“You can’t be serious.”

“Ah, but I am. I’ll admit that I wouldn’t put the matter quite so plainly in a public forum, but I do believe what I’ve been saying. It is not, as Boa would have it, ‘just for effect.’ Indeed, as to whether the system works, recidivism rates show that it does. If prisons are to act as a deterrent to crime, then they must be significantly more unpleasant than the environments available outside of prison. The so-called humane prisons bred career criminals by the millions. Since we began, some twenty years ago, to make the prisons in Iowa distinctly less congenial places to pass the time, the number of released convicts who return on a second offense has been enormously reduced.”

“They don’t return to prison because they leave Iowa the minute they’re released.”

“Splendid. Their behavior outside Iowa is not our concern as members of the state board. If they’ve reformed, so much the better. If not, we’re well rid of them.”

Daniel felt stymied. He considered further objections, but he began to see how each of them might be stood on its head. He found himself admiring Whiting, in a sneaky way. Perhaps ‘admire’ was too strong. There was a fascination, certainly.

But did it (this fascination) derive from the man’s ideas (which were not, after all, so original as to be beyond comparison) or rather from knowing that this was the actual and unique Grandison Whiting, celebrated and vilified in newspapers and on tv? A man, therefore, more real than other men, more vivid, composed of some lordlier substance so that even his hair seemed more red than all other red hair, the lines of his face more crisply expressive, and the inflections of his speech full of larger significances.

There was more talk, along less divisive lines, and even some laughter. Serjeant so far overcame his shyness (not of Daniel but of his father) as to tell a droll and fairly scathing story about his analyst’s extra-marital difficulties. Boa insisted on telling about Daniel’s moment of glory in Mrs. Norberg’s class, and made it sound a much larger moment than it had been. Then, as the talk began noticeably to flag, a servant came in to tell Mr. Whiting that he was wanted on the telephone, urgently, by Miss Marspan.

Grandison Whiting excused himself.

A moment later Serjeant took his leave.

“Well,” said Boa eagerly, “what do you think?”

“About your father?”

“He’s incredible, isn’t he?”

“Yes. He is incredible.” That was all he said, nor did she seem to require more.

The snow had continued steadily through the afternoon. It was arranged that Daniel would ride home in the next car going in to town. He had only a twenty-minute wait at the gatehouse (with a different and much friendlier guard on duty), and there was the further good luck that his ride was in a pick-up in the back of which he could put his bicycle.

At first Daniel couldn’t understand why the driver of the truck was glaring at him with such a degree of unprovoked ill will. Then he recognized him: Carl Mueller, Eugene’s brother, but more to the point, Roy Mueller’s oldest son. It was common knowledge that Carl worked at Worry, but in all his daydreams since he’d started being a friend of Boa Whiting Daniel had never indulged in this one.

“Carl!” he said, slipping off a mitten, holding out his hand.

Carl glowered and kept both gloved hands on the steering wheel.

“Carl,” Daniel insisted. “Hey, it’s been a long time.”

The guard was standing by the open gate, above which a lighted sign commanded them still to WAIT. He seemed to be watching them, though against the dazzle of the truck’s headlights this small contest must have passed unwitnessed. Even so, Carl appeared to have been unnerved, for he conceded Daniel the acknowledgement of grimace.

WAIT changed to PASS.

“Christ, this is some snowstorm, isn’t it?” Daniel said, as they moved ahead in second gear along the path that Worry’s own plows had cleared not long before.

Carl said nothing.

“The first real blizzard of the year,” he went on, twisting sideways in his seat so as to look directly at Carl’s stony profile. “Will you look at it come down.”

Carl said nothing.

“He’s incredible, isn’t he?”

Carl said nothing. He shifted to third. The truck’s rear end swayed on the packed snow.

“That Whiting is incredible. A real character.”

With a slow unsymmetrical rhythm the wipers pushed the wet snow off to the sides of the windshield.

“Friendly, though, once he puts aside his company manners. Not that he ever lets it all hang out, I suppose. You’d know that better than I. But he does like to talk. And theories? More theories than a physics textbook. And one or two of them would set a few people I know back on their fat asses. I mean, he’s not your average run-of-the-mill fiscal conservative. Not a Republican in the grand old tradition of Iowa’s own Herbert Hoover.”

“I don’t know what you’re fucking talking about, Weinreb, and I’m not interested. So why not just shut the fuck up, unless you want to ride that bicycle the rest of the way to town.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’d do that, Carl. Risk a swell managerial position like yours? Risk your exemption?”

“Listen, you god-damn draft-dodger, don’t talk to me about exemptions.”

“Draft-dodger?”

“And you fucking well know it.”

“As I see it, Carl, I performed my service to God and country at Spirit Lake. And while I’ll admit I’m not exactly anxious to go off to Detroit and protect the good people of Iowa from dangerous teen-agers, the government knows where I am. If they want me, all they have to do is write and ask.”

“Yeah. Well, they probably know what they’re up to, not drafting shits like you. You’re a fucking murderer, Weinreb. And you know it.”

“Up yours, Carl. And up your fucking father’s too.”

Carl stopped, too suddenly, on the brake. The truck’s back wheels sloughed to the right. For a moment it looked like they’d do a complete spin, but Carl managed to ease them back on course.

“You put me out here,” Daniel said shrilly, “and you’ll lose that fat job tomorrow. You do anything but take me to my front door, and I’ll have your ass for it. And if you think I can’t, just wait. Just wait anyhow.”

“Chickenshit,” Carl replied softly. “Chickenshit Jewish cocksucker.” But he took his foot off the brake.

Neither said any more till the truck pulled up in front of the Weinreb house on Chickasaw Avenue.

Before getting out of the cab Daniel said, “Don’t pull away till I’ve got my bike out of the back. Right?”

Carl nodded, avoiding Daniel’s eyes.

“Well, then, good-night, and thanks for the lift.” Once more he held out his hand.

Carl took the offered hand and grasped it firmly. “So long, murderer.”

His eyes locked with Daniel’s and it became a contest. There was something implacable in Carl’s face, a force of belief beyond anything that Daniel could ever have mustered.

He looked away.

And yet it wasn’t true. Daniel was not a murderer, though he knew there were people who thought he was, or who said they thought it. In a way Daniel rather liked the idea, and would make little jokes to encourage it, offering his services (in jest) as a hit man. There has always been a kind of glamor in the mark of Cain.

The murder had taken place shortly after Daniel’s release from prison. The father and older brother of his friend Bob Lundgren had been forced off the road on their way back from a co-op meeting, made to lie flat in a ditch, and shot. Both bodies had been mutilated. The stolen car was found the same day in a parking lot in Council Bluffs. The assumption was that the two murders were the work of terrorists. There had been a rash of similar killings all through that winter and spring, and indeed for many years. Farmers, especially undergod farmers, had many enemies. This was the main reason, behind the proliferation of fortress-villages like Worry, for despite their sponsors’ claims they were not provably more efficient. Only safer.