Fat Ernst grinned, eyes bright. “We’ll have to see about that one, Heck.”

I decided to take advantage of Fat Ernst’s good mood and satisfy my curiosity. It just seemed like the right time to ask. Without really thinking, I opened my mouth and the words tumbled out. “Hey, have you guys ever seen Ma Sawyer? I mean, do you know anything about her?”

Heck crunched his dentures together like a startled snapping turtle. Fat Ernst stood back for a moment, then sagged, leaning on the bar, staring at me. He didn’t say anything for a several seconds. “Why?”

“I, uh, saw her last night,” I stammered.

“You saw her last night?” Heck scrunched his eyebrows together. “Huh.” Then, as if he’d forgotten his question, said suddenly, “I saw her once, man. Way back, before the accident.” He stared at the bottles behind the bar. “It was over at Smith’s Butcher Block, that place on Third Street.” He took a sip of his drink before continuing. “Now this, this was damn near thirty years ago. Them boys, they were just little kids.” I had a hard time picturing Bert and Junior Sawyer as little kids. “Pearl had gotten into an argument with the butcher over some damn thing.” Heck looked up at Fat Ernst. “You remember old Guy Smith, right? Well, man, she backed him up against the counter and was chewing into him like you wouldn’t believe.” Oh, I can believe it, I thought. “At the time, what took my attention the most was those boys, man. They were grabbing handfuls of ground beef and just flinging them ateach other like goddamn monkeys throwing their shit at each other. I couldn’t believe it. It was just, well …” Heck searched for the word. “… uncivilized.”

Fat Ernst nodded, settling into his stool, while I stood there, plastic bin on my hip, next to Heck. I thought about climbing onto a barstool, but it was kind of an unwritten rule that employees weren’t allowed on the stools. Heck stared at his plate. “But now … hell, man, I remember that woman. She couldn’t have cared less about what her boys were up to. She was too busy staring old Guy down. I guess she was wanting to know why he wasn’t buying any meat from her. Man. Poor old Guy. He kept saying that it wasn’t up to him. But she wasn’t listening.” Heck pounded the bar in sudden recognition. “I remember ’cause it was around Thanksgiving. I was there getting some pork sausage for the stuffing. That’s right.” He stopped, deep in his memories. “Finally, Guy tried to get away, to get around the meat counter. But Pearl, man, she just struck, like a goddamn snake, just grabbed poor Guy by the balls. She looked strong, I tell you that much. She grabbed old Guy’s nuts, I mean hard, man, and hung on, demanding to know why her meat wasn’t being bought. She’d shake him now and again and Guy’d turn about the color of this plate here. The last thing I heard was that rusty voice screaming, ’You listen to me ‘less you want me take a hammer to your balls again.’ I don’t know what finally happened, man, but what I remember—clear as daylight—is that you don’t mess with that woman.”

Fat Ernst nodded. “You got that right. That Pearl, she isn’t a woman you mess with. No, sir.” I nodded too. I knew exactly how Heck and Fat Ernst felt. I’d seen Pearl, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with her. She scared the hell out of me. “Nobody fucks with Pearl. ‘Specially now, after the accident,” Fat Ernst muttered.

“Why not?” I whispered back, afraid to speak louder.

“Well, let’s just say we’ve all heard the stories,” Fat Ernst said, rolling back on his stool. “As far as I can tell, people started talking when she wasforced to retire from the DMV. It was the supervisor, remember? John Halkin, I think. Poor goddamn stupid bastard. He shoulda known,” Fat Ernst said. “He’s the one that fired her. Well, the story goes that he didn’t fire her, he had to … let her … go. She hit retirement age, you know? Not too long after that little talk, the supervisor’s house gets all infested with flies. I mean to tell you, flies were coming out of the fucking woodwork. They were flying out of the goddamn refrigerator, the air conditioning vents, the bathtub drain, the kitchen sink, closets, dresser drawers, electric sockets, cracks in the floor, you know, between the wall and the floor, everywhere.”

A creeping, itching feeling crawled up my back and into my hair. It was all I could do not to twist my arm around and furiously scratch at my back. Fat Ernst stared out the front window, watching the rain. “And no matter what the hell this poor bastard tries, nothing works, you know? Nothing. Poisons, chemical bombs, flypaper, a fucking flyswatter—you name it, nothing worked. The flies just kept coming. Finally, he tries to sell the damn property. But every time somebody comes to check out the house, the damn flies drive ’em off.” Fat Ernst took a heavy breath, slapping his hands and clasping his fingers together between his knees.

He shook his head. “Finally, this dumb sonofabitch tries to burn his own house down and collect on the insurance. Well, he got caught, convicted, and got sent off to the Monroe County Jail. Had to give up his life, his family, all because of this one woman. Far as I know, he’s still there.”

“So … it was just that one guy, right?” I asked.

“Hell, no. After that, Pearl found an old lawnmower somewhere and started mowing lawns in the summer. At first, I think folks hired her out of pity, this old woman scrabbling for a little change, trying to raise them two wild boys. And for a few years, from what I heard, she did a halfway decent job, mowing lawns with this old, I mean old, rattling lawnmower, driving from job to job in that shitty El Camino. Evenwhen Pearl couldn’t manage to pull the starter cord on the mower anymore, somebody’d start it for her, and she’d push it around the streets, going from one lawn to the next without turning it off. I’m telling you flat out, this bit—” Fat Ernst stopped suddenly, then said quickly, “this—ah—she refused to even kill the engine while she was pouring gas in the damn thing.”

Heck nodded to both of us. “I saw her pushing that lawnmower down the street while it was still running. I just remember praying that nobody got too close.”

I thought about the five or six rusted lawnmowers in the Sawyer Brothers’ backyard.

Fat Ernst kept talking, more to Heck than me, but I didn’t care. “And then her eyes started going. Or maybe she just stopped giving a damn. People got different opinions, but the fact is, people started finding their flower beds, gardens, bushes, everything mowed down to something like three inches. I saw a couple of them yards. You should’ve seen it. Then I heard that garden hoses were getting all sliced and chopped by that fucking machine. Sometimes, freshly cut grass got … accidentally dumped into swimming pools. And once in a while, the family cat or some small dog would disappear. Oh, yeah. I heard all about it.”

Fat Ernst took a long look around his restaurant. “But it wasn’t just the lawnmower.” His gaze settled on Heck. “Remember what happened to Harry Knight?”

Heck shrugged. “Just that he died a few years back. Some kind of disease, wasted away in the hospital or something.”

Fat Ernst flicked his glance at me for a second, saying, “Harry used to be the vet around here. Ed took over the business after he died. Anyways”—he looked back to Heck—“I’m driving to work one day and I see Harry’s truck and the Sawyer truck stopped, side by side, middle of the road. So I figure they’re just talking, right? I pull up behind the Sawyers’ truck, figuring they’d pull out of the way. Butnobody moves. I can’t see into the Sawyers’ truck, but I can see Harry through his windshield. He’s madder’nhell, shouting at ‘em. Then he stops, all of a sudden.”

Fat Ernst drew back and looked at us, serious as brain cancer. “Then this … this arm, I guess, kind of reaches out of the Sawyers’ window. Can’t explain it exactly. It was just there—one second it’s not, and the next it’s just fucking there. And it ain’t Junior or Bert’s arm. No way. It looked like one of them arms you might see on an Ethiopian or some poor starving bastard like that. It was that skinny. But see, the weird part is, I just thought it looked too long at first. That arm was so skinny, it took me a minute to figure out that it was holding a stick.”