Dale shook hands with the brunette and had to flex his fingers afterward.

“So what are you doing back here, Dale Stewart?” said Michelle/Mica.

For a mad instant, Dale considered telling her the whole sad story of the last few years of his life, right down to his last view of Clare and all about Anne’s contemptuous farewell. Instead, he said, “Writing a book. . . I think.”

“I thought you were a teacher or something as well.”

“Professor of English,” said Dale, wondering if that were still true. “University of Montana at Missoula. On sabbatical.” He could hear the staccato telegraph-style of his speech and wondered where it was coming from.

“And you’re staying in Oak Hill ?” There was incredulity in her voice.

“Near Elm Haven, actually,” he said. “Renting Duane McBride’s farmhouse for a few months.”

Michelle Staffney blinked at this. “Duane McBride? The kid who was killed in that awful farm accident when we were ten or something?”

“Eleven or twelve,” said Dale. “Summer of 1960. Yeah.”

Michelle looked at her friend and then back at Dale. “That’s weird. But no weirder than our situation, I guess.”

Dale waited.

“Diane and I are spending a few months at my folks’ home in Elm Haven.”

“On Broad Street,” said Dale. “The big house with the big barn behind it.”

“Yep. The same. Only when I lived there as a kid, it was a great house. . . hell, even a great barn. Now it’s all a ramshackle fucking mess. Di and I are trying to get it fixed up a bit so we can sell it. Hoping that there’s some rich, snot-nosed young couple out of Peoria who wants a big Victorian house and who won’t check the wiring or the furnace or anything.”

“Are your parents. . .” began Dale. He always felt strange asking someone his own age about their parents. His own folks had died young in the 1960s.

“Dad died in. . . Jesus, 1975,” said Michelle. “But Mom just hung in there—senile as a loon, warehoused away in Alzheimer Manor here in Oak Hill for a few decades—until she died a couple of months ago.”

“I’m sorry,” said Dale.

“Don’t be. It would have been a blessing for everyone if she’d shoved off years and years ago. Anyway, the house was empty and needed work, so it gave Di and me an excuse to get out of L.A. and away from the Industry for a while.”

Dale heard the capital “I” in Industry. Just like everyone else in L.A. he thought.

“You were involved with movies?” he said politely. “Producing?”

“No,” said Michelle, the Mica smile returning and then fading. “I was mostly fucking producers. Even married two of them. I was an actress.”

“Of course,” said Dale, making a conscious effort not to drop his gaze to the obviously unfettered and obviously unnatural breasts under her sweater. “Have you been in anything I might have seen?” He hated questions like that. Why did I ask it? When people asked him, “Have you written anything I might have read?” his impulse was always to say, “I don’t know. Do you read anything decent, or just the occasional John Grisham crap?”

“Did you see Titanic ?” asked Michelle.

“Wow,” said Dale. “You were in that?”

“Nope. But I was in It’s Alive IV that went straight to video the same month Titanic came out. And I was one of the alien dancers in the spaceship scene in The Fifth Element with Bruce Willis. The one with the bare blue tits. That was the last time anyone hired me. . . more than four years ago.”

Dale nodded sympathetically. Bare blue tits, he thought, keeping his gaze level with hers through an act of will.

Diane touched Michelle’s arm as if reminding her that it was cold and wet out here in the parking lot.

“Yeah,” said Michelle. “Well, hell, we really should get together sometime and swap lies about the good old days. Di and I will probably be here through Christmas. . . maybe longer, given the mess we have to deal with. You got a card with your phone number?” She took out a pen and scribbled her number on her grocery receipt and gave it to him.

Dale dug out a business card, using her pen to scratch out his ranch, university, and home phone numbers, and circling the mobile phone number. “The only problem,” he said, “is that cell phones don’t seem to work around Elm Haven.”

Michelle raised an eyebrow. “That’s what I’m using there as my only phone. It works fine in town.”

Dale shrugged. “Well, I guess there’s a dead area out near the McBride farm.”

Michelle looked as if she was going to say something, stopped herself, tapped him on the arm, and said, “I’m serious about gabbing. Come on over and we’ll cook you a good dinner and drink a shitload of tequila.”

The two women walked back to their Toyota pickup and drove off.

“Michelle Staffney,” said Dale, still standing in the rain. “Jesus Christ.”

SEVEN

DALE had driven only a few miles south out of Oak Hill toward Elm Haven when the two pickup trucks cut him off.

At first he thought it was Michelle and her friend in the white pickup approaching quickly in the rearview mirror, but then he saw that it was not a new Toyota truck, but a beat-up old Chevy, with another old pickup—this one a scabrous green Ford—roaring along just behind it.

Dale slowed down, waiting for the idiots to pass, but the first pickup pulled up alongside and stayed there, slowing when he did, accelerating when he did. Dale glanced over, saw the black leather jackets and the shaved heads, and thought, Oh, shit.

The white Chevy pickup passed him and then slowed. The green Ford pickup pulled closer to his rear bumper. Suddenly the white pickup in front of him hit the brakes.

Dale braked hard, lurching forward against the Land Cruiser’s shoulder harness, but still had to swerve right to avoid the Chevy. Luckily there was a gravel turnout by the side of the road—some sort of small picnic area rest stop. The Land Cruiser slid to a stop in the gravel there, and the green and white trucks blocked his way out.

Three young men spilled out of the white Chevy pickup. Two more jumped out of the cab of the green Ford. All five of them had extremely short hair or shaved heads. All five wore black leather coats and combat boots. The tallest of the five had a swastika tattooed on the back of his right hand. The tallest was also the oldest—perhaps in his middle twenties—and the youngest looked to be about sixteen. At least three of the five were taller and heavier than Dale.

Dale had perhaps ten seconds to decide what to do. It wouldn’t have been a problem for Dale’s father; he had always carried a lug wrench tucked under the driver’s seat of the family station wagon. Dale had always noticed that fact but had never asked his dad why he carried the heavy lug wrench there. Now he knew. But Dale Stewart—even while living and traveling in the wilds of Montana—had never thought that he needed a weapon handy.

He wished like hell that he had one now.

Heart pounding, Dale briefly considered locking the truck’s doors and waiting in the Land Cruiser. He even considered throwing the truck into four-wheel drive, going up and over the curb, driving through the grassy picnic area and the adjoining cornfield if necessary, and making a run for it down the county road. His pride kept him from doing either.

Dale stepped out and down just as the five skinheads made a semicircle around him. Well, he thought, there’s still an outside chance that they are Jim Bridger: Mountain Man fans.

“You the Jewboy Zionist motherfucker?” snarled the tallest of the skinheads.

There goes the fan theory, thought Dale. He was amazed to realize that his pulse rate had fallen back to near-normal and that he was no longer frightened. Perhaps the situation was just too absurd for him to take seriously. It seemed like a bad postmillennial remake of Gentleman’s Agreement by way of Deliverance.