“At any rate, you never answered my question. Is your new book about the Marsten House?”

“I suppose it is, in a way.”

“I’m pumping you. Sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Ben said, thinking of Susan and feeling uncomfortable. “I wonder what’s keeping Weasel? He’s been gone a hell of a long time.”

“Could I presume on short acquaintanceship and ask a rather large favor? If you refuse, I’ll more than understand.”

“Sure, ask,” Ben said.

“I have a creative writing class,” Matt said. “They are intelligent children, eleventh-and twelfth-graders, most of them, and I would like to present someone who makes his living with words to them. Someone who—how shall I say?—has taken the word and made it flesh.”

“I’d be more than happy to,” Ben said, feeling absurdly flattered. “How long are your periods?”

“Fifty minutes.”

“Well, I don’t suppose I can bore them too badly in that length of time.”

“Oh? I do it quite well, I think,” Matt said. “Although I’m sure you wouldn’t bore them at all. This next week?”

“Sure. Name a day and a time.”

“Tuesday? Period four? That goes from eleven o’clock until ten of twelve. No one will boo you, but I suspect you will hear a great many stomachs rumble.”

“I’ll bring some cotton for my ears.”

Matt laughed. “I’m very pleased. I will meet you at the office, if that’s agreeable.”

“Fine. Do you—”

“Mr Burke?” It was Jackie, she of the heavy biceps. “Weasel’s passed out in the men’s room. Do you suppose—”

“Oh? Goodness, yes. Ben, would you—”

“Sure.”

They got up and crossed the room. The band had begun to play again, something about how the kids in Muskogee still respected the college dean.

The bathroom smelled of sour urine and chlorine. Weasel was propped against the wall between two urinals, and a fellow in an army uniform was pissing approximately two inches from his right ear.

His mouth was open and Ben thought how terribly old he looked, old and ravaged by cold, impersonal forces with no gentle touch in them. The reality of his own dissolution, advancing day by day, came home to him, not for the first time, but with shocking unexpectedness. The pity that welled up in his throat like clear, black waters was as much for himself as for Weasel.

“Here,” Matt said, “can you get an arm under him when this gentleman finishes relieving himself?”

“Yes,” Ben said. He looked at the man in the army uniform, who was shaking off in leisurely fashion. “Hurry it up, can you, buddy?”

“Why? He ain’t in no rush.”

Nevertheless, he zipped up and stepped away from the urinal so they could get in.

Ben got an arm around Weasel’s back, hooked a hand in his armpit, and lifted. For a moment his buttocks pressed against the tiled wall and he could feel the vibrations from the band. Weasel came up with the limp mail sack weight of utter unconsciousness. Matt slid his head under Weasel’s other arm, hooked his own arm around Weasel’s waist, and they carried him out the door.

“There goes Weasel,” someone said, and there was laughter.

“Dell ought to cut him off,” Matt said, sounding out of breath. “He knows how this always turns out.”

They went through the door into the foyer, and then out onto the wooden steps leading down to the parking lot.

“Easy,” Ben grunted. “Don’t drop him.”

They went down the stairs, Weasel’s limp feet clopping on the risers like blocks of wood.

“The Citroën…over in the last row.”

They carried him over. The coolness in the air was sharper now, and tomorrow the leaves would be blooded. Weasel had begun to grunt deep in his throat and his head jerked weakly on the stalk of his neck.

“Can you put him to bed when you get back to Eva’s?” Matt asked.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Good. Look, you can just see the rooftop of the Marsten House over the trees.”

Ben looked. Matt was right; the top angle just peeked above the dark horizon of pines, blotting out the stars at the rim of the visible world with the regular shape of human construction.

Ben opened the passenger door and said, “Here. Let me have him.”

He took Weasel’s full weight and slipped him neatly into the passenger seat and closed the door. Weasel’s head lolled against the window, giving it a flattened, grotesque look.

“Tuesday at eleven?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Thanks. And thanks for helping Weasel, too.” He held out his hand and Ben shook it.

He got in, started the Citroën, and headed back toward town. Once the roadhouse neon had disappeared behind the trees, the road was deserted and black, and Ben thought, These roads are haunted now.

Weasel gave a snort and a groan beside him and Ben jumped. The Citroën swerved minutely on the road.

Now, why did I think that?

No answer.

SEVEN

He opened the wing window so that it scooped cold air directly onto Weasel on the ride home, and by the time he drove into Eva Miller’s dooryard, Weasel had attained a soupy semiconsciousness.

Ben led him, half stumbling, up the back porch steps and into the kitchen, which was dimly lit by the stove’s fluorescent. Weasel moaned, then muttered deep in his throat, “She’s a lovely girl, Jack, and married women, they know…know…”

A shadow detached itself from the hall and it was Eva, huge in an old quilted housecoat, her hair done up in rollers and covered with a filmy net scarf. Her face was pale and ghostly with night cream.

“Ed,” she said. “Oh, Ed…you do go on, don’t you?”

His eyes opened a little at the sound of her voice, and a smile touched his features. “On and on and on,” he croaked. “Wouldn’t you know it more than the rest?”

“Can you get him up to his room?” she asked Ben.

“Yes, no sweat.”

He tightened his grip on Weasel and somehow got him up the stairs and down to his room. The door was unlocked and he carried him inside. The minute he laid him on the bed, signs of consciousness ceased and he fell into a deep sleep.

Ben paused a moment to look around. The room was clean, almost sterile, things put away with barrackslike neatness. As he began to work on Weasel’s shoes, Eva Miller said from behind him, “Never mind that, Mr Mears. Go on up, if you like.”

“But he ought to be—”

“I’ll undress him.” Her face was grave and full of dignified, measured sadness. “Undress him and give him an alcohol rub to help with his hangover in the morning. I’ve done it before. Many times.”

“All right,” Ben said, and went upstairs without looking back. He undressed slowly, thought about taking a shower, and decided not to. He got into bed and lay looking at the ceiling and did not sleep for a long time.

Chapter Six

Fall and spring came to Jerusalem’s Lot with the same suddenness of sunrise and sunset in the tropics. The line of demarcation could be as thin as one day. But spring is not the finest season in New England—it’s too short, too uncertain, too apt to turn savage on short notice. Even so, there are April days which linger in the memory even after one has forgotten the wife’s touch, or the feel of the baby’s toothless mouth at the nipple. But by mid-May, the sun rises out of the morning’s haze with authority and potency, and standing on your top step at seven in the morning with your dinner bucket in your hand, you know that the dew will be melted off the grass by eight and that the dust on the back roads will hang depthless and still in the air for five minutes after a car’s passage; and that by one in the afternoon it will be up to ninety-five on the third floor of the mill and the sweat will roll off your arms like oil and stick your shirt to your back in a widening patch and it might as well be July.