‘Knew that, did you? I’m glad you wanted us to be private. Well, ain’t nobody here but you and me. Just us chickens. Want a cigar? Here, take one.’ Jonathan shook his head. ‘Come on, come on: they’re Corona Coronas. The best.’ Jonathan shook his head again. The first picture he’d seen of George alive, in the Chicago Tribune on the way from Hannaville to Ellsworth, Maine, where he’d buried the Malloys: in that first picture George had been smoking a Corona Corona. George lit one now and grimaced as the taste hit him. How the hell can he keep it up? Jonathan thought. The pain – whatever it’s from – is plainly terrible. And so goddamn fat, too. What’s he on? Laudanum? Morphine?

‘Ah, Johnny,’ George said. ‘Beautiful Johnny. You were my first foray into politics. Know that? Sure you do. Practically every fucking day I think to myself, shit, I’m one of the best there is at this politics business – used to be anyhow – and how did I learn my trade? Did my damndest to squash you – and you a defenseless little kid. So what happened? The defenseless little kid defended himself. Wonderful! By God, I learned from that—’

‘Have you been happy, George?’ Jonathan interrupted.

George drank from his glass and grimaced at the taste of the whiskey just as he’d grimaced at the taste of the cigar. ‘I married a stupid bitch for her money, raped her a dozen times to get kids for election purposes – I wish I could get this liquor to taste like it used to. How come that happens, huh? You’re getting old and you feel lousy. What do you need? Liquor. And what does the liquor do? Tastes like hog’s piss. Cigars taste like turds. There’s justice for you.’ He put the glass back on the table with a sigh. ‘I’m a whore, my old friend. I sell to the highest bidder, and the bidding’s getting lower these days—’

‘Cut the crap. You were a great senator.’

‘Yeah. But in politics you ain’t happy less of which there’s a pack baying for your blood. Ain’t nobody interested like that in old George anymore.’ George put the cigar to his mouth, hesitated and took it away again. ‘You were the first one wanted to kill me maybe, but there was plenty after you. And now? Nobody gives a fuck. Not a soul.’

‘Oh, come on, George,’ Jonathan said, letting his amusement show. ‘You know I came here tonight to kill you. Just in time, too, wouldn’t you say?’

3

By the time Claire had maneuvered me into the car again, folded my wheelchair and got it back into the trunk, Atlas was awake. He insisted on taking the wheel, and he did not drive anywhere near as well as Claire. ‘Look at this country,’ he said, waving at the endless highway, ‘we’re not far from Walla Walla. Beautiful, isn’t it? One year when I was still in pre-med I worked in the wheatfields near here. And one day they let me drive an old Hayward combine. Know what that is? No? I always wanted to drive one – wonderful machine, drove a twenty-one-foot sickle, cut the wheat, shook the grains loose, blew them out to separate the chaff. It took thirty-three horses to pull the thing—’