She sat a moment, her hands clasped lightly before her. “Do you know how hard it was to write that note?” she said in a new voice.

“It was very good,” I told her. “I knew it really was from you.”

“That’s not what I mean. The arrival of that note would start something I didn’t want started. I knew that. In the end, I couldn’t do anything about it. But I wanted you to know I tried.”

“I told you, he would have—”

“Done it anyway. If true, it still doesn’t change the way it seemed at the time.” She raked her hands through her hair. “So I made the damned cross-country trek here, where I found Sherrea and told her where you were. She coupled your name with a few choice bits of verbiage. She knew better than I did what you’d called down on your head. Then she worked out the Great Escape.

“You ought to try to appreciate it properly,” Frances added with a sigh. “Maybe you will later. I thought it was the stuff that caper movies were made of, but what do I know?”

“I can’t try until you tell me about it.”

“That’s better — it almost sounded like you. The plan was a variant of the plague trick. Sherrea and a fellow named LeRoy put three rather startled calves in a livestock trailer, hitched up the pickup, and headed in on I-94. No particular attention paid to them, since they were going in. They went to Del Corazón, found you, and hid you under the false floor in the trailer. Then they put the shockingly realistic latex sores on the calves and headed for the Cedar Avenue checkpoint.”

At that she stopped and looked expectantly at me.

“Sores?” I asked.

“Anthrax,” she said, savoring the syllables. “Spreads like wildfire, fatal, communicable to humans. Nobody searched the trailer. The only problem was that when LeRoy finally pulled off the latex, all the hair underneath came off, too. The calves are out in the pasture shooting accusing looks at anyone who comes near.”

“You’re right,” I said. “It would have been good in a movie.”

Frances leaned forward again and gave me the strange look; then she stood up. “Go back to sleep,” she said.

This time it didn’t work. For one thing, I hurt almost everywhere. And I was nagged by the feeling that Frances had wanted entirely different responses from the ones she’d gotten. I couldn’t think what they would have been — I’d been polite and attentive and cheerful, if not very emphatic — but that didn’t keep me from trying.

The next week seemed like one long series of disabilities and allowances made for them. I couldn’t remember ever having been bedridden before, or even very sick, so they all came as a surprise. Going to the bathroom was the most unpleasant; I insisted on hobbling across the room to the water closet long before I was really able, even if it meant having to lean on someone as far as the door. The alternative, after all, was much worse.