Back at the motel Warlock checked by phone with different companies on the worth of Bob’s estimates of the total board feet of white pine, hemlock, oak and maple that had been stolen. He totaled up the figures then took a shower. He would wait until tomorrow morning to call Rabun, not wanting him to know how fast and easy it had been. He lay back on the bed for a quick snooze, shoving Hudley off with a heel, but somehow didn’t feel tired. Or hungry, for that matter, which was even more surprising. He must eat or, in the long range, he would disappear. Simple as that. It was action itself that removed temporarily his need for sleep or food. All that fresh air and movement. He decided that life itself was like bad art, and action pee led off the lattice, fretwork, filagree; in short, the drivel. He discontinued, for the time being, this train of thought when it led to rape, fistfights, murder and war. Some fine lines must be drawn. Hudley tore apart his bag of kibble but Warlock couldn’t stop his eyes from closing. A mosquito bite on his dick woke him at twilight. His stomach growled unbearably and he dressed at top speed, imagining a meal that reason told him wouldn’t be available locally. In a stroke of caution he hid the Rabun timber papers in the back of the television set. He grabbed Diana’s copy of Roger Tory Peterson for want of anything else to read at dinner. From lack of habit he nearly forgot the .38, but strapped it on to revive his diminishing sense of mystery. The shifting faces of reality, he thought, driving to the only bona fide restaurant in the village; it had been closed a full half hour but he could still see the lucky piggies in there eating. How unfair. An old gent in madras shorts and yellow knee socks told him there were steaks at the bar downtown. Hudley jumped out the car window, growled at the old man and took a dump on the sidewalk.

“I’m sorry. Jeez, Hudley, you jerk.”

“Maybe my wife will slip in that shit and break her neck. Then I can go to Florida alone. Here’s hoping.” The old man stared off at the last light, sunken deeply in his reverie.

Warlock ate a rib steak looking at bird pictures, then a sirloin with home fries when the chancre of hunger still seemed unassuaged. Diana was quite the birdwatcher. It seemed impossible that there were so many different kinds. Had god been indecisive? Why both crow and raven, for instance?

“There’s Mr. Birdy-fucker.” The two burly woodchoppers were at the bar with a dapper-looking, older woodsman wearing the same expensive wool shirt as Warlock. Must be the mastermind criminal. He approached tentatively.