With by Donald Harington Page A

did those fumes stink. He figured he’d better protect himself against it, and was fishing in his pocket for his handkerchief to wrap around his nose when it suddenly got too black to be just plain dark.
    When he came to, the black was being replaced by a sliver of light in the east. He looked at his watch, and although his watch said five-thirty, his mind was only thinking about his determination to get rid of the watch as soon as he was settled on the mountaintop. Next his mind became aware of how his whole damn head felt—like it was being pounded into a rat hole. Next it was not his head screaming for his awareness of its pain, but his stomach. He had just enough mind left to think to get the fucking door open, and then he puked out into the road. He went on puking until there wasn’t nothing left. Then he had sense enough to pour out what he’d already mixed in the bucket. He started up the truck and turned it around and headed for the highway, and at the first culvert he passed he slowed down just enough to toss the Chlorox and the acetone out into the ditch. He had to stop once more to puke, and then he headed for Stay More.
    And goddamn it all to hell if he wasn’t stopped by the fucking state police once again! And wouldn’t you know it was ole Hedge again.
    “I wasn’t doing sixty-five,” Sog protested.
    “Naw, Sarge, you was only doing forty. But you was driving erratic. Better let me sniff your breath.” Hedge got his face up close and drew a big breath and said, “Wowee, have you been drinking varnish?”
    “I aint been drinking,” Sog said.
    “What are you out this time o’ night for?” Hedge wanted to know. “Or early morning, I ort to say.”
    Sog thought fast. “Some friends of mine were giving me a goodbye party.”
    “’Scuse me, Sarge,” Hedge said, “but you aint got no friends.” Sog wouldn’t challenge the accuracy of that shitty observation, so Hedge went on, “And if you was at a party, you would of been drinking, wouldn’t you of?”
    “Hedge, I wouldn’t take a drop because I knew you’d catch me,” Sog said. “Now if you’ll just let me go on, I’ll drive more careful.”
    “You better do that, Boss,” Hedge said. “Oops, you aint my boss or nobody’s any more, are you?”
    “Then you ort to be glad of that,” Sog said and drove off fast. Tomorrow—or, more exactly, today —when he came back to Harrison, coming and going he’d have to take back-roads to stay out of Hedge Larrabee’s territory.
    It’s forty twisting miles from Harrison to Stay More. As soon as he got home, he popped a fistful of aspirin, which helped just a little, took half a glass of bourbon, which helped more, and then dragged what possessions he had left out into the yard. Just as he figured, almost nobody showed up for his yard sale. Stay More was practically a ghost town anyhow, and only a few people from hereabouts took a notion to come. George Dinsmore came and offered to buy his chickens, and he had to explain he’d already sold ’em. Latha Bourne, who used to be postmistress of Stay More before it lost the PO to Parthenon, offered to buy his davenport, and he had to explain he’d already sold it.
    Mid-afternoon he stuck the unsold stuff back into the house and shut it up and locked it, which he never had done before. He taped a sheet of paper on the door: GONE TO CALIFORNIA . He took one quick drive around what little was left of the town, including the old empty schoolhouse across the creek, taking a kind of farewell look. If it hadn’t been for his headache he might have allowed himself to get nostalgic over the scenes of his boyhood but he wanted to just tell them all to go to hell.
    Back in Harrison for the last time, he skipped the last supper at Western Sizzlin’ because his stomach still wasn’t settled.
    He took up his spy post near the Kerr place and waited and followed when Karen Kerr drove the girl away and across town to somebody else’s house, and left her