Free Barking Man by Madison Smartt Bell Page A

said.
    She looked up at me, not telling me one word, just giving me a stare out of those big cow eyes of hers like I was the one had been beating on her that whole winter through. And I saw then that they were both stuck in their groove and that she would not be the one to step out of it. So I pulled back out of the doorway and went on down the steps to my car.
    I was speeding down the road to Norfolk, doing seventy, seventy-five. I’d have liked to go faster if the car had been up to it. It didn’t matter to me that I didn’t have any brakes. Anybody wanted to keep out of a wreck had better just keep the hell out of my way. I can’t say I felt sorry for busting that guy, though I didn’t enjoy the thought of it either. I just didn’t know what difference it had made, and chances were it had made none at all. Kind of a funny thing, when you thought about it that way. It was the second time in my life I’d hurt somebody bad, and the other time I hadn’t meant to do it at all. This time I’d known what I was doing for sure, but I still didn’t know what I’d done.

FINDING NATASHA
    “H EY, C APTAIN,” S TUART SAID . He’d seen the dog as soon as he turned the corner, stretched over the door sill of the bar in a wide amber beam of the afternoon sun. “Hey, babe, you still remember me?” He hesitated just outside the doorway in case the big German shepherd did not remember him after all. No doubt that Captain was a lot older now, shrunken into his bagging skin, the hair along the ridge of his back turning white. A yellow eye opened briefly on Stuart and then drowsed slowly back shut. Stuart took a long step over the dog and was inside the shadowy space of the bar.
    He had expected Henry to be behind the counter and he felt a pulse of disappointment when he saw it was Arthur instead. On Saturday nights Arthur would often cover the bar while Henry and Isabel went out to dinner, but ordinarily they wouldn’t have left so early, not at midafternoon. Stuart sat down at the outside corner of the bar. When Arthur got over to him Stuart could see he didn’t remember who he was.
    “Short beer,” Stuart said, not especially wanting to get into it just yet. There were two people sitting at the far end of the counter, he couldn’t quite make out their faces in the shadows, and nobody else in the place. He swiveled his stool back toward the door, and as his eyes adjusted to the dim he saw the new paint, new paneling. It had all been done over, the broken booths and tables all replaced, a new jukebox right where the pay phone used to be. The opposite wall was practically papered with portrait sketches of the Mets.
    “Hey, what’s going on?” Stuart said. Arthur had put down the glass of beer and picked up the dollar Stuart had laid on the bar. “Hey, you even got new glasses too? Henry and Isabel do all this work?”
    “They retired,” Arthur said, staring at Stuart like he knew he ought to recognize him now. “What, you haven’t been around in a while, right? You move in Manhattan?”
    “Farther than that,” Stuart said. He pushed the beer glass a little away from him. A weird little bell-shaped thing, nothing like the straight tumblers Henry had used.
    ‘“Who would it be but Stuart?” said one of the men at the far end of the bar. Stuart peered back into the dim. “Give him a shot on me, Arthur.”
    “Clifton,” Stuart said. Arthur was reaching behind him for a bottle of Jack. He’d remembered that much now, at least.
    “Nah,” Stuart said. “No thanks.”
    “What, you don’t drink anymore either?” Clifton said.
    “I drink,” Stuart said. “It’s a little early.”
    Clifton was on his feet, walking up into the light toward him now. He looked like he’d had little sleep and there was reddish stubble on his face. Stuart shifted to the edge of his stool and put one foot on the floor.
    “You’re back, hey?” Clifton said.
    “Righto,” Stuart said.
    Clifton parted T-shirt from jeans to