Barbara takes it and reads it. “Who’s Carl Morton?”

“A therapist I saw after I came back from Texas. I only saw him twice. That was all the time I needed to tell my story.”

“Which was what? Was it like . . .” She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t have to.

“I might tell you someday, you and Jerome both, but not on Christmas. Just know that if you need to talk to someone, he’ll listen.” She smiles. “And because he’s heard my story, he might even believe yours. Not that that matters. Telling it is what helps. At least it did me.”

“Getting it out there.”

“Yes.”

“Would he tell my parents?”

“Absolutely not.”

“I’ll think about it,” Barbara says, and puts the card in her pocket. “Thank you.” She hugs Holly. And Holly, who once upon a time feared to be touched, hugs back. Hard.

4

It is the Alastair Sim version, and when Holly drives slowly home through the blowing snow, she can’t remember a happier Christmas. Before going to bed, she uses her tablet to send Ralph Anderson a text message.

There will be a package from me when you get back. I have had quite an adventure, but all is well. We’ll talk, but it can wait. Hope you & yours had a merry (tropical) Christmas. Much love.

She says her prayers before turning in, finishing as she always does, by saying that she’s not smoking, she’s taking her Lexapro, and she misses Bill Hodges.

“God bless us every one,” she says. “Amen.”

She gets in bed. Turns out the light.

Sleeps.

February 15, 2021

Uncle Henry’s mental decline has been rapid. Mrs. Braddock has told them (regretfully) that it’s often the case once patients are in care.

Now, as Holly sits beside him on one of the couches facing the big-screen TV in the Rolling Hills common room, she finally gives up trying to make conversation with him. Charlotte already has; she’s at a table across the room, helping Mrs. Hatfield with her current jigsaw puzzle. Jerome has come with them today, and is also helping. He’s got Mrs. Hatfield laughing, and even Charlotte can’t help smiling at some of J’s amiable chatter. He’s a charming young man, and he’s finally won Charlotte over. Not an easy thing to do.

Uncle Henry sits with his eyes wide and his mouth agape, the hands that once fixed Holly’s bicycle after she crashed it into the Wilsons’ picket fence now lying slack between his splayed legs. His pants bulge with the continence pants beneath. Once he was a ruddy man. Now he’s pale. Once he was a stout man. Now his clothes hang on his body and his flesh sags like an old sock that’s lost its elastic.

Holly takes one of his hands. It’s just meat with fingers. She laces her own fingers through his and squeezes, hoping for a return, but no. Soon it will be time to go, and she’s glad. It makes her feel guilty, but there it is. This isn’t her uncle; he’s been replaced by an oversized ventriloquist’s dummy with no ventriloquist to lend it speech. The ventriloquist has left town and isn’t coming back.

An ad for Otezla, urging these wrinkled, balding oldsters to “Show more of you!” ends, and is replaced by the Bobby Fuller Four: “I Fought the Law.” Uncle Henry’s chin has been sinking toward his chest, but now it comes up. And a light—low-wattage, to be sure—comes into his eyes.

The courtroom appears and the announcer intones, “Steer clear if you’re a louse, because John Law is in the house!”

As the bailiff comes forward, Holly suddenly realizes why she gave the Macready School bomber the name she did. The mind is always at work, making connections and making sense . . . or at least trying to.

Uncle Henry finally speaks, his voice low and rusty from disuse. “All rise.”

“All rise!” George the bailiff bellows.

The spectators don’t just rise; they get on up, clapping and swaying. John Law jives his way in from his chambers. He grabs his gavel and tick-tocks it back and forth to the music. His bald head gleams. His white teeth flash. “What have we got today, Georgie, my brother from another mother?”

“I love this guy,” Uncle Henry says in his rusty voice.

“So do I,” she says, and puts an arm around him.

Uncle Henry turns to look at her.

And smiles.

“Hello, Holly,” he says.

RAT

1

Ordinarily, Drew Larson’s story ideas came—on the increasingly rare occasions when they came at all—a little at a time, like dribbles of water drawn from a well that was almost dry. And there was always a chain of associations he could trace back to something he’d seen or heard: a real-world flashpoint.

In the case of his most recent short, the genesis had come when he’d seen a man changing a tire on the Falmouth entrance ramp to I-295, the guy down in an effortful squat while people honked and swerved around him. That had led to “Blowout,” labored over for almost three months and published (after half a dozen rejections at larger magazines) in Prairie Schooner.

“Skip Jack,” his one published story in The New Yorker, had been written while he was a grad student at BU. The seed of that one had been planted while listening to the college radio station in his apartment one night. The student DJ had attempted to play “Whole Lotta Love,” by Zep, and the record had begun to skip. The skip went on for nearly forty-five seconds until the breathless kid killed the tune and blurted, “Sorry, guys, I was taking a shit.”

“Skip Jack” was twenty years ago. “Blowout” had been published three years ago. In between, he had managed four others. They were all in the three-thousand-word range. All had taken months of labor and revision. There had never been a novel. He had tried, but no. He had pretty much given that ambition up. The first two efforts at long-form fiction had given him problems. The last try had caused serious problems. He had burned the manuscript, and had come close to burning the house, as well.

Now this idea, arriving complete. Arriving like a long overdue engine pulling a train of many splendid cars.

Lucy had asked him if he’d drive down to Speck’s Deli and pick up sandwiches for lunch. It was a pretty September day, and he told her he’d walk instead. She nodded approvingly and said it would be good for his waistline. He wondered later how different his life might have been if he’d taken the Suburban or the Volvo. He might never have had the idea. He might never have been at his father’s cabin. He almost certainly would never have seen the rat.

He was halfway to Speck’s, waiting at the corner of Main and Spring for the light to change, when the engine arrived. The engine was an image, one as brilliant as reality. Drew stood transfixed and staring at it through the sky. A student gave him a nudge. “Sign says you can walk, man.”

Drew ignored him. The student threw him an odd look and crossed the street. Drew continued to stand on the curb as WALK became DON’T WALK and then WALK again.

Although he avoided western novels (with the exceptions of The Ox-Bow Incident and Doctorow’s brilliant Welcome to Hard Times) and hadn’t seen many western movies since his teenage years, what he saw as he stood on the corner of Main and Spring was a western saloon. A wagon-wheel chandelier with kerosene lanterns mounted on the spokes hung from the ceiling. Drew could smell the oil. The floor was plank. At the back of the room were three or four gaming tables. There was a piano. The man playing it wore a derby hat. Only he wasn’t playing it now. He had turned to stare at what was happening at the bar. Standing next to the piano player, also staring, was a tall drink of water with an accordion strapped to his narrow chest. And at the bar, a young man in an expensive western suit was holding a gun to the temple of a girl in a red dress so low-cut that only a ruffle of lace hid her nipples. Drew could see these two twice, once where they stood and once reflected in the backbar mirror.