CHAPTER 18 Nick opened the door between Sheriff Baker's office and the jail cells and they started razzing him

CHAPTER 18

Nick opened the door between Sheriff Baker's office and the jail cells and they started razzing him right off. Vincent Hogan and Billy Warner were in the two Saltine-box cells on Nick's left. Mike Childress was in one of the two on the right. The other was empty and it was empty because Ray Booth, he of the purple LSU fraternity ring, had flown the coop. "Hey, dummy!" Childress called. "Hey, you fuckin dummy! What's gonna happen to you when we get outta here? Huh? What the fuck's gonna happen to you?" "I'm personally gonna rip your balls off and stuff em down your throat until you strangle on em," Billy Warner told him. "You understand me?" Only Vince Hogan didn't participate in the razzing. Mike and Billy didn't have too much use for him on this day, June 23, when they were to be taken up to the Calhoun County seat and jugged pending trial. Sheriff Baker had leaned on Vince and Vince had spilled his yellow guts. Baker had told Nick he could get an indictment against these ole boys, but when it got to a jury trial, it was going to be Nick's word against these three-four, if they picked up Ray Booth. Nick had gained a healthy respect for Sheriff John Baker these last couple of days. He was a two- hundred-and-fifty-pound ex-farmer who was predictably called Big Bad John by his constituents. The respect Nick felt for him was not because Baker had given him this job swamping out the holding area to make up for his lost week's pay, but because he had gone after the men who had beaten and robbed Nick. He had done it as if Nick were a member of one of the oldest and most respected families in town instead of just a deaf-mute drifter. There were plenty of sheriffs here in the border South, Nick knew, who would have seen him on a workfarm or roadgang for six months instead. They had driven out to the sawmill where Vince Hogan worked, taking Baker's private car, a Power Wagon, instead of the county prowler car. There was a shotgun under the dash ("Always locked up and always loaded," Baker said) and a bubble light Baker put on the dash when he was on police business. He put it up there when they swung into the lumberyard parking area, two days ago now. Baker had hawked, spat out the window, blew his nose, and dabbed at his red eyes with a handkerchief. His voice had acquired a nasal foghorn quality. Nick couldn't hear it, of course, but he didn't need to. It was clear enough that the man had a nasty cold. "Now, when we see him, I'll grab him by the arm," Baker said. "I'll ask you, `Is this one of em?' You give me a big nod yes. I don't care if it was or not. You just nod. Get it?" Nick nodded. He got it. Vince was working the board planer, feeding rough planks into the machine, standing in sawdust almost to the top of his workboots. He gave John Baker a nervous smile, and his eyes flicked uneasily to Nick standing beside the sheriff. Nick's face was thin and battered and still too pale. "Hi, Big John, what you doin out with the workin folk?"

67 The other men in the crew were watching all this, their eyes shifting gravely from Nick to Vince to Baker and then back the other way like men watching some complicated new version of tennis. One of them spat a stream of Honey Cut into the fresh sawdust and wiped off his chin with the heel of his hand. Baker grabbed Vince Hogan by one flabby, sunburned arm and pulled him forward. "Hey! What's the idea, Big John?" Baker turned his head so Nick could see his lips. "Is this one of em?" Nick nodded firmly, and pointed at Vince for good measure. "What is this?" Vince protested again. "I don't know this dummy from Adam." "Then how come you know he's a dummy? Come on, Vince, you're going to the cooler. Toot- sweet. You can send one of these boys to get your toothbrush." Protesting, Vince was led to the Power Wagon and deposited inside. Protesting, he was taken back to town. Protesting, he was locked up and left to stew for a couple of hours. Baker didn't bother with reading him his rights. "Damn fool'd just get confused," he told Nick. When Baker went back around noon, Vince was too hungry and too scared to do any more protesting. He just spilled everything. Mike Childress was in the jug by one o'clock, and Baker got Billy Warner at his house just as Billy was packing up his old Chrysler to go someplace-along piece from the look of all the packed liquor- store boxes and strapped-together luggage. But somebody had talked to Ray Booth, and Ray had been just smart enough to move a little quicker. Baker took Nick home to meet his wife and have some supper. In the car Nick wrote on the memo pad: "I am sure sorry it's her brother. How is she taking it?" "She's bearing up," Baker said, both his voice and the set of his body almost formal. "I guess she's done some crying over him, but she knew what he was. And she knows you can't pick your relatives like you do your friends." Jane Baker was a small, pretty woman who had indeed been crying. Looking at her deeply socketed eyes made Nick uncomfortable. But she shook his hand warmly and said; "I'm pleased to know you, Nick. And I apologize deeply for your trouble. I feel responsible, with one of mine being a part of it and all." Nick shook his head and shuffled his feet awkwardly. "I offered him a job around the place," Baker said. "Station's gone right to hell since Bradley moved up to Little Rock. Painting and picking up, mostly. He's gonna have to stick around for a while anyway-for the... you know." "The trial, yes," she said. There was a moment then in which the silence was so heavy even Nick found it painful. Then, with forced gaiety, she said, "I hope you eat redeye ham, Nick. That's what there is, along with some corn and a big bowl of slaw. My slaw's never been up to what his mother used to make. That's what he says, anyway." Nick rubbed his stomach and smiled. Over dessert (a strawberry shortcake-Nick, who had been on short rations during the last couple of weeks, had two helpings), Jane Baker said to her husband: "Your cold sounds worse. You've been taking too much on, John Baker. And you didn't eat enough to keep a fly alive." Baker looked guiltily at his plate for a moment, then shrugged. "I can afford to miss a meal now and then," he said, and palpated his double chin. Nick, watching them, wondered how two people of such radically different size got along in bed. I guess they manage, he thought with an interior grin. They sure look comfortable enough with each other. And not that it's any of my business anyway. "You're flushed, too. You carrying a fever?" Baker shrugged. "Nope... well. Maybe a touch." "Well, you're not going out again tonight. That's final." "My dear, I have prisoners. If they don't specially need to be watched, they do need to be fed and watered." "Nick can do it," she said with finality. "You're going to bed. And don't go on about your insomnia; it won't do you any good." "I cant send Nick," he said weakly. "He's a deaf-mute. Besides, he ain't a deputy." "Well then, you just up and deputize him." "He ain't a resident!" "I won't tell if you won't," Jane Baker said inexorably. She stood up and began clearing the table. "Now you just go on and do it, John." And that was how Nick Andros went from Shoyo prisoner to Shoyo deputy in less than twenty- four hours. As he was preparing to go up to the sheriff's office, Baker came into the downstairs hall, looking large and ghostly in a frayed bathrobe. He seemed embarrassed to be on view in such attire.

68 "I never should have let her talk me into this," he said. "Wouldn't have done, either, if I didn't feel so punk. My chest's all clogged up and I'm as hot as a fire sale two days before Christmas. Weak, too." Nick nodded sympathetically. "I'm stuck between deputies. Bradley Caide and his wife went up to Little Rock after their baby passed away. One of those crib deaths. Awful thing. I don't blame them for going." Nick pointed at his own chest and made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. "Sure, you'll be okay. You just take normal care, you hear? There's a . 45 in the third drawer of my desk, but don't you be takin it back there. Nor the keys either. Understand?" "If you go back there, stay out of their reach. If any of em tries playin sick, don't you fall for it. It's the oldest dodge in the world. If one of em should get sick, Doc Soames can see them just as easy in the morning. I'll be in then." Nick took his pad from his pocket and wrote: "I appreciate you trusting me. Thanks for locking them up & thanks for the job." Baker read this carefully. "You're a puredee caution, boy. Where you from? How come you're out on your own like this?" "That's a long story," Nick jotted. "I'll write some of it down for you tonight, if you want." "You do that," Baker said. "I guess you know I put your name on the wire." Nick nodded. It was SOP. But he was clean. "I'll get Jane to call Ma's Truck Stop out by the highway. Those boys'll be hollering police brutality if they don't get their supper." Nick wrote: "Have her tell whoever brings it to come right in. I can't hear him if he knocks." "Okay." Baker hesitated a moment longer. "You got your cot in the corner. It's hard, but it's clean. You just remember to be careful, Nick. You can't call for help if there's trouble." Nick nodded and wrote, "I can take care of myself." "Yeah, I believe you can. Still, I'd get someone from town if I thought any of them would—" He broke off as Jane came in. "You still jawing this poor boy? You let him go on, now, before my stupid brother comes along and breaks them all out." Baker laughed sourly. "He'll be in Tennessee by now, I guess." He whistled out a long sigh that broke up into a series of phlegmy, booming coughs. "I b'lieve I'll go upstairs and lie down, Janey." "I'll bring you some aspirin to cut that fever," she said. She looked back over her shoulder at Nick as she went to the stairs with her husband. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Nick. Whatever the circumstances. You be just as careful as he says." Nick bowed to her, and she dropped half a curtsy in return. He thought he saw a gleam of tears in her eyes.

A pimply, curious boy in a dirty busboy's jacket brought three dinner trays about half an hour after Nick had gotten down to the jail. Nick motioned for the busboy to put the trays on the cot, and while he did, Nick scribbled: "Is this paid for?" The busboy read this with all the concentration of a college freshman tackling Moby-Dick. "Sure," he said. "Sheriff's office runs a tab. Say, can't you talk?" Nick shook his head. "That's a bitch," the busboy said, and left in a hurry, as if the condition might be catching. Nick took the trays in one at a time and pushed each one through the slot in the bottom of the cell door with a broomhandle. He looked up in time to catch "-chickshit bastard, ain't he?" from Mike Childress. Smiling, Nick showed him his middle finger. "I'll give you the finger, you dummy," Childress said, grinning unpleasantly. "When I get out of here I'll—" Nick turned away, missing the rest. Back in the office, sitting in Baker's chair, he drew the memo pad into the center of the blotter, sat thinking for a moment, and then jotted at the top:

Life History By Nick Andros

He stopped, smiling a little. He had been in some funny places, but never in his wildest dreams had he expected to be sitting in a sheriff's office, deputized, in charge of three men who had beaten him up, and writing his life story. After a moment he began to write again:

69 I was born in Caslin, Nebraska, on November 14, 1968. My daddy was an independent farmer. He and my mom were always on the edge of getting squeezed out. They owed three different banks. My mother was six months pregnant with me and my dad was taking her to see the doctor in town when a tie rod on his truck let go and they went into the ditch. My daddy had a heart attack and died. Anyway, three months after, my mom had me and I was born the way I am. Sure was a tough break on top of losing her husband that way. She carried on with the farm until 1973 and then lost it to the "big operators," as she always called them. She had no family but wrote to some friends in Big Springs, Iowa, and one of them got her a job in a bakery. We lived here until 1977 when she was killed in an accident. A motorcycle hit her while she was crossing the street on her way home from work. It wasn't even his fault but only bad luck as his brakes failed. He wasn't even speeding or anything. The Baptist Church gave my mamma a charity funeral. This same church, the Grace Baptist, sent me to the Children of Jesus Christ orphanage in Des Moines. This is a place that all sorts of churches chip together to support. That was where I learned to read and write...

He stopped there. His hand was aching from writing so much, but that wasn't why. He felt uneasy, hot and uncomfortable at having to relive all that again. He went back to the jail quarters and looked in. Childress and Warner were asleep. Vince Hogan was standing by the bars, smoking a cigarette and looking across the corridor at the empty cell where Ray Booth would have been tonight if he hadn't run so quick. Hogan looked as if he might have been crying, and that led him back in time to that small mute scrap of humanity, Nick Andros. There was a word he had learned at the movies as a kid. That word was INCOMMUNICADO. It was a word that had always had fantastic, Lovecraftian overtones to Nick, a fearful word that echoed and clanged in the brain, a word that inscribed all the nuances of fear that live only outside the sane universe and inside the human soul. He had been INCOMMUNICADO all his life. He sat down and re-read the last line he'd written. That was where I learned to read and write. But it hadn't been as simple as that. He lived in a silent world. Writing was code. Speech was the moving of lips, the rise and fall of teeth, the dance of a tongue. His mother had taught him to read lips, and had taught him how to write his name in struggling, sprawling letters. That's your name, she had said. That's you, Nicky. But of course she had said it silently, meaninglessly. The prime connection had come when she tapped the paper, then tapped his chest. The worst part about being deaf-mute was not living in the silent movie world; the worst part was not knowing the names of things. He had not really begun to understand the concept of naming until he was four. He had not known that you called the tall green things trees until he was six: He had wanted to know, but no one had thought to tell him and he had no way to ask: he was INCOMMUNICADO. When she died he had retreated almost all the way. The orphanage was a place of roaring silence where grim-faced thin boys made fun of his silence; two boys would run up to him, one boy with his hands plastered over his mouth, one boy with his hands plastered over his ears. If none of the staff happened to be near, they would punch him out. Why? No reason. Except that maybe in the vast white class of victims there is a subclass: the victims of victims. He stopped wanting to communicate, and when that happened the thinking process itself began to rust and disintegrate. He began to wander from place to place vacantly, looking at the nameless things that filled the world. He watched groups of children in the play yard move their lips, raise and lower their teeth like white drawbridges, dance their tongues in the ritual mating of speech. He sometimes found himself looking at a single cloud for as long as an hour at a time. Then Rudy had come. A big man with scars on his face and a bald head. Six feet, five inches tall, might as well have been twenty to runty Nick Andros. They met for the first time in a basement room where there was a table, six or seven chairs, and a TV that only worked when it felt like it. Rudy squatted, putting his eyes on approximately the same level as Nick's. Then he took his huge, scarred hands and put them over his mouth, his ears. I am a deaf-mute. Nick turned his face sullenly away: Who gives a fuck? Rudy slapped him. Nick fell down. His mouth opened and silent tears began to leak from his eyes. He didn't want to be here with this scarred troll, this bald boogey. He was no deaf-mute, it was a cruel joke. Rudy pulled him gently to his feet and led him to the table. A blank sheet of paper was there. Rudy pointed at it, then at Nick. Nick stared sullenly at the paper and then at the bald man. He shook his head. Rudy nodded and pointed at the empty paper again. He produced a pencil and handed it to Nick. Nick put it down as if it were hot. He shook his head. Rudy pointed at the pencil, then at Nick, then at the paper. Nick shook his head. Rudy slapped him again. More silent tears. The scarred face looking at him with nothing but deadly patience. Rudy pointed at the paper again. At the pencil. At Nick.

70 Nick grasped the pencil in his fist. He wrote the four words that he knew, calling them forth from the cobwebby, rusting mechanism that was in his thinking brain. He wrote:

NICHOLAS ANDROS FUCK YOU

Then he broke the pencil in half and looked sullenly and defiantly at Rudy. But Rudy was smiling. Suddenly he reached across the table and held Nick's head steady between his hard, callused palms. His hands were warm, gentle. Nick could not remember the last time he had been touched with such love. His mother had touched him like that. Rudy removed his hands from Nick's face. He picked up the half of the pencil with the point on it. He turned the paper over to the blank side. He tapped the empty white space with the tip of the pencil, and then tapped Nick. He did it again. And again. And again. And finally Nick understood.

You are this blank page. Nick began to cry. Rudy came for the next six years.

.. where I learned to read and write. A man named Rudy Sparkman came to help me. I was very lucky to have him. In 1984 the orphanage went broke. They placed as many kids that they could, but I was not one of them. They said I would get in with a family after a while and the state would pay them for keeping me. I wanted to go with Rudy but Rudy was in Africa working for the Peace Corps. So I ran away. Being sixteen, I don't think they looked for me too hard. I figured if I could stay out of trouble I would be all right, and so far so good. I have been taking the high school correspondence courses one at a time, because Rudy always said education is the most important. When I settle down for a while I'm going to take that high-school equivalency test. I will be able to pass it soon. I like school. Maybe I will go to college someday. I know that sounds crazy, a deaf-mute bum like me, but I don't think it's impossible. Anyway, that's my story.

Yesterday morning Baker had come in around seventhirty while Nick was emptying wastebaskets. The sheriff looked better. "How you feeling?" Nick wrote. "Pretty good. I was burnin up until midnight. Worst fever I've had since I was a kid. Aspirin didn't seem to help it. Janey wanted to call the doc, but around twelve-thirty the fever just broke. I slep like a log after that. How are you doing?" Nick made a thumb-and-forefinger circle. "How's our guests?" Nick opened and closed his mouth several times in a mime jabbering. Looked furious. Made banging gestures on invisible bars. Baker threw back his head and laughed, then sneezed several times. "You ought to be on TV," he said. "Did you write your life story down like you said you was gonna try to do?" Nick nodded and handed the two sheets of longhand over. The sheriff sat down and read them carefully. When he was done he looked at Nick so long and so piercingly that Nick stared down at his feet for a moment, embarrassed and confused. When he looked up again Baker said: "You've been on your own since you were sixteen? For six years?" "And you've really taken all these high school courses?" Nick wrote for some time on one of the memo sheets. "I was way behind because I started to read & write so late. When the orphanage closed I was just starting to catch up. I got six h. s. credits from there and another six since then from La Salle in Chicago. I learned about them from a matchbook cover. I need four more credits." "What courses do you still need?" Baker asked, then turned his head and shouted: "Shut up in there! You'll get your—hotcakes and coffee when I'm damned good and ready and not before!" Nick wrote: "Geometry. Advanced math. Two years of a language. Those are the college requirements."

71 "A language. You mean like French? German? Spanish?" Baker laughed and shook his head. "Don't that beat all. A deaf-mute learning to talk a foreign language. Nothing against you, boy. You understand that." Nick smiled and nodded. "So why you been driftin around so much?" "While I was still a minor°I didn't dare stay in one place for too long," Nick wrote. "Afraid they'd try to stick me in another orphanage or something. When I got old enough to look for a steady job, times got worse. They said the stockmarket crashed, or something, but since I'm deaf I didn't hear it (ha-ha)." "Most places would have just let you ramble on," Baker said. "In hard times the milk of human kindness don't flow so free, Nick. As for a steady job, I might be able to put you onto something around here, unless those boys soured you on Shoyo and Arkansas for good. But... we ain't all like that." Nick nodded to show he understood. "How's your teeth? That was quite a shot in the mouth you took." Nick shrugged. "Take any of those pain pills?" Nick held up two fingers. "Well, look, I got some paperwork to do on those boys. You go on with what you were doing. We'll talk more later."

Dr. Soames, the man who had almost hit Nick with his car, came by around 9:30 A. M. the same morning. He was a man of about sixty with shaggy white hair, a scrawny chicken neck, and very sharp blue eyes. "Big John tells me you read lips," he said. "He also says he wants to see you gainfully employed, so I guess I better make sure you're not going to die on his hands. Take off your shirt." Nick unbuttoned his blue workshirt and took it off. "Holy Jesus, lookitim," Baker said. "They did a job of work, all right." Soames looked at Nick and said dryly, "Boy, you almost lost your left tit." He pointed to a crescent-shaped scab just above the nipple. Nick's belly and ribcage looked like a Canadian sunrise. Soames poked and prodded him and looked carefully into the pupils of his eyes. At last he examined the shattered remains of Nick's front teeth, the only part of him that really hurt now, in spite of the spectacular bruises. "That must hurt like a sonofabitch," he said, and Nick nodded ruefully. "You're gonna lose them," Soames went on. "You—" He sneezed three times in quick succession. "Excuse me." He began to put his tools back into his black bag. "The prognosis is favorable, young man, barring strokes of lightning or further trips to Zack's ginmill. Is your speaking problem physical, or does it come from being deaf?" Nick wrote: "Physical. Birth defect." Soames nodded. "Damn shame. Got to think positive, though, and thank God that He didn't decide to give your brains a stir while He was at it. Put your shirt on." Nick did. He liked Soames; in his way, he was very much like Rudy Sparkman, who had told him once that God had given all deaf-mute males an extra two inches below the waist to make up for the little bit He had subtracted from above the collarbones. Soames said, "I'll tell em to give you a refill on that pain medication down at the drugstore. Tell moneybags here to pay for it." "Ho-ho," John Baker said. "He's got more dough stashed away in fruit jars than a hog has warts," Soames went on. He sneezed again, wiped his nose, rummaged around in his bag, and brought out a stethoscope. "You want to look out, Gramps, I'll lock you up for drunk and disorderly," Baker said with a smile. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," Soames said. "You'll open your mouth too wide one day and fall right in. Take off y'shirt, John, and let's see if your boobs are as big as they used to be." "Take off my shirt? Why?" "Because your wife wants me to look at you, that's why. She thinks you're a sick man and she doesn't want you to get any sicker, God knows why. Ain't I told her enough times that she and I wouldn't have to sneak around anymore if you were underground? Come on, Johnny. Show us some skin." "It was just a cold," Baker said, reluctantly unbuttoning his shirt. "I feel fine this morning. Honest to God, Ambrose, you sound worse'n I do." "You don't tell the doctor, the doctor tells you." As Baker pulled his shirt off, Soames turned to Nick and said, "But you know it's funny how a cold will just start making the rounds. Mrs. Lathrop is

72 down sick, and the whole Richie family, and most of those no-accounts out on the Barker Road are coughing their brains out. Even Billy Warner in there's hacking away." Baker had wormed out of his undershirt. "There, what'd I tell you?" Soames asked. "Ain't he got a set of knockers on him? Even an old shit like me could get horny looking at that." Baker gasped as the stethoscope touched his chest. "Jesus, that's cold! What do you do, keep it in a deep freeze?" "Breathe in," Soames said, frowning. "Now let it out." Baker's exhale turned into a weak cough. Soames kept at the sheriff for a long time. Front and back both. At last he put away his stethoscope and used a tongue depressor to look down Baker's throat. Finished, he broke it in two and tossed it into the wastebasket. "Well?" Baker said. Soames pressed the fingers of his right hand into the flesh of Baker's neck under the jaw. Baker winced away from it. "I don't have to ask if that hurt," Soames said. "John, you go home and go to bed and that isn't advice, that's an order." The sheriff blinked. "Ambrose," he said quietly, "come on. You know I can't do that. I've got three prisoners who have to go up to Camden this afternoon. I left this kid with them last night, but I had no business doing it, and I won't do it again. He's mute. I wouldn't have agreed to it last night if I had been thinking right." "You never mind them, John. You got problems of your own. It's some kind of respiratory infection, a damn good one by the sound, and a fever to go with it. Your pipes are sick, Johnny, and to be perfectly frank, that's no joke for a man who's carrying around the extra meat you are. Go to bed. If you still feel okay tomorrow morning, get rid of them then. Better still, call the State Patrol to come down and get them." Baker looked apologetically at Nick. "You know," he said, "I do feel kind of dragged out. Maybe some rest—" "Go home and lie down," Nick wrote. "I'll be careful. Besides, I have to earn enough to pay for those pills." "Nobody works so hard for you as a junkie," Soames said, and cackled. Baker picked up the two sheets of paper with Nick's background on them. "Could I take these home for Janey to read? She took a real shine to you, Nick." Nick scrawled on the pad, "Sure can. She's very nice." "One of a kind," Baker said, and sighed as he buttoned his shirt back up. "This fever's comin on strong again. Thought I had it licked." "Take aspirin," Soames said, latching his bag. "It's that glandular infection I don't like." "There's a cigar box in the bottom desk drawer," Baker said. "Petty cash fund. You can go out for lunch and get your medication on the way. Those boys are more dildoes than desperadoes. They'll be okay. Just leave a voucher for how much money you take. I'll get in touch with the State Police and you'll be shut of them by late this afternoon." Nick made a thumb-and-forefinger circle. "I've been trusting you a lot on short notice," Baker said soberly, "but Janey says it's all right. You have a care."

Jane Baker had come in around six yesterday evening with a covered dish supper and a carton of milk. Nick wrote, "Thanks very much. How's your husband?" She laughed, a small woman with chestnut brown hair, dressed prettily in a checked shirt and faded jeans. "He wanted to come down himself, but I talked him out of it. His fever was up so high this afternoon that it scared me, but it's almost normal tonight. I think it's because of the State Patrol. Johnny's never really happy unless he can be mad at the State Patrol." Nick looked at her quizzically. "They told him they couldn't send anybody down for his prisoners until nine tomorrow morning. They've had a bad sick-day, twenty or more troopers out. And a lot of the people who are on have been fetching people to the hospital up at Camden or even Pine Bluff. There's a lot of this sickness around. I think Am Soames is a lot more worried than he's letting on." She looked worried herself. Then she took the two folded sheets of memo paper from her breast pocket. "This is quite a story," she said quietly, handing the papers back to him. "You've had just about the worst luck of anyone I ever heard of. I think the way you've risen above your handicaps is admirable. And I have to apologize again for my brother."

73 Nick, embarrassed, could only shrug. "I hope you'll stay on in Shoyo," she said, standing. "My husband likes you, and I do, too. Be careful of those men in there." "I will," Nick wrote. "Tell the sheriff I hope he feels better." "I'll take him your good wishes." She left then, and Nick passed a night of broken rest, getting up occasionally to check on his three wards. Desperadoes they were not; by ten o'clock they were all sleeping. Two town fellows came in to check and make sure Nick was all right, and Nick noticed that both of them seemed to have colds. He dreamed oddly, and all he could remember upon waking was that he seemed to have been walking through endless rows of green corn, looking for something and terribly afraid of something else that seemed to be behind him.

This morning he was up early, carefully sweeping out the back of the jail and ignoring Billy Warner and Mike Childress. As he went out, Billy called after him: "Ray's gonna be back, you know. And when he catches you, you're gonna wish you were blind as well as deaf and dumb!" Nick, his back turned, missed most of this. Back in the office, he picked up an old copy of Time magazine and began to read. He considered putting his feet up on the desk and decided that would be a very good way to get in trouble if the sheriff came by. By eight o'clock he was wondering uneasily if Sheriff Baker might have had a relapse in the night. Nick had expected him by now, ready to turn the three prisoners in his jail over to the county when the State Patrol came for them. Also, Nick's stomach was rumbling uncomfortably. No one had showed up from the truck-stop down the road, and he looked at the telephone, more with disgust than with longing. He was quite fond of science fiction, picking up falling-apart paperbacks from time to time on the dusty back shelves of antique barns for a nickel or a dime, and he found himself thinking, not for the first time, that it was going to be a great day for the deaf-mutes of the world when the telephone viewscreens the science fiction novels were always predicting finally came into general use. By quarter of nine he was acutely uneasy. He went to the door which gave on the cells and looked in. Billy and Mike were both standing at their cell doors. Both of them had been banging on the bars with their shoes... which just went to show you that people who can't talk only made up a small percentage of the world's dummies. Vince Hogan was lying down. He only turned his head and stared at Nick when he came to the door. Hogan's face was pallid except for a hectic flush on his cheeks, and there were dark patches under his eyes. Beads of sweat were standing out on his forehead. Nick met his apathetic, fevered gaze and realized that the man was sick. His uneasiness deepened. "Hey, dummy, how about some brefus?" Mike called down to him. "An ole Vince there seems like he could use a doctor. Tattle-taleindon't agree with him, does it, Bill?" Bill didn't want to banter. "I'm sorry I yelled at you before, man. Vince, he's sick, all right. He needs the doctor." Nick nodded and went out, trying to figure out what he should do next. He bent over the desk and wrote on the memo pad: "Sheriff Baker, or Whoever: I've gone to get the prisoners some breakfast and to see if I can hunt Dr. Soames up for Vincent Hogan. He appears to be really sick, not just playing possum. Nick Andros." He tore the sheet off the pad and left it in the middle of the desk. Then, tucking the pad into his pocket, he went out into the street. The first thing that struck him was the still heat of the day and the smell of greenery. By afternoon it was going to be a scorcher. It was the sort of day when people like to get their chores and errands done early so they can spend the afternoon as quietly as possible, but to Nick, Shoyo's main street looked strangely indolent this forenoon, more like a Sunday than a workday. Most of the diagonal parking spaces in front of the stores were empty. A few cars and farm trucks were going up and down the street, but not many. The hardware store looked open, but the shades of the Mercantile Bank were still drawn, although it was past nine now. Nick turned right, toward the truck-stop, which was five blocks down. He was on the corner of the third block when he saw Dr. Soames's car moving slowly up the street toward him, weaving a little from side to side, as if with exhaustion. Nick waved vigorously, not sure if Soames would stop, but Soames pulled in at the curb, indifferently taking up four of the slanted parking spaces. He didn't get out but merely sat behind the wheel. The look of the man shocked Nick. Soames had aged twenty years since he had last seen him bantering casually with the sheriff. It was partly exhaustion, but exhaustion couldn't be the whole explanation-even Nick could see that. As if to confirm his thought, the doctor produced a wrinkled handkerchief from his breast pocket like an old magician doing a

74 creaky trick that does not interest him much anymore, and sneezed into it repeatedly. When he was done he leaned his head back against the car's seat, mouth half-open to draw breath. His skin looked so shiny and yellow that he reminded Nick of a dead person. Then Soames opened his eyes and said, "Sheriff Baker's dead. If that's what you flagged me down for, you can forget it. He died a little after two o'clock this morning. Now Janey's sick with it." Nick's eyes widened. Sheriff Baker dead? But his wife had been in just last night and said he was feeling better. And she... she had been fine. No, it just wasn't possible. "Dead, all right," Soames said, as though Nick had spoken his thought aloud. "And he's not the only one. I've signed twelve death certificates in the last twelve hours. And I know of another twenty that are going to be dead by noon unless God shows mercy. But I doubt if this is God's doing. I suspect He'll keep right out of it as a consequence." Nick pulled the pad from his pocket and wrote: "What's the matter with them?" "I don't know," Soames said, crumpling the sheet slowly and tossing the ball into the gutter. "But everyone in town seems to be coming down with it, and I'm more frightened than I ever have been in my life. I have it myself, although what I'm suffering most from right now is exhaustion. I'm not a young man anymore. I can't go these long hours without paying the price, you know." A tired, frightened petulance had entered his voice, which Nick fortunately couldn't hear. "And feeling sorry for myself won't help." Nick, who hadn't been aware Soames was feeling sorry for himself, could only look at him, puzzled. Soames got out of his car, holding on to Nick's arm for a minute to help himself. He had an old man's grip, weak and a little frenzied. "Come on over to that bench, Nick. You're good to talk to. I suppose you've been told that before." Nick pointed back toward the jail. "They're not going anywhere," Soames said, "and if they're down with it, right now they're on the bottom of my list." They sat on the bench, which was painted bright green and bore an advertisement on the backrest for a local insurance company. Soames turned his face gratefully up to the warmth of the sun. "Chills and fever," he said. "Ever since about ten o'clock last night. Just lately it's been the chills. Thank God there hasn't been any diarrhea." "You ought to go home to bed," Nick wrote. "So I ought. And will. I just want to rest for a few minutes first..." His eyes slipped shut and Nick thought he had gone to sleep. He wondered if he should go on down to the truck-stop and get Billy and Mike some breakfast. Then Dr. Soames spoke again, without opening his eyes. Nick watched his lips. "The symptoms are all very common," he said, and began to enumerate them on his fingers until all ten were spread out in front of him like a fan. "Chills. Fever. Headache. Weakness and general debilitation. Loss of appetite. Painful urination. Swelling of the glands, progressing from minor to acute. Swelling in the armpits and in the groin. Respiratory weakness and failure." He looked at Nick. "They are the symptoms of the common cold, of influenza, of pneumonia. We can cure all of those things, Nick. Unless the patient is very young or very old, or perhaps already weakened by a previous illness, antibiotics will knock them out. But not this. It comes on the patient quickly or slowly. It doesn't seem to matter. Nothing helps. The thing escalates, backs up, escalates again; debilitation increases; the swelling gets worse; finally, death. "Somebody made a mistake. "And they're trying to cover it up." Nick looked at him doubtfully, wondering if he had picked the words rightly from the doctor's lips, wondering if Soames might be raving. "It sounds slightly paranoid, doesn't it?" Soames asked, looking at him with weary humor. "I used to be frightened of the younger generation's paranoia, do you know that? Always afraid someone was tapping their phones... following them... running computer checks on them... and now I find out they were right and I was wrong. Life is a fine thing, Nick, but old age takes an unpleasantly high toll on one's dearly held prejudices, I find." "What do you mean?" Nick wrote. "None of the phones in Shoyo work," Soames said. Nick had no idea if this was in answer to his question (Soames seemed to have given Nick's last note only the most cursory of glances), or if the doctor had gone off on some new tack-the fever could be making Soames's mind jump around, he supposed. The doctor observed Nick's puzzled face, and seemed to think the deaf-mute might not believe him. "Quite true," he said. "If you try to dial any number not on this town's circuit, you get a recorded announcement. Furthermore, the two Shoyo exits and entrances from the turnpike are

75 closed off with barriers which say ROAD CONSTRUCTION. But there is no construction. Only the barriers. I was out there. I believe it would be possible to move the barriers aside, but the traffic on the turnpike seems very light this morning. And most of it seems to consist of army vehicles. Trucks and jeeps." "What about the other roads?" Nick wrote. "Route 63 has been torn up at the east end of town to replace a culvert," Soames said. "At the west end of town there appears to have been a rather nasty car accident. Two cars across the road, blocking it entirely. There are smudge pots out, but no sign of state troopers or wreckers." He paused, removed his handkerchief, and blew his nose. "The men working on the culvert are going very slowly, according to Joe Rackman, who lives out that way. I was at the Rackmans' about two hours ago, looking at their little boy, who is very ill indeed. Joe said that he thinks that the men at the culvert are in fact soldiers, though they're dressed in state road crew coveralls and driving a state truck." Nick wrote: "How does he know?" Standing up, Soames said: "Workmen rarely salute each other." Nick got up, too. "Back roads?" he jotted. "Possibly." Soames nodded. "But I am a doctor, not a hero. Joe said he saw guns in the cab of that truck. Armyissue carbines. If one tried to leave Shoyo by the back roads and if they were watched, who knows? And what might one find beyond Shoyo? I repeat: someone made a mistake. And now they're trying to cover it up. Madness. Madness. Of course the news of something like this will get out, and it won't take long. And in the meantime, how many will die?" Nick, frightened, only looked at Dr. Soames as he went back to his car and climbed slowly in. "And you, Nick," Soames said, looking out the window at him. "How do you feel? A cold? Sneezing? Coughing?" Nick shook his head to each one. "Will you try to leave town? I think you could, if you went by the fields." Nick shook his head and wrote, "Those men are locked up. I can't just leave them. Vincent Hogan is sick but the other two seem okay. I'll get them their breakfast and then go see Mrs. Baker." "You're a thoughtful boy," Soames said. "That's rare. A boy in this degraded age who has a sense of responsibility is even rarer. She'd appreciate that, Nick, I know. Mr. Braceman, the Methodist minister, also said he would stop by. I'm afraid he'll have a lot of calls to make before the day is over. You'll be careful of those three you have locked up, won't you?" Nick nodded soberly. "Good. I'll try to drop by and check on you this afternoon." He dropped the car into gear and drove away, looking weary and red-eyed and shriveled. Nick stared after him, his face troubled, and then began to walk down to the truckstop again. It was open, but one of the two cooks was not in and three of the four waitresses hadn't shown up for the seven-to-three shift. Nick had to wait a long time to get his order. When he got back to the jail, both Billy and Mike looked badly frightened. Vince Hogan was delirious, and by six o'clock that evening he was dead.