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“How can you stand it? I thought when you left for Lillian’s funeral, you might not come back.”

“We fight, but that’s the way it is. We’ve been together a long time, Darcy.”

“That’s what women say whose husbands beat them up.”

Mistake!

Megan’s eyes narrow, defending her man.

“Julius has never laid a hand on me. Or any woman.”

Stuttering, I say, “I didn’t mean to say Allfather was like that.”

“It has gotten worse.” She considers me with an insinuating stare. “Actually, a lot worse since you arrived.”

Sticking an agent under his nose, as we might have learned from the Steve Crawford tragedy, only succeeds in aggravating the paranoia of a person like Dick Stone. His behavior has become irrational, and Megan is close to stating the truth: Once again, the FBI is responsible for letting the genie out of the bottle.

“I used to be able to talk him down. But what he did to Slammer…” Her voice breaks. “He was gone. He couldn’t hear me. I couldn’t physically stop him.”

We hear Stone stomping around upstairs.

“Where is he going?”

“To see his friend Toby,” she replies fretfully. “All of a sudden he’s got to see Toby, the most important thing in the world. The single day I have to go to Portland, and it’s a long drive in the opposite direction.”

“Why don’t I go along and keep an eye on him, Megan?”

Her eyes rise to the old beamed ceiling and her lips pinch.

“I wish I could get him to stay on his meds, but he refuses. Stubborn man.”

She looks at her watch.

“What time do you have to be in Portland?” I ask helpfully.

Megan hesitates. It is clear she’ll never make it to the market to sell her hazelnut brittle unless somebody volunteers to babysit Stone.

“Go with him,” she says, “but if he’s still like this, promise me you will not let him drive.”

Clouds of fog lie in the valleys, and the hills are saturated black. It stays that way, everlasting twilight. Nothing moves beside the houses and fences that blur the edge of our vision except the suddenly peaceful bandit, who seems to be flying past at eighty miles an hour, as if without benefit of a vehicle, like one of those maharishis known to levitate cross-legged over the mountains of India.

No way was he going to let me drive. He is the center. He is on the flight deck. He checks the green dials pulsing at the changes in the atmosphere—changes I imagine that he needs to know. Green dial faces are loyal. Amber ones are false. The amber ones do not worry him because he knows the truck is secure. As we crossed the misty yard, he called to me to make sure the engine hoses were clamped tight and there were no explosives hidden under the seat.

Now he is just steering the truck, maybe wondering what in hell made him so touchy when, in fact, he has everything! They tried disinformation, but he knew the game. They sent a provocateur, whom he skillfully disabled. His euphoria is rising. He feels like Jesus Christ—in a good way.

“Careful,” I say for the second or third time. “Who is this guy Toby Himes? I saw him at the festival.”

“Old pal of mine. He’s selling a boat. Check it out.” He pats his stomach. “Lost four more pounds.”

“Good for you.”

Then Dick Stone decides to drive for a while in the opposite lane.

“Let’s get there alive, if you don’t mind.”

He laughs until he can’t stop laughing, swerving back across the road.

No soldier at a reckless gallop, no jet pilot screaming upside down, no Navy Seal in dead of night, mad junkie, murdering, thrill-seeking sadistic monster; no hero under fire or Purple Heart, adrenaline-locked-eighteen-year-old-joyful-virgin-fucker; no one-eyed god, no God-drunk raven razoring the most primitive chartreuse skies of perpetual black rain was ever as purely out-of-body high as Dick Stone is now.

And he is like this recently, a lot.

The two-lane blacktop rounds a curve and we are afforded an inspirational view of mountains meeting mountains, whispering to the horizon beyond the wide green water of the Columbia River. There are a preposterous number of waterfalls in the mountains along