Читать книгу Kornwolf - Tristan Egolf - Страница 16

Whatever the reason for Owen’s return to Stepford, finances weren’t the problem. Although he had less than a grand to his name (which wouldn’t have gotten him off to so much as a working start in New York City), the fact was: the cost of living in Stepford was really no lower than in Philth Town or Baltimore.

Neither were matters of employment the cause of it, as—even though, yes, he had just been fired, with disdain, as a crime beat reporter in Gorbach (pop 10k), Louisiana, and couldn’t rely on references there—he had nothing, no business connections in Stepford, to fall back on in the event of disaster.

And as much as he might have preferred to blame his parents, they weren’t responsible either. In point of fact, they had left the area, bound for Connecticut, seven years earlier: his father in seeking out long-distance bicycle routes, on which he was given to foray, his mother in search of that New England light—her “acrylicist’s dream”—by which to paint.

In retrospect, they would claim to have stayed in the area for so many years for the land. Once it was gone, they had left, went the story.

But not before Owen had shouldered the brunt of it.

Whatever, family matters had nothing to do with the situation at hand.

And he couldn’t consider himself to have gotten over it (that is: The Angst) either. Worldly experience hadn’t succeeded in galvanizing his tender hide. He certainly hadn’t returned with outstanding hopes of recapturing lost youth.

No, he wasn’t in town on account of a personal crisis or taxes or bankruptcy. No, he hadn’t burned all of his bridges—or exhausted the last of his options …

He had returned for one reason alone. And a long time due, it had been:

The fight game.

Owen had seen his first boxing match (Clay v. Liston II) at the age of five. Since then, nothing of any significance to happen in the ring had escaped his attention. Much of his “traveling road show” (the heap of things he now carted from town to town) consisted of a sizeable video library—roughly three thousand bouts on tape—five or six boxes of memorabilia: gloves, pictures, trophies, wraps—dozens of books and hundreds of magazines, all of which Owen had read through repeatedly, tracing the history of the sport from gladiatorial Rome to the present day …

Over the years, he had dreamed of one day committing related knowledge to print. Yet, to date, he had published a mere two articles touching on the subject. The reason being, as he was aware: he couldn’t evaluate any contender’s performance—that is: critique it in print—without ever having stepped into a ring, without ever having taken a punch in his life.

While his love for the sport had never faltered, it had remained, thus far, vicarious. In youth, the allure of music, books and film (along with a field of grass) had piqued his interest as much as the fight game. He hadn’t played organized sports in school. Most of his adolescence had gone into priming the noggin for freelance reporting. His twenties had passed in a flurry of same, with all the attendant indulgence in vice. His body had held up remarkably well, considering. So had his mind, for the most part. Until now, plenty of time had remained for “salvaging mortal wreckage,” as he termed it—or, less dramatically, getting in shape.

Decidedly, that was no longer the case.

At present, his physical constitution, though not yet waning, had certainly peaked. His tide was now all the way in, so to speak. (And he hadn’t even tried to quit smoking in a decade.) The number of seasons remaining to pick up the sport, from the inside, proper, was limited. Learning the ropes could go on for years. Owen had five of them left, at best.

If ever he planned on entitling himself to write on the subject, or even to watch it, then now was the time to find a gym, quit smoking and work like never before. He couldn’t expect to have anything up on the matadors, cops and bear hunters out there—the algebra teachers and ATF agents and all the wrong cowards at large on the rock—who wouldn’t have lasted a round in the ring, who would’ve been spat on and booed and insulted and driven right out of the house as disgraceful (not to mention the legion of half-witted journalists already plaguing the sport) without having warded off incoming blows on his own, and throwing a few in return.

His conscience simply wouldn’t allow for it.

He had come “home” to get punched in the face.

With that in mind, he had settled on Stepford for two basic reasons, both of them practical: first, between Philth Town, Pittburgh, Rudding, Horaceburg, Alleytown, Stepford and Yorc, Pennsyltucky probably harbored the richest boxing tradition on earth. Residing in any one of these towns would have tapped him into the source directly. And, like it or not, despite his absence, he already knew his way around Stepford—adding to which, as importantly, second: he also had ties to Roddy Lowe.

Three time Golden Gloves state champ and, presently, accomplished professional junior welterweight, Roddy was truly a home-town legend. He and Owen had met through a mutual friend. (Which is to say: their medicine dealer.) Courteous, humble, attentive, impeccably groomed and tailored—and charming to boot—he often prompted the same remark from strangers: “I’ve never met anyone like him.” Dependably brimming with euphemistic vernacular, Roddy had always presented a figure more suited to 1940: one part dying breed / old-school gentleman—a deferential ham with the ladies—one part dutiful Christian soldier / chevalier of the righteous light, and one part anachronistic cross of beatnik, homeboy and wharf rat brawler: a throwback in every regard, if incongruous, more: a decidedly singular character. And he was loyal. Roddy would’ve bent over backwards to help out a friend in need. Owen had known he could count on as much. It was taken for granted ahead of the move.

While puttering north in his overstuffed Legacy, Owen had accepted, then embraced, his decision. Fifteen hours behind the wheel, nonstop, and he’d surfaced from Dixie intact: as usual, Stepford appeared and seemed to straddle the Mason / Dixon equally: not quite the South, yet a hundred miles shy of New England, and vaguely Midwestern all over, Pennsyltucky consisted of Philth Town and Pittburgh. The rest was West Virginia.

The apartment, it seemed, had been waiting for him: twenty-five classified listings and, clearly, the choice of the lot: a one-hundred-year-old colonial flat near the Beaver Street projects. Instead of immersing himself in the well-to-do cracker suburban ring around town, he would settle with the resident poor therein, who hadn’t the means or desire to ruin it. This would resolve his sidewalk issues. Along with the gingerbread eyesore modules. As a new Caucasian, he preferred the old ghetto.

His lease was secured in an afternoon.

Landing a job had been easier still.

Even though he’d come back willing not only to put his profession on hold, for the moment, but to tackle the grind, if necessary—be it temp work, dishes or pick-hoeing mule apples out of the cracks on Route 21—he was still able, somehow, by stroke of unlikely fortune, to land a job reporting. In truth, he’d submitted his file to The Plea on a whim while heading to an interview with a dog-walking agency over on Lime Street. Passing the five-storied glass-front building, he’d decided, for the hell of it, to go on in.

The lobby’s receptionist, a scowler with her hair pulled back so tightly it was thinning down the middle, had examined his resume. Her tag read “Josie.” Frowning, she had mumbled, “I’ve got to use the phone.”

Her pronunciation of “phone” had been laden with the Dutch Anal Pucker—the Stepford drawl. Owen hadn’t heard that lilt in years—the nasally rolling “oe” (with an umlaut) of “Broeg’s” a regional microbrewery. Of “poenies” galloping over a field. Of “poems” by moonlight. Of “toetem” poles. And of secretaries named “Joesie” on “phoens” … By slowing down the enunciation and rolling over, forward and back, the “oe” while simultaneously curling the top lip sharply toward the nostrils—thereby exposing the two front teeth (hence the “anal” pucker) and pressing one’s tongue almost flush with the roof of the mouth, then forcing a tonsillar bleat through that opening—one may hope to re-create this phenomenon within a controlled environment. Anyone who’s ever left the county would have to recognize it as local stuff. Only the people of Stepford Town could demand of their faces the work of an anus.

Owen had turned to walk out the door when she snapped her fingers, still holding the phoen. He had turned back. Annoyed, she had motioned to hold on—flexing a finger. Again, she had looked away. Someone had picked up the line on the other end. Soon, the receptionist had glanced up to ask, “How soon are you available?”

Incredulous, Owen had shrugged. “What time is it?”

The voice on the other end must have overheard him. There was laughter, cawing. The receptionist hung up. “Mr. Jarvik will see you now”—handing him back his resume.

“Mr. Jarvik?”

She nodded. “Terrance Jarvik.” Her voice had gone flat. “The city editor.”

Upstairs.

He sat on a chair in the waiting room, convinced that his time was being wasted. He figured his background check was running, and shortly, somebody would give him the boot.

(As soon as he landed a job, he would have to quit smoking. That was the goal he had set. Which left him in no kind of hurry, for the moment. The four-alarm hell ride was fast approaching.)

Laughter drifted out of an office. Followed by: “Where is he?”—coughed with delighted approval, by the sound of it. “Send him in here!”

A woman in blue secretarial gear appeared in the doorway. She beckoned to Owen.

For the next better part of the afternoon, he had sat in a comfortable leather recliner being lauded with undeserved praise by a stranger—a gaunt, wiry old ferret of a man, overdressed, in a gabardine number—who couldn’t stop laughing and shifting in starts at his desk, and who hadn’t introduced himself yet, although Owen was naturally left to assume he was dealing with Editor Terrance Jarvik. That much was likely. The rest was unclear.

It seemed that the old man had gotten a hoot out of Owen’s “reason” for leaving Gorbach—which, admittedly, sounded preposterous, but which had been at least half true: his boss in Louisiana, a mouthpiece for corporate land deal interests (the true half), had made inappropriate “advances” toward him—an allegation intended to ward off inquiry more than to entertain. The fact is: the charge wasn’t meant to be funny. Yet Jarvik, strangely, was all busted up by it. Stranger still, he hadn’t appeared to believe the story, and yet, for that reason, was all the more thrilled and, evidently, impressed. By admitting, thus, to horrible references, Owen had bought his way out of them—out of the need to address them.

Or so it appeared.

He hadn’t the first idea of what to make of it.

On walking in, he had taken Jarvik for simply eccentric, a cracked old goat of a very-big-fish-in-an-empty-pond type, a lettered Yankee from old southern money, perhaps—with no one around him at present to pose any challenge or threat to his eminence—which, in itself, had grown flaccid, as such—full of bluster and affectation, he was.

However, as the meeting had proceeded, the old man’s fervor began to appear less than voluntary. He must’ve been pushing seventy plus, so maybe his mind was just falling apart. But his gaze had appeared alert and attentive. And his energy level was through the roof. He may have been nearing retirement, yes, but he hadn’t seemed ready to go out quietly.

Apparently (being the operative term), the gist of his current dilemma was this: in the previous month, an unexplained rise in disturbances—or, as the old man had coined them patronizingly, “rural mishaps,” had swept the eastern—almost a third of—Stepford County. Notably similar incidents of breaking and entering, arson, criminal trespass, robbery and senseless destruction of property had been reported across the area known, unofficially, as the Amish Basin. Accounts of livestock assault, theft and harassment were unexplainably numerous (twelve by the last count) from Laycock to Bird-in-Hand, Intercourse to Paradise and all through Blue Ball. The highest frequency of incidents appeared to be occurring in the less residential expanses of corn and tobacco fields south of New Holland, off of Route 21, along the township borders. Statistically, the area couldn’t have boasted a recent history of much less crime. Low-key barroom brawls had let out in the local taverns from time to time, and there was a significant biker culture, with multiple road gangs headquartered locally. But most of the resident “underworld,” so to speak, usually kept pretty much to itself. Cases of actual breaking and entering had never been filed on the present level. The willful destruction of property was almost unheard of, even toward Halloween.

October had always been strange in The Basin. But rarely, if ever, to such extremes. The public records, according to Jarvik, reflected as much in no uncertain terms. “Trouble in Paradise isn’t the norm,” he claimed, unable to skirt the term. The Basin was characteristically dull and uneventful in most regards, to the point where even The Plea didn’t opt to retain a full-time farm beat reporter. Any news worth printing was normally gathered once a week by a “hack” for inclusion in Sunday’s “Lifestyles” section. That particular “hack,” it seemed, had quit the paper two weeks earlier. Meaning: The Plea was critically understaffed one dependable field reporter. Attempts to fill the position had, for whatever reason, come to naught. For the moment, two city reporters were splitting the sudden barrage of complaints down the middle. This, in effect, had demanded their overtime, travel through unfamiliar terrain and, as Jarvik pronounced, “more common sense than either fool can manage to summon.”

“Besides which,” he kept on, “they don’t know a thing about farm equipment. And they can’t write.”

These were the circumstances into which Owen had blundered haphazardly, however strange. Even though he probably knew less about farms, and farming equipment, than anyone in town, he had managed without even trying, somehow, to land a position writing about them. Which, in general, seemed to be one of his stronger and more consistent talents. “The luck of the Celts,” his grandfather called it. Despite the fact that he hadn’t exactly been offered a shot at deposing the mayor, he had secured a job he could not only live with, but work without blowing his focus.

Or so he had thought on accepting the offer.

Then he had gone to the game reserve.

From there on, nothing had happened as planned. And nothing had been short of frantically paced.

His second day on the job, Friday, October 8th, as the perfect example:

He was called to the office at two p.m., an hour early, on Jarvik’s orders. Two other daily reporters were present, neither of whom extended him a greeting, or even a handshake, upon introduction. They both seemed annoyed with him right off the bat. And so did Jarvik’s assistant editor, a pasty-faced honky named Timothy Kegel. They all struck Owen as miserable assholes.

Then he found out why they’d been called in.

The Blue Ball Devil Returns edition had already gone into four printings. By evening, a fifth was expected to go to press, with further demand projected. Regional TV was phoning nonstop, along with a paper from nearby Rudding—and numerous local residents calling to verify similar “sightings” of their own.

So much for the cozy reception, thought Owen: his basket looked like a public spitoon. It would overflow the next morning, when the Philth Town Inquiry ran his story, front page … No doubt, the regular staff was irate. And not without reason. After all, who was he?—this Owen Brynmor, this slovenly kid drifting into their midst on an unscreened, trial-run basis, apparently, to fall under some kind of cracked and delirious favor of their aging city editor—who, incidentally, introduced him as “someone who might help you idiots think”—then go on to triple circulation by landing an AP smash on his first report—and with tales of Bigfoot, no less …

They all looked insulted beyond their capacities.

Owen himself found it hard to believe.

Beforehand, of course, he’d expected a smash. There was no way this story could not have sold. But to watch something actually rip as intended was a rare and genuine marvel to behold. Twice in the past, he had lost what should have been national copy to turn of luck—the first to a presidential scandal, the second to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He knew not to blink till the check had cleared—and even then, with residual caution.

Jarvik, on the other hand, was openly thrilled. (Tripling circulation tends to have that effect on city editors.) Having called everyone into his office, he assigned his regulars each to a task—two of them to telephone duty, and the third, a furious Kegel, to screening messages, while Owen, overtly exempt from the old man’s disdain, was encouraged to follow up his story. He could start by reporting to the Intercourse Market to verify rumors of livestock attacks.

Already, Owen could feel the resentment building around him. He left quietly.

Outside, in the car, his window jammed. While rolling the handle, his fingers locked up. Nicotine: worse than he’d ever imagined possible, hurting like none of these people could … Day number two. It would never get worse. This nightmare would never seem more insurmountable. He would feel crazed, overdriven and sick for the next thirty hours, with little improvement. His hand would continue to wander involuntarily, à la Dr. Strangelove. The sweat would continue to roll in flashes. His heart would continue to palpitate violently. He would be tempted to give up, but wouldn’t be able to. He would feel optionless, ruined: either back to the toxins, or life as an unending heart attack.

This would take years to get used to.

The coming week had been put on reserve for expected trauma to mind and body—compounded by which, the effects of his workout with Roddy that morning—his first afternoon at the West Side Gym—were beginning to register. He hadn’t been out of the club for an hour. Yet already, both of his lats felt torn. Hard as The Coach had pushed them—and, Jesus, he certainly hadn’t shown any mercy—Owen was having a great deal of trouble just lifting his keys to start the ignition. His arms and legs were a throbbing mass of quivering, mashed and achy muscles. Earlier, coming down the stairs, his knees had threatened to buckle beneath him. Now, he felt nauseous—so out of shape, it was something of a miracle the session hadn’t killed him. There was no oxygen high on this trip. He wasn’t enjoying the pump, so to speak. The only reward was a fleeting reprieve from the nicotine cravings. Which wouldn’t last.

One hour later, twenty miles west, in the steadily darkening afternoon, he had managed to alienate most of the Intercourse Market’s outdoor livestock vendors. Having started out casually, broaching the subject with palpably brazen nonchalance, he’d been quick to pick up on the sweeping derision his inquiries seemed to be eliciting. Before long, he’d felt less at home in the stands than he had at the paper that afternoon. Being spurned by the Plain Folk was highly unsettling. It made Owen feel like a cancer cell. He was suddenly given to wonder if Jarvik’s reason was altogether intact. In avoiding his questions, these people were not only unresponsive—there was hostility. Which couldn’t have come as any surprise. The Plain Folk had always been ill-disposed toward the press. Jarvik must have known that.

Yet, checking back into the office was unreassuring. The old man had stepped out for dinner.

Thus, Owen took the initiative to follow up several reports from the previous week.

The first was a breaking and entering call from the “venison farm,” a fenced-in, four-acre pasture stocked with exotic deer. The farm was privately owned by an elderly couple, Robert and Nancy McConnel—according to whom, their herd of seventy rare and, primarily, imported animals had been terrorized by a loping, bipedal “freak of creation” for the past two weeks. When asked to elaborate, the couple fell silent, as neither, it turned out, had sighted the creature. Nevertheless, Mrs. McConnel was willing to go on record as stating that, based on events of the week before, the sounds she had heard from the yard after midnight (howling above the stampeding herd) undoubtedly / certainly / had to have been that “thing” in the paper: “Jesus help us.”

It wasn’t much better a mile down the road, where a local tavern—the Dogboy—owner, an aging coot with a widow’s peak, reported a “one-man pack of dogs” having scattered garbage all over the parking lot. Several regulars claimed to have spotted a “creature” on leaving the bar that week—and while no one could say what it looked like for certain, or even agree on the species, for that matter, going consensus held that the newspaper’s Blue Ball Devil was close enough. As far as Owen could tell, the Dogboy’s owner was speaking in dead earnest.

Owen left him a contact number, one he was free to give out to the locals.

Finally, he drove to the Holtwood Development, a ten-acre neighborhood under construction a mile down the road, between Smoketown and Bird-in-Hand. There, amid eyesore module foundations in varying stages of half-assembly, a contractor hoarsely explained how the houses had fallen prey to nightly sabotage. And no, Bigfoot wasn’t suspected—or any fraternity prank, for that matter. One needed only consider the “evidence” left behind to confirm as much: a purplish goo, some kind of spray paint, marking the sides of several plows. In other words: people (gasp) and the contractor reckoned he knew just whom: “Them hippies.”

As though on cue, Owen’s clunky cell phone rang in his jacket pocket. It was Jarvik’s assistant reporting a “riot” on 341, back east, toward Intercourse. Leaving the contractor, Owen climbed into his Subaru and took off, bewildered by now. Since when had The Basin gone apeshit, he wondered. This place was amazing. He couldn’t believe it.

He arrived on the scene of the “riot” to find that the road had been sealed off and traffic rerouted toward Bareville and Ronks, to the north and south. He parked his car and walked toward the scene of what looked to be a fairly serious accident. A telephone pole lay across the road. A clean-up crew was attempting to move it. Aside from a couple of Lamepeter troopers, a tow truck driver and some volunteer firemen, only a handful of elderly locals with cardboard signs remained on the scene. These were the hippies, no doubt: as defined by exercising their right to assemble—though most of them, based on appearance, had probably been too old to draft even back in the sixties. Owen had trouble coaxing a clear account of proceedings from anyone present. The most he could ascertain was that a “crazy-ass Dutch boy” had challenged an eighteen-wheeler to a game of chicken in an open buggy—and, afterward, paid a terrible price in a brutal beating by one of the cops.

The farm boy’s name, as determined through a call to the Lame-peter precinct, was Ephraim Bontrager. No further details regarding his case were available. The suspect was being “interrogated.”

Owen returned to the office at dusk. But the office would bring him little relief.

To start, the Associated Press had been calling all day for verification of text. Demands had been made to speak with “the lucky reporter.” Congratulations were offered: “most convincing hoax in years,” and “should go down in the books with Nessie.” One caller had asked what the suit was made of, applauding the editor’s sense of humor. Another deplored his sheer audacity and willingness to stop at nothing for sales. For most of the afternoon, Jarvik’s assistant had kept her cool while fielding questions. Along about five, however, someone had called her a hayseed. From there, she had lost it.

As Owen entered the copy room, most of the rest of the staff appeared equally frazzled. He walked down an aisle of partitioned cubicles, feeling the glares from every side.

Telephones all through the building were ringing. Even the weatherman’s line was tied up. And not just with press calls, either. As many complaints had been pouring in from locals—some in urgent need of assurance, some in jabbering, high-flown panics, the rest either tickled pink or disgusted, with glimpses of vague uncertainty between. Several subscribers had threatened already to cancel their daily delivery service in opposition to what they considered the creature’s “pornographic” namesake. Others were simply embarrassed—one lady claiming a brother in Yorc had been teasing her. As well, the game warden, Kratz, had phoned to complain that he, too, had been swamped with calls. Everyone seemed intent on discrediting him as the “hoax’s” perpetrator. But, as that went, Kratz hadn’t taken the photograph. He was demanding a public disclaimer.

And then there was the mail—by fax, by telegraph and, later, by post it would flood the office.

Throughout the week, Owen would come in to parcels from every enthusiast geek of the paranormal this side of Billings: allegations of similar “sightings,” and going speculation per this one.

Someone in Blue Ball was willing to wager the Jersey Devil had come to town. But the problem with that was: the Jersey Devil, by legend, had the head of a horse, the wings of an eagle and the body of a giant serpent. The Blue Ball Devil looked more like a mud-thrown kangaroo with a scorched pompadour. So then, perhaps the fabled Goat Man: one caller certainly seemed to think so. Years earlier, according to a Michael Hoober of Windmill City, Virginia, a neighbor had clipped the beast while driving home on a back road, late one night—and even had a wiry clump of hair that was pulled from the radiator grill to show for it. The catch was: the Goat Man, a laboratorial fugitive gone amok in the hills, was described as having the upper body of a man, and the legs and hooves of a goat. Here, too, the descriptions clashed. A closer match, one anonymous source contended, was Mo Mo, the half-man / half-ape creature from Louisiana, Missouri. While closer to the Blue Ball Devil in appearance, there was little to account for the distance between them, or the fact that Mo Mo hadn’t been spotted in over twenty years. And so with the Beast of Truro, a savage, catlike creature from Massachusetts. And Saskatchewan’s mythical Red Coyote. And El Dientudo of Buenos Aires … The list continued: a regional entity / legend from most existing cultures, and hundreds of former marching band geeks here at home to keep them all on file.

Owen wound up at a loss for anything even remotely similar in profile. The Blue Ball Devil, as urban myth and enigma, appeared to be one of a kind. The only related reference on file—three one-paragraph blurbs on the subject, all of them upward of twenty years old—had been pulled from the Stepford Daily Plea’s archives. The microfiche files had been milked for their worth, and from them was woven to print the tale of a creature—what one local farmer was quoted as calling a “wingless goblin with quills”—purported to have wandered the eastern half of the county in 1974. The creature was said to have rendered extensive, community-impacting levels of crop damage. None of The Plea’s current staff members, not even Jarvik, as the longtime city editor, could tell him much more than that. And being that Lindsey Cale, the reporter who’d covered the story originally, was dead (her car gone into a roadside ditch in the early eighties, cause unknown), Owen would have to rely on the here and now in following up his story. Which should have been simple enough: the calls that were pouring in to the paper at present were not in reference to previous sightings so much as they were in regard to a creature trashing their compost heaps that week.

For his follow-up article, therefore, he gathered the choicest reports from the previous days, and, with minimal formatting, gave them to Jarvik.

The old man couldn’t have been more pleased.

He burst into laughter on reading the text. He dabbed his face with a handkerchief, giggled, then nodded approvingly. “This will do.”

Owen went home feeling relatively satisfied, if intent on a few basic changes.

For one thing, he wanted his story, for as long as it ran, to be more than a public ledger. One time around, that format worked. But the impact would lessen with repetition. He would have to find a new angle, somehow. He would have to explore The Basin …

More confusingly, he didn’t know what he was after, exactly. What was he getting at? Mass hysteria? As in: the provocation thereof?

—Most likely, yes.

But, theatrics aside, was that justifiable?

—Sometimes it’s right to do the wrong thing …

Beyond all of which, there was also the matter of what exactly did he “believe”? Now, there was a question worth considering.

When his mother had called him to talk that morning, things had been plenty confusing already. Explaining to her the situation had proven no easy matter for Owen. Mostly, she hadn’t been able to figure out where he was coming from, why he was doing this. By her estimation, he was one of what he called those “paranormal geeks” himself. Yet his tone was imbued with the glee of a prankster.

Moreover, she couldn’t have known the extent to which he and his coverage were having an impact.

On Thursday morning, however, that changed—as the story began to appear in newspapers all across the nation, including her chosen daily in rural Connecticut. “Beelzebub in Pennsyltucky”—disgusted, she quoted the lead by phone. And a caption beneath the photo: “It Came From Blue Ball.”

“I suppose you think that’s funny.”

Even though neither term was Owen’s, his mother was sure to blame him for both.

What she didn’t, and couldn’t, have known was that Owen, despite his giggle on breaking it down, had questions himself—and couldn’t entirely write this matter off as a hoax.

On first appearance, he’d taken the motion detector photo for having been staged—and brilliantly so: far and away the best thing ever to come out of Stepford. But after a day in The Basin, he’d been given to wonder—not so much by the tavern and deer ranch debacles, which barely held water, but owing more to the hostile reception afforded him that afternoon at the market. Those vendors had been more than simply unfriendly. They had been spooked. There was no doubt about it.

Whatever the case, he was certain of one thing: the Blue Ball Devil was a bonafide smash—a syndicated humdinger, national copy. And as a result, in spite of his initial resolve on returning to Stepford to begin with, Owen found himself back in reporting as never before.

He felt like a rock star.

An estimated three hundred papers across the country had printed the story and photo. There was talk of coverage in Europe too. And on TV: at one point, a network executive called to speak with “the werewolf reporter.” A late night radio DJ from Texas had gotten himself in trouble for claiming the creature was Uncle Shrub in drag.

A brick had been thrown through the station window.

Just down the street from The Plea, the Press Room Deli was humming with talk of the matter. On stopping in before work that day, Owen had silenced the room completely. While standing in line, he could feel their contempt in a noxious, stifling cloud all around him. Slowly, their conversation resumed, but in hushed mutters, with awkward pauses.

Bess, a sickly attractive, chain-smoking thirty-something from Format approached him.

“Man,” she squinted unsmilingly, leaning forward to whisper. “These people hate you.”

For what it was worth, he hated them back—especially Kegel, the junior editor: chronically dour, with a bulging vein that divided his forehead in times of duress: Kegel, the Stepford Anus incarnate …

That afternoon, he pounced on Owen straight out of the elevator: “Mister Brynmor.” He sidled up, waving some papers. “I don’t know how it’s done elsewhere, but here we staple submissions. It’s clear that you haven’t consulted your style book.”

Blam.

He probably went golfing every Thursday.

He would make working the bag less torturous.

For Sunday’s edition, Jarvik ordered a “week in review” piece—intended not only to recap the story’s development to date, but to focus as much on worldwide coverage the photograph, and thereby Stepford, was receiving: interviews with recognized “experts” in Tucson who claimed that the beast was an astral traveler, to locals from Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, who yodeled of Pumpkinhead’s return.

Somewhere in the article, mention was made of a bid for the photo’s original negative (quoted at $2,000) being surpassed by a TV executive’s offer. In truth, the original bid had been placed by a comic book collector from Delaware, who, like his corporate competitor, had been referred directly to Dwayne Gibbons. Apparently, Gibbons, who owned the original negative, had not received their calls—or at least had yet to benefit by them—as, Sunday morning, he phoned The Plea to complain. “It says here two thousand dollars.” His tone was belligerent. “What’s this about?”

He wanted to speak with the “author” in person—and, yes, he had news—an update, of sorts. He was down at the Dogboy, east on 21.

Owen hung up.

He knew the address.

The tavern was nearly empty at that hour. Most of the regular crowd was sleeping. A couple of stoolhuggers sat at the end of the bar. The air smelled of lovely tobacco.

The barkeep, a ruggedly fierce-looking woman, came over. She looked at him blankly.

“I’m here to see someone named Dwayne Gibbons,” he told her.

She nodded, turning.

Behind her, down at the end of the bar, a figure sat up. He was wearing a hood.

“The reporter’s here to see you,” the bartender called to him, jerking a thumb toward Owen.

The figure let out a belch. Then, getting up: “So he is.” He started to weave down the aisle. “You think he’ll buy me a drink?”

Owen nodded to the bartender.

“One for yourself?” she asked.

He nodded again.

As Gibbons approached down the length of the bar, Owen turned for an introduction.

“I’m Brynmor,” he said. He held out his hand.

Sliding onto a stool before him, Gibbons looked back in silence, frowning. “I know who you are.” He wiped his chin.

Gradually, Owen dropped his hand.

Right off, he didn’t like what he saw. There was something overtly obscene about Gibbons. More than shady, he was all-out beady-eyed.

“Look,” he commenced, producing a paper. “It says here an offer for two thousand dollars.”

“That offer was forwarded straight to you,” said Owen. “I gave him your number myself.”

Gibbons blinked. “It says here offers.”

“—were forwarded straight to you, as I said.”

Surely, this weasel had more to say.

The bartender brought over two pints of beer.

Owen placed a five on the counter.

Shaking his head, Gibbons continued with a forced, unnaturally casual leer. “The way I see it, you owe me some money.”

Owen stared at him, trying to pinpoint the physical features that most repulsed him—maybe the way his eyebrows intersected just over the bridge of his nose—or his scrawny neck, marked with cuts and a horribly razor-burned Adam’s apple—the way his back was bowed to a permanent C—his darkly tobacco-stained lips.

Yet even in combination, none of those features surpassed his venomous gaze.

It was disappointing to think that the Blue Ball Devil, and thereby the current renown of Stepford (let alone Owen’s career), had been triggered by one with the eyes of a viper.

“You won’t get a dime out of me,” said Owen.

He stood up. Twenty-five minutes he’d wasted driving here. “Check your answering machine.” He chased his beer in clear disgust.

Gibbons cracked a hideous grin: you could follow it back to his fortieth aunt. “I didn’t expect a dime out of you,” he said. “I was talking about your boss. But now that you mention it—” Sliding his empty glass across the counter, he nodded. “Buy me another drink, and I just might tell you something.”

The bartender cut in. “Don’t buy him anything, mister.”

Furious, Gibbons glared at her.

Ignoring him, she added, “He’s just trying to tell you what everyone in here already knows. And that is—”

“Shut your mouth!” snarled Gibbons.

She followed up: “The Devil was here last night.”

Until then, Owen had been intent on walking out with no further remark.

He lifted a finger. “Give him a drink.”

A heap at the end of the counter sat up.

“And that one too,” Owen added. “And one for yourself.”

He pulled up a stool and sat.

They were silent at first, the four of them hitting their beers, until finally, the bartender spoke: “It came in at midnight.”

The Heap interjected. “It was closer to one.”

“It was midnight exactly. Bob had just left. I remember.”

“Bob worked late last night.”

They argued the point. Owen allowed it to roll for a moment. Then he cut in: “So what did it look like?” he asked, not knowing where to begin.

They shifted uncertainly.

The Heap was the first to venture an effort: “He looked like Nixon.”

“Right,” said Gibbons. “Maybe after a beating.”

The bartender shook her head. “It weren’t Nixon. More like an ape in overalls.”

“Dirty ones.”

“Smelled like it …”

“Ugly.”

“—as Nixon.”

“And talks like him.”

Owen’s head was spinning. “Hold on now.” He stepped in, reeling. “Do you mean to tell me this thing wears clothing?”

He could hear how ridiculous the question sounded.

They stared at him.

“And that it talks” he continued, trying to justify having spoken.

(The Blue Ball Devil as Richard Nixon?)

“That’s right,” said Gibbons. “He’s a regular guy. Though to my ear, it don’t speak English too good.”

“He’s not a regular guy,” said the barkeep.

“He ain’t a guy at all,” said The Heap. “He’s a devil. Just like you called him, mister.”

Owen gestured to Gibbons’s newspaper. Sitting faceup on the counter, the motion detector photo begged his retort. “That doesn’t look like a person to me.”

“Of course not.” Gibbons said, shaking his head. “That picture was taken on October first.”

Owen stared for a moment. “And what does that mean?” he asked.

Gibbons stared back. “All I can say is: check your calendar.”

Suddenly, Owen felt disadvantaged, as though the ground were sliding beneath him. What did these people know that he didn’t? What did that sneer of Gibbons’s mean?

Just then, a beverage delivery man stepped in. He was older, grizzled, stocky. The door swung shut behind him. The barkeep directed him back toward the take-out coolers. She picked up a clipboard and moved to join him.

The Heap kept talking: “I heard The Devil’s a chimp they shaved and taught to speak.”

Gibbons dismissed him. “The Devil’s no chimp.”

“How would you know?”

“Cuz.” He glowered. “I seen it.”

Another argument started up. Owen listened in disbelief as they went back and forth on the creature’s appearance, then onto theories of nuclear accidents just down the river and Nature’s revenge …

In spite of his prior insistence, The Heap was now sure that the Blue Ball Devil, the original, was dead: some local farmers had shot it. The freak that had come in the night before was a fake, he claimed: an imposter, a charlatan.

Down the bar, at the end of the counter, the beverage delivery man overheard them. He looked up from tallying invoice figures to chime in, calmly: “It’s definitely dead.”

Everyone looked at him.

“What would you know?” Gibbons demanded. “You don’t even live in this area.”

“True,” said the man, unfazed. “But I used to.”

“So, then?” asked The Heap. “Have you seen it?”

“No,” the man admitted. “But it ripped the handle off of my grandfather’s whiskey still, if that counts.” He laughed out loud.

“I thought you said it was dead,” Owen followed up.

“I said, the Blue Ball Devil’s dead. You folks are talking about something else.”

“Like what?” asked Gibbons.

The man shook his head with a grin: “The Mennonites call it the Corn Wolf.”

“The what?” said Owen.

The Heap added: “What is it?”

Grinning still, the man came back. “Hey, you tell me. I don’t live here, remember?”

At last, The Heap and Gibbons fell silent.

But Owen continued to press the issue: “How do you know for certain it’s dead?”

The man replied with a casual shrug. “Because,” he said, reaching into his pocket to pull out a Swisher Sweet cigarillo. He lit it, puffed and concluded: “His name was Jacob Speicher. He died in The Nam.”