They were buying a huge box of meat. When it was ready, the woman turned away from the counter, and Clyde saw that she was enormously pregnant. The man grabbed one end of the box with his good hand and slid it off the counter, holding up one knee to support the end while he groped for a fingerhold with his damaged hand. When he raised his knee in this fashion, the leg of his trousers rode up on his calf and exposed a few inches of flesh-colored plastic. But it must have been a below-the-knee amputation, because once he got his finger hooked into the box, he walked over to the cashier with only a slight limp.
Maggie pawed at her pacifier, which flew out of her mouth and skidded across the floor. Clyde was chagrined that he had not made use of the baby technology available to him by the infinite bounty of the extended Dhont family; they owned many clip-on pacifier shock cords intended to prevent this sort of incident, but in his haste to get Maggie out of the house lest she detonate prematurely and wake Desiree up, he had forgotten to install one.
The pregnant woman bent over carefully and picked up the pacifier. She turned to the cashier, a blue-eyed Lukas female in her fifties. “Is there a WC?” she said.
“Pardon me, honey?” said the cashier, leaning forward and cupping one hand to her ear.
“Rest room,” said the husband, more for his wife’s benefit than the cashier’s.
“Back there through the door,” said the cashier.
The pregnant woman circumnavigated the counter, seeming to glide along on a cushion of air in her tentlike garment. A Bunn coffee machine was sitting on the counter with a stack of Styrofoam cups next to it and a bowl for contributions. One of the glass carafes was full of hot water. The woman plucked it off the machine as she went by and carried it into the bathroom with the pacifier.
Clyde heard the sound of water running. Maggie was beginning to fuss; he turned around, said something meant to be reassuring, but couldn’t make eye contact without breaking his own neck. Presently the woman emerged from the bathroom and replaced the carafe. She turned toward Clyde, smiling warmly. Clyde was slightly taken aback until he realized that she was smiling not at him but at Maggie. “May I?” she said, holding up the steaming pacifier.
“Please. Thank you,” Clyde said. The woman did something behind his head, and Maggie became quiet and calm as she built up to full suction. The woman remained for a few moments as her husband finished paying for the meat, making eyes at the baby and talking to her in a low voice, speaking an unfathomable language. Then her husband was by the door, holding the box, repeating a word to her a few times, patient but firm.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Clyde said as she was on her way out. Her husband had shouldered the door open and was holding it there with his back while she made her way out. Clyde made eye contact with him; he was looking back at Clyde calmly, in an appraising and almost absentminded way. Clyde nodded to him. “Have a good day, sir. Vote Banks.”
Maggie fell asleep. As Clyde approached the counter, he shushed Todd Gruner, the butcher, who, surprised and excited to see a fellow representative of Christendom, was about to greet him too loudly. “How you doing, Todd?” he whispered.
“Nice to see you, Clyde. What’s in there, a coon?”
“Bats,” Clyde improvised. “Been catching them round the porchlight with a potato sack.” He took the lid off. “Huh. Neck nuggets. Looks like old Ebenezer’s work,” Todd said. “Need us to make you somesausage?”
“Yup.”
“We got a new spice mix that’s real good. It’s extra spicy.”
“Don’t want extra spicy.”
“Regular, then. Where’d you get a buck this time of year, Clyde? Poach it?”
“Had it flown in from Australia. It’s deer season in the Southern Hemisphere.”
“Well, I should have it ready for you, oh, Monday afternoon.”
“See you then,” Clyde said. “Vote Banks.”
It had occurred to Clyde that he might score some additional relationship karma by driving into Wapsipinicon and going to the European bakery there on Lincoln Way and buying some cinnamon rolls. It was not out of the question that he might even get back with said booty before Desiree woke up, which would earn him a double karma bonus.
Shortly after he turned south on River Street, he noted three Nishnabotna Police Department vehicles blocking the right lane a couple of blocks ahead, and Lee Harms standing there in his cop uniform waving traffic around the obstruction.
Clyde gunned the truck forward crisply, ignoring the gesticulations of Lee Harms, who had not yet recognized him, and stopped it behind a police unit.
He saw right away that another officer, Mark Ditzel, had a suspect facedown on the pavement and handcuffed. Ditzel had his nightstick out; it had blood on it. A bulky woman in a tentlike dress was standing with her hands on the fender of the Toyota, shouting at the police officers in a language that Clyde did not recognize. A police dog from the local K-9 unit was busying herself with something that was not in the Toyota, but on the pavement next to it, up on the curb.