CHAPTER 4
1
The total population of McDowell, Bridger, and Dooling counties amounted to roughly seventy-two thousand souls, fifty-five percent male, forty-five percent female. This was down five thousand from the last full US census, officially making the Tri-Counties an “out-migration area.” There were two hospitals, one in McDowell County (“Great gift shop!” read the only post in the comment section of the McDowell Hospital’s website) and a much bigger one in Dooling County, where the largest population—thirty-two thousand—resided. There were a total of ten walk-in clinics in the three counties, plus two dozen so-called “pain clinics” out in the piney woods, where various opioid drugs could be obtained with prescriptions written on the spot. Once, before most of the mines had played out, the Tri-Counties had been known as the Republic of Fingerless Men. These days it had become the Republic of Unemployed Men, but there was a bright side: most of those under fifty had all their fingers, and it had been ten years since anyone had died in a mine cave-in.
On the morning Evie Doe (so recorded by Lila Norcross because her prisoner would give no last name) visited Truman Mayweather’s trailer, most of the fourteen thousand or so females in Dooling County awoke as usual and started their day. Many of them saw the television reports about the spreading contagion that was first called Australian Sleeping Sickness, then the Female Sleeping Flu, and then the Aurora Flu, named for the princess in the Walt Disney retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. Few of the Tri-County women who saw the reports were frightened by them; Australia, Hawaii, and Los Angeles were faraway places, after all, and although Michaela Morgan’s report from that old folks’ home in Georgetown was mildly alarming, and Washington, DC, was geographically close—not even a day’s drive—DC was still a city, and for most people in the Tri-Counties, that put it in an entirely different category. Besides, not many people in the area watched NewsAmerica, preferring Good Day Wheeling or Ellen DeGeneres.
The first sign that something might be wrong even out here in God’s country came shortly after eight o’clock AM. It arrived at the doors of St. Theresa’s in the person of Yvette Quinn, who parked her elderly Jeep Cherokee askew at the curb and came charging into the ER with her infant twin girls crooked in her arms. A tiny, cocoon-swaddled face rested against each of her breasts. She was screaming like a fire siren, bringing doctors and nurses running.
“Someone help my babies! They won’t wake up! They won’t wake up for anything!”
Tiffany Jones, much older but similarly swaddled, arrived soon thereafter, and by three o’clock that afternoon, the ER was full. And still they came: fathers and mothers carrying daughters, girls carrying little sisters, uncles carrying nieces, husbands carrying wives. There was no Judge Judy, no Dr. Phil, and no game shows on the waiting room TV that afternoon. Only news, and all of it was about the mysterious sleeping sickness, the one that affected only those with the XX chromosome.
The exact minute, half-minute, or second, when sleeping female Homo sapiens stopped waking up and began to form their coverings was never conclusively determined. Based on the cumulative data, however, scientists were eventually able to narrow the window to a point between 7:37 AM EST and 7:57 AM EST.
“We can only wait for them to wake up,” said George Alderson on NewsAmerica. “And so far, at least, none of them have. Here’s Michaela Morgan with more.”
2
By the time Lila Norcross arrived at the square brick building that housed the Dooling County sheriff’s station on one side and Municipal Affairs on the other, it was all hands on deck. Deputy Reed Barrows was waiting at the curb, ready to babysit Lila’s current prisoner.
“Be good, Evie,” she said, opening the door. “I’ll be right back.”
“Be good, Lila,” Evie said. “I’ll be right here.” She laughed. Blood from her nose was drying to a crack-glaze on her cheeks; more blood, from the gash on her forehead, had stiffened her hair in front, forming a small peacock fan.
As Lila exited the car, making way for Reed to slide in, Evie added, “Triple-double,” and laughed some more.
“Forensics is on the way to that trailer,” Reed said. “Also the ADA and Unit Six.”
“Good,” Lila said, and trotted toward the door of the station.
Triple-double, she thought. Ah, there it was: at least ten points, ten assists, and ten rebounds. And that was what the girl had done last night at the basketball game, the one Lila had come to see.
The girl, she thought of her. Her name was Sheila. It wasn’t the girl’s fault. Sheila’s fault. Her name was the first step toward . . . What? She didn’t know. She just didn’t know.
And Clint. What did Clint want? She knew she shouldn’t care, given the circumstances, but she did. He was a true mystery to her. A familiar image came: her husband, sitting at the kitchen counter, staring out at the elms in the backyard, running his thumb over his knuckles, vaguely grimacing. Long ago she’d stopped asking him if he was all right. Just thinking, he always said, just thinking. But about what? And about whom? These were obvious questions, weren’t they?
Lila couldn’t believe how tired she felt, how weak, as if she had dribbled out of her uniform and all over her shoes in the twenty or so paces between the cruiser and the steps. It suddenly seemed as though everything was open to question, and if Clint wasn’t Clint, then who was she? Who was anybody?
She needed to focus. Two men were dead and the woman who had probably killed them was in the back of Lila’s cruiser, higher than a kite. Lila could be tired and weak, but not now.
Oscar Silver and Barry Holden were standing in the main office. “Gentlemen,” she said.
“Sheriff,” they said, almost in unison.
Judge Silver was older than God and shaky on his pins, but suffered from no shortage in the brains department. Barry Holden eked out a living for himself and his tribe of female dependents (one wife, four daughters) writing wills and contracts, and negotiating insurance settlements (mostly with that notorious dragon Drew T. Barry of Drew T. Barry Indemnity). Holden was also one of the half a dozen Tri-County lawyers who served as public defenders on a rotating basis. He was a good guy, and it didn’t take long for Lila to explain what she wanted. He was agreeable, but needed a retainer. He said a dollar would do.
“Linny, do you have a dollar?” Lila asked her dispatcher. “It might look funny if I hired representation for a woman I’ve arrested on two counts of capital murder.”
Linny handed Barry a dollar. He put it in his pocket, turned to Judge Silver, and spoke in his best courtroom voice. “Having been retained by Linnette Mars on behalf of the prisoner Sheriff Norcross has just taken into custody, I request and petition that . . . what’s her name, Lila?”
“Evie, no last yet. Call her Evie Doe.”
“That Evie Doe be remanded to the custody of Dr. Clinton Norcross for psychiatric examination, said examination to take place at Dooling Correctional Facility for Women.”
“So ordered,” Judge Silver said smartly.
“Um, what about the district attorney?” Linny asked from her desk. “Doesn’t Janker get a say?”
“Janker agrees in absentia,” Judge Silver replied. “Having saved his incompetent bacon in my courtroom on more than one occasion, I can say that with complete confidence. I order Evie Doe to be transported to Dooling Correctional immediately, and held there for a period of . . . how about forty-eight hours, Lila?”
“Make it ninety-six,” Barry Holden said, apparently feeling that he ought to do something for his client.
“I’m okay with ninety-six, Judge,” Lila said. “I just want to get her someplace where she won’t hurt herself anymore while I get some answers.”
Linny spoke up. In Lila’s opinion, she was becoming a bit of a pain. “Will Clint and Warden Coates be okay with a guest camper?”
“I’ll handle that,” Lila said, and thought again about her new prisoner. Evie Doe, the mystery killer who knew Lila’s name, and who babbled about triple-doubles. Obviously a coincidence, but an unwelcome and badly timed one. “Let’s get her in here long enough to roll some fingerprints. Also, Linny and I need to take her into one of the holding cells and put her into some County Browns. The shirt she’s got on has to be marked as evidence, and it’s all she’s wearing. I can’t very well take her up to the prison buck-ass naked, can I?”
“No, as her lawyer, I couldn’t approve of that at all,” Barry said.
3
“So, Jeanette—what’s going on?”
Jeanette considered Clint’s opening gambit. “Hmm, let’s see. Ree said she had a dream last night about eating cake with Michelle Obama.”
The two of them, prison psychiatrist and patient-inmate, were making slow circuits of the exercise yard. It was deserted at this time of the morning, when most of the inmates were busy at their various jobs (carpentry, furniture manufacture, maintenance, laundry, cleaning), or attending GED classes in what was known in Dooling Correctional as Dumb School, or simply lying in their cells and stacking time.
Pinned to the top of Jeanette’s beige smock top was a Yard Pass, signed by Clint himself. Which made him responsible for her. That was okay. She was one of his favorite patient-inmates (one of his pets, Warden Janice Coates would have said, annoyingly), and the least troublesome. In his opinion, Jeanette belonged on the outside—not in another institution, but outside altogether, walking free. It wasn’t an opinion he would have offered to Jeanette, because what good would that do her? This was Appalachia. In Appalachia, you didn’t get a free pass on murder, it didn’t matter if it was second degree. His belief in Jeanette’s lack of culpability in the death of Damian Sorley was the sort of thing that he wouldn’t express to anyone except his wife and maybe not even to her. Lately Lila seemed a little off. A little preoccupied. This morning, for instance, although that was probably because she needed some sleep. And there was that thing Vanessa Lampley had said about an overturned pet food truck on Mountain Rest Road last year. How likely was it that there had been two identical, bizarre accidents months apart?
“Hey, Dr. N., are you there? I said that Ree—”
“Had a dream about eating with Michelle Obama, got it.”
“That’s what she said at first. But she just made that up. She actually had a dream about a teacher telling her she was in the wrong classroom. Total anxiety dream, wouldn’t you say?”
“Could be.” It was one of about a dozen default positions he kept ready for answering patient questions.
“Hey, Doc, you think Tom Brady might come here? Give a speech, sign some autographs?”
“Could be.”
“You know, he could sign some of those little toy footballs.”
“Sure.”
Jeanette stopped. “What did I just say?”
Clint thought about it, then laughed. “Busted.”
“Where are you this morning, Doc? You’re doing that thing you do. Pardon me for, like, barging in on your personal space, but is everything okay at home?”
With a nasty internal start, Clint realized he was no longer sure that was true, and Jeanette’s unexpected question—her insight—was unsettling. Lila had lied to him. There hadn’t been a crash on the Mountain Rest Road, not last night. He was suddenly sure of that.
“Everything’s fine at home. What’s the thing I do?”
She made a frowny face and held up her fist and ran her thumb back and forth over her knuckles. “When you do that, I know you’re out there picking daisies or something. It’s almost like you’re remembering a fight you were in.”
“Ah,” said Clint. That was too close for comfort. “Old habit. Let’s talk about you, Jeanette.”
“My favorite subject.” It sounded good, but Clint knew better. If he let Jeanette lead the conversation, they would spend this entire hour in the sun talking about Ree Dempster, Michelle Obama, Tom Brady, and whomever else she could free associate. When it came to free association, Jeanette was a champ.
“Okay. What did you dream about last night? If we’re going to talk about dreams, let’s talk about yours, not Ree’s.”
“I can’t remember. Ree asked me, and I told her the same thing. I think it’s that new med you put me on.”
“So you did dream something.”
“Yeah . . . probably . . .” Jeanette was looking at the vegetable garden rather than at him.
“Could it have been about Damian? You used to dream about him quite a bit.”
“Sure, about how he looked. All blue. But I haven’t had the blue man dream in a long time. Hey, do you remember that movie, The Omen? About the son of the devil? That kid’s name was Damien, too.”
“You have a son . . .”
“So?” She was looking at him now, and a bit distrustfully.
“Well, some people might say your husband was the devil in your life, which would make Bobby—”
“The son of the devil! Omen Two!” She pealed laughter, pointing a finger at him. “Oh, that’s too funny! Bobby is the sweetest kid in the world, takes after my momma’s side of the family. He comes all the way from Ohio with my sister to see me every other month. You know that.” She laughed some more, a sound not common to this fenced and strictly monitored acre of ground, but very sweet. “You know what I’m thinking?”
“Nope,” Clint said. “I’m a shrink, not a mind-reader.”
“I’m thinking this might be a classic case of transference.” She wiggled the first two fingers of each hand in the air to make quotation marks around the key word. “As in you’re worried that your boy is the devil’s child.”
It was Clint’s turn to laugh. The idea of Jared as the devil’s anything, Jared who brushed mosquitoes off his arms rather than swatting them, was surreal. He worried about his son, yes, but not that he would ever wind up behind bars and barbed wire, like Jeanette and Ree Dempster and Kitty McDavid and the ticking time-bomb known as Angel Fitzroy. Hell, the kid didn’t even have enough nerve to ask Mary Pak to go to the Spring Dance with him.
“Jared’s fine, and I’m sure your Bobby is, too. How’s that medication doing with your . . . what do you call them?”
“My blurries. That’s when I can’t see people just right, or hear them just right. It’s all kinds of better since I started the new pills.”
“You’re not just saying that? Because you have to be honest with me, Jeanette. You know what I always say?”
“HPD, honesty pays dividends. And I’m being straight with you. It’s better. I sometimes still get down, though, then I start to drift and the blurries come back.”
“Any exceptions? Anyone who comes through loud and clear even when you’re depressed? And can maybe bootstrap you out of it?”
“Bootstrap! I like that. Yeah, Bobby can. He was five when I came in here. Twelve now. He plays keyboards in a group, can you believe that? And sings!”
“You must be very proud.”
“I am! Yours must be about the same age, right?”
Clint, who knew when one of his ladies was trying to turn the conversation, made a noncommittal noise instead of telling her that Jared was approaching voting age, weird as that seemed to him.
She thumped his shoulder. “Make sure he’s got condoms.”
From the umbrella-shaded guard post near the north wall, an amplified voice blared, “PRISONER! NO PHYSICAL CONTACT!”
Clint tossed the officer a wave (hard to tell because of the loudhailer, but he thought the uni in the lawn chair was that asshole Don Peters) to show all was cool and then said to Jeanette, “Now I’m going to have to discuss this with my therapist.”
She laughed, pleased.
It occurred to Clint, not for the first time, that if circumstances were entirely different, he would have wanted Jeanette Sorley for a friend.
“Hey, Jeanette. You know who Warner Wolf is?”
“Let’s go to the videotape!” she responded promptly, a spot-on imitation. “Why do you ask?”
It was a good question. Why did he ask? What did an old sportscaster have to do with anything? And why should it matter if his pop culture frame of reference (like his physique) was a little out of date?
Another, better question: Why had Lila lied to him?
“Oh,” Clint said, “someone mentioned him. Struck me funny.”
“Yeah, my dad loved him,” Jeanette said.
“Your dad.”
A snatch of “Hey Jude” came from his phone. He looked at the screen and saw his wife’s picture. Lila, who should have been deep in dreamland; Lila, who might or might not remember Warner Wolf; Lila, who had lied.
“I need to take this,” he told Jeanette, “but I’ll keep it brief. You should stroll over there to the garden, pull some weeds, and see if you can remember what you dreamed last night.”
“Little privacy, got it,” she said, and walked toward the garden.
Clint waved toward the north wall again, indicating to the officer that Jeanette’s move was sanctioned, then pushed ACCEPT. “Hey, Lila, what’s going on?” Aware as it came out of his mouth that it was how he had started many a patient conference.
“Oh, the usual,” she said. “Meth lab explosion, double homicide, doer in custody. I collared her strolling up Ball’s Hill pretty much in her altogether.”
“This is a joke, right?”
“Afraid not.”
“Holy shit, are you okay?”
“Running on pure adrenalin, but otherwise fine. I need some help, though.”
She filled in the details. Clint listened, not asking questions. Jeanette was working herself along a row of peas, pulling weeds and singing something cheerful about going uptown to the Harlem River to drown. At the north end of the prison yard, Vanessa Lampley approached Don Peters’s lawn chair, spoke to him, then took the seat as Don trudged toward the admin wing, head down like a kid who has been called to the principal’s office. And if anyone deserved to be called in, it was that bag of guts and waters.
“Clint? Are you still there?”
“Right here. Just thinking.”
“Just thinking,” Lila repeated. “About what?”
“About the process.” The way she pressed him took Clint aback. It almost seemed like she had been mocking him. “In theory it’s possible, but I’d have to check with Janice—”
“Then do it, please. I can be there in twenty minutes. And if Janice needs convincing, convince her. I need help here, Clint.”
“Calm down, I’ll do it. Fear of self-harm is a valid concern.” Jeanette had finished one row and was working her way back toward him along the next. “I’m just saying that ordinarily, you’d take her to St. Terry’s first to get her checked out. Sounds like she whammed her face pretty good.”
“Her face isn’t my immediate concern. She nearly tore one man’s head off, and stuck another guy’s head through a trailer wall. Do you really think I should put her in an exam room with some twenty-five-year-old resident?”
He wanted to ask again if she was all right, but in her current mood she’d go ballistic, because when you were tired and ragged, that’s what you did, lashed out at the person who was safe. Sometimes—often, even—Clint resented having to be the safe one. “Perhaps not.”
Now he could hear street sounds. Lila had left the building. “It’s not just that she’s dangerous, and it’s not just that she’s off her gourd. It’s like—Jared would say, ‘My Spidey Sense is tingling.’ ”
“Maybe when he was seven.”
“I’ve never seen her before in my life, I’d swear to that on a pile of Bibles, but she knows me. She called me by name.”
“If you’re wearing your uniform shirt, and I assume you are, there’s a name tag on your breast pocket.”
“Right, but all it says is NORCROSS. She called me Lila. I have to get off the phone. Just tell me that when I get there with her, the welcome mat will be out.”
“It will be.”
“Thank you.” He heard her clear her throat. “Thank you, honey.”
“You’re welcome, but you have to do something for me. Don’t bring her alone. You’re beat.”
“Reed Barrows will be driving. I’m riding shotgun.”
“Good. Love you.”
There was the sound of a car door opening, probably Lila’s cruiser. “Love you, too,” she said, and clicked off.
Was there a slight hesitation there? No time to think about that now, to pick at it until it turned into something it probably wasn’t, which was just as well.
“Jeanette!” And when she turned to him: “I’m going to have to cut our session short. Something has come up.”
4
Bullshit was Coates’s arch-enemy. Not that most people were friends with it, or even liked it, but they put up with bullshit, came to an understanding with it, and they dished up their fair share. Warden Janice Tabitha Coates didn’t bullshit. It wasn’t in her disposition and it would have been counterproductive anyway. Prison was basically a bullshit factory, call it the Dooling Bullshit Manufacturing Facility for Women, and it was her job to keep production from raging out of control. Waves of bullshit memos came down from the state that demanded she simultaneously cut costs and improve services. A steady stream of bullshit flowed from the courts—inmates and defense attorneys and prosecutors bickering over appeals—and Coates always seemed to get drawn in somehow. The health department loved to drop in for bullshit inspections. The engineers who came to repair the prison electrical grid always promised that this would be the last time—but their promises were bullshit. The grid kept right on crashing.
And the bullshit didn’t stop while Coates was at home. Even as she slept, it piled up, like a drift in a snowstorm, a brown drift made of bullshit. Like Kitty McDavid going nuts, and the two physicians’ assistants picking the exact same morning to go AWOL. That stinking pile had been waiting for her the moment she stepped through the door.
Norcross was a solid shrink, but he produced his share of bovine excrement, too, requesting special treatments and dispensations for his patients. His chronic failure to recognize that the vast majority of his patients, the inmates of Dooling, were themselves bullshit geniuses, women who had spent their lives nurturing bullshit excuses, was almost touching, except that it was Coates who had to wield the shovel.
And hey, underneath their bullshit, some of the women did have real reasons. Janice Coates wasn’t stupid and she wasn’t heartless. Lots of the women of Dooling were, above all else, luckless. Coates knew that. Bad childhoods, horrible husbands, impossible situations, mental illnesses medicated with drugs and alcohol. They were victims of bullshit as well as purveyors of it. However, it wasn’t the warden’s job to sort any of that out. Pity could not be allowed to compromise her duty. They were here, and she had to take care of them.
Which meant she had to deal with Don Peters, who appeared before her now, the bullshit artist supreme, just finishing his latest bullshit story: the honest workingman, unfairly accused.
When he had put on the finishing touches, she said, “Don’t give me that union crap, Peters. One more complaint and you’re out. I got one inmate saying you grabbed her breast, I’ve got another saying you squeezed her butt, and I’ve got a third saying you offered her half a pack of Newports to suck you off. The union wants to go to the mattresses for you, that’s their choice, but I don’t think they will.”
The squat little officer sat on her couch with his legs spread wide (as if his basket was something she wanted to look at) and his arms crossed. He blew at the Buster Brown bangs that hung down over his eyebrows. “I never touched anyone, Warden.”
“No shame in resigning.”
“I’m not quitting, and I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done!” Red suffused his normally pale cheeks.
“Must be nice. I’ve got a list of things I’m ashamed of. Signing off on your application in the first place is near the top of it. You’re like a booger I can’t get off my finger.”
Don’s lips took on a crafty twist. “I know you’re trying to make me angry, Warden. It won’t work.”
He wasn’t stupid, was the thing. That was the reason no one had nailed him so far. Peters was canny enough to make his moves when no one else was around.
“Guess not.” Coates, seated on the edge of her desk, pulled her bag into her lap. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.”
“You know they lie. They’re criminals.”
“Sexual harassment’s a crime, too. You’ve had your last warning.” Coates rummaged in her bag, searching for her ChapStick. “By the way, only half a pack? Come on, Don.” She yanked out tissues, her lighter, her pill bottle, her iPhone, wallet, and finally found what she was looking for. The cap had fallen off and the stick was flecked with bits of lint. Janice used it anyway.
Peters had fallen silent. She looked at him. He was a punk and an abuser and incredibly fortunate that another officer hadn’t stepped forward as a witness to any of the abuses. She’d get him, though. She had time. Time was, in fact, another word for prison.
“What? You want some?” Coates held out her ChapStick. “No? Then get back to work.”
The door rattled in the frame when he slammed it and she heard him thudding flat-footed out of the reception area, like a teen doing a tantrum. Satisfied that the disciplinary session had gone about as she had expected, Coates returned to the matter of her linty ChapStick, and began to stir around in her bag for the cap.
Her phone vibrated. Coates set her bag on the floor and walked to the vacated couch. She considered how much she disliked the person whose ass had last been planted there, and sat down to the left of the dent in the center cushion.
“Hi, Mom.” Behind Michaela’s voice was the sound of other voices, some shouting, and sirens.
Coates put aside her initial impulse to skin her daughter for not calling in three weeks. “What’s wrong, honey?”
“Hold on.”
The sounds became muffled and Janice waited. Her relationship with her daughter had had its ups and downs. Michaela’s decision to quit law school and go into television journalism (as big a bullshit factory in its own way as the prison system, and probably just as full of criminals) had been a valley, and the nose job that followed had taken them way, way below sea level for awhile. There was a persistence to Michaela, however, which Coates had gradually come to respect. Maybe they weren’t as different as it seemed. Daffy Magda Dubcek, the local woman who had babysat for Janice when Michaela was a toddler, once said, “She’s like you, Janice! She cannot be denied! Tell her one cookie, she make it her personal mission to eat three. Smile and giggle and sweet you up until you cannot say no.”
Two years ago, Michaela had been doing puff pieces on the local news. Now she was on NewsAmerica, where her rise had been rapid.
“Okay,” Michaela said, coming back on. “Had to get someplace quiet. They’ve got us outside the CDC. I can’t talk long. Have you been watching the news?”
“CNN, of course.” Janice loved this jab and never missed a chance to use it.
This time Michaela ignored it. “You know about the Aurora Flu? The sleeping sickness?”
“Something on the radio. Old women who can’t wake up in Hawaii and Australia—”
“It’s real, Mom, and it’s any woman. Elderly, infant, young, middle-aged. Any woman who sleeps. So: don’t go to sleep.”
“Pardon?” Something wasn’t tracking here. It was eleven in the morning. Why would she go to sleep? Was Michaela saying she should never sleep again? If so, it wasn’t going to work out. Might as well ask her to never pee again. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Turn on the news, Mom. Or the radio. Or the Internet.”
The impossibility lingered between them on the line. Janice didn’t know what else to say except, “Okay.” Her kid might be wrong, but her kid wouldn’t lie to her. Bullshit or not, Michaela believed it was the truth.
“The scientist I just talked to—she’s with the feds, and a friend, I trust her—is on the inside. She says that they’re estimating that eighty-five percent of women in the Pacific standard time zone are already out. Don’t tell anyone that, it’s going to be pandemonium as soon as it hits the Internet.”
“What do you mean out?”
“I mean, they aren’t waking up. They’re forming these—they’re like cocoons. Membranes, coatings. The cocoons seem to be partly cerumen—ear wax—partly sebum, which is the oily stuff on the sides of your nose, partially mucus, and . . . something else no one understands, some kind of strange protein. It reforms almost as quick as it comes off, but don’t try to take it off. There have been—reactions. Okay? Do-not-attempt-to-remove-the-stuff.” On this last matter, which made no more sense than the rest, Michaela seemed uncharacteristically severe. “Mom?”
“Yes, Michaela. I’m still right here.”
Her daughter sounded excited now—keen. “It started happening between seven and eight our time, between four and five Pacific standard, which is why the women west of us got hit so hard. So we’ve got all day. We’ve got just about a full tank.”
“A full tank—of waking hours?”
“Bingo.” Michaela heaved a breath. “I know how crazy this thing sounds, but I am in no way kidding. You’ve got to keep yourself awake. And you’re going to have some hard decisions to make. You need to figure out what you’re going to do with your prison.”
“With my prison?”
“Your inmates are going to start falling asleep.”
“Oh,” Janice said. She suddenly did see. At least sort of.
“Have to go, Mom, I’ve got a stand-up and the producer’s going crazy. I’ll call when I can.”
Coates stayed on the couch. Her gaze found the framed photograph on her desk. It showed the late Archibald Coates, grinning in surgical scrubs, holding his infant daughter in the crook of his arm. Dead of a coronary at the impossibly unfair age of thirty, Archie had been gone now almost as long as he had lived. In the picture there was a bit of whitish afterbirth on Michaela’s forehead, like a scrap of web. The warden wished she’d told her daughter that she loved her—but the regret only held her still for a few seconds. There was work to be done. It had taken a few seconds to get a hold on the problem, but the answer—what to do with the women of the prison—did not seem to Janice to be multiple-choice. For as long as she could, she needed to keep on doing what she had always done: maintain order and keep ahead of the bullshit.
She told her secretary, Blanche McIntyre, to buzz their PAs again at their homes. After that, Blanche was to call Lawrence Hicks, the vice-warden, and inform him that his recovery time from wisdom tooth surgery was being curtailed; he was required on the premises immediately. Finally, she needed Blanche to notify each of the officers on duty in turn: due to the national situation everyone was pulling a double. The warden had serious concerns about whether or not she could count on the next rotation coming in. In an emergency people were reluctant to leave their loved ones.
“What?” Blanche asked. “The national situation? Did something happen to the president? And you want everyone for a double? They aren’t going to like that.”
“I don’t care what they like. Turn on the news, Blanche.”
“I don’t understand. What’s happening?”
“If my daughter’s right, you’ll know it when you hear it.”
Next, Coates went to get Norcross in his office. They were going to check on Kitty McDavid together.
5
Jared Norcross and Mary Pak were sitting on the bleachers during Period Three PE, their tennis rackets put aside for the time being. They and a bunch of Silly Sophomores on the lower tiers were watching two seniors playing on the center court, grunting like Monica Seles with each hit. The skinny one was Curt McLeod. The muscular redhead was Eric Blass.
My nemesis, Jared thought.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said.
Mary looked at him, eyebrows raised. She was tall, and (in Jared’s opinion) perfectly proportioned. Her hair was black, her eyes were gray, her legs long and tanned, her lowtops immaculately white. Immaculate was, in fact, the best word for her. In Jared’s opinion. “And that would be apropos what?”
As if you don’t know, Jared thought. “Apropos you going to see Arcade Fire with Eric.”
“Um.” She appeared to think this over. “Lucky you’re not the one going with him, then.”
“Hey, remember the field trip to the Kruger Street Toy and Train Museum? Back in fifth grade?”
Mary smiled and brushed her hand, the nails painted a velvety blue, through her long hair. “How could I forget? We almost didn’t get in, because Billy Mears wrote some nasty ink on his arm. Mrs. Colby made him stay on the bus with the driver, the one who had the stutter.”
Eric lofted the ball, went up on his toes, and whacked a killer serve that barely topped the net. Instead of trying to return it, Curt flinched back. Eric raised his arms like Rocky at the top of the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps. Mary clapped. Eric turned toward her and bowed.
Jared said, “It was MRS. COLBY EATS THE BIG ONE on his arm, and Billy didn’t put it there. Eric did. Billy was fast asleep when he did it, and kept his mouth shut because staying on the bus was better than getting beaten up by Eric at a later date.”
“So?”
“So Eric’s a bully.”
“Was a bully,” Mary said. “Fifth grade was a long time ago.”
“As the twig is bent, so the bough is shaped.” Jared heard the pedantic tone his father sometimes adopted, and would have taken it back if he could.
Mary’s gray eyes were on him, appraising. “Meaning what?”
Stop, Jared told himself, just shrug and say whatever and let it go. He often gave himself such good advice, and his mouth usually overrode him. It did so now.
“Meaning people don’t change.”
“Sometimes they do. My dad used to drink too much, but he stopped. He goes to AA meetings now.”
“Okay, some people do. I’m glad your father was one of them.”
“You better be.” The gray eyes were still fixed on him.
“But most people don’t. Just think about it. The fifth grade jocks—like Eric—are still the jocks. You were a smart kid then, and you’re a smart kid now. The kids who got in trouble in fifth are still getting in trouble in eleventh and twelfth. You ever see Eric and Billy together? No? Case closed.”
This time Curt managed to handle Eric’s serve, but the return was a bunny and Eric was vulturing the net, almost hanging over it. His return—a clear net-foul—hit Curt in the belt-buckle. “Quit it, dude!” Curt shouted. “I might want to have kids someday!”
“Bad idea,” Eric said. “Now go get that, it’s my lucky ball. Fetch, Rover.”
While Curt shuffled sulkily to the chainlink fence where the ball had come to rest, Eric turned to Mary and took another bow. She gave him a hundred-watt smile. It stayed on when she turned back to Jared, but the wattage dimmed considerably.
“I love you for wanting to protect me, Jere, but I’m a big girl. It’s a concert, not a lifelong commitment.”
“Just . . .”
“Just what?” The smile was all gone now.
Just watch out for him, Jared wanted to say. Because writing on Billy’s arm was a minor thing. A grade-school thing. In high school there have been ugly locker room stunts I don’t want to talk about. In part, because I never put a stop to any of them. I just watched.
More good advice, and before his traitor mouth could disregard it, Mary swiveled in her seat, looking toward the school. Some movement must have caught her eye, and now Jared saw it, too: a brown cloud lifting off from the gymnasium roof. It was large enough to scare up the crows that had been roosting in the oaks surrounding the faculty parking lot.
Dust, Jared thought, but instead of dissipating, the cloud banked sharply and headed north. It was flocking behavior, but those weren’t birds. They were too small even for sparrows.
“An eclipse of moths!” Mary exclaimed. “Wow! Who knew?”
“That’s what you call a whole bunch of them? An eclipse?”
“Yes! Who knew they flocked? And most moths leave daytime to the butterflies. Moths are fly-by-nights. At least, usually.”
“How do you know all that?”
“I did my eighth grade science project on moths—mott, in Old English, meaning maggot. My dad talked me into doing it, because I used to be scared of them. Someone told me when I was little that if you got the dust from a moth’s wings in your eyes, you’d go blind. My dad said that was just an old wives’ tale, and if I did my science project on moths, I might be able to make friends with them. He said that butterflies are the beauty queens of the insect world, they always get to go to the ball, and the poor moths are the ones who get left behind like Cinderella. He was still drinking then, but it was a fun story just the same.”
Those gray eyes on him, daring him to disagree.
“Sure, cool,” Jared said. “Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Make friends with them.”
“Not exactly, but I found out lots of interesting stuff. Butterflies close their wings over their backs when they’re at rest. Moths use theirs to protect their bellies. Moths have frenulums—those are wing-coupling devices—but butterflies don’t. Butterflies make a chrysalis, which is hard. Moths make cocoons, which are soft and silky.”
“Yo!” It was Kent Daley, riding his bike across the softball field from the tangle of waste ground beyond. He was wearing a backpack and his tennis racket was slung over his shoulder. “Norcross! Pak! You see all those birds take off?”
“They were moths,” Jared said. “The ones with frenulums. Or maybe it’s frenula.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. What are you doing? It’s a school day, you know.”
“Had to take out the garbage for my ma.”
“Must have been a lot of it,” Mary said. “It’s already Period Three.”
Kent smirked at her, then saw Eric and Curt on the center court and dropped his bike into the grass. “Take a seat, Curt, let a man take over. You couldn’t hit Eric’s serve if your dog’s life depended on it.”
Curt ceded his end of the court to Kent, a bon vivant who did not seem to feel any pressing need to visit the office and explain his late arrival. Eric served, and Jared was delighted when the newly arrived Kent smashed it right back at him.
“The Aztecs believed that black moths were omens of bad luck,” Mary said. She had lost interest in the tennis match going on below. “There are people out in the hollers who still believe a white moth in the house means someone’s going to die.”
“You are a regular moth-matician, Mary.”
Mary made a sad trombone noise.
“Wait, you’ve never been in a holler in your life. You just made that up to be creepy. Good job, by the way.”
“No, I didn’t make it up! I read it in a book!”
She punched him in the shoulder. It kind of hurt, but Jared pretended it didn’t.
“Those were brown ones,” Jared said. “What do brown ones mean?”
“Oh, that’s interesting,” Mary said. “According to the Blackfeet Indians, brown moths bring sleep and dreams.”
6
Jared sat on a bench at the far end of the locker room, dressing. The Silly Sophomores had already departed, afraid of getting whipped with wet towels, a thing for which Eric and his cohorts were famous. Or maybe the right word was infamous. You say frenulum, I say frenula, Jared thought, putting on his sneakers. Let’s call the whole thing off.
In the shower, Eric, Curt, and Kent were hooting and splashing and bellowing all the standard witticisms: fuck you, fuck ya mother, I already did, fag, bite my bag, your sister’s a scag, she’s on the rag, et cetera. It was tiresome, and there was so much high school left before he could escape.
The water went off. Eric and the other two slapped wet-footed into the area of the locker room they considered their private preserve—seniors only, please—which meant Jared only had to suffer a brief glimpse at their bare butts before they disappeared around the corner. Fine with him. He sniffed his tennis socks, winced, stuffed them into his gym bag, and zipped it up.
“I saw Old Essie on my way here,” Kent was saying.
Curt: “The homeless chick? The one with the shopping cart?”
“Yeah. Almost rode over her and fell into that shithole where she lives.”
“Someone ought to clean her out of there,” Curt said.
“She must have busted open her stash of Two Buck Chuck last night,” Kent said. “Totally out cold. And she must have rolled in something. She had cobwebby crud all over her face. Fucking nasty. I could see it moving when she breathed. So I give her a yell, right? ‘Hey Essie, what’s up, girl? What’s up, you toothless old cunt?’ Nothing, man. Fuckin flatline.”
Curt said, “I wish there was a magic potion to put girls to sleep so you could bang em without having to butter them up first.”
“There is,” Eric said. “It’s called roofies.”
As they bellowed laughter, Jared thought, That’s the guy taking Mary to see Arcade Fire. That guy right over there.
“Plus,” Kent said, “she’s got all kinds of weird shit in that little ravine she sleeps in, including the top half of a department store mannequin. I’ll fuck just about anything, man, but a drunk-ass homeless bitch covered in spiderwebs? That’s where I draw the line, and that line is thick.”
“My line is totally dotted right now.” There was a wistful note in Curt’s voice. “The situation is desperate. I’d bone a zombie on The Walking Dead.”
“You already did,” Eric said. “Harriet Davenport.”
More prehistoric laughter. Why am I listening to this? Jared asked himself, and it occurred to him again: Mary is going to a concert with one of these sickos. She has no idea what Eric is actually like, and after our conversation on the bleachers, I’m not sure she’d believe me if I told her.
“You would not bone this chick,” Kent said. “But it’s funny. We ought to go by after school. Check her out.”
“Never mind after school,” Eric said. “Let’s cut out after sixth period.”
Whacking sounds as they slapped hands, sealing the deal. Jared grabbed his gym bag and left.
It wasn’t until lunch that Frankie Johnson sat down next to Jared and said the weird female sleeping sickness that used to be only in Australia and Hawaii had shown up in DC, Richmond, and even in Martinsburg, which wasn’t that far away. Jared thought briefly of what Kent had said about Old Essie—spiderwebs on her face—then decided it couldn’t be. Not here. Nothing that interesting ever happened in Dooling.
“They’re calling it Aurora,” Frankie said. “Hey, is that chicken salad? How is it? Want to trade?”