Chaingang

“I might as well have been on another planet.” He gestured in the vague direction of Waterworks Hill. “I'm up there in my own little world. I haven't read a paper or heard any news for three or four weeks. I wouldn't know if war had been declared."

“I don't know what to do. I'm not sure why I'm picking on you, but—"

“That's okay. I'm glad you did. I don't know what I can do, but if you need some help—you know—um...” He spread his hands.

“I just thought maybe you'd have some ideas. Something we hadn't thought of. I can't sit here doing nothing. I've talked to everybody. Marty Kerns says nobody saw Sam. He just ... disappeared.” Royce nodded grimly.

“Hmm. Wow,” he said, and made a humming noise of condolence and befuddlement. He had no idea what to say to her.

For her part, she was instantly sorry she'd called him. He seemed irritated that she'd bothered him with her problem after all these years—and he seemed rather ... dirty. Or perhaps she'd built him up in her mind. Royce had been a big jock in school, but he'd gone down the junk road. She was wary of him, and he could read it on her face.

“I'm really glad you thought to call, Mary.” He felt scuzzy and in need of personal grooming. God—he hadn't thought of being “well groomed” in a long time. She was looking at his roughshod appearance, and he knew he wasn't measuring up.

“It's just that I'd heard something—” she looked down “—some gossip about you doing detective work or something. You know—when you were away from town those years. Sam said you had joined the CIA...” She trailed off.

“No!” He smiled, coldly, instantly on guard. “I heard that bullshit too. CIA. Jeezus!” He laughed humorlessly. “Not me, kid."

“So that was why, you know, I thought about calling you...” She let it drop. It felt like it was pointless for them to waste any more of each other's time. She looked tired, but Royce's maleness reacted to her, as he always had. She was a lovely woman, even without makeup, and she was clearly out of it.

“I'll help any way I can, Mary. I thought when I got the note that Bobby was gone.” They were now uncomfortable as strangers.

“Bobby?” She had no idea what he was talking about.

“Bobby Bartel. Didn't you know he has cancer?"

“You're kidding,” she said, dumbly.

“Uh-uh. Heard it a couple months ago from Lyle Garner. You remember Lyle?"

“Sure.” She nodded. Sam and Mary had been married for nearly fifteen years, and it had been sixteen years since she'd been involved with any part of Royce Hawthorne's world.

When Sam Perkins left Waterton to go to college out East, he'd made a new set of friends and locked on to the business track. When he returned, the kids who'd stayed around their hometown were still involved with one another's lives, the Waterton-Maysburg sports rivalry, and Friday night brew parties. Sam told her early in the resumption of their dating that he'd left all of that behind. He didn't mean it in an unkind way; it was merely a fact of maturing. Mary agreed, and had been pleased to grow along with her childhood beau.

Royce typified the kids they'd hung out with in high school. He hadn't changed much: a rugged Marlboro man sort of party guy. He'd been stuck back in his Waterton letter-sweater days, memorizing Coach John's playbook, and pretending he was going to be drafted by the Cowboys.

“JoAnne James is dead, you know?” she heard him say, and she shook her head.

“My God. I hadn't heard."

“She and her husband and two or three kids, living down in Florida. I believe she was shot and they never solved the case.” They sat quietly for a moment. “Do you know about Hal Stahly?” he asked, after a bit. She looked blank. “He's in Vegas. Struck it rich in the auto parts business. Gale Strickland told me he'd lost about a hundred pounds and was married to Helen Swoboda. Used to be a cheerleader at Maysburg."

She smiled and listened to him run down the catalog of their onetime classmates. Royce was tall, rangy, his looks spoiled by a nose that had run up against a number of hard objects over the years. He still had all his hair (though it needed washing), and a jock's flat stomach, but his eyes were cloudy, squinting against the light, and he seemed to have acquired a few nervous habits, like he had a dozen itches at once and couldn't decide which to scratch first.

He was something of a shock to her system after so many years. One of the strange components at work was the strong attraction she'd always felt when she was in Royce's company. Who can explain these things? Her subconscious gave her a guilty nudge as she recalled their silly nicknames for each other. She called him “Buns,” and he called her “L.D.,” for Legs Diamond.

The notion that she might in some way even identify those kinds of feelings was such anathema to her that Mary felt a momentary stab of irritation as it drifted through to the surface of her awareness. She pushed it away, concentrating on Sam, and trying to decide what she should do next in searching for him.