Tactfully, she didn’t explain what Clyde could see with his own eyes: if the red strip was torn off, what remained was a black strip with a little icon that might have been a cross; but when he looked closer, he saw it was probably supposed to be a dagger.
_We know all about nasty old anthrax now and so they are training us in something more exotic: botulin toxin. They think Saddam may have some of that in his stockpile, too. I hope they’re wrong, because though we have tons and tons of anthrax vaccine, the botulin serum is in very short supply. I suppose they are trying to make more, but it’s a slow process. Apparently you can’t just crank the stuff out like sausage. They gave us some handouts to read—mostly copies of research papers. Gave my little Iowan heart a thrill to see that a lot of this research comes from our very own hometown. Remember Dr. Folkes, the old man who rides his bicycle to work? Turns out what he’s been doing all this time is studying botulin. So his name and the name of our fair city are all over this research._
_Give the little one a big hug and kiss for me. I’ve been thinking that when I get out of this in one piece, we should give her a new little brother or sister as a present for Christmas ninety-one. We’ve been holding off, I know, but now I want to do everything right away._
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Dr. Folkes? Clyde Banks. Sorry to disturb you in the evening like this, but as you may have heard, I’m running for Forks County sheriff, and I’ve made a personal commitment to knock on every door inthe county before the election, and, well, your turn just came up.”
Dr. Arthur Folkes had emerged onto the porch and now peered at his visitor through large glasses with lenses even thicker than Clyde’s. Between the two of them they must be separated by a good inch of expensively ground glass. Rumor had it that he was in his mid-eighties. He certainly looked that way from the shoulders up; his blotched scalp was completely bald, and loose flesh sagged from his neck and jowls. But he moved like a sixty-year-old fencing master. For decades he had been making a spectacle of himself by riding his Raleigh to the university every day, snow or shine. Every few years, just to break the monotony, he got run off the road by a thoughtless student or careening school bus and racked up a few weeks in a body cast.
“That’s okay. Haven’t had any peace anyway,” he said. “Door’s open.”
Clyde opened the screen door, wiped his feet carefully on the mat, and stepped in. Dr. Folkes had already retreated inside the house, so Clyde crossed the porch, made another show of wiping his feet on a second mat, and entered. It had the wet human smell that he had learned to associate with houses where people had grown old. There was another smell, too, a hospital smell, though Clyde didn’t consciously recognize it for a while.
He had lost Dr. Folkes’s trail and stood uncertainly in the foyer until he heard the old professor’s voice from the kitchen. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to trap you here for hours. You get a lot of old people doing that to you?”
“Some folks are quite pleased to receive a visitor,” Clyde allowed.
“Got something going on the stove and want to keep an eye on it,” Folkes said.
Clyde found his way into the kitchen and discovered Folkes frying up some Italian sausages. “I’d offer you some, but I know you probably want to exchange some pleasantries and move on.”
Clyde said nothing to this remark, still trying to work out whether his host was trying to be polite or rude.
“Not much of a politician, are you?” Folkes said, eyeing him through a column of fennel-scented steam.
The telephone began ringing. Dr. Folkes ignored it. Clyde wondered whether he was hard of hearing; but he’d heard the doorbell.
“No, sir, I don’t imagine that I am.”
“I’m kind of a knee-jerk Democrat. Like most academics, I guess.”
“That’s a decision I respect, sir. But you may find that the traditional policy differences that separate the two parties don’t have much relevance in the position of county sheriff.”
“Ah. Well-oiled riposte.”
The phone stopped ringing after nine or ten times, then immediately started ringing again. “Hate it when people call during dinnertime,” Dr. Folkes said.
“I have a handout here with some drunk-driving statistics—comparing Iowa’s ninety-nine counties.” Clyde laid a sheet of paper on the spotless avocado Formica of Dr. Folkes’s kitchen counter.
“Hell,” said Dr. Folkes, squinting at it from across the room. “You handwrote it. Don’t you have a computer or a typewriter or something?”
“Thought the numbers spoke for themselves.”
“What do they say?”
“We have the lowest rate of drunk-driving arrests and the highest rate of drunk-driving fatalities in the state.”
“Ah. And you’re thinking that as a bicyclist, this one is near and dear to me.”
Clyde said nothing.
“Well, I’ll review your statistics and probably vote for you. Satisfied?”