The windshield fogged over. Morgan wiped at it with a sleeve.

“I can’t believe it,” Reams said. “I thought I’d killed him. I could have fucked up my whole life. I’m up for tenure next year. You can’t get tenure if you kill a guy.”

“No. It’s not like the old days,” Morgan said.

“I really thought I’d broken his neck, Morgan. Do you know what that feels like? The thought that you’ve killed somebody?”

Morgan saw Annie Walsh’s face in his mind, saw her naked, skin slack and cold in his bed. Remembered the weight of her wrapped in the plastic. He started to speak, to say something to Reams, but his voice caught. Another memory, the shallow grave in the peach orchard.

“I hope you never have to feel like that,” Reams said.

twelve

Morgan dropped Reams off at his house then went home.

He was soaking wet. He peeled off the slippers and tossed them into the trash. He showered, thought about getting dressed, but crawled under the covers instead.

He didn’t sleep well. Annie’s corpse followed him through the world of dreams, called to him from beneath the ground. He knew somewhere a mother and father wondered why they hadn’t heard from her. Friends would talk. Other professors would wonder why she wasn’t attending class.

Morgan awoke sore, sweat slick on his forehead and under his arms. He tumbled out of bed, groaned, stood, stretched. He felt heavy and weak and unhappy. Maybe he’d try to write. Maybe a drink first. No, he needed another shower. He wanted to rinse off the nightmare sweat.

After the shower, he shuffled into the kitchen. He looked out the window and saw that the day was creeping into evening.

He made coffee, stood and watched it brew, then poured himself a mug, took it to his little desk. It was a mess, so he started cleaning and found an unfamiliar manila folder. He opened it.

It was Fred Jones’s poetry.

“Hell.”

Something caught his eye, so he kept reading. A good line here and there. He read two or three, came to one that might work with some edits. The old man had decent instincts, smooth with images. Nothing too didactic. The poems must have been in chronological order because they improved as he went along. He pulled out two near the bottom and began marking them with a green pen. As Morgan critiqued each poem, he came to a horrifying realization.

The old man was good.

His images were fresh and energetic, savagely raw and gritty without being overly gruesome. They didn’t pander. His voice was rugged, straightforward, and American.

Morgan was sick with jealousy but couldn’t pull himself away from the old man’s work. Outside it grew full dark, the weather turning sour yet again. The wind kicked up. A little rain. Morgan switched on the tiny desk lamp and kept reading.

After another hour, the wind really started to howl, so he didn’t hear when Jones walked into his house, stood over him at the desk, and put the gun to his forehead.

Morgan felt his sphincter twitch. He was going to die.

“You stupid goddamn punk.” Jones shook the pistol at him. It was an automatic with a silencer. The old man dripped, the gun glistened wet. “You said you was going to take care of the girl, and here I find she’s walking around breathing. For fuck’s sake you know what kind of position I’m in? I can’t have this dumb kid opening her yap.”

The barrel of the gun was gigantic.

And this old man was about to blow his head off. Morgan’s eyes fogged with tears, and he was ashamed to meet death so feebly. No one would come to his funeral, he thought. Not his ex-wife. He wasn’t that close to anyone in the department. He would be buried alone and forgotten like Annie Walsh.

Part of Morgan knew it was what he deserved. He was a small, sad man living a miserable little life. But he wanted to keep on living that little life.

“She won’t say anything,” Morgan said. “I know her. She won’t talk.”

“Don’t yank me off, you dumb egghead. She’s a girl. Girls can’t help blabbing their big fucking mouths all over creation.”

“Don’t kill me.”

“Shut up. Sometimes you people just don’t understand-”

He looked down at his poems spread across Morgan’s desk, plucked one from the pile with wet, bony fingers. “You wrote on these?”

Morgan nodded.

Jones looked at the changes. “Better.”

“Yes.”

Jones pulled up a chair, scooted close to Morgan, and shifted the gun to his other hand. He pointed to one of the poems where Morgan had crossed out the word is three times. “What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s a be-verb,” Morgan said. “They’re weak.”

“What do you mean?”

Morgan explained, and the old man understood.

“Are you going to kill me?” asked Morgan.

“No.”

“What about Ginny Conrad?”

“You banging her?”

“Yes.”

Jones scratched his head, exhaled. Tired. “That’s okay, then, I guess. But I’m going to keep an eye on her.”

“Thanks.”

“What about these things?” Jones meant the poems.

“They’re pretty good, Mr. Jones.”

“Okay.”

Morgan said, “How about twice a month? We’ll talk about these and whatever new ones you bring.”

“You want to help me?”

Morgan nodded. “I’d like to try.”

“Okay,” Jones said. “I’ll bring doughnuts. What do you like? You like cream-filled?”

thirteen

Harold Jenks fidgeted in his desk, looked at the other grad students who looked back at him like he was a fucking Martian.

A black Martian.

The desks were arranged in a circle, so everyone could see everyone else. He fingered the paper in front of him. His first poem. Professor Morgan had looked annoyed when Jenks had finally shown after missing the first few classes. The professor told Jenks to hand in a poem right away if he wanted to fit back into the rotation. Jenks was catching on to the routine. Half the class handed in poems one week, the other half the next week. Everybody got photocopies of all the poems. It was his job to take the poems home, read them, then come back to class and say things to help the poem be better.

It had sounded easy.

Professor Morgan shuffled into class five minutes late, sat at his desk in the circle. “Okay,” Morgan said. “Which poem will we look at first?”

Jenks’s stomach clenched. He didn’t want to be first.

“How about Belinda’s?” Morgan said.

Belinda was a tiny blond girl who was so white she was almost invisible. Jenks shifted her poem to the top of his pile. He’d read the poem five times last night. Slowly. He had no fucking idea what it was about.

Belinda sat up straight, took the gum out of her mouth, and stuck it on the end of her finger. She extended the finger, the wad of gum glistening pink, held her poem with the other fingers.

She cleared her throat and read: “This poem is called ‘Like Dust in the Wind.’ ”

Her eyes circled the room. She lowered her voice, soaked heavy with emotion. “My heart is a desert flower, blooming in season, sleeping through summer heat. Water it with your tears. Feed it kisses. Place petals on your dead eyes like pennies. Your breath is the hot desert wind, blowing only from the west.”

Belinda bit her bottom lip, looked coyly around the circle again, and settled back into her seat and waited for the commentary to begin.

Jenks decided Belinda was one sad sorry bitch.

“Thank you, Belinda,” Morgan said. “That was very moving.” He scanned the faces in the room. “Who’d like to start us off?”

Half the class looked away. Jenks made a close inspection of his fingernails.

The kid next to Jenks cleared his throat. What was his name? Timothy Lancaster. Blue blazer, penny-loafer motherfucker.

Lancaster said, “The juxtaposition of the active and the static present an interesting tension in this poem, I think.”