Her gaze shifted away. “I’d handle the situation differently. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t leave it at that,” Monks said. “But if you’ve got a better idea than keeping me chained up here playing ‘Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,’ then by all means go for it.”

Her head tilted with a calculating air. “He’s sure right about one thing,” she said. “You reek of self-righteousness.”

The words hit hard, and it must have shown. Monks saw her take on the satisfied look of knowing that she had scored.

He turned away and walked to the door. “You’d better get him to do something about those blisters,” he said. “He’s looking at losing his teeth.”

He stepped out of the cabin, feeling weak, as if he were bleeding internally. He stared off into the gloom in the direction that Glenn had run-his son, who in some ways seemed old far beyond his years, but in other ways would always be very young. There was an ugly irony in that the niche he had finally found, his pride in whatever Freeboot’s cause was, involved madness and violence.

He had tried with Glenn, Monks assured himself. But it had never been enough. The more that Glenn had gotten, the more-and more belligerently-he had demanded, until there was nothing left for Monks to do but build a wall.

At least that was how Monks remembered it.

Hammerhead was waiting for him. They walked back toward the lodge, the shackles clanking around Monks’s ankles.

“Uh, getting back to what you said before,” Hammerhead said.

“What?” Monks said distractedly.

“That tic. In my eye.”

Monks stared at him, then remembered.

“What about it?” he demanded.

“You said it was probably nothing. What does ‘probably’ mean?”

Monks shook his head. “It means you probably don’t want to know.”

“Yeah, I do. Tell me.”

“Well-a tic like that is a classic symptom of a brain tumor. Pressing on the optic nerve.”

“A brain tumor?”

“Sometimes if you catch them very early, they can be lasered out, or treated by radiation. But by the time they start interfering with your vision, they tend to be the size of an egg, and they’re growing fast. They’re pretty tough to handle by then.”

Hammerhead’s square jaw moved from side to side, as if trying to work its way around the concept.

“Of course, I’m not sure,” Monks said. “Keep tabs on the headaches and delusions. If they go away, that’s good. But if you start noticing them more…” He grimaced. Then he added, comfortingly, “There’s other things it could be, too. Maybe a minor stroke. That’s no problem in itself, but it makes you more susceptible to a major one. Then you’re talking the rest of your life in a wheelchair, wearing a diaper.”

Hammerhead’s face had taken on a stunned, flounder-like look.

“Is there, like-I mean-what should I do?”

“A hospital might be able to help,” Monks said. “Or at least tell you how long you’ve got. But if you buy into the antimedical sentiment around here-” He shrugged. “Enjoy yourself as much as you can, is my advice.”

When Monks stepped into the lodge, Freeboot was sitting at the long wooden table with a kerosene lamp before him, poring over an open book. The pose was so like medieval paintings of scholars like Aquinas and Erasmus that Monks wondered if it was deliberately staged.

Freeboot kept reading for another half minute, a pause that also seemed staged.

“I’m a self-educated man,” Freeboot said. “I never had no benefits of formal schooling. But that also means I think for myself. My mind hasn’t been crammed full of poison by people who want you to believe things their way.

“So here’s how I see it. This country’s gotten to be a big, spoiled, overgrown kid. Everybody figures if they got the best toys, that gives them the right to hog the sandbox.”

He watched Monks intently, apparently expecting a response.

“I told you, I’m not interested in discussion while I’m chained up,” Monks said.

Freeboot considered this a moment, then said, “All right.” He dug into a pocket of his jeans and tossed Monks a small key.

Monks sat on the floor and unlocked the cuffs. The clicks as they released were among the most satisfying sounds he had ever heard. He stayed sitting down, rubbing his chafed ankles.

“Does this mean I’m free to go?” he said.

Freeboot smiled thinly. “I’m working on trust, like I told you. I expect the same back from you.” He held his open palm out for the key. Monks tossed it back.

“Let’s hope we won’t need it again,” Freeboot said. “You with me so far?”

“About the country being a spoiled kid?”

“That’s right. What’s it going to take to make it grow up?”

Monks chose his words carefully, very much aware of the shackles still lying on the floor.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think there are simple answers to complex problems.”

“Oh, the problem’s real simple. The system’s set up so all the money’s going to a few rich motherfuckers who’ve already got a ton of it, and it’s being taken from the masses who need it.”

That was putting it simply, all right-a one-line summary of Marxist ideology with a contemporary spin, managing to combine the words motherfuckers and masses.

“And the solution?” Monks said.

“What you got to do with any kid that gets out of line. A good old-fashioned spanking.”

Monks was startled. “Spank America?”

“Tough love,” Freeboot agreed. He smiled again, and this time it seemed to have a leering, even sadistic edge. And yet Freeboot’s brand of tough love seemed to have captivated Glenn, while Monks’s own attempts had failed miserably. Was that the key-some mixture of cruelty and submission?

Freeboot abandoned the philosophic pose, leaning back in his chair and groping on the floor for a bottle of the Monte Alban mescal. He took a long swig and offered it to Monks. Monks shook his head.

“The next question is: How do you bring off something like that?” Freeboot said. “You’d need an army, right?”

Monks was still not clear on what “spanking America ” entailed. He shrugged noncommittally.

“It’s already out there.” Freeboot waved one arm in a wide, circling gesture. “All those working people who got thrown out on the bricks, because somebody sent their jobs to slave-labor factories in China. All those kids coming up poor, the best thing they can ever expect is to put on a Burger King cap. There’s three and a half million homeless people in this country right now, man, and thousands more every month. Another big factory closed down every time you pick up a newspaper. That’s the real, hard-ass result of the big rip-off that’s going on.”

He watched Monks, his gaze challenging.

“I agree that spreading money around differently would help,” Monks said.

“It’s not just about money. Those people have lost their dignity. You give that back to them, they’ll give you dedication.”

“Dignity’s a huge thing to offer.”

“Meaning what? My mouth’s writing a check my ass can’t cash? Let me tell you something else. The necks think the people on the streets are just going to disappear somehow. They’re fucking wrong. Those people are tough, and they’re not stupid.”

“Necks?”

“That’s right. ’Cause when shit starts to happen, somebody’s foot’s going to be on them.” Freeboot crossed his ankles up on the table, displaying his bare soles, dark with dirt and horny with callus. “They think they can hide in their gated communities and nobody can touch them. They’re gonna get spanked hard.” He drank again from the mescal bottle. It seemed that he was prepared to hold forth for quite some time.

“I’d better check on Mandrake,” Monks said, turning toward the bedroom.

“Hey, I took your chains off.” Freeboot said, annoyed. “You’re not going to talk to me?”

Workers of the world, unite, Monks thought. You have nothing to lose but your chains.