of there, no sir, not at all.”
The carpenter laughed a short nervous laugh.
“That’s how I was thinking,” he said.
“So what you need is an incentive,” the employer said. “Understand? To
make sure you try real hard to get out.”
The carpenter glanced up at the blanked-off second-story corner. When
he glanced back down, there was a dull black automatic in the
employer’s hand.
“There’s a sack in the truck,” the employer said, ‘go get it, OK?”
The carpenter just looked around, astonished. The employer pointed the
gun at his head.
“Get the sack,” he said quietly.
There was nothing in the pickup bed. There was a burlap sack on the
passenger seat. Wrapped into a package maybe a foot and a half long.
It was heavy. Felt like reaching into a freezer at the market and
pulling out a side of pig.
“Open it up,” the employer called. “Take a look.”
The carpenter peeled back the burlap. First thing he saw was a finger.
Icy white, because the blood had drained. Yellow workman’s calluses
standing out, big and obvious.
“I’m going to put you in the room now,” the employer called to him.
“You don’t get out by morning, I’m going to do that to you, OK? With
your own damn saw, because mine went dull doing those.”
NINE
REACHER LAY QUIETLY ON THE DIRTY STRAW IN HIS STALL IN THE cow barn.
Not asleep, but his body was shut down to the point where he might as
well have been. Every muscle was relaxed and his breathing was slow
and even. His eyes were closed because the barn was dark and there was
nothing to see. But his mind was wide awake. Not racing, but just
powering steadily along with that special nighttime intensity you get
in the absence of any other distractions.
He was doing two things at once. First he was keeping track of time.
It was nearly two hours since he had last looked at his watch, but he
knew what time it was to within about twenty seconds. It was an old
skill, born of many long wakeful nights on active service. When you’re
waiting for something to happen, you close your body down like a beach
house in winter and you let your mind lock on to the steady pace of the
passing seconds. It’s like suspended animation. It saves energy and
it lifts the responsibility for your heartbeat away from your
unconcious brain and passes it on to some kind of a hidden clock. Makes
a huge black space for thinking in. But it keeps you just awake enough
to be ready for whatever you need to be ready for. And it means you
always know what time it is.
The second simultaneous thing Readier was doing was playing around with
a little mental arithmetic. He was multiplying big numbers in his
head. He was thirty-seven years and eight months old, just about to
the day. Thirty-seven multiplied by three hundred and sixty-five was
thirteen thousand five hundred and five. Plus twelve days for twelve
leap years was thirteen thousand five hundred and seventeen. Eight
months counting from his birthday in October forward to this date in
June was two hundred and forty-three days. Total of thirteen thousand
seven hundred and sixty days since he was born. Thirteen thousand
seven hundred and sixty days, thirteen thousand seven hundred and sixty
nights. He was trying to place this particular night somewhere on that
endless scale. In terms of how bad it was.
Truth was, it wasn’t the best night he had ever passed, but it was a
long way from being the worst. A very long way. The first four or so
years of his life, he couldn’t remember anything at all, which left
about twelve thousand three hundred nights to account for. Probability
was, this particular night was up there in the top third. Without even
trying hard, he could have reeled off thousands of nights worse than
this one. Tonight, he was warm, comfortable, uninjured, not under any
immediate threat, and he’d been fed. Not well, but he felt that came
from a lack of skill rather than from active malice. So physically he