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thing about doors, haven’t we?”
    “Please Jimmie. Go.”
    “Don’t you want me to sign my books?”
    “No!”
    She pulled. I pulled.
    “What’s his real name?”
    “Whose?”
    “Ace’s.”
    “Jason, damn you!”
    “That’s terrible, too.”
    “Please go!”
    She pulled. I pulled.
    “Mr. Butters–”
    “What’s your husband’s name?”
    “Henry.”
    “My God. What’s he do?”
    “He’s—with the government.”
    “If you ever divorce him, will you notify me in care of my publishers?”
    “Yes! Now will you please—”
    “Kiss me goodbye, Annie?”
    “Bigamist!”
    I let her close it. But before I could go she reopened and whispered. “One other thing. Harding runs an ad in the paper here every spring inviting El Pasoans to come on over there for a celebration or something. I remember because they run it every year. I think they call it ‘Buell Wood Day.’”
    “Cowboys are living proof that the Indian fucked the buffalo.” This was my greeting by Harding, New Mexico. Inscribed on the wall over the John in the bathroom of my motel room when I checked in that afternoon, having dallied in El Paso as long as I dared. The drive over was dull, dull. Fifty miles of miles. Desert. Great gobs of space and sky. And in the distances, barren and sullen mountains.
    I registered into the Ramada Inn, Room 112, that being the only motel in town with the amenities of a bar and coffee shop, unpacked, lay down for a siesta, dreamed of making lewd love to a blonde librarian in Caldecott color, was waked by a sound.
    Wind.
    I called the desk. “Does the damned wind here blow all the damned time?”
    “Sure does, in the spring.” A female voice. Undoubtedly a teenage twit who diddled boys.
    “I need to see a man in Harding named Vaught. Charles S. Vaught Jr.”
    “Judge Vaught?”
    “Judge?” Tyler had never told me that. “Where will I find him?”
    “The courthouse—where else?”
    “Does this county have a coroner?”
    “Gollee, I don’t know. You could ask the County Sheriff’s Department.”
    I asked. The county medical examiner was a local GP named Dr. Jack Shelley II. I called his office. The nurse said he was booked till five-thirty, but would see me then. What is your medical problem, sir?”
    “Syphilis.”
    I lay down again, dozed, woke with an idea, called the desk, got Miss Diddle again.
    “You keep your registration cards on file for a while, don’t you?”
    “I think so.”
    “Good. Will you look back in the cards”—I did some quick arithmetic—“back about ten days ago and see if somebody named Max Sansom registered in here? From New York City?”
    “Urammm. I don’t know if I’m s’posed to give out—”
    “Please do, my dear. And you shall have your reward in heaven if not sooner.”
    “Okay. Just a sec.”
    After a minute, a man’s voice, guarded. “This is the manager, Mr. Butters. Why do you require this information?”
    “I don’t require it. But Max is a friend of mine, and I’m just trying to catch up with—”
    “I’m sorry, I’ve checked. Ten days ago would have been April twenty-seventh, and no one by that name was staying with us.”
    “Try the twenty-sixth. Or the twenty-eighth.”
    “I have. I’m sorry.”
    “Thanks a bunch.”
    I put down the phone. Sansom had to stay at the Ramada. There was no other with a bar. He might even have been assigned this room.
    The wind again. It gave me fits. It snooped at the window, it burgled the door. It was a small, incessant wind which caused a small, incessant ache in the EAR OF THE MIND.
    To get out of the room, to pass the time, to scout the town, I went for a spin. I remembered Tyler saying once that Harding had peaked too soon. From its founding in 1885 it had aspired to become a county seat, and when, in 1910, after much finagling in Santa Fe, it had finally nailed down the designation, it immediately built a costly —for the time—courthouse even though statehood for New Mexico and official