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Wayne Louis Hornfly still walked the Earth—or had ever existed—the
Twenty miles from Maple Grove, as he passed a wind farm of two-hundred-foot-tall towers, a great flock of birds winged with foolish confidence where their kind had flown for millennia. The massive whirling blades introduced the concept of mortality to their small brains, reducing 90 percent of them to a shower of feathers, blood, chopped flesh, and bone bits.
just bright enough to assure him there had been such a person and
except community standards in those days would not have included crawling testicles in his list of symptoms.
At any one time, fifty of those individuals had taken their aircraft to a far-away exotic location to attend a conference with the purpose of developing policies and influencing legislation that would prevent the common people from depleting the world’s precious resources.
Although these jet owners were engaged in far more demanding and important activities than most Earthlings,
budding film financier of her acquaintance, Holden von Smack,
There wasn’t a man on the planet who would have refused to grant a reasonable request from Rebecca Crane, and if you ever saw her, you’d know why. Even at two pounds five ounces above her ideal weight, she was a knockout.
[Bear with me for another paragraph.
They intended to defile priceless art at the Getty Museum; however, security at the Getty outfoxed them. Lacking the flammable liquid needed to set something important on fire, and with the spray paint unused, they came to the airport under the mistaken belief that a mist of carnelian red or peacock blue could destroy a jet engine.
Their certainty that someone had erased portions of their memory, the bad dreams they suffered, Spencer’s fugues, Rebecca’s own obsession with keeping surfaces clean, Bobby’s almost frantic need to travel, Ernie’s conviction that nature was frighteningly fragile and his interest in novels about brainwashing and amnesia—could all of it, every weird thread, lead to the Keppelwhite Institute?
“Back in the day,” Bobby recalled, “the people we knew who were in comas, they just woke up. Didn’t they just wake up? I sure don’t remember them dying, then waking up. I don’t like this seeming-to-be-dead phase. Especially when it’s Ernie.”
“People in comas? I don’t . . . I didn’t remember people in comas until you mentioned them. I don’t remember who they were, or where or why. But, by God, there were people in comas, weren’t there? More than a few of them.”
with that tangled agitation of words you intended to imply that I should be openly grieving, be assured I forgive your impertinence.” “Thank you,” said Spencer.
“You are referring to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s reaction to the death of his five-year-old son, which many think cruel and chilling.
even when he greatly embarrassed me by composing that deplorable shitkicker music that made him famous.”
“It’s the hat that Walter White started wearing partway through Breaking Bad, when he realized he was a bad dude and no one better mess with him.”
Gene Hackman wore when he played Popeye Doyle in The French Connection.”
“This hat,” said Spencer, “happens to be the style of hat that Sylvester Stallone wore in Rocky.
forgot about Rocky Balboa wearing a hat like that. Now that I think about it, a lot of real tough guys in the movies have worn a hat like yours. You go ahead and take the wheelchair.” Nonplussed, Spencer said, “What?”
Actually, there was little chance that the security guard would shoot Bobby the Sham. Although it is standard practice in these violent times for authors to kill major characters early in—as well as all the way through—a novel, merely for the shock value, this is not that kind of story, nor is the storyteller in this case cavalier about the value of human life.
or if the storyteller finds one or more characters annoying.
During a cross-country trip in July of 1989, I was driven to my knees by massive enlightenment while fueling my car in Flagstaff, Arizona, at an off-brand service station with the unlikely name of Terrible Herbst.
She knew that when he was an infant, the Pinchbecks had taken him into their home and fed him and clothed him, but hadn’t raised him. It had
some strange regenerative power.
The lid of the window seat made a distinctive sound as it was raised,
into the kitchen as a mysterious individual conveyed its burden toward an unknown lair with a purpose that was no doubt unholy.
Wind and solar power were killing entire species of birds; mining and processing of the rare-earth minerals needed to service those industries and to make billions of lithium batteries was creating more devastating pollution in one decade than occurred in the past half century of fossil fuels. Now that Adorno’s Pizzeria had become a ristorante, any change could be forced on the world; anything could happen. Anything.
“Thanks, amigo. Mom still lives in New Orleans. She calls herself Constanina de Fornay. She never writes.”
“He’ll be up for parole in six years. I never will understand how he went from founding a church to robbing armored cars. I guess he wasn’t who I thought he was. He had a secret self.”
“I never do. He refuses to add me to his approved-visitor list. Last time I saw him was thirteen years ago. I came back from Chicago to visit Ernie, decided to drop by the rectory, just to see if Dad was doing okay. He was in a meeting with twelve deacons. They were all wearing black robes, stag antlers, and goat masks.
Then Bobby said, “I keep thinking about the church, Saint Mark’s. All those bodies lined up in the basement. Maybe our minds are connecting puzzle pieces. Maybe the bodies in the basement are somehow tied to Hornfly.”
cattle barons who paid them to kill sheep ranchers, gunslingers in the hire of sheep ranchers who paid them to kill corn farmers, gunslingers in the hire of corn farmers who paid them to kill those who were foolish enough to grow beets.
However, Hawkshaw was honored by the Maple County Corn Growers Association, half of whose members had recently been gunned down but who refused to be defeated by a bunch of sheepherders.
carried this instrument with him in his travels, secured to his left ankle with a Velcro strap just in case he fell into the hands of bad people who locked him in a windowless room to be tortured and interrogated later. Growing up in Maple Grove, he’d become somewhat paranoid.
Okay, here’s the thing: Dialogue tags that identify speakers can be annoying in a long exchange of short statements between more than two characters, especially when it isn’t that important to know exactly who said what. Consequently, though it will present a knotty problem for the narrator of the audiobook, dialogue identifiers have been omitted from the following give-and-take.
In that ominous vault under the church, having conveyed a great deal of detail in quick, easy-to-read dialogue, thereby eliminating the need for clunky paragraphs of exposition,
In a deep, raw, wet voice, he declared, “If you don’t go back to Malibu soon, you will be ours forever.”
of his having written a few bestselling novels about dogs; he seemed to have a talent for creating a believable doggy point of view.
He didn’t have any intention of burglarizing anyone. He was not a thief. A boy can be fascinated with nuclear physics without wanting to blow up civilization, although if you know a boy like that, it is advisable to keep an eye on him.
then he would not have remained there on the back porch. The story would end here, and many of you would be dissatisfied and possibly angry.
The most interesting thing in the room was the man who occupied the armchair, with his feet on the footstool. The first thing one noticed about this individual was his size.
that the man was about six and a half feet tall and weighed two hundred fifty pounds.
Filthy? The big man’s black hair was greasy and tangled. Sooty smudges mottled his face. Green teeth, dark stains in the crevices between them. Knuckles and fingernails encrusted with grime. His clothes had been worn so long between washings that the fabrics were limp, exhausted. But no. Mere filth wasn’t what made him such a frightening presence. Eyes? They were green with orange striations, or perhaps orange with green striations.
giant proved to have the well-trained, sprightly voice of a game-show host. “Hello there, young man, Robert Shamrock, Bobby, Bobby the Sham to your friends.”
“Hornfly. Wayne Louis Hornfly.”
This seemed to suggest that she and Bobby were psychically linked, which they were, although the explanation is more complex and will be revealed later.
Rebecca could not have known that this linkage also had the convenient effect of breaking one chapter into two, each of a length more tolerable to modern readers than otherwise would have been the case.
“Hornfly. Wayne Louis Hornfly,” said the filthy giant in the armchair. “That is our name for this manifestation of us.”
Then will come the Day of Fun when we will exterminate every last one of your kind.”
