She looked at him, troubled.
He opened the lunchroom door and stepped into dry, antiseptic heat. The floor was dusty. The sheen on the chrome was dull. The wooden blades of the ceiling fans stood still. Empty tables. Empty counter stools. But the mirror behind the counter had been shattered and there was something else. . . in a moment he had it. All the beer taps had been broken off. They lay along the counter like bizarre party favours.
Vicky's voice was g*y and near to breaking. 'Sure. Ask anybody. Pardon me, sir, but could you tell me -'
'Oh, shut up.' But his voice was dull and without force. They were standing in a bar of dusty sunlight that fell through the lunchroom's big plate-glass window and again he had that feeling of being watched and he thought of the boy they had in their trunk, and of the high laughter of children. A phrase came to him for no reason, a legal-sounding phrase, and it began to repeat mystically in his mind: Sight unseen. Sight unseen. Sight unseen.
His eyes travelled over the age-yellowed cards thumb-tacked up behind the counter: CHEESEBURG 35c WORLD'S BEST JOE 10c STRAWBERRY RHUBARB PIE 25c TODAY'S SPECIAL HAM & RED EYE GRAVY W/MASHED POT 80c.
How long since he had seen lunchroom prices like that?
Vicky had the answer. 'Look at this,' she said shrilly. She was pointing at the calendar on the wall. 'They've been at that bean supper for twelve years, I guess.' She uttered a grinding laugh.
He walked over. The picture showed two boys swimming in a pond while a cute little dog carried off their clothes. Below the picture was the legend: COMPLIMENTS OF GATLIN LUMBER & HARDWARE. You Breakum, We Fixum. The month on view was August 1964.
'I don't understand,' he faltered, 'but I'm sure -,
'You're sure!' she cried hysterically. 'Sure, you're sure! That's part of your trouble, Burt, you've spent your whole life being sure!'
He turned back to the door and she came after him.
'Where are you going?'
'To the Municipal Center.'
'Burt, why do you have to be so stubborn? You know something's wrong here. Can't you just admit it?'
'I'm not being stubborn. I just want to get shut of what's in that trunk.'
They stepped out on to the sidewalk, and Burt was struck afresh with the town's silence, and with the smell of fertilizer. Somehow you never thought of that smell when you buttered an ear and salted it and bit in. Compliments of sun, rain, all sorts of man-made phosphates, and a good healthy dose of cow shit. But somehow this smell was different from the one he had grown up with in rural upstate New York. You could say whatever you wanted to about organic fertilizer, but there was something almost fragrant about it when the spreader was laying it down in the fields. Not one of your great perfumes, God no, but when the late-afternoon spring breeze would pick up and waft it over the freshly turned fields, it was a smell with good associations. It meant winter was over for good. It meant that school doors were going to bang closed in six weeks or so and spill everyone out into summer. It was a smell tied irrevocably in his mind with other aromas that were perfume: timothy grass, clover, fresh earth, hollyhocks, dogwood.
But they must do something different out here, he thought. The smell was close but not the same. There was a sickish-sweet undertone. Almost a death smell. As a medical orderly in Vietnam, he had become well versed in that smell.
Vicky was sitting quietly in the car, holding the corn crucifix in her lap and staring at it in a rapt way Burt didn't like.
'Put that thing down,' he said.
'No,' she said without looking up. 'You play your games and I'll play mine.'
He put the car in gear and drove up to the corner. A dead stoplight hung overhead, swinging in a faint breeze. To the left was a neat white church. The grass was cut. Neatly kept flowers grew beside the flagged path up to the door. Burt pulled over.
'What are you doing?'
'I'm going to go in and take a look' Burt said. 'It's the only place in town that looks as if there isn't ten years' dust On it. And look at the sermon board.'
She looked. Neatly pegged white letters under glass read: THE POWER AND GRACE OF HE WHO WALKS BEHIND THE ROWS. The date was 27 July 1976 - the Sunday before.
'He Who Walks Behind the Rows,' Burt said, turning off the ignition. 'One of the nine thousand names of God only used in Nebraska, I guess. Coming?'
She didn't smile. 'I'm not going in with you.'
'Fine. Whatever you want.'
'I haven't been in a church since I left home and I don't want to be in this church and I don't want to be in this town, Burt. I'm scared Out of my mind, can't we just go?'
'I'll only be a minute.'
'I've got my keys, Burt. If you're not back in five minutes, I'll just drive away and leave you here.'
'Now just wait a minute, lady.'
'That's what I'm going to do. Unless you want to assault me like a common mugger and take my keys. I suppose you could do that.'
'But you don't think I will.'