Full Dark, No Stars

“By then, of course, I had seen the blood. I have never seen anything like that before, and never want to again. He had bitten himself al over—arms, legs, ankles, even his toes. Nor was that al . It was clear he had been busy with some sort of writing project, but he had chewed up the paper, as wel . It was al over the floor. It looked like paper does when rats chew it up to make their nests. In the end, he chewed his own wrists open. I believe that’s what kil ed him. He certainly must have been deranged.”

Little is known of Mr. James at this writing. Ronald Quarles, the head librarian at the Omaha Public Library, took Mr. James on in late 1926. “He was obviously down on his luck, and handicapped by

the loss of a hand, but he knew his books and his references were good,” Quarles said. “He was col egial but distant. I believe he had been doing factory work before applying for a position here, and he told people that before losing his hand, he had owned a smal farm in Hemingford County.”

The World-Herald is interested in the unfortunate Mr. James, and solicits information from any readers who may have known him. The body is being held at the Omaha County Morgue, pending

disposition by next of kin. “If no next of kin appears,” said Dr. Tattersal , the Morgue’s Chief Medical Officer, “I suppose he wil be buried in public ground.”

BIG DRIVER

- 1 -

Tess accepted twelve compensated speaking engagements a year, if she could get them. At twelve hundred dol ars each, that came to over fourteen thousand dol ars. It was her retirement fund. She

was stil happy enough with the Wil ow Grove Knitting Society after twelve books, but didn’t kid herself that she could go on writing them until she was in her seventies. If she did, what would she find at the bottom of the barrel? The Willow Grove Knitting Society Goes to Terre Haute? The Willow Grove Knitting Society Visits the International Space Station? No. Not even if the ladies’ book societies who were her mainstay read them (and they probably would). No.

So she was a good little squirrel, living wel on the money her books brought in… but putting away acorns for the winter. Each year for the last ten she had put between twelve and sixteen thousand

dol ars into her money market fund. The total wasn’t as high as she might have wished, thanks to the gyrations of the stock market, but she told herself that if she kept on plugging, she’d probably be al right; she was the little engine that could. And she did at least three events each year gratis to salve her conscience. That often annoying organ should not have troubled her about taking honest money for honest work but sometimes it did. Probably because running her gums and signing her name didn’t fit the concept of work as she had been raised to understand it.

Other than an honorarium of at least twelve hundred dol ars, she had one other requirement: that she be able to drive to the location of her lecture, with not more than one overnight stop on the way to or from. This meant she rarely went farther south than Richmond or farther west than Cleveland. One night in a motel was tiring but acceptable; two made her useless for a week. And Fritzy, her cat, hated keeping house by himself. This he made clear when she came home, twining between her feet on the stairs and often making promiscuous use of his claws when he sat in her lap. And although Patsy

McClain from next door was very good about feeding him, he rarely ate much until Tess came home.

It wasn’t that she was afraid of flying, or hesitant about bil ing the organizations that engaged her for travel expenses just as she bil ed them for her motel rooms (always nice, never elegant). She just hated it: the crowding, the indignity of the ful -body scans, the way the airlines now had their hands out for what used to be free, the delays… and the inescapable fact that you were not in charge. That was the worst. Once you went through the interminable security checkpoints and were al owed to board, you had put your most valuable possession—your life—into the hands of strangers.

Of course that was also true on the turnpikes and interstates she almost always used when she traveled, a drunk could lose control, jump the median strip, and end your life in a head-on col ision ( they would live; the drunks, it seemed, always did), but at least when she was behind the wheel of her car, she had the illusion of control. And she liked to drive. It was soothing. She had some of her best ideas when she was on cruise control with the radio off.

“I bet you were a long-haul trucker in your last incarnation,” Patsy McClain told her once.

Tess didn’t believe in past lifetimes, or future ones for that matter—in metaphysical terms, she thought what you saw was pretty much what you got—but she liked the idea of a life where she was not a