Chaingang

The picture of this man, successful—no, make that suddenly rich—but stuck with a boring and prosaic existence, kept poking her in the imagination. Suppose this man decides to vanish? It happens. He creates another identity, building up a new persona to help cover his tracks. Maybe his is the sort of profession where his work takes him frequently to neighboring towns, and in one of these, far enough from home that he is sure to be unknown there, he becomes John Jones.

He wears a wig. A mustache. Obtains a birth certificate and carefully builds a life that will leave no paper trail. John Jones buys on credit. His wallet begins to fill with plastic rectangles that give his fictitious life identity. He buys a car, which he keeps secreted in the garage of a rental house. He's a salesman on the road for an out-of-town company, so his neighbors seldom see him. But John Jones keeps his lawn mowed, his sidewalks shoveled, his leaves raked—and the people who maintain his life for him always get their money up front. Cash, perhaps, or maybe John opens a small bank account. If he wants to make the effort, he can even take a driver's test and get a driver's license under the new identity. He does everything but pay his taxes, this fellow, but John Jones will cover his tracks so that even the IRS will lose the trail.

Perhaps the house John rents is only a temporary shelter. His intermediate link, a safehouse, his hiding place. This will be the place he runs to when he appears to vanish from the face of the earth. The rent is paid, the lawn is going to seed, the larder is stocked. He has only to settle down and stay out of sight for a few months. Watch a lot of TV. Read. Exercise. Count his money. When the trail is cold, John Jones's neighbors will learn that his company is transferring him, and this persona will now also disappear.

Maybe he has the cosmetic surgery next. Flies to the Cayman Islands, or wherever his offshore bank is. And there, in time, a new and untraceable identity is built.

When you start this kind of stuff, every newly imagined step of the plot feeds on distorted reality. You recall statements out of context, twist meanings, analyze preoccupations and idiosyncracies with a jaundiced perspective. You can get crazy with it.

Mary Perkins realized this kind of thinking was stupid and nonproductive, but alone in the sunny house, she'd found that she'd built a wall of such scenarios, and at the moment all she could do was sit in the middle of it and look out.

She felt her husband's name shudder through her like a cold chill. Sam.

Royce Hawthorne was driving down North Main, the main drag of their little village, heading northwest in the direction of the river. The street ended where Willow River Road and North Main and the busy Market Road all converged at the floodgates.

It never failed to amaze him, how a burg of six hundred and some souls could always have busy traffic on its main streets, but half of the population farmed, and farmers run the road. A lot of the tiny agri-communities also came into town on their way across the river to Maysburg, or on the way back home.

He found his access blocked by a work crew that stretched from the sidewalk in front of the State Farm agency over to General Discount's front door. He could see a line of trucks and cars and RVs of every description lined up on Market, and he knew where they were all going. Market became Jefferson Street there at the three corners, and everybody was angling around to get at the bank's drive-up window.

A fellow party-hearty he knew slightly flashed a big smile at him, and pretended to subtly masturbate the handle of his shovel. One more layabout easing through the workday on those nice hefty county wages.

He wheeled into Dr. Willoughby's parking lot and hung a left on Cotton Avenue, cutting back around the block to edge his way into the line of traffic. When his turn came, he eased across Jefferson, pulling into the large lot that faced the small cluster of overpriced office space that called itself Riverfront Park. He'd always loved that. There were a dozen or so expensive “suites” and “executive spaces,” the big parking lot that the bank and Waterton Drug used for their customers, and a little manicured circle of fescue and Bermuda grass with a couple of concrete bench-and-table setups. All within .22 range of the river, hence Riverfront Park.

He nursed an Oly Light, paper propped on the wheel in front of him, back to the offices, and angled the rearview so he could watch the door of Drexel Commodity Futures.

For once his timing was okay, and after about forty minutes he saw Dave in the doorway speaking to someone, and he was out of the car and moving.

“Yo."

“Hey, Royce. I was just about to get back to you, babe. Sorry!” Big lying smile on his face.

“Yeah. Uh-huh. Dave. We got to talk, hoss."

“Oh, um—wow!” He glanced furtively at his wrist. “I've got to see this guy, babe. Let me call you tonight."