Emmetsburg: Seventy-three

John wheeled suddenly and brought the pistol up to the Deputy’s nose. The blood drained quickly from the kid’s face. It was then John found his conscience again. But he had come too far to turn back now.

“Need you inside,” he said quietly.

“Jesus H., Mister Dugan.”

“Have to do this, son. I’m sorry”

“Please don’t pull that trigger, okay?”

“Won’t if I don’t have to,” John replied.

John motioned with the pistol and glanced back along the mostly deserted street. There were a couple of soldiers at the corner, but they were too far away to notice what was happening. The boy slid past John into the cool and quiet of the courthouse.

“Lock the door,” John said coolly.

The boy complied, fumbling nervously to wrestle a string of keys from his belt. They rattled loudly in the emptiness. He glanced back at John, feeling for the right key among the others. He pushed it into the lock and turned the key until the bolt slid into place with a resounding clunk.

Emmetsburg: Sixty-five

Pale-green. Two hours out of Emmetsburg John curled himself tightly on the seat, and pulled the shirt over his shoulders. It wasn’t a good sleep, by any stretch. He had to turn into the seat against the heavy scent of oil and engine grease. He was outrunning that storm just building from clear blue sky most of the evening. When he pulled aside it was still behind him, but coming up steadily.

Just around dawn when he was awakened by an insistent tapping at the window. His eyes opened grudgingly to the face of an old farmer. The fellow had a long narrow face dominated by a red round nose and full gray eyelashes like long wispy reeds of grass. Furled, they cut dangerously deep lines in his broad forehead. Not in an alarming way, but with a wistful sort of scolding of a patient grandparent. Behind him an old gray mare was hitched to a small covered carriage.

“Down on your luck?” said the old timer through the window.

John sat up and pinched his nose, pulling sleep from his eyes. It took a moment to answer. Not that the fellow seemed in all that much of a hurry. John rolled down the window and replied before his eyes could fully focus.

“Headed home.”

“Ain’t in some kind of trouble?”

“Not with the law or the lord,” said John.

The old farmer almost smiled and looked up the road. It seemed to rise into the dark blue storm clouds to the east. The storm had passed to the north a bit, marching steadily southward in proportion.

“Leaves only money and family.” The man smiled warmly. “Reckon I’ll take my chances with the Lord.”

“Expect I should be getting off your land.”

The farmer shrugged. “Weren’t harming anything. Didn’t mean to startle you. Just trying to be neighborly.”

“Much obliged.”

“Where’s home, if you don’t mind me asking?’

“Emmetsburg.”

The farmer nodded thoughtfully. His mouth twisted as he mulled a thought. “Big doings up there today.”

“You don’t say,” John yawned, stretching the sleep from his arms and fingers.

“Army moved in overnight. Hoover’s finest.” The man’s sarcasm was drier than a desert. “Heard through the grapevine some fellas might be up to some sort of insurrection of sorts. Show these federals a thing or two about messing with good hard working Iowa folks.”

“Sure hope your wrong about that.”

“Suppose we'll see. Welcome to come up to the house for some breakfast.”

“Could use a bite,” said John with a slight nod. “Don’t want to intrude.”

“Can’t speak to the quality. The wife was the real cook in the house. Since she passed I’m just pretending.”

Emmetsburg:Sixty

Emily drew the waist of the dress into her hands and hesitated a moment. She lifted away the dress and let it fall to a small bush behind her. John looked at her. Not with lust, but with admiration. Starlight fell across her breasts, shone upon the smooth slope of her belly to where it lost in the tangled triangle of dark pubic hair. She swam nd luxuriated in his gaze.
“Married.” she said, almost as a disappointed sigh.

“Matter?”

“Just if you’re running from…”

“Just as soon leave it be,” he said, then tempered the words. “If that’s all right.”

“Don’t mean to pry.”

“Just wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Fair enough.”

“And you?”

Emily sort of laughed darkly to herself. She played with her hair a moment before tying it back. “Wouldn’t have called it a marriage. At least not in the biblical sense.”

“Where is he now?”

In hell, if there is any justice in the world, she thought to say. Instead she shrugged and sat and leaned back on her elbows, as if she and John had been lovers forever. The conversation stirred memories Emily would just as soon have buried for good.

Was there any real justice in the world, she wondered, or were such things illusions for gullible hearts that still clung to ideas like god and fate and love? She wasn’t enough of a hypocrite to abandon such things. No still beating heart rightly could. But she didn’t entertain those thoughts either.

As for love, she saw it not as a goal or a treasure to be cherished. Rather it was more a weakness, a flaw of the heart that allowed the unscrupulous to delude the needing heart against the stubborn human mind that it was capable of anything purer. Still, in quieter moments Emily understood that her hypocrisy was complete. The conflicting thoughts brought a sudden wave of emotion. Tears threatened her eyes.

“I love looking at the stars,” she said, hoping to divert her thoughts. Something in their eternity settled her a bit.

“That so?” he replied. He was thinking of Anna. It tore at his heart what she must be thinking at this moment, wondering where he had gone off to

“Makes the problems in the world seem so small.”

“I reckon.”

“Ask you a question?”

“Might cost you,” John smiled.

“Take wooden nickels?” she teased.

The rising moon scattered across the flowing waters. Her gaze fixed upon that scattered light, as if some wisdom could be gleaned from its study, or that it might wrestle free deeper thoughts she was incapable of reaching on her own. John was thinking the same thing.


“What do you figure this is all about?” he asked.

“Ain’t a proper question,” she answered.

“Don’t follow.”

“I ain’t seeing the world through your eyes, and you can’t see through mine.”

He nodded at her reply, a bit disappointed he couldn’t come to it himself. It only seemed to confirm the words.

“That’s a curse, I suppose.”

“Don’t know,” she said. Her voice was almost lost to the crickets and the river. She looked away. There were campfires among a bank of trees a ways off. “Works out about the same either way.”

“Think?”

“Maybe. Who knows?”

“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully. She didn't hear. Didn't seem like there was much else to say. The moment fell away from them to hang heavy in the growing humidity. There were bigger thoughts here that neither was in the mood to pursue much, at least not with someone else. Emily chuckled, breaking the moment.

“Didn't figure on pondering the heavens when I came down here with you, John.”

John smiled a little sadly. Not quite meeting her eyes, but more looking past her. “Hot night.”

Emily stood without replying and pondered the river. She went to the edge. Her toes sank in the cool silky mud. The water rushed in around her feet chasing the heat of the night from her body. John closed his eyes.

“You asked what this all means,” Emily swept a foot through the water before her.

“Uh huh.”

“I'm looking at this here river,” she said. Her voice felt distant, even to her. “Been running forever. Be running after I'm dead and gone.”

Doesn't frighten you?”

“The word or forever?”

“Take your pick.”

The answer was simple. It was perfect. Emily swept a foot back and forth in the water.

“Think I'll go for that swim,” she said.

John nodded in a nondescript manner. Emily took a long cleansing breath and released it. She waded into the river waist deep. John watched as she slid forward and pushed gently into the dark river. Caught by the current she slipped from view and was gone.

John stood and walked slowly up to the truck, pausing to study the contours of a leaf for a moment. Emily's mom and pop were seated precisely where he had found them earlier. John gave a polite nod. The old man looked away and spat into the dust. His wife remained a statue to the injustices of her life. She was a lifetime away, playing at the world the little girl in her dreamed once.

Emmetsburg: Fifty-nine

Emily stood and started for the river with the coffee pot. There was a narrow trail through the trees along the bank. Emily turned for him, beckoning with a smile that was somewhere between seduction and eternal disappointment. She disappeared through the trees into the darkness. John followed, finding her at the bank.

She was silhouetted against the inky darkness of the river. Off in the distance heat lightening flashed silently. There was a storm off towards des Moines, seemingly another world away. Fireflies filled the warm night air. It was a shade cooler here by the river, the trickling obsidian waters whispering lazily by. She crouched at the river's edge and dipped the pot in the water.

“Don't know if your dad knew what to make of me when I pulled up,” John searched for something to say. “Strange fella showing up unannounced.”

“Papa had himself a stroke last year. Ain't been himself since. Then we lost the farm. Think that was the worst for him.”

“And you?”

“Ain't never been able to call no place home for very long.” Emily stood, holding the pot with both hands. She shrugged. “Can't miss what you never had, right?”

She was close to him now. Emily looked up at John, sort of mulling him over in her mind. John found he suddenly had the urge to kiss her. In fact, hungered for her lips as he had never hungered for a woman before. His desire for her raged beyond all control. If only he could muster the courage, If only she offered some sign that she felt the same he would have happily tumbled to the ground with her, pushing up her dress, devouring and tasting her. He would make passionate love to her love, spilling over and into her all his desire, grief and anger.

“Didn't much have a taste for coffee,” he said.

“I figured,” she replied softly, at hardly more than a whisper.

John gently lifted the pot from her hands and set it on the ground. He reached up and cradled her face, surprised at the coolness of her soft cheeks. Emily's hands went to his sides.

¨Could you love me?¨ she asked. Emily pressed her belly against John. She marveled at the perfection of that fit. She warmed with the mutual rush of excitement. Emily found eternity in his eyes. But there are different views on eternity.

As for John, he found more than one answer to his question. There was, almost overpowering all reason, the answer of the moment and his body. It was a moment filled with excitement and discovery, as if her body and the unpredictability of her movements, of the promise of furtive breaths, the taste of her lips, of moans and cries of ecstasy were a new culture and mysterious land begging to be explored. And there was the moment of his soul and of Anna. In each answer there was Louis's insinuation, and this moments demand for greater context and importance. His reply belied John's strident revolt against that larger question.

“I could.”

She might have kissed him. John was far too terrified to undertake that himself. She would have kissed him, but there was something behind the words. Not reluctance, necessarily, but a shadow of something else. Emily couldn't say exactly, but it was as though, to John, she wasn't a destination, but a waypoint on a greater journey. And that was something she did not care for anymore. It was a need she recognized within herself better.

Emily touched his face. John turned and kissed the palm of her hand.. His lips lingered there, where he breathed in the perfume of her palm. They remained frozen there for a time, almost as if consoling one another over the loss of a friend, or over the passing of an opportunity. Slowly they drew apart and faced the river.

Emmetsburg: Chapter-three

Take me in your arms, lover.
Let me feel the love flow from you.
The hero that stanđs before you is a frauđ.
I, alone know the lies only others suspect.
I, alone desire the soft salvation of your breast,
And feel the love that flows from you.
Take me in your arms, lover.


Take me in your arms, Lover.
This love that steals me from ruin.
You are a warm sun-drenched field of cool green grass.
I am lost to the wilderness, forever searching for respite.
It is only your song this blind fool goes,
Still the winds of ego seek to tear me away,
Take me in your arms, lover.

Take me in your soul, sweetheart.
Not as a selfish sanctuary from besieging cold.
I am the sinking ship that defines the sheltered harbor.
I am the weary traveler that gives the blanket meaning.
You are warmth and peace to my guilty heart's privilege,
Take me in you, in your...lover.

Emmetsburg: Fifty-four

Golden pillars of morning light poured in through the tall stained glass windows inside St. Mary’s Church. They drifted and moved, transforming the congregation, the alter and the crowded rows of blond pews into curtains of light and shadow. The blended voices of the choir gave life to those shadows and light, as if those melodious tones were instead a quality to the sunlight, as if the light had been sent by God with a quality and power altogether different from mere daylight.

John was lost in them, feeling suddenly like a castaway from the world. He felt choked by the collar of his white Sunday shirt, and by the knot of his black bow tie. He was sweating under the collar, despite a pleasant breeze through the open doors at the back of the church. John turned and twisted his head and fought a growing sense of panic and desperation. He might have run outside, but that wouldn’t save him either.

Ana was beside him, but felt farther away from John than ever. Not even in the war, an ocean away, sending off a letter and waiting weeks for a reply, hoping it wouldn’t be a note saying he had been killed. She looked at him, wishing to know what was tearing at him so. He wished to tell her, to tell her everything, including his misgivings about their life and their love.

Where would John even begin? He found himself negotiating with fate, without knowing if such a thing was even possible. What was it? Was fate unchangeable and petty human choice the illusion that allowed us distance and insulation from the coldness of our ultimate fates? Perhaps it was indeed malleable and changeable. But what about Anna and her fate? Could she, as Louis foretold (given that it was impossible for him to know about Bert Himmel and the Spirit Lake fire) find someone else and have the child she wished to have? And what about Myron Himmel? Knowing his fate, and knowing that his death would alter their lives for the better, did John have a responsibility to their fates? John felt trapped by those thoughts, and grasped for the only decision he could see.

He'd run. John'd go off and repair his soul. He'd drown it in liquor, or bury it in lust and another woman. As for Anna, if would be a far sight easier for her to get on with things if he'd gone off and left her. Far easier, he figured, to digest betrayal than suffer mourning. There. There was the pit in the armor of Louis's predictions.

He was quiet all day, and didn't let on when she left to take care of Mrs. Conlon. At dusk, before Anna returned home, and without so much as a letter of explanation, John climbed into the truck and drove west out of Emmetsburg. He drove west into the twilight of his bitterness. He drove west into a rust red sun setting among the dusty purple haze of the darkening Iowa landscape.

Emmetsburg: Fifty-three

John sat on a stool beside the cellar door, wondering if he ought to be saying goodbye to the world. A storm was moving in, though the stars were bright and bold. The wind had picked up, carrying the mineral scent of approaching rain. The wind washed through the willow behind the house, tugging at its long flowing branches. There were flashes of lightening, reflected in houses and trees, but it was accompanied by a silence that told John the storm was the better part of an hour away.

The wind chased the off the heat of the day and kept the fire flies to the low branches of trees or among the tall grass at the back of the yard. More than that, the wind settled the storms in his heart that had tossed him madly the last few days. It didn’t resolve anything, and certainly gave him no peace of mind, but it offered a moment’s reprise from which he could collect the shattered pieces of his thoughts a bit.

Anna was already in bed, waiting for him. John felt that tug, the pattern and familiarity of being beside her the better part of his life, it was just that he couldn’t be near her right now. Too many thoughts and feelings besieged him, and too many doubts assailed him. It weakened him. It weakened his tongue and allowed those un-tempered misgivings free reign to charge Anna with things she might well be innocent of, at least as much as John’s heart was concerned. It was better he remain there in the yard where the solitude and quiet asserted themselves as the proper prescriptions for his tormented heart.

John pulled at the bandage. The act drew his mind from the sudden appearance of darker thoughts about Anna, their love and eternity, as if those thoughts had collected themselves from the broken pieces of his thoughts. The end of the bandage came loose, and if it was some sort of puzzle, something hiding a mystery, he began to unwrap it from his hand. He focused on it, forcing away though thoughts, wrestling them to the ground. The effort was fully respected in his face. John’s lips tightened, eyes narrowing and his brow sinking deeply. He pulled the wrappings away more quickly, more forcefully as the task to stop those thoughts became herculean. They fought back, allied with his selfish heart until he was helpless to hold them back any longer. They overran him, turning him from Anna, indicting and vilifying her for manufactured crimes and the hearsay foolishness of a madman.

The bandages lay in a pile at his feet. John held out the hand before him and studied the jagged scar, running from his index finger, through the center at his wrist where it almost reached his wrist. It was dark against the flesh of his palm, reminding him of trenches scarring the rolling farmland of France. He opened his hand, stretching his fingers as much as the pain and sutures would allow. He could feel the pull of the flesh, a tension that threatened to burst and gush warm dark blood.

“John?” Anna appeared at the back door. Her voice was sleepy and concerned. She noticed the bandages at his feet and came down the back step, the wind tugging at her thin white gown. “What have you done?”

“Cutting off the circulation,” he said, his voice held a sulking quality. She knelt before him, resting a hand on his knee. The other gently cradled the underside of his injured hand.

“Are you all right?” she tried in vain to find his eyes. “You’re just not yourself.”

“Fine,” he replied. “Just need to sort out a few things.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

It was as if these thoughts were a sin, a crime that he wished to hide. It was easier to be cruel to Anna than unburden himself. The words came out colder than he could ever recall speaking to her. It was as though someone else was speaking them.

“Can I keep a single thought to myself?” he told her. “Sometimes a man has to sort things out for himself. Now go on to bed.”

Anna stood and backed away, as if she no longer understood the man sitting on that stump. The words stabbed at her, and caused a cascade of reasons for his cruelty. Clearly it wasn’t John. She thought better of a response. She breathed heavily and shook her head.

“When you get things good and sorted out, John Perkins, come to bed.” She pulled open the screen and looked back at him once more. John was looking into the palm of his hand, picking at the stitches and dried blood. She let the door bang closed and went back to bed leaving him be.

Emmetsburg: Fifty-two

The morning paper screamed at him from the yellow Newspaper box in front of the town hall. Behind him Main Street was busy with traffic. The street bent downhill through a tunnel of summer-green maples, to where the sun played across the blue-green waters of the lake. The headline sucked the air from John's lungs. He felt the blood run cold from his face, tumbling icily through his body. It rebounded as a quiet gasp. It was just what Louis had foreseen.

THREE GIRLS DIE IN SPIRIT LAKE FIRE
the world seemed to tilt and twist away beneath his feet. One of the oldtimers on the bench nearby caught him at the last minute. Big powerful farm-hewn hands held John fast.

“Hey there, fella,” he said, quite concerned. “Having a spell, son?”

“Lost my balance,” John grinned dumbly, then hurried off along the street.

At the corner he lifted his hand skyward and let the sun filter through his fingers. So it was true, he realized. Everything that Louis had predicted had come true. And if that was the case, then what was to say that the rest would not come true as well? There was no reason to believe what he had said about Anna, and about John's death. That said, was there nothing he could do. Was fate a mighty river running inexorably to so unpredictable, but all too certain fate? Was it as small as a flower unfolding in spring or as large as the whole universe? In either case was he a king or a fool to that fate?

A truck turned the corner past the diner. John decided at that moment it was high time to put the issue of fate and Louis to the ultimate test. The truck coughed and lurched through its aging gears. It roared, belching black exhausted and charged up the street in John's direction.

John decided that thinking about it would only complicate things. It was a reflexive action, as he had learned to do in the war. Best not to think about what amounted to organized mass suicide, but rather just throw one's self into the gap once that whistle blew. John took a breath and stepped off the curb at the precise instant when it would be impossible for the truck to stop. He felt hollow and resigned, but more than that, fully at the helm of his own fate, which may or may not have been an illusion. John turned to face the onrushing truck directly and closed his eyes.

There was a rush of wind and the heat of the truck's engine. Tires screeched and a woman across the street screamed. John remained frozen, his eyes still closed. Not tightly closed, but closed. The woman, the birds in the maple trees and the burping exhaust as the truck's motor stalled were distant.

John opened his eyes to the billowy white clouds and summer blue sky. He was vaguely aware of someone shouting, even if he couldn't make them out at first or even cared. He was alone, sealed off and protected from the world. It took a moment before it all came rushing back in on him.

“Damned crazy fool!” shouted the truck driver, shaking his fist in rage. The burly, square-jawed fellow was red faced. Relief and surprise and fury competed alternately upon that red face. “Ought to have your head examined!”

John looked at him for a long moment, as though the driver was an alien creature, and that all of this was an observation or an experiment of some sort. He glanced over at the newspaper box again before turning up the street towards home.

Emmetsburg: Fifty-One

George opened the door and immediately perceived the change in atmosphere. Even in the stale still air of the front office it tasted decidedly less oppressive than the jail cells. Bremer noticed the blood on john's arm and looked at him alarmingly. He pushed past John and went directly to Louis' cell. He was back in the cot, fully surrendered to a deep sleep, as if nothing had happened.

“Everything all right, John?” George's tone was leading, suspecting something out of sorts. John waved his hand in the air. It was warm and pulsing with dull pain, and almost felt dead.

“Healing slowly,” he said unconvincingly. “Don't take much to open her up.”

“George frowned, and looked back at Louis. He didn’t believe him for a moment. “Hope you made your peace. Best you be going now.”

John had made his peace. He felt free of Louis. More than that, he felt he could adequately find the proper perspective for the doubts and questions he'd conjured from all this. He crossed the park, each step lifted by a renewed vigor. He'd never mention word of this to Anna. What a fool he had been to doubt her even for a moment, and if there was one thing he could take from this it would be to cherish her as long as breath remained in his body. There could be no accounting for eternity, but he could account for the quality of his love for her in this life. What else was there? What else could a man hope for?

Emmetsburg: Fifty

George Bremer's office was just up the stairs. With each step John was tearing this moment apart. He wondered what George would say, or if he would think John a fool. By the time he reached the top of the stairs John wasn't certain himself. When he reached the Sheriff's door John was convinced that he was indeed. Despite himself John's hand went out and knocked without confidence on the door. Without awaiting a reply John turned the brass knob and pushed his head through the gap.

The room was a fog of bitter cream-white cigar smoke, carrying herbal chill. It hung as strands and nebulous banks, scattering sunlight [pouring through half open blinds in a rhythm of shadow and light. George sat in the far corner of the room upon a small wooden chair, away from his desk and almost lost to dingy shadow.

The cigar was a mere stub between George's teeth, where it was more chewed than smoked any longer. With the thumb and forefinger George pulled the stub from his teeth. He gave a casual nod and gestured John into the room. John obliged, sweeping a hand before his face and disturbing filaments of smoke there.

“Best close the door, John.” he said with a whimsical quality. “Mildred hates the smell. Like having two wives. Don't imagine how them Arab fellas do it. Got enough on my plate with just one, and Mildred.”

John managed a smile. “Something again air, George?”

“Not as long as I can see it!”

“Don't know, George,” said John, waving at the smoke again. Not that it really bothered him all that much.

George leaned forward in the chair and stretched to tap a butt from the open window. “Wife won't let me smoke at home.”

“Can't imagine why.”

“Never had a taste for the smoke, eh?”

“Never cared for it personally.”

“Cigarettes,” George began, thoughtfully, “are for young boys, the nervous and the condemned, but a cigar, John, a cigar is for the thinking man.”

“That so,” said John.

George popped the cigar back into his mouth, moving it from one side to the other between his teeth. “But you didn't come here to talk about cigars, now did you. What can I do ya for?”

“Need to see Stanton.” John felt as if he had forced the words out, like spitting out something vile and distasteful.

George was immediately against the idea, shaking his head strongly from side to side. “John, I'm...”

“I'm asking this one favor,” John said quickly, almost pleading, at least as much as his ego and soul would allow.

George leaned back, tipping back in the chair and chewing the end of his cigar, as though it helped him to think.

“What's your business with this fella?”

“Can't say.”

“Something that might concern the law, John?”

“Nothing like that.” John looked him square in the eye. “Business between him and me.”

“Nothing to do with that girl?” George asked.

“Nope.”

George studied the cigar in his fingers and pursed his lips. He rubbed his bent brow roughly with a thumb and forefinger.

“Put me in an awful spot, John, anyone should hear of this.”

“Five minutes is all I'm asking.”

Man could get in a lot of trouble in five minutes.” George took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His gaze hovered near the floor a moment. Tapping out a butt, he threw the cigar back between his teeth and looked up at John. “I'll give you two.”

John nodded his appreciation. “Two'll do just fine.”

Emmetsburg: Forty-nine

Umber. John hesitated at the steps to the jail across from the courthouse in Emmetsburg. It might have been better to leave well enough alone. A weaker part of him felt as though he'd been given a reprieve from the fate Louis described. The better part of him felt sure it was nothing more than the ramblings of a criminally insane man. But if all that was true, why did the questions persist in haunting him so?

How did Louis know about Bert Himmel? That little mystery added an undeniable weight to his ramblings, and had served to call into question so much that he took as unassailable. It plagued and shadowed damn near every thought and action that he might be living his final days, and that Anna would go off and find another love whom she might be just as happy or happier than with him. That specter made every breath and every moment agonizing. More, it caused him to question Anna and the very foundations of a love he prayed was eternal and exalted by God Himself. But if any of that were true, why did Louis not predict his own fate?

It wasn't much of a jail. The dull brown brick building was small, and partly painted in the mottled shade of a crooked oak. There were three cells at the back of the building, with old fashioned bars, straight out of some old Western movie. Most days they went unused, but for the occasional bar brawl, a drunk or two and vagrants coming in on out of town trains. Next to Louis Stanton the most dangerous criminals ever to grace Emmetsburg's jail were a couple out of towner's who, after attempting to blow up the bank at Cylinder, became so lost among tall August corn that they surrendered to the first farmer they came across. John found himself at the top of the step, almost without realizing, as if he was moving in a dream, as if he was a spectator in a foreign body.

John had questions. He had questions about Bert Himmel and how he knew old Bert would pass away that night. What was hardest for John to figure was, if Louis could see the future, why hadn't he predicted his own arrest? And what did that mean for John's fate, at least the one Louis predicted? Was it all the ramblings of a fool, or a con man who could read folks like some back alley Parisian Gypsy?

John went through the heavy wooden door, immediately assailed by the thin stale air within. It felt to him like a crypt, as it the air had not been let out in years, as if it was old and tired but whimsically melancholic. It was warmer inside than out on the street. The windows were up, but it did little for the heat. What it did do was let in the sounds off the street wheich, in that dulcid space, blended to a pale hollow din. On the back wall there were three eight by ten black and white portraits, hung vertically. President Hoover occupied the top spot. Below that was a porttrait of a pompous Vice President Curtis. Last was that of Govenor Daniel Turner. The walls were a faded shade of pale blue. Three heavy metal desks occupied the room, arranged neatly behind the receptionist's desk. All were a soft pea green, each with a pair of cherry-stained chairs set neatly before them. An American flag with dingy gold tassels hung limp on a pole in the far corner beside the stairs leading to George Bremer's second floor office.

Mildred O'connor, the receptionist. looked up from the Underwood typewriter. A report she was working on was being typed in triplicate, each page curling away and separated by thin reused black.sheets of fragile carbon paper.

Mildred had lost her husband the winter before last. Hank O;connor worked a lifetime with the railroad as a signalman. John knew Hank from Hamilton's diner and soda fountain's around the corner, which served the best and cheapest made-rite sandwiches in town. He went quietly in his sleep one night, a heartattack the doctor's said. But grief and the years had done little to diminish a natural beauty, nor an unmistakable enthusiasm that the good Lord put in her body. There wasn't a Sunday John could recall that Mildred wasn't leading the chior at St.Mary's.

Mildred smiled warmly, and invitation to return the gesture John found impossible to refuse. Her sharp blue eyes lit up the moment, further evidence of an uncommon beauty and warmth, neither of which had diminished greatly through the years. The expression darkened to a sympathetic smile, in Mildred's overly dramatic style, when she noticed the bandage on his hand.

“Oh dear,” she gasped. For anyone else such gushing emotion would see fake or condescending. “Looks just awful!. Must hurt something terrible.”

John reached out and gently squeezed her small frail hand. “In the way more than anything, “Miss O'conner.”

“Trust Misses Perkins is taking good care of you?”

He let go of her hand. “Never better.”

“Ah, she's a good soul, just like my Henry was.”

“Th at she is,” he agreed readily.

“You cherish every minute with that girl,” said Mildred.

John nodded smartly. “I do.”

“Gosh,” she beamed cutely, “remember when the two of you were a couple kids. I would say to Henry, now there's a couple meant for each other!”

“Expect Anna would be pleased to hear that.”

“Don't life just go by so fast?” Mildred waxed.

“That is does, Misses O'connor,” said John with a smart nod. “George back in his office?”

“Expect that's what you came in for,” She waved a hand in the air and turned sharply back to her reports. “Look at me, the lonely old widow, babbling on and on.”

“Not at all, hon,” said John. “Always a pleasure.”

Emmetsburg: Forty-six

“George,” John nodded.

The deputies stopped behind, and just to either side of Bremer, like over-protective sons than public employees.Both of them were young and baby-faced.. At least that's how they appeared to John, serving only to make him feel a bit ancient. One of them was tall and well built, the other short and a little on the doughy side.His name was Ray. His parents ran a tailor shop downtown. None of the men were armed. Ray held a set of wrist irons. He nervously shifted them from hand to hand. George nodded respectfully and motioned to John's wound.

“John. How's that hand?”

“Help you fellas?”

“Hope you'll forgive the intrusion, but we've come for him.”

John scrtached the back of his head trying to figure why Louis didn't seem immediately surprised. Then all at once his expression changed, as if it was manufactured or contrived.

“John, I swear I don't...” Louis began before Bremer cut him off.

“Best you not say another word,son.”

“What's this all about, George?” asked John.

Bremer went over and laid a hand gently upon Louis' shoulder.. “I think your guest knows.” His eyes met Louis with a judicious quality. He patted the man's shoulder almost sympatheically. “My deputies here trust you won't be any trouble.”

The deputies were patient as John pulled Bremer aside. They had known each other for almost their whole lives. George Bremer was the first person John had seen the day he stepped off the Milwaukee line from the war. John led him over to the cellar door.

“What's this all about, George?'

Bremer kept his voice low. His brow was tortured. The words fell heavily. “A wrecker pulled his car out of the creek. John, there was a body inside, a white woman.”

“George, I was all over that car, if there'd been...”

“She was in the rear compartment. Her hands and feet were bound. There was a rope around her neck.”

Both men looked over at Louis. John felt a shiver of dread that he had left Louis alone with Anna. He felt betrayed by Louis. It raged red hot in his veins.

“You're sure?”

“Afraid so.”

“Who was she?”

“Don't know.”

“He says his name is Louis, Louis Stanton.” John hesitated. “About all I've been able to get out of him.Like they both fell out of the sky.”

“Folks just don't fall out of the sky.”

.

THE LAST MAN: Part Twenty-one

I stand and stretch with a groan. After a piss I look out across the city. The hazy orange sun is glorious and warm. The ruins are lost to the sun’s bright reflection upon the mirror-like sea. The city looks clean and full. Business is brisk, the streets choked with traffic.

“What is your fertility rank?” I ask without looking at her. Desiree’s reflection is vaguely superimposed over the city. The fires burning among the ruins are clearer than I can ever recall.

“I’m viable,” she cocks her head. “Why do you ask?”

I don’t answer right off. Without a word I grab one of the chairs, walk calming across the room and smash the Sentinel by the door. Desiree screams, startled. She covers herself with the sheet and looks at me as if I have gone stark raving mad. Truth be told, I’m not so sure I haven’t.

“What are you doing?” she cries. A body can be Reclaimed for much less. I doubt we will for this, at least not before the trial ends. I have gotten away with so much already. I figure they will repair it soon enough. Kneeling at the bed I take her trembling hands in mine.

“What if you become pregnant?”

“I don’t know.”

“What if it looks like me? Would you be ashamed? Disgusted?”

She thinks a moment. “I don’t know.”

“I’d want it to have a chance.”

“You’re crazy to believe that, you know?”

“If there was some place, somewhere far from Sentinel and the Corporation?”

“No such place exists,” she scoffs.

“If there was?”

“It doesn’t!”

“Can’t you answer the question?” I shake her, growing impatient.

“It’s a ridiculous.”

“Just yes or no?”

“To what?”

I groan loudly and flail with frustration. She really is just impossible. I turn and have a mind to fling the chair across the room. Then she smiles, though it is tinged with spite. She toys with me, which only enrages me more.

“What?” I demand.

“Your temper,” she replies.

“You provoke it,” I laugh. It is impossible to remain mad at her for very long. “I hate you.”

Desiree’s expression softens. Her eyes flash quickly to the shattered Sentinel. Wisps of white smoke trail from the tattered innards.

“Where would we go?”
I pull her quickly from bed and guide her to the window. I lean against her and press a finger to the window. She studies the distant ruins for a time, and her brow furls slightly. She has not noticed them before.

“There?” she asks, perplexed.

“There.”

“The ruins?”

“Things are different there!” My voice rises with emotion.

“Like how?”

“Free,” I say.

“And how do you know that?” she asks, trapping me. I draw away and right the upturned chair. With a wounded sigh I sit.

“Anyway, that’s what I believe.”

“Don’t be a fool!” she laughs. The words crush me. I would die to be anything but a fool in her eyes. I fall into bed, staring at the wall. My chest tightens as tears come to my eyes. It seems an eternity before she comes to me. I refuse to look at her, but she knows only too well the feeble nature of that gesture.

“Don’t be mad,” she says.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“So what if I am?”

She moves onto the bed beside me, nudging me with her hips, and running her hand gently across my back and shoulder. I pull away. Not much, but I so want to punish her for being so cruel. She is first to bridge the chasm, and kisses my shoulder.

“You’re not a fool.”

I turn and melt in her eyes. My fingers brush her soft breast and the rubbery dark nipple. With a shudder Desiree pulls me to her chest.

“They had dreams,” I say, staring past her. There are still tears in my eyes, but not for her comments, but now from a sudden upwelling of passion. It is something pure and clean and not of this world; something that transcends the body. “Things were not always as they are now.”

She does not reply. Instead she nods un-committed and strokes my chest. After all, what was there to say? How does one talk about the past to people who have no history? It is why Section Twenty-one and the Corporation have no fear of me. I am trapped within a truth. I could shout them to the masses in hopes of starting a revolt, but they would prove little more than the ramblings of a madman.

“I wish I could believe like you,” she says to be kind.

“Do you?”

She rises and walks to the window again. I marvel at her waist, the alternating tension and relaxation of the muscles of her back and shoulders, and of the rise and fall of her buttocks when she moves. Desiree remains silhouetted at the window for some time. I can see her face reflected there, and know that it is only a half-hearted gesture.

“I see it,” she says, “the fires. People are moving, though I cannot make out any details. Are they men or women? Maybe there are more like you.”

She turns. I sit, unsure for moment if she is still mocking me. Then I can see that she doesn’t really believe, but that she believes in me.

“I don’t know,” I tell her, “but in when the light is just right I believe that I can actually see them. Sometimes I close my eyes and can almost feel their hands touching me, welcoming me.”

“Hands?”

“Maybe I’ll go there. Maybe I’ll escape and bring you with me.”

She returns to me, and falls into my arms. I kiss her smooth belly and look up between her breasts. I have no idea if she believes anything I have said. I have no evidence, no concrete reason for believing as I do. It is hope and I am bleeding it all over her.