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Lars Olsen had meandered into auditory range, ears all but flapping. Go on back to my car, Olsen, Jones said. This is a private conversation.

Lars, a meek soul, scurried off without demur. Jones turned back to me. He was far less cheerful than on his previous visit, and had dispensed with the bumbling persona, as well.

I already know enough, dont I? That your kid got Harl Cotteries daughter in the famly way and has probably gone haring off to Omaha. He run the truck off the road into a field of high grass when he knew the tank was bout dry. That was smart. He get that kind of smart from you? Or from Arlette?

I said nothing, but hed given me an idea. Just a little one, but it might come in handy.

Ill tell you one thing he did that well thank him for, Jones said. Might keep him out of jail, too. He yanked all the grass from under the truck before he went on his merry way. So the exhaust wouldnt catch it afire, you know. Start a big prairie fire that burned a couple thousand acres, a jury might get a bit touchy, dont you think? Even if the offender was only 15 or so?

Well, it didnt happen, Sheriff-he did the right thing-so why are you going on about it? I knew the answer, of course. Sheriff Jones might not give a hoot in a high wind for the likes of Andrew Lester, attorney-at-law, but he was good friends with Harl. They were both members of the newly formed Elks Lodge, and Harl had it in for my son.

A little touchy, arent you? He wiped his forehead again, then resettled his Stetson. Well, I might be touchy, too, if it was my son. And you know what? If it was my son and Harl Cotterie was my neighbor-my good neighbor-I mightve just taken a run down there and said, Harl? You know what? I think my son might be going to try and see your daughter. You want to tell someone to be on the peep for him? But you didnt do that, either, did you?

The idea hed given me was looking better and better, and it was almost time to spring it.

He hasnt shown up wherever she is, has he?

Not yet, no, he may still be looking for it.

I dont think he ran away to see Shannon, I said.

Why, then? Do they have a better brand of ice cream there in Omaha? Because thats the way he was headed, sure as your life.

I think he went looking for his mother. I think she may have gotten in touch with him.

That stopped him for a good ten seconds, long enough for a wipe of the forehead and a brush of the hair. Then he said, How would she do that?

A letter would be my best guess. The Hemingford Home Grocery was also the post office, where all the general delivery went. They would have given it to him when he went in for candy or a bag of peanuts, as he often does on his way back from school. I dont know for sure, Sheriff, any more than I know why you came out here acting like I committed some kind of crime. I wasnt the one who knocked her up.

You ought to hush that kind of talk about a nice girl!

Maybe yes and maybe no, but this was as much a surprise to me as it was to the Cotteries, and now my boy is gone. They at least know where their daughter is.

Once again he was stumped. Then he took out a little notebook from his back pocket and jotted something in it. He put it back and asked, You dont know for sure that your wife got in touch with your kid, though-thats what youre telling me? Its just a guess?

I know he talked a lot about his mother after she left, but then he stopped. And I know he hasnt shown up at that home where Harlan and his wife stuck Shannon. And on that score I was as surprised as Sheriff Jones but awfully grateful. Put the two things together, and what do you get?

I dont know, Jones said, frowning. I truly dont. I thought I had this figured out, but Ive been wrong before, havent I? Yes, and will be again. We are all bound in error, thats what the Book says. But good God, kids make my life hard. If you hear from your son, Wilfred, Id tell him to get his skinny ass home and stay away from Shannon Cotterie, if he knows where she is. She wont want to see him, guarantee you that. Good news is no prairie fire, and we cant arrest him for stealing his fathers truck.

No, I said grimly, youd never get me to press charges on that one.

But. He raised his finger, which reminded me of Mr. Stoppenhauser at the bank. Three days ago, in Lyme Biska-not so far from where the rider found your truck-someone held up that grocery and ethyl station on the edge of town. The one with the Blue Bonnet Girl on the roof? Took 23 dollars. I got the report sitting on my desk. It was a young fella dressed in old cowboy clothes, with a bandanna pulled up over his mouth and a plainsman hat slouched down over his eyes. The owners mother was tending the counter, and the fella menaced her with some sort of tool. She thought it might have been a crowbar or a pry-rod, but who knows? Shes pushing 80 and half-blind.

It was my time to be silent. I was flabbergasted. At last I said, Henry left from school, Sheriff, and so far as I can remember he was wearing a flannel shirt and corduroy trousers that day. He didnt take any of his clothes, and in any case he doesnt have any cowboy clothes, if you mean boots and all. Nor does he have a plainsmans hat.

He could have stolen those things, too, couldnt he?

If you dont know anything more than what you just said, you ought to stop. I know youre friends with Harlan-

Now, now, this has nothing to do with that.

It did and we both knew it, but there was no reason to go any farther down that road. Maybe my 80 acres didnt stack up very high against Harlan Cotteries 400, but I was still a landowner and a taxpayer, and I wasnt going to be browbeaten. That was the point I was making, and Sheriff Jones had taken it.

My sons not a robber, and he doesnt threaten women. Thats not how he acts and not the way he was raised.

Not until just lately, anyway, a voice inside whispered.

Probably just a drifter looking for a quick payday, Jones said. But I felt like I had to bring it up, and so I did. And we dont know what people might say, do we? Talk gets around. Everybody talks, dont they? Talks cheap. The subjects closed as far as Im concerned-let the Lyme County Sheriff worry about what goes on in Lyme Biska, thats my motto-but you should know that the Omaha police are keeping an eye on the place where Shannon Cotteries at. Just in case your son gets in touch, you know.

He brushed back his hair, then resettled his hat a final time.

Maybe hell come back on his own, no harm done, and we can write this whole thing off as, I dont know, a bad debt.

Fine. Just dont call him a bad son, unless youre willing to call Shannon Cotterie a bad daughter.

The way his nostrils flared suggested he didnt like that much, but he didnt reply to it. What he said was, If he comes back and says hes seen his mother, let me know, would you? Weve got her on the books as a missing person. Silly, I know, but the law is the law.

Ill do that, of course.

He nodded and went to his car. Lars had settled behind the wheel. Jones shooed him over-the sheriff was the kind of man who did his own driving. I thought about the young man whod held up the store, and tried to tell myself that my Henry would never do such a thing, and even if he were driven to it, he wouldnt be sly enough to put on clothes hed stolen out of somebodys barn or bunkhouse. But Henry was different now, and murderers learn slyness, dont they? Its a survival skill. I thought that maybe But no. I wont say it that way. Its too weak. This is my confession, my last word on everything, and if I cant tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, what good is it? What good is anything?

It was him. It was Henry. I had seen by Sheriff Joness eyes that he only brought up that side-o-the-road robbery because I wouldnt kowtow to him the way he thought I shouldve, but I believed it. Because I knew more than Sheriff Jones. After helping your father to murder your mother, what was stealing some new clothes and waving a crowbar in an old grannys face? No such much. And if he tried it once, he would try it again, once those 23 dollars were gone. Probably in Omaha. Where they would catch him. And then the whole thing might come out. Almost certainly would come out.

I climbed to the porch, sat down, and put my face in my hands.

Days went by. I dont know how many, only that they were rainy. When the rain comes in the fall, outside chores have to wait, and I didnt have enough livestock or outbuildings to fill the hours with inside chores. I tried to read, but the words wouldnt seem to string together, although every now and then a single one would seem to leap off the page and scream. Murder. Guilt. Betrayal. Words like those.

Days I sat on the porch with a book in my lap, bundled into my sheepskin coat against the damp and the cold, watching the rainwater drip off the overhang. Nights I lay awake until the small hours of the morning, listening to the rain on the roof overhead. It sounded like timid fingers tapping for entry. I spent too much time thinking about Arlette in the well with Elphis. I began to fancy that she was still not alive (I was under stress but not crazy), but somehow aware. Somehow watching developments from her makeshift grave, and with pleasure.

Do you like how things have turned out, Wilf? shed ask if she could (and, in my imagination, did). Was it worth it? What do you say?

One night about a week after Sheriff Joness visit, as I sat trying to read The House of the Seven Gables, Arlette crept up behind me, reached around the side of my head, and tapped the bridge of my nose with one cold, wet finger.

I dropped the book on the braided sitting room rug, screamed, and leaped to my feet. When I did, the cold fingertip ran down to the corner of my mouth. Then it touched me again, on top of my head, where the hair was getting thin. This time I laughed-a shaky, angry laugh-and bent to pick up my book. As I did, the finger tapped a third time, this one on the nape of the neck, as if my dead wife were saying, Have I got your attention yet, Wilf? I stepped away-so the fourth tap wouldnt be in the eye-and looked up. The ceiling overhead was discolored and dripping. The plaster hadnt started to bulge yet, but if the rain continued, it would. It might even dissolve and come down in chunks. The leak was above my special reading-place. Of course it was. The rest of the ceiling looked fine, at least so far.

I thought of Stoppenhauser saying, Do you want to tell me there arent improvements you could make? A roof to fix? And that sly look. As if he had known. As if he and Arlette were in on it together.

Dont be getting such things in your head, I told myself. Bad enough that you keep thinking of her, down there. Have the worms gotten her eyes yet, I wonder? Have the bugs eaten away her sharp tongue, or at least blunted it?

I went to the table in the far corner of the room, got the bottle that stood there, and poured myself a good-sized hooker of brown whiskey. My hand trembled, but only a little. I downed it in two swallows. I knew it would be a bad business to turn such drinking into a habit, but its not every night that a man feels his dead wife tap him on the nose. And the hooch made me feel better. More in control of myself. I didnt need to take on a 750-dollar mortgage to fix my roof, I could patch it with scrap lumber when the rain stopped. But it would be an ugly fix; would make the place look like what my mother would have called trash-poor. Nor was that the point. Fixing a leak would take only a day or two. I needed work that would keep me through the winter. Hard labor would drive out thoughts of Arlette on her dirt throne, Arlette in her burlap snood. I needed home improvement projects that would send me to bed so tired that Id sleep right through, and not lie there listening to the rain and wondering if Henry was out in it, maybe coughing from the grippe. Sometimes work is the only thing, the only answer.

The next day I drove to town in my truck and did what I never would have thought of doing if I hadnt needed to borrow 35 dollars: I took out a mortgage for 750. In the end we are all caught in devices of our own making. I believe that. In the end we are all caught.

In Omaha that same week, a young man wearing a plainsmans hat walked into a pawnshop on Dodge Street and bought a nickel-plated.32 caliber pistol. He paid with 5 dollars that had no doubt been handed to him, under duress, by a half-blind old woman who did business beneath the sign of the Blue Bonnet Girl. The next day, a young man wearing a flat cap on his head and a red bandanna over his mouth and nose walked into the Omaha branch of the First Agricultural Bank, pointed a gun at a pretty young teller named Rhoda Penmark, and demanded all the money in her drawer. She passed over about 200 dollars, mostly in ones and fives-the grimy kind farmers carry rolled up in the pockets of their bib overalls.

As he left, stuffing the money into his pants with one hand (clearly nervous, he dropped several bills on the floor), the portly guard-a retired policeman-said: Son, you dont want to do this.

The young man fired his.32 into the air. Several people screamed. I dont want to shoot you, either, the young man said from behind his bandanna, but I will if I have to. Fall back against that post, sir, and stay there if you know whats good for you. Ive got a friend outside watching the door.

The young man ran out, already stripping the bandanna from his face. The guard waited for a minute or so, then went out with his hands raised (he had no sidearm), just in case there really was a friend. There wasnt, of course. Hank James had no friends in Omaha except for the one with his baby growing in her belly.

I took 200 dollars of my mortgage money in cash and left the rest in Mr. Stoppenhausers bank. I went shopping at the hardware, the lumberyard, and the grocery store where Henry might have gotten a letter from his mother if she were still alive to write one. I drove out of town in a drizzle that had turned to slashing rain by the time I got home. I unloaded my newly purchased lumber and shingles, did the feeding and milking, then put away my groceries-mostly dry goods and staples that were running low without Arlette to ride herd on the kitchen. With that chore done, I put water on the woodstove to heat for a bath and stripped off my damp clothes. I pulled the wad of money out of the right front pocket of my crumpled biballs, counted it, and saw I still had just shy of 160 dollars. Why had I taken so much in cash? Because my mind had been elsewhere. Where elsewhere, pray? On Arlette and Henry, of course. Not to mention Henry and Arlette. They were pretty much all I thought about on those rainy days.