Four Past Midnight

'No, I couldn't do th - '

'I'll bring them next Thursday,' she overrode him. 'I have thousands.' So many I'll never get a chance to use them all, her voice implied. After all, somewhere out there a safe is waiting for me to walk under it, or a tree is waiting to fall over in a windstorm and squash me, or in some North Dakota motel a hair-dryer is waiting to fall off the shelf and into the bathtub. I'm living on borrowed time, so what do I need a bunch of fucking Folger's Crystals coupons for?

'All right,' Sam said. 'That would be great. Thanks, Mary, you're a peach.'

'And you're sure nothing else is wrong?'

'Not a thing,' Sam replied, speaking more heartily than ever. To himself he sounded like a lunatic topsergeant urging his few remaining men to mount a final fruitless frontal assault on a fortified machine-gun nest. Come on, men, I think they might be asleep!

'All right,' Mary said doubtfully, and Sam was finally permitted to escape.

He sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs and regarded the almost empty Johnnie Walker box with a bitter eye. Dirty Dave had come to collect the newspapers, as he did during the first week of every month, but this time he had unknowingly taken along a little bonus: The Speaker's Companion and Best Loved Poems of the American People. And Sam had a very good idea of what they were now.

Pulp. Recycled pulp.

Dirty Dave was one of Junction City's functioning alcoholics. Unable to hold down a steady job, he eked out a living on the discards of others, and in that way he was a fairly useful citizen. He collected returnable bottles, and, like twelve-year-old Keith Jordan, he had a paper route. The only difference was that Keith delivered the Junction City Gazette every day, and Dirty Dave Duncan collected it - from Sam and God knew how many other homeowners in the Kelton Avenue section of town - once a month. Sam had seen him many times, trundling his shopping cart full of green plastic garbage bags across town toward the Recycling Center which stood between the old train depot and the small homeless shelter where Dirty Dave and a dozen or so of his compadres spent most of their nights.

He sat where he was for a moment longer, drumming his fingers on the kitchen table, then got up, pulled on a jacket, and went out to the car.

CHAPTER 5

Angle Street (I)

1

The intentions of the sign-maker had undoubtedly been the best, but his spelling had been poor. The sign was nailed to one of the porch uprights of the old house by the railroad tracks, and it read:

ANGLE STREET

Since there were no angles on Railroad Avenue that Sam could see - like most Iowa streets and roads, it was as straight as a string - he reckoned the sign-maker had meant Angel Street. Well, so what? Sam thought that, while the road of good intentions might end in hell, the people who tried to fill the potholes along the way deserved at least some credit.

Angle Street was a big building which, Sam guessed, had housed railroad company offices back in the days when Junction City really had been a railway Junction point. Now there were just two sets of working tracks, both going east-west. All the others were rusty and overgrown with weeds. Most of the cross-ties were gone, appropriated for fires by the same homeless people Angle Street was here to serve.

Sam arrived at quarter to five. The sun cast a mournful, failing light over the empty fields which took over here at the edge of town. A seemingly endless freight was rumbling by behind the few buildings which stood out here. A breeze had sprung up, and as he stopped his car and got out, he could hear the rusty squeak of the old JUNCTION CITY sign swinging back and forth above the deserted platform where people had once boarded passenger trains for St Louis and Chicago - even the old Sunnyland Express, which had made its only Iowa stop in Junction City on its way to the fabulous kingdoms of Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

The homeless shelter had once been white; now it was a paintless gray. The curtains in the windows were clean but tired and limp. Weeds were trying to grow in the cindery yard. Sam thought they might gain a foothold by June, but right now they were making a bad job of it. A rusty barrel had been placed by the splintery steps leading up to the porch. Opposite the Angle Street sign, nailed to another porch support post, was this message:

NO DRINKING ALLOWED AT THIS SHELTER!

IF YOU HAVE A BOTTLE, IT MUST GO HERE BEFORE YOU ENTER!

His luck was in. Although Saturday night had almost arrived and the ginmills and beerjoints of Junction City awaited, Dirty Dave was here, and he was sober. He was, in fact, sitting on the porch with two other winos. They were engaged in making posters on large rectangles of white cardboard, and enjoying varying degrees of success. The fellow sitting on the floor at the far end of the porch was holding his right wrist with his left hand in an effort to offset a bad case of the shakes. The one in the middle worked with his tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth, and looked like a very old nursery child trying his level best to draw a tree which would earn him a gold star to show Mommy. Dirty Dave, sitting in a splintered rocking chair near the porch steps, was easily in the best shape, but all three of them looked folded, stapled, and mutilated.

'Hello, Dave,' Sam said, mounting the steps.

Dave looked up, squinted, and then offered a tentative smile. All of his remaining teeth were in front. The smile revealed all five of them.

'Mr Peebles?'

'Yes,' he said. 'How you doing, Dave?'

'Oh, purty fair, I guess. Purty fair.' He looked around. 'Say, you guys! Say hello to Mr Peebles! He's a lawyer!'

The fellow with the tip of his tongue sticking out looked up, nodded briefly, and went back to his poster. A long runner of snot depended from his left nostril.

'Actually,' Sam said, 'real estate's my game, Dave. Real estate and insur-'

'You got me my Slim Jim?' the man with the shakes asked abruptly. He did not look up at all, but his frown of concentration deepened. Sam could see his poster from where he stood; it was covered with long orange squiggles which vaguely resembled words.

'Pardon?' Sam asked.

'That's Lukey,' Dave said in a low voice. 'He ain't havin one of his better days, Mr Peebles.'

'Got me my Slim Jim, got me my Slim Jim, got me my Slim Fuckin Slim Jim?' Lukey chanted without looking up.

'Uh, I'm sorry - ' Sam began.

'He ain't got no Slim Jims!' Dirty Dave yelled. 'Shut up and do your poster, Lukey! Sarah wants em by six! She's comin out special!'

'I'll get me a fuckin Slim Jim,' Luckey said in a low intense voice. 'If I don't, I guess I'll eat rat- turds.'