Read Page 17

The shadows grew.

In front of the Ice House, the old-timers sat on benches smoking their cigars and corncob pipes and talking about the meteor. Heard it from Jimmy Rice, one of them said. Jimmy got it straight from the sheriff's mouth. Hell, I didn't get to be seventy-four years old to be kilt by no damned rock from out yonder in space, I'm tellin' you! Damn thing just about fell right on our heads!Advertisement

They all agreed it had been a near miss. They talked about the helicopter, still sitting in the middle of Preston Park, wondering how such a thing could fly, and would you get up in onei Hell no, I ain't crazy! was the unanimous answer. Then their talk drifted to the new baseball season, and when was a southern team going to win a seriesi When time runs back-assward and horses stand on two legs! one of them growled, and kept chewing on his cigar butt.

In the House of Beauty on Celeste Street, Ida Younger frosted Tammy Bryant's mouse-brown hair and talked not about the meteor or the helicopter but about the two handsome men who had gotten out of it. The pilot's a hunk too, Tammy said. She'd seen him when he went into the Brandin' Iron for a hamburger and coffee - and, of course, she and May Davis just had to go in there for a bite of lunch too. and you should've seen the way that damn Sue Mullinax flounced herself all over the cafe! Tammy confided. I mean, it was a disgrace!

Ida agreed that Sue was the nerviest bitch who ever tied a mattress to her back, and Sue's butt just kept getting bigger and bigger and that's what so much sex'll do to you too.

She's a nymphomaniac, Tammy said. a nympho, plain and simple.

Yeah, Ida said. Plain-lookin' and simpleminded.

and they both laughed.

On Cobre Road, past the Smart Dollar clothing store, the post office, the bake shop, and the Paperback Kastle, a middle-aged man squinted through his wire-rimmed spectacles and concentrated on inserting a pin through the abdomen of a small brown scorpion, found dead of Raid inhalation in the kitchen this morning. His name was Noah Twilley, and he was slender and pale, his straight black hair lank and going gray. His skinny fingers got the pin through, and he added the scorpion to his collection of other "ladies and gentlemen" - beetles, wasps, flies, and more scorpions, all pinned to black velvet and kept under glass. He was in the study of his white stone house, thirty yards behind the brick building with a stained-glass front window, a stucco statue of Jesus standing between two stucco cacti, and a sign that read INFeRNO FUNeRaL HOMe.

His father had died six years ago and left the business to him - a dubious honor, since Noah had always wanted to be an entomologist. He had made sure his father was buried in the hottest plot on Joshua Tree Hill.

"Nooooaaaahhh! Noah!" The screech made his backbone stiffen. "Go get me a Co-Cola!" "Just a minute, Mother," he answered.

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"Noah! My show's on!" He stood up wearily and walked down the corridor to her room. She was wearing a white silk gown, sitting up against white silk pillows in a bed with a white canopy. Her face was a mask of white powder, her hair dyed flame red. On the color TV, the Wheel of Fortune was spinning. "Get me a Co-Cola!" Ruth Twilley ordered. "My throat's as dry as dust!" "Yes, Mother," he answered, and trudged toward the staircase. Better to do what she wanted and get it over with, he knew.

"That meteor's doin' somethin' to the air!" she hollered after him, her voice as high as a wasp's whine. "Makin' my throat clog up!" He was on his way down the steps, but that voice followed him: "I'll bet old Celeste heard it hit! Bet it made her shit pickles!" Here we go, he thought.

"That prissy-pants bitch livin' out there high and mighty, not carin' a damn about anybody else, just suckin' the guts out of this town. She did it, y'know! Prob'ly killed poor Wint, but he was too smart for her! Yessir! He hid all his money so she couldn't get none of it! Foxed her, he did! Well, when she comes to Ruth Twilley askin' for money and down on her hands and knees, I'm gonna snub her like she's a snail! You listenin' to me, Noahi Noah!" "Yes," he answered, down in the depths of the house. "I'm listening." She kept babbling on, and Noah let himself ponder what life might be like if that meteor had struck smack dab over the ceiling of her bedroom. There was not a plot on Joshua Tree Hill that was hot enough.

across Inferno and Bordertown, other lives drifted on: Father Manuel LaPrado listened to confessions at the Sacrifice of Christ Catholic Church, while Reverend Hale Jennings put a pencil to paper at the Inferno Baptist Church and worked on his Sunday sermon. On his porch, Sarge Dennison napped in a lawn chair, his face occasionally flinching at unwelcome memories, his right arm hanging down and his hand patting the head of the invisible Scooter. Rick Jurado stacked boxes in the stockroom of the hardware store on Cobre Road, the Fang of Jesus heavy in his jeans pocket and his mind circling what Mr. Hammond had said today. Heavy-metal music blared from a ghetto blaster through the corridors of the 'Gades' fortress at the end of Travis Street, and while Bobby Clay Clemmons and a few other 'Gades smoked reefers and shot the shit, Nasty and Tank lay on a bare mattress in another room, their bodies damp and intertwined in the aftermath of sex - the one activity for which Tank removed his football helmet.

The day was winding down. a postal truck left town, heading north to Odessa with its cargo of letters - among which were a high percentage of job applications, inquiries for employment, and supplications to relatives for extended visiting privileges. Of all people, the postman knew the pulse of Inferno, and he could see death scrawled on the envelopes.

The sun was sinking, and on the First Texas Bank the electric-bulb sign read 93��F. at 5:49. pqdm.com