Shallow Graves

hands. Her head sagged against the wall.
    Sam reached her, put his arms around her head. He screamed, “Go away, go away, you!”
    The twin opened the door and shouted. “Yo, Bobby. It’s under control. Come on in.”
    Bobby walked inside. Sniffed the air. “Stinks. Brimstone. Lookit that thing.” He nodded at the Springfield in admiration. Then he saw the sheriff’s body. “You have to do that?”
    “He seen me coming through the window,” Billy said, massaging his head where he’d struck it on the doorknob. “The fuck you think I should’ve done? Said ‘Howdy-do’?”
    Bobby closed the door, looked over at Sam. “Hey, young fella. Don’t worry. You’ll be okay.”
    His brother muttered, “Son of a bitch, I’m bleeding.” He looked with satisfaction at Meg, whose head lolled back and forth against the wallpaper. Her face was white. He asked, “Where’s Keith?”
    Meg didn’t answer. He slapped her hard. Still silence. She was only half conscious.
    “No!” the boy cried.
    “Where’s your father?”
    He hesitated then said, “He’s at the office but he’s coming home any minute and he’s going to kill you.”
    “Any minute,” Billy repeated, looking at his brother.
    But Bobby was looking over at the little boy. “How ’bout you and me go watch TV or something. In the living room there? While we wait for him.”
    “No.”
    “You don’t want me to hit your mommy again, do you?”
    Sam didn’t say anything, just shook his head, wiped tears.
    Bobby smiled. “Come on. Let’s you and me go in there.”
    Billy said, “We don’t have time for that now.”
    Feeling good that he’d thought of something his brother hadn’t, Bobby said, “We gotta wait anyway, don’t we?”

Chapter 23
    THE ROADSIDE SIGNS gave him messages.
    The scientist within Keith Torrens would see a yellow warning sign with a curve and a side road painted on it and he’d think of a sigma bond. And his mind would shift into thoughts about electron sharing and the unequal charge distribution in a chloride-bromine molecule.
    Or he’d see a yield sign and think, delta, and, bang, there it would be in his thoughts: the Gibbs free-energy exchange formula.
    Wandering, his mind. Going down those odd paths, just like it did when he was a pudgy kid with a slide rule. The Magic Moments happened then too, didn’t they?
    Another sign—this one on an old, abandoned White Castle hamburger stand. Castle . . . He saw the faded paint of the parapets as he sped past.
    Castle. Medieval castles. Alchemists.
    He thought about the location scout.
    Pellam . . .
    He was tired. It was nearly eleven and he’d put in a full fourteen hours at the plant. Another Sunday gone. Pushing the Cougar along the deserted, dark road, listeningto the damn front-end squeak. A scientist. I’m a scientist and I can’t fix a noisy hunk of metal.
    But none of that mattered: the fatigue, the squeak, the headache. He didn’t care. What was there to bitch about? He’d buy a new goddamn Cougar, a Cadillac, a Mercedes.
    He was riding on a Magic Moment.
    The answer had come all at once. At two that afternoon in a crisp unfolding of thoughts that he fought to put into numbers, Greek letters and scientific symbols. He had run from the factory into his office, closing the door, shutting off the telephone, and wrote furiously—frantic, terrified that he’d miss something. Keith had felt the shock of fear rise up to his scalp, like the first and only time he took speed—in college, struggling to get his master’s degree project in on time. That warm clarity, everything focused, sweeping forward.
    A Magic Moment.
    That the problem solved—a new stabilizer for one of his company’s cough syrups—wasn’t exactly earth-shattering or in proportion to his euphoria didn’t occur to him. And if it had, the excitement wouldn’t be the least dampened.
    The magic worked. He’d packed a problem into his brain, let it bake and out came a solution. He was high, he was alive. Those moments validated everything—all the business bullshit he put up with, all the long hours, the risks, the ulcers he was sure he was developing. All the time away from Meg and Sam.
    All of that was paid for in one moment. A Magic Moment.
    Thinking about Meg . . .
    And he regretted for the tenth time that day, as every day, that she couldn’t really be a part of what he’d done, his business. She’d benefit, of course. She’d be a millionaire too. But she couldn’t be a