“When I did my imitation of a garden hose all over the carrot patch,” I said.

“Whatever. I couldn’t tell if that helped or hurt. Acceptance of despair sometimes looks like that, too. That’s why people often say of suicides that they seemed so much better the day before.”

“I couldn’t have done it. Frances would have been furious, after I kept… ” I took a moment to decide if I was really going to do what I thought I was. “Josh, do you have any beer?”

He looked affronted. “I have an icebox, don’t I?”

“I’ll tell you the whole story if you want to hear it. But I don’t think I can do it yet without drinking some beer.”

“These things take practice,” he agreed. “How ’bout the porch?”

So we sat outside in the dark, reeking of pennyroyal to keep the mosquitoes off, with three bottles of home-brewed beer apiece, and I told him what I was and how I’d managed to end up blood-boltered in his front yard. Josh whistled and invoked gods in all the appropriate places. When I was done, he took a long, meditative swallow of beer and said, “What are you going to do now?”

I hadn’t expected that. “I don’t know,” I answered after some thought. “Do I have to do anything?”

“Maybe not. Probably not. But in the larger scheme of things, we’re close to the City. We do a lot of trading there. This seems like the kind of business any sane person would leave unfinished, but you may find that it won’t leave you.”

I finished my third bottle. “Maybe I ought to go.”

“Where?”

“South again? Or I could try Mick’s idea, and head for the border.”

“Not the border,” Josh said. “You wouldn’t get across openly, anyway.”

“Have they closed it?”

“No. But they’d ask for your health card. And when you couldn’t show them one, they’d give you a physical. Then they’d take you out back and shoot you.”

“Oh. Not fond of unusual foreigners up north, huh?”

He finished his third beer. “Besides, you might not have to go anywhere at all. Then what’ll you do?”

“Prune the raspberries?”

He laughed. “Be careful what you ask for.” Then he set his bottle down on the porch and leaned forward in his chair, looking out at the village circle. “Has anyone explained to you about hoodoo?”

“I know about hoodoo,” I said, a little sharply.

“Really? Well. Ask Sherrea,” said Josh in an odd, pleasant voice, “about this town.”

The tone put my back up. It occurred to me that Josh could have meant it to; he might not have been all-knowing, but he had a respectable average with me. “She said it used to be the zoo.”

“That probably had something to do with it, but that’s not what I mean.”

“Will she know what you mean?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Do I have to ask her tonight?”

Josh opened his eyes wide. “You don’t have to ask her at all.”