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me again. ”
“Were we friends?” Crow said. His voice sounded dreamy and on some level he knew that meant that the dream was coming to an end.
“Yeah, little Scarecrow…I guess we was at that. ”
“Do you know where Val is?”
“Yeah, I know, but she ain’t here, man. You gonna have to keep looking for her. You gotta find her, man, ’cause these is evil times and she’s the heart. You may be the fist, but she’s the heart. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Crow shook his head.
“Do you remember…a long time ago I told you something about good and evil?”
“I…don’t remember. ”
“Don’t worry, you will. Now, listen close, little man,” the man said and leaned forward over his guitar, his voice dropping to a whisper, “you gotta know this. ”
Crow leaned closer, too.
“Evil…it don’t never die,” the bluesman said and looked left and right before adding. “Evil don’t die. It just waits. ”
“I don’t understand. ”
“Yeah, you do, but you don’t want to understand. ” The man leaned back and laughed. “Hell’s a-?coming, little Scarecrow. Hell’s a-?coming and we all gotta learn to play the blues. ’Cause you know…it’s all the blues, man. ” He grinned and strummed his strings. “Everything’s always about the blues. ”
Crow drifted on into another dreamless place, but the sound of the blues followed him.
2
Outside the hospital window the dawn had given way to brilliant sunshine and a warm breeze out of the southeast. The rain had scrubbed the air clean and standing in the window of Crow’s room, Terry could see for miles. He hardly remembered seeing a morning so clear. Birds were singing, the nurses who came and went were smiling, and everything had a veneer of freshness and vitality.
Terry loathed it. He personally felt dirty and grubby and old. His clothes were a mess, his hands shook, and when he’d gone into the little bathroom to throw water on his face his reflection looked like a street person. He popped a Xanax and shambled back into Crow’s room and sank down into the chair.
Crow had awakened around dawn and Terry had filled him in on most of the night’s events, but as he talked Crow’s eyes kept drifting shut and Terry had no idea how much of it his friend had absorbed. A nurse came in, woke Crow up, and then gave him a sedative—a hospital policy Terry had never quite grasped the logic of—and Terry sat by the bedside and watched Crow sleep, feeling wretchedly guilty.
He felt that by sending Crow to the hayride he’d somehow been party to Ruger’s attack on the Guthries. Maybe if Crow had just gone out to Val’s as he’d planned Henry would still be alive and the rest of the Guthrie family—and Crow—would not be in various rooms in this hospital. On the surface he knew that such thinking was absurd, that no one could really ascribe any of the blame to him, but his deeper self refused to let go of the notion, and for that reason he could not bring himself to leave Crow’s side.
As he sat there he wondered how long he would have to wait before he popped another Xanax. The first one was really not doing him much good and he was using every ounce of his willpower not to scream.
3
There was nothing rewarding about waking up, so Crow gave it up and passed out again. He slept for hours and dreamed that someone was sitting by his hospital bed, playing blues to him on a sweet-?sounding old slide guitar.
A couple of hours later he gave it another try and opened his eyes. This time the pain in his head wasn’t quite so sharp, and the nausea seemed to have ebbed—but every other part of his body hurt like hell, and his entire waist felt constricted and on fire.
He jacked open one eye and peered around until he saw Terry Wolfe sprawled in an orange plastic chair a few feet away. Terry had his ankles crossed and propped up on a small table, thick arms folded across his chest. His tie hung limp, his red hair was badly combed, and he looked like he’d slept in his suit in an alleyway. He had a copy of the Black Marsh Sentinel folded on his lap. “Good morning,” he said.
“Ug,” Crow said with a dry throat. “You’re a picture to wake up to. ”
Terry’s smile made him look old and thin and miserable. “How d’you feel?”
“Like shit. ”
“That’s pretty much how you look. ”
“What time is it?”
“Almost ten,” Terry said, then added, “In the morning. ”
