'Should I call Lou?'
I debated for a second, watching Sarah work at the little yellow sweater. I had no desire to spend the morning in Lou's presence, especially not a hung over Lou. 'No,' I said. 'There's no reason for him to come.'
'But I can tell him we're going?'
'Of course,' I said. 'We're all in this together. Last thing we want now is to start keeping secrets from each other.'
WE COULDN'T figure out how to hide the money on me so that Jacob wouldn't notice it. There were fifty packets; it was like trying to conceal fifty small paperback books on my body. We filled my pockets, jammed bills up my sleeves, in my socks, under my waistband; but after a while certain areas of my body started swelling suspiciously, looking weighted down, stuffed, and there were always a few packets left over that we couldn't find a place for.
'I don't think it's going to work,' I said finally.
We were in the kitchen still. I had my jacket on, was starting to get hot, frustrated. The packets stuffed into my clothes made me feel heavy; every movement was awkward, like a robot's. We were both wearing gloves.
Sarah was standing a few feet away from me, looking me up and down. It was obvious from her expression that she didn't approve of what she saw. 'Maybe you could just carry it in a bag.'
'A bag?' I said. 'I can't carry it in a bag. What would I tell Jacob?' I unzipped my jacket, and three packets fell out, slapping to the floor in quick succession. I watched her squat down to pick them up.
'Maybe we should put less back,' I said.
She ignored me. 'I know what we'll do,' she said. Then she turned and walked rapidly from the room.
I waited in the kitchen for her, like a burly scarecrow, my arms extended stiffly away from my sides. When she came back, she had a little knapsack in her hand.
'It's for carrying the baby,' she said. She held it up in front of me. It was made of purple nylon, with a picture of a cartoon dinosaur on its front. Sarah seemed very pleased with it. 'I got it out of a catalog.'
I took off my jacket, and we hung the knapsack over my shoulders, loosening its straps until it rested snugly against my stomach. Sarah wrapped the money in a plastic garbage bag -- so that I'd have something to leave it in when I reached the plane -- then stuffed the bag inside the pouch. After she finished, I zipped up my parka. There was a definite bulge around my abdomen, but the jacket's bulk obscured it.
'You look a little fat,' Sarah said, patting me on the belly. 'But Jacob'll be the last one to comment on that.'
'I look pregnant is what I look like,' I said. 'I look like you.'
ASHENVILLE was a small, ugly town, just two streets really, Main and Tyler, with a blinking yellow light to mark their intersection. Each of the four corners formed by this junction supported one of the tiny municipality's essential institutions -- the town hall, Raikley's Feedstore, St. Jude's Episcopal Church, and the Ashenville Savings Bank. The rest of the town, a motley group of one- and two-story structures, splayed out around these four establishments, straggling off along either side of Tyler and Main: the post office, the volunteer fire department, a small grocery store, a gas station, a pharmacy, a diner, a hardware store, a laundromat, two taverns, a hunting goods store, a pizza place.
There was a gray uniformity about the buildings, a seemingly universal dilapidation that inevitably depressed me whenever I saw them. Paint peeled from their clapboard sides in huge barklike strips, as if they were molting; cracked windowpanes were covered over with yellowed newspapers; gutters sagged; shutters banged in the wind; and giant black gaps dotted the rooftops, marking the blank spaces left by storm-blown shingles. It was a poor town, a farm town which had seen its greatest days sixty years ago, in the decade before the Depression, a town whose population had steadily decreased in every census since 1930, and which clung now, leechlike, to the land around it, sucking out only enough sustenance to maintain its tenuous hold there, hunched over, careworn, dying.
It was nine-thirty by the time I pulled up in front of the hardware store, above which Jacob lived. Ashenville was quiet, its sidewalks virtually empty. The pale, cloud-filtered light gave it a tired, pallid quality, as if, like many of its inhabitants, it was hung over, entering the new year on wobbly legs, a dry, sticky taste in its mouth. Christmas decorations clung to the light poles lining the street -- green, red, and white tinselly creations: snowmen, Santas, reindeer, candy canes, looking old and limp, beaten down, like things you might see at a garage sale.
Jacob was waiting on the street with Mary Beth, leaning against a parking meter. I was relieved to see him there; it meant I didn't have to enter his apartment, something that always oppressed me, highlighting as it did his material failure in the world. Jacob lived in squalor: it was a poor person's apartment, badly lit and grimy, full of broken-down furniture and leftover food, and the thought of him waking and eating and sleeping there infused me with a disagreeable mixture of pity and contempt.
I'd tried on several occasions to help Jacob, but it never worked. The last time had been seven years before, just after our parents' accident. I'd offered him a part-time job at the feedstore, driving a delivery truck. It was something that, when we were children, had been done by a semiretarded man, a slow-moving giant with mongoloid features who spoke a high-pitched language full of nods and giggles that no one could understand. That was years ago, and I'd forgotten all about it, but Jacob hadn't. He was insulted, angry, as mad at me as I'd ever seen him. For a moment it even seemed like he was going to hit me.
'I just want to help you,' I'd said.
'Help me?' he asked, sneering. 'Leave me alone, Hank. That's how you'll help. Just stay the fuck out of my life.'
And so that, essentially, was what I'd done.
Jacob shoved Mary Beth into the backseat of the station wagon, then climbed in beside me, breathing loudly through his open mouth, as if he'd just sprinted up a flight of stairs. He had a Styrofoam cup full of coffee, and after he shut the door he pulled something wrapped in a greasy paper towel from his jacket pocket. It was a fried-egg sandwich, liberally ketchuped, which he immediately began to eat.
I eased out onto the road, appraising his condition. He was wearing his red jacket, and its bright color highlighted the wanness of his face. He hadn't shaved; his hair was greasy and uncombed. The lenses of his glasses were speckled with dirt.
'You went out with Lou last night?' I asked. I could feel the baby bag hanging like a large, heavy football against my stomach. My jacket was bunched up over it, touching the edge of the steering wheel. It felt obvious to me, absurdly so, and I had to resist the temptation to look down.
Jacob nodded, his mouth jammed full of toast and egg and ketchup.
'Have fun?' I asked.
He nodded again, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.
'Where'd you go?'
He swallowed, took a sip of coffee from the Styrofoam cup. I noticed that there was no steam coming off it; it was cold. The thought of this made me feel a little sick.
'The Palace,' he said. 'In Metamora.'
'You and Lou and Nancy?'
He nodded, and we drove for a while in silence. Mary Beth rode with his head sticking over into the front seat, resting next to Jacob's shoulder. We were outside of town now, moving west. In the distance, swaybacked, its roof caving in, was an old, brown barn, a handful of holsteins clustered around its rear. The day was still and gray, neither particularly cold nor warm, the temperature hovering just below the freezing mark. If it were to snow, as it was forecasted to, it would be wet and sloppy.
I cleared my throat, was about to speak, but then didn't. Jacob finished his sandwich. He balled up the paper towel and set it on the dashboard. I eyed it with distaste.
I had something I wanted to ask him but sensed that he would take it wrong. Finally I just did it. 'You think Lou told Nancy?' I asked.
He shrugged. 'Leave him alone,' he said.
I glanced across at him, trying to read his expression, but he was turned away, staring out the window at the
