“Or they’re in bed,” Jurgen said, “and enjoy to become intimate with the light on.”

“My favorite place to screw Muriel,” Darcy said, “was on the squeaky glider on the front porch of her mom’s house. Was before we’re married. You ever met Honey?”

Jurgen shook his head.

“You ought to meet her. She’s the smartest girl I ever knew and she’s my sister. No, she use to be the smartest till she married Walter. He hasn’t told you about her?”

Jurgen shook his head again. “You’re married?”

“Sorta. I hardly ever see Muriel.”

“Children?”

“Listen, I spent every night of a year trying to knock Muriel up. It must be a female thing she can’t have children. But if you want to go out with me some night, become the world’s first Kraut rustler, lemme know.”

Jurgen said, “I don’t have a cowboy hat.”

Darcy said, “I got hats, partner. What size you wear?”

Darcy stopped at a bar in Farmington and had a few shots with beer chasers thinking about his sister, wanting to know what she was up to visiting Walter. And who the guy was with her. Darcy hadn’t called Honey since he’d come up here, he was still getting around to it. He said, Shit, go on over there and introduce yourself to your sister and see if the guy’s with the law.

It was dark by the time he left the bar and drove past the house, pulling his trailer.

The car Honey’d been in wasn’t in the driveway. He cut through the field to the barn lot. The only cars here belonged to Walter’s Kraut meat cutters. Shit. He could say to Walter, “My sister come to visit you, huh?” Get him to tell what was going on. He’d take a leak and stop in the barn first. See how the cutters were doing and kid with ’em. Those old guys and their six-inch blades they kept sharpenin’, they could take the coat off a cow, Jesus, like it was buttoned on. There was only one area of their dressing down a cow where he disagreed with them. How they killed it.

Jurgen was watching the guy acting as the stunner this evening, holding a .22-caliber rifle in one hand he pointed at the cow’s forehead, no more than a few inches from the end of the barrel, and shot it and the cow buckled in the chute, not dead but stunned, knocked cold.

Coming up behind Jurgen, Darcy said, “You see the cow lookin’ up at the stunner? She’s thinkin’, The fuck you doin’ with a .22? Use a man’s gun. You want to kill me, fuckin’ kill me, man. Get her done.”

Darcy, still talking, moved up next to Jurgen.

“Cruelty to Animals says you got to stun the girl, so she won’t feel it when you hoist her up head-down and slice through her arteries and look out, take a quick step back. You aren’t wearin’ that rubber apron ’cause it’s rainin’ out. Split her down the middle from asshole to brisket, pull out her tummies, her bladder, her kidneys. Pull the esophagus up through her diaphragm and it frees the organs hooked on to come loose. Take out all the nasty stuff-”

“The offal,” Jurgen said.

“That’s correct, what she was gonna make cow pies out of. Hell,” Darcy said, “all the time you spend in here watchin’, it tells me you’re thinkin’ of becomin’ a butcher once you’re free.”

“I’m free now,” Jurgen said. “What I want to do is go out West and be a cowboy.”

Walter came in while they were talking about going out on a dark night, what Darcy called “the owl hoot trail,” Jurgen serious, wanting to know if they could ride horses, do it as they did out West. Jurgen serious but sounding like he was kidding.

He saw Walter approaching, Walter looking excited for a change, telling them, “Honig was here.”

Jurgen said, “The girl in the car,” to Walter, “your former wife?”

Walter said, “Yes, Honig,” and said to Darcy, “Did you see her?”

“Out there on the road,” Darcy said, “but I wasn’t sure it was her.”

“They came in the back,” Jurgen said, seeing the Pontiac again, “and turned around.”

“My sis,” Darcy said. “I told you about her, Miss Sunshine? Use to be Walter’s old lady.” He said to Walter, “What’d she want, see if you become American yet? I didn’t recognize that guy she had with her.”

“He’s a federal officer,” Walter said, “but is not with the Federal Bureau.” Walter’s hand went into his pocket as he turned to Jurgen. “He’s looking for you and Otto.”

“He told you his name?”

Walter’s hand came out of the pocket holding Carl’s card with the gold star engraved on it.

Jurgen could feel it between his fingers, taking the card and seeing deputy u.s. marshal carlos huntington webster and thinking, You’ve found me.

He would be seeing Carl again and liked the idea of it, talking to him, smiling at things he said, but didn’t want to go back to Oklahoma, not until the war was over and he could look up that marshal who had worked with Carl Webster, the one who’d been a bull rider in the rodeo before he became a marshal. Spend time with guys like that, and Carl Webster. Watch them and learn how to spit. There was a lot of spitting involved with chewing tobacco.

“He didn’t want to search the house, the grounds?”

“It was time for supper,” Walter said. “He was hungry, so he left . . . with Honig.”

Jurgen thought he was going to say “with my Honey.”

“But he’s coming back,” Jurgen said.

“We have to believe that,” Walter said. “He knows you. You must have told him you lived here at one time and of course have friends here?”

Jurgen nodded.

“Yes, he’ll come back. I’m going to speak to Helmut,” Walter said, looking at the three cutters. They stood by the cow now hanging head-down, all three of them sharpening their knives. “Helmut, Reinhard and Artur, excellent men. Helmut will take you with him when he leaves.”

Jurgen said, “I’m going to live with Helmut?”

“No, you’re going to stay with the countess, Vera Mezwa. Helmut will deliver you. I’ll drive into Farmington to call her on a pay phone, tell her you’re coming. I think she won’t mind taking care of you, have something to do for Germany at this depressing time, something that will please her.”

“It sounds like you’re giving me to her as a gift, something to cheer her up.” He thought Walter was smiling but couldn’t be sure. “Is she really a countess?”

“She’s Ukrainian. Married a Polish count.”

“Killed in the war.”

“Yes, a hero. They sent his wife here, trained in military intelligence. Vera Mezwa was the most important German agent in America.”

“How old is she?”

“I don’t know. Older than you.”

“Is she attractive?”

“What difference does it make what she looks like? She’s going to hide you.”

Jurgen believed a woman with the name Vera Mezwa, a countess, a German espionage agent, could not be as boring as Walter. He was ready to move on.