The Meadow 121 jaw. In countryside now, some random nook off the highway, they start aiming to find someone. Maybe somebody heard a car out of place, saw a twist of dust blow through. Maybe worried fingers felt vibration in an old window. Some place to begin, as the deputies fan out, scowling at the rough land. The sheriff smokes at the roadside—he smokes, it’s blackand-white years—long enough for a shout from the line not to seem over-sudden. The ponytail ribbon hangs, indecent, off the deputy’s fingers. Switch now on Veronica’s friends, bunched after school, popping gum and mouthing What Happened? Tight blouses, plaid skirts, swinging their arms — a little dessert for the boys in slick hair and skinnies. Or a diner maybe, guys sucking headlines—a salesman comes in, wiping heat from his face, asking What’s The News, Boys? Seeking friends an instant, prospective way. But the guys see only a stranger in a sweat-darkened suit. Or jump forward a night: a kid runs out for his puppy who won’t come inside. All different paces and routes we could take, to achieve the next intervention. By now it’s plain I’m no hero—too old, too involved the wrong way. The hero is puppy kid’s big brother, or a guy alone in the diner, or a lesser noise among the street-end Valentinos. A regular Joe who fills like Superman. His beautiful, unpopular girl—studious type, no lipstick—tags along for love interest. Eighteen minutes from now she’s in peril. Break it—look around the empty seats, dust in the long beam of the image. A creak, a spring retracts—glance back at the usherette two rows behind. Her profile stern, mottled with shadow or inflammation. The scratch of a screw cap—she tips the bottle to her lips, its flat, heavy shape framed in brown light. She swallows, hides the bottle down. We have complicity now.
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