Praying for Sleep

the proper lane and would drive English-style for some distance before gradually returning to the right.
    On and on he drove, a steady forty miles an hour in a fifty-five zone. He swallowed and moaned often and muttered to himself, and he wanted nothing so much as to fall onto the smooth plain of the upholstered seat, cover his head and fall fast asleep. But he didn’t. No, Michael remained as upright as a soldier on guard duty, looking straight into the darkness where the guns of his enemy waited.
    His eyes left the asphalt only once, to glance at the sign that said, RIDGETON 17 MILES, then returned to the highway. With pleasure he inhaled the sweet smell of the heater that blasted air into his face. The memories he’d had this November evening, Michael thought with a burst of rare perception, had traveled as far as he had. And he thought now about an afternoon long ago, sitting in the library of one of his hospitals, singing a song that he himself had written. He recalled that he’d sung it over and over until the librarian asked him to stop and then he sang it in his head, silently mouthing the words.
    Now, ensconced in his luxurious black car, he once again sang it and he sang it loud.
    “Hard tack, horseback, the Capital’s asleep.
    The soldier boys are crying. Somewhere a woman weeps.
    Hard tack, the moon’s back, and bloody in the sky.
    I’m going to the graveyard, where the body lies. . . .”
    Michael points the black nose of the car down a long hill and feels the gradual, smooth acceleration of the engine. Unexpectedly though, despite the glory of new-found speed, despite his immense pride at mastering this machine that a year ago would have paralyzed him with terror, Michael Hrubek begins to cry.
    He gulps hot air into his lungs, fueling the sobbing, and feels the moisture on his wide cheeks. His throat stings.
    Why am I crying? Michael wonders, barely conscious that he is crying.
    He really has no idea. But somewhere deep in his mind is the answer that he cries for man’s genius in making this exquisite automobile. He cries for all the miles he’s traveled tonight. And for the vague memory of a woman wearing a very unfashionable hat on her otherwise perfect head.
    For the past dead and for those soon to be.
    And he cries for what is surely sitting above the thickening storm clouds over his car right now—a moon blood red.
    I’m going to the graveyard, where the body lies. . . .

20
    Lis was taping the top row of windows in the greenhouse when the storm finally hit.
    Her face was inches from the glass as she was reaching out to lay a strip on a hard-to-reach pane. Suddenly a slash of rain cracked against the window. She twisted away, dropping the tape, thinking for an instant that someone had flung a handful of gravel at the panes. She nearly tumbled backwards off the ladder.
    She climbed down and retrieved the masking tape, surveying the sky. Worried that a window might shatter into her face if she continued to tape, Lis again considered leaving—now. But the north windows, those facing the storm, were still to be done.
    Ten minutes, she decided. She’d allow herself that.
    Climbing up once again she thought about Kohler’s advising her to leave. Yet she felt no extreme urgency. He hadn’t seemed particularly concerned on her behalf. Besides, she reasoned, the Ridgeton sheriff would certainly have called if he’d learned that Hrubek was headed for town.
    As she laid the X’s on the squares of glass, her eyes fell on the lake and the forest. Beyond them, barely visible in the rain, was a huge expanse of countryside—a muddy horizon of fields and woods and rocks disappearing into the black windy sky. The sweep of terrain seemed so limitless, so perfectly able to contain the infection of Michael Hrubek, that it was foolish to think that he might even get close to Ridgeton. The vastness of the landscape would protect her husband too; how could either man possibly find the other?
    And where was Owen at this moment?
    In her heart she believed he’d be back soon. Perhaps even before she and Portia left for the Inn. Returning empty-handed, angry and frustrated—because he’d missed his chance to play soldier.
    And because he had lost an opportunity to do penance.
    Oh, Lis had understood that from the start. She knew that his errand tonight had a tacit purpose. It was part of a complicated debt he seemed to feel he owed his wife.
    And perhaps he did, she reflected. For Owen had spent much of