"Yes, okay, this'll just take a few minutes."

Jadie looked down at the floor. "My mom's going to get us them kind of shoes that got dinosaurs on them."

"Well, what I wanted to say was that I think you're going to be seeing a psychiatrist at the mental health clinic. That same clinic in Falls River where you used to go when you were littler. Do you remember?"

Jadie leaned back against the counter and lifted up one foot. She caught it with her hand and fingered the stitching of her running shoe.

"Sometimes our feelings get sick, just like our bodies do, and when that happens, we go to a special doctor called a psychiatrist, who tries to make our feelings well again."

"I'm going to get high-top shoes. Amber wants them, too, but my mom says she can't have them, 'cause she can't tie bows yet. She's got to get the kind with Velcro fastenings."

"Mr. Tinbergen and Mrs. Peterson aren't entirely happy with the way we're getting on in here. They don't think I've been quite as much help as you need, and they think it would be better if you went to see someone who understands more about the kinds of troubles you've been having. This isn't a punishment or anything. This lady's really nice and she understands kids, and I think it's the right idea, too. You'll still be here for school, of course, but she'll help us out on this other matter."

"I like them shoes, 'cause they leave dinosaur footprints. Looks like a dinosaur's been walking there."

"Jadie. Are you listening to me?"

She had still been fingering the top of her shoe, but she stopped, her fingers going momentarily rigid. "Why should I?" she said in a disparaging tone and let her foot drop back down to the floor. "'Cause I can tell you never listen to me."

Chapter Twenty-Two.

The first heavy snowfall of the winter came the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and turned the plains from buffalo-grass yellow to white. Looking out my window at breakfast time, it was as if the world beyond Pecking had disappeared. The jumble of rooftops was still there, but in the distance, the white prairie was indistinguishable from the white sky.

Fortunately, all my children made it to school, even Jeremiah, who lived the farthest out, and he, as usual, was full of weird and wonderful news.

"I seen you on TV last night," he announced, as we settled down for morning discussion.

"You did?"

"Yeah, we was watching this here movie and there was these two ladies wrestling. And this one lady, she looked just like you. I says to Micah, 'Hey, that there's my teacher!' But Micah said it probably wasn't."

Lowering my head slightly to disguise my smile, I managed a nod. "Micah was right. It wasn't me."

"It looked like you," Jeremiah said suspiciously. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure, Jeremiah."

"Well, she was fighting this other broad. Then, just as she was getting her down good, WHAM! She pulls out this great big ol' knife and stabs her right in the heart. That one that looked like you, I mean. She stabbed the other one. And all this blood goes squirting everywhere. It was really good, man. You shoulda seen it."

"Mmmm."

"You sure it wasn't you?"

"Positive, Jeremiah. I haven't made any movies."

"I told Micah that was probably where you got so strong at. I said you were one strong broad. I know." He grinned cheekily.

"Where exactly did you see all this?" I asked.

"On my TV. My mom's boyfriend's got this friend, see, and he gets stuff free sometimes. He's always bringing home these movies he gets for free."

"And you and Micah watch them?"

"Yeah. They're good, man," he replied enthusiastically.

"Do you think what happens on them is real?"

"You mean like when you was stabbing that other broad?"

I nodded.

Jeremiah paused. "Well, it's not real. But it's not not real, either. Those things could happen. It's sort of real, I think. I mean, some of the stuff they show on TV is real, like news and junk. And some of this stuff is sort of real, too. 'Cause I always think if it could happen, it could be real, and so maybe it is."

I glanced over at Jadie, sitting hunched, her head down. Jeremiah was a sturdy child, well-grounded in the world around him, and he clearly did not discern the reality of what he was watching easily. How easy would it be for a confused child exposed to violent, pornographic material to extrapolate it to real life?

For the most part, the day went well. The children were overexcited by the snow, the pageant, and the prospect of four days' vacation from school, so there was silliness on a monumental scale, but it was good-natured and not too outrageous. Philip and Jeremiah were the worst, egging one another on in the classroom, prancing around in their headbands, having a peeing contest up the wall above the urinal in the boys' restroom. Reuben caught the excitement of the day, but he and Brucie still found the disruption of routine more disconcerting than fun. Jadie, alone, was the odd one out. Although she now generally enjoyed a warm relationship with the boys during class time, particularly Philip and Jeremiah, on this occasion she kept separate. Badly bent over, her head lowered, her arms drawn up, she fought the rest of us off with irritable silence.

When afternoon came, we joined the other classes backstage and the excitement reached fever pitch, until finally, in a fit of laughter, Philip wet himself. This sobered the others considerably, and they gave their performance flawlessly. Afterward, we all retired to our individual classrooms, where the parents had been invited for cookies and punch. Everyone in my class had family there, except for Jeremiah, so I let him pass around the cookies and punch.

Jadie's mother came, accompanied not only by Sapphire but also Amber, who, being a kindergartner and attending mornings only, had no school in the afternoon. I found myself watching this little group furtively as I went about my task as hostess. There wasn't much conversation among any of them, but then conversation with Jadie in her bent-over position would have been difficult in any case. When Jeremiah came around, Mrs. Ekdahl accepted her cookies and punch from him graciously, gave a drink to Sapphire, who was sitting on the floor beside her, and then gave the toddler a cookie. From across the room, I studied her. Was this the face of Miss Ellie? Pam? Sue Ellen? Did she turn into some kind of monster behind closed doors, abusing her child so frightfully that Jadie's entire self had disintegrated?

I couldn't see anything. She'd made an effort to look nice, but there was an aura of pathos in the wildly out-of-date turquoise eyeshadow and streaky blusher. I'd always found Mrs. Ekdahl's well-intentioned but ineffectual efforts poignant, but now I couldn't dislodge the wariness. Repeatedly, I tried to sense even the slightest thing that might give substance to Jadie's stories.

After the children had gone, a festive mood remained in the school. Abandoning my room for the teachers' lounge, I joined the rest of the staff for coffee and sugar doughnuts. No one talked of pupils or lesson plans; all conversation revolved around Thanksgiving dinner, the holiday football games, and the diabolical weather.

Throughout the day, the snow had continued to fall, so when I left the school to go home, there was about eighteen inches on the ground. I got into my car and started the motor. A few cold, misty moments passed before the defroster cleared the windshield on the inside. In the meantime, I ran the wipers to knock the powdery snow off enough to give me a view. Then I shifted into reverse gear and went nowhere. A pause. I tried again and the all-too-familiar sound of spinning tires greeted me.

My car was hopeless at reversing in deep snow. It was too lightweight and it was front-wheel drive. Piqued because I had not had the foresight to reverse into my parking space, I knew the only solution now was to dig a bit of the snow away from the tires in order to get some traction. Pulling my gloves on, I got out again to get the shovel from the trunk.

Looking around the passenger side of the car from where I was standing beside the open trunk, I was startled to see a bit of blond hair sticking out from under the front tire. I quickly went to see what it was but couldn't pick it up, because as I had been trying to reverse, the car had moved far enough back to run over it.

"What's that?"

Startled, I turned abruptly.

Lucy stood just beyond the other car. "What have you got there?"

"It seems to be a doll. One of my dolls, you know, those Sasha dolls from the classroom. Only it's trapped under the car. I was trying to back out, and now I'm going to have to move the car forward to release it."

"What the heck is it doing here?"

I'd already gone around the car and climbed back into the driver's seat. Pulling it forward, I moved the tire off the doll sufficiently for Lucy to pick it up. It was the doll with the long, blond hair, except that now, partially run over, it was no longer blond or long-haired. Gingerly, I touched its head, still intact but badly squashed.

"This is the doll Jadie had, isn't it? How do you expect it got here?" Lucy asked, her brow puckering. "That's an awful funny place for her to drop it."

I took the doll from her.

"I know she waits for you sometimes, but you wouldn't think she'd just drop it that way, would you? Kind of makes you think ... well, it sort of looks put there on purpose."

I felt a sickening tightness in my stomach.

"Kind of makes you think she wanted it to get run over."

Once home that evening, I was haunted by the doll. It had been lying perpendicular to the front tire on the passenger side, its head shoved right up against the tire, the rest of the body extending back under the car. There was no way I could, in ordinary circumstances, have avoided running over it. There was also no way, in my opinion, that it could have been dropped into that position accidentally. Someone had to have put it that way. But why? What purpose did it serve? In all likelihood, I would never even have known the doll was there, and thus, would never have realized I'd run over it.

The message behind this incident seemed clear enough to me. Everybody, myself included, had identified the doll as me, as my stand-in for Jadie when I was not physically there. To destroy it so dramatically was hardly a subtle hint about Jadie's feelings for me; and while such a nasty gesture didn't make me feel good, in and of itself it wouldn't have been too worrying. I knew I was a powerful figure in the lives of the children I worked with. The intensity of our relationship always made me a target for destructive feelings and many, many children over the years had made symbolic efforts to kill me. The fact that only the afternoon previously I had told her about the psychiatrist might have been ample stimulus for hate. Perhaps she felt I was abandoning her or giving up on her. Perhaps she felt betrayed, thinking that I might have told others about things she'd made me promise would stay between us. Perhaps she just felt I was getting too close for comfort. All were ample reasons for such intense hate. But still, that one thing did not make sense. Why position the doll so that I wouldn't know it had been destroyed? If this was a gesture of anger or defiance, what good was it, if I never knew it was made?

Thanksgiving morning, I rose early and in the predawn darkness, I set out for the city. Had things gone to plan, I should have gone up on Wednesday evening to stay with Hugh, so that we could drive over to the adjacent state in the morning to spend Thanksgiving with his sister and her family. Weather had prevented my going anywhere on Wednesday, and the way it was Thursday morning, I didn't think I could get into the city on time to make the subsequent journey to Annie's. Not wanting to chance ruining her Thanksgiving dinner by arriving late, I phoned Hugh and told him to go on ahead without me. I had a key to his apartment, so I said I'd just let myself in and be there when he got back.

The journey between Pecking and the city was, in a word, horrific. The snow had stopped, but the wind had picked up and the road was often lost in a ground blizzard. There wasn't a vehicle on the highway besides myself and the occasional snow-plow. A couple of times a highway patrol car passed, and in both instances I expected to be pulled over and told the road was being closed. Valhalla and Harmony and all the other hamlets along the way had disappeared into the vast whiteness, their lumpiness no more distinguishable than that of trees or fence posts. The only way of marking progress was with the odometer and, since it steadily ticked over, I assumed I was still moving. But only just. I was seldom able to exceed forty miles per hour.

Despite the difficult driving conditions, I felt my mood lighten as the journey progressed. I'd always enjoyed driving and found long distances mentally relaxing. With the outrageous weather, I was forced to concentrate much harder than usual, but this, too, was beneficial. Preoccupied with the road conditions, I had no time to think about what I'd left behind.

When I came up to Hugh's apartment, I discovered that he, also, had not gone to his sister's.

"Not worth it in this weather," he said as he helped me in with my duffel bag. "And me there, you here-not a sensible arrangement, is it?" He grinned.

I laughed.

"Besides, I've cooked us our own Thanksgiving dinner."

"What? Now? How did you know when I'd be in?" This I was going to have to see, as Hugh's cooking skills were not renowned.

"Didn't I tell you about that Cordon Bleu course I was taking?" And with that, he tossed me out the box from a microwave dinner. "We got four more minutes 'til the bell rings. You hungry? You ready for the big gorge?"

Hugh and I got along far better when we only saw one another every few weeks. The arguments and agitations that had marred our relationship previously never arose during these short visits. We had the best of one another and made the most of it.

I spent the break in complete contrast to my normal habits. Hugh loved the honky-tonk bars down near the stockyards on the southern fringe of the city. He could play a pretty mean bit of guitar himself and enjoyed the smoky, crowded rooms and the country-western music. So we went bar-hopping every evening, staying well into the wee hours of the morning. The snow and the holiday had thinned the crowds, but there were still plenty of people left making good music and the dance floor was roomier.

I had desperately needed such a change, and it wasn't until early Sunday afternoon that my thoughts strayed back in the direction of Jadie and Pecking. Hugh and I had stayed out outrageously late the previous night and hadn't gotten up until after eleven. We'd then made muffins and bacon and taken these, along with a jug of orange juice, into the living room, where he sprawled across the couch and I across the floor, both absorbed in the Sunday papers. The sun had finally put in an appearance, and it shone brightly through the French windows, making the whole room pleasantly hot.

I'd already read the papers once and was lolling in the sun, browsing through the advertisements, when for no particular reason Jadie came to mind. "Is that occult bookstore open today?" I asked.

"Yeah, I suppose so. Why?"

"Do you think we could go down there before I have to leave? I'd like another look around."

"Still pursuing that issue, are you?" he asked.

"Yeah, sort of, I guess. I was thinking I'd like to talk to that girl again. You know. The witch."

"Hey, Brenda!" Hugh shouted as we came through the doorway of the bookstore. There were two or three other people amidst the crowded shelves in the tiny shop, and they all turned to see what the commotion was about.

"Hi, you guys," Brenda said cheerfully when she saw us. "How'd you like your books? Do the trick for you? Back for more?"

"Yes, they were okay. Pretty interesting," I said, then paused a moment, "but what I was really wondering was if I could have a quick word with you. I had something happen to me the other day; and I've been curious about it ever since. I was hoping maybe you could tell me if you'd ever heard of such a thing in connection with the occult."

"Yeah?" she asked, her eyes lighting up with interest.

"I mean, it might not be. It might very well be someone just acting silly, but ... well, I'm still kind of interested in this occult business, and I was just wondering ..."

I turned my head to see if the other customers had left yet. Hugh was browsing through the section on New Age material, but there was someone else around the corner still.

Brenda sensed my reluctance to talk there, in front of everyone. She jerked her head toward a curtained-off area behind the cash register. "Come back here," she said. "I can still hear from here, if anyone wants anything."

The place was narrow, no more than a walk-in closet, with a teapot, a couple of stools, and what appeared to be account books. It was heavy with the musty scent of sage tea.

Brenda pulled over one of the stools for herself and pushed the other in my direction. "Yeah, so what's going on?" she asked.

"I gave someone a doll," I said. "The doll does look somewhat like me. Certainly, the person concerned has used it to represent me, and I guess I did encourage that. It's a child we're talking about; she's got emotional problems, and I thought she'd be able to deal with them better if she had something to symbolize the stability of our relationship."

"Yeah?" said Brenda, curiosity brightening her expression. She leaned forward on her stool, putting her elbows on her knees.

"The other night after work, I went out to my car to go home. It had been snowing heavily, and the tires started spinning when I tried to back out of my parking space, so I had to dig it out some. As I was coming around to shovel out the front tire on the passenger's side, I found this doll I'd given to the little girl. It had been placed right under the tire, like so," I gestured, "so that when I backed the car out of my parking space, I would run directly over its head and break it."

Brenda's eyes widened, the pupils expanding.

"Now, I'm not exaggerating when I say this girl has emotional problems. She does, and I suppose the logical conclusion is that she put the doll there herself. Certainly, I feel positive it was placed there and hadn't fallen accidentally into that position, if for no other reason than that the snow would have kept it from rolling. But I guess what I'm wondering is if there might be an occult connection to all this. I'm wondering if perhaps someone else beyond this girl might be involved."

"I haven't heard of people doing that precisely, but I know what they're up to."

"What?"

Brenda paused and studied my face a long moment before continuing. "I'm not sure you're going to want me to say this. I mean, like, I don't even know you and I don't know what you're into."

"I'm not really into any of this on purpose, but if there is a definite satanic connection here, it would be very helpful for me to know."

"They're not wishing you well," Brenda said cautiously.

"I gathered that much myself. But is this satanic?"

"I don't know for sure who's doing it to you, but I do know what it is: black magic." A pause. Brenda scratched her head, then dropped her hands between her knees. Several moments passed, as she contemplated them. "See, I'm not really in that scene," she said at last. "Mine's white magic. I just want sort of to be one with the Mother Goddess and that kind of thing, you know? To be in tune with the earth. With the natural spirits. I don't mess with any of the black stuff."

"But it is definitely black magic? You know that? What kind? What does this mean?"

Brenda took a deep breath. "Well, see, they ... them ... well, in doing black magic ... they're usually doing it for power. Power to get the things they want. Power to influence people. Power over their enemies. And part of getting the power means having to call up the forces of darkness. See, that's how we're different. In white magic, you never call upon the forces of darkness."

For a brief moment, I pulled myself back from this conversation and the absurdity of it struck me. Here I was, in some decrepit back room, having an earnest conversation with a witch over magic. Me? What immediately followed was the depressing realization that I wasn't dreaming. This was real life and I couldn't get out of it.

"In doing black magic, they're going to make sacrifices. That's all part of calling the dark forces, and if ... well, if they have an enemy they want to get rid of, especially if the enemy is strong and has a lot of power, they're going to have to do a lot of magicking. They're going to need to make a sacrifice to get help ..." Brenda's voice faded and again she contemplated her hands. "There's this thing, see, about sacrifices," she said, her voice quiet. "A willing one gives you a lot more power than an unwilling one."