"Hey!" Joe shouted.

Morton looked down the hallway. Joe was up and hanging onto the frame of the living room door.

"You not dead yet?" Morton said, and strode back towards Joe.

to the end of her days, Phoebe would never be exactly sure what happened next. She went after Morton to hold him back, or at least delay him long enough for Joe to get to the front door-that much was sure-but as she grabbed his shoulder, Joe stepped or slipped into his path. Perhaps he struck Morton; perhaps Morton stumbled, weak from blood loss; perhaps her weight was enough to topple him. Whichever it was, he fell forward, reaching to snatch hold of Joe even as he did so. As he struck the ground there was a snapping sound, followed by something like a sob from Morton. He didn't get up. His legs twitched for a moment. Then he lay still.

"Oh... my... God..." Joe said, and turning from Phoebe started to vomit violently.

Still afraid Morton could get up again, she approached him cautiously. There was blood seeping from beneath his chest. The fork! She'd forgotten the fork!

She started to roll him over. He was still breathing, but his breaths were like spasms, shaking him from head to toe. As for the fork, it had snapped halfway down its length. The rest, maybe three inches of it, was buried in his chest.

Joe was getting to his feet now, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Gotta get a doctor here," he said, and disappeared into the living room.

Phoebe went after him. "Wait, wait," she said. "What are we going to say?"

"Tell 'em the truth," he said. He pulled the phone out of the debris.

It had been dragged out of the wall. Grimacing with every move he made, he stopped to plug it back in, while Phoebe pulled on her underwear.

"They're going to put me away for this, baby."

"It was an accident," she said.

He shook his head. "That's not the way it works," he went on. "I've had trouble before." "What do you mean?"

"I mean I've got a record," he said. "I would've told you-"

"I don't care," she said.

"Well, you should," he snapped, "because that screws erything." He had found the end of the phone line, but it ended in sheared wires. "It's no good," he said, tossing the phone down amid the trashed furniture. Then he got to his feet, tears filling his eyes. "I'm so sorry... " he said,

"I'm so... sorry."

"You'd better go," she said.

"No.

"I can take care of Morton. You just go." She'd pulled on her skirt, and was buttoning up her blouse. "I'll explain everything, he'll be looked after, then we'll just get out together." There was faulty logic here, she knew, but it was the best she could do. "I mean it," she said. "Get dressed and go!"

She went back to the door. Morton was muttering now, which was an improvement on the spasms: obscenities mingled with nonsense, like baby talk, except that there was blood coming from between his lips instead of milk and spit. "He's going to be all right," she said to Joe, who was still standing in the middle of the wrecked room looking desolate.

"Will you please go? I'll be fine."

Then she was out into the sunlight, and down the stairs. The kids had stopped playing in the street, and were watching from the opposite sidewalk.

"What are you looking at?" she said to them in the tone she took to latecomers at the surgery. The group dispersed in seconds, and she hurried along to the phone at the corner of the street, not daring to look back for fear she'd see Joe slipping away.

"I bet you thought this was a quiet little town, right?" Will Hannick said, sliding another glass of brandy the way of his sober-suited customer. "Is it not?" the fellow said.

He had the look of money about him, Will thought; an ease that only came when people had dollars in their pocket. Hopefully, he'd spend a few of them on brandies before he moved on.

"There's been some kind of bloodshed across town this afternoon."

"Is that so?"

"A guy comes in all the time, Morton Cobb, sits at the table by the wall there," Will pointed to it, "been carted off to the hospital with a fork in his heart."

"A fork?" said the man, plucking at his perfect moustaches.

"That's what I said, I said a fork, just like that, a fork, I said. Big man too' "

"Hmm," said the man, pushing the glass back in Will's direction.

"Another?"

"Why not? We should celebrate."

"What are we celebrating?"

"How,about bloodshed?" the fellow replied. This struck Will as tasteless, which fact must have registered on his long, dolorous features, because the drinker said, "I'm Sorry. I misunderstood. Is this fellow Cobb a friend of yours?" :'Not exactly."

'So this attempt upon his life, by the wife, or her lover, her black lover-2'

"You've heard."

"Of course I've heard. This bloody, scandalous deed is really just something to be... savored, isn't it?" He sipped his brandy. "No?"

Will didn't reply. The fellow was spooking him a little, truth to tell.

"Have I offended you?" he asked Will.

"No.

"You are a professional bartender, am I right?"

"I own this place," Will said.

"All the better. You see a man like yourself is in a very influential position. This is a place where people congregate, and when people congregate, what do they do?"

Will shrugged.

"they tell tales," came the reply.

"I really don't-2'

"Please, Mr.-"

"Hamrick."

"Mr. Hamrick, I've been in bars in cities across the world-Shanghai, St. Petersburg, Constantinople-and the great bars, the ones that become legendary, they have one thing in common, and it isn't the perfect vodka martini. It's a fellow like you. A disseminator."

"A what?"

"One who sows seeds."

"You got me wrong, mister," Will said with a little gfin "You want Doug Kenny at Farm Supplies."

The brandy drinker didn't bother to laugh. "Personally," he said, "I hope Morton Cobb dies. It'll make a much better story." Will pursed his lips. "Go on, admit it," the man said, leaning forward, "if Morton Cobb dies of a fork wound to the chest will it not be a far better story for you to tell?" "Well... " Will said, "I guess maybe it would."

"There. That wasn't so difficult was it?" The drinker drained his glass. "How much do I owe you?"

"Nine bucks."

The man brought out an alligator-skin wallet, and from it drew not one but two crisp ten-dollar bills. He laid them down on the counter. "Keep the change," he said. "I may pop back in, to see if you've got any juicy details about the Cobb affair. The depth of the wound, the size of the lover's apparatus-that sort of thing." The brandy drinker smirked. "Now don't tell me it didn't cross your mind. If there's one thing a good disseminator knows it's that every detail counts. Especially the ones nobody'll confess they're interested in., Tell them shameful stuff and they'll love you for it." Now he laughed, and his laughter was as musical as his voice. "I speak," he said, "as a man who has been well-loved."

And with that he was gone, leaving Will to stare down at the twenty bucks not certain whether he should be grateful for the man's generosity or burning the bills in the nearest ashtray.

Phoebe stared at the face on the pillow and thought: Morton's got more bristles than a hog. Bristles from his nose; bristles from his ears; bristles erupting from his eyebrows and from under his chin where he'd missed them shaving.

Did I love him before the bristles? she asked herself. Then: Did I ever love him?

Her musings were curiously detached, which fact she put down to the tranquilizers she'd been given a couple of hours before. Without them, she doubted she would have gotten through the humiliations and interrogations without collapsing. She'd had her body examined (her breasts were bruised and her face puffy, but there was no serious damage); she'd had Jed Gilholly, Everville's police chief, asking her questions about her relationship with Joe (who he was; why she'd done it); she'd been ferried back from the hospital in Silverton to the apartment, and quizzed about what, precisely, had happened where. And finally, having told all she'd could tell, she was brought back to the bedside where she now sat, to sit and meditate on the mystery of Morton's bristles.