But when I tried to watchThe Searchers and saw Buddy instead, everything changed. My brain knew that he couldn't really be talking and singing from a pressurized, heated radiation-shielded bubble on a satellite of Jupiter; my brain knew that someone had rigged up the fraud and had framed me for it.

My soul, however, could feel that Buddy had come back to life. I had seen him and heard him, and no actor or computer-generated simulacrum could have done what the figure on my Sony had done. He was real. He wasalive.

So I would ride Peggy Sue to Lubbock. I would screw up my courage by going to the statue first, and then, if no one stopped me, I would go to the grave. I would discover for myself, for both brain and soul, whether his body was still there.

I turned on Peggy Sue's lights and dismounted to examine the contents of my wallet in the glare. My credit cards would be worse than useless; buying gas with Visa would be like revealing my position with a flare gun. I would have to rely on whatever cash I happened to have.

I had fifty-eight dollars and twenty-three cents. Based on Peggy Sue's usual fuel consumption, I calculated that I might make it to Lubbock if I didn't eat and if I stole a few bucks from vending machines or video games on the way. I was already a Federal fugitive, so what difference would a misdemeanor or two make?

Before remounting, I looked down at the bike's left exhaust pipe. Ringo had bitten off approximately seven inches, and a canine fang was wedged into a ragged tear in the chrome. I grasped the tooth and tugged, my gloves protecting my hands from the heat, and it came free. Examining it, I discovered that its base was not a b.l.o.o.d.y root, but a bent metal screw.

Veterinary dentistry had made strides of which I hadn't been aware. I was glad that I was miles away from Ringo and about to increase the distance.

I dropped the tooth into a Moonsuit pocket, then straddled Peggy Sue and put her into gear. It was only as I twisted the throttle that I noticed how different she sounded with the shortened, ragged exhaust pipe.

The noise was as loud and raucous as that of a piston-engine airplane.

We headed south across the low-water bridge. If we managed to make it as far as Oklahoma, I'd buy or steal a road map. Until then, I wouldn't worry about getting lost. I knew that my best route would pa.s.s through or near Oklahoma City, and I had been there once before, visiting the Cowboy Hall of Fame on an eighth-grade field trip.

The cloud cover was thick now, and snow began to fall. There was no wind, so the flakes fell straight and gentle before Peggy Sue's light. We pa.s.sed farms where men in coveralls and earflapped caps were herding Holsteins to white buildings for the morning milking. Most of the men waved.

"Oh, boy!" I shouted, strangely joyful.

It felt like Christmas.

SHARON Notes on client Oliver Vale, continued...

2/3/89; 4:22 A.M.: Two Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents and three uniformed state troopers have just left. They were looking for Oliver, but Oliver never arrived. I wasn't able to look for him either, because the agents and troopers showed up just as I was heading out the door.

I don't believe that a broadcasting violation is within the KBI's purview, and I said so. They threatened me with a charge of obstructing justice. Bruce commented that if they tried that he would be forced to recommend that I sue them until they became old and sick. That made them still more abusive, but despite that, I was as cooperative as my professional ethics would allow.

When I explained that I had not seen Oliver in over a week (they didn't ask whether I had telephoned him, so I didn't mention it), they left, muttering about a statewide manhunt.

I can only imagine what would have happened if Oliver/Buddy's initial interruption had occurred during prime time. In all likelihood, the governor would have called out the National Guard.

The KBI agents informed me that other officers were already on their way to Oliver's home. I have no way of knowing whether he left before they arrived, or whether they intercepted him en route here. I've just tried to phone him again, but after three rings his machine took the call. I recorded the answering tape, which I had not heard before: "h.e.l.lo, this is Oliver Vale. I can't come to the phone right now, but you probably have a wrong number anyway. If not, leave a message at the primal scream, and I'll send you the money I owe you. If you're one of Mother's old Flying Saucer cronies, she doesn't live here anymore. In fact, she doesn't live anywhere, because she's dead, like Jim Morrison. The only difference is that Morrison is supposedly buried in France, and Mother was definitely cremated in Topeka. As stipulated in her will, I scattered her ashes in a field near Clear Lake, Iowa. You can look for her there, if you like, but I've got to tell you, it's just a field.Beeeeep."

Oliver needs even more help than I had realized.

It is now 4:47 A.M. I intend to stay awake as long as I can in the hope that I will hear some news of him, and so that I can help him if he has been arrested. Bruce, however, went to bed as soon as the KBI agents left. I am angry with him for that, which is interesting, because there is no reason for anger. Oliver is my client, not Bruce's, and the truth is that I am not doing Oliver any good by sitting up by the telephone. So why should I be angry with Bruce for doing the sensible thing?

Anger = Anxiety + Fatigue.

I can hear the son of a b.i.t.c.h snoring.

CATHY AND JEREMY.

They waited in the pale circle cast by Vale's yard light while Ringo bounded up to them with a chunk of chrome pipe in his mouth. He was wagging his bobbed stump of a tail, and the blue sparks in his eyes were bright. "I was hoping to provoke him," Cathy said, speaking loudly to be heard over the approaching sirens.

"The fact that he simply fled presents a complication, but we can deal with it."

Jeremy jerked a thumb toward the end of the driveway, where a blue automobile with flashing red lights on its roof was entering. "Cheese it," he said, turning toward their house. "The cops."

Cathy grasped his arm and gave him a look of disgust as three more shrieking, flashing automobiles crammed into the driveway. "You still don't know the first thing about how to handle the fleshbound, do you?" she said. Then she put her hands to her head and began screaming. "Oh, my G.o.d! Oliver Vale messed up our TV and tried to attack us! After that he jumped on his horrible motorcycle and went that way!" She pointed south.

The cars stopped and the sirens' wails droned down. The driver of the first car opened his door and began to step out.

"That way, I tell you!" Cathy screamed.

Jeremy gave her a quizzical look. "Do we want them after him?" he asked.

Cathy waved her arms and smacked the back of Jeremy's head. Jeremy's right eye popped out and fell to the gravel.

The police officer who was emerging from his car stopped halfway and stared at Ringo, who still had the short length of exhaust pipe clenched in his jaws.

"Uh, I need to ask-" the officer began.

Ringo growled.

"That way!"Cathy shrieked, pointing south again.

The shriek galvanized the officer into action. "Right!" he shouted, turned to face the other three cars. "He went south! He's on a motorcycle!"

"Armed and dangerous!" Cathy cried, jumping up and down.

Jeremy got down on his hands and knees and began searching for his eye. "I really don't think we want these people to-"

Cathy collided with him, knocking him onto his side. "Well, go!" she told the police officer.

"Don't worry," the officer said, reentering his cruiser. "We have a warrant." He slammed his door shut, and one by one, the four cars backed out onto the pavement and sped away to the south, their sirens wailing again as they accelerated.

"A warrant from whom? I wonder," Jeremy said, still searching for his eye. "You'd think that the jurisdictional questions would need to be untangled first."

"Who cares?" Cathy said. "No doubt some high-powered judge didn't like having his Portuguese p.o.r.n cut off. All that matters to me is that they're after him." "Why?" Jeremy spotted his eye and crawled toward it.

Cathy reached down and plucked the eye from the gravel before Jeremy's fingers could close on it. She tossed the blue-and-white sphere from one hand to the other. "For six years we've been waiting for Vale to try to contact the pro-flesh agitators so that we could prevent him and maintain the status quo," she said, "but in all that time he's done nothing-and until now, they haven't tried to communicate with him either."

"I guess they got tired of waiting."

"They aren't the only ones." Cathy shivered. "It's going to snow, and I hate snow. Flesh gets cold, and bored. So as long as Vale's running, I want the fleshbound police after him. If they lock him up, our problem's as good as solved, and if they don't, his fear may force him to finally act. If that happens, then either the pro-flesh experiment succeeds or we're able to foil it. But no more limbo." She slapped her legs with her free hand. "No more limbs."

Jeremy stood. "But if they don't catch him quickly, we'll have to follow him. In the Datsun, for Christ's sake."

Cathy shook her head. "Until he tries something, all we have to do is watch him." She whistled, and Ringo dropped the tail pipe, wagging his stump and giving her a wide Doberman grin.

"Aw, look," Jeremy said. "He lost a tooth. I'll see if we have a spare."

Cathy squatted and pressed her thumb against the side of Ringo's right eye until it popped out. "There's no time to bother with that," she said, pushing Jeremy's eye into Ringo's empty socket. Now the dog had one black eye with a blue spark, and one blue eye with a black pupil.

Jeremy clapped a hand over his own empty socket. "Yag! I'll get dizzy and throw up!"

"So take out your left one too," Cathy said. She picked up the length of exhaust pipe and held it against Ringo's nose. "Ringo! Go follow!"

The Doberman sniffed, then loped away, turning south as he reached the road.

Cathy stood. "That's all we need to do right now. I doubt that Vale will find a way to call on our misguided brothers without returning here first, and in that case we can stop him."

Jeremy lurched off the driveway and began staggering across the dead yard. "Oh, dog, not so fast," he moaned.

Cathy caught up with him and inserted Ringo's eye into his socket. "This should improve your reception and balance. Keep me apprised of what he sees. Six years of flesh-bound life are riding on this."

"Some life," Jeremy said. "I don't even have working genitals."

Cathy took his arm and steered him toward their house. "That's a psychological problem."

"So my psychology doesn't work either."

She patted his hand. "Maybe we won't have to put up with any of it much longer. How's Ringo doing?" "He's stopped to urinate on a tree. Oh, disgusting-I canfeel it!"

Cathy sighed. "b.i.t.c.h, b.i.t.c.h, b.i.t.c.h."

3.

OLIVER.

I remember little of my infancy. I do have a vague recollection of being breast-fed, but according to Volume II of Mother's diary, I was strictly a bottle-baby. Even back then, it would seem, I had an active imagination.

On the whole, I am thankful for my lack of memories from this period, because Volume II depicts my early years as having been horrific. Grandfather plunged deeper and deeper into the Falstaff well from which he would never emerge, and Grandmother became a bitter, wounding harpy-while Mother, as a teenage single parent in 1960, had no choice but to live with them until I was old enough for full-time school. To make things worse, I contracted every ailment known to babyhood-colic, diaper rash, croup, measles, mumps, impetigo, ear infections, you name it-and all before my first birthday.

It is a lousy way to start,Mother wrote while I was crusty with impetigo.How is he catching all of this stuff, anyway? We never go anywhere except to the doctor's office.

Meanwhile, Grandmother took every opportunity to preach to Mother about how this was what always happened to babies born out of sin: The sin stayed with them, staining them with illness, for their entire lives. Mother would have liked to take a job in order to escape this refrain for at least eight hours a day, but that would have meant leaving me with Grandmother (no day care in Topeka in 1960), which she was not willing to do.There's no telling what Mama might do in one of her moods, she wrote.

This may not have been paranoia. My first clear memory, from when I was perhaps two years old, is of Mother preventing Grandmother from smacking me in the face because I had ralphed up my Cream of Wheat. The first complete phrase I learned was "drowned at birth."

Mother kept the radio in our bedroom tuned to the local rock 'n' roll station.It is the one thing in my world that offers any joy, she wrote.Despite what happened to Buddy Holly, despite even what happened to C., this music makes me feel as though I and my son might live forever.

Which we wouldn't.

I remember when I realized this. It was lunchtime on a Sat.u.r.day, four days after my fifth birthday. I liked Sat.u.r.days because there was no kindergarten. (I was the youngest kid in Mrs. Johnson's morning cla.s.s, and the other kids called me "the baby.") Mother and I were in our room listening to the radio and finishing off the last of my chocolate birthday cake. As a song ended, the disc jockey said, "Now let's spin a few in tribute to the late Sam Cooke, who died last night in Los Angeles at the age of twenty-nine."

The radio started playing "You Send Me."

Mother was sitting on the floor with a piece of cake in her hand, staring at the radio on her dresser. Shewas so still and quiet that I was scared.

"Mother?" I said.

She didn't acknowledge me. She just kept staring at the radio.

I crawled onto her lap and hugged her. She didn't hug me back.

"Everything dies," she said.

I pressed my face into her sweater. She smelled of baby powder, and the sweater made my eyes itch. I began to cry.

She held me then and stroked my hair and face. Her hands were cold. My grandparents didn't believe in wasting money on heating the house.

"Not you, Oliver," Mother murmured as she rocked me. "Not you, baby, not you."

I could hear the lie.

I knew what death was. I had seen a squirrel run over in the street. It had lain there for weeks until it had become a virtual part of the blacktop. That had happened to Sam Cooke. That was going to happen to me.

Years later, I learned that Sam Cooke's demise had been even less glorious than that of the squirrel. In the reported version of reality, he was shot three times by the owner of a motel where he had been trying to make it with a woman who didn't want to be made.

But even if I had heard that and had been able to understand it at the age of five, the knowledge wouldn't have made any difference in how I felt. After all, I wasn't mourning for Sam Cooke. His voice was still alive, and I would hear it again and again. I wasn't even mourning for Buddy Holly, because Mother had told me that he still lived inside me, and that his music was immortal.

I was mourning for Mother. I was mourning for me.

We were not immortal.

This was not an easy revelation for my five-year-old self. I had nightmares for months afterward. They usually involved my being run over, like the squirrel, while "You Send Me" echoed in the street as I was mashed.

That day in the bedroom, my chocolate cake sticky in my throat, I learned that only the music lasts.

From that moment on, I paid closer attention to the songs on the radio, listening for the secret of eternal life.

Volume II reveals that Sam Cooke's death was a turning point for Mother as well. It was the impetus that started her down the path to true weirdness. She wrote,All things beautiful are doomed. The purer the voice, the truer the vision, the more vibrant the song, the sooner death comes for the perpetrator. The only way to escape this truth is to deny the reality from which it has been created, to exist in some other universe altogether.

So it is time to believe in flying saucers. Dianetics is worth serious consideration. Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Mississippi welcomes visiting Jews. Vietnam will become the fifty-first state.

My son Oliver is the reincarnation not only of Buddy Holly, but of the Buddha. Mama is the reincarnation of Lot's wife. I can fly to the moon if I tape a photograph of John Glenn to my forehead.

Rereading that pa.s.sage makes me realize something: The mention of Lee Harvey Oswald is the only reference to the a.s.sa.s.sination of John F. Kennedy in any of Mother's diary entries, and I have no recollection of November 22, 1963, even though I was almost four years old at the time. Maybe if Kennedy had cut a record.