He had opened Vince’s cell on the afternoon of the twenty-third and had put makeshift icepacks on the man’s forehead, chest, and neck. Vince had opened his eyes and looked at Nick with such silent, miserable appeal that Nick wished he could say anything—as he wished it now, two days later, with Mrs. Baker—anything that would give the man a moment’s comfort. Just You’ll be okay or I think the fever’s breaking would be enough.

All the time he was tending to Vince, Billy and Mike were yelling at him. While he was bent over the sick man they didn’t matter, but he saw their scared faces every time he looked up, their lips forming words that all came down to the same thing: Please let us out. Nick was careful to keep away from them. He wasn’t grown, but he, was old enough to know that panic makes men dangerous.

That afternoon he had shuttled back and forth on nearly empty streets, always expecting to find Vince Hogan dead on one end or Jane Baker dead on the other. He looked for Dr. Soames’s car but didn’t see it. That afternoon a few of the shops had still been open, and the Texaco, but he became more and more convinced that the town was emptying out. People were taking paths through the woods, logging roads, maybe even wading up Shoyo Stream, which passed through Smackover and eventually came out in the town of Mount Holly. More would leave after dark, Nick thought.

The sun had just gone down when he arrived at the Baker house to find Jane moving shakily around the kitchen in her bathrobe, brewing tea. She looked at Nick gratefully when he came in, and he saw her fever was gone.

“I want to thank you for watching after me,” she said calmly. “I feel ever so much better. Would you like a cup of tea?” And then she burst into tears.

He went to her, afraid she might faint and fall against the hot stove.

She held his arm to steady herself and laid her head against him, her hair a dark flood against the light blue robe.

“Johnny,” she said in the darkening kitchen. “Oh, my poor Johnny.”

If he could speak, Nick thought unhappily. But he could only hold her, and guide her across the kitchen to a chair by the table.

“The tea—”

He pointed to himself and then made her sit down.

“All right,” she said. “I do feel better. Remarkably so. It’s just that… just…” She put her hands over her face.

Nick made them hot tea and brought it to the table. They drank for a while without speaking. She held her cup in both hands, like a child. At last she put her cup down and said: “How many in town have this, Nick?”

“I don’t know anymore,” Nick wrote. “It’s pretty bad.”

“Have you seen the doctor?”

“Not since this morning.”

“Am will wear himself out if he’s not careful,” she said. “He’ll be careful, won’t he, Nick? Not to wear himself out?”

Nick nodded and tried a smile.

“What about John’s prisoners? Has the patrol come for them?”

“No,” Nick wrote. “Hogan is very sick. I’m doing what I can. The others want me to let them out before Hogan can make them sick.”

“Don’t you let them out!” she said with some spirit. “I hope you’re not thinking of it.”

“No,” Nick wrote, and after a moment he added: “You ought to go back to bed. You need rest.”

She smiled at him, and when she moved her head Nick could see the dark smudges under the angles of her jaw—and he wondered uneasily if she was out of the woods yet.

“Yes. I’m going to sleep the clock right around. It seems wrong, somehow, to sleep with John dead… I can hardly believe he is, you know. I keep stumbling over the idea like something I forgot to put away.” He took her hand and squeezed it. She smiled wanly. “There may be something else to live for, in time. Have you gotten your prisoners their supper, Nick?”

Nick shook his head.

“You ought to. Why don’t you take John’s car?”

“I can’t drive,” Nick wrote, “but thank you. I’ll just walk down to the truck-stop. It isn’t far. & check on you—in the morning, if that’s all right.”

“Yes,” she said. “Fine.”

He got up and pointed sternly at the teacup.

“Every drop,” she promised.

He was going out the screen door when he felt her hesitant touch on his arm.

“John—” she said, stopped, and then forced herself to go on. “I hope they… took him to the Curtis Mortuary. That’s where John’s folks and mine have always buried out of. Do you think they took him there all right?”

Nick nodded. The tears brimmed over her cheeks and she began to sob again.

When he left her that night he had gone directly to the truck-stop. A CLOSED sign hung crookedly in the window. He had gone around to the house trailer in back, but it was locked and dark. No one answered his knock. Under the circumstances he felt he was justified in a little breaking and entering; there would be enough in Sheriff Baker’s petty cash box to pay any damages.

He hammered in the glass by the restaurant’s lock and let himself in. The place was spooky even with all the lights on, the jukebox dark and dead, no one at the bumper-pool table or the video games, the booths empty, the stools unoccupied. The hood was over the grille.

Nick went out back and fried some hamburgers on the gas stove and put them in a sack. He added a bottle of milk and half an apple pie that stood under a plastic dome on the counter. Then he went back to the jail, after leaving a note on the counter explaining who had broken in and why.

Vince Hogan was dead. He lay on the floor of his cell amid a clutter of melting ice and wet towels. He had clawed at his neck at the end, as if he had been resisting an invisible strangler. The tips of his fingers were bloody. Flies were lighting on him and buzzing off. His neck was as black and swollen as an inner-tube some heedless child has pumped up to the point of bursting.

“Now will you let us out?” Mike Childress asked. “He’s dead, ya fuckin mutie, are you satisfied? You feel revenged yet? Now he’s got it, too.” He pointed to Billy Warner.

Billy looked terrified. There were hectic red splotches on his neck and cheeks; the arm of his workshirt, with which he had repeatedly swiped at his nose, was stiff with snot. “That’s a lie!” he chanted hysterically. “A lie, a lie, a fuckin lie! that’s a l—” He began to sneeze suddenly, doubling over with the force of them, expelling a heavy spray of saliva and mucus.

“See?” Mike demanded. “Huh? Y’happy, ya fuckin mutie dimwit? Let me out! You can keep him if you want to, but not me. It’s murder, that’s all it is, cold-blooded murder!”

Nick shook his head, and Mike had a tantrum. He began to throw himself against the bars of his cell, bruising his face, bloodying the knuckles of both hands. He stared at Nick with bulging eyes while he banged his forehead repeatedly.

Nick waited until he got tired and then pushed the food through the slots in the bottoms of the cells with the broomhandle. Billy Warner looked at him dully for a moment, then began to eat.

Mike threw his glass of milk against the bars. It shattered and milk sprayed everywhere. He slammed his two burgers against the graffiti-covered rear wall of his cell. One of them stuck in a splat of mustard, ketchup, and relish that was grotesquely cheery, like a Jackson Pollock painting. He jumped up and down on his slice of apple pie, boogying on it. Apple chunks flew every which way. The white plastic plate splintered.

“I’m on a hunger strike!” he yelled. “Fuckin hunger strike! I won’t eat nothing! You’ll eat my dingle before I eat anything you bring me, you fuckin deaf-mute retard asshole! You’ll—”

Nick turned away and silence immediately descended. He went back out into the office, not knowing what to do, scared. If he could drive, he would take them up to Camden himself. But he couldn’t drive. And there was Vince to think about. He couldn’t just let him lie there, drawing flies.