On the radio, the weather report promises a cold front coming down from Canada—a break in Graynier’s record 56 days of drought. After months of unrelenting sun, the browned trees and leached grasses carry an enamel glaze. But now, overnight, all the humidity has been sucked from the air. The sky blazes azure, as bright as if it has just been invented. The dimpled moon still hovers clearly across from the sun, and the lawns and forests of Graynier wait for rain.
“Can you believe it?” Behind the pharmacy counter, the ponytailed druggist rings up Hoyt’s gauze bandages, adhesive tape, and antibiotics. “Rain, finally. Everybody’s running to the fair today, ‘cause tomorrow’s supposed to be rained out. You been yet?”
“No.” Hoyt’s gaze wanders to a corkboard beside the register, where people post notices for sublets and yoga classes.
“I gave my kids a fifty-dollar limit for the whole two days. They already called, crying poor. They get hooked on those games, just to win some crap prize they don’t even want.”
Hoyt is no longer listening, transfixed by a missing-persons flier on the corkboard: “HAVE YOU SEEN HER?” The kind of poster you see at the post office and liquor store and never really look at.
Unless you recognize the person in the photo.
“What’s this?” He tries to keep his voice calm.
“Some old dude was in about ten days ago and put that up. You recognize her?”
“Can’t say I do,” Hoyt lies.
When the druggist’s back is turned, he snatches the flier off the board and hurries outside. Standing in the parking lot, he scans the description under Jane’s blurry photo.
Height 5’5”, blond hair, gray eyes, age 22. “Missing since 7/20, last seen at the Winchester Mall in Deer Run, Pennsylvania.” Then, “Has a mental development disorder that requires medical care,” heavily underlined. Below is a telephone number, area code 703.
JANE PEERS OUT the kitchen door’s stickered pane, looking for the dog.
Pete is asleep on the grass in the noonday sun. The barrel of his ribs swells with each breath. She returns to the living room, fishing her sneakers from under the sofa. A small book slides out with them. Bound in cracked black leather with gilt-edged pages, the volume bears a stamped gold symbol.
Her fingers tremble as she turns to the flyleaf. The Holy Bible, King James version, 1851. A thin, threadbare ribbon marks a page.
And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
The angel Gabriel. The Gabriel Nation Bible.
She can barely breathe for joy. She holds the precious volume, no longer imaginary, but real, in her hands. It is a gift, like the brooch, inviting her: Come closer, Jane, you are very near to the truth. You have only to climb the hill.
She slips on her sneakers, ignoring the pain in her shoulder. Feeling the breath of angels at her back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The first thing Seth Poonchwalla notices when he arrives at the clearing is that the shovel is missing.
Panting from his trek up Rowell Hill, he slips off his backpack. His load isn’t heavy: only hundreds of decongestant cold capsules in zip-lock bags and two empty plastic soda bottles.
The last time he’d been to the shack, a month ago, he left the shovel leaning next to the door. Or did he? Maybe he put it in the crawl space.
He needs it to bury the coffee filters and matchbooks and lye cans—whatever is left over from cooking. He goes down on all fours to look. The shovel isn’t under the cabin.
Someone was here.
Getting to his feet, Seth scans the ground with misgiving. No tracks, human or animal. The ground is baked rock-hard by drought. But the dried grass seems matted in places. Probably from his own footsteps…
A vagrant wind sweeps through the clearing; branches on the surrounding pine trees flail. Seth’s anxiety increases: rumor has it that the Graynier cops have sent for extra detectives to help solve the town’s drug problem. Still, they’re probably looking for meth labs in houses and trailers in town, not in an old hunting blind everyone’s forgotten.
But his intuition persists. Destroy the lab and go home. Let the crank addicts of Graynier turn into shrieking psycho insect-hallucinating bales of exposed nerves. Already tweakers like Googie Bains and Graynier’s mayor Sharon Sperakis are texting him every five minutes, getting antsy for delivery.
But…Pearl.
She wants more money. Unlike her soft-brained mother, Pearl gives nothing for free. The funds he kept stashed in the pool robot are gone, spent like his seed inside her luscious cunt. His cock hardens, remembering the squeeze of her sugar walls when he comes, and the full-body trembling that seizes him afterwards. (He’s trembling right now; he will have to beat off before he can manage the volatile chemicals with a steady hand.)
Inside the lean-to, the room is in the same condition he left it. Whoever came to the clearing didn’t go inside the shack. Pulling his footlocker from under the bench, he unlocks it with the key from his backpack. The contents are untouched: ten boxes of matchbooks, rubber gloves, engine starter fluid, lye crystals, Heet, muriatic acid, digital scale, skillet, coffee filters, surgical tubing.
Propping open the cabin’s flip board to give himself some air, he gets down to the tedious work: scraping the red striking strip from each matchbook to make red phosphorous; soaking the cold capsules in Heet to extract the pseudo, wiping the wax coating off each pill with a towel… And then it will be time to cook.
The soft pink hills of Pearl float through his mind. He is a fool to love her. But he is addicted to her extravagant flesh. Like his clients, he will pay anything to feel that happy.
In ten days he’ll have to kick his habit, though, when he leaves for freshman orientation at MIT. This will be his final batch of crank. Then he’ll dump the evidence into Pease Pond, and close up shop for good.
RUPA POONCHWALLA GAZES around the fairground, feeling a wave of nostalgia. Every year they have the same rides: the Ferris wheel, the Dragon, the Sizzler. So many summers have passed since Gita and Seth were little!
The little ones used to ball up cotton candy and pelt each other, and fish for prizes at the Frog Bog; the two would beseech Rupa and Harish to stay long after sundown, until the tattooed roustabouts pulled the brakes on their rides and the strings of bulbs festooning the concession aisles were switched off.
And the Convoy. Before Gita was born, Seth used to race around on his short chubby legs, finally choosing the best color truck to sit in. So solemnly, he’d pull the rope on the bell that didn’t ring, as the trucks wound slowly around the track. He truly believed he was steering the whole convoy with each masterly turn of his wheel.
But Seth hasn’t even bothered to come today, and Gita looks like she’d rather be anywhere else. Such a strange child, with her moods and whims. And so unfeminine.
What goes on inside that head? It’s been ages since Rupa has been inside Gita’s bedroom, even to vacuum. Her daughter won’t allow it. She says she will clean the room herself, but as far as Rupa knows, the girl has not used so much as a dust cloth. Rupa can’t help worrying that all Gita’s candles dripping wax on the carpet will set the motel on fire.
Rupa was granted no such freedoms when she was a girl—in India, independence did not come with Independence Day! That is an American delusion. What do either of her children know about self-sacrifice? Americans act as if they alone control their fates. But they are strapped to the wheel of karma like everyone else.
Her willful girl sits now on an artist’s stool while Rupa looks on in dismay. Gita has insisted on having her face painted; at her request, the artist layers a military camouflage pattern on her face: olive green and tan smears, black stripes under her eyes, even black lips! Horrifying. Wait until Ha
rish sees her, he will throw a fit. Then Gita will back-talk. And Harish will come unglued. Daughters know all too well how to dismantle their fathers.
Rupa and Gita are to meet Harish at the Daffy Dress-Ups trailer, and have their photographs taken in funny costumes, like cowboys and hippies and harem girls. She hopes Gita won’t put on the G.I. Joe outfit to go with her face paint!
It’s true the girl has been seeing a great deal of the Sampson boy. That she likes a boy is a good sign. But Rupa will feel relieved when Collin goes home. Gita is better off choosing a husband from Mumbai.
Or will her daughter demand to have her way there, too? Will Rupa and Harish then crumble before their child as American parents seem to do? There may be peace and prosperity in this nation, but in families it is a land of war.
THEY’VE DONE THE SCRAMBLER, followed by the Sizzler and the Howler. But Brett can’t tell if his son is having any fun. Collin seems distracted. At the Quack Attack, when he knocks a duck down on the third beanbag throw, and wins a bright yellow duckbill hat, he doesn’t even crack a smile. Maybe he’s afraid moving his face will ruin his makeup.
The artist hadn’t been surprised when Collin asked him for army camouflage instead of clown paint or cat whiskers; the guy told them he’d already done camo for someone else ten minutes ago.
Seeing his black lipstick in the mirror, Collin smiles for the first time that day. Maybe the kid will be a goth in high school.
On their way to the next amusement, they pass Elsa Graynier running the Historical Society booth, which the crowds seem to be spurning.
Brett imagines what the fairground must have looked like, when the Graynier Glass factory was on this same spot. They might have sponsored an annual company picnic on a day like today.
The lawn would have been dotted with blankets and baskets. Brett can picture women of all ages strolling about in straw bonnets and flounced summer dresses…men in shirtsleeves and vests, their Sunday-best frock coats cast on the grass, hacking watermelon slices for the children…young men dashing by in a foot race, to flaunt their prowess before the girls selling pies and boiled ham at a communal table.
And Jane Pettigrew, in a picture hat with a blue satin bow, laughing on Brett’s arm…
“What about the Rope-A-Dope?”
Collin is pointing to a rope ladder stretched over an inflated cushion. A carny barker motions to a stack of toys: “Get to the top, you get to shop!”
“Go on, Dad, win me something!” For the second time that day, the boy grins, his teeth flashing white. “I dare you!”
Brett considers the Rope-A-Dope dubiously. Handing two tickets to the carny, he climbs up on the cushion, plants one foot on the ladder.
He is thinking about his vision of Jane at the picnic, when the ladder pivots and flings him onto the inflated bolster with a thump.
Under the yellow bill of his hat, Collin is laughing. “Go again, Dad! Bet you’ll win.”
Brett flushes with embarrassment. He fell because he was thinking of Jane, when he’d promised himself to think only of Collin. This time, he’ll concentrate on impressing his son.
Paying more tickets, he studies the contraption. He concludes that putting weight in the middle of the rungs activates the pivot. If he grabs the side ropes only, not the rungs, and keeps his weight evenly distributed as he climbs—by grasping with the left hand while stepping with the right, then grasping with the right while stepping with the left—he will be able to maintain his balance.
He tries out this technique on the first rung. The cords tremble, dying to flip, but Brett is balanced…moving up… hearing voices behind him as people congregate to watch.
Gathering speed, he reaches the top, where he triumphantly clangs the bell.
A cheer erupts below. He rolls off the ladder onto the air cushion, sliding easily to the ground. A couple of teenagers high-five him; the barker tells him to pick a prize.
Brett’s not listening. His head jerks from side to side, frantically looking around him.
His son is gone.
RUPA POONCHWALLA’S SIDES ache from laughing. Harish looks so funny as a gunslinger, tripping over his spurs, with his stiff bowed chaps and ten-gallon hat tipped over his nose. Rupa declines the skimpy dancehall hostess outfit, then slips into the cowgirl costume the young photographer found her.
It’s Harish’s turn to convulse with laughter as his wife stumbles out of the dressing room, a gun in her holster, pointy Western boots on her tiny feet. “You are dangerous, woman!”
They pose before a white backdrop, while the photographer props a fiberboard cactus behind them. He is a wiry boy not much older than Seth, with oiled hair flopping over his brow. His sleeveless T-shirt shows off tattooed biceps as he adjusts the digital camera on the tripod.
Behind him a plump girl in a short babydoll sundress shows off her soft round thighs. The candy apple in her hand glistens with her saliva.
Rupa recognizes her: the daughter of the local whore.
“Look in the camera lens, please. Point your pistols at each other like it’s a shoot-out.”
Rupa lifts her gun to Harish’s chin. “Careful, husband, I will kill you!”
He aims his gun at her temple. “I will give you such a headache!”
The photographer snaps the picture, and goes over to a printer in the corner. The plump girl joins him, leaning so her breasts graze against him as they watch the photo slide out. He turns and hooks his arm around her neck, kissing her candy-stained lips. She giggles.
The daughter already turns into the mother. Rupa looks away, unbuckling her holster.
Harish approaches the curtain of the dressing room, where Gita is taking forever to change into a mermaid costume. “Gita! It’s your turn!”
There is no answer from the girl.
“Gita!” Rupa opens the curtain to peek her head inside.
The dressing room is empty.
“COLLIN SAMPSON,” a voice blares over the P.A., “please come to the Ferris wheel ticket booth where your father is waiting.”
Collin darts quickly through the crowd, keeping his face down.
“Anyone who sees a boy ten years old, in a dark green tee-shirt and a yellow duck hat, please bring him to the Ferris wheel.”
Ditching the yellow hat, he cuts between the Dog ‘N Patty and the Buttered Cob, then sprints for the exit. Gita is already waiting.
They dodge through backyards, avoiding main roads, and blending into the foliage in their camo makeup.
At the motel, they retrieve their bikes and weapons and begin pedaling toward Rowell Hill.
Pumping beside Gita, Collin is breathless, ecstatic. They are cosmic commandos. Their mission is underway; there’s no turning back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Marly is dying.
She can tell from the doctor’s aloof expression: she is as good as gone.
While she was out on the table, they scooped out her mole and the surrounding flesh; then did some kind of dye test that lit up the tumor’s progress.
It had branched out to the lymph nodes. The doctor removed those too.
She has to wait four days for the biopsy, but the doctor is 99.9% sure that it will confirm melanoma; it has probably spread too far to treat, and there’s only a 1 in 10 chance that radiation will work.
Sure, if I felt like going through agony and then dying anyway and leaving Pearl with a pile of hospital bills.
Dying.
She couldn’t say the D word to Pearl when she emerged from the doctor’s office. (She couldn’t say much of anything, with half her face still frozen from the anesthetic and her cheek taped up in bandages.) Pretending she was fine, she made a show of lying down for a nap once they got home. She sent Pearl off to the St. Paul’s Fair to have herself some fun.
Alone, Marly bursts into tears.
She shuffles to the kitchenette, opening a can of beer. She’ll have to take food through a straw for a while; barely more than a membrane remains of her outer cheek. She’s
afraid to touch the spot with her tongue for fear it’ll break through.
The beer makes her have to pee. But if she goes to the bathroom, she will catch sight of herself in the mirror.
Someone put a curse on me.
It all started going bad that summer night—can it be only six weeks ago?—she swerved to avoid a girl in the road, and crushed her bumper on Hoyt Eddy’s pickup. Ever since then, it has been one woe after another, eroding her spirit; despair metastasizing like the cancer in her face.
Outside, Thom Sayre’s brakes screech; she hears the thud of the mail in her box, the lid squealing shut. He’s gone by the time she comes out on the stoop.
She surveys her pathetic slice of lawn, an overgrown mess of chickweed that’s also metastasizing. Pook’s food bowl lies near the corner of the picket fence; she never had the heart to throw it out.
Pook is gone. In a little time she’ll be gone too. Then who will take care of Pearl?
All because of a girl in a purple anorak who appeared out of the dark and walked into Marly’s headlights…
Whatever happened to hope?
She retrieves her mail, flipping through collection notices. Then she sees the envelope from the lab.
Here it is: one last hope.
She sits at the dinette table. Breathless, she tears open the envelope.
Skimming over all the confusing numbers and columns, she skips to the interpretative section.
The alleged father, Hoyt Eddy, is excluded as the biological father of the child named Pearl Walczak. Based on testing results obtained from analyses of 4 different DNA probes, the probability of paternity is 0.0%.
Stunned, Marly rereads the paragraph so many times the words blur. She pictures her younger self in the bar, in her apron and miniskirt, flirting with the blue-eyed boy named Hoyt, thinking of his trust fund as he fucked her, hopes flying like colored flags: he’ll take me to Boston, introduce me to his family, lift me up into a life of riches…
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