Bone by Bone

Dave Hardy had grown to loathe that woman.

The volume of the TV set was turned up, the better to hear the questions shouted out from the crowd of reporters. 'Does Swahn have a criminal record? Does he like little boys? He's a homosexual, isn't he?' But the only sound bite from Sally Polk was, 'No, he didn't take a lie detector test. Cut from this new version was her statement that Swahn had never been asked to take a polygraph exam.

The current image was a studio shot that Dave had not seen in the earlier viewing. A psychiatrist was pointing out that the overwhelming number of pedophiles were heterosexual. And furthermore-

No one in the bar could hear the rest. Riding over the voice of reason, a chorus of voices shouted obscenities. A beer bottle hit the television screen.

The bartender, a man of many tattoos and a short temper, reached under the bar and pulled out a shotgun, yelling words to the effect that the unruly patrons should take their business down the road-or die.

In keeping with the judge's instructions, Mrs. Winston's birder journals had been left behind on the library shelves, where they would be safe from Sally Polk's warrants.

Hannah started up the car. 'If you give Mavis some time with those books, she might be able to tell you more about this town than you wanted to know.'

'I'd like to know why she kept her relationship with Mrs. Winston a secret.' The librarian had not been willing or able to tell him. 'Swahn went to dinner at the Winston lodge-but not Mrs. Hardy.'

'Oren, I think you can figure that one out. You've spent enough time with Addison.' She steered the car away from the curb. 'Maybe Sarah and Mavis had something in common besides birds.'

'You think Ad Winston beats his wife?'

'No, that's not it.' Hannah craned her neck to see over the wheel. 'You should come to the birthday ball this year. You'll never see a man more in love with his wife. But he's a controlling bastard, isn't he? I'm guessing Sarah's only contact with Mr. Swahn was at the dinner table-with Addison. He might not want her to have a friend that she could talk to alone.' She turned a wide smile on her passenger. 'Do you still shoot pool like a hustler?'

'I do,' he said. 'And do you still hustle the tourists?'

'I get my fun where I can.' When they reached the edge of town, she decided on the mountain route, arguing that the coast highway was too tame. 'And away we go.'

The old Mercedes was not an automobile to Hannah; it was an amusement ride. Up and down they went, around and around, and at one point he believed that she could make it fly Oren averted his eyes from the speedometer, though he knew the needle would never reach forty miles an hour. This road was treacherous at thirty, and every curve that blinded them to oncoming cars was an opportunity to crash and die.

After passing through two towns, then traveling awhile on a stretch of unpaved road with no helpful signs, they pulled into the crowded parking lot of the Endless Bar, a saloon that could not be found unless one knew the way.

Inside the establishment, nothing had changed. The music was loud and country, and this same song might have played on the jukebox when Oren was too young to legally walk through the door. Most of the patrons were corralled inside a revolving circular bar. It was rumored that some of the regulars never left; blind drunk, they could not find the hinge to the outer rim, where a patron could lift up a plank and escape. When people went missing for days and days, this was the first place their loved ones looked for them. The unloved were remembered on the hall-of-fame plaque for those who had died on their barstools. It was positioned well above the line of sight to avoid the problem of a cautionary tale for paying customers.

Oren and Hannah walked past the bar, heading for the pool tables in the back. The little woman nodded and waved to acknowledge hellos from large, hairy bruisers, who no doubt belonged to the gang of motorcycles in the parking lot. How they smiled to see her coming. It was easy enough to read those wide grins, the shake of heads, saying, No, not this time, old lady. You ain't gettin my money-not another dollar.

Every table had been booked. Not a problem. Two men gave up their game so that Hannah could play, and they nodded to Oren with something approaching condolence, taking him for one of her patsies.

The tiny woman was on her toes and grinning when she leaned over the

table to rack up the balls in triangular formation. 'Let's make this interesting.' She aimed the tip of her stick at the white ball and sent it slamming into the tight cluster. Balls of stripes and solid colors spread out on the green felt, slow-rolling along in their separate directions. 'Loser buys the first round.'

'Deal.' Oren was a happy man. The last ball had come to a stop, and Hannah had failed to sink any of them into the pockets. He owned a spread of easy shots.

'One condition,' she said. 'We're not playing eight ball. You have to run the whole table in one turn with one hand behind your back.'

'Nothing easier.' He would not even need a brace to steady his stick. Every shot was a gimme, and a half-bright child could not lose. It reminded him of his very first pool game. It was almost as though she had set up the table this way. Later, this thought would cross his mind again. But now, with no suspicion at all, he lined up the first shot and took aim.

Before he could follow through, Hannah leaned in and touched his arm, saying, 'The stick will shake.'

'Yeah, right,' he said. 'Nice try.' Smile widening, he completed his shot-and-he- missed-it.

'In case you're wondering,' said Hannah, nonchalantly chalking up her pool cue in preparation for clearing the table. 'That shaky stick? That trick's got a real fancy name. It's called the ideomotor effect.'

Click. A striped ball dropped into a corner pocket.

'I wasn't talking to you when I made your stick shake,' she said. 'I bypassed your brain.'

Click, click. Two balls in the corner pocket.

'I was talking to your arm.'

'Sure you were.' When Oren looked up from the last shot, Hannah was unfolding the sheets of paper given to her by the librarian.

'Here.' She slapped the pages down on the rim of the table. 'I've got science on my side. Read it.'

Click, click, click.

Oren read the article's long title, 'The Influence of Suggestion in Directing Muscular Action Independent of Volition.' This was followed by lengthy text in small type. 'Maybe you could just-'

Click.

'You want me to give you the gist of it?' She lined up her next shot. 'Your brain's got what's called an executive module. That's what you use to do this.' Click. She sank a ball. 'But you've got other modules, independent ones, and they bypass the thinking process. I made a suggestion, and they moved your muscles to blow that easy shot. That's how I talked to your arm. And now you know how Alice Friday's witchboard works. A question might suggest an answer, and then all those hands move that little wooden heart to spell out a word on the board. Or maybe, when the players call out a letter, that one suggests the next one. But there's no connection between their fingertips and their brains. I told you-nobody cheats.'

'That psychic runs the board,' said Oren. 'She's a con artist.'

'No, she's an idiot.'

Click, click, click, click.

When Hannah had sunk the last ball on the table, she straightened up to her full height of four feet, nine inches and faced him down. 'Only idiots believe in two-way conversations with the dead, and that woman is a true believer.'

'The judge has conversations with my dead mother.'

'When he's sleepwalking. That doesn't count.'

'And the judge believes in miracles. He even asked my mother for another one.'

'When your father's wide-awake, he's no believer in miracles. His perfect god died with your mother when she crashed her car on a rainy night. The judge believes in logical explanations. And you can believe in me when I tell you that Alice Friday has no idea how that board game works.'

Oren had ceased to hear her. He was recalling the message spelled out at the seance: Do you still love me? 'I'm betting that woman knows how to manipulate the Ouija board and the players. Like my missed shot that was just one of your parlor tricks.'

'Of course it was. And I've always explained my tricks.' Two by two, she pulled balls out of the slot inside the table and set them back on the felt surface. 'I didn't raise you to believe in magic.'

True enough. When he was a child, she had always shown him the works and the wires behind her illusions. And, after taking a Ouija board away from two terrified little boys, she had tried to explain the trick to them in terms of expectations and the power of belief in horror movies. She had assured Josh and Oren that the old woman from Paulson Lane, crazy as she was in life, would never curse children from her grave. The dead spoke to no one.

Oren had not believed her then.

Hannah racked up the balls inside the wooden triangle, no doubt sensing that he did not believe her now, either. Her hazel eyes looked up to question him, and then she damned him with, 'Oh, never mind.' She took back her pages of science and crumpled them into a tight ball. 'I can see it was a waste of time explaining the witchboard.' Hannah bent over the table once more, poised for the first shot of a new game. 'For my next trick, I'll show you how life works.'

24

The outcasts of Peck's Roadhouse had formed a loose union of drunks in the parking lot. And two more bars down the road, they had become an ugly crew as tight as family.

Dave Hardy followed their weaving line of cars, trucks and vans. If he had been in uniform tonight-and sober-this would have been an easy twelve tickets for driving under the influence. The parade swelled in numbers with every little Podunk bar these yahoos had been thrown out of, and he was keeping count on the vehicles.

The deputy reached down to the six-pack on the seat beside him, and then pulled back his empty hand. Maybe he should also be counting his drinks tonight. With a glance at the rifle rack above the windshield of his truck, he opened the glove compartment and pulled out a box of shotgun shells.

When the caravan of drunks pulled into the next bar, he waited awhile in the lot, loading his gun. After replacing it on the rack, he followed them inside, where the men were slowly gravitating toward the light of a television set that seemed to draw them by remote control. On screen was the same old film: Sally Polk was answering the same questions, and William

Swahn was still limping. Long after day had turned into night, the sun was still shining in reruns.

The drunks talked back to Sally Polk and saluted her TV image with raised glasses of beer.

Dave wanted to put his fist through the screen.

In another bar on the other side of the county, Hannah was saying, 'I can't help but win this game.'