"Everything," the nurse said in a professionally kind voice, "has been taken care of for you."

Trish could not speak or move. She imagined her baby with its delicate fingers and nubbed chin, feet tucked together, curled up on top of a pile of medical trash, disposed of. She imagined this pile of trash hauled off in a large truck and dumped in a landfill where rats slithered in and out of sight and seagulls circled and swooped down to s.n.a.t.c.h whatever they could find.

She tried to ask a question, but no sound came from her mouth. Billy was nowhere to be seen. She tried to get out of the bed, a hoa.r.s.e growl rising out of her throat, and when the nurse came to try and calm her she kicked and scratched and shrieked until they had to strap her down and tranquilize her.

She went home from the hospital the next day and acted as if nothing had happened. Every morning she made Billy his bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins, the way Billy liked it. Each day, while he was at work selling hot tubs, she cleaned the bathroom, sanitized with ammonia and boiling water, vacuumed the rugs, dusted, washed clothes, ironed shirts, balanced the checkbook-all in the exact way that Billy required. She wore her matching outfits, put on her makeup and did her hair, and one day, when she thought she might disintegrate in the clean light and sterile odor of her own house, she went across the street, invited her Peeping Tom neighbor, Mr. Ellis, over for a cup of hot chocolate, and let him f.u.c.k her.

After Mr. Ellis there was Billy's boss, Ricky Gaines, and then the young man who came to the door asking about donations for the Firemen's a.s.sociation. The s.e.x offered her relief, made her feel young and heedless for a little while, and when she told Billy what she'd done, he'd given her no response except to take away her checkbook, sell their second car which she used for errands, and explained to her in an eerie whisper that if she tried to leave the house without permission, or allowed anyone inside who he had not authorized, he would kill her.

No wonder, she would think later, that her Faye, who had somehow survived her own corrupted womb, was a haunted child. Faye, who rarely spoke, did not like to play with other children, and spent most of her hours kneeling in the spot beside the fireplace she called her "prayer cave"-a kind of improvised grotto constructed of pillows, blankets and dismembered stuffed animals where she carried on intricate conversations with Jesus and the Holy Ghost and other invisible beings. She seemed to have no affection at all for her remote father, who punished her for minor infractions such as bed-wetting by locking her in a closet or throwing cold water on her in the bathtub while Trish stood by and watched, a mute conspirator. The family was not particularly religious, but somewhere along the line, during one of their few visits to the Mormon church down the street, Faye had been infected by G.o.d.

As much as Trish would have liked to, she could not blame Faye's odd behavior entirely on Billy. Needing to talk to someone besides her flaky mother or stone-faced husband, she had told Faye all about Daniel and Martine, explained in detail how they arrived early into the world and left much too soon, both so perfect in G.o.d's sight they were given a pa.s.s on the Test of Life and were now living happily with Jesus and His angels up in heaven. The truth of it was that she felt connected to her two dead children in a way she didn't with her living daughter. Trish had no remedy for this, no way to bring them all together except to make Faye an accomplice in this sorrow of hers. Faye, a toddler barely out of diapers, listened to her mother talk about her invisible brother and sister and seemed to understand.

Faye had been carrying on a regular discourse with G.o.d and Jesus and several of the Bible prophets since she learned to talk, but gradually she began bringing others into the conversation: the Holy Ghost, Joseph Smith, Abraham Lincoln, Old Yeller, and her two siblings. With Daniel and Martine, she mostly kept them up to date on the news of the Paddock household: the racc.o.o.n in the attic, the Fourth of July gra.s.s fire on the mountain, the new refrigerator that whistled and moaned when you opened the freezer door. Sometimes she aksed questions, tilting her head and nodding as if receiving answers.

It was hard, sometimes, for Trish not to ask her what they had to say.

Her decision to leave Billy was not particularly painful or even difficult; one sparkling fall morning she felt a rare bit of clarity and the will to put it to use. She asked Faye how she would feel about their going away for a while. Faye sighed as if she'd been waiting a long time to field this particular question.

"We could go away," she said, "and if we like it there, we could never come back."

Trish called her mother, who had taken up with a livestock auctioneer in a trailer park outside Carson City.

"You know I never liked that Billy," her mother said. "Little banty rooster with his head up his you-know-what. We don't have room for you here, honey, but I was talking to Daphne the other day-"

"Hold on," Trish said. "Aunt Daphne?" Aunt Daphne had been one of her mother's sister-wives, wife number three, a thoughtlessly kind, chubby woman who h.o.a.rded candy at the bottom of her clothes hamper and once gave Trish a whole Big Hunk candy bar, as generous a gift as she had ever received. Trish and her mother occasionally spoke about the family they had left in Montana, and speculated about what had become of them, but as far as Trish knew her mother had never been in contact with any of them. Daphne?" Aunt Daphne had been one of her mother's sister-wives, wife number three, a thoughtlessly kind, chubby woman who h.o.a.rded candy at the bottom of her clothes hamper and once gave Trish a whole Big Hunk candy bar, as generous a gift as she had ever received. Trish and her mother occasionally spoke about the family they had left in Montana, and speculated about what had become of them, but as far as Trish knew her mother had never been in contact with any of them.

"She tracked me down, wanted to catch up. She's the same old Daph, sweet and happy all the day long. She's down to Utah, married another plyg there and started to feel lonely once all the kids moved out. That's why she called. A lonely old lady, and I know for a fact she's got all kinds of spare room. She'd be happy to take you and Faye, but you have to promise me, honey. One of those men shows up at the front door with his hat in his hand, looking for another heifer to put in his corral, you turn and run for the hills."

NUMBER THREE: JACK Eight and a half months along, big as a Volkswagen, she ate heaping portions of kidney beans, pork chops, and spinach greens (all prescribed by her midwife), dutifully took her baby aspirin every morning, after which she would sit on her porch in the sun, dazed with relief. She knew, this time, there would be no tragic replay, no evil doctors casually whispering their horrible news, no nurses absconding with her baby, never to be seen again. She felt this new one, this big baby boy, arch and swim inside her, active as a colt, and she knew that her old life, her old polluted self, was forever gone.

Reno, and everything that had happened there: gone. Billy, the succession of groping teenage boys and rutting men, her vanity and selfishness, her cursed body, her loneliness and hard-packed grief: all gone, cleansed by the sharp hot light of the Virgin River Valley. Reno had been one long detour into a blighted territory, and now she had returned to country in which she belonged, a place filled with women and children and companionship and constant distraction, a place of simple rights and wrongs, a place in which Faye could pray the whole day long and no one think it the slightest bit odd.

She had not heeded her mother's advice, of course. Within a month of moving to Virgin, where she and Faye lived in one wing of Aunt Daphne's six-bedroom rambler, she was attending church regularly and meeting with the Women's Relief Society, an organization that promoted gossip and irreverent female bonding under the cover of quilting bees and seminars on emergency preparedness.

It was on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, at something called Service Day, that she first met Golden. Though they worked together only ten minutes or so-he helped her unload flats of tomato sprouts to be planted in the community garden-she was immediately taken by his gentle deference, the sad cast of his eyes. She didn't know it at the time, but a year earlier he had lost one of his young daughters, and Trish would soon come to realize it was the weight of grief she sensed in him, so much like her own, that first drew her to him.

Of course, none of this got past Beverly; nothing ever did. Within a couple of days Trish was being invited to dinner at Old House, to Big House to help with the funeral luncheon for old Brother Billick. Trish thought nothing of it until she got a call one night from Golden himself, who sheepishly inquired if she might like to take a ride with him to Sister Flett's nursery to pick out flowers for the upcoming Easter service. On the phone that night, the cord wrapped around her wrist, she felt herself grinning and spinning in place like the gum-smacking high schooler she had once been: she was being asked out on a date! That her suitor was a man with three wives and twenty-six children didn't bother her nearly as much as it should have.

As the courtship progressed-barbecues and church socials, dinner and a movie in St. George (usually chaperoned by one of the wives), a little chaste nuzzling and kissing in the front seat of the hea.r.s.e-it became easier and easier to consider living under the protection of this family, to return to the safety of the life she had led as a child, to share her pain with this sweet giant of a man in the hopes that they might find a way to heal each other.

A month before her one-year anniversary in the valley she was baptized and, so quickly it seemed to happen at once, married to Golden and his first three wives, and then pregnant with the child who would make everything right again.

Two days after the midwife stopped by and p.r.o.nounced her two centimeters dilated, the baby already dropping and loaded for bear, she felt the initial spasm of pain. She was balancing awkwardly on one knee in the corner of the kitchen, searching for the b.u.t.ton that had zinged off her overstressed maternity jumper when she'd bent to retrieve a dropped spoon. She winced-her eyes pulled tight at the corners as if someone had grabbed her hair and yanked, making her scalp sing-and then came the hard, torquing jolt, which felt like the baby straightening out all at once and kicking her in the spine. The movement inside her was so violent and sudden she collapsed onto her side and grabbed her belly with both hands as if to keep it from breaking open. She lay on the linoleum, waiting for something else, for a set of aftershocklike contractions, or her water to break, but there was nothing except for a lingering buzz in her nerves.

That night, did she wonder why the baby, such an active little kicker she had nicknamed him Jackhammerin' Jack, had not so much as stirred the rest of the day? After two more days of perfect stillness, as if the child had withdrawn to a distant corner of the womb to ready himself for his initiation into this bright new dimension, did she think to consult the midwife, or at the very least allow herself a moment or two of concern? No. Her faith in this child, in the joy and completion he would give her, was pure. Whenever a sliver of doubt would creep into her peripheral consciousness she resorted to the old childhood chant that dispersed the ghosts and shadow-men who crept out of the woods at night to scratch and whisper under the steel belly of the boxcar: It'llbeallright it'llbeallright it'llbeallright it'llbeallright it'llbeallright it'llbeallright. It'llbeallright it'llbeallright it'llbeallright it'llbeallright it'llbeallright it'llbeallright.

When her water broke early that Wednesday morning, leaking down her legs in slow fingers as she hung a towel on the line, she took it as a confirmation that everything was occurring in its rightful fashion. She called Beverly, who drove her and Faye back to Old House, where Nola and Rose-of-Sharon and some of the older girls had already gathered to set up the master bedroom for birthing. She lay on the expansive king-sized bed, propped up by a bank of pillows, and when the contractions came for real, the pain was sharp and affirming. The old midwife, Sister Meisner, showed up and unpacked her implements like a mobster readying for a hit. Sister Meisner, whose every word and movement suggested a no-nonsense competence, had arthritic old claws and an exquisitely sour face that expressed nothing but irritation at humankind and its shortcomings.

After an intricate hand-washing ritual that included three different cakes of soap and a towel baked for fifteen minutes in the oven, Sister Meisner checked the cervix, timed her contractions, and placed the bell of her old bra.s.s stethoscope on Trish's exposed belly. She moved the stethoscope around, tilting her head a little, and quickly her expression changed from one of irritation to one of extreme and wholehearted irritation.

"You've felt the baby move?" she said. "In the last few days? You've felt it kicking?"

Paralyzed, Trish could not so much as open her mouth.

"If you please, young lady, I need your a.s.sistance. Maybe you felt a bad pain in the past few days since I last checked you? Like the baby doing a backflip inside you?"

Beverly, who had been undergoing midwife training under Sister Meisner's tutelage, appeared at the foot of the bed, her face gone a shade pale. "I'll call the ambulance in from Hurricane. They'll be here in ten minutes."

"You'll do no such thing," Sister Meisner said. She shook her head, grimaced, and began to bear down against Trish's belly with both hands as if she were trying to push the baby out all on her own. She took up the stethoscope again, glared up at the light fixture as if it had challenged her to a fight, and listened. Her expression never changed, she never looked down, but Trish felt that old gnarled hand, hard and cold as a piece of varnished wood, roughly seek out her own and clutch it tight.

"Your little one is gone," she whispered so that only Trish could hear. "G.o.d bless you both."

Then louder, after a few moments: "That's all. No heartbeat, nothing. We'll deliver here, just as planned. Nothing a hospital or ambulance can do. I can feel the cord now. No blood flow. Hasn't been, looks like, for a day or two."

Later, Trish would remember little about the delivery itself, except for her own repeated pleas-as if they were made by somebody else in the room-that she be allowed to hold the baby once it was born. Beverly held her hand and said, Yes, of course Yes, of course, and Sister Meisner had nothing to say but, Not yet, not yet Not yet, not yet, and then, Push, push, push, push Push, push, push, push. Trish did not open her eyes the entire six hours, just hunkered down in the trough of sheets and welcomed the pain that came as dazzling yellow flashes across her retinas. And then, all at once, it was over. The years of her life, the months of nausea and expectation, the late-night hours of despair and loss, the hours of sweat and suffering, all funneled into this moment of expectation, only to be met with a ringing silence.

"Hup, crimped cord," said the midwife. "Thirty-eight years and only the third I've seen."

Beverly took the baby and after a few minutes returned with him, cleaned and wrapped in his birthing quilt, which featured bounding lions and frolicking zebras painstakingly hand-st.i.tched in turn by her three sister-wives. Beverly settled the boy into Trish's arms, and when Trish got her first look at him, felt his small compact form sink against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, she cried, not in grief, but in love. He was chubby, with his eyes closed, and his pink jowls gone slack around his mouth, as if he were enjoying a very satisfying nap. Oh, how she loved him! She squeezed him against her chest and pressed her nose into his damp, red-blond hair. His beauty, his smell, obliterated for the moment the monumental injustice of what had happened. She looked at her baby and smiled, unable to contain her mother's pride in his strong features, in his solid heft, in the way his fat little fists tucked neatly under his chin.

She asked for Faye, and against Sister Meisner's protests ("This is not proper," she said. "A viewing, a funeral, that is proper, this is not") the girl was brought in and allowed to hold Jack. Faye went right to her mother and, with no sign of distress or reluctance, picked up the baby, expertly tucking his head into the crook of her elbow, and looked into his face. "Jack, you've been a bad little boy, haven't you?"

"Blessed Savior," Sister Meisner said under her breath.

"Where did you go?" Faye said to the dead baby. "Did you fly away, you bad boy?"

"Heavenly Father forgive us all," Sister Meisner said.

Next, Beverly ushered Golden in, and Sister Meisner, going through her final checkup, mumbled and groused, wondered to herself what this was, a convention? Who was going to be invited in next, the entire extended family? The next-door neighbors? The mayor of San Francisco?

Golden stepped to the side, hulking and sheepish, looking to Beverly, in his eyes a desperate wish for clarification or instruction. Beverly stood next to the door, her hand on the k.n.o.b, and thanked Sister Meisner for her service. "We can handle things from here, Mavis. Please don't forget the cinnamon cake I made for you on the kitchen table."

Sister Meisner planted her feet in a bowlegged stance, a shoot-this-old-gray-head-if-you-must look in her eye. She glared at Golden as if he were the cause of everything, and he could only nod in apparent agreement. Finally, she took up her satchel and webby shawl and stomped grumbling out the door.

After a nod from Beverly, Golden went to Trish, put his hand on hers. Trish took the baby from Faye and smiled at him. She had forgotten, until this moment, that this baby was as much his as hers. "Here he is." It was all she could say. She knew she was smiling and could hardly understand why. "Look at him."

He nodded but did not glance at the baby.

"Why don't you take him for a minute," Beverly urged.

"No, I don't-" he said.

"You go ahead and hold him for a minute," she ordered calmly, "while I attend to a few things with your wife. Sit in the rocker over there and sing him a lullaby. Go on, Goldy. Every child deserves a lullaby."

Trish had not noticed until now, but outside night had begun to set in. The wind blew and the timbers of the old house shifted and creaked. Golden turned on the bureau lamp and sat down with the baby, cradling it in the manner of someone used to dropping things. He started to rock, blinked hard and swallowed, hummed a few notes. He took his time looking down at the baby, and only when his eyes settled on the child's face did he begin to cry: a small hiccup of a sob and then tears crowding the inner hollows of his eye sockets and tracking down his nose. He cleared his throat, tried another feeble hum. He didn't know any lullabies. So he sang the only song he could think of: I'm a broken-hearted keelmanAnd I'm o'er head in loveWith a young la.s.s from GatesheadAnd I call her my dove.Her name's Cushie b.u.t.terfieldAnd she sells yella clayAnd her cousin's a muckmanAnd they call him Tom Grey.

He paused. For a second it seemed to occur to him the song might not be appropriate for the occasion, but then he continued on, his voice filling the room like it was no more than a coat closet. Trish had never heard Golden sing before, had always a.s.sumed him to be tone-deaf. She'd sat next to him at church, where he'd always mumbled the hymns, as most of the men did, rolled the words in his mouth like used-up chewing gum they didn't know how to get rid of. But now, after a whispery first line, his voice grew full and sweet.

She's a big la.s.sShe's a bonny la.s.sAnd she likes her beerAnd I call her Cushie b.u.t.terfieldAnd I wish she was here.

Later, after Golden had gone to make arrangements with the funeral home, Nola and Rose-of-Sharon came in, eyes bright with tears, and they wept as they admired the baby and told Trish how beautiful he was. Beverly led them in a prayer and then all four sister-wives sat together on the bed, holding hands and clutching each other for comfort. Trish loved them then as much as she had ever loved her own kin, her own blood.

Once they were gone, she eased herself into a p.r.o.ne position, wincing at the pain between her legs, and closed her eyes. In the coming weeks and months she would feel the weight of this loss, would sit in her bathtub late at night, her nipples sore, her tender b.r.e.a.s.t.s engorged with milk, and wonder how much hurt a person could withstand-but not now. Now the wind scoured the windows with dust, the house creaked, and she settled into sleep, contented, her little boy at her side.

8.

THE BOY AT THE WINDOW

THE BOY WAITS AT THE WINDOW. HE HAS GROWN TIRED OF SCRUTINIZING himself in the mirror and is now back at his post on the old ceramic radiator, stiff-backed and still as if sitting for a portrait, taking in the view: river, fields, road, ostrich, neighbors' house, crow, water tower, and in the far distance the floating blue mountains so familiar and remote his brain no longer registers their existence. himself in the mirror and is now back at his post on the old ceramic radiator, stiff-backed and still as if sitting for a portrait, taking in the view: river, fields, road, ostrich, neighbors' house, crow, water tower, and in the far distance the floating blue mountains so familiar and remote his brain no longer registers their existence.

If you were to ask the boy what he is waiting for, he wouldn't be able to tell you. He is waiting for a meteor strike, a tornado, a full-scale zombie invasion, anything to rescue him from this room, this house, these people.

He scans the length of the twisting river and, sure enough, there next to the boulder that looks like a giant snail two young mermaids cavort in the shallow water, silver scales glinting and b.r.e.a.s.t.s a-bobbing, playfully tugging on each other's long red hair. "Dear me," says the boy in an English accent. "Now what do we have here." The mermaids squeal deliciously and slap their tail fins on the water.

Lately, women of the nude and semi-nude variety have been insinuating themselves into the boy's consciousness at every opportunity; just about anywhere he looks there are well-oiled bikini chicks winking at him from behind bushes, tall Amazon ladies in leather bustiers making little growling noises at him while they sharpen their spears. If he hears music, even organ music at church, here come the gyrating belly dancers, and if there is water in the vicinity? Bring on the mermaids.

His erection, which was making a nuisance of itself even before the mermaids showed up, is now operating at full capacity, making it hard for him to think. He sighs, shifts his leg around on the radiator. This boy, he doesn't know what to do with these minute-by-minute bodily a.s.saults, these crazed thoughts: he is at a loss. Even though he has some idea that with a little hands-on manipulation he could achieve temporary relief, he is careful not to touch himself. Which is odd, because if he is known for anything it is his lack of restraint; he is a liar, a loudmouth, a thief, an instigator, a Peeping Tom, a crybaby, a snoop. But in this most private aspect of his life, one that no one will ever see or know about, he shows the self-discipline of an anchorite. He understands what s.e.x is, at least in theoretical terms, and though he is fascinated by its dark and manifold mysteries, it also freaks him out. Which probably has something to do with his growing suspicion that s.e.x is behind everything, that it is what drives adults to act in strange, unpredictable ways, that it lurks in places it should not belong, in church sermons and evening meals and daily family prayer, that it is responsible for the unreasonable number of brothers and sisters he has, and is therefore responsible in some way for the state of his confusing and miserable life.

Or it may just be that he refuses to touch himself because of the possibility that an invisible Jesus Christ, with His mournful eyes and weirdly girlish eyelashes, is somewhere in this room, right now, spying on him.

So how does the boy seek relief? He blurts out swear words and sings dirty song lyrics he has overheard from the bad kids at school. He imagines in fine detail the suffering and total destruction of his enemies. He plays graba.s.s with his siblings in highly inappropriate ways. He tries on his sisters' underwear.

In church they instruct the youngsters that in order to free themselves from bad thoughts they should recite a scripture or sing a hymn. The boy doesn't understand scripture, and though he has heard hymns his entire life, he has a hard time remembering them.

Now let us hmm-hmm in the day of salvation, he sings. No longer deranged on the earth need we roam No longer deranged on the earth need we roam.

This is the best he can do. It doesn't help at all.

Downstairs somebody yells something and there is a burst of laughter, like when someone delivers a zinger on TV. They are laughing at him, he knows they are. They are calling him a f.a.g and a pervert, which in the boy's estimation would make them fifty percent correct.

The house is quiet again. The mermaids have gone. He has nothing to do, so he sits at the window. He watches. He waits. For something, anything, to happen.

9.

A NEW FRIEND

ON HIS BIKE NOW, HAULING b.u.t.t DOWN WATER SOCKET ROAD, RUSTY was making a break for it. He had spent all that time looking out the window, distracted by the humping cows and the mermaids and Raymond the Ostrich, and not realizing that escape was at hand: all you had to do was open the window, push off the screen, slide down the old copper gutter, jump down two roof levels, drop ten feet to the top of the detached garage, and from there you were home free. No one had seen him, not even Louise with her great all-seeing bubble-eyes, and in less than a minute he was on his bike, which he had snuck out of the garage, and pedaling down the long driveway thinking, was making a break for it. He had spent all that time looking out the window, distracted by the humping cows and the mermaids and Raymond the Ostrich, and not realizing that escape was at hand: all you had to do was open the window, push off the screen, slide down the old copper gutter, jump down two roof levels, drop ten feet to the top of the detached garage, and from there you were home free. No one had seen him, not even Louise with her great all-seeing bubble-eyes, and in less than a minute he was on his bike, which he had snuck out of the garage, and pedaling down the long driveway thinking, I am in very big trouble I am in very big trouble.

Even worse, he didn't have any shoes on. His high tops, which were honestly just as sorry and worn out as his underwear, were with all the other shoes in the box by the front door because Aunt Beverly had a no-shoes-in-the-house policy, which meant if somebody important like Neil Armstrong or Jesus ever decided to stop by they would have to remove their shoes and place them in the shoe box, no exceptions. It wasn't a big deal for some people who were lucky enough to have regular-smelling feet, but Rusty had been born with foot-odor complications, which caused certain people to gag when he entered the room, or to ask him why his feet smelled like hot garbage.

So because of Aunt Beverly's shoe policy, here he was pedaling down the street in his tube socks like a r.e.t.a.r.d. Where was he going? He didn't know. He had thought about going home and asking his mother to allow him to stay there, he would tell her all the terrible things Aunt Beverly and her a-hole kids were perpetrating on him, but he had already tried that twice now and it hadn't worked. Today, he decided, he would pedal until he got so far out into the desert n.o.body could ever find him, except for maybe a bunch of illegal Mexican bandits who had got lost on their way to Las Vegas and formed their own civilization by constructing adobe forts and eating lizards and he would surprise them because of his silent-walking ability, and they would look at him suspiciously and say, Como estas? Como estas? and because he had paid attention in Spanish cla.s.s at school he would say, and because he had paid attention in Spanish cla.s.s at school he would say, Bueno, gracias. Como estas bien? Bueno, gracias. Como estas bien? and they would all start jumping up saying, and they would all start jumping up saying, O mi Dios!, O mi Dios!, deeply impressed because not only was he a guy with excellent silent-walking ability, he also spoke their difficult language as well, and they would start asking him questions, most of which he couldn't understand because they spoke even faster than Mrs. Burd.i.c.k at school, but he would hold up his hand and say, deeply impressed because not only was he a guy with excellent silent-walking ability, he also spoke their difficult language as well, and they would start asking him questions, most of which he couldn't understand because they spoke even faster than Mrs. Burd.i.c.k at school, but he would hold up his hand and say, Si, Si, mi nombre llamo Rusty, Si, Si, mi nombre llamo Rusty, and they would fall down and practically worship him and his BMX racer because they'd never seen a person riding such a technological bike and he would be their king. and they would fall down and practically worship him and his BMX racer because they'd never seen a person riding such a technological bike and he would be their king.

He would show them how to make fire, and how to get free Dr Peppers from the vending machine in front of Platt's Market in town, and in return they would do his bidding, which would include kidnapping Parley and tying him to a juniper tree and practicing some Mexican torture techniques on his genitals, after which he would look Parley in his face and say, Who's the f.a.ggety-f.a.g now, Senor Muchacho? Who's the f.a.ggety-f.a.g now, Senor Muchacho?

Of course, his father and Aunt Beverly would come out to his desert stronghold and beg him for mercy, asking him to come home, the family needed him, they were falling apart without him, especially his mother, who hadn't eaten a bite of food since his disappearance, and the Mexicans would terrify Aunt Beverly with their sharp spears and painted faces but Rusty would hold out his hand and say, Please, gentlemen, Please, gentlemen, and the Mexicans would back away, and with great sadness he would inform them in artistic Spanish that he had to go home because his mother, his and the Mexicans would back away, and with great sadness he would inform them in artistic Spanish that he had to go home because his mother, his senorita mamacita senorita mamacita, was dying of sadness without him, he hoped they would understand, and as he rode away on his bike they would cry their Mexican eyes out and do some mariachi singing and trumpet-playing and shout, Adios, amigo Rusty! Adios! Adios, amigo Rusty! Adios!

It was about at this point that he forgot to watch where he was going and ended up skidding into the irrigation ditch. His front tire bit into the soft sand at the bottom of the ditch and Rusty went over the handlebars and landed not in the soft sand of the ditch but on the other side where there were rocks and stickers and pieces of broken beer bottles. Ahrrg Ahrrg, what a gyp! Look at this: he'd sc.r.a.ped the dookie out of his elbow and there were rocks and gla.s.s stuck in his palms and his front tire was all bent up, plus he had bit his tongue. Heck yes, he cried. He jammed his hands into his eyes and did some serious howling.

He was so busy howling he didn't hear the truck pull up.

"Oh wow," somebody said. "You okay, kid?"

He stopped howling and said, "Uh?" There was a guy with his arm hanging out the window of an old green pickup, a young guy with a weird adam's apple and red beard that wasn't really a beard at all but about thirty-five curly red whiskers sticking out of his face. His forehead was so sunburned his skin was peeling off like wallpaper. What an idiot.

"You need a ride home?" the guy said.

Rusty hiccupped and wiped the tears from his cheeks. He didn't need a ride from some sunburned idiot with a sorry red beard. Then he thought about walking all the way back to Old House, dragging his mangled bike and possibly dying from thirst or being ambushed by Mexican bandits.

"Can't go home," he said with a sniff. He explained he was running away from his cruel parents who had locked him in his room for nothing more than being curious and having an inquisitional mind, and if he went home now with a busted bike and blood on his shirt there's no doubt that his mother, an extremely evil and unfriendly person named Beverly, would whip the snot out of him with her liontamer's bullwhip, and his father would come home and scream the kind of cuss words that Rusty would rather not repeat out loud.

"Well, uh," the guy said. "I don't know what I can do about that, but yeah, I think I can probably fix that bike."

The guy helped him off the ground and put his bike in the back of the pickup, which was filled with trash and wire and rusty tools and a coyote pelt that looked like it had been taken off a coyote not all that long ago. When they got in the pickup the guy shuddered like a ghost had touched him.

"It's my feet," Rusty said. "You'll get used to it."

They drove for a mile or two, then turned off on a dirt road so full of potholes and boulders they spent more time driving next to the road than on it. The guy didn't say anything, didn't look at Rusty, or even try explaining where they were going, just held his index finger up close to his nose. There was nothing but cedar trees and red-rock cliffs, and just when Rusty became certain the guy was taking him out into the boonies so he could murder him in some freaky way that would end up in the newspaper, they came over a rise where two silver-painted Quonset huts sat side by side like igloos on Mars.

Maybe this was a secret military installation where this mysterious sunburned guy was experimenting with ultra-secret death ray isotopes and was going to use Rusty as a human guinea pig? Or maybe he wanted Rusty as his trusted loyal henchman, which wouldn't be so bad either.

"Home sweet home," the guy said, and made a girly little laugh. He led Rusty into one of the huts, which was decorated something like a house: rugs on the cement floor, an easy chair next to a table with a ham radio, a cowhide couch, an enormous Frigidaire that hummed and shuddered.

The guy washed Rusty's hands and arm in a utility sink and put iodine on his sc.r.a.pes and a gauze bandage on his elbow.

"I was wondering what your name was?" he said.

"Lance," Rusty said.

"Lance," the guy said. "That's a, uh, pretty good name. Yeah. My name's June Haymaker."

Rusty snorked, which was, for once, appropriate.