As I followed the sidewalk south, the bright image of the three torched children plagued me. I didn’t know when or where the cowboy trucker intended to burn them, or why. My sixth sense has limits and often frustrates more than serves me.
Do what you must, Annamaria had said. Her words seemed to be not merely advice meant for this moment but also a recognition of the likelihood that, after all, I would not be back long before sunset.
I really needed socks and a new pair of jeans. But given a choice between replenishing wardrobe items and trying my best to prevent children from being cooked alive, the correct course seemed obvious. Hurrying through the village, along a sidewalk dappled with sunshine and oak shadows, I intended to do the right thing. Ironically, in order to do the right thing, I needed to steal a car, and quickly.
Two
THE COWBOY TRUCKER HAD WHEELS, AND I DIDN’T. HE was getting farther away by the minute.
As the siren swelled louder, rotating emergency beacons flashed far to the south, approaching.
Immediately ahead of me, a muscular man with tattooed arms and a pit-bull face sprang out of a Ford Explorer parked at the curb. Leaving the driver’s door open and the engine running, making an urgent keening sound, he ran past the bank in front of which he had left the SUV, raced past two other buildings, and disappeared around the corner, as if perhaps he had a prostate as big as a grapefruit and an urge to pee that sent him rushing pell-mell toward the nearest restroom.
The bank was a sleek contemporary building with big windows. In spite of the tinted glass, I could see two men inside. They were wearing identical President-of-the-United-States masks. They held what appeared to be short-barreled pistol-grip shotguns. I figured the employees and customers must be lying on the floor. Evidently, none of them in there could hear the siren yet.
At once I climbed behind the wheel of the Explorer and closed the door. I put the SUV in gear, pulled into the street, and drove perhaps seventy or eighty yards before the racing police car swept past me on its way to the supermarket.
I have never owned a motor vehicle. If you own one, you must purchase insurance for it, repair it, wash it, wax it, fill the tank with gasoline, scrub bug remains off the windshield, periodically rotate the tires. … The demands of a motor vehicle never stop.
Because my sixth sense is a massive complication, I simplify my life every way that I can. I own little, and I have no desire to possess any more than I already do. I would no more buy a car than I would acquire a performing elephant.
In the past, when I had needed wheels, I’d borrowed vehicles from various friends, and I’d always returned them without damage. But I had lived in this town only a month. And because I had been pretty much hiding out and waiting for the call to action that would send me traveling once more, I had not joined a book group or claimed a personal stool in a favorite pub where everybody knew my name.
In this emergency, the only way that I could obtain a suitable vehicle was to steal one. Stealing from thieves seemed less of a crime than taking from honest people. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Providence put this Explorer before me precisely when I needed it, because I wouldn’t want to imply that God collaborated with me in auto theft. But if it wasn’t Providence, it was something.
I circled a block, returned to the main drag, and headed south this time. When I passed the bank, two well-armed presidents were standing on the sidewalk, frantically looking north and south for their getaway wheels. I felt that I should do something to alert the police to the robbery, but running these guys down seemed extreme.
They recognized the Explorer and started into the street. I waved, tramped the accelerator, and was out of shotgun range in about three seconds.
A couple of blocks south of the bank, a decapitated woman was crossing the street. In black high heels and a slinky blue dress, she appeared to be attired for a party, and she held her severed head in the crook of her left arm.
Ordinarily, I would have stopped to comfort her and see if I could do anything to help her move on from this world. But she was already dead, just a spirit now, and those three imperiled children were still alive, so the kids came first.
Rare prophetic dreams and keen intuition are not the primary aspects of my paranormal ability. If those were the only unnatural talents I possessed, I might lead a relatively ordinary life and be able to hold a job more taxing than that of a short-order cook. Say a furniture-store manager or a home-appliances repairman.
Most important and exhausting is my ability to see the spirits of the lingering dead. They are reluctant to leave this world either because they are afraid of what awaits them on the Other Side or because they remain determined to see their murderers brought to justice, or because they love this beautiful world and refuse to let go of it.