Praying for Sleep

road.”
    “God, he’s not coming this way?” Portia asked.
    “No, he’s going east.” Lis looked at her sister. “It’ll just be better to spend the night at the Inn.”
    “Okay by me.” Portia shrugged and went to collect her backpack.
    Lis rose. Owen squeezed her leg. What, she wondered, does that mean? Thanks? I won? I love you? Hand me my guns, woman?
    “I won’t be long. A few hours, tops. Come lock the door after me.”
    They walked into the kitchen and he kissed her for a long moment but she could see that his mind was already in the fields and on the roads where his prey wandered. He pocketed the pistol and slung his deer rifle over his shoulder. He then walked outside.
    Lis double-locked the door behind him, watching him climb into the truck. She stepped to the window and looked down at the garage. The black Cherokee backed out and paused for a moment. The interior of the truck was dark and she wondered if he was waving to her. She lifted her own hand.
    He pulled into the driveway. Of course Owen was right. He knew more about Hrubek than all of the pros did—the troopers, the sheriffs, the doctors. And, what’s more, Lis knew too. She knew Hrubek wasn’t harmless, that he wasn’t wandering around like a dim animal, that he had something on his mind, damaged though it was. She knew these things not as facts but as messages from her heart.
    Her cheek pressed against the window for a moment. She backed away and gazed at the uneven, bubble-flecked glass, realizing something she’d never thought of—that these panes had been made two and a half centuries ago. How, Lis wondered, had the fragile glass survived intact all those turbulent years? When she focused again on the yard, the truck’s taillights were gone. Yet she continued for a long time to gaze at the shadowy driveway down which the truck had vanished.
    Here I am, she thought in disbelief, a pioneer wife, staring into the wilderness after my husband, who’s traveling through the night, on his way to kill the man who would kill me.
     
    The lingering dust raised by the vehicles settled and their taillights vanished behind a hill far to the east. The night was still again. Overhead the clouds that swept in from the west obscured a sallow moon, which sat over a rock outcropping above the deserted highway.
    There was as yet no hint of storm. No breeze at all. And for a moment this portion of highway was absolutely silent.
    Then Michael Hrubek, pulling his precious Irish cap down over his head, pushed aside the grass and walked directly into the middle of Route 236. He replaced his pistol in the backpack.
    GET TO
    These words swam into his mind and floated there for a moment, doing slow loop-the-loops. He knew they were vitally important but their meaning kept evading him. They vanished and he was left with a prickling reminder of their absence.
    What do they mean? he wondered. What was he supposed to do with them?
    He stood on the asphalt and walked in a circle, searching through his confused mind for the answer. What did GET TO mean? Filled with a churning dread, he knew that they were jamming his thoughts. They: the soldiers who’d just been pursuing him.
    Let’s think about this.
    GET TO
    What could it possibly mean?
    Hrubek again looked east down the highway, the direction in which the soldiers had disappeared. Conspirators! With their dogs on ropes, sniffing and growling. Fuckers! One man in gray, one man in blue. One Confederate soldier. And one Union, the man with the limp. He was the one Hrubek hated the most.
    That man was a con- spirat -or, a fucking Union soldier.
    GET TO
    GETTO
    Slowly the hatred began to fade as he thought about how he’d fooled them. He’d been only thirty feet away from the soldiers, holding his cocked gun, crouching down in a bowl of dirt high on a ledge of rock above them. They’d eased into the grass and found the bag he’d carefully placed there. Shivering with fear he’d heard their alien voices, heard the wet snorting of the dogs, the rustle of grass.
    Hrubek saw the letters again, GETO. They floated past, then vanished.
    Hrubek recalled the colored lights on the police car starting to spin. A moment later the soldiers returned to the cars and the one who hated him most, the lean fucker in blue, the one with the limp, got into the truck with his dog. They sped off east.
    Hrubek crouched down and put his cheek against the damp road. Then he stood up.
    “Good night, ladies . . .”
    It was