Northern Lights

of credit to my memory, Ignatious. I'll think about it."
    "Good. If you remember anything, come to me. Just me, Hopp."
    "Spring's coming," Hopp said. "And spring can be a bitch."
    She walked away, leaving him by the river. He stood in the chilly wind, watching that river come back to life.

 
     
     
    TWENTY-TWO
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    IT WASN'T JUST river ice that cracked and heaved during breakup. Streets, frozen through the long winter burst with fissures the size of canyons and potholes wide enough to swallow a truck.
    It didn't surprise Nate that Bing had the contract for road repair and maintenance. What did surprise him was that no one seemed to give much of a damn that the repair and maintenance moved at the pace of a lame snail.
    He had other things to worry about.
    People, he discovered, cracked, too. Some who had held onto their sanity through the dark, relentless winter appeared to think the tease of spring was a good time to let it go.
    His cells were revolving doors for the drunk, the disorderly, the domestic disturbances and the just plain dopey.
    The sound of horns tooting and catcalls brought him to the bedroom window just after dawn. A light snow had fallen during the night, hardly more than a dusting that lay thin and sparkling on the streets and sidewalks under the rising sun.
    The lights on the barricades around the two-foot pothole he'd named Lunatic Crater blinked red and yellow. Around those blinking lights he saw a man dancing what appeared to be a jig. That might have been surprising enough for sunrise entertainment, but the fact that the man was buck-assed naked added a certain panache.
    A crowd was gathering already. Some were clapping—maybe keeping time, Nate speculated. Others were shouting—encouragement or derision in equal measures.
    With a sigh, Nate toweled off his half-shaven face, grabbed a shirt and shoes and headed down.
    The dining room was deserted, with a few plates of half-eaten breakfast as testament to the draw of a naked guy dancing on Lunatic Street.
    Nate grabbed a jacket off a hook and walked out in his shirtsleeves.
    There were whistles and stomping feet—and a dawn temperature Nate judged hadn't quite come up to the freezing mark as yet. He nudged his way through the gathered crowd. He recognized the dancer now. Tobias Simpsky, part-time clerk at The Corner Store, part-time dishwasher at The Lodge, part-time disc jockey at Lunacy Radio.
    He'd changed the jig to some kind of western-movie Indian war dance.
    "Chief." Rose, with Jesse's hand in hers and the baby snuggled in a pack at her breast, smiled serenely. "Nice morning."
    "Right. Is today some particular event? A pagan ritual I might've missed hearing about?"
    "No. Just Wednesday."
    "Okay." He passed through the onlookers. "Hey, Toby? Forget your hat this morning?"
    Still dancing, Toby tossed back his long, brown hair and threw out his arms. "Clothes are only a symbol of man's denial of nature, of his ac ceptance of restrictions and loss of innocence. Today, I merge with nature! Today I embrace my innocence. I am man! "
    "Just barely," someone called out, giving the crowd a good laugh.
    "Why don't we go talk about that?" Nate took his arm and managed to flap the jacket over his hips.
    "Man is a child, and a child comes naked into the world."
    "I've heard that. Show's over," Nate called out. He tried to arrange the jacket while guiding Toby across the street. The man had grapefruitsized goose bumps on every inch of exposed skin. "Nothing much to see here anyway," he muttered under his breath.
    "I drink only water," Toby told him. "I eat only what I gather with my own hands."
    "Got it. No coffee and doughnuts for you."
    "If we don't dance, the dark will come back, and the cold winter. The snow." He looked around, wildly now. "It's everywhere. It's everywhere."
    "I know." He got him inside, into a cell. Figuring Ken was the closest he had to a shrink, he contacted him to request a house call.
    In the next cell Drunk Mike snored away, sleeping off a toot that had had him wandering into a neighbor's house instead of his own the night before.
    Including Drunk Mike, he'd had six calls between eleven and two. Slashed tires on Hawley's truck, a portable radio turned up to full blast and left on Sarrie Parker's doorstep, broken windows at the school, more yellow graffiti on Tim Bower's new Ski-doo and on Charlene's Ford Bronco.
    Apparently even the thought of spring stirred up the natives.
    He was thinking about