I said never mind. I meant never mind."

Frank scratched his nose with the tip of a broad-headed arrow. "Actually, I think it might be his wife."

I started to walk back and he shouted at my back. "Or his sister."

When the driver had his papers back, he opened up the side doors and stood back.

"There you f.u.c.king go. First two f.u.c.king pallets and don't leave any f.u.c.king wrap behind. f.u.c.k."

The pallets were maybe two yards square at the base and three yards high, and consisted of brightly colored boxes of archery and outdoors equipment, tents, bags, and camouflage clothing. They were all wrapped in thick plastic that looked like Saran Wrap on steroids. I jumped up and looked at the pile.

"C'mon, I ain't got all f.u.c.king day."

There was no way around this. I grabbed hold of the edge of the plastic and started to tear it.

When I had the top layer exposed, I took the first box and looked for a place to put it. Finally I had to climb down and put it by the door. While I was doing this, the driver had retrieved a small cooler from the cab and was drinking a can of beer and eating a foot-long submarine sandwich loaded with meatb.a.l.l.s and dripping a semi-translucent red sludge onto the ground in front of him. He saw me looking and waved the bottle around.

"Don't worry, it's only f.u.c.king American beer. It's like p.i.s.s."

It took me almost an hour to unload both pallets onto the ground. When I was done, the driver slammed the door shut and nearly took my fingers off.

"Took you f.u.c.king long enough."

He was a small man, shorter than I by maybe a foot and a whole lot heavier, but he dwindled when I got in close. I smiled into his face and he reached for his belt, where a multi-purpose tool or folding knife was holstered in a leatherette case.

"You know ..."

He squared his shoulders and undid the clasp on the case. He was using his right hand with his left to hold the case and it was on his left hip, which meant he'd draw it across his body before he could use it. That gave me possibilities, which made me smile widely.

"... I could show you how to wear a Colombian Necktie. It'd look good on you. First I cut your throat, just a little, right under your chin. Then I pull your tongue out really hard until it sticks all the way down the outside of your throat. You don't bleed to death, you suffocate. It's been a while since I've done it but we can try, it'll come back to me."

He froze and broke and the next thing I knew, he had jumped into his truck and taken off, so I turned and went back to loading the boxes into the shop. Frank watched me from the front for a while and then came back to see how I was doing.

"What's wrong?"

"Hurt my back a while ago. I've got to take it slow, hope you don't mind."

Frank scratched his nose some more and thought about it. He was holding a big fibergla.s.s-and-aluminum bow painted in camouflage colors. There were big pulleys at both ends of the arms and the line went back and forth over and over again. He changed the subject.

"You ever shoot?" Frank looked at me down the arm of the bow.

I answered, "Bows? No."

"You should, it's very relaxing. Peaceful, even."

I put down the last box and stretched to loosen my back. "Is it hard?"

"Not at all. Take this one. It's got a fifty-pound pull but you only hold twenty-five at the apex. It's legal for deer, elk, bear, anything you can find in Canada or the States. With one arrow you can take a rabbit, change the arrowhead and you can put a two-inch-wide hole right through the chest of a grizzly, change the arrow again and you can take fish. Bows are versatile, which guns ain't."

"Well ..."

I picked up the last packing case from the truck.

"Let me put this stuff away and we'll talk."

Frank added. "And shoot."

"Long as it's free."

"First time always is."

I kept working. First taste is always free in both worlds.

13.

Claire held me at arm's length when I got back home that afternoon and sniffed the air loudly on either side of my head.

"Ye G.o.ds, sweat, I do believe the boy has sweated."

Any retort I might have made was silenced when she thrust an odiferous Fred into my arms and turned to walk back towards the kitchen.

"This is not fair! Fred's c.r.a.pped himself."

Fred nodded in serious agreement and tried to throw himself to the floor. After I changed him, I went upstairs for a shower, carefully putting the baby gate into place in Fred's room and locking it despite his squalls of outrage. I had to raise my voice to be heard downstairs over the baby.

"I'm showering!"

Claire came up and idly dusted flour off the front of her sweatshirt.

"You have no idea how glad I am. Dinner will be in ten minutes."

Upstairs the taps ran cold, then hot, then warm and finally they stuttered along at that temperature for just long enough. I changed into a pair of black dress pants cut down to shorts and a sleeveless white dress shirt and then came down to find the dining room lit by candles, with Fred dozing in his high chair.

"Monsieur." Claire made a broad gesture with her arm and showed me to my seat at the rickety old card table we were using since the cops had taken away our dining room table. G.o.d knows why. Probably to test it for blood or other crucial evidence. This despite the fact they had at least two confessions, both of them mine, plus whatever other theories they might have come up with. From past experience I knew we might maybe get the d.a.m.n table back in a year. That was a big maybe and odds were we'd never see it again unless we visited a cop's house or went to a police auction.