1970

Tom Wilson pulled the car into the parking space downtown that was nearest to the bridge, cut the engine and the headlights. The bridge sprang directly from the intersecting street, but its nearest light was yards away, on the other side of a one-story row of offices. Sitting in a black car on a deserted nighttime avenue underneath a street light that was out, he felt as if he could simply disappear. Disappear, he thought, saying the word over in his head, a mental mantra.

The note lay on the seat next to him. He'd written it in a bar. He kept thinking someone would wonder what he was writing, but no one even noticed. Like he was already gone.

He tipped his head back against the seat. God, he loved this car. Loved it from the moment he saw it, late '66. He hadn't gone too far then, he could've turned himself around. But he had to have this car. And then Cathy's face, open with surprise and admiration when he drove it up the driveway.

It was all for her, really. She deserved the best. All for her.

He shook his head a little. He knew it was bull. He was tired of self-justification and tired of self-hatred and tired of the argument between them raging in his head. He wanted it to disappear.

He tried to remember Cathy's face again, but now all he could picture was how pinched and tense it had looked this afternoon. She wasn't going to scream at him, wouldn't kick him when he was down, but at the same time she couldn't bear to look at him. She had pored obsessively over the Attorneys section of the Yellow Pages, trying to judge who was good and who was a shyster by comparing their ads, because she was too humiliated to call any of her friends or relatives and ask for the name of a good criminal attorney.

Whether through attorney's fees or reparations, of course, they'd lose the house. But a relatively young woman can move halfway across the country back to her parents' house, start her life over again, with some secrecy and dignity as a widow. She can't do that with an unemployable jailbird husband in tow.

He'd known it was coming for days, knowledge accompanied by a persistent nausea that wouldn't let him vomit and get it over with. Last night he'd thought he couldn't go through another night like this, knowing that, actually, worse evenings were in store. Tonight he'd decided he wouldn't go through another night like that, and at the decision his stomach had settled. He'd even been able to smile at Cathy before he left, tell her they'd get through this somehow.

He lunged out of the car, listening to the solid sound of the door closing with the pleasure it always gave him, and started down the bridge. The Kansas River was wide and the water moved rapidly at that point, the tree-lined banks swallowed in darkness. The bridge lights touched and vanished on the tops of fast-moving ripples, looking like dozens of fantastical creatures down in the blackness that appeared and then vanished before you could focus your gaze on them.

– One bad second. Then it's all over.

A car zoomed through the intersection, its tires squealing, racing away from the bridge. He looked back over his shoulder.

Then he went back to the black car and turned on its emergency flashers. He'd destroyed himself. No point in destroying his cherished car by leaving it almost invisible in the darkness all night.

He ran his hand over the hood as he walked back to the railing, and this time he went to the bridge's highest point. The river sound below was a hushed shushing, as though it were urging quiet.

His body was spotted after dawn by a bridge worker; it hadn't gone far, washing up on a tiny islet in the middle of the river. The impact hadn't killed him, but had apparently knocked him unconscious, and the rushing water had done the rest.

At about the same time, a Lawrence policeman was running the plates of the black Impala that had been sitting downtown for hours, its emergency flashers quietly ticking.

1972

When John Winchester treated himself to lunch out, it was usually at the Woolworth's downtown, where the motherly women at the counter recognized and chatted with their regulars. He should've known better than to lunch at a place that featured, on the wall behind the counter, the popular poster of a little old lady flipping the bird. But he was in a hurry, on the other side of town, and someone had told him that this place had a good omelette.

Which it did, and he chewed morosely, wishing there was a publication anywhere in here with a sports section and that the guy sitting at the nearby table would shut up. " – not even mainly the racial thing," he was saying. "Look, you take a bunch of hyper-macho cases, shut them up in a ship, send 'em off to kill people, and what happens? There's a riot! What a surprise! No one else to get violent with, the lab rats turn on each other!"

"Probably the Navy's way of culling the herd," said the long-haired braless girl behind the counter.

"Herd is right. Animals."

"They'd been at sea on combat duty for eight months," John said quietly, because he did read things other than the sports section. "They'd just been told that their tours were extended. They weren't going home like they thought, they were going back to combat duty."

The girl looked at him and over at the other guy.

"So," the guy said carefully, "so, what you're saying is, they were under a lot of stress."

"Not really an excuse, but yeah, they were."

"Because they had to go back to sending bombers off to destroy innocent villagers. I dunno, it seems to me like the people under stress there were the folks getting bombed."

"Well, no, Dave," the girl said, "they don't have feelings like the rest of us, remember? They're just gooks."

"Oh yeah," Dave said at the same time that John said, "My whole time there, I only ever heard one guy use that word."

"I believe you completely." Dave's voice was rich with phony sincerity.

"I don't get it," the girl said to John, sounding honestly befuddled. "If you're in Vietnam and you truly think of the Vietnamese as human beings, how do you justify what you're doing to them?"

"That's the beauty of the military," Dave said. "You don't have to think about anything. 'Yes sir! Yes sir!' That's it."

John stood sharply, getting a sneaking pleasure at the way Dave jumped, put just enough money on the counter to pay for his omelette and left.

When he was just outside the door he heard the girl say, "Y'all come back now, y'hear?" in an exaggerated accent, and Dave laughing.

John didn't slam the car door when he got in, but there was no question it got closed. He put his hands on the steering wheel and stared at it for a moment.

Then he smiled a little, shaking his head.

– When I have my own garage, I've got to remember not to go around forcing my opinions on customers. You either sound like a snot-nosed college brat or a ninety-year-old geezer. Either way, not good for business.

And that reminded him that he was in a hurry. He started the car, only now beginning to feel the November chill.

It took only five minutes to get to the one-story building surrounded by a huge parking lot and fronted with the sign, "Lawrence Used Auto – Serving You Since 1958!" He pulled the yellow Mustang parallel with a row of other cars, got out and started unloading the trunk. His boss, Curt Bailey, came out of the office, his tie flapping in the sudden sharp wind that had sprung up, and started helping. "How did she drive?"

"Just fine. All it needed was a good tune-up, tire balance and rotation."

"Great. I thought we got a deal with this car." Curt closed the trunk and patted it. "I almost feel like I should've made him a better offer."

"You made him a great offer," John said, "considering that he hadn't serviced the thing since he bought it. I'll give this row a good wash after I put this stuff away."

"Actually, I've got another project for you." Their arms full, they were walking briskly toward the office. "Uh, by the way, a customer took the Impala for a test drive."

John stopped dead as Curt opened the door. "I don't want to hear this."

"Freezing cold. Had the heater turned up full blast, might as well have been air conditioning. Needless to say, no deal."

"It's impossible!" John dropped his load of office and car maintenance supplies on the desk. "Well. Obviously it's not. I've just missed something, that's all. I'll go over it again."

"I'm not blaming you. I know the kind of work you do."

"Did it moan at you?"

Curt chuckled. "The only person who ever said that Impala made a moaning sound was that loon who bought it and returned it a week later. And Ed said he heard it, right before he quit."

"Ed?"

"Salesman who left here right before you came on board. Son of a bitch."

Curt swore so seldom that John, putting away supplies, glanced over his shoulder in surprise.

"Figured out after he left that when he was supposedly reconciling the petty cash at night he was dipping into it. Not too much at a time, but I bet it came to a thousand or two all told."

"Did you press charges?"

Curt shrugged. "By this time, it wouldn't be worth trying to prove it in court. But I hope every car the jerk ever drives moans at him."

"It's a shame. Great car like that Impala, I mean."

"It's been kind of a labor of love for you, hasn't it? Hey, do you want it? I'd give you a price break."

With a reluctant sigh and smile, John shook his head. "I couldn't afford it, even with the break."

"You know, I'd put you on full-time if I could."

Curt was really too soft-hearted to be a used-car dealer, John thought. Good thing he was in Lawrence, Kansas; in a bigger city he'd have been eaten alive. "Don't worry about it. I'm knocking on doors, my dad's putting out feelers. I'll get full-time work soon. Actually, I'm kind of enjoying the time off."

"Sort of making a gradual transition to civilian life?"

"Something like that. OK. Wash the cars first, or go over the Impala?"

"Actually, another project. And I'm sorry to stick you with it, but Doris is at her mother's house for the week and you know my handwriting. I need about seventy envelopes addressed."

It was John's turn to shrug. "Work's work. Why the mass mailing?"

"The calendars came in."

"Calendars?"

"We did the photos earlier this year. I've been fighting with the photographer and the printer ever since. But I think the end result is worth it." Curt was digging into an opened cardboard box on the floor as he spoke and now straightened, handing a square wall calendar to John.

The cover caption was "Lawrence Used Auto – Let's Drive! 1973". The cover shot showed a pretty girl in a short white coat and an only slightly longer skirt. She was leaning over the windshield of a bright red car with an ice scraper, looking at the camera with her lips slightly puckered as though scraping imaginary ice were an unexpectedly difficult task. The leaning caused her skirt to ride up enough to show that she had very well shaped upper thighs. Her shoes were wholly unsuited for winter, making it just as well that the sparkling snow heaped on the ground around her was patently fake.

John didn't laugh often, but when he did he grinned broadly and his chest shook. He just made no sound. "Are you selling the car or the girl?"

Curt seemed offended. "Hey, this is just good old-fashioned cheesecake. It's nothing compared to what the skin magazines are doing now."

"That's true," John said, still smiling as he turned the pages. The cover shot was repeated as Miss January, Miss February was predictably pink and lacy.

"I've gotta do something to unload some of these hulks. Maybe the girls will glamour them up."

Miss April was a real beauty by anyone's standard. "What modeling agency did you use?" John asked.

"You think I could afford to use professional models? These are all local girls. They were thrilled to earn a hundred bucks for standing around looking pretty for a few hours."

John was giving his silent laugh again. "You don't figure you'll unload the Charger by June?"

"I'll be lucky if I'm rid of that thing by next November," Curt said glumly.

John turned a page and was quiet as Curt continued, "You know, with Libya and OPEC and everything, I think the trend is going to be to smaller cars. Higher gas mileage is going to be a big selling point."

"Wow," John said.

Curt looked over at him. He was staring at the calendar, and his grin had taken on a slightly stupid quality.

"Which one?" Curt asked, looking over the top of the calendar. "Oh, Miss July. Not my personal favorite, but yeah, she's cute."

"Wow," John said.

Not the classic beauty of Miss April; not the deliberate provocativeness of Miss January. A pretty, fresh-faced blonde who smiled directly into the camera with mischief and – maybe a hint of defiance, a little challenge?

She was stretched out on the hood of a long black car, her right elbow propped on the windshield, showing her long legs to advantage. She was wearing navy blue short shorts and a red-and-white blouse pulled down off of her shoulders and unbuttoned enough to show modest but promising cleavage. Her left hand, bent slightly backward and gracefully at the wrist, clasped a small American flag. Her silver charm bracelet accented the slenderness of her arm; a red barrette accented the golden hair. One of her feet was slightly over the side of the car, dangling a bright red sandal as if she were about to kick it off. Her lips were a muted dusky red, and for a moment, John thought it was a shame that the color scheme hadn't been carried through to red fingernail and toenail polish. Then he decided, no, this was right. This girl wasn't a porn star; without the eye-catching outfit, she'd look wholesome, fresh-scrubbed. Now there was a thought to dwell on.

"See?" Curt said triumphantly. "I bet you have a whole new feeling for that Impala now, don't you?"

Actually, he hadn't even noticed the car, but didn't want to depress Curt by saying so. Sure enough, Miss July was reposing on the '67 Impala with the temperature control problem.

"Why not," he cleared his throat, "why not a red car?"

"We were going to pose her with a white GTO, but it actually sold the day before, and that day the loon who said the Impala moaned at him all week brought it back. Like I say, I think the trend is going to be to smaller cars. I figured I'd better do my best by the Impala if I was going to get it out of here."

John nodded, not taking his eyes off the picture.

"He actually shot that one outdoors, real bright day. She climbed up on that thing and posed for, I dunno, a couple of hours. I was doing business, you know. Came by when they were wrapping up and helped her off the hood. The thing was hotter than the hubs of Hades, and she'd been sitting on it in shorts, smiling, that whole time. She's tougher than she looks."

"I'll bet," John said. "What's her name?"

Curt grinned. "You know, there's five more months."

John looked up at him, and Curt swallowed an outright laugh. "Mary something. I could look it up."

"Is she married?"

"Don't think so. Anyway, I don't remember her saying she needed to ask her husband's permission. I met her at the courthouse when I was filing a deed."

"What was she filing?"

"Nothing. She was working there."

John looked at his watch. "OK if I take the envelopes and address list home with me and work on them tonight?"

Curt grinned and started gathering them. "Best of luck. Let me know."

"Can I keep this calendar?"

"Sure."

John made the walk to the bus stop quickly, the wait for the bus patiently, and the ride downtown self-questioningly (How many Marys do you suppose work in the Register of Deeds office? Exactly how insane is she going to think I am?). Alas, when he got there he was able to answer the first but not the second. When he asked for Mary the middle-aged woman at the counter knew immediately who he was talking about, but said she only worked there part-time and she wasn't there today, could someone else help him? He said no thanks, and started the long walk to his father's house with his eyes not really focused on anything in front of him.

He went back to the courthouse the next morning, and was told that on the days when Mary was there she worked only afternoon shifts. The young woman with whom he spoke this time was chattier than the woman from yesterday, and told him that she thought Mary helped out her dad on some kind of family business at nights and slept late. John would've loved to ask her Mary's last name, but figured that might make her suspicious of him, so he just said he'd catch up with Mary later and went to work.

Curt had looked up Mary's last name; it was Campbell. Unfortunately, John was needed at work all afternoon. And, of course, that was Friday.

Over the weekend, just for the heck of it, he checked to see how many Campbells there were in the Lawrence-area directory. There were twenty-four. That would be a lot of knocking on doors, but he didn't intend to do that except as a last resort. John knew he was no expert on women, but he did know that a young man showing up at a girl's home and saying, "I'm here because I saw your calendar picture," was likely to result in, at best, a call to the police by the girl and, at worst, presentation of a shotgun by her boyfriend. No, better to introduce himself someplace public, unthreatening.

And remember to smile. A female friend of his in high school had let him in on the fact that he was perceived as intense, and some girls found that kind of a turn-on but others found it a little scary. The problem was knowing how Mary Campbell would react, but until he knew, he decided to smile a lot when he met her, to try to seem, as the druggies would say, mellow.

He looked for full-time work over the weekend; if you're going to take a girl out regularly, you need a steady income and a car. At nights he watched sports with his father, both of them munching on TV dinners. A couple of times his father inquired where exactly his mind was lately.

At about the time that John went to bed Sunday night, Mary Campbell and her father Samuel were staggering across ranchland lit only by a truck's headlights, carrying a half of a side of raw beef. Tall and muscular, Samuel was carrying most of the weight, but Mary was keeping up her end.

"Placement's the thing," her father was saying. "We want it as far from the truck as possible and still be able to hit it with the headlights."

At that moment, Mary stepped in an uneven sport on the rough ground and fell, her side of the beef hitting the ground with her.

Samuel laughed. "OK, yeah, that's a good spot." He dropped his side. "You OK?"

"M-hm," Mary said. They both went back to the truck. Her father took from it the cow's blood he'd got at the butcher shop that day and a pair of heavy spikes. Mary took the large folded piece of cloth, the net and the sledge hammer.

By the truck's headlights, Samuel poured the blood thoroughly all over the side of beef. Mary draped the cloth, mottled in a way that in the dim light could have passed for a cow's hide, over the bloody meat and bone, and the two of them spread a small-mesh but heavy-duty fishing net over the whole thing. Samuel anchored the net on one side of the beef by driving the two stakes, larger than the net's holes, through the net into the ground. The net was left untethered on the other side of the meat.

"Do you really think the cloth is necessary?" Samuel asked during this process. "Chupacabras find prey by smell mostly, not sight."

"I just want it to look a little like a cow. Well, a calf."

"You think this thing is smart enough to know what a trap is?"

"It's come all the way from Durango to Kansas by a zig-zag trail. It had really good hunters after it outside Amarillo and Enid, and got away both times. I don't know if it's smart, but I think it has really good instincts."

"Well," her father said, unloading the shotguns from the truck, "you're the world's expert on this particular specimen, so we'll play it your way."