2

The man whom Amity called Mr. Spooky referred to himself as Ed and never mentioned a surname. He was one of the homeless who lived in isolated encampments deeper in the canyon, well beyond where the blacktop lane dead-ended. Having been in the vicinity for about a year, he came to visit at least twice a month, uninvited.

Jeffy wasn't afraid of Ed. For one thing, Jeffy was thirty-four years old, six feet two, lean and fit, while Ed was perhaps thirty years older and six inches shorter, as out of shape as a moldering squash. The old man was eccentric, although not outright crazy, and he never exhibited the slightest tendency to aggression.

Nevertheless, after saying, "Good evening, Ed," Jeffy let Amity into the house, and he waited until she locked the door and turned on some lights before he settled in one of the rocking chairs on the porch, which their visitor had rearranged to face each other more directly. These days, Jeffy never left Amity home alone, and they went everywhere together, not just because—in fact, not at all because—of Ed.

In its current decline, California was home to an ever-growing throng of the homeless, many of them severely disturbed and with addictions. The politicians governing the state cared only about ideology and power and graft, not about the citizenry. They spent billions on the problem, with no effect other than to greatly enrich their friends and create more homeless people.

When too many of these wounded souls pitched their camps in the same place, the authorities finally moved to evict them, for reasons of public health and safety. Consequently, those who lived in tents or in sleeping bags on the fringes of Suavidad Beach had recently taken to camping in the woods and brushland, each at a distance from the other, to draw less attention to themselves.

Although rumpled and unshaven, Ed was in fundamental ways much different from most single men in his circumstances. His teeth were white, and he smelled clean, perhaps because he walked into town daily to avail himself of the showers and other services offered by some public and church-operated facilities. Instead of shapeless exercise suits or baggy jeans and hoodies, he favored slacks with his shirt tucked in, a sport coat, and always a bow tie. This night, he wore a polka-dot tie with a bold plaid shirt, but he wasn't likely to encounter people who, steeped in style, would arch their eyebrows and mock him surreptitiously.

According to Ed, no alcoholic beverages had ever passed his lips, other than fine cabernet sauvignon, and far less of that than he would have liked because he had a taste only for the best, which he'd not often been able to afford. He also said that he had never done drugs stronger than aspirin.

Jeffy believed Ed's denial of those vices, largely because the old man never lamented his homelessness or made excuses for it—or explained it. His situation was simply his situation, as if he had been born a hobo, as caste bound as any Hindu from another century.

He visited from time to time, in part to discuss the creatures of nature that shared the wooded canyon. He had a deep knowledge of history, too, and liked to speculate about how the present-day world might have been if certain pivot points in human events had resulted in a different resolution from the one that occurred. He also had an interest in poetry, which he could quote at length, everything from Shakespeare to Poe to the Japanese masters of haiku. He never stayed long, certainly never overstayed his welcome, perhaps because his restless mind made him an impatient conversationalist—or because Jeffy was an uninspiring intellectual companion.

"How have you been, Ed?"

"I've been dying since I was born, just like you. And now I'm nearly out of time."

A dour mood was as much a part of Ed as the furry tangles of bushy white eyebrows that he never trimmed.

"You seem fit enough," Jeffy said. "I hope you're not ill."

"No, no, Jeffrey. Not ill, but hunted."

A few teachers in elementary school had insisted on calling him Jeffrey, but no one since then, until Ed. In spite of Jeffy's height and reasonably imposing physique, he possessed some curious quality that caused others to think of him as, in part, a perpetual boy, and thus as Jeffy, which was his mother's pet name for him. He took no offense at this. He liked who he was well enough; and he could be no one different. If being called Jeffy was necessary for him to remain the man who he had always been, then "Jeffy" would suit him for his gravestone and for all the days between now and that final rest.

"Hunted? Hunted by whom?" Jeffy asked.

Ed's scowl knitted his extravagant eyebrows into one long albino caterpillar, and his deep-set eyes receded into the shadows of their sockets. "Better you don't know. It's the incessant need to know more and more and yet still more, to know everything, that is the fast track to destruction. Knowledge is a good thing, Jeffrey, but the arrogance that so often comes with knowledge is ultimately our undoing. Don't be undone, Jeffrey. Do not be undone by pride in your knowledge."

"I don't know all that much," Jeffy assured him. "I'm more likely to be undone by ignorance."

Saying nothing, Ed leaned forward in his chair, his grizzled head thrust out like that of a tortoise craning its neck from its shell, regarding his host as if Jeffy were an avant-garde sculpture, the meaning of which couldn't be discerned.

Having undergone such intense scrutiny on other occasions, Jeffy knew that Ed would not engage in further conversation until he was ready to initiate it. This penetrating stare must be met with a smile and patience.

Filtered by distance and trees, the irregular susurration of the traffic on Oak Hollow Road was a mournful sound, like the exhalations of some noble leviathan slowly dying.

Among the oaks, owls expressed their curiosity to one another.

At last Ed leaned back in his chair, though his scowl did not relent. His luxuriant eyebrows were still interlaced, as if engaged in copulation.

From the porch floor beside his chair, he picked up a package that Jeffy had not previously noticed. The twelve-inch-square white pasteboard gift box was discolored by time and soiled. The matching lid had been secured with a length of string.

Ed placed the item on his lap and held it in both hands. As he stared at the package, his solemn scowl seemed to shade into dread. Occasionally he was afflicted by a benign tremor in his left hand, and now the pads of his fingers tapped spastically against the box.

He raised his head and met Jeffy's eyes again and said, "This contains the key."

After an ensuing silence, Jeffy said, "What key?"

"The key to everything."

"Sounds important."

"They must never get their hands on it."

"They who?"

"Better you don't know," Ed said again. "I'm giving it to you."

Jeffy raised his hands, palms toward his guest in a gesture of polite decline. "That's kind of you, Ed, but I can't accept. I've got a house key, a car key. That's all I need. I wouldn't know what to do with a key to everything."

Snatching the box off his lap and holding it against his chest, Ed declared, "No, no. You must do nothing with it! Nothing! You must not open it. Never! "

Previously just quaint and quirky, Ed seemed to be crossing a mental bridge from eccentric to a condition more disturbing.