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By Root 484 0

fence. Then Johnny had one of his wrists and Dave Reed had the other and Brad scrabbled to the top of the fence, leaving generous amounts of skin behind. He tried to get his left leg over the top and thumped the ankle on one of the blunt stakes instead. Then he was falling, tearing his shirt all the way down one side in his useless struggle to hold on to the top of the fence with his right hand. He let go in time to keep from breaking his arm, but when he landed (partly on top of Johnny, mostly on top of his admirably padded wife), he could feel blood trickling down from his armpit.

'Want to think about getting off me, handsome?' the admirably padded lady herself asked, sounding breathless. 'I mean, if it wouldn't discommode you any?'

Brad crawled off them both, collapsed in a heap, then rolled over on his back. He looked up at alien stars, swollen things that blinked on and off like the Christmas lights they strung over small-town Main Streets every year on the day after Thanksgiving. What he was looking at were no more real stars than he was the King of Prussia . . . but they were up there, just the same. Yes they were, right over his head, and how bad was your situation when the sky itself was part of the damned conspiracy?

Brad closed his eyes so he wouldn't look at them anymore. In his mind's eye — the one that opened widest when the other two closed — he saw Gary Ripton tossing him his Shopper. Saw his own hand, the one not holding the hose, go up and catch it. Good one, Mr Josephson! Gary called, honestly admiring. It came from far away, that voice, like something echoing down a canyon. Closer by, he heard howls from the greenbelt side of the fence (except now it was the desertbelt). These were followed by a series of hard thuds as the boar-coyotes threw themselves at it.

Christ.

'Brad,' Johnny said. Low voice, leaning over him, from the sound.

'What.'

'You all right?'

'Fine as paint.' Still not opening his eyes.

'Brad.'

'What!'

'I had an idea. For a movie.'

'You're a maniac, John.' Eyes still shut. Things were better that way. 'But I'll bite. What's it going to be called, this movie I can be in?'

'Black Men Can't Climb Fences,' Johnny said, and began laughing wildly. It had an exhausted, half-crazy sound to it. I'm gonna get Mario Fucking Van Peebles to direct. Larry Fishburne's gonna play you.'

'Sure,' Brad said, sitting up painfully. 'I love Larry Fishburne. Very intense. Offer him a million up front. Who could resist?'

'Right, right,' Johnny agreed, now laughing so hard he could barely talk . . . only tears were streaming down his face, and Brad didn't think they were tears of laughter. Not ten minutes ago, Cammie Reed had come within a hair of blowing his head off, and Brad doubted if Johnny had forgotten that. Brad doubted if Johnny forgot much of anything, in fact. It was probably a talent he would have traded, if given the opportunity.

Brad got on his feet, took Bee's hand, and helped her up. There were more thuds at the fence, more howls, then gnawing sounds, as if the hungry abortions over there were trying to eat their way through the stakes.

'So what do you think?' Johnny asked, letting Brad help him up as well. He staggered, found his balance, wiped his streaming eyes.

'I think that when the chips were down, I climbed just fine,' Brad said. He slipped an arm around his wife, then looked at Johnny. 'Come on, honky. You climbed to success over your first black man, you must be all tuckered out. Let's get in the house.'

2

The thing which hopped unsteadily through the gate at the rear of Tom Billingsley's backyard was a child's version of the gila monster Jeb Murdock blows off a rock during his shooting contest with Candy about halfway through The Regulators. Its head, however, was that of an escapee from Jurassic Park.

It hopped up the back steps, slithered to the screen, and pushed at it with its snout. Nothing happened; the screen opened outward. The gila stretched its saurian head forward and began chomping at the bottom panel of the door with its teeth. Three bites was all