“Yes, I’m sure they will be. Are you all right? Not going to faint or anything like that?”

“I’m okay. Can you remember the directions?”

“Of course-she’s talking about the place that used to be Barrett’s Orchards. Carolyn and I used to go out there every fall to pick apples and buy cider until they sold out in the early eighties. To think that’s High Ridge.”

“Be amazed later, Ralph-I really am starving to death.”

“All right. What was the note, by the way? The note about the niece with the full scholarship at UNH?”

She flashed him a little smile and handed it to him. it was her light-bill for the month of September.

“Were you able to leave your message?” the security guard asked as they came out and started down the walk.

“Yes, thanks,” Lois said, turning on the megawatt smile again.

She kept moving, though, and her hand was gripping Ralph’s very tightly. He knew how she felt; he hadn’t the slightest idea how long the suggestions they had given the two women would hold.

“Good,” the guard said, following them to the end of the walk, “This is gonna be a long, long day. I’ll be glad when it’s over.

You know how many security people we’re gonna have here from noon until midnight? A dozen. And that’s just here. They’re gonna have over forty at the Civic Center-that’s in addition to the local COPS.”

And it won’t do a damned bit of good, Ralph thought.

“And what for? So one blonde with an attitude can run her mouth.”

He looked at Lois as if he expected her to accuse him of being a male sexist oinker, but Lois only renewed her smile.

“I hope everything goes well for you, Officer,” Ralph said, and then led Lois back across the street to the Oldsmobile. He started it up and turned laboriously around in the WomanCare driveway, expecting either Barbara Richards, Rachel Anderson, or maybe both of them to come rushing out through the front door, eyes wild and fingers pointing. He finally got the Olds headed in the right direction and let out a long sigh of relief. Lois looked over at him and nodded in sympathy.

“I thought I was the salesman,” Ralph said, “but man, I’ve never seen a selling job like that.”

Lois smiled demurely and clasped her hands in her lap.

They were approaching the hospital parking-garage when Trigger came rushing out of his little booth, waving his arms. Ralph’s first thought was that they weren’t going to make a clean getaway after all-the security guard with the clipboard had tipped to something suspicious and phoned or radioed Trigger to stop them. Then he saw the look-out of breath but happy-and what Trigger had in his right hand.

It was a very old and very battered black wallet. It flapped open and closed like a toothless mouth with each wave of his right arm.

“Don’t worry,” Ralph said, slowing the Olds down.

“I don’t know what he wants, but I’m pretty sure it’s not trouble.

At least not yet.”

“I don’t care what he wants. All I want is to get out of here and eat some food. If he starts to show you his fishing pictures, Ralph, I’ll step on the gas pedal myself,”

“Amen,” Ralph said, knowing perfectly well that it wasn’t fishing pictures Trigger Vachon had in mind. He still wasn’t clear on everything, but one thing he knew for sure: nothing was happening by chance. Not anymore. This was the Purpose with a vengeance. He pulled up beside Trigger and pushed the button that lowered his window. It went down with an ill-tempered whine.

“Eyyy, Ralph!” Trigger cried. “I t’ought I missed you!”

“What is it, Trig? We’re in kind of a hurry-”

“Yeah, yeah, dis won’t take but a second. I got it right here in my wallet, Ralph.

Man, I keep all my paperwork in here, and I never lose a ting out of it.”

He spread the old billfold’s limp jaws, revealing a few crumpled bills, a celluloid accordion of pictures (and damned if Ralph didn’t catch a glimpse of Trigger holding up a big bass in one of them), and what looked like at least forty business cards, most of them creased and limber with age. Trigger began to go through these with the speed of a veteran bank-teller counting currency.

“I never t’row dese tings out, me,” Trigger said. “They’re great to write stuff on, better’n a notebook, and free. Now just a second… just a second, oh you damn ting, where you be?”

Lois gave Ralph an impatient, worried look and pointed up the road. Ralph ignored both the look and the gesture. He had begun to feel a strange tingling in his chest. In his mind’s eye he saw himself reaching out with his index finger and drawing something in the foggy condensate that had appeared on the windshield of Trigger’s van as a result of a summer storm fifteen months ago-cold rain on a hot day.

“Ralph, you ’member the scarf Deepneau was wearin dat day?

White, wit some kind of red marks on it?”

“Yes, I remember,” Ralph said. Cuntlicker, Ed had told the heavyset guy. Fucked your mother and licked her cunt. And yes, he remembered the scarf-of course he did. But the red thing hadn’t been just marks or a splotch or a meaningless bit of pattern; it had been an ideogram or ideograms. The sudden sinking in the pit of his stomach told Ralph that Trigger could quit rummaging through his old business cards right now. He knew what this was about. He knew.

“Was you in da war, Ralph?” Trigger asked. “The big one? Number Two?”

“In a way, I guess,” Ralph said. “I fought most of it in Texas.

I went overseas in early ’45, but I was rear-echelon all the way.”

Trigger nodded. “Dat means Europe,” he said. “Wasn’t no rearechelon in the Pacific, not by the end.”

“England,” Ralph said. “Then Germany.”

Trigger was still nodding, pleased. “If you’d been in the Pacific, you woulda known the stuff on that scarf wasn’t Chinese.”

“It was Japanese, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it, Trig?”

Trigger nodded. In one hand he held a business card plucked from among many. On the blank side, Ralph saw a rough approximation of the double symbol they had seen on Ed’s scarf, the double symbol he himself had drawn in the windshield mist.

“What are you talking about?” Lois asked, now sounding not impatient but just plain scared.

“I should have known,” Ralph heard himself say in a faint, horrified voice. “I still should have known.”

“Known what?” She grabbed his shoulder and shook it. “Known what?”

He didn’t answer. Feeling like a man in a dream, he reached out and took the card. Trigger Vachon was no longer smiling, and his dark eyes studied Ralph’s face with grave consideration. “I copied it before it could melt off a da windshield,” Trigger said, “cause I knew I seen it before, and by the time I got home dat night, I knew where.

My big brother, Marcel, fought da las year of the war in the Pacific.

One of the tings he brought back was a scarf with dat same two marks on it, in dat same red. I ast him, ’us to be sure, and he wrote it on dat card.” Trigger pointed to the card Ralph was holding between his fingers. “I meant to tell you as soon as I saw you again, only I forgot until today. I was glad I finally remembered, but looking at you now, I guess it woulda been better if I’d stayed forgetful.”

“No, it’s okay.”

Lois took the card from him. “What is it? What does it mean?”

“Tell you later.” Ralph reached for the gearshift. His heart felt like a stone in his chest. Lois was looking at the symbols on the blank side of the card, allowing Ralph to see the printed side.

R. H. FOSTER, WELLS amp; DRY-WALLS, it said. Below this, Trigger’s big brother had printed a single word in black capital letters.