It was a small detail, but she noticed it at once. To the left of Papa's arm a tiny bubble grew. It popped and was immediately replaced by others. She smiled. Another bubble or two burst and then the mud began to boil. It spit into the air. As if he'd struck oil, it shot up all around him, some of it spattering the wagon's top. The smells of mud, linseed oil and hickory pervaded the air. Papa screamed, lowered his head, and mud filled the sky before slopping back.

And the wheel began to shake.

The hubs of elm, spokes of oak, and rims of ash all set to it. The wagon, all ton and a half of it, trembled. The tailgate opened and closed like a chattering mouth. The tongue shook and the oxen craned their heads, their black eyes stupidly concerned. Papa pulled his arms out, held them to his eyes, black and soaked with mud, and watched the wagon lean forward, disturbing the oxen. They took lumbering steps. After five or six of these, the wheel budged. It turned, then rolled. Painstakingly, they yanked the wheel free of the earth's grasp.

"Why thank you, John," said her mother, shaking her head, her arms crossed.

Thankfully, the remainder of the morning had been free of concerns. Now, Sarah sat beside her mother, pretending to sleep. "Can we make it by nightfall?" Mama asked.

Papa nodded, but raised his eyebrows. "Think so. Not much past, if it comes to that."

"And he has no idea we're coming?"

He eyed her disapprovingly. "You know he doesn't."

"But he'll-"

"Stop it," he said, glancing past her at Sarah, who quickly closed her eyes. "She's not like us. We need advice."

"She's just started the change, John."

"And who knows what that'll bring?"

They rode on.

The sun was bleeding into the west and smoke rose on the horizon. Sarah's eyes widened and she leaned forward. "Look!"

Papa jumped. "What?"

She poked her finger at the smoke. Light beat back the encroaching darkness somewhere in the distance. The town, she knew, lay under the heat of street lamps. She had heard that Tempest was as modern as they came.

"Must not be far."

"Aren't you excited?" asked Sarah.

Papa kept his eyes on the gray twirling into the gloom. He said nothing. Beside him, Mama stirred. She lifted her head, sat up and stared at the horizon.

Sarah watched as her parent's eyes met and her heart beat faster and faster. She spied a clapboard building. She broke into a sweat. Tempest was coming. It was coming and they weren't going to turn around.

They rolled into Tempest just after the dusk had dissolved into dark. A farmer outside of town agreed to corral their oxen and keep their wagon on his property. After they took a few essentials, they started for town.

The place was larger than Sarah had expected. Main Street was wide enough for three wagons to roll through side by side, and the buildings on either side of the street were too close-there weren't alleys between them, as in most towns. Most of them sported 'Closed' signs hanging in dirty windows. The right side of the street was dark and quiet, while on the left most of the noise in town-and there was considerable racket-was centered within the bright confines of the saloon. Sarah couldn't see over the batwing doors, but underneath them she spotted beautiful balmorals next to ankle jacks and brogans. Unlike in the great city, the cla.s.ses mixed here. Sarah took this as a good sign.

The few denizens they pa.s.sed on the street did not nod their heads or utter greetings. Instead, the moment anyone caught sight of the family meandering down the center of Main Street, they slowed their stride to a luxuriant stroll, eyeing them as they glided by.

The hotel was a block removed from the saloon. It stood two broad stories tall and was lit by kerosene lamps that hung from the eaves. The aromas of coffee and lintel beans wafted from the lobby. Inside, dishes and silverware tinked, and her stomach groaned: she'd eaten only an ear of corn all day.

Papa turned to Sarah and her mother after he stepped under the awning. "Wait here." He caught Mama's eye as she was about to protest. "Just do it."

Mama sighed, turned, and Sarah followed her gaze. She couldn't tell if her mother was looking across the street, at the various closed establishments, or at the street itself, where blobs of manure hosted flies.

When he returned, he said, "At least tonight you won't freeze on one side," and offered an uneasy smile to Mama. He led them inside.

Looming over a wide counter, the innkeeper looked them over.

Chapter Four: Body and Mind.

1.

It rained in Simola Straight all that Sunday. The Liebers stayed in, Veronica reading a Larry McMurtry novel, Jenn playing with her dolls, and Robert scared and alone in his office. Every time he blinked he saw those two dots of blood, and while he knew it could be anything it was exactly this that bothered him: the possibilities.

Although he knew he should, he couldn't stay off the Internet. After consulting a search engine for blood in stool (and eighteen million, four hundred thousand fired back in .18 second) he scrolled through all he could, even telling Veronica he was working on an essay when she called him to dinner. By nine, he was utterly convinced he had either bowel cancer or a positively nuclear hemorrhoid. He knew he should consult his doctor, but found, quite in contrast to his history of hypochondria, he didn't want to know yet. Dogged by aching eyes, he logged off around ten and climbed the stairs, feeling like a ghost. He slid into bed, grabbed the remote and clicked on CNN.

And the world wasn't doing so hot either.

At ten after midnight, his stomach cramped and he bolted up, straight out of a dead sleep. He doubled over, racing to the toilet. After it ended he stayed put, shivering and sweating. He closed his eyes and stood unsteadily, not wanting to look back. But the possibility of an answer was there, the easy answer of a popped blood vessel or a sore. He turned, opened his eyes.

The toilet was filled with blood.

With what seemed a superhuman effort, Robert stepped from the bathroom, tiptoeing to his daughter's room. He pushed at her door and it creaked open. She lay on her side, her arm around a tattered Raggedy-Andy, her opposite hand cupped over her ear. The light slicing through the blinds illuminated the Barbies on the toy chest. The dolls's eyes were like shards of obsidian. He watched her, heard the wheezing her sinus trouble caused, saw her eyes roam behind her eyelids, and his emotions rose. What did Jenn explore in her sleep? Did she have nightmares? More important, did she have dreams? These thoughts made him angry. He didn't want to miss her childhood, or those bad days in junior high when she would believe all the boys despised her. And he certainly didn't want to miss when she discovered they didn't. The tears were hot on his cheeks, and he blotted them with his palm. Jenn's covers rose and fell. He pried his eyes from the form of his only child, scanned her shoe closet, then took a deep breath, reminding himself that there was any number of answers besides the Big C. He had to keep his habit of overreaction in check.

Descending the stairs, he kept his arms out for any light switches. I need a drink, he told himself, hoping that a little alcohol might calm his flighty stomach. Every time he blinked those two p.r.i.c.ks of red wavered on the water, a premonition. "Calm down," he whispered. "You caught something." His voice, coolly measured as a result of twelve years in the cla.s.sroom, soothed even him.

The bottle was in the cabinet above the microwave. He unscrewed the cap, poured a shot over a cupful of ice. When the whiskey reached the rim, he broke his wrist and the amber liquid splashed over the rocks. He splashed ginger ale over it and raised the gla.s.s. The ice cubes bounced off his lips.

Instead of having the calming effect he'd hoped for the booze just coated him with fresh anxieties. The blood wasn't the scope of his problems. It was a monomania, a distraction. He set the gla.s.s on the counter and crossed the living room to his office.

The complete fifteen-volume set of his mother's diaries was book ended by two unrelated tomes. Sometimes his mother's words calmed him. Always, they mystified him. Every single day, he wished he'd met her.

Brain cancer had taken Sarah Eugene Lieber on November 14, 1972, two days after his fifth birthday. He had no recollection of her, no memory of the sickness that had stolen her. All he had were these diaries.

And he shouldn't have had them.

Christmas of 1982 was turning out to be nicer than Robert had expected. His father, Jimmy Lieber, was finally coming out of a decade-long trance of grief. Over the past six months, he'd lost nearly thirty pounds with a regimen of two hundred push-ups a day. But more important, another love had entered his life. Her name was Juanita Sanchez.

Robert liked Juanita, liked her two little kids, Pedro and Jose, and loved that she loved his father. She'd lost a husband back in Puerto Rico and she seemed overjoyed to have found Jimmy. Today, Christmas Eve, she was in the living room next to a naked tree, rummaging through a stack of boxes that contained fewer ornaments than she'd hoped. Pedro and Jose scurried through the house, flying paper airplanes. They tried and tried to engage Robert, but he was busy sitting at Juanita's feet, a place he was growing increasingly comfortable. The years following his mother's death had not been happy ones in the Lieber home, but she was quickly changing all that. "Now look at that one," exclaimed Juanita, taking out an ornament with a picture on it. She brought it to his eye level. "Is that your mother?"

His smile faded somewhat, but he nodded. "Yeah, that's her. You putting it up?"

She steadied her eyes on his. "Would it be alright with you and your papa?"

He thought about it, but had no idea how Jimmy would react. When people p.r.i.c.ked his father's memory, he sometimes exploded.

Juanita replaced the gla.s.s ball. "Maybe next year."

"Okay," he said, hoping she would be here next year.

Just then Jose yelled and dropped his airplane. The air scooped it up, carried it a few feet before landing it perfectly. "Uncle Jimmy!" he cried, running out to the garage.

Robert heard his father laugh loudly at his reception. Even after months of this, his father's laugh, so rare during the first thirteen years of his life, startled him.

Juanita smiled, then looked back at him. "Coming?"

She and Robert met him in the kitchen. Jimmy's face lit up and he opened his arms, hugging them both. He knuckled Robert's head. "How's it going kiddo?"

"Pretty good, except Juanita and I can't find all the ornaments."

Jimmy released them. "Check the attic?"

"Me?"

Jimmy grinned. "Aren't you big enough to make it up and back?"

Robert ran to the garage. He drew down the ceiling door, unraveled the ladder. A dingy light pulsed twice, came on. Dust filmed it, dimming the light. Lungs filled with a deep breath, he climbed. At the top of the stairs, he tucked his head in and crawled to the left. He felt like a tight rope performer, there being only one cross beam safe to travel on. Pink insulation puffed all around it. Ten feet in, he came upon a stack of boxes. The first was huge. The word ELECTROLUX ran from the left to right corner. He clapped his hands on top, attempted to hoist himself up, but his forehead smacked into a beam and he lost his balance. He tried to right himself, using the box for support, but it failed him, and the box toppled into the lake of insulation. He cursed, hoping it wasn't heavy enough to fall through the pink mess and break though the ceiling below. But the insulation supported the box. Sweat crept into his eyes, stinging. He kneaded his knuckles into them, blinking madly.

When they cleared, he saw the box that would change everything. It was small, about half the size of ELECTROLUX. He crawled to it, careful not to run his head into another beam. Feeling along the top, he was happy to find it wasn't taped shut. He nearly stuck his hand in blindly, but thought better of it; instead he pulled it closer. Could be a nest of spiders in an open attic box, he thought. Inside, surrounded by packing popcorn, were two stacks of books bound by lace. He immediately imagined his mother's hands looping the lace around the books, drawing them into bows. He took one of them out, untied the lace, opened the cover. "Oh my G.o.d," he said. It was the first volume of his mother's diary, dated June of 1955. She would have been eight, perhaps nine. His eyes stung again, but now not with sweat. "Hey, Mom," he said. "Nice to meet you."

Robert ran his finger along the spines of the fifteen volumes. He pulled one out, crept through a couple of pages. His mother had been possessed of a wonderful imagination; these weren't diaries, not exactly anyway, but were some sort of mythical interpretation of her life. At least that's what he hoped they were, because if she had actually believed she'd been born in 1802 and had been orphaned in a frontier town in the late 1860's, well then his late mother's illness had consisted of more than cancer. But he loved books, as she had, and as a literary man he believed her diaries evidence of a metaphorical mind. Her descriptions of a lonely life on the plain, as an underground bartender in speakeasies during prohibition, and as a woman awaiting her knight were lovely, ripe explanations of the feelings that had gripped her during the dark years she had been shuffled from foster home to foster home; her narratives about a race of witches, not quite human, who lived abnormally long lives could be nothing more than an abstraction about the feelings of separation she must have felt, having grown up without a family.

Robert shook his head. He'd gone over and over her diaries and just when he thought he understood them, along came a night like this one. Who knew?

Back in the kitchen, he poured another whiskey and ginger ale and snapped it back. After another swig, he capped the bottles and headed for bed.

That night the dream he'd been having Sat.u.r.day morning repeated: A crimson, purged sky, angry as a wound. Streaked with purple and orange ribbons, it appears opulently full, almost pregnant. And there, off in the metallic distance, a strange silhouette, black amidst the colors. A winged beast disappears into a gray-white cloud.

Chapter Five: Mary and Grady.

1.

The dream breaks over Mary like a wave: She stands on a desolate beach; a lazy tide reaches a few feet inland, licking her heels; the sand, brilliantly white in the mid-morning sun, is like brick under her feet; before her, pink and white foliage lay shaded under the towering pines; and at the opposite end of the beach, a pale figure waves.

When she awoke, she was afraid to move. She began counting ceiling tiles but was unable to get past three. Her immobility seemed more condition than choice. Move, she commanded her body, but nothing happened until her finger twitched; then her thigh cramped; her toes crinkled up, causing another cramp to seize her calf. She screamed and lurched over the bedside. The hangover throbbed, a living thing trapped in her skull. Her sheets in her hands, she suffered through a series of dry heaves, in between which she told G.o.d she would never get that drunk again, would, in fact, forego alcohol forever . . . . Then she remembered the evening's conclusion.

Sitting up, eyes wide open but focused on nothing, she ran through the events, figured her memory covered only half of them. Tears filled her eyes and she shook her head, as if she could clear the memories by force of will.

In the other bed, Grady coughed.

Mary held her breath a moment, then her voice broke the silence, "Grady?" A tear ran the length of her cheek.

Grady stretched out lazily, yawning.

Mary didn't know what to say, didn't know how to say it, but didn't know if she could even if it came to her. In the end, she only asked, "Why, Grady?"

Grady sat up, resting her torso on her elbows. What had been blonde spikes last night was now a matted mess. Her makeup had faded and run; mascara masked her eyes; acne scars littered her cheeks. "Why what? Aren't you beat? I'm trying to get my f.u.c.k-me sleep."

"Do you know what happened to me?" asked Mary.

"What do you mean do I? You were initiated. We all are. You got your college cherry popped. It's alright-you still got the box your cherry came in." She grinned.

"I-" but then Mary couldn't speak anymore. Her body broken with sobs, she wrapped her arms around herself, rocking back and forth on the bed.

2.

Grady watched Mary cry and something about it bothered her. It wasn't that this preppie t.w.a.t was a little worse for wear, nor that half a dozen frat brats had taken her for a test drive. Normally, whenever anyone lost it she told them to buck up, to get over it. She'd grown up with alcoholics and if that didn't harden a person against phony emotions, nothing did. But Mary's tears didn't seem for show.

Last night, she'd been annoyed with Mary for accepting Randall's attention. She'd expected nothing less of Mike, but she'd hoped Mary would leave it. But she understood now that Mary had been shocked by his quick and ruthless gaze, then paralyzed by Everclear.