I'll tell you all my secrets
But I lie about my past
So send me off to bed forevermore
-Tom Waits, "Tango Till They're Sore"
A whole life in darkness, surrounded by filth1, that was what Shadow dreamed, his first night in Lakeside. A child's life, long ago and far away, in a land across the ocean, in the lands where the sun rose. But this life contained no sunrises, only dimness by day and blindness by night.
Nobody spoke2 to him. He heard human voices, from outside, but could understand human speech no better than he understood the howling of the owls3 or the yelps4 of dogs.
He remembered, or thought he remembered, one night, half a lifetime ago, when one of the big people had entered, quietly, and had not cuffed5 him or fed him, but had picked him up to her breast and embraced him. She smelled good. Hot drops of water had fallen from her face to his. He had been scared, and had wailed6 loudly in his fear.
She put him down on the straw, hurriedly, and left the hut, fastening the door behind her.
He remembered that moment, and he treasured it, just as he remembered the sweetness of a cabbage heart, the tart7 taste of plums, the crunch8 of apples, the greasy9 delight of roasted fish.
And now he saw the faces in the firelight, all of them looking at him as he was led out from the hut for the first time, which was the only time. So that was what people looked like. Raised in darkness, he had never seen faces. Everything was so new. So strange. The bonfire light hurt his eyes. They pulled on the rope around his neck, to lead him to the place where the man waited for him.
And when the first blade was raised in the firelight, what a cheer went up from the crowd. The child from the darkness began to laugh with them, in delight and in freedom.
And then the blade came down.
Shadow opened his eyes and realized that he was hungry and cold, in an apartment with a layer of ice clouding the inside of the window glass. His frozen breath, he thought. He got out of bed, pleased he did not have to get dressed. He scraped at a window with a fingernail as he passed, felt the ice collect under the nail, then melt to water.
He tried to remember his dream, but remembered nothing but misery10 and darkness.
He put on his shoes. He figured he would walk into the town center, walk across the bridge across the northern end of the lake, if he had the geography of the town right. He put on his thin jacket, remembering his promise to himself that he would buy himself a warm winter coat, opened the apartment door, and stepped out onto the wooden deck. The cold took his breath away: he breathed in, and felt every hair in his nostrils12 freeze into rigidity13. The deck gave him a fine view of the lake, irregular patches of gray surrounded by an expanse of white.
The cold snap had come, that was for sure. It could not be much above zero, and it would not be a pleasant walk, but he was certain he could make it into town without too much trouble. What did Hinzelmann say last night-a ten-minute walk? And Shadow was a big man. He would walk briskly and keep himself warm. He set off south, heading for the bridge.
Soon he began to cough, a dry, thin cough, as the bitterly cold air touched his lungs. Soon his ears and face and lips hurt, and then his feet hurt. He thrust his ungloved hands deep into his coat pockets, clenched14 his fingers together trying to find some warmth. He found himself remembering Low Key Lyesmith's tall tales of the Minnesota winters-particularly the one about a hunter treed by a bear during a hard freeze who took out his dick and pissed an arching yellow stream of steaming urine that was already frozen hard before it hit the ground, then slid down the rock-hard frozen-piss-pole to freedom. A wry15 smile at the memory and another dry, painful cough.
Step after step after step. He glanced back. The apartment building was not as far away as he had expected.
This walk, he decided16, was a mistake. But he was already three or four minutes from the apartment, and the bridge over the lake was in sight. It made as much sense to press on as to go home (and then what? Call a taxi on the dead phone? Wait for spring? He had no food in the apartment, he reminded himself).
He kept walking, revising his estimates of the temperature downward as he walked. Minus ten? Minus twenty? Minus forty, maybe, that strange point on the thermometer when Celsius18 and Fahrenheit19 say the same thing. Probably not that cold. But then there was wind chill, and the wind was now hard and steady and continuous, blowing over the lake, coming down from the Arctic across Canada.
He remembered, enviously20, the chemical hand-and foot-warmers. He wished he had them now.
Ten more minutes of walking, he guessed, and the bridge seemed to be no nearer. He was too cold to shiver. His eyes hurt. This was not simply cold: this was science fiction. This was a story set on the dark side of Mercury, back when they thought Mercury had a dark side. This was somewhere out on rocky Pluto21, where the sun is just another star, shining only a little more brightly in the darkness. This, thought Shadow, is just a hair away from the places where air comes in buckets and pours just like beer.
The occasional cars that roared past him seemed unreal: spaceships, little freeze-dried packages of metal and glass, inhabited by people dressed more warmly than he was. An old song his mother had loved, "Walking in a Winter Wonderland," began to run through his head, and he hummed it through closed lips, kept pace to it as he walked.
He had lost all sensation in his feet. He looked down at his black leather shoes, at the thin cotton socks, and began, seriously, to worry about frostbite.
This was beyond a joke. This had moved beyond foolishness, slipped over the line into genuine twenty-four-karat Jesus-Christ-I-screwed-up-big-time territory. His clothes might as well have been netting or lace: the wind blew through him, froze his bones and the marrow22 in his bones, froze the lashes23 of his eyes, froze the warm place under his balls, which were retreating into his pelvic cavity.
Keep walking, he told himself. Keep walking. I can stop and drink a pail of air when I get home. A Beatles song started in his head, and he adjusted his pace to match it. It was only when he got to the chorus that he realized that he was humming "Help."
He was almost at the bridge now. Then he had to walk across it, and he would still be another ten minutes from the stores on the west of the lake-maybe a little more...
A dark car passed him, stopped, then reversed in a foggy cloud of exhaust smoke and came to a halt beside him. A window slid down, and the haze24 and steam from the window mixed with the exhaust to form a dragon's breath that surrounded the car. "Everything okay here?" said a cop inside.
Shadow's first, automatic instinct was to say Yup, everything's just fine and jimdandy thank you officer. But it was too late for that, and he started to say, "I think I'm freezing. I was walking into Lakeside to buy food and clothes, but I underestimated the length of the walk"-he was that far through the sentence in his head, when he realized that all that had come out was "F-f-freezing," and a chattering25 noise, and he said, "So s-sorry. Cold. Sorry."
The cop pulled open the back door of the car and said, "You get in there this moment and warm yourself up, okay?" Shadow climbed in gratefully, and he sat in the back and rubbed his hands together, trying not to worry about frostbitten toes. The cop got back in the driver's seat. Shadow stared at him through the metal grille. Shadow tried not to think about the last time he'd been in the back of a police car, or to notice that there were no door handles in the back, and to concentrate instead on rubbing life back into his hands. His face hurt and his red fingers hurt, and now, in the warmth, his toes were starting to hurt once more. That was, Shadow figured, a good sign.
The cop put the car in drive and moved off. "You know, that was," he said, not turning to look at Shadow, just talking a little louder, "if you'll pardon me saying so, a real stupid thing to do. You didn't hear any of the weather advisories27? It's minus thirty out there. God alone knows what the wind-chill is, minus sixty, minus seventy, although I figure when you're down at minus thirty, windchill's the least of your worries."
"Thanks," said Shadow. "Thanks for stopping. Very, very grateful."
"Woman in Rhinelander went out this morning to fill her birdfeeder in her robe and carpet slippers28 and she froze, literally29 froze, to the sidewalk. She's in intensive care now. It was on the TV this morning. You're new in town." It was almost a question, but the man knew the answer already.
"I came in on the Greyhound last night. Figured today I'd buy myself some warm clothes, food, and a car. Wasn't expecting this cold."
"Yeah," said the cop. "It took me by surprise as well. I was too busy worrying about global warming. I'm Chad Mulligan. I'm the chief of police here in Lakeside."
"Mike Ainsel."
"Hi, Mike. Feeling any better?"
"A little, yes."
"So where would you like me to take you first?"
Shadow put his hands down to the hot-air stream, painful on his fingers, then he pulled them away. Let it happen in its own time. "Can you just drop me off in the town center?"
"Wouldn't hear of it. Long as you don't need me to drive a getaway car for your bank robbery I'll happily take you wherever you need to go. Think of it as the town welcome wagon30."
"Where would you suggest we start?"
"You only moved in last night."
"That's right."
"You eaten breakfast yet?"
"Not yet."
"Well, that seems like a heck of a good starting place to me," said Mulligan.
They were over the bridge now, and entering the northwest side of the town. "This is Main Street," said Mulligan, "and this," he said, crossing Main Street and turning right, "is the town square."
Even in the winter the town square was impressive, but Shadow knew that this place was meant to be seen in summer: it would be a riot of color, of poppies and irises31 and flowers of every kind, and the clump32 of birch trees in one corner would be a green and silver bower33. Now it was colorless, beautiful in a skeletal way, the bandshell empty, the fountain turned off for the winter, the brownstone city hall capped by white snow.
"...and this," concluded Chad Mulligan, bringing the car to a stop outside a high glass-fronted old building on the west of the square, "is Mabel's."
He got out of the car, opened the passenger door for Shadow. The two men put their heads down against the cold and the wind, and hurried across the sidewalk and into a warm room, fragrant34 with the smells of new-baked bread, of pastry35 and soup and bacon.
The place was almost empty. Mulligan sat down at a table and Shadow sat opposite him. He suspected that Mulligan was doing this to get a feel for the stranger in town. Then again, the police chief might simply be what he appeared: friendly, helpful, good.
A woman bustled36 over to their table, not fat but big, a big woman in her sixties, her hair bottle-bronze.
"Hello, Chad," she said. "You'll want a hot chocolate while you're thinking." She handed them two laminated menus.
"No cream on the top, though," he agreed. "Mabel knows me too well," he said to Shadow. "What'll it be, pal37?"
"Hot chocolate sounds great," said Shadow. "And I'm happy to have the whipped cream on the top."
"That's good," said Mabel. "Live dangerously, hon. Are you going to introduce me, Chad? Is this young man a new officer?"
"Not yet," said Chad Mulligan, with a flash of white teeth. "This is Mike Ainsel. He moved to Lakeside last night. Now, if you'll excuse me." He got up, walked to the back of the room, through the door marked POINTERS. It was next to a door marked SETTERS.
"You're the new man in the apartment up on Northridge Road. The old Pilsen place. Oh, yes," she said, happily, "I know just who you are. Hinzelmann was by this morning for his morning pasty, he told me all about you. You boys only having hot chocolate or you want to look at the breakfast menu?"
"Breakfast for me," said Shadow. "What's good?"
"Everything's good," said Mabel. "I make it. But this is the farthest south and east of the yoopie you can get pasties, and they are particularly good. Warming and filling too. My speciality."
Shadow had no idea what a pasty was, but he said that would be fine, and in a few moments Mabel returned with a plate with what looked like a folded-over pie on it. The lower half was wrapped in a paper napkin. Shadow picked it up with the napkin and bit into it: it was warm and filled with meat, potatoes, carrots, onions. "First pasty I've ever had," he said. "It's real good."
"They're a yoopie thing," she told him. "Mostly you need to be at least up Ironwood way to get one. The Cornish men who came over to work the iron mines brought them over."
"Yoopie?"
"Upper Peninsula. U.P. Yoopie. It's the little chunk38 of Michigan to the northeast."
The chief of police came back. He picked up the hot chocolate and slurped39 it. "Mabel," he said, "are you forcing this nice young man to eat one of your pasties?"
"It's good," said Shadow. It was too, a savory40 delight wrapped in hot pastry.
"They go straight to the belly," said Chad Mulligan, patting his own stomach. "I warn you. Okay: So you need a car?" With his parka off, he was revealed (as a lanky41 man with a round, apple-belly gut42 on him. He looked harassed43 and competent, more like an engineer than cop.
Shadow nodded, mouth full.
"Right. I made some calls. Justin Liebowitz's selling his jeep, wants four thousand dollars for it, will settle for three. The Gunthers have had their Toyota 4-Runner for sale for eight months, ugly sonofabitch, but at this point they'd probably pay you to take it out of their driveway. And if you don't care about ugly, it's got to be a great deal. I used the phone in the men's room, left a message for Missy Gunther down at Lakeside Realty, but she wasn't in yet, probably getting her hair done down at Sheila's."
The pasty remained good as Shadow chewed his way through it. It was astonishingly filling. "Stick-to-your-ribs food," as his mother would have said. "Sticks to your sides."
"So," said Chief of Police Chad Mulligan, wiping the hot-chocolate foam44 from around his lips. "I figure we stop off next at Hennings Farm and Home Supplies, get you a real winter wardrobe, swing by Dave's Finest Food so you can fill your larder45, then I'll drop you up by Lakeside Realty. If you can put down a thousand up front for the car they'll be happy, otherwise five hundred a month for four months should see them okay. It's an ugly car, like I said, but if the kid hadn't painted it purple it'd be a ten-thousand-dollar car, and reliable, and you'll need something like that to get around this winter, you ask me."
"This is very good of you," said Shadow. "But shouldn't you be out catching46 criminals, not helping47 newcomers? Not that I'm complaining, you understand."
Mabel chuckled48. "We all tell him that," she said.
Mulligan shrugged49. "It's a good town," he said, simply. "Not much trouble. You'll always get someone speeding within city limits-which is a good thing, as traffic tickets pay my wages. Friday, Saturday nights you get some jerk who gets drunk and beats on a spouse-and that one can go both ways, believe me. Men and women. But out here things are quiet. They call me out when someone's locked their keys in their vehicle. Barking dogs. Every year there's a couple of high school kids caught with weed behind the bleachers. Biggest police case we've had here in five years was when Dan Schwartz got drunk and shot up his own trailer, then he went on the run, down Main Street, in his wheelchair, waving this darn shotgun, shouting that he would shoot anyone who got in his way, that no one would stop him from getting to the interstate. I think he was on his way to Washington to shoot the president. I still laugh whenever I think of Dan heading down the interstate in that wheelchair of his with the bumper50 sticker on the back. 'My Juvenile51 Delinquent52 is Screwing Your Honor Student.' You remember, Mabel?"
She nodded, lips pursed. She did not seem to find it as funny as Mulligan did.
"What did you do?" asked Shadow.
"I talked to him. He gave me the shotgun. Slept it off down at the jail. Dan's not a bad guy, he was just drunk and upset."
Shadow paid for his own breakfast and, over Chad Mulligan's halfhearted protests, both hot chocolates.
Hennings Farm and Home Supplies was a warehouse-sized building on the south of the town that sold everything from tractors to toys (the toys, along with the Christmas ornaments53, were already on sale). The store was bustling54 with post-Christmas shoppers. Shadow recognized the younger of the girls who had sat in front of him on the bus. She was trailing after her parents. He waved at her and she gave him a hesitant, blue-rubber-banded smile. Shadow wondered idly what she'd look like in ten years' time.
Probably as beautiful as the girl at the Hennings Farm and Home checkout55 counter, who scanned in his purchases with a chattering hand-held gun, capable, Shaded had no doubt, of ringing up a tractor if someone drove it through.
"Ten pairs of long underwear?" said the girl. "Stocking up, huh?" She looked like a movie starlet.
Shadow felt fourteen again, and tongue-tie and foolish. He said nothing while she rang up the thermal56 boots, the gloves, the sweaters, and the goose-down-filled coat.
He had no wish to put the credit card that Wednesday had given him to the test, not with Chief of Police Mulligan standing57 helpfully beside him, so he paid for everything in cash. Then he took his bags into the men's rest room, came out wearing many of his purchases.
"Looking good, big fella," said Mulligan.
"At least I'm warm," said Shadow, and outside, in the parking lot, although the wind burned cold on the skin of his face, the rest of him was warm enough. At Mulligan's invitation, he put his shopping bags in the back of the police car, arid58 rode in the passenger seat, in the front.
"So, what do you do, Mister Ainsel?" asked the chief of police. "Big guy like you. What's your profession, and will you be practicing it in Lakeside?"
Shadow's heart began to pound, but his voice was steady. "I work for my uncle. He buys and sells stuff all over the country. I just do the heavy lifting."
"Does he pay well?"
"I'm family. He knows I'm not going to rip him off, and I'm learning a little about the trade on the way. Until I figure out what it is I really want to do." It was coming out of him with conviction, smooth as a snake. He knew everything about big Mike Ainsel in that moment, and he liked Mike Ainsel. Mike Ainsel had none of the problems that Shadow had. Ainsel had never been married. Mike Ainsel had never been interrogated59 on a freight train by Mr. Wood and Mr. Stone. Televisions did not speak to Mike Ainsel ("You want to see Lucy's tits?" asked a voice in his head). Mike Ainsel didn't have bad dreams, or believe that there was a storm coming.
He filled his shopping basket at Dave's Finest Food, doing what he thought of as a gas-station stop-milk, eggs, bread, apples, cheese, cookies. Just some food. He'd do a real one later. As Shadow moved around, Chad Mulligan said hello to people and introduced Shadow to them. "This is Mike Ainsel, he's taken the empty apartment at the old Pilsen place. Up around the back," he'd say. Shadow gave up trying to remember names. He just shook hands with people and smiled, sweating a little, uncomfortable in his insulated layers in the hot store.
Chad Mulligan drove Shadow across the street to Lakeside Realty. Missy Gunther, her hair freshly set and lacquered, did not need an introduction-she knew exactly who Mike Ainsel was. Why, that nice Mr. Borson, his uncle Emerson, such a nice man, he'd been by, what, about six, eight weeks ago now, and rented the apartment up at the old Pilsen Place, and wasn't the view just to die for up there? Well, honey, just wait until the spring, and we're so lucky, so many of the lakes in this part of the world go bright green from the algae60 in the summer, it would turn your stomach, but our lake, well, come fourth of July you could still practically drink it, and Mr. Borson had paid for a whole year's lease in advance, and as for the Toyota 4-Runner, she couldn't believe that Chad Mulligan still remembered it, and yes, she'd be delighted to get rid of it. Tell the truth, she'd pretty much resigned herself to giving it to Hinzelmann as this year's klunker and just taking the tax write-off, not that the car was a klunker, far from it, no, it was her son's car before he went to school in Green Bay, and, well, he'd painted it purple one day and, ha-ha, she certainly hoped that Mike Ainsel liked purple, that was all she had to say, and if he didn't she wouldn't blame him...
Chief of Police Mulligan excused himself near the middle of this litany. "Looks like they need me back at the office. Good meeting you, Mike," he said, and he moved Shadow's shopping bags into the back of Missy Gunther's station wagon.
Missy drove Shadow back to her place, where, in the drive, he saw an elderly SUV. The blown snow had bleached61 half of it to a blinding white, while the rest of it was painted the kind of drippy purple that someone would need to be very stoned, very often, to even begin to be able to find attractive.
Still, the car started up on the first try, and the heater worked, although it took almost ten minutes of running the engine with the heater on full before the interior of the car changed from unbearably62 cold to merely chilly63. While this was happening, Missy Gunther took Shadow into her kitchen-excuse the mess, but the little ones just leave their toys all over after Christmas and she just didn't have the heart, would he care for some leftover64 turkey dinner? Well, coffee then, won't take a moment to brew65 a fresh pot-and Shadow took a large red toy car off a window seat and sat down, while Missy Gunther asked if he had met his neighbors yet, and Shadow confessed that he hadn't.
There were, he was informed while the coffee dipped, four other inhabitants of his apartment building--back when it was the Pilsen place the Pilsens lived in the downstairs flat and rented out the upper two flats, now their apartment, which was taken by a couple of young men, Mr. Holz and Mr. Neiman, they actually are a couple and when she said couple, Mr. Ainsel, Heavens, we have all kinds here, more than one kind of tree in the forest, although mostly those kind of people wind up in Madison or the Twin Cities, but truth to tell, nobody here gives it a second thought. They're in Key West for the winter, they'll be back in April, he'll meet them then. The thing about Lakeside is that it's a good town. Now next door to Mr. Ainsel, that's Marguerite Olsen and her little boy, a sweet lady, sweet, sweet lady, but she's had a hard life, still sweet as pie, and she works for the Lakeside News. Not the most exciting newspaper in the world, but truth to tell Missy Gunther thought that was probably the way most folk around here liked it.
Oh, she said, and poured him coffee, she just wished that Mr. Ainsel could see the town in the summer or late in the spring, when the lilacs and the apple and the cherry blossoms were out, she thought there was nothing like it for beauty, nothing like it anywhere in the world.
Shadow gave her a five-hundred-dollar deposit, and he climbed up into the car and started to back it up, out of her front yard and onto the driveway proper. Missy Gunther tapped on his front window. "This is for you," she said. "I nearly forgot." She handed him a buff envelope. "It's kind of a gag. We had them printed up a few years back. You don't have to look at it now."
He thanked her, and drove, cautiously, back into the town. He took the road that ran around the lake. He wished he could see it in the spring, or the summer, or the fall: it would be very beautiful, he had no doubt of that.
In ten minutes he was home.
He parked the car out on the street and walked up the outside steps to his cold apartment. He unpacked66 his shopping, put the food into the cupboards and the fridge, and then he opened the envelope Missy Gunther had given him.
It contained a passport. Blue, plasticated cover and, inside, a proclamation that Michael Ainsel (his name handwritten in Missy Gunther's precise handwriting) was a citizen of Lakeside. There was a map of the town on the next page. The rest of it was filled with discount coupons67 for various local stores.
"I think I may like it here," said Shadow, aloud. He looked out of the icy window at the frozen lake. "If it ever warms up."
There was a bang at the front door at around 2:00 P.M. Shadow had been practicing the Sucker Vanish with a quarter, tossing it from one hand to the other undetectably. His hands were cold enough and clumsy enough that he kept dropping the coin onto the tabletop, and the knock at the door made him drop it again.
He went to the door and opened it.
A moment of pure fear: the man at the door wore a black mask which covered the lower half of his face. It was the kind of mask that a bank robber might wear on TV, or a serial68 killer69 from a cheap movie might wear to scare his victims. The top of the man's head was covered by a black knit cap.
Still, the man was smaller and slighter than Shadow, and he did not appear to be armed. And he wore a bright plaid coat, of the kind that serial killers70 normally avoid.
"Ih hihelhan," said the visitor.
"Huh?"
The man pulled the mask downward to reveal Hinzelmann's cheerful face. "I said, 'It's Hinzelmann.' You know, I don't know what we did before they came up with these masks. Well, I do remember what we did. Thick knitted caps that went all around your face, and scarves and you don't want to know what else. I think it's a miracle what they come up with these days. I may be an old man, but I'm not going to grumble71 about progress, not me."
He finished this speech by thrusting a basket at Shadow, filled high with local cheeses, bottles, jars, and several small salamis that proclaimed themselves to be venison summer sausage, and by coming inside. "Merry day after Christmas," he said. His nose and ears and cheeks were red as raspberries, mask or no mask. "I hear you already ate a whole one of Mabel's pasties. Brought you a few things."
"That's very kind of you," said Shadow.
"Kind, nothing. I'm going to stick it to you next week for the raffle72. The Chamber73 of Commerce runs it, and I run the Chamber of Commerce. Last year we raised almost seventeen thousand dollars for the children's ward17 of Lakeside Hospital."
"Well, why don't you put me down for a ticket now?"
"It don't start until the day the klunker hits the ice," said Hinzelmann. He looked out of Shadow's window toward the lake. "Cold out there. Must have dropped fifty degrees last night."
"It happened really fast," agreed Shadow.
"We used to pray for freezes like this back in the old days," said Hinzelmann. "My daddy told me."
"You'd pray for days like this?"
"Well, yah, it was the only way the settlers survived back then. Weren't enough food for everyone, and you couldn't just go down to Dave's and fill up your shopping cart in the old days, no sir. So my grampaw, he got to figgerin', and when a really cold day like this come along he'd take my grarnmaw, and the kids, my uncle and my aunt and my daddy-he was the youngest-and the serving girl and the hired man, and he'd go down with them to the creek75, give 'em a little drink of rum and herbs, it was a recipe he'd got from the old country, then he'd pour creek water over them. Course they'd freeze in seconds, stiff and blue as so many Popsicles. He'd haul them to a trench76 they'd already dug and filled with straw, and he'd stack 'em down there, one by one, like so much cordwood in the trench, and he'd pack straw around them, then he'd cover the top of the trench with two-b'-fours to keep the critters out-in those days there were wolves and bears and all sorts you never see anymore around here, no hodags though, that's just a story about the hodags and I wouldn't ever stretch your credulity by telling you no stories, no sir-he'd cover the trench with two-b'-fours and the next snowfall would cover it up completely, save for the flag he'd planted to show him where the trench was.
"Then my grampaw would ride through the winter in comfort and never have to worry about running out of food or out of fuel. And when he saw that the true spring was coming he'd go to the flag, and he'd dig his way down through the snow, and he'd move the two-by-fours, and he'd carry them in one by one and set the family in front of the fire to thaw77. Nobody ever minded except one of the hired men who lost half an ear to a family of mice who nibbled78 it off one time my grampaw didn't push those two-by-fours all the way closed. Of course, in those days we had real winters. You could do that back then. These pussy79 winters we get nowadays it don't hardly get cold enough."
"No?" asked Shadow. He was playing straight man, and enjoying it enormously.
"Not since the winter of '49, and you'd be too young to remember that one. That was a winter. I see you bought yourself a vehicle."
"Yup. What do you think?"
"Truth to tell, I never liked that Gunther boy. I had a trout80 stream down in the woods a way, on back of my property, way back, well it's town land but I'd put down stones in the river, made little pools and places where the trout liked to live. Caught me some beauties too-one fellow must have been a six-, seven-pound brook81 trout, and that little Gunther so-and-so he kicked down each of the pools and threatened to report me to the DNR. Now he's in Green Bay, and soon enough he'll be back here. If there were any justice in the world he'd've gone off into the world as a winter runaway82, but nope, sticks like a cockleburr to a woolen83 vest." He began to arrange the contents of Shadow's welcome basket on the counter. "This is Katherine Powdermaker's crabapple jelly. She's been giving me a pot for Christmas for longer than you've been alive, and the sad truth is I've never opened a one. They're down in my basement, forty, fifty pots. Maybe I'll open one and discover that I like the stuff. Meantime, here's a pot for you. Maybe you'll like it."
"What's a winter runaway?"
"Mm." The old man pushed his woolen cap above his ears, rubbed his temple with a pink forefinger84. "Well, it ain't unique to Lakeside-we're a good town, better than most, but we're not perfect. Some winters, well, maybe a kid gets a bit stir crazy, when it gets so cold that you can't go out, and the snow's so dry that you can't make so much as a snowball without it crumbling85 away..."
"They run off?"
The old man nodded, gravely. "I blame the television, showing all the kids things they'll never have-Dallas and Dynasty, all of that nonsense. I've not had a television since the fall of '83, except for a black-and-white set I keep in a closet for if folk come in from out of town and there's a big game on."
"Can I get you anything, Hinzelmann?"
"Not coffee. Gives me heartburn. Just water." Hinzelmann shook his head. "Biggest problem in this part of the world is poverty. Not the poverty we had in the Depression but something more in...what's the word, means it creeps in at the edges, like cock-a-roaches?"
"Yeah. Insidious. Logging's dead. Mining's dead. Tourists don't drive farther north than the Dells, 'cept for a handful of hunters and some kids going to camp on the lakes-and they aren't spending their money in the towns."
"Lakeside seems kind of prosperous, though."
The old man's blue eyes blinked. "And believe me, it takes a lot of work," he said. "Hard work. But this is a good town, and all the work all the people here put into it is worthwhile. Not that my family weren't poor as kids. Ask me how poor we was as kids."
Shadow put on his straight-man face and said, "How poor were you as kids, Mister Hinzelmann?"
"Just Hinzelmann, Mike. We were so poor that we couldn't afford a fire. Come New Year's Eve my father would suck on a peppermint87, and us kids, we'd stand around with our hands outstretched, basking88 in the glow."
Shadow made a rimshot noise. Hinzelmann put on his ski mask and did up his huge plaid coat, pulled, out his car keys from his pocket, and then, last of all, putted on his great gloves. "You get too bored up here, you just come down to the store and ask for me. I'll show you my collection of hand-tied fishing flies. Bore you so much that getting back here will be a relief." His voice was muffled89, but audible.
"I'll do that," said Shadow with a smile. "How's Tessie?"
"Hibernating90. She'll be out in the spring. You take care now, Mr. Ainsel." And he closed the door behind him as he left.
The apartment grew ever colder.
Shadow put on his coat and his gloves. Then he put on his boots. He could hardly see through the windows now for the ice on the inside of the panes91 which turned the view of the lake into an abstract image.
His breath was clouding in the air. He went out of his apartment onto the wooden deck and knocked on the door next door. He heard a woman's voice shouting at someone to for heaven's sake shut up and turn that television down-a kid, he thought, adults don't shout like that at other adults. The door opened and a tired woman with very long, very black hair was staring at him warily92.
"Yes?"
"How do you do, ma'am. I'm Mike Ainsel. I'm your next-door neighbor."
Her expression did not change, not by a hair. "Yes?"
"Ma'am. It's freezing in my apartment. There's a little heat coming out of the grate, but it's not warming the place up, not at all."
She looked him up and down, then a ghost of a smile touched the edges of her lips and she said, "Come in, then. If you don't there'll be no heat in here, either."
He stepped inside her apartment. Plastic, multicolored toys were strewn all over the floor. There were small heaps of torn Christmas wrapping paper by the wall. A small boy sat inches away from the television set, a video of the Disney Hercules playing, an animated93 satyr stomping94 and shouting his way across the screen. Shadow kept his back to the TV set.
"Okay," she said. "This is what you do. First you seal the windows, you can buy the stuff down at Hennings, it's just like Saran Wrap but for windows. Tape it to windows, then if you want to get fancy you run a blow-dryer on it, it stays there the whole winter. That stops the heat leaving through the windows. Then you buy a space heater or two. The building's furnace is old, and it can't cope with the real cold. We've had some easy winters recently, I suppose we should be grateful." Then she put out her hand. "Marguerite Olsen."
"Good to meet you," said Shadow. He pulled off a glove and they shook hands. "You know, ma'am, I'd always thought of Olsens as being blonder than you."
"My ex-husband was as blond as they come. Pink and blond. Couldn't tan at gunpoint."
"Missy Gunther told me you write for the local paper."
"Missy Gunther tells everybody everything. I don't see why we need a local paper with Missy Gunther around." She nodded. "Yes. Some news reporting here and there, but my editor writes most of the news. I write the nature column, the gardening column, an opinion column every Sunday and the 'News from the Community' column, which tells, in mind-numbing detail, who went to dinner with who for fifteen miles around. Or is that whom?"
"Whom," said Shadow, before he could stop himself. "It's the objective case."
She looked at him with her black eyes, and Shadow experienced a moment of pure déjà vu. I've been here before, he thought.
No, she reminds me of someone.
"Anyway, that's how you heat up your apartment," she said.
"Thank you," said Shadow. "When it's warm you and your little one must come over."
"His name's Leon," she said. "Good meeting you, Mister...I'm sorry..."
"Ainsel," said Shadow. "Mike Ainsel."
"And what sort of a name is Ainsel?" she asked.
Shadow had no idea. "My name," he said. "I'm afraid I was never very interested in family history."
"Norwegian, maybe?" she said.
"We were never close," he said. Then he remembered Uncle Emerson Borson, and added, "On that side, anyway."
***
By the time Mr. Wednesday arrived, Shadow had put clear plastic sheeting across all the windows, and had one space heater running in the main room and one in the bedroom at the back. It was practically cozy95.
"What the hell is that purple piece of shit you're driving?" asked Wednesday, by way of greeting.
"Well," said Shadow, "you drove off with my white piece of shit. Where is it, by the way?"
"I traded it in in Duluth," said Wednesday. "You can't be too careful. Don't worry-you'll get your share when all this is done."
"What am I doing here?" asked Shadow. "In Lakeside, I mean. Not in the world."
Wednesday smiled his smile, the one that made Shadow want to hit him. "You're living here because it's the last place they'll look for you. I can keep you out of sight here."
"By 'they' you mean the black hats?"
"Exactly. I'm afraid the House on the Rock is now out of bounds. It's a little difficult, but we'll cope. Now it's just stamping our feet and flag-waving, caracole and saunter until the action starts-a little later than any of us expected. I think they'll hold off until spring. Nothing big can happen until then."
"How come?"
"Because they may babble96 on about micromilliseconds and virtual worlds and paradigm97 shifts and what-have-you, but they still inhabit this planet and are still bound by the cycle of the year. These are the dead months. A victory in these months is a dead victory."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," said Shadow. That was not entirely98 true. He had a vague idea, and he hoped it was wrong.
"It's going to be a bad winter, and you and I are going to use our time as wisely as we can. We shall rally our troops and pick our battleground."
"Okay," said Shadow. He knew that Wednesday was telling him the truth, or a part of a truth. War was coming. No, that was not it: the war had already begun. The battle was coming. "Mad Sweeney said that he was working for you when we met him that first night. He said that before he died."
"And would I have wanted to employ someone who could not even best a sad case like that in a bar fight? But never fear, you've repaid my faith in you a dozen times over. Have you ever been to Las Vegas?"
"Las Vegas, Nevada?"
"That's the one."
"No."
"We're flying in there from Madison later tonight, on a gentleman's red-eye, a charter plane for high rollers. I've convinced them that we should be on it."
"Don't you ever get tired of lying?" asked Shadow. He said it gently, curiously99.
"Not in the slightest. Anyway, it's true. We are playing for the highest stakes of all. It shouldn't take us more than a couple of hours to get to Madison, the roads are clear. So lock your door and turn off the heaters. It would be a terrible thing if you burned down the house in your absence."
"Who are we going to see in Las Vegas?"
Wednesday told him.
Shadow turned off the heaters, packed some clothes into an overnight bag, then turned back to Wednesday and said, "Look, I feel kind of stupid. I know you just told me who we're going to see, but I dunno. I just had a brain-fart or something. It's gone. Who is it again?"
Wednesday told him once more.
This time Shadow almost had it. The name was there on the tip of his mind. He wished he'd been paying closer attention when Wednesday told him. He let it go.
"Who's driving?" he asked Wednesday.
"You are," said Wednesday. They walked out of the house, down the wooden stairs and the icy path to where a black Lincoln Town Car was parked.
Shadow drove.
***
Entering the casino, one is beset100 at every side by invitation-invitations such that it would take a man of stone, heartless, mindless, and curiously devoid101 of avarice102, to decline them.
Listen: a machine-gun rattle103 of silver coins as they tumble and spurt104 down into a slot machine tray and overflow105 onto monogrammed carpets is replaced by the siren clangor of the slots, the jangling, blippeting chorus swallowed by the huge room, muted to a comforting background chatter26 by the time one reaches the card tables, the distant sounds only loud enough to keep the adrenaline flowing through the gamblers veins106.
There is a secret that the casinos possess, a secret they hold and guard and prize, the holiest of their mysteries. For most people do not gamble to win money, after all, although that is what is advertised, sold, claimed, and dreamed. But that is merely the easy lie that gets them through the enormous, ever-open, welcoming doors.
The secret is this: people gamble to lose money. They come to the casinos for the moment in which they feel alive, to ride the spinning wheel and turn with the cards and lose themselves, with the coins, in the slots. They may brag107 about the nights they won, the money they took from the casino, but they treasure, secretly treasure, the times they lost. It's a sacrifice, of sorts.
The money flows through the casino in an uninterrupted stream of green and silver, streaming from hand to hand, from gambler to croupier to cashier to the management to security, finally ending up in the Holy of Holies, the innermost sanctum, the Counting Room. And it is here, in the counting room of this casino, that you come to rest, here, where the greenbacks are sorted, stacked, indexed, here in a space that is slowly becoming redundant108 as more and more of the money that flows through the casino is imaginary: an electrical sequence of ons and offs, sequences that flow down telephone lines.
In the counting room you see three men, counting money under the glassy stare of the cameras they can see, the insectile gazes of the tiny cameras they cannot see. During the course of one shift each of the men counts more money than he will see in all the pay packets of his life. Each man, when he sleeps, dreams of counting money, of stacks and paper bands and numbers that climb inevitably109, that are sorted and lost. Each of the three men has idly wondered, not less than once a week, how to evade110 the casino's security systems and run off with as much money as he could haul; and, reluctantly, each man has inspected the dream and found it impractical111, has settled for a steady paycheck, avoided the twin specters of prison and an unmarked grave.
And here, in the sanctum sanctorum, there are the three men who count the money, and there are the guards who watch and who bring money and take it away; and then there is another person. His charcoal112-gray suit is immaculate, his hair is dark, he is clean-shaven, and his face and his demeanor113 are, in every sense, forgettable. None of the other men has even observed that he is there, or if they have noticed him, they have forgotten him on the instant.
As the shift ends the doors are opened, and the man in the charcoal suit leaves the room and walks, with the guards, through the corridors, their feet shushing along the monogrammed carpets. The money, in strongboxes, is wheeled to an interior loading bay, where it is loaded into armored cars. As the ramp74 door swings open, to allow the armored car out onto the early streets of Las Vegas, the man in the charcoal suit walks, unnoticed, through the doorway114, and saunters up the ramp, out onto the sidewalk. He does not even glance up to see the imitation of New York on his left.
Las Vegas has become a child's picture-book dream of a city-here a storybook castle, there a sphinx-flanked black pyramid beaming white light into the darkness as a landing beam for UFOs, and everywhere neon oracles115 and twisting screens predict happiness and good fortune, announce singers and comedians116 and magicians in residence or on their way, and the lights always flash and beckon117 and call. Once every hour a volcano erupts in light and flame. Once every hour a pirate ship sinks a man o' war.
The man in the charcoal suit ambles118 comfortably along the sidewalk, feeling the flow of the money through the town. In the summer the streets are baking, and each store doorway he passes breathes wintry A/C out into the sweaty warmth and chills the sweat on his face. Now, in the desert winter, there's a dry cold, which he appreciates. In his mind the movement of money forms a fine latticework, a three dimensional cat's cradle of light and motion. What he finds attractive about this desert city is the speed of movement, the way the money moves from place to place and hand to hand: it's a rush for him, a high, and it pulls him like an addict119 to the street.
A taxi follows him slowly down the street, keeping its distance. He does not notice it; it does not occur to him to notice it: he is so rarely noticed himself that he finds the concept that he could be being followed almost inconceivable.
It's four in the morning, and he finds himself drawn120 to a hotel and casino that has been out of style for thirty years, still running until tomorrow or six months from now when they'II implode121 it and knock it down and build a pleasure palace where it was, and forget it forever. Nobody knows him, nobody remembers him, but the lobby bar is tacky and quiet, and the air is blue with old cigarette smoke and someone's about to drop several million dollars on a poker122 game in a private room upstairs. The man in the charcoal suit settles himself in the bar several floors below the game, and is ignored by a waitress. A Muzak version of "Why Can't He Be You?" is playing, almost subliminally123. Five Elvis Presley impersonators, each man wearing a different-colored jumpsuit, watch a late night rerun of a football game on the bar TV.
A big man in a light gray suit sits at the man in the charcoal suit's table, and, noticing him even if she does not notice the man in the charcoal suit, the waitress, who is too thin to be pretty, too obviously anorectic to work Luxor or the Tropicana, and who is counting the minutes until she gets off work, comes straight over and smiles. He grins widely at her. "You're looking a treat tonight, m 'dear, a fine sight for these poor old eyes," he says, and, scenting124 a large tip, she smiles broadly at him. The man in the light gray suit orders a Jack11 Daniel's for himself and a Laphroaig and water for the man in the charcoal suit sitting beside him.
"You know," says the man in the light gray suit, when his drink arrives, "the finest line of poetry ever uttered in the history of this whole damn country was said by Canada Bill Jones in 1853, in Baton126 Rouge127, while he was being robbed blind in a crooked128 game of faro. George Devol, who was, like Canada Bill, not a man who was averse129 to fleecing the odd sucker, drew Bill aside and asked him if he couldn't see that the game was crooked. And Canada Bill sighed, and shrugged his shoulders, and said 'I know. But it's the only game in town.' And he went back to the game."
Dark eyes stare at the man in the light gray suit mistrustfully. The man in the charcoal suit says something in reply. The man in the light suit, who has a graying reddish beard, shakes his head.
"Look," he says, "I'm sorry about what went down in Wisconsin. But I got you all out safely, didn't I? No one was hurt."
The man in the dark suit sips130 his Laphroaig and water, savoring131 the marshy132 taste, the body-in-the-bog quality of the whiskey. He asks a question.
"I don't know. Everything's moving faster than I expected. Everyone's got a hard-on for the kid I hired to run errands-I've got him outside, waiting in the taxi. Are you still in?"
The man in the dark suit replies.
The bearded man shakes his head. "She's not been seen for two hundred years. If she isn't dead she's taken herself out of the picture."
Something else is said.
"Look," says the bearded man, knocking back his Jack Daniel's. "You come in, be there when we need you, and I'll take care of you. Whaddayou want? Soma? I can get you a bottle of Soma. The real stuff."
The man in the dark suit stares. Then he nods his head, reluctantly, and makes a comment.
"Of course I am," says the bearded man, smiling like a knife. "What do you expect? But look at it this way: it's the only game in town." He reaches out a paw like hand and shakes the other man's well-manicured hand. Then he walks away.
The thin waitress comes over, puzzled: there's now only one man at the corner table, a sharply dressed man with dark hair in a charcoal-gray suit. "You doing okay?" she asks. "Is your friend coming back?"
The man with the dark hair sighs, and explains that his friend won't be coming back, and thus she won't be paid for her time, or for her trouble. And then, seeing the hurt in her eyes, and taking pity on her, he examines the golden threads in his mind, watches the matrix, follows the money until he spots a node, and tells her that if she's outside Treasure Island at 6:00 A.M., thirty minutes after she gets off work, she'll meet an oncologist from Denver who will just have won forty-thousand dollars at a craps table, and will need a mentor133, a partner, someone to help him dispose of it all in the forty-eight hours before he gets on the plane home.
The words evaporate in the waitress's mind, but they leave her happy. She sighs and notes that the guys in the corner have done a runner, and have not even tipped her; and it occurs to her that, instead of driving straight home when she gets off shift, she's going to drive over to Treasure Island; but she would never, if you asked her, be able to tell you why.
***
"So who was that guy you were seeing?" asked Shadow as they walked back down the Las Vegas concourse. There were slot machines in the airport. Even at this time of the morning people stood in front of them, feeding them coins. Shadow wondered if there were those who never left the airport, who got off their planes, walked along the jetway into the airport building, and stopped there, trapped by the spinning images and the flashing lights until they had fed their last quarter to the machines, and then, with nothing left, just turned around and got onto the plane back home.
And then he realized that he had zoned134 out just as Wednesday had been telling him who the man in the dark suit they had followed in the taxi had been, and he had missed it.
"So he's in," said Wednesday. "It'll cost me a bottle of Soma, though."
"What's Soma?"
"It's a drink." They walked onto the charter plane, empty but for them and a trio of corporate135 big spenders who needed to be back in Chicago by the start of the next business day.
Wednesday got comfortable, ordered himself a Jack Daniel's. "My kind of people see your kind of people..." he hesitated. "It's like bees and honey. Each bee makes only a tiny, tiny drop of honey. It takes thousands of them, millions perhaps, all working together to make the pot of honey you have on your breakfast table. Now imagine that you could eat nothing but honey. That's what it's like for my kind of people...we feed on belief, on prayers, on love."
"And Soma is..."
"To take the analogy further, it's a honey wine. Like mead136." He chuckled. "It's a drink. Concentrated prayer and belief, distilled137 into a potent138 liqueur."
They were somewhere over Nebraska eating an unimpressive in-flight breakfast when Shadow said, "My wife."
"The dead one."
"Laura. She doesn't want to be dead. She told me. After she got me away from the guys on the train."
"The action of a fine wife. Freeing you from durance vile139 and murdering those who would have harmed you. You should treasure her, Nephew Ainsel."
"She wants to be really alive. Can we do that? Is that possible?"
Wednesday said nothing for long enough that Shadow started to wonder if he had heard the question, or if he had, possibly, fallen asleep with his eyes open. Then he said, staring ahead of him as he talked, "I know a charm that can cure pain and sickness, and lift the grief from the heart of the grieving.
"I know a charm that will heal with a touch.
"I know a charm that will turn aside the weapons of an enemy.
"I know another charm to free myself from all bonds and locks.
"A fifth charm: I can catch an arrow in flight and take no harm from it."
His words were quiet, urgent. Gone was the hectoring tone, gone was the grin. Wednesday spoke as if he were reciting the words of a religious ritual, or remembering something dark and painful.
"A sixth: spells sent to hurt me will hurt only the sender.
"A seventh charm I know: I can quench140 a fire simply by looking at it.
"An eighth: if any man hates me, I can win his friendship.
"A ninth: I can sing the wind to sleep and calm a storm for long enough to bring a ship to shore.
"Those were the first nine charms I learned. Nine nights I hung on the bare tree, my side pierced with a spear's point. I swayed and blew in the cold winds and the hot winds, without food, without water, a sacrifice of myself to myself, and the worlds opened to me.
"For a tenth charm, I learned to dispel141 witches, to spin them around in the skies so that they will never find their way back to their own doors again.
"An eleventh: if I sing it when a battle rages it can take warriors142 through the tumult143 unscathed and unhurt, and bring them safely back to their hearths144 and their homes.
"A twelfth charm I know: if I see a hanged man I can bring him down from the gallows145 to whisper to us all he remembers.
"A thirteenth: if I sprinkle water on a child's head, that child will not fall in battle.
"A fourteenth: I know the names of all the gods. Every damned one of them.
"A fifteenth: I have a dream of power, of glory, and of wisdom, and I can make people believe my dreams."
His voice was so low now that Shadow had to strain to hear it over the plane's engine noise.
"A sixteenth charm I know: if I need love I can turn the mind and heart of any woman.
"A seventeenth, that no woman I want will ever want another.
"And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be."
He sighed, and then stopped talking.
Shadow could feel his skin crawl. It was as if he had just seen a door open to another place, somewhere worlds away where hanged men blew in the wind at every crossroads, where witches shrieked146 overhead in the night.
"Laura," was all he said.
Wednesday turned his head, stared into Shadow's pale gray eyes with his own. "I can't make her live again," he said. "I don't even know why she isn't as dead as she ought to be."
"I think I did it," said Shadow. "It was my fault."
Wednesday raised an eyebrow147.
"Mad Sweeney gave me a golden coin, back when he showed me how to do that trick. From what he said, he gave me the wrong coin. What he gave me was something more powerful than what he thought he was giving me. I passed it on to Laura."
Wednesday grunted148, lowered his chin to his chest, frowned. Then he sat back. "That could do it," he said. "And no, I can't help you. What you do in your own time is your own affair, of course."
"What," asked Shadow, "is that supposed to mean?"
"It means that I can't stop you from hunting eagle stones and thunderbirds. But I would infinitely149 prefer that you spend your days quietly sequestered150 in Lakeside, out of sight, and, I hope, out of mind. When things get hairy we'll need all hands to the wheel."
He looked very old as he said this, and fragile, and his skin seemed almost transparent151, and the flesh beneath was gray.
Shadow wanted, wanted very much, to reach out and put his hand over Wednesday's gray hand. He wanted to tell him that everything would be okay-something that Shadow did not feel, but that he knew had to be said. There were men in black trains out there. There was a fat kid in a stretch limo and there were people in the television who did not mean them well.
He did not touch Wednesday. He did not say anything.
Later, he wondered if he could have changed things, if that gesture would have done any good, if it could have averted152 any of the harm that was to come. He told himself it wouldn't. He knew it wouldn't. But still, afterward153, he wished that, just for a moment on that slow flight home, he had touched Wednesday's hand.
***
The brief winter daylight was already fading when Wednesday dropped Shadow outside his apartment. The freezing temperature when Shadow opened the car door felt even more science fictional154 when compared to Las Vegas.
"Don't get into any trouble," said Wednesday. "Keep your head below the parapet. Make no waves."
"All at the same time?"
"Don't get smart with me, m'boy. You can keep out of sight in Lakeside. I pulled in a big favor to keep you here, safe and sound. If you were in a city they'd get your scent125 in minutes."
"I'll stay put and keep out of trouble." Shadow meant it as he said it. He'd had a lifetime of trouble and he was ready to let it go forever. "When are you coming back?" he asked.
"Soon," said Wednesday, and he gunned the Lincoln's engine, slid up the window, and drove off into the frigid155 night.
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filth
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| n.肮脏，污物，污秽；淫猥 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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owls
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| n.猫头鹰( owl的名词复数 ) | |
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yelps
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| n.（因痛苦、气愤、兴奋等的）短而尖的叫声( yelp的名词复数 )v.发出短而尖的叫声( yelp的第三人称单数 ) | |
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cuffed
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| v.掌打，拳打( cuff的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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wailed
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tart
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crunch
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| n.关键时刻；艰难局面；v.发出碎裂声 | |
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greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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nostrils
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rigidity
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| adj.钢性，坚硬 | |
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clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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wry
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decided
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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Celsius
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Fahrenheit
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| n./adj.华氏温度；华氏温度计(的) | |
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enviously
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Pluto
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marrow
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lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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haze
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chattering
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| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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chatter
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| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
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advisories
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| n.（有关进展、动向、建议等的）报告( advisory的名词复数 )；公告；通告；通报 | |
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28
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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30
wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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irises
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| n.虹( iris的名词复数 )；虹膜；虹彩；鸢尾（花） | |
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32
clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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33
bower
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| n.凉亭，树荫下凉快之处；闺房；v.荫蔽 | |
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fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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pastry
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| n.油酥面团，酥皮糕点 | |
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36
bustled
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| 闹哄哄地忙乱，奔忙( bustle的过去式和过去分词 )； 催促 | |
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37
pal
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| n.朋友，伙伴，同志；vi.结为友 | |
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38
chunk
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| n.厚片，大块，相当大的部分（数量） | |
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slurped
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| v.啜食( slurp的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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40
savory
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| adj.风味极佳的，可口的，味香的 | |
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41
lanky
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| adj.瘦长的 | |
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42
gut
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| n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏 | |
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harassed
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| adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词 | |
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44
foam
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| v./n.泡沫，起泡沫 | |
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45
larder
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| n.食物贮藏室，食品橱 | |
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46
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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47
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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48
chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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49
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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50
bumper
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| n.(汽车上的)保险杠；adj.特大的，丰盛的 | |
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51
juvenile
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| n.青少年，少年读物；adj.青少年的，幼稚的 | |
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52
delinquent
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| adj.犯法的，有过失的；n.违法者 | |
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53
ornaments
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| n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 )；点缀；装饰品；首饰v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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54
bustling
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| adj.喧闹的 | |
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55
checkout
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| n.（超市等）收银台，付款处 | |
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56
thermal
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| adj.热的，由热造成的；保暖的 | |
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57
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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58
arid
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| adj.干旱的；(土地)贫瘠的 | |
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interrogated
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| v.询问( interrogate的过去式和过去分词 )；审问；（在计算机或其他机器上）查询 | |
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60
algae
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| n.水藻，海藻 | |
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61
bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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62
unbearably
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| adv.不能忍受地，无法容忍地；慌 | |
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63
chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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64
leftover
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| n.剩货，残留物，剩饭；adj.残余的 | |
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65
brew
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| v.酿造，调制 | |
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66
unpacked
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| v.从（包裹等）中取出（所装的东西），打开行李取出( unpack的过去式和过去分词 )；拆包；解除…的负担；吐露（心事等） | |
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67
coupons
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| n.礼券( coupon的名词复数 )；优惠券；订货单；参赛表 | |
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serial
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| n.连本影片，连本电视节目；adj.连续的 | |
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69
killer
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| n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者 | |
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70
killers
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| 凶手( killer的名词复数 )； 消灭…者； 致命物； 极难的事 | |
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71
grumble
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| vi.抱怨；咕哝；n.抱怨，牢骚；咕哝，隆隆声 | |
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72
raffle
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| n.废物，垃圾，抽奖售卖；v.以抽彩出售 | |
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73
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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74
ramp
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| n.暴怒，斜坡，坡道；vi.作恐吓姿势，暴怒，加速；vt.加速 | |
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75
creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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76
trench
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| n./v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕 | |
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77
thaw
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| v.（使）融化，（使）变得友善；n.融化，缓和 | |
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78
nibbled
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| v.啃，一点一点地咬（吃）( nibble的过去式和过去分词 )；啃出（洞），一点一点咬出（洞）；慢慢减少；小口咬 | |
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79
pussy
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| n.(儿语)小猫，猫咪 | |
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80
trout
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| n.鳟鱼；鲑鱼(属) | |
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81
brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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82
runaway
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| n.逃走的人，逃亡，亡命者；adj.逃亡的，逃走的 | |
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83
woolen
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| adj.羊毛(制)的；毛纺的 | |
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84
forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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85
crumbling
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| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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86
insidious
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| adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧 | |
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87
peppermint
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| n.薄荷，薄荷油，薄荷糖 | |
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88
basking
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| v.晒太阳，取暖( bask的现在分词 )；对…感到乐趣；因他人的功绩而出名；仰仗…的余泽 | |
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89
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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90
hibernating
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| （某些动物）冬眠，蛰伏( hibernate的现在分词 ) | |
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91
panes
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| 窗玻璃( pane的名词复数 ) | |
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92
warily
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| adv.留心地 | |
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93
animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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94
stomping
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| v.跺脚，践踏，重踏( stomp的现在分词 ) | |
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95
cozy
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| adj.亲如手足的，密切的，暖和舒服的 | |
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96
babble
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| v.含糊不清地说，胡言乱语地说，儿语 | |
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97
paradigm
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| n.例子，模范，词形变化表 | |
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98
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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99
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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100
beset
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| v.镶嵌；困扰，包围 | |
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101
devoid
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| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
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102
avarice
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| n.贪婪；贪心 | |
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103
rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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104
spurt
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| v.喷出；突然进发；突然兴隆 | |
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105
overflow
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| v.(使)外溢，(使)溢出；溢出，流出，漫出 | |
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106
veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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107
brag
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| v./n.吹牛，自夸；adj.第一流的 | |
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108
redundant
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| adj.多余的，过剩的；(食物)丰富的；被解雇的 | |
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109
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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110
evade
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| vt.逃避，回避；避开，躲避 | |
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111
impractical
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| adj.不现实的，不实用的，不切实际的 | |
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112
charcoal
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| n.炭，木炭，生物炭 | |
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113
demeanor
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| n.行为；风度 | |
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114
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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115
oracles
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| 神示所( oracle的名词复数 )； 神谕； 圣贤； 哲人 | |
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116
comedians
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| n.喜剧演员，丑角( comedian的名词复数 ) | |
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117
beckon
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| v.(以点头或打手势)向...示意，召唤 | |
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118
ambles
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| v.（马）缓行( amble的第三人称单数 )；从容地走，漫步 | |
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119
addict
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| v.使沉溺；使上瘾；n.沉溺于不良嗜好的人 | |
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120
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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121
implode
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| v.内爆，剧减 | |
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122
poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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123
subliminally
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| adv.下意识地 | |
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124
scenting
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| vt.闻到（scent的现在分词形式） | |
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125
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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126
baton
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| n.乐队用指挥杖 | |
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127
rouge
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| n.胭脂，口红唇膏；v.(在…上)擦口红 | |
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128
crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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129
averse
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| adj.厌恶的；反对的，不乐意的 | |
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130
sips
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| n.小口喝，一小口的量( sip的名词复数 )v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的第三人称单数 ) | |
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131
savoring
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| v.意味，带有…的性质( savor的现在分词 )；给…加调味品；使有风味；品尝 | |
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132
marshy
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| adj.沼泽的 | |
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133
mentor
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| n.指导者，良师益友；v.指导 | |
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134
zoned
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| adj.划成区域的，束带的v.（飞机、汽车等）急速移动( zoom的现在分词 )；（价格、费用等）急升，猛涨 | |
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135
corporate
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| adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的 | |
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136
mead
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| n.蜂蜜酒 | |
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137
distilled
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| adj.由蒸馏得来的v.蒸馏( distil的过去式和过去分词 )；从…提取精华 | |
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138
potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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139
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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140
quench
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| vt.熄灭，扑灭；压制 | |
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141
dispel
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| vt.驱走，驱散，消除 | |
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142
warriors
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| 武士，勇士，战士( warrior的名词复数 ) | |
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143
tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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144
hearths
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| 壁炉前的地板，炉床，壁炉边( hearth的名词复数 ) | |
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145
gallows
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| n.绞刑架，绞台 | |
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146
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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147
eyebrow
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| n.眉毛，眉 | |
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148
grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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149
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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150
sequestered
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| adj.扣押的；隐退的；幽静的；偏僻的v.使隔绝，使隔离( sequester的过去式和过去分词 )；扣押 | |
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151
transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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152
averted
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| 防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移 | |
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153
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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154
fictional
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| adj.小说的，虚构的 | |
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155
frigid
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| adj.寒冷的，凛冽的；冷淡的；拘禁的 | |
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