“That’s mental,” Luis said.
Mary cackled, a husky smoker’s laugh. “You’re telling us boys don’t do this. There was no Groom Game.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
A cheer rose up in the bar. The Bruins had scored a goal.
Mitch took the empty pitcher to the bar for a refill. Florine and Mary stepped outside for a smoke. Claudia turned to Luis—remembering, suddenly, what she’d been meaning to tell him.
He listened, frowning.
“Someone took her picture?” he said. “Claudia, are you sure?”
“Well, no.” She drained her glass of beer, which now tasted like beer. “That came straight from the patient. And like I said, she’s not the most reliable witness.”
“Why would someone do that?” Luis looked mystified. “I mean, what the hell for?”
8
The world is full of signs.
Excelsior11 drove at night, south and east into the Maryland panhandle, holding a bag of frozen peas to the left side of his face. Wedged behind his seat were a shovel and mallet and posthole digger. In the bed of his pickup, beneath a clean blue tarp, was a stack of freshly painted signs.
He rolled through Hagerstown just before dawn. The streets were deserted. His target was a tract of state land outside Cumberland. When possible, he preferred to work in darkness.
The installation went smoothly. In Maryland the snow had melted. A few crusts hung on at the margins, but the ground was soft and moist.
He finished just as the sun was rising. There was another tract he had his eye on, along State Road 36. According to the public records database, the land was privately owned, a delicate matter. He believed, ardently, in the sanctity of ownership. He would not knowingly violate a citizen’s property rights, even in the service of good.
The site was in a field gone fallow. It had not been plowed in many years. The owner lived across the street, in a sturdy brick house with a deep front porch, set far back from the road.
He parked in the driveway and rang the doorbell. The wide grassy yard was studded with lawn ornaments—garden gnomes, oversized plastic mushrooms, a miniature wishing well cast in cement. An old lady in a housecoat opened the door.
“Good morning, ma’am. Are you a Christian?” His speech was a little mushy. He was trying not to move his mouth.
“I am.” She hugged her robe around her, studying him—a barrel-chested man in what he thought of as his sign-planting uniform: blue jeans, denim shirt, orange hunting vest. “Why do you ask?”
“My name is Victor Prine, and I believe in the sacredness of all life. With your permission, I’d like to put one of my signs on your property.”
The old lady looked confused. “What kind of a sign?”
“Let me show you. I have a couple in my truck.”
She followed him outside. In the driveway he lowered his tailgate and peeled back the tarp. On top of the stack was one of his favorites, a dark silhouette of a pregnant woman. Only her womb and its contents were rendered in color—a chubby pink infant, blond-haired and blue-eyed. The lettering was bright pink, all caps. IT’S A CHILD NOT A CHOICE.
“Oh my,” she said. In the clear morning light she looked very old, one eye milky with cataract. “The baby is darling. Is he waving?”
“That’s right,” he said.
She seemed at a loss for words.
“I have other ones,” he said, moving it aside. The three remaining signs were identical. He had a dozen more at home, stacked in the hayloft of his stepbrother’s barn. The caption read AMERICAN CARNAGE.