A short hallway ran off the kitchen to two bedrooms. One had a small bed with a pine night table. There was a painting over the headboard that looked original. It portrayed a Northwoods Harbor empty save for a few small boats. It looked cold and gray.

The second bedroom was nearly empty save for a few guitar cases, a steel folding chair and a small stereo. There was a bathroom between the bedrooms. I peeked inside and saw that it was small and cramped but impeccably clean.

I walked back to the living room and tried to imagine Jesse Barre, a talented guitar maker, daughter of a talented musician, working all day in the shop, then coming up here to relax. When? Did she eat in the studio or up here? What time did she finish? Dinnertime, or later? Was she a night owl? The living room looked hardly lived in. There was no television. No stereo. Just the couch, the rocking chair, a lamp, and the books. Did she spend all day laboring over the machines, the grinding and cutting and sanding and shaping of wood, then retire up here with a glass of wine and a good book?

Not a bad way to go, really. Awfully solitary though. Was she antisocial? Working all day alone, then coming up here alone? How often did this Nevada Hornsby come by?

I looked around the living room for pictures, spotted a small shelf to the left of the rocker. I crossed the room and studied them. There were about seven all together. All very small frames. There was one of Jesse, who at the time looked to be in her early twenties, with a woman who was considerably older. Her mother. Where was Clarence? I studied the pictures and saw two with him, one younger and one probably a couple years ago.

I heard a footstep behind me.

I picked up the picture and started to say to Clarence, who had probably gotten tired of waiting in the car, “So tell me about this picture—”

The blow came out of the darkness, sent pain shooting through my middle. My kidneys flattened, and I instantly sank to my knees. I tried to turn my head, but a walloping smash that felt like a brick being broken over my head toppled me over onto the floor. Instantly, my attacker was on top of me. He had on a mask. A knife flashed in front of my face, and then I felt its razor sharpness against my throat. I could feel his breath on my face. It smelled like beer and hamburger.

“Where is it?” he asked.

I tried to answer but my tongue and brain weren’t connecting. Some kind of wiring had been rearranged.

“Don’t play dumb, motherfucker. I’ll split you in two right here.”

I saw the flash of teeth through the fabric of the mask. I tried again to speak, but nothing came out. I felt blood in my mouth, and there was an enormous pressure against my eyes. My head was going to explode, I was sure of it. Suddenly, he grabbed the neck of my shirt and dragged me across the floor.

“You’re going to tell me where it is or you’re going to fucking die. Those are your choices.”

His voice was raw and angry. He was slightly out of breath. I tried to fight him, tried to raise my arms, but my vision came in bursts, followed by oceans of black. My limbs were numb and useless. I felt myself falling, banging off the stairs, the wall, the handrail leading down into the shop. I saw snapshots of wood and plaster, felt stabs of pain in my back, shoulders, and face. Everything went black. But it was only for a second, because a blurred canvas of colors washed across my brain before I heard his steps and then felt his hands on me again.

There was a roar in my ears, and he pulled me into a sitting position, pinning me against a base cabinet. Now, the roaring was closer and louder. One of my eyes must have already been swollen shut because I couldn’t see anything to my left. All I could see out of the other one was the rounded edge of a woodworking machine. He grabbed my right arm and pulled it toward him. He changed his grip, holding two of my fingers in each hand. He pulled them apart so they formed a V, opening up a path that would go directly into the middle of my hand. My fingers were pulled so far apart I was sure he was going to rip them right out of my hand. I twisted as best I could, heaved against him in a panicked fury, but to no avail. He leaned against me, pinning me still, my hand a helpless sacrifice to whatever he intended to do.

“Where . . . is . . . it?” he asked me again. I could practically hear his teeth grinding as the words choked from his mouth.

I turned my head so my good eye could get a better look, and what I saw sent my body and mind both screaming in panic. The roaring was the high-pitched whine of a glorified scroll saw—a thin blade moving up and down with nearly incomprehensible speed. My hand was pressed onto the cutting surface, the blade already in the middle of the V, just an inch or so away from the webbing of where the fingers met the palm.

Before I could react, he pushed my arm forward and a searing pain shot up my palm to my arm to my brain, and I exploded as I saw the blade sink its teeth into my flesh. I crashed against the man, and we both fell against the saw. I felt the blade rip from my hand, and then the man screamed in pain. We both toppled to the floor. I heard his knife clatter across the concrete just before my head banged against the floor, and then he was on top of me, punching and kicking and the lights were swirling.

I lashed out at him, but my blows caught air or glanced off him harmlessly. I was going to die, a few feet from where Jesse Barre’s blood still stained the concrete—then the color of the flashing lights changed from a throbbing, dull yellow to bright white.

The blows suddenly stopped, and he was off me in a rush. I struggled to get up, but my legs didn’t want to cooperate.

I heard shouting and then glass breaking as the windows and walls of the studio were now awash with incredibly bright light. Maybe this was Heaven. I looked for Jesus, thinking he would wave me in. Instead, I saw a thick wave of gray hair.

“Grandma?” I asked. “Should I come toward the light?”

For just a second, everything started to spin, and the spacious room looked like a dance floor. Only instead of teenagers consumed with the throes of adolescent love, the only thing happening at center stage was a thirty-five-year-old father of two bleeding and overcome with more pain than he’d ever thought possible.

The figure in the light moved and said something I couldn’t understand.

Just before I blacked out for good, I figured out who was calling me to Heaven.

It was Kenny Rogers.

Chapter Ten

The last time I had stitches, I was eight years old. I’d gone ice skating for the first and last time. I took a header and fell flat on my face, my front tooth slicing through my lip. A lip the size of a ping pong ball resulted, with four stitches sealing up the cut.

Now, at Bon Secour Hospital’s emergency room, I got the same number in the middle of my hand.

“That’s a really ugly cut,” the doctor said to me. “How did it happen?”

“I was building a bird feeder, and I got careless,” I said. “I was thinking ahead to the cardinals and blue jays, not about what I was doing.”

He nodded like he heard it all the time.

“You know that older guy you came in with?” the doctor asked. “Where do I know him from?”

I sang, “You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away, know when to run . . .”

The doctor gave a surprised look and then peeked out of the room toward the lobby.

“Hey,” I said, “Are we done here?”

•

Clarence and I walked out to my car in the Bon Secour Hospital parking lot. My hand had a small bandage, but unfortunately not so small that I’d be able to get it past my wife without her noticing. That would be another tussle where I’d end up on the losing end.