“Katherine McGraw. She’d be twenty years old by now. Reddish-brown hair and blue eyes and some freckles when she was younger. Maybe they went away.”
“Got a picture of her?”
“The best picture we had of her, it was when she was thirteen, and after Peg died, that was my wife, damn if I could find it. I looked all over for that picture. She was a pretty child. She ought to be a good-looking woman. Her ma was.”
“You don’t know what new name she took?”
“She never said. In those postcards.”
‘A can’t help you. I don’t know if anybody can or wants to, Mr. McGraw. People that join up don’t go back to the lives they had before.”
“Where did everybody go from here?” I asked.
No answer. They urged me along and shut me up in C Building. It was a cement-block building about ten feet square, with two windows with heavy wire mesh over them. There was a wooden chair, a tree-trunk table, a stained mattress on the floor, and a forty-watt bulb hanging from a cord from the middle of the ceiling. There was a ragged pile of religious comic books, a musty army blanket, a two quart jug of tepid drinking water, and a bucket to use as a toilet. They had taken my belt, shoelaces, and duffel bag. The door was solidly locked. I heard some bird sounds, and that was all. I wondered if they had all left.
Darkness came, and there was a quick light rain on the corrugated roof of my prison. I heard a distant motor noise and tried to decide if it was coming or going. When the sound did not change, I realized it might be a generator, the engine turning over at an unchanging rpm. So I tried my light bulb again, and it went on. It did not help the decor.
Two of them came and unlocked my door. They had a dazzling-bright gasoline lantern, an automatic weapon at the ready, and a tin bowl full of stew. They were two I had glimpsed before at a distance. One was a sallow blond girl with very little chin, and the other was a young man with an Asian cast to his features.
No harm to object. After all, I was Tom McGraw. “Why are you people pointing guns at me all the time? Dame it, I’m not some kind of crimi- nal. I don’t like being locked up like this. Where’s my stuff you took away from me? I got my rights. You people are all gun-happy.”
“Shut up, Dads,” the Oriental said, and they closed the door and locked it.
Even though I had to eat it with a little white plastic spoon, I found the venison stew delicious. And it had been a long time since I had enjoyed the
The Green Ripper taste of anything. The lack of interest in eating had leaned me down a little over the past weeks.
There was a cook in the camp. Even a slight taste of wine in the stew. Boiled onions, carrots, celery, tomatoes. And a lot of it. After my dinner I read a religious comic book. All about Samson yanking down that temple. Samson looked like Burt Reynolds. Delilah looked like Liz Taylor. The temple looked like the Chase Bank.
After I turned my light off, I stretched out in my clothes on the dingy mattress and covered myself with the musty sheet. And in the darkness, I went over what I knew. I followed Meyer’s injunction. Never mix up what you really know with what you think you know. Don’t let speculation water down the proven truths. Leap to conclusions only when that is the only way to safety.
People talking outside my door awakened me. I knew it was late. I realized it was just the changing of the guard. I heard the clink of metal and a yawning good night and went back to sleep.
In the morning I was escorted down to a rushing tumbling icy creek by Nicky and the chinless blonde. She carried the weapon. I carried the soil bucket in one hand and held up my trousers with the other. I had asked politely for my belt, and they told me to shut up. They pointed me to the place on the bank where I could wash out the bucket in the fast water. Then I was allowed to go upstream to a place where I could dash some of the icy water into my face. Big Nicky was sullen. The blonde was trying to cheer him. When he answered, I found out her name was Stella. So I had four names out of the group of eight. They marched me back to C Building, again carrying the bucket, now empty, and holding up my trousers. I asked when they expected Mr. Persival, and they told me to shut up.