Clare shrugged. “The Blackfeet are as terrified by ghosts as the Navajo. At least the ghosts in European tradition—say, the ghost of Hamlet’s father or Scrooge’s partner Marley—have personalities. They can reason, talk, defend their actions, warn the living of the folly of their ways. To the Plains Indians—to almost all Indians—the spirit of a dead person has no more personality than a fart.”

“Pardon?” said Jean-Pierre, blinking. “A. . . faret?”

“Un pet,” said Clare. “Just a noxious gas left behind. Ghosts in Indian traditions are always evil, always unpleasant, absolutely one-dimensional—less interesting in their way than the powerless shades in Hades that Orpheus and Eurydice visited.”

She was obviously speaking too quickly for Jean-Pierre. Dale guessed that his editor had understood no words after “un pet.” “If mademoiselle refers to the indigenous people of the United States as ‘Indians,’ “said Jean-Pierre, his voice dripping Gallic sarcasm, “then mademoiselle has no understanding of indigenous people.”

Dale started to speak then, but Clare encircled his wrist with her thumb and forefinger and squeezed. She smiled sweetly at Jean-Pierre. “Monsieur Pee-wee must certainly be correct.”

The editor had frowned again, paused, started to speak, and then changed the subject, moving his monologue along to the current political folly in the United States, explaining the vast conspiracy of moneyed interests—probably Jews, Dale interpreted—who controlled all reins of power in that benighted country.

Later, at Gestapo headquarters, in their bed, with the moonlight flowing over the rooftops of Paris and falling on their naked bodies, Dale had whispered, “Is this real? Are we real? Is this going to last, Clare?”

She had smiled at him from inches away. Dale was not sure, but he did not think that it was the same smile that she had showed Jean-Pee-wee in the Alsatian brasserie. “I can only think of Napoleon’s mother’s favorite quote,” she whispered back.

“Which was?”

“Ça va bien pourvu que ça dure—”

“Which means?”

“It goes well as long as it lasts.”

Dale awoke in the basement of The Jolly Corner. It was late morning. His restarted and reset watch said 10:45, and a weak, sluggish light filtered through the slits of the grimy basement windows. Padding in his slippers, still in the old sweatsuit he wore for pajamas, he went up to the kitchen. The farmhouse was cold and drafty, and the sunlight outside looked as weak and hung over as he felt. The rain from the night before had frozen into long icicles that hung outside the windows and door like prison bars. The refrigerator and cupboards were almost empty. He was starved and hungry for something other than the cereal and milk he always ate for breakfast, hungry for something like rich, black coffee and warmed croissants with melted butter dripping on them. He wondered if he had dreamt about food.

He walked into the study and stopped. The computer was on. The stupid quote from Milton was still on the screen, as was his ultimatum from the previous night:

>Tell me who you are or I’ll shut this fucking computer down forever.

Beneath that, this:

>I could isolate, consciously, little. Everything seemed blurred, yellow, grafted onto daylight. Maudlin evasions, theopathies—every recollection formed ripples of mysterious meaning. Everything dies, unwanted and neglected—everything.

Irritated by the double-talk on the screen and by a half memory of disturbing dreams and by the real memory of his conversation with Mab and his failure to wait for Anne’s call, Dale hurriedly blocked the passage and reached for theDELETE key.

He paused.

Rereading the paragraph of nonsense brought words, almost a phrase, to mind. Icicles. Sisters. Sybil.

He shook his head. He had a headache and he was out of food. Even the fucking bread was moldy. He’d go shopping and worry about this later.

An hour later, Dale came out of the KWIK’N’EZ carrying his three plastic bags of groceries and froze in place. Derek and his four skinhead friends were standing at the pumps between Dale and his Land Cruiser. Their two old Ford and Chevy pickups were the only other vehicles on the rainy tarmac.

Dale paused just outside the gas station/convenience store’s doors. He felt a surge of adrenaline and panic and instantly hated himself for being afraid.

Go inside and call the cops. . . the state police, if not the sheriff’s office. He glanced over his shoulder at the fat and acned teenage girl behind the counter. She met his stare with a bovine gaze and then deliberately looked away. Dale guessed that she was probably a girlfriend of Derek’s or one of the other skinheads. . . or perhaps she served all of them.

Hefting the plastic bags and wishing they were heavier—filled with heavy cans of vegetables, perhaps—Dale stepped off the curb and began walking toward the clustered skinheads.

The leader—the man in his mid-twenties with a swastika tattooed on the back of his right hand—showed small, irregular teeth in a wide grin as Dale approached. He was holding something in his hand, hiding it.

Dale felt his legs go weak, and again he was furious at himself. In an instant he played out the fantasy of the boys parting for him just long enough for him to get his loaded Savage over-and-under out of the backseat, of blasting away into the asphalt to frighten them, of knocking the lead skinhead down, of kneeling on his chest and banging his fucking skull into the wet pavement until blood ran out of the motherfucker’s ears. . .

The Savage was not in the backseat. In any fight, Dale knew, the skinhead would have all the advantages—experience, meanness, willingness to hurt another person. His heart pounding uselessly, Dale abandoned his fantasies and tried to focus on the unpleasant reality of now.

“Hey, Professor Jewboy motherfucker,” said the skinhead leader, reminding Dale that this crew had heard of him through the series of anti-militia articles he’d stupidly written. The anti-Semitism of these so-called patriotic groups had been one of his major themes.

Now losing your teeth and getting cut up will be your major themes, he thought as he stopped in front of the five young men. He wanted to tell them to get the fuck out of his way, but he didn’t trust his voice to be steady. Wonderful. I’m fifty-two years old and I just discovered that I’m a coward.

A blue Buick drove into the gas station lot and pulled up to the closest pumps, right where Dale and the five losers were standing. The old couple in the front seat stared bleary-eyed and uncomprehending at the boys as the sullen gathering moved aside.

The interruption gave Dale the chance to hurry to his SUV and clamber inside. The leader leaned close to the driver’s-side window just as Dale clicked the locks shut. The boy standing closest to Derek dragged a key along the left rear quarter panel of the Land Cruiser.

If I were a real man, thought Dale, I’d get out and beat the shit out of that kid.

Dale drove off, hoping that would be the end of it. No such luck. The five skinheads scrambled to their pickup trucks—Derek and the next-youngest hopping into the white Chevy, the leader and two of his older friends crawling into the scabrous green Ford with the oversized tires. Both trucks roared to follow Dale out of the KWIK’N’EZ lot.

Dale paused at the entrance to the county road. Should he head south a couple of hundred yards to the entrance to I-74? Once on the interstate, he could drive straight to Peoria. If the punks followed him he would flag down a police car or go to the police center he dimly remembered on War Memorial Drive. Or should he turn north toward the Hard Road and Highway 150A, then back west to Oak Hill Road and north to the sheriff’s station in Oak Hill? That wouldn’t make much sense. Not with Sheriff C.J. Congden there. One of these punks was probably C.J.’s kid. They probably all attended skinhead gatherings together and lent each other white robes for their cross burnings.