Bloody River Blues

She added, “I know it works. You keep wishing that you’ll get well. Put the oil on you, then wish and wish and wish. I meditated for an hour and seven minutes last night . . .”
    The Terror hears this and rolls upright. It starts to prowl through Donnie Buffett’s guts.
    Sweat pops onto his forehead.
    Bleeding Christ, is it restless! Dodging around inside him, playing with the pain in his legs, slipping up to his heart, dancing over his crotch. (Can’t get south of there, can you, you shit?)
    The Terror. . . .
    He fights it down. He presses his nails into the palm of his left hand. He concentrates on the pain, willing it to become a wave of agony. This ironically numbs the Terror. Its prowling slows and it grows tired. Buffett begins to calm. Penny does not seem to notice her husband’s absence and continues to talk about shopping and her parents and a consciousness-raising group she’s been attending.
    The Terror finally falls asleep.
    Buffett took a deep breath and calmed down, then interrupted her to say, “I’d like you to meet my doctor.”
    Penny blinked.
    Buffett continued, “Dr. Weiser. She’s the best in the city.”
    “You know how I feel about doctors. You need more than—”
    “But I do need a doctor, honey,” he said. “Come on, please. Just meet her.”
    “Okay,” she said cheerfully, eyes sparkling, “I’d like that. I promise I won’t lecture her on . . .”
    What was she going to say? On the right way to practice medicine? Holism? Spiritualism?
    Penny did not continue her thought but instead crossed her heart like a coy schoolgirl. “Promise.” Shenodded broadly, acknowledging, though she probably didn’t know it, her excessive sincerity.
    There were some moments when Penny appeared completely normal. Her hair would be shiny clean and curled nicely, her face—from the right angle—was soft, her collar turned up, covering the dark bones of her shoulders. Her hands would be folded; the torn cuticles and ragged ripped nails were out of view. A dancing light would be in her eyes—a little mystified, a little shy. It was charming.
    At those times, Donnie Buffett remembered the woman he had fallen in love with.
    He listened to her tell him about how she and her friends were going to be chanting for him.
    “Chanting,” Donnie Buffett said, and was suddenly tired. Exhausted. He closed his eyes and suddenly all he wanted was to fall back to sleep. The sleep in which he dreamed of pain flowing through muscles that now felt no pain. Fatigue wrapped around him sensuously and squeezed tight like a college girl making desperate love.
    “I’m beat, honey,” he muttered, pretending to doze.
    “You should sleep,” Penny said. She touched his hand.
    “Uh-huh.” Buffett almost opened his eyes and looked at her. But he chose not to. He felt momentarily guilty about this deception.
    I’m a lucky man. Lucky lucky lucky. I didn’t get shot in the brain. I didn’t get shot in the heart. I didn’t get shot in the neck. I can still smell.
    And he could hear her voice in a detached little whisper, “You sleep now, honey. I’m going home.” Heheard paper crinkle. “These are the instructions for the candle.”
    Donnie Buffett breathed deeply like a man asleep. And in less than a minute this lie became the truth and he was dreaming that he was skiing down a panoramic mountain of huge white cliffs rising into an infinitely blue sky.
    HALFWAY TO ST . Louis, Stevie saw his chance. He gunned the engine and the car sluggishly responded, moving ahead of a lumbering truck.
    He eased up right behind the Yamaha. A dirt bike, it looked like, with the high fenders that doubled as mudguards and the long shocks that would take the potholes and shitty city streets easily. The rack was cockeyed. Stevie studied the yellow fenders and the silver bars and the red helmet and the leather jacket of the driver and then started looking for an exit ramp.
    He saw one a half mile ahead and glanced in the rearview mirror, at what loomed behind him. It was a White semi. Not the trailer, just the tractor, the sort with the ten forward gears and a steering wheel wide as a tire. The truck would have air brakes and little weight, but at sixty it’d skid for a hundred fifty feet.
    A quarter mile away.
    Stevie Flom started signaling.
    He accelerated until he was three feet from the beer man, who was hunched forward, sunlight flaring off his helmet. The truck driver was holding back, seeing Stevie’s turn