From a Buick 8(26)

'Oh, please,' I said. 'Tony would have scalped anyone he caught playing poker in the barracks, even for matches. And I'd do exactly the same. I was joking.'

'We're not firemen, boy,' Huddie said with such disdain that I had to laugh. Then he returned to the subject at hand. 'That old woman believed we had something to do with it because she hated us. She would have hated anyone that distracted Ennis's attention from her. Is hate too strong a word, Sarge?'

'No,' I said.

Huddie once more turned to Ned. 'We took his time and we took his energy. And I think the part of Ennis's life that was the most vivid was the part he spent here, or in his cruiser. She knew that, and she hated it  ? 'the job, the job, the job,' she'd say. 'That's all he cares about, his damned job.' As far as she was concerned, we must have taken his life. Didn't we take everything else?'

Ned looked bewildered, perhaps because hate of the job had never been a part of his own home life. Not that he'd seen, anyway. Shirley laid a gentle hand on his knee. 'She had to hate somebody, don't you see? She had to blame somebody.'

Ned looked pale and thoughtful. Maybe a few hateful thoughts had crossed his own mind. Surely it had occurred to him that if not for the gray uniform, his dad would still be alive.

I said, 'Edith called, Edith hectored us, Edith wrote letters to her Congressman and to the state Attorney General, demanding a full investigation. I think Tony knew all that was in the offing, but he went right ahead with the meeting we had a few nights later, and laid out his proposal to take care of her. If we didn't, he said, no one would. Ennis hadn't left much, and without our help she'd be next door to destitute. Ennis had insurance and was eligible for his pension ? probably eighty per cent of full by then ? but she wouldn't see a penny of either one for a long time. Because ? '

' ? he just disappeared,' Ned said.

'Right. So we got up a subscription for The Dragon. A couple of thousand dollars, all told, with Troopers from Lawrence, Beaver, and Mercer also chipping in. Buck Flanders's brother put it in computer stocks, which were brand-new then, and she ended up making a small fortune.

'As for Ennis, a story started going around the various troops over here in western PA that he'd run off to Mexico. He was always talking about Mexico, and reading magazine stories about it. Pretty soon it was being taken as gospel: Ennis had run away from his sister before she could finish the job of cutting him up with that Ginsu Knife tongue of hers. Even guys who knew better ? or should have ? started telling that story after awhile, guys who were in the back room of The Country Way when Tony Schoondist said right out loud that he believed the Buick in Shed B had something to do with Ennie's disappearance.'

'Stopped just short of calling it a transporter unit from Planet X,' Huddie said.

'Sarge was very forceful dat night,' Arky said, sounding so much like Lawrence Welk ? Now here's da lovely Alice-uh Lon ? that I had to raise my hand to cover a smile.

'When she wrote her Congressman, I guess she didn't talk about what you guys had over there in the Twilight Zone, did she?' Ned asked.

'How could she?' I asked. 'She didn't know. That was the main reason Sergeant Schoondist called the meeting. Basically it was to remind us that loose lips sink sh ? '

'What's that?' Ned asked, half-rising from the bench. I didn't even have to look to know what he was seeing, but of course I looked anyway. So did Shirley, Arky, and Huddie. You couldn't not look, couldn't not be fascinated. None of us had ever pissed and howled over the Roadmaster like poor old Mister D, but on at least two occasions I had screamed.

Oh yes. I had damned near screamed my guts out. And the nightmares afterward. Man oh man.

The storm had gone away to the south of us, except in a way it hadn't. In a way it had been caged up inside of Shed B. From where we sat on the smokers' bench we could see bright, soundless explosions of light going off inside. The row of windows in the roll-up door would be as black as pitch, and then they'd turn blue-white. And with each flash, I knew, the radio in dispatch would give out another bray of static. Instead of showing 5:18 PM the clock on the microwave would be reading ERROR.

But on the whole, this wasn't a bad one. The flashes of light left afterimages ? greenish squares that floated in front of your eyes ? but you could look. The first three or four times that pocket storm happened, looking was impossible ? it would have fried the eyes right out of your head.

'Holy God,' Ned whispered. His face was long with surprise.

No, that's too timid. It was shock I saw on his face that afternoon. Nor was shock the end of it. When his eyes cleared a little, I saw the same look of fascination I had seen on his father's face. On Tony's. Huddie's. Matt Babicki's and Phil Candleton's. And hadn't felt it on my own face? It's how we most often appear when we confront the deep and authentic unknown, I think ? when we glimpse that place where our familiar universe stops and the real blackness begins.

Ned turned to me. 'Sandy, Jesus Christ, what is it? What is it?'

'If you have to call it something, call it a lightquake. A mild one. These days, most of them are mild. Want a closer look?'

He didn't ask if it was safe, didn't ask if it was going to explode in his face or bake the old sperm-factory down below. He just said 'Yeah!' Which didn't surprise me in the least.