"Well, it's whatever you want," Mrs. Renquist said. "She's just being ornery. Do you want to use the office phone?"

"I'll call from the motel."

"Be sure we know how to get in touch with you," she said, with a faint note of uneasiness. I could see a hint of panic in her eyes at the notion that I might leave town without making arrangements for Agnes's removal.

"I'll leave the motel number with Mrs. Haynes."

I drove back to the Vagabond, where I put in a call first to Sergeant Pokrass at the sheriff's department, advising her that Agnes Grey had indeed turned up.

Then I placed the call to Irene Gersh and filled her in on her mother's circumstances. My report was greeted with dead silence. I waited, listening to her breathe in my ear.

"I suppose I better talk to Clyde," she said finally. She did not sound happy at having to do this and I could only imagine what Clyde's reaction would be.

"What do you want me to do in the meantime?" I asked.

"Just stay there, if you would. I'll give Clyde a call at the office and get back to you as soon as possible, but it probably won't be till around suppertime. I'd appreciate it if you'd drive back out to the Slabs and put a padlock on Mother's door."

"What good is that going to do?" I said. "The minute I'm gone, the little turds will break in. The louvers in one window are already gone. Frustrate these kids and they'll tear the place apart."

"It sounds like they've already done that."

"Well, true, but there's no point making life any more difficult."

"I don't care. I hate the idea of trespassers and I won't abandon the place. She may still have personal belongings on the premises. Besides, she might want to go back when she's feeling like herself again. Did you talk to the sheriff? Surely there's some way to patrol the area."

"I don't see how. You know the situation better than I do. You'd have to have an armed guard to keep squatters out and what's the point? That trailer's already been trashed."

"I want it locked," she said with an unmistakable edge.

"I'll do what I can," I said, making no attempt to disguise my skepticism.

"Thank you."

I gave her the telephone number at the Vagabond and she said she'd get in touch with me later on. I changed back into jeans and tennis shoes, hopped in the car, and headed over to a hardware store where I bought an oversize padlock of cartoon proportions that weighed about three pounds. The clerk assured me it would take a blasting cap to pop it off the hasp. What hasp, I thought? While I was at it, I bought the whole mechanism-hinged metal fastening and the corresponding staple-along with the tools to install the damn thing. Nothing was going to keep those kids out. I'd seen at least two holes punched into the trailer shell. All they'd have to do was enlarge one and they could crawl in and out like rats. On the other hand, I was getting paid to do this, so what did I care? I picked up some nails and a couple of pieces of scrap lumber and returned to my car.

I drove north on 111, doing the eighteen-mile return trip to the Slabs. Offhand, I couldn't recall the name of the road I was looking for so I kept my speed down and spent a lot of time peering off to my right. I passed a grove of date palms on my left. Beyond, in the far distance, I could see the vivid green of fields under cultivation. Somehow the countryside looked different, but it wasn't until I spotted the sign reading salton sea recreation area that I realized how far I'd overshot the mark. The road to the Slabs had to be ten miles back. I spotted a gravel side road ahead on the left and

I figured it was as good a place as any to make the turnaround. An old high-sided truck was approaching, kicking up a trail of dust in spite of the tact it was only moving ten miles an hour.

I slowed for the turn, checking my rearview mirror. A red pickup truck was barreling down on me, but the driver must have noted my change in speed. He veered right, cutting around me as I gunned the engine, scooting out of his path. I heard the faint pop of a rock being crushed under my wheel, but it wasn't until I'd done the U-turn and was back on 111, that I felt the sudden roughness in the ride. The flap-flap-flapping sound warned me that one of my back tires was flat.

"Oh great," I said. Clearly, I'd run over something more treacherous than a rock. I pulled over to the side of the road and got out. I circled my car. The rim of my right rear wheel was resting on the pavement, the tire forming a flabby rubber puddle underneath. It must have been five or six years since I'd changed a tire, but the principles probably hadn't changed. Take the jack out of the trunk, crank the sucker till the weight is lifted off the wheel, remove the hubcap, struggle with the lug nuts, pull the bad wheel off and set it aside while you heft the good one into place. Then replace all the lug nuts and tighten them before you jack the car down again.

I opened my trunk and checked my spare, which was looking a bit soggy in itself. I wrestled it out and bounced it on the pavement. Not wonderful, but I decided it would get me as far as the nearest service station, which I remembered seeing a few miles down the road. This is why I jog and bust my hump lifting weights, so I can cope with life's little inconveniences. At least I wasn't wearing heels and panty hose and I didn't have glossy fingernails to wreck in the process.

Meanwhile, the flatbed had turned out onto the highway and had come to a stop a hundred yards behind me. A dozen male farmworkers hopped off the back of the truck and rearranged themselves. They seemed amused at my predicament and called out suggestions in an alien tongue. I couldn't really translate, but I got the gist. I didn't think they were giving any actual pointers on how to change a flat. They seemed like a good-natured bunch, too weary from the short hoe to do me any harm. I rolled my eyes and waved at them dismissively. This netted me a wolf whistle from a guy grabbing his crotch.

I tuned them out and set to work, cussing like a stevedore as the flatbed pulled away. At times like this, I tend to talk to myself, coaching myself through. It was midafternoon and the sun was beating down on me. The air was dry, the quiet unbroken. I don't know the desert well. To my untutored eye, the landscape seemed unpopulated. At ground level, where I sat wielding my crescent wrench, all I could see was a dead mesquite tree a few feet away. I've been told that if you listen closely, you can hear the clicks of the wood-boring beetles that tunnel through the dead wood to lay their eggs.

I settled down to work, letting the isolation envelop me. Little by little, I became accustomed to the stillness in the same manner that eyes become accustomed to dark. I picked up the drone of an occasional insect and noticed then the foraging warblers catching bugs on the fly. The true citizens of the Mojave emerge from their lairs by night: rattlesnakes and lizards, jackrabbits, quail, the owl and the Harris hawk, the desert fox and the ground squirrel, all searching for prey, angling to eat each other in a relentless predatory sequence that begins with the termites and ends with the coyote. This is not a place I'd want to unroll my sleeping bag and lay my little head down. The sun spiders alone will scare you out of ten years' growth.

By 3:20, I'd successfully completed the task. I rolled the flat tire around to the front of the car so I could hoist it into my trunk. I could hear a foreign body rattle around inside, a rock or a nail by the sound of it. I checked for the puncture, running my fingers around the circumference of the tire. The hole was in the sidewall-a ragged perforation not quite the size of my little fingertip. I blinked at it, feeling chilled, not wanting to believe my eyes. It looked like a bullet hole. An involuntary sound escaped as I was overtaken by one of those rolling shudders you experienced as a kid on leaving a dark room. I lifted my head. I surveyed the countryside. No one. Nothing. Not another car in sight. I wanted out of there.