Warlock felt safe enough by Newberry to stop at a party store and buy a pint of schnapps to tamp down the steaks which were acting up. Fear was bad for digestion. A fear diet would be big on rice and poached fish. Soda crackers and soup. Nothing heavy. The schnapps immediately did its yeoman’s service and he decided to spend the night in Sault Ste. Marie. Rabun would probably want to send up a lawyer right away and Warlock could arrange to drop the papers at the airport. He turned the radio dial with irritation: there was an enervating controversy in country music about who was, and who wasn’t, a “real” cowboy. The real ones he had seen in Texas and Wyoming appeared to be an impoverished, unenviable lot. Early in his teens he had asked Dad for a pair of cowboy boots and Dad had confided that cowboys “fucked sheep.” This information tended to color his views of the West. Now on the dark highway to Sault Ste. Marie it occurred to him that he had been gullible. He took a deep swig of schnapps, almost in anger. Dad had no doubt fibbed to save himself the price of the boots! If you weren’t wary your entire view of reality could become discolored. The sudden notion that reality could be scrubbed utterly clean of lies and illusions was discomfiting. You might not like it that way, he thought. In high school his friend Dick was always claiming that his mother didn’t love him. Warlock took the bull by the horns and one day after football practice, over milk and cookies, he confronted the woman. Dick fled the kitchen. “No, I don’t love him. He’s a dreadful little nose-picking shit. He was big at birth and ruined my body. I could have been an actress. I hate him.” She finally ran off downstate with a Chrysler salesman, who was later brought to justice for swiping a DeSoto out of the used car lot.

Sault Ste. Marie proved a grand morale boost. You could sense the clean winds of Canada sweeping across St. Mary’s River. The motel clerk, an older lady reading Christian Century, had peered into the dark at the barking Hudley. Why hadn’t he parked down the street?

“We can’t accept dogs. I’m sorry.”

“Please give this to the church of your choice,” said Warlock, noticing her magazine and slipping a hundred on top of the room payment. “I’m very tired.”

“Why thank you. I guess dogs are god’s creatures, too.”

“They sure are. Jesus was partial to little lambs. Of course I’m not bringing in a lamb.”

“Of course not.”

“Of course not.”