Butcher

touchingly vulnerable thing for him to do. “Speaking of your best shot, come here a minute. I want to show you something.” He turned away and started walking.

She caught up with him. Her heels sank into the mud.

“What are you going to show me?'

“It's over here,” he said, motioning across the field toward a huge, old barn that stood beside a weather- beaten tractor shed. They walked in silence for a few seconds, Sharon doing her best to stay on a crude board walkway that spanned the muddy ground.

“Vanishing Americana,” she said to him, her words surprisingly loud in the stillness of the Bootheel boonies.

“Him?'

“Old barns. Part of the past. They always seem to make a powerful statement about yesteryear to me. Do you feel that way, too?'

“Barns just mean a lot of work to me. I think of stock when I see one. Livestock's one endless headache.'

“You mean barns are only for farm animals down here? We had hay barns where I was raised.'

“Nah. They have grain barns here, but I mean in the old days everybody had some stock. I used to run about fifty head of cattle myself, here and on my other pasture land. So I look at the barn and that's what I see—all that work.'

“It's immense.'

“Watch your step here,” he said, as they went through where stairs had once been, stepping through a framed doorway, walking on a floor of old straw. “It's all hand-hewn cypress. Man could build himself a hell of a little cabin out of this. You'd have your fireplace out of the foundation. All that rock was hauled down here from the Black River. So there's all your stones. You got enough cypress the termites haven't ate, you'd have your walls. And you could burn those others in your fireplace after you built it.” He pointed up at the roof high above them. “Those are Shaker shingles. They'd be your kindling.'

“You should do it. Build yourself an old log cabin—My God, Ray?' He was holding a pistol in his hand.

“It's okay. You're not afraid of firearms are you?'

“Yes,” she said, “I certainly am. Where did that come from?'

“Under my arm.'

“You carry a gun?'

To answer her he pulled open his jacket and she saw the leather shoulder holster, but her eyes were riveted on the deadly looking object in his hand. “Why do you carry a gun?” She was frozen in terror.

“Habit, I guess. It's a good idea, being afraid of firearms, but they're like saws or hammers or vehicles. Tools to do a job with. You don't play with them, you treat them with respect and take care of them and then, when you need them, you have the tool to help you.” He'd misinterpreted her fear.

“Please put it away. I hate guns.” Sharon's voice sounded as small and helpless as that of a scared child.

“I don't want you to be scared of it, Sharon. A little fear isn't bad. It's okay. A healthy respect. But don't be scared to use it if you have to. Have you ever fired a handgun?'

“Yes, as it happens, I have. I won't again. Not ever.'

“Why's that?'

“I just won't.” She wanted to tell him about Stacey and her boyfriend Duane, why she'd never touch a gun again. But she couldn't talk about it. Instead, she said, quietly, “I hate violence and violent things. I don't believe in guns.'

“You probably fired a forty-five or something that made a lot of noise, and had a heavy kick, and it made your wrist sore or whatever.” He continued to misread her reaction. “But sometimes a firearm can save your life, or someone else's. In the old days they called ‘em equalizers. If you're going up against some old Nazi who may be an experienced killer, you better be holding some protection.'

“I have protection, Ray. God is my protection.'

“That's fine. But a little iron is good, too, for insurance.” There was a small white paper square stuck in some rotting hay bales that stood against the far wall of the barn. “Imagine that a feller who meant to do you harm was standing over there.” He pointed. “This is my friend, Irma,” it sounded as if he said, as he held the pistol, finger off the trigger. “This is my baby. She's an ERMA EX-CAM, RX-22. Fires long rifle rounds. CCI Stingers.” He turned and did not appear to aim, his hand and arm and body sort of pointed toward the hay bales and the weapon barked twice. It was deafeningly loud and Sharon turned and ran, tripping over the sill of the doorway, falling, getting up, falling again, screaming, crying, letting it all come crashing down around her, all the fake toughness, the pain of missing her dad and knowing he might be in grave danger, of being all alone and trying to stay strong and failing, the pain of a thousand Duanes and Staceys and river rats and cops and robbers and he was holding her and she was letting him, not caring, not caring about anything, sobbing, shaking, wishing she were back in their nice snug home, Mom in the kitchen, Dad not knowing from Nazis, everybody nice and safe.

She finally got quieted down to a soft snuffling, and he held her in his arms as gently as he could, rocking her a bit, or perhaps she imagined it, and then she felt one of his hands touch her, dipping beneath her hair, cupping the nape of her neck, and she read his desire in the heat of his palm, and it fed her somehow and she looked up at him and her full lips were so perfect, the wide inverted V a model's pout, an actress's temptation from a zillion seduction scenes, but when you're near it and you can touch it the pull is more magnetic than any gravity.

Sex with anybody, Raymond Meara or whomever, was so far from Sharon's conscious desires she'd have bet anything such a turn of events was out of the question. Her father might have perished, there was a monster of an old Nazi out there somewhere ... but sometimes the act of lovemaking can be a release or a physical pressure valve. There are times when it becomes an astonishing, life-affirming reaction.

The first kiss took him under and her with it, and against all odds and reason they were inside the barn, touching, tasting, holding, kissing, enflaming, exploring, swallowing each other in the searing heat of tongue and caress and passion that spurted out, melting what-ever it touched, brooking no arguments, taking no prisoners.

It was the oldest equation on earth and totally unsupported by math, common sense, logic, or science, but it still worked. The old heat-plus-mass formula, its impossible arithmetic continuing to defy law by cognition. Two into one equals one.

46

Marion, Illinois

“Yes, sir,” Dr. Norman said, in what was for him a nearly obsequious tone, “that was my intention when I phoned you.” The old man to whom he was speaking was one of the most powerful leaders in the world, yet few knew his name. The force behind the throne of several former and present monarchs, CEOs, and U.S. presidents, he had personally mandated the organization known as SAUCOG, in an executive session of the National Security Council, which he had then headed.

“So, nu?'

“When we were getting Special Covert Action printouts over the Newton Secure/Comsec System I saw the operation in southeast Missouri. So I phoned the gentleman at Justice and confirmed the status of that particular situation,” Dr. Norman explained. The scrambled land-line was silent for a moment.

“They want this old Nazi sanctioned?” the old man asked, using the passe jargon for an execution.

“That's correct. It seems he's built a new identity and become such a pillar of the community that Justice is afraid they might not be able to get him through channels. They might not make a sufficiently tight case against him. The gentleman also said if such a person was tried and the thing backfired, like the Ivan the Terrible case did, it could have a chilling effect on future sightings. They want him brought down in a public way. Messy ... I'm quoting,” Norman said.

“What?'

“Messy was the word he used,” Dr. Norman said again. “I don't care how messy your man makes it.'