"Painter, huh?" she asked cheerfully.

"Yeah. I suppose you get a few of them," I said. "It's a heck of a view."

"We get a few. Local amateurs," she said. She shaded her eyes and peered down at the sketch pad. I'd made notes on a dozen or so pages, figuring out the moves I'd make when I got the painting going. At the beginning, on a big picture, which I'd decided this might be, I intellectualize the process. After I've figured everything out with a pencil, I go to the paint. Then it usually takes three or four tries before I get it. "Chenille Dessusdelit called and said I might see you. She said you were OK."

"That was nice of her."

"Well, you like to know who's on your street," she said.

"Sure. Look, my name is Kidd, and after I get done with this – it'll take me a few days – I might knock on your door and ask if I can set up someplace in your yard. I'd like to get a better shot at that bridal wreath with the geraniums."

"That'd be fine. I'm Gloriana Trent. I'm home most mornings. If I'm not, go ahead and set up," she said. Then, just as abruptly as she arrived, she said her good-byes and left, striding away with the determined stretch of a speed walker. Too much of the time, when I'm working outdoors, people linger, curious about the painting process. It can drive you crazy, trying to work with somebody looking over your shoulder.

When I was satisfied with my sketches, I got my water jugs out of the car, filled the buckets, and started with the paint. I was so deep into it that I didn't hear the van behind me until the driver warped it against the curb.

"What's this?" the driver asked, climbing out. It was a plain white van. When he slammed the door, I saw the ANIMAL CONTROL sign on the door. This was Hill, the dogcatcher. And he looked like his house: ugly and mean. He was maybe forty, an inch under six feet, deep through the body with a short, thick neck. His face was permanently tightened in a frown, making knobs of his cheeks and chin and nose. He wore his hair in a Korean War crew cut, and his forehead had that flattened, shiny look that you see on bar brawlers. Like Dessusdelit, he wore a stressed-out face, compounded of anger and weariness. We'd taken well over three hundred thousand out of his house.

"Painting," I said. I was sitting on a canvas stool, and he moved in close, looming over me. He stuck out one thick finger and tapped the French easel, making it shiver.

"I can see that," he said. "You got a permit?"

"I didn't know I needed one," I said. "The mayor didn't mention it."

His eyes tightened. "The mayor? You got permission?"

"She sent me up here," I said. "She and Mr. Ballem."

"Huh." He looked skeptical but backed off a step. He was about to say something else when the screen door on the Trent house slammed and Gloriana Trent came striding across the yard.

"Old bitch," the dogcatcher muttered under his breath.

"Duane Hill, you get out of here and leave Mr. Kidd alone," she said. Her voice was pitched up a notch. Under her flinty exterior she was afraid of the man.

"Just goin'," Hill muttered. He looked at me, his lips moving silently, as though he were memorizing my face, glanced resentfully back at Gloriana, got in the van and slowly pulled away. Gloriana watched him go.

"Bluff sort of fellow," I said.

"He's a chrome-plated asshole," Gloriana snapped. She looked back at me. "The people downtown say he has his uses. Sometimes I wonder."

"He's not one of your friends," I said. It wasn't a question.

"No. When he was in third or fourth grade, he used to steal from my husband's store; we own the department and sporting goods stores in town, the family does. I caught him once and sent him on his way. The second time I took him by the ear and dragged him down the street to his parents' house, for all the good that did. The Hills were always. trashy, I suppose. The third time I caught him, I took him down to the police station, and he went to juvenile court. He's not forgotten those trips with his ear stretched out like a rubber band." She smiled. "I like to think his head is lopsided, but I suppose it's wishful thinking."

She had me laughing. "I hope this won't cause you any trouble," I said.

"Oh, no. Duane knows where the lines are drawn. He came to look at you because the way things work here, he's sort of the town-" She groped for a word.

"Dogcatcher," I said.

She looked at me, no longer smiling. "Exactly," she said. "I hear from the rumor mill that he's had some trouble lately. Someone broke into his home."

"Crime is everywhere these days," I said distractedly, in my flattest voice.

"Yes, it is." She looked at the painting on the easel, and the smile came back. "Very nice."

"Not so good," I said. "I'm just getting a feel for it. It's a complicated subject. I'm not really painting the house, you know. I'm painting the light."

"I understand from Chenille that Lucius Bell owns one of your works, bought it in N'Orleans."

"That's what he says."

"He's a nice boy, Lucius," she said. "Grew up poor, put together a very nice farming business. Educated himself."

"Poor but not trashy?"

"Definitely not trashy. Poor and trashy don't have much to do with each other, do they?" she said.

"Not much," I conceded. "Listen, Mrs. Trent, you want a Dos Equis? I got a couple of bottles in a cooler."

"Well." She looked around, as if spotting neighbors peering from behind curtains. "Well, yes, as a matter of fact, that would be nice on a hot day. But why don't we sit on my porch?"

We had a nice talk, and then she went back to her air-conditioning, and I spent the rest of the afternoon working on the painting. LuEllen was in town, ostensibly shopping but also checking out the City Hall and the city attorney's personal office. About four o'clock the dogcatcher's van crossed the street a block down, slowly, and I could see Hill's face in the driver's side window, looking my way.

There's a myth that bullies can't handle a real fight, that if they get into a real fight, they fold. My experience is just the opposite: Bullies like to fight. They go far out of their way to fight. They are men who look for slights – imagined ones will do nicely – as an excuse. Hill, I thought, was probably one of them. He had that look, the narrow, scarred, righteous eyes of a sociopathic brawler. I hadn't seen the last of him.

A little after five, when the light started to go red, I dumped the water, closed up the easel, and put the painting gear in the Chevy. On the way back to the marina I stopped downtown. Just a look, I thought.

The Longstreet City Hall was kitty-corner from Chickamauga Park, the town square. The square was a busy place; there was a children's play area, with swings, a slide, monkey bars, and a huge sandbox. Metal benches lined the walks, and one or two old men were perched on each of them. The equestrian statue, of old Jim Longstreet himself, was at the center of the square, a major attraction for passing pigeons.

The City Hall looked like most of the other business buildings in town: squat, brick, undistinguished, vaguely moderne. The streets on the front and one side were not particularly busy and were fronted mostly by service stores selling hardware, office equipment, auto parts, and so on. An alley ran down the back of the building, to a small blacktopped parking lot and an entryway with a lighted glass sign that said police. On the fourth side, the side with no street, was a hardware store. The store was separated from the City Hall by a ten-foot-wide strip of grass.

I walked through the square, stopped to look at Longstreet on his big fat horse, then waited for two traffic lights, crossed to the City Hall, and went up the steps. Inside, it was cool and slightly damp, the kind of feel you get with old-fashioned air-conditioning. Following the hand-painted signs, I climbed a flight of stairs to the city clerk's office and asked the woman behind the counter if she had a city or county map. She had both and was happy to give them to me, free. There was a built-in safe at the back of the office, with a black-painted door and gold scrollwork. The combination dial was big as a saucer and right out on front, just as Marvel said it was.