I did. Two steps down, I heard that pressure-equalizing pop deep in my ears. Warmth hit my skin; sunlight shone through my closed eyelids; I heard the shat-HOOSH, shat-HOOSH of the weaving flats. It was September 9, 1958, two minutes before noon. Tugga Dunning was alive again, and Mrs. Dunning’s arm had not yet been broken. Not far from here, at Titus Chevron, a nifty red Ford Sunliner convertible was waiting for me.

But first, there was the former Yellow Card Man to deal with. This time he was going to get the dollar he requested, because I had neglected to put a fifty-cent piece in my pocket. I ducked under the chain and paused long enough to put a dollar bill in my right front pants pocket.

That was where it stayed, because when I came around the corner of the drying shed, I found the Yellow Card Man sprawled on the concrete with his eyes open and a pool of blood spreading around his head. His throat was slashed from ear to ear. In one hand was the jagged shard of green wine bottle he had used to do the job. In the other he held his card, the one that supposedly had something to do with it being double-money day at the greenfront. The card that had once been yellow, then orange, was now dead black.

CHAPTER 10

1

I crossed the employee parking lot for the third time, not quite running. I once more rapped on the trunk of the white-over-red Plymouth Fury as I went by. For good luck, I guess. In the weeks, months, and years to come, I was going to need all the good luck I could get.

This time I didn’t visit the Kennebec Fruit, and I had no intention of shopping for clothes or a car. Tomorrow or the next day would do for that, but today might be a bad day to be a stranger in The Falls. Very shortly someone was going to find a dead body in the millyard, and a stranger might be questioned. George Amberson’s ID wouldn’t stand up to that, especially when his driver’s license was for a house on Bluebird Lane that hadn’t been built yet.

I made it to the millworkers’ bus stop outside the parking lot just as the bus with LEWISTON EXPRESS in its destination window came snoring along. I got on and handed over the dollar bill I’d meant to give to the Yellow Card Man. The driver clicked a handful of silver out of the chrome change-maker he wore on his belt. I dropped fifteen cents into the fare box and made my way down the swaying aisle to a seat near the back, behind two pimply sailors—probably from the Brunswick Naval Air Station—who were talking about the girls they hoped to see at a strip joint called the Holly. Their conversation was punctuated by an exchange of hefty shoulder-punches and a great deal of snorkeling laughter.

I watched Route 196 unroll almost without seeing it. I kept thinking about the dead man.

And the card, which was now dead black. I’d wanted to put distance between myself and that troubling corpse as quickly as possible, but I had paused long enough to touch the card. It wasn’t cardboard, as I had first assumed. Not plastic, either. Celluloid, maybe . . . except it hadn’t exactly felt like that, either. What it felt like was dead skin—the kind you might pare off a callus. There had been no writing on it, at least none that I could see.

Al had assumed the Yellow Card Man was just a wet-brain who’d been driven crazy by an unlucky combination of booze and proximity to the rabbit-hole. I hadn’t questioned that until the card turned orange. Now I more than questioned it; I flat-out didn’t believe it. What was he, anyway?

Dead, that’s what he is. And that’s all he is. So let it go. You’ve got a lot to do.

When we passed the Lisbon Drive-In, I yanked the stop-cord. The driver pulled over at the next white-painted telephone pole.

“Have a nice day,” I told him as he pulled the lever that flopped the doors open.

“Ain’t nothin nice about this run except a cold beer at quittin time,” he said, and lit a cigarette.

A few seconds later I was standing on the gravel shoulder of the highway with my briefcase dangling from my left hand, watching the bus lumber off toward Lewiston, trailing a cloud of exhaust. On the back was an ad-card showing a housewife who held a gleaming pot in one hand and an S.O.S. Magic Scouring Pad in the other. Her huge blue eyes and toothy red-lipsticked grin suggested a woman who might be only minutes away from a catastrophic mental breakdown.

The sky was cloudless. Crickets sang in the high grass. Somewhere a cow lowed. With the diesel stink of the bus whisked away by a light breeze, the air smelled sweet and fresh and new. I started trudging the quarter mile or so to the Tamarack Motor Court. Just a short walk, but before I got to my destination, two people pulled over and asked me if I wanted a ride. I thanked them and said I was fine. And I was. By the time I reached the Tamarack I was whistling.

September of ’58, United States of America.

Yellow Card Man or no Yellow Card Man, it was good to be back.

2

I spent the rest of that day in my room, going over Al’s Oswald notes for the umpteenth time, this time paying special attention to the two pages at the end marked CONCLUSIONS ON

HOW TO PROCEDE. Trying to watch the TV, which essentially got just one channel, was an exercise in absurdity, so when dusk came I ambled down to the drive-in and paid a special walk-in price of thirty cents. There were folding chairs set up in front of the snackbar. I bought a bag of popcorn plus a tasty cinnamon-flavored soft drink called Pepsol, and watched The Long, Hot Summer with several other walk-ins, mostly elderly people who knew each other and chatted companionably. The air had turned chilly by the time Vertigo started, and I had no jacket. I walked back to the motor court and slept soundly.

The next morning I took the bus back to Lisbon Falls (no cabs; I considered myself on a budget, at least for the time being), and made the Jolly White Elephant my first stop. It was early, and still cool, so the beatnik was inside, sitting on a ratty couch and reading Argosy.

“Hi, neighbor,” he said.

“Hi yourself. I guess you sell suitcases?”

“Oh, I got a few in stock. No more’n two-three hundred. Walk all the way to the back—”

“And look on the right,” I said.

“That’s right. Have you been here before?”

“We’ve all been here before,” I said. “This thing is bigger than pro football.” He laughed. “Groovy, Jackson. Go pick yourself a winner.”

I picked the same leather valise. Then I went across the street and bought the Sunliner again.

This time I bargained harder and got it for three hundred. When the dickering was done, Bill Titus sent me over to his daughter.

“You don’t sound like you’re from around here,” she said.

“Wisconsin originally, but I’ve been in Maine for quite awhile. Business.”

“Guess you weren’t around The Falls yesterday, huh?” When I said I hadn’t been, she popped her gum and said: “You missed some excitement. They found an old boozer dead outside the drying shed over at the mill.” She lowered her voice. “Suicide. Cut his own throat with a piece of glass. Can you imagine?”