busload of nuns at a crossing, smashing it the hell out of the way and roaring on, you 
wanted to follow that train, not go back and see what had happened to the luckless nuns; 
dead or alive, the nuns were history once the damn bus was slammed off the tracks, and 
what mattered was the train; not consequences, but momentum.
  Now, here on this sunny ridge in Oregon, miles from any train and farther still from 
any nuns, Junior applied this artistic insight to his own situation, overcame his 
squeamishness, and regained some momentum of his own. He approached his fallen wife, 
stood over her, and stared down into her fixed eyes as he said, "Naomi'."
  He didn't know why he'd spoken her name, because at first sight of her face, he was 
certain that she was dead. He detected a note of melancholy in his voice, and he supposed 
that already he was missing her.
  If her eyes had shifted focus in response to his voice, if she had blinked to 
acknowledge him, Junior might not have been entirely displeased, depending on her 
condition. Paralyzed from the neck down and posing no physical threat, brain damaged to 
the extent that she couldn't speak or write, or in any other way convey to the police 
what had happened to her, yet with her beauty largely intact, she might still have been 
able to enrich his life in many ways. Under the right circumstances with sweet Naomi as 
gloriously attractive as ever but as pliable and unjudgmental as a doll, Junior might 
have been willing to give her a home-and care.
  Talk about action without consequences.
  She was, however, as dead as a toad in the wake of a Mack truck, and of no more 
interest to him now than would be a busload of train smacked nuns.
  Remarkably, her face was nearly as stunning as ever. She had landed face up, so the 
damage was largely to her spine and the back of her head. Junior didn't want to think 
about what her posterior cranium might look like; happily, her cascading golden hair hid 
the truth. Her facial features were ever so slightly distorted, which suggested the 
greater ruin underneath, but the result was neither sad nor grotesque: Indeed, the 
distortion gave her the lopsided, perky, and altogether appealing grin of a mischievous 
gamine, lips parted as though she had just said something wonderfully witty.
  He was puzzled that so few traces of gore stained her rocky bed, until he realized that 
she had died instantly upon impact. Stopped so abruptly, her heart hadn't pumped blood 
out of her wounds.
  He knelt beside her and gently touched her face. Her skin was still warm.
  Ever the sentimentalist, Junior kissed her good-bye. Only once. Lingeringly, but only 
once, and with no tongue involved.
  Then he returned to the fire road and headed south along that serpentine dirt track at 
a fast walk. When he reached the first turn in the narrow road, he paused to look back 
toward the top of the ridge.
  The high tower imprinted its ominous black geometry upon the sky. The surrounding 
forest seemed to shrink from it, as if nature chose no longer to embrace the structure.
  Above the tower and to one side, three crows had appeared as though by spontaneous 
generation. They circled over the spot where Naomi lay like Sleeping Beauty, kissed but 
unawakened.
  Crows are carrion eaters.
  Reminding himself that action was what mattered, not aftermath, Junior Cain resumed his 
journey down the fire road. He moved at an easy jog now instead of a fast walk, chanting 
aloud in the way that Marines chanted when they ran in training groups, but because he 
did not know any Marine chants, he grunted the words to "Somewhere over the Rainbow," 
without melody, roughly in time with his footfalls, on his way to neither the halls of 
Montezuma nor the shores of Tripoli, but to a future that now promised to be one of 
exceptional experience and unending surprises.
  
  Chapter 6
  EXCEPT FOR THE EFFECTS of pregnancy, Agnes was petite, and Maria Elena Gonzalez was 
even smaller. Yet as they sat catercorner to each other at the kitchen table, young women 
from far different worlds but with remarkably similar personalities, their clash of wills 
over payment for the English lessons was nearly as monumental as two tectonic plates 
grinding together deep under the California coast. Maria was determined to pay with cash 
or services. Agnes insisted that the lessons were an act of friendship, with no 
compensation required.
  "I won't steal the adjustments of a friend," Maria proclaimed.
  "You're not taking advantage of me, dear. I'm getting so much pleasure from teaching 
you, seeing you improve, that I ought to be paying you."
  Maria closed her large ebony eyes and drew a deep breath, moving her lips without 
making a sound, reviewing something important that she wanted to say correctly. She 
opened her eyes: "I am thanking the Virgin and Jesus every night that you have been 
within my life."
  "That's so sweet, Maria."
  "But I am buying the English," she said firmly, sliding three one dollar bills across 
the table.
  Three dollars was six dozen eggs or twelve loaves of bread, and Agnes was never going 
to take food out of the mouth of a poor woman and her children. She pushed the currency 
across the table to Maria.
  Jaws clenched, lips pressed tightly together, eyes narrowed, Maria shoved the money 
toward Agnes.
  Ignoring the offered payment, Agnes opened a lesson book.
  Maria swiveled sideways in her chair, turning away from the three bucks and the book.
  
  Glaring at the back of her friend's head, Agnes said, "You're impossible."
  "Wrong. Maria Elena Gonzalez is real."
  "That's not what I meant, and you know it."
  "Don't know nothing. I be stupid Mexican woman."
  "Stupid is the last thing you are."
  "Always to be stupid now, always with my evil English "Bad English. Your English isn't 
evil, it's just bad."
  "Then you teach."
  "Not for money."
  "Not for free."
  For a few minutes, they sat unmoving: Maria with her back to the table, Agnes staring 
in frustration at the nape of Maria's neck and trying to will her to come face-to-face 
again, to be reasonable.
  At last Agnes got to her feet. A mild contraction tightened a cincture of pain around 
her back and belly, and she leaned against the table until the misery passed.
  Without a word, she poured a cup of coffee and set it before Maria. She put a homemade 
raisin scone on a plate and placed it beside the coffee.
  Maria sipped the coffee while sitting sideways in her chair, still turned away from the 
three worn dollar bills.
  Agnes left the kitchen by way of the hall, through the swinging door, rather than 
through the dining room, and when she passed the living-room archway, Joey exploded out 
of his armchair, dropping the book he had been reading.