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thought whoever was driving that crate was going much too fast; cruising like they had bone-dry highways and lots of light.
    "Gonna end up in a goddamn ditch," he said around the stem of his pipe.
    And now the car was splashing by with a hungry roar—
    —and Malachi felt cold; more so than any rain should make him, even a late October rain. The wet slush in his chest that had been serving as a heart turned to a fist of hard ice.
    He shivered.
    For a moment it was as if nothing else lived in the universe but him.
    Lightning flashed, lit the night bright as day. Malachi could see the car clearly—a black '66 Chevy turning off 59 onto the Old Minnanette Highway, which was hardly a highway at all anymore.
    Then it was night again and there were only the taillights winking away in the cold, dark sockets of night and the growl of the engine receding in the distance.
    Suddenly the driver hit down on his horn.
    Once.
    Twice.
    Three times.
    Sharp, harsh punctures in the messy, wet night.
    Then silence.
    Malachi shivered again. Thought: It's as if Old Man Death himself just drove by with his window cranked down and his breath leaking out; the rotten, chilling breath of the sick and the dying.
    After a moment the sensation passed. Malachi thumped the contents of his pipe out and hauled the kettle inside, put it in its place and put the pan away.
    Then, removing his shoes, pinching them between thumb and forefinger, he stole silently back to the bedroom, pushed the shoes beneath the bed and removed his pants. He eased softly under the bedclothes and for a moment lay still on his back, looking at the ceiling.
    Dorothy did not awake.
    He had it made now.
    Gently, he rolled on his side and put his arm around her—and felt the marble-cool flesh of the recently dead.
    FIVE
    October 30, 1:30 A.M.
    The black car pulled off the Old Minnanette Highway and rolled down a wet, clay road. It found harbor in front of a barbed-wire cattle gate. Sat there while the sky went about its wet tantrum.
    After a moment, a back door opened. A girl got out, moved across the road and into the woods behind the car. She found a place thick with overhead branches and surrounding foliage, dropped her pants, squatted to pee.
    She could see the car from where she squatted, and even in the darkness, she could see the white face of the driver. It was pressed up against the door glass, looking out at the night. It didn't look quite human, a white, pasty thing with gun-barrel eyes; eyes loaded with hate and fury.
    She shivered.
    "Blessed Mother," she mumbled to herself, "how did I get into this?"
    All she wanted was a wedding. The sort with a veil, a long bridal train dragging behind her. Nothing more. Except Jimmy dressed in a suit instead of greasy jeans and jacket for a change.
    That was hardly what she had gotten.
    But then, not getting what she wanted or expected had become a way of life for her.
    It had always been that way.
    Each day was just one bigger shit-brick than the last.
    Her first memories of her father were of him speaking Spanish drunkenly, fondling her between the legs—until her mother caught him one night, and that was the last she saw of him. Here today. Gone tomorrow. No big loss.
    The thing she remembered best after that was her mother constantly making her strip and lie on the bed so she could explore with cold hands— always cold hands—the inside of her snatch. Make sure she was still a virgin. This was an obsession with her mother, making sure her daughter was unsoiled.
    She went out on a date, her mother would be waiting. Then she'd get the strip, cold fingers in the snatch routine.
    If her mother suspicioned she had been near boys, it was the strip, cold fingers in the snatch routine.
    Look at a boy's picture too long in a magazine, it was the strip, cold fingers in the snatch routine. What was she expecting to find in there? The refuse of wood-pulp jism?
    Was the guy in the magazine going to come out of the picture and stick a paper