Catfish let his coffee go cold in the cup. Estelle ran the story around in her head, both relieved and fearful that the shadows in her paintings now had a shape. Somehow, as fantastic as it was, Catfish’s story seemed familiar.

She said, “Catfish, did you ever read The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway?”

“He that boy write about bullfights and fishing? I met him once, down Florida way. Why?‘

“You met him?”

“Yeah, that sumbitch didn’t believe that story neither. Said he like to fish, but he don’t believe me. Why you ask?”

“Never mind,” Estelle said. “If this thing eats people, don’t you think we should report it?”

“I been tellin folks about that monster for some fifty years, ain’t no one believed me yet. Said I was the biggest liar ever come outta the Delta. I’d have me a big house and a stack of records if not for that. You call the law and tell them ‘bout this, they gonna call you the crazy woman of Pine Cove.”

“We already have one of those.”

“Well, ain’t no one gonna get eat but me, and if I lose this gig ‘cause they thinkin I’m crazy, I have to be movin on then. You understand?”

Estelle took Catfish’s cup from the table and placed it in the sink. “You’d better get ready to go play.”

Twelve

To distract herself from the dragon next door, Molly had put on her sweats and started to clean her trailer. She got as far as filling three black trash bags with junk food jetsam and was getting ready to vacuum up the collec-tion of sow bug corpses that dotted her carpet when she made the mistake of Windexing the television. Outland Steel: Kendra’s Revenge was playing on the VCR and when the droplets of Windex hit the screen, they magnified the phosphorescent dots, making the picture look like an impressionist painting: Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Le Grande Warrior Babe perhaps.

Molly froze the frame on the gratuitous shower scene. (There was always a shower scene in the first five minutes of her films, despite the fact that Kendra lived on a planet almost completely devoid of water. To address this problem, one young director had gotten the bright idea of using “anti-radioactive foam” in the shower scene and Molly had spent five hours with whipped Ivory Snow suds being blown on to her by an offscreen Shop-Vac. She ended up playing the rest of the film in a Bedouin burnoose to cover the rash that developed all over her body.)

“Art film,” Molly said, sitting on the floor in front of the TV, dowsing it with Windex for the fiftieth time. “I could have been a model in Paris in those days.”

“Not a chance,” said the narrator. He was still around. “Too skinny. They liked fat chicks back then.”

“I’m not talking to you.”

“You’ve used half a bottle of Windex for this little trip to Paris.”

“Seems like cheap travel to me,” Molly said. Even so, she got up and took two glasses from the top of the TV. She was taking them to the kitchen when the doorbell rang.

She opened the door with the rims of the glasses pinched in one hand. Outside, two women in dresses and heels and lots of hair spray were standing on her steps. They were both in their early thirties, blonde, and wore stiff smiles of either insincerity or drug use, Molly couldn’t be sure which.

“Avon?” Molly asked.

“No,” the blonde in front said with a titter. “I’m Marge Whitfield, this is Katie Marshall, we’re from the Coalition for a Moral Society. We’d like to talk to you about our campaign to reinstate school prayer. I hope we haven’t caught you at a bad time.” Katie was in pink. Marge in pastel blue.

“I’m Molly Michon. I was just cleaning up a little.” Molly held up the two glasses. “Come on in.”

The two women stepped in and stood in the doorway as Molly took the glasses to the sink. “You know, it’s interesting,” Molly said, “but if you put Diet Coke in one glass, and regular Coke in another, and let them sit for, oh, say six months, then come back, there will be all sorts of green stuff growing on the regular Coke, but the Diet Coke will be as good as new.”

Molly returned to the living room. “Can I get you two something to drink?”

“No thank you,” Marge droned in robot response. She and Katie were staring at the paused image of a wet and naked Molly on the television screen. Molly breezed by them and flipped off the television. “Sorry, an art film I made in Paris when I was younger. Won’t you sit down?”

The women sat down next to each other on Molly’s tattered couch, their knees pinched together so tight they could have crushed diamonds to powder.

“I love your air freshener,” Katie said, trying to pull out of her terror. “It smells so clean.”

“Thanks, it’s Windex.”

“What a cute idea,” Marge said.

This was good, Molly thought. Normal people. If I can hold myself together for normal people like these, I’ll be okay. This is good practice. She sat down on the floor in front of them. “So your name is Marge. You don’t hear that outside of detergent commercials anymore. Did your parents watch a lot of TV?”

Marge tittered. “It’s short for Margaret, of course. My grandmother’s name.”

Katie jumped in. “Molly, we’re very concerned that our children’s education is totally without any spiritual instruction. The Coalition is collecting signatures for reinstatement of prayer in school.”

“Okay,” Molly said. “You’re new in town, aren’t you?”

“Why, yes, we’ve both moved here from Los Angeles with our husbands. A small town is just a better place to raise children, as I’m sure you know.”

“Right,” Molly said. They had no idea who she was. “That’s why I brought my little Stevie here.” Stevie was Molly’s goldfish who had died during one of her stays in County. Now he lived in a Ziploc in her freezer and regarded her with a frosty gaze every time she retrieved some ice.

“And how old is Stevie?”

“Uh, seven or eight. I forget sometimes, it was a long labor.”

“He’s a year behind my Tiffany,” Marge said.

“Well, he’s a little slow.”

“And your husband is…?”

“Dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” Katie said.

“No need, you probably didn’t kill him.”

“Anyway,” Katie said, “we’d really like to have your signature to send to the state senate. Single mothers are an important part of our campaign. And we’re also collecting donations for the campaign to have the Constitu-tion amended.” She put on an embarrassed smile. “God’s work needs funding too.”

“I live in a trailer,” Molly said.

“We understand,” Marge said. “Finances are difficult for a single mother. But your signature is just as important to God’s work.”

“But I live in a trailer. God hates trailers.”

“Beg pardon?”

“He burns them up, freezes, them out, tears them up with tornadoes. God hates trailers. Are you sure I wouldn’t be hurting your cause?”

Katie giggled. “Oh, Mrs. Michon, don’t be silly. Just last week I read where a woman’s trailer was picked up by a tornado and dropped almost a mile away and she survived. She said that she was praying the whole time and that God had saved her. You see?”

“Then who sent the tornado in the first place?”

The two pastel women squirmed on the couch. The blue one spoke first. “We’d love to have you at our Bible study group, where we could discuss that, but we have to be getting along. Would you mind signing the peti-tion?” She pulled a clipboard out of her oversized purse and handed it over to Molly with a pen.

“So if this works, kids will be able to pray in school?”

“Why, yes.” Marge brightened.

“So the Muslim kids can turn to Mecca seven times a day or whatever and it won’t count against their grades?”

The blue and pink pastel ladies looked at each other. “Well, America is a Christian nation, Mrs. Michon.”

Molly didn’t want them to think she was a pushover. She was a smart woman. “But kids of other faiths can pray too, right?”