stepped in and took hold of his elbow.
“This is a tough course,” he said.
“You can say that again.”
“I don’t think I’m doing too well.”
“You’re doing fine. That was the last hole.”
“Yeah. How’d I do?”
“You beat the competition hands down. Come along, Sue Ellen is waiting for us.”
I led him along and the wind picked up and the trash twisters coiled at our feet.
4
Serious rain.
Serious wind.
Serious lightning.
Serious lost.
“Where the hell are we?” Timothy asked.
“Well, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
“Kansas? We’ve been in Kansas? Who’s Toto?”
“Just close your little mouth and walk.”
Sometimes it doesn’t pay to read or watch old movies. No one knows what you’re talking about.
“Goddamn,” Timothy said. “This is a weird course. What’s that?”
It was shadows. They had collected in our path. On either side of us the trees whipped their heads up and down like drunk women with the dry heaves.
I threw my stick at the shadows and the stick went into them and was not seen again. The shadows flowed over us with a howl of the wind and they felt like wet felt where they touched us. But there was nothing more to them. They went through us, and I turned to watch them blow on down the trail like ink-stained ghosts.
The trail disappeared. It was as if the trees had pulled up by the roots and repositioned themselves. Nothing was familiar. Strips of film dropped down from the branches and clung to us, and when I tore them off they ripped my flesh.
Timothy swatted at them with his golf club. The film wound itself around the club and jerked it away from him. Last sight of it was a silver wink in the moonlight as it disappeared into the rustling leaves of a dark, gnarled tree.
I grabbed hold of his wrist and tugged him. We went between trees and shrubs, wherever there was a space. Film ran along the ground and dropped out of the trees and tried to grab us.
Lightning flashed. I got a glimpse of the highway through the trees. Not much farther.
Timothy was pulled from me. I turned. The film had him by the feet and more of it had dropped down from the trees and coiled around his arms and pulled them up. A thin strip of it was twisting around his leg and working up his body. By the time I reached him, the end of it was tight around his neck.
I tried to pull it off of him, but more of it came up from the forest floor and snapped around me like the business end of a whip. Then my feet were held and my arms went up and more of it wrapped around my body. Where it touched my bare skin I could feel a sensation like dozens of tiny needles.
From where I stood, immobile, I could see a clear spot in the trees, and when the lightning flashed. I saw the highway, and out there on the highway was a black wrecker with its light on. A man was standing by the wrecker looking at the jungle and the wrecker door was open and I could see a naked butt rising and falling, and there was something between the butt and the seat, white-legged and thrashing, and I knew instantly that it was poor Sue Ellen.
And I knew too that the same lightning that had flashed and allowed me to see the man by the wrecker had allowed him to see me.
5
A flashlight bounced like a great firefly toward us. When the light reached the edge of the jungle I could see the outline of a big, broad-shouldered man and the outline of another behind him. Their shadows leaned together behind them like two happy thugs. When the men moved, the shadows moved of their own accord.
As they entered into the jungle the film crept out and grabbed at them and the biggest of the two men yelled, “Edit,” and produced some large scissors and snipped at the film. The man behind him did the same with a smaller pair.
They cl ipped their way through, and one came up to me, the other to Timothy.
The one with the big scissors and the flashlight was the one in front of me. He put the light in my face and said, “How would you like to be cast in the part of prime pussy?”
Film crawled on his legs and he bent casually and clipped it. “Damn stuff,” he said.
“This one looks like a dumb asshole,” said the other.
Some of the old Timothy came back, and it couldn’t have been a worse time. Timothy said. “Fuck you.”
The man hit Timothy in the side of the head with the little scissors. Timothy nodded forward, made no further sounds.
The little scissors went to work on the film that held Timothy, and when it was snipped, Timothy fell down. The man picked him up and tossed him over his shoulder and headed toward the highway, kicking at the film as he went. Once he squatted with Timothy balanced on his shoulder, and used the scissors on a swathe of film.
“Snip, snip, snip, you little motherfuckers,” he said. Then he and Timothy were out of the jungle, being pursued by both men’s shadows; they moved out into the brighter moonlight which had replaced the dark and the lightning. Out on the highway the wind made little plumes of trash jig all around the wrecker.
The man in front of me cut a coil of film from around my neck and snipped an even smaller piece from that, held it three feet from me. It dripped blood.
“They’re like leeches. They show best when they’ve eaten.” He put the flashlight against the strip from behind and two hands holding a chainsaw came out on my side and ballooned to full size and the chainsaw buzzed and the hands shoved it at my face.
He turned out the light just in time. The buzz of the saw died, and where the hands and saw had been, were drops of falling blood. I felt them bite my shoe.
The man cocked the flashlight and said, “Good night, moon,” and he hit me.
I was still bound when I awoke, but I was no longer in the jungle. I was tied to the wrecker, facing out. The wrecker was off the highway and a tarp had been stretched over it and the end visible to me was stretched down tight with stakes, and the center of it was poked up high with an antenna stalk that bloomed into a clutch of silver quills at the top.
It was warm under the tarp, and the warmth came from fires built in the husks of a dozen television sets. Rain pounded the tarp and scratched at it like harpy claws. Some of it came through the holes in the tarp and hissed in the fire and hit my face and ran down it like tears. The televisions gave off greasy smoke and it fouled the air and made me woozy.
The side of my head hurt. It should. I had been knocked on it enough. But considering all that, I was lucky. My dad always said I had a hard head. On the other hand, I have dizzy spells from time to time even now. My vision gets screwy.
But as I was saying. My head hurt. Where the film touched me stung.
To the rear of the tarp, squatting in a semicircle, facing me, were four men. They were all dressed in ragged clothes and jeans. They were close-shaved and had bushy flattops that looked as if they had been cut with dull knives. They looked strong and well fed, or maybe just fed. Two of them were the men who had taken Timothy and
