healed and always won its dark victory.
What Nudger had too much of today. Monday morning a copy of the latest St. Louis Voyeur was stuffed into Nudger's mailbox in the vestibule of his apartment building. He wasn't a subscriber, so with a certain dread he withdrew the thin weekly newspaper from the tarnished brass box and unfolded it.
Though he was somewhat prepared, it was still a shock. The Voyeur hadn't given up on Candy Ann, hadn't the decency to allow her some breathing space. There was a front-page photo layout of the entire Curtis Colt affair, including shots of Colt being arrested, a long view of Olson's Liquor Emporium, Colt being led to his execution, and a candid close-up of an apparently sobbing Candy Ann above the caption 'Wages of Lover's Sin.'
The last photograph, 'Solace After Heartbreak,' was of Nudger stealthily stepping outside into the brightening morning and closing Candy Ann's trailer door behind him. His face was turned three-quarters toward the camera, his features highlighted by the rising sun. The shot was a little fuzzy because of the long lens the photographer had used, but there was no doubt as to the identity of the man in the photo. There was what appeared to be an expression of guilt on his face, though Nudger knew it was really the result of him squinting in the sudden morning light.
He felt embarrassed, then angry. Then he told himself nobody read the rag of a paper anyway.
But he knew better. People in his line of work read the Voyeur. So did some of the people who might hire him. Even people who couldn't read bought the Voyeur. The photograph would be misunderstood and bad for business.
But then, business was plenty bad already.
The hell with it. Nudger carried the paper upstairs, wadded it tightly, and dropped it into the wastebasket in the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink. It made a solid, satisfying sound hitting the rest of the trash.
Then he stood for a moment, rubbing the back of his neck and turning in a slow circle. The sun was brilliant on the window over the sink, casting a weblike shadow of the glass's corner crack onto the bright counter. A large wasp, reveling in the morning heat, buzzed exploringly against the pane from frame to frame, found no opening, then zigzagged away. Nudger stopped turning and stood still and watched it, until the mere speck that it had become blended with the leaves of a tree and could no longer be discerned. He wondered how long the wasp would live if it didn't fall victim to a bird or exterminator. It struck him as tragic that any creature should miss the opportunity to live out its allotted time. Cruel nature, crueler mankind.
He knew he couldn't stay away. He'd known it since yesterday.
Before he had breakfast, before he called Harold Benedict or left to look at his office mail or checked his answering machine, he put on his blue sport coat and a dark tie and drove to Curtis Colt's funeral.
XXVIII
It was a state-funded affair, with only a graveside ceremony at a paupers' cemetery in south St. Louis. Nudger had noticed the date and time of burial while reading newspaper accounts of Colt's execution, and they had lodged, cold and nagging, in his mind.
There were about a dozen people gathered around the grave, including the state-appointed clergyman. Most of them were pallbearers, also paid by the state. Lester was there, looking more bereaved then anyone, wearing an oversized winter-wool sport jacket over a T-shirt. There was an older couple who appeared bored with the ceremony. Welborne Colt hadn't attended. He and his brother had reached the final parting still separated by antagonism and distance.
Candy Ann was standing about a hundred feet away from the clergyman, off to the side of the gleaming wood casket. Her straw-colored hair glowed with the morning. In the wash of bright sunlight, she looked like a child playing a dress-up in black.
When she saw Nudger, she averted her eyes. He was sure she'd gotten her complimentary copy of the Voyeur, as he had. A great thing to wake up to on the day of your fiance's funeral.
The preacher, who himself resembled a cadaver and was of indeterminate religion, adjusted his dark suit on his thin frame and made a vague crosslike motion with his right hand. Nudger noticed several people, including a man with a tripod-mounted camera, stationed on the grave-strewn hill above Curtis' coffin. The media would stop only after Colt was buried, and maybe not even then. Certain crimes, and their aftermaths, caught and held the public's attention. Nudger knew a telephoto lens was probably trained in close- up on Candy Ann now as the photographer, possibly from the Voyeur, hoped for an expression of grief, a tear. If he really got lucky, she'd faint.
The clergyman rambled on about life and death, gesticulating grandly, playing for the press. Where Nudger was standing, the man's voice came across merely as a monotonous drone. Everyone around the grave was shifting their weight from leg to leg, perspiring heavily, wishing the clergyman would finish sending Colt on his way. Only Candy Ann stood perfectly still, though, like Nudger, she was probably too far away to understand what the preacher was saying.
A blue jay in a nearby pin oak began chattering angrily, noisily, upstaging the preacher, who turned briefly and glared at it. The jay cocked its head to the side, as if to get a better angle of vision, and stared back insolently with a bright eye, a look it probably usually reserved for worms. The clergyman made up his mind to ignore the winged interloper. The jay hopped down onto a lower branch, among sunlit leaves, and really started raising hell. That seemed to hurry the gaunt man of the cloth along.
Finally the service was over. The jay stopped its clacking as if in relief. Candy Ann walked to the single floral spray by the grave, plucked a blossom, and laid it gently on the lid of the casket. The clergyman rested a bony hand on her shoulder, but she ignored him. He was part of Curtis' imposed untimely death and could in no way comfort her.
After standing motionless for a few minutes, she turned and walked away. Nudger saw the photographer with the tripod and long lens straighten up from his camera and say something to the man next to him. Everyone began drifting toward the parked cars.
Something tugged at Nudger's arm. He turned to see Lester Colt beside him, red-eyed and stricken-looking. His face was puffier than usual, and he reeked of cheap, per- fumy cologne or shaving lotion mingled with perspiration.
'I figure you did your best, Mr. Nudger,' he said. He sniffled. 'Want you to know there ain't no hard feelings 'cause you couldn't save Curtis.'
Nudger nodded, feeling uncomfortable. 'We did what we could,' he said. 'I'm sorry, Lester.' Over Lester's shoulder he saw Candy Ann get into a waiting County cab, a flash of pale leg against the black of her dress.
'Welborne shoulda been here, don't you think?'
'I think so,' Nudger said. He didn't feel like giving Welborne a break. 'It was the least he could have done. His own brother.' Nudger meant it.
The taxi carrying Candy Ann wound along the cemetery's narrow gravel road, flashing through patches of deep shade. It paused at tall black iron gates hinged open on stone pillars, then turned out into the traffic. Nudger could see Candy Ann's wide black hat through the cab's rear window. She didn't look back.
'She did okay by Curtis after all,' Lester said, watching with Nudger as the cab disappeared beyond the trees. He smiled, looked over at the grave, and sniffled again.
'How did you get here?' Nudger asked. There were no more parked cars now other than his VW and a van belonging to one of the media people.
'Took a bus. Couple of buses. My car's broke down.'
'Where you going now?'
'Back to work. I got to. The foreman said I could have the rest of the day free, but I'll be better off taking it out on the freight, what I feel. Work's kinda like medicine, don't you think?'
'Like medicine,' Nudger agreed. He'd often fled into the diversion of hard work himself. But he knew that eventually work wasn't enough; at a certain point people had to turn and face whatever they were running from or holding at bay.
He told Lester he was going his way and would drop him off at Commerce Freightlines. Two bearded men in work clothes were hanging around the grave, in the shade of a small canvas awning that had been set up, waiting
