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opened the Land Cruiser's back gate, pulling aside the tent and moist towels. "I mean, not fresh… Just new. Not on any charts. It shouldn't be there. We found this next to it."
    The miter-head lifted slightly, and the three sherry-colored eyes emerged to stare at the three of them. Reslaw stood by the store's far corner, keeping a lookout for gawkers.
    To her credit, Stella did not scream or even grow pale. She actually leaned in closer. "It's not a fake," she said, as quickly convinced as he had been.
    "No, ma'am."
    "Poor thing… What is it?"
    Edward suggested she stand back. They unloaded it and carried it through the delivery door into the refrigerated meat locker.
    PERSPECTIVE
    East Coast News Network interview with Terence Jacobi, lead singer for the Hardwires, September 30, 1996:
    ECNN: Mr. Jacobi, your group's music has consistently preached—so to speak—the coming of the Apocalypse, from a rather radical Christian perspective. With two songs in the Top 40 and three records totaling ten million sales, you've obviously hit a nerve with the younger generation. How do you explain your musics popularity?
    Jacobi ( Laughing, then snorting and blowing his nose ): Everybody knows, between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two, you've got only two best friends: your left hand and Christ. The whole world's out to get you. Maybe if the world went away, if God wiped the slate clean, we could get on with just being ourselves. God's a righteous God. He will send his angels to Earth to warn us. We believe that, and it shows in our music.
    October 3
    Harry Feinman stood near the back of the boat untangling line from the spindle of his reel. Arthur let the boat drift with the slow-moving water. He dropped anchor a dozen yards south of the big leaning pine that marked the deep, watery hollow where, it was rumored, fishermen had pulled in so many big ones the past few years. Marty played with the minnows in the bait bucket and opened the cardboard containers full of dirt and worms. The sun was a dazzle outlined by thin high clouds; the air smelled of the river, a fresh, pungent greenness, and of coolness, of the early fall. In the calm backwater of the hollow, orange and brown leaves had collected in a flat, undulating clump.
    "Do I have to bait my own hook?" Marty asked.
    "That's part of the game," Harry said. Harry Feinman was stocky and muscular, six inches shorter than Arthur, with premature ash-gray hair receding on all fronts but his neck, where it ventured as stiff fuzz below the collar of his black leather jacket. His face was beefy, friendly, with small piercing eyes and heavy dark eyebrows. He reeled in loose nylon vigorously and propped the pole between the bait can and a tackle box. "You don't earn your fish without doing the whole thing."
    Arthur winked at Marty's dubious glance.
    "Might hurt the worms," Marty said.
    "I honestly don't know whether they feel pain or not," Harry said. "They might. But that's the way of things."
    "Is that the way of things, Dad?" Marty asked Arthur.
    "I suppose it is." In all the time they had spent living by the river, Arthur had never taken Marty fishing.
    "Your dad's here to break things easy to you, Marty. I'm not. Fishing is serious business. It's a ritual."
    Marty knew about rituals. "That means we're supposed to do something a certain way so we won't feel guilty," he said.
    "You got it," Harry said.
    Marty put on the vacant look that meant he was hatching an idea. "Peggy getting married… is that a ritual, because they're going to have sex? And they might be guilty?"
    In the morning, Francine and Martin would drive to Eugene to attend her niece's wedding. Arthur would have accompanied them, but now there were far more important things.
    Arthur raised his eyebrows at Harry. "You've done all the talking so far," he said.
    "He's your son, fellah."
    "Getting married is celebration. It's a ritual, but it's joyous. Not at all like baiting a hook."
    Harry grinned. "Nobody's guilty about