"Yeah. He spent so much time at the nursing home with Jackie, I thought he was laying pipe with a nurse there. G.o.d. I can't believe he's dead."

It was at that moment, sitting in Stan's living room listening to his wife, that I began to believe all of Stan's theories.

Stan had had the shakes, same as me. He'd had the waxy hands, same as me. And then he'd died on the freeway the way Jackie Feldbaum had almost died. The question was: If he hadn't died, would he have ended up like Joel?

"Well," Marsha said, standing. "Thanks for telling me. I'll get the kids together and go over to my brother's."

"Do me a favor, Marsha. Call the fire station and leave a number where we can reach you."

"Sure."

"I'll find out what the city and state owe him. Get his package together. I'll call the pension office in Olympia. Get out his insurance policies from work. And I'll collect his stuff from the station."

"Thank you, Jim." I certainly didn't want to hug her, but if there was ever a time, this was it. I opened my arms and she stepped into them. She hadn't shed a tear. A minute later I was almost out the door when she said, "Wait."

She left the room and moments later reappeared with a small white envelope, my name across it in Stan's crabby printing.

"What's this?"

"I don't know. Stan said you'd be here today and I was to give it to you. He said it was the most important thing."

"He told you I would be here today?"

"Said sometime after lunch."

Outside in my truck, I opened the envelope with a deliberation verging on dread.

Inside I found a small sheet of paper torn off a stationery pad. The note said: Jim, my friend. Your turn to carry the torch. Jim, my friend. Your turn to carry the torch. A three-by-five card fell out of the envelope, one side blank. The other side had a hand-printed list: A three-by-five card fell out of the envelope, one side blank. The other side had a hand-printed list: Day 1:Tingly hands that shake.

Day 2:Waxy hands, weak legs, and mild headache.

Day 3:Worse headache, dizziness, falling down.

Day 4:Headache goes away, cannot keep food down.

Day 5:Stomach problems disappear. Blurred vision, ringing in ears, syncope.

Day 6:Everything seems fine except the ringing in ears is louder.

Day 7:Now you a zombie.

Good luck, my friend.

It was signed: Stan.

I said, "Good luck to you, too, my friend."

17. SEVEN SACRED DAYS INSIDE STAN'S LOCKER Somebody convinces you you're going to be brain-dead in a week, believe me, it gets the gears whirring. They can get to whirring pretty fast. For a few seconds there on the drive home, I thought I was going crazy.

A million courses of action raced through my mind. I wanted to call Jackie Feldbaum's common-law husband and ask whether in the days immediately preceding her car accident Jackie had experienced any of the symptoms from Stan's list. I wanted to ask Mary McCain about the circ.u.mstances of Joel's fall.

Now that I thought about it, Joel's roof was practically flat. How do you fall off a flat roof?

I'd scoffed at Stan's theories, but now I knew why. From the first there had been a strain of truth to what he'd proposed. Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall kill you. Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall kill you.

If Stan's theory was correct, I was on day two of my last week as a recognizable human being.

Apprehension and dread were beginning to make my stomach queasy.

I wanted to convene a presidential commission to investigate. I wanted to call the FBI, the CIA. I wanted the Vatican in on it. I wanted somebody important to tell me this was all a mistake.

Whether Stan's end had been a self-fulfilling prophecy or an inescapable bullet of destiny I could not say. Stan obviously felt getting crushed under the wheels of an eighteen-wheeler was preferable to years with a brain that functioned below the level of that of your common house cat. But was that really where his brain had been headed? On the other hand, maybe he'd turned into a zombie out there on the highway. Maybe losing his mind had caused the accident.

If Stan's hypothesis did nothing else, it introduced a comprehensive theory of what had been happening to North Bend Fire and Rescue in the past weeks. The only only comprehensive theory I'd heard. comprehensive theory I'd heard.

Parking across the street from the station, I got out of my truck just as one of the volunteers showed up, a community college student named Jeb Parker, a happy-go-lucky young man who reveled in the camaraderie of our little fire department.

"Forgot your Big Gulp?" he said, laughing at the large cup still glued to my roof.

I went into the station, jogged up the stairs past Ian and Karrie, who both asked, "How'd it go?," and found Stan's clothing locker in the bunk room. Padlocked. I jogged back downstairs to the apparatus bay and retrieved a pair of bolt cutters from a side compartment on the engine.

"Pretty bad?" Ian asked, having followed me upstairs the second time.

"He's been telling her something was going to happen all week."

"What do you mean, 'something was going to happen'? Like what?"

"Like what happened."

"You're kidding."

"Nope."

Squeezing the bolt cutters, I watched the shackle on the lock split in half and fall to the floor. All of Stan's clothing had been removed from the locker, the remaining articles arranged neatly: two cans of soup on the top shelf, a pair of sungla.s.ses, a pencil, several three-by-five cards, and a manila envelope labeled in Stan's cramped lettering: HAROLD LEVY NEWCASTLE AUTOPSY REPORT. HAROLD LEVY NEWCASTLE AUTOPSY REPORT. Poor Stan had squandered a portion of his last week making certain n.o.body had to clean up after him. Poor Stan had squandered a portion of his last week making certain n.o.body had to clean up after him.

The cards appeared to be earlier drafts of the list Marsha had given me. Most were labeled Seven Sacred Days Seven Sacred Days, no doubt Stan's idea of a joke, but he'd inadvertently transposed a couple of letters and wrote Seven Scared Days Seven Scared Days on one. In either case, I knew what he meant. The closer I got to the details of Stan's final hours, the more I realized they might also be the details of on one. In either case, I knew what he meant. The closer I got to the details of Stan's final hours, the more I realized they might also be the details of my my last hours. last hours.

If Stan was wrong about a syndrome, there were a h.e.l.l of a lot of coincidences operating in North Bend. Chief Newcastle. Joel McCain. Jackie Feldbaum. Stan. My own symptoms. One might even include Holly in the list.

Poring over the various cards, I could see how he'd rearranged the order of the symptoms as his information base and his own condition altered. On two of the cards the list was six days instead of seven. The more I read, the more I became convinced the list I'd received from his wife was the final compendium. For starters, it was the only one that had the first two days precisely as I'd experienced them.

Ian Hjorth peered around my shoulder into the locker. "Don't you think he was traveling a little light?"

"Look, Ian. I'm checking out for the day. Keep Jeb on for the rest of the shift."

"He can only stay a couple of hours."

"Then find somebody else. I'm outa here."

"Sure. Of course. None of us feel much like working."

Brushing past Ian on my way out of the station, I said, "Thanks for the Big Gulp. That was actually pretty funny."

He was chasing me across the street to my car as I left. "Oh, Jesus. I forgot. I put it up there before our alarm. You don't think I ran out there and put it on your roof after we came back from the freeway, do you? Oh, s.h.i.t. You had to drive around like that? I'm sorry. I'll take it off right now."

I ignored him, was already turning the key in the ignition and buckling the seat belt.

"Come on, Lieut," Ian said. "Let me get that off there. You don't want to be driving around like that. At least let me take the straw out. It's got juice in it. Ben thought it would be funnier with juice in it. Look, I'll climb up-"

I shot gravel out from my rear tires peeling out of the parking area. It wasn't often one of Ian's gags backfired on him. Leaving the Big Gulp container on my roof and pretending to be p.i.s.sed might be the last joke I ever played.

Alpine Estates Nursing Home was a white single-story concrete-block building three blocks from the fire station. I parked and went inside, found myself being chased down the hallway by a short Hispanic woman in white pants and one of those kiddie-print smocklike tops nurses wear these days that look more suited to a nursery school than a medical facility. This one was all teddy bears or lollipops or some such thing.

"Can we help you?" she asked for about the fourth time. "You want to visit a patient?" I must have been daydreaming.

"Jackie Feldbaum."

She went back to her cubicle and picked up several sheets of paper stapled together. "Not here. Nope. No. Wait. Rolanda Feldbaum. Could that be her?" I nodded. "One-oh-seven. Down at the end of this hall. Turn left."

The room was what you'd expect. Two patients, two beds, a curtain between them, photos and personal touches on the nightstand alongside each bed, and next to the sink a TV that looked as if it'd been underwater for about a year. Jackie's roommate, a small humpbacked, masculine-looking woman with close-cropped hair and no teeth, looked to be about a hundred fifty and was absorbed in a Spanish-language game show I had the feeling she didn't understand a word of.

Jackie was in bed on her back, her hair cut with straight Moe Howard bangs. Both hands were above the blankets, both covered in a waxy-looking patina.

"Jackie?"

"She don't talk," said the roommate.

"Ever?"

"Not since I been here."

"What does does she do?" she do?"

"She farts."

"That's it?"

"That's about all. Yes sirree. They don't smell so great, neither."

Tuning out the racket from the television, I sat in the only free chair in the room and tried to ignore the stench of ammonia pervading the room. I opened the manila envelope I'd been carrying and scanned Harold Newcastle's autopsy report. It took a while to pinpoint what I was looking for. The palms appear to be normal, but the backs of both hands extending from the fingernails to the ulnar styloid process are spotted with a whitish substance of indeterminate origin. The palms appear to be normal, but the backs of both hands extending from the fingernails to the ulnar styloid process are spotted with a whitish substance of indeterminate origin.

When I tried to push myself up out of the chair, my legs felt weak.

"You leaving?" the hundred-year-old woman asked.

I nodded.

"Whatsa matter? She do a p.o.o.per?"

"No. She's okay. Just time to go."

"Have a good day, mister."

"I can't see it getting any worse."

18. WANNA BET?.

Room 111 was just down the corridor. I couldn't tell you what made me stop there. It wasn't proximity, because during the past three years I'd been proximate plenty of times without stopping in.

On the wall next to the door were two easily disposable paper labels: FUJIMOTO-SWOPE. FUJIMOTO-SWOPE.

I pushed the door open.

Again, two beds, minimal personal effects, some newspaper clippings on the walls, a few photos cut out of magazines. Your basic jailhouse decor.

My father was slumped in a wheelchair next to the window at the foot of the second bed. His roommate was out playing paddleball or racing wheelchairs up the halls, chasing the nurses. Whatever.

My father's back was to the window, his face squared up with the heat register. The window behind him afforded an awkward view of some shrubbery. A few tall shafts of June sunlight penetrated the thicket and lit up the windowpane. There was little difference between my father and Jackie. Thirty years was all.

I squatted until we were at eye level. I don't know what scared me more, the possibility that he would look at me or the possibility that he couldn't couldn't look at me. look at me.

"Dad? It's me: Jim. It's been awhile."

After a minute it became clear that he wasn't going to reply.

Not long after moving to North Bend to be near his granddaughters, my father had suffered a CVA and had, after a brief hospital stay, been incarcerated here. As far as I knew, during his entire three-year tenure he'd never received a visitor. I'd certainly not been here before.

After a few minutes of silence, the day began caving in on me. I thought about how insubstantial were my reasons for not visiting sooner, about Stan's death, Joel McCain's condition, Holly's coma, about my own future or lack of same. If my worst fears came true, I'd end up staring at a wall, too. Except it wouldn't happen when I was seventy-six; it would happen at the end of the week. At age thirty-four.

Somebody had taped a clipping from the local newspaper to the wall over the heat register. It was this article my father was facing, as if studying it, which of course, he was not. It included a black-and-white photo of me in my fire-fighting gear kneeling alongside two toddlers; there was a second photo of a burned-out Ford Explorer.

I'd forgotten about the article. About the incident. There had been a clipping in the fire station for a while, but eventually it had been thrown out with the trash. It was one of those embarra.s.sing moments when the newspapers proclaimed you a hero for doing your job. I'd been driving my private vehicle, spotted a car fire on North Bend Way, and did nothing more than open the back door and remove two toddlers while their mother and a bunch of bystanders ran around in a panic. Because I'd received some minor burns, they called me a hero. It was bulls.h.i.t, the result of a small-town newspaper reporter jacked up on caffeine with nothing to write about.

Kneeling on the floor beside my father's wheelchair, I said, " 'Hear me when I call, O G.o.d of my righteousness: thou has enlarged me when I was in distress: have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer.' "

I thought about what I was doing and began to laugh. How many prayers had I uttered during my first sixteen years of life? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? And how many times during those years had I prayed alongside my father? A better question was how many of those prayers had been answered? Certainly fewer than the laws of probability would suggest-which had caused me to conclude long ago that if I needed something, I was actually better off not informing G.o.d about it.

I reached out and put my hand on my father's knee. "In the name of Jesus Christ and William P. Markham, rise up and walk. Leave this wheelchair. Reclaim your senses. Bid good riddance to this inst.i.tution of despair. In the name of William P. Markham, rise up and be a man again."

I'd like to be able to tell you that my father stood up and said, "Thank you, Son. I needed that little three-year rest. Thanks for bringing me around. Now I can go get a fine potato salad lunch with crab legs and French mustard and a cream soda and be on about the Lord's work."

But you and I both know my father didn't budge. My father wasn't getting out of his wheelchair on his own steam because I'd knelt on the floor beside him and uttered words from Psalms. My father was never getting out of that chair on his own steam.

Faith was what made prayers work. At least that was the conclusion I'd reached over the years. Religion needed to be backed up with faith, and the remnants of my faith had eroded eighteen years earlier.