Am I going to make it? he wondered.

He drove up and down the little streets of trailers and saw people out of cartoons, fat Americans in shorts, women with their hair in curlers, lots of sullen, rude little children.

I must look a sight, he thought.

But nobody noticed; they were all sunk into their own dramas.

Then he saw her name on the mailbox, followed by R.N., her profession.

He knew the address from memory. All the letters had been returned unopened, placed in a slightly larger envelope. The flowers, every December, around the fourteenth. She probably just threw them out; she never sent a note of thanks. Yet she had never moved. She had not changed her name or made any attempt to become who she wasn’t. She just wouldn’t let him in. He was the rotten past and it carried too much hurt.

Bob looked at her place: the trailer was shabby but well tended, with trim little window boxes, with flowers in them. That was a woman’s gentle way. The trailer was brown, edged in white trim, plastic. Neat, very neat.

And suppose she was not home? But the car was there, what had to be her car. And the name was hers, just as he knew it would be. Suppose there was a man there? Why not? She was a woman, didn’t there have to be a man?

But he didn’t think there would be.

He turned off the engine, and managed to lurch to the door. He knocked.

He’d never seen the woman before, only her picture. But when she opened the door he recognized her instantly. He’d always wondered what she looked like in the flesh, all those times off in Indian Country, looking at that picture. She had been a young beauty then and now she was a not-so-young beauty, but she was a beauty.

The face was a little too tough, some wrinkles, but not too many; the eyes, behind reading glasses, were gray, and miles beyond any kind of surprise. The hair was blond, but just blond. The lanky tall woman before him looked at him with eyes that stayed flat as the desert horizon.

She wore jeans and some kind of a pullover shirt and no makeup and had her hair pulled back in a short ponytail. She held a book in her hand with a bright cover, some kind of novel.

“Yes?” she said, and he saw a little shock cross her face.

He had no idea what to say. Hadn’t talked to women for years.

“Sorry,” he said, “sorry to bother you, ma’am, and sorry to look so bad. My name’s Swagger. Bob Lee. I knew your husband in the Marines. A finer young man there never was.”

“You,” she said. And then again, “You.” A sudden grimace as she bit off the word. He saw her tracking the details; his scrubby face, matted with dirt; his filthy shirt with the blood stain now faded almost rose-colored; the eyes bloodshot, the rank smell of a man beyond hygiene. She probably saw his absolute defenselessness, too. He knew he was simply throwing himself at her. He felt himself begin to wobble.

“My God, you look awful.”

“Well, I got the whole damn government after me for something I never did. I’ve been driving for twenty-four straight hours. I came to you because – ”

She looked at him some more, as if to say, Boy, this had better be good.

“…because he said that he told you all about me in those letters. Well, that was the best I ever was, and if you believed what your husband said to you when he was in the middle of a war, maybe you’ll believe me now, when I tell you that what they’re saying about me isn’t the truth, and that I need help in the worst possible way. Now that’s my piece. You can let me in or you can call the police. One way or the other, at this point I’m not sure I could tell the difference.”

She just stared at him.

“Will you help me, Mrs. Fenn? I haven’t got another place to go, or I’d be there.”

She eyed him up and down.

Finally she said, “You.” She paused. “I knew you’d come. When I heard about it, I knew you’d come.”

He went in and she led him to her bed, and threw back the cover and the sheets.

He collapsed.

“I’ll move the car around back,” she said and that was the last thing he remembered as he slid under.

Bob dreamed of Payne. He dreamed of that instant when he’d seen Solaratov fire and Payne had said his name and he’d turned and the gun muzzle exploded, the bright flame lighting the room, the noise enormous and the sensation of being kicked as the bullet drove through him. He dreamed of his knees buckling and the terrible rage he felt at his own impotence as he hit the floor.

It played over and over in his head: the flash of the shot, the fall, the sense of loss as he hit. He had the sensation of screaming.

Finally, he awoke.

It was morning, judging from the light. He was freshly bandaged, his arm in a tight sling against his chest. He was clean, too. Somebody had sponged him down. He was undressed. With his good hand, he pulled the blanket close about him, feeling even more vulnerable. He blinked, swallowed, realized suddenly how thirsty he was. His legs ached; his head ached; there was also a bandage on his arm, and some pain. Yes, he’d been hit there; almost forgot about it.

The details swam at him; the punctured holes of the acoustic ceiling, all neat and in rows; some curtains, and how the bright sun streamed through them from some sort of porthole. The room he was in was small and dark, except for the sunlight’s beam. Next to him on a table was a pitcher filled with ice water.

He raised himself and poured a drink and swallowed it in one long gulp.

“How do you feel?”

She had slid into the doorway.

“Oh. Well, I feel like I might live a little bit. How long have I – ”

“It’s been three days.”

“Jesus.”

“You slept, you screamed, you cried, you begged. Who’s Payne? You kept yelling about Payne.”

“Payne. Oh, let’s see. A fellow that pulled a trick on me.”

“Why do I think there aren’t too many men that have pulled tricks on you?”

“Maybe not. But he’s one of them.”

“The papers say you’re a psychopathic killer, a crazy man with a rifle. They think if you’re not in New Orleans, you’re in Arkansas. Or dead. Some people think you’re dead.”

He didn’t say anything. His head ached.

“I didn’t kill the president.”

“The president!”

“I wouldn’t kill the pres – ”

“It wasn’t the president. Didn’t you listen to the radio?”

“Ma’am, I’ve been in a swamp for a week, shooting one animal every two days to live. In the cars – hell, I just drove.”

“Well, it wasn’t the president. They say you aimed at the president but you hit some archbishop.”

“I never missed what I aimed at in my life. Besides with that rifle – ”

And then he stopped.

“That’s what Donny said. And that’s what I believe. But they have evidence. Fingerprints, the tests on the gun, that sort of thing.”

“Well, maybe they aren’t as smart as they think they are. Maybe I’m not so far up the tree as they say. A bishop?”

“My God, you really don’t know. Either that or you’re the best liar I’ve ever seen.”

“I wouldn’t shoot a priest. I wouldn’t shoot anything. I haven’t shot to kill in more than a decade.”

Bob shook his head glumly.

Shooting a priest, he thought. And then he thought: That’s what it was all about. That’s what it was always all about.

And then he thought: And they had me bird-dog it for them. Figure out the best way. Work it out for them. And then they used it against me. For some priest.

Then a thought came to him.

He took a deep breath.

“Say, was there anything in the papers about my dog?”

“Oh,” she said. “You don’t know?”

“They killed him?”

“They say you killed your dog.”

“What they say and what happened are two different things,” he said. But it hurt him that people could say such a thing of him.

He watched her watching him.

“The bastards. Kill a great old dog like that. Oh, the sons of bitches.”