A couple of stock boys in white aprons looked up from their work as I sprinted through their domain, but they wisely did not pursue me. Now I was the beneficiary of that lunatic-identifying radar that I mentioned earlier. As if desperately fleeing men raced wild-eyed through this place a few times every day, the stock boys continued preparing huge carts full of bagged potato chips and Cheez Doodles for delivery to the selling floor.
Passing a cart on which were stacked open cases of canned goods, I borrowed a two-pound can of baked beans, and then another.
At the back of the stockroom, in line with the door by which I had entered, another metal door led to a loading dock and the service alley. I left it ajar, to indicate where I’d gone, and stood with my back against the building wall, a can of beans in each hand.
Such is the absurd and violent nature of my life, that I am not infrequently reduced to battles involving highly bizarre bad guys and unconventional weapons that Mr. Matt Damon and Mr. Daniel Craig never have to deal with when, always solemn and dignified, they save the world in their movies.
I expected the cowboy to follow me as quickly as he was able. He didn’t seem to be a guy who quit easily, nor did he seem to be one who would proceed with caution. When he plunged through the door, eager not to lose track of me, I would bean him with one can and try to smack the gun out of his hand with the other.
After a minute or so, I began to wonder if I had disabled him more than I’d realized. At about the minute-and-a-half mark, the door opened slowly. One of the stock boys warily peeked out, reeled back in pale-faced fright, as if I were Dr. Hannibal Lecter holding two severed heads, and hurriedly returned to his Cheez Doodles.
I put down the cans, jumped off the loading dock, and sprinted toward the north end of the building.
If the cowboy decided to disengage, I needed to get the license number of his truck. I could make an anonymous call to the highway patrol, accuse him of hauling contraband of one kind or another, and give them an excuse to look in that black trailer.
Although my special intuition told me that he had not yet abducted the children, there would almost certainly be something incriminating in his trailer.
I turned the corner, ran along the north wall, and burst into the parking lot, where sunlight dazzled off a hundred windshields. The truck was gone.
I hurried among the parked cars, slipped between two trees in the row of tall eucalyptuses at the end of the lot, halted on the sidewalk, and looked both ways along the street. No red, black, and sparkly silver ProStar+.
From a distance came a siren.
After crossing the street, I headed south, glancing in shop windows, just a young guy off work, with a day to kill, not at all the kind of hooligan who would terrorize innocent grocery shoppers with a ferocious barrage of fruit.
I made a mental note to mail five dollars to the supermarket to pay for the damaged apples when this business with the cowboy was concluded. I wouldn’t pay for the cantaloupe. I hadn’t shot it. The maniac had shot it.
Yes, I had fled into the market, drawing the maniac after me; therefore, an argument could be made that part of the cost of the cantaloupe might be my responsibility. But the line between moral behavior and narcissistic self-righteousness is thin and difficult to discern. The man who stands before a crowd and proclaims his intention to save the seas is convinced that he is superior to a man who merely picks up his own and other people’s litter on the beach, when in fact the latter is in some small way sure to make the world a better place, while the former is likely to be a monster of vanity whose crusade will lead to unintended destruction.
Not a penny for the damn cantaloupe. If I was wrong and woke up in a chamber in Hell, eternally drowning in the slime and seeds found at a cantaloupe’s core, I would just have to deal with that.
As I followed the sidewalk south, the bright image of the three torched children plagued me. I didn’t know when or where the cowboy trucker intended to burn them, or why. My sixth sense has limits and often frustrates more than serves me.
Do what you must, Annamaria had said. Her words seemed to be not merely advice meant for this moment but also a recognition of the likelihood that, after all, I would not be back long before sunset.
I really needed socks and a new pair of jeans. But given a choice between replenishing wardrobe items and trying my best to prevent children from being cooked alive, the correct course seemed obvious. Hurrying through the village, along a sidewalk dappled with sunshine and oak shadows, I intended to do the right thing. Ironically, in order to do the right thing, I needed to steal a car, and quickly.
Two
THE COWBOY TRUCKER HAD WHEELS, AND I DIDN’T. HE was getting farther away by the minute.
As the siren swelled louder, rotating emergency beacons flashed far to the south, approaching.
Immediately ahead of me, a muscular man with tattooed arms and a pit-bull face sprang out of a Ford Explorer parked at the curb. Leaving the driver’s door open and the engine running, making an urgent keening sound, he ran past the bank in front of which he had left the SUV, raced past two other buildings, and disappeared around the corner, as if perhaps he had a prostate as big as a grapefruit and an urge to pee that sent him rushing pell-mell toward the nearest restroom.
The bank was a sleek contemporary building with big windows. In spite of the tinted glass, I could see two men inside. They were wearing identical President-of-the-United-States masks. They held what appeared to be short-barreled pistol-grip shotguns. I figured the employees and customers must be lying on the floor. Evidently, none of them in there could hear the siren yet.
At once I climbed behind the wheel of the Explorer and closed the door. I put the SUV in gear, pulled into the street, and drove perhaps seventy or eighty yards before the racing police car swept past me on its way to the supermarket.
I have never owned a motor vehicle. If you own one, you must purchase insurance for it, repair it, wash it, wax it, fill the tank with gasoline, scrub bug remains off the windshield, periodically rotate the tires. … The demands of a motor vehicle never stop.
Because my sixth sense is a massive complication, I simplify my life every way that I can. I own little, and I have no desire to possess any more than I already do. I would no more buy a car than I would acquire a performing elephant.
In the past, when I had needed wheels, I’d borrowed vehicles from various friends, and I’d always returned them without damage. But I had lived in this town only a month. And because I had been pretty much hiding out and waiting for the call to action that would send me traveling once more, I had not joined a book group or claimed a personal stool in a favorite pub where everybody knew my name.
In this emergency, the only way that I could obtain a suitable vehicle was to steal one. Stealing from thieves seemed
less of a crime than taking from honest people. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Providence put this Explorer before me precisely when I needed it, because I wouldn’t want to imply that God collaborated with me in auto theft. But if it wasn’t Providence, it was something.
I circled a block, returned to the main drag, and headed south this time. When I passed the bank, two well-armed presidents were standing on the sidewalk, frantically looking north and south for their getaway wheels. I felt that I should do something to alert the police to the robbery, but running these guys down seemed extreme.
They recognized the Explorer and started into the street. I waved, tramped the accelerator, and was out of shotgun range in about three seconds.
A couple of blocks south of the bank, a decapitated woman was crossing the street. In black high heels and a slinky blue dress, she appeared to be attired for a party, and she held her severed head in the crook of her left arm.
Ordinarily, I would have stopped to comfort her and see if I could do anything to help her move on from this world. But she was already dead, just a spirit now, and those three imperiled children were still alive, so the kids came first.
Rare prophetic dreams and keen intuition are not the primary aspects of my paranormal ability. If those were the only unnatural talents I possessed, I might lead a relatively ordinary life and be able to hold a job more taxing than that of a short-order cook. Say a furniture-store manager or a home-appliances repairman.
Most important and exhausting is my ability to see the spirits of the lingering dead. They are reluctant to leave this world either because they are afraid of what awaits them on the Other Side or because they remain determined to see their murderers brought to justice, or because they love this beautiful world and refuse to let go of it.