The mansion across the street had stood empty since the All-Star break, and now it was nearly time for the World Series. So we were relieved when a moving truck finally pulled into our dead-end street, a mile north of downtown Columbus, Ohio. Our dog, Pudge, noticed it first—not the truck, but the dog sitting erect and regal between the two dark men in the front seat. Broad-shouldered and shaggy as a wolf, the dog was taller when seated than the passenger on his right, and just a little shorter than the driver, who was so lanky that he had to duck his head to peer under the sun flap.

Pudge thrust his boxy head through the porch balusters and barked at the wolf-dog as he would at any intruder. After the mansion was taken from the previous neighbors—either repossessed by the bank, or seized as part of a meth bust, depending on who you asked—Pudge’s territory had grown to include not just the brick mansion and pillared front porch, but also the yard with its bare patches under pine trees, its sagging white fence, its cracked sidewalk next to the weed-choked grass along the curb, and even a length of the street where the moving truck had now pulled up and stopped.

The cab door opened, and the driver dropped soundlessly to the street. Standing upright, he was as long-limbed as a catalog model, and he was dressed in the fall collection: khaki slacks and a beige corduroy jacket over a matching turtleneck sweater. The fall colors continued into his face and hands, whose skin was tawny as an oak leaf.

“Don’t.” Annika waved the waiter away from the empty place setting on the other side of the table, her voice husky from too many cigarettes, too many drinks, too many lies swallowed year after year until she could no longer breathe. Explanations would be lost on the attending stranger, so she offered up her glass instead.

“Dirty martini.”

He’d spit in it, retribution for the hours she’d taken up his table nursing her cocktails and despair, for the rings of dark lipstick she’d left on the rim of her glass.

He was burned out behind the bar, tired of listening to other people’s troubles. He had plenty of his own, but he knew his role as bartender: he was supposed to listen, to hand out sympathy, and otherwise keep his trap shut.

But every night late, after the last drunk had shuffled out the door of Tavern Tavern, Gregory turned the plastic Open sign in the window to Closed, pulled down the shade, and turned the key in the lock. He lumbered up the wooden stairs to the little attic apartment over the bar that his employer gave him as part wages, and remoted the TV onto his favorite channels: food, nature, or adventure…whichever one was on that night.

Then is when he dreamed his dreams. Made himself a honey-nut sandwich on 9-grain and washed it down with a Stella Artois—only his third of the evening, that was his limit when he was alone.

Gregory’s secret dream, which he would never confess to anyone in the world, was to become a greengrocer. A produce guy.

It was the last thing anyone would guess about him. He was large and clumsy, one shirt button was always undone, his hair wouldn’t comb, and he sometimes got a look from the Health Department inspector like he, Gregory, might be cause enough for a B rating, even though he kept Tavern Tavern spic and span.

Sprays of soil erupted from the road below us as Silas and I dove into the ditch to escape the Federals’ bullets. Others of our unit jumped in the ditch behind us, but the buzz of the bullet flying directly over my head ended in a wet thok! as the man behind me fell to the road.

Silas and I lay flat on our bellies, below the line of sight of the enemy. Blasts of gun fire and the whirring of bullets continued. The ditch was deeper on this side of the road, and was why so many of our men were dashing across. One man tripped and fell into the ditch on top of me, and then wedged himself between me and the man to my right. I scooted closer to Silas on my left. He was my mentor and my comfort. He’d been in these situations before. I had not.

“Damn it! Hold off!” Silas yelled behind us. “We can’t fit no more over here!”

That didn’t stop more men from trying. I heard running on the road and looked in time to see the back of a man’s neck spray red behind him.

The love letter in our mailbox Saturday was addressed to me. I had nothing to hide. Delores, who was looking over my shoulder, saw the “Darling Kevin” salutation, and freaked out.

“Is there something you want to tell me, Kevin?” My wife of 12 years put on her pit bull look, the one she wears when I forget to put out the garbage or miss the kid’s school bus.

“Delores, I have never met this…this Sharlayne in my life. It’s just another one of those mash notes that come every now and then. I mean, how could I even meet this babe? I go to editorial meetings, see my publisher. I come home. No business trips. And the letter’s postmarked San Francisco.”

“Then how do you know she’s a babe? Maybe she’s an editorial assistant. She certainly knows where the famous Kevin Alter lives.”

Delores was right on one count. I’m Kevin Alter, mystery author and runner up for an Edgar Award two years ago. But now there’s this bozo somewhere stealing my fame and identity, passing himself off as me.

The Annual Scarecrow Festival
was cancelled this year—
in the fields as you enter the village,
in the strawberries,
there is one left over,
like a sign warning last chance for a hundred miles.

Unofficially, they made them anyway,
fleshing cast-offs with fistfuls of straw, stalks
poxing the backs of hands, wrists.
Either gouging out their eyes with peeler, scissor,
or scoring their face on sack-cloth, pillow-case.
Back-boned them on garden rakes, or on rough wood
that fused broom, spade;
belted their waists round avenue trees.

My name is Harold Hart Crane. I am alone in my hotel room. It is Christmas Eve, in the Year of Our Lord 1941. I will not lose my mind.

The Herr Doktor told me to repeat things like this, when the “peak” of the drug happens, whenever that is. Time has turned to rubber, and the clocks have melted down.

My name is Harold Hart Crane. I will not lose my mind.

A thousand years ago, I got that package this afternoon from that quaint little bearded Kraut Dr. Rinkel at Boston Psychopathic Hospital. The stuff’s an alkaloid that acts on several chemicals already in the brain. He orders it in microgrammes, do you believe that, at the most exorbitant rates from Sandoz Labs, in Chur, Switzerland.

Or did, a thousand years ago. Before the clock melted on the wall, and the trip to the store did not end. This room is tired. The velvet wallpaper spirals up into patterns of patterns toward the ceiling, beanstalks I have no heart to climb.

“Mrs. Hanover—” The bungalow door slammed hard on Steve Flanagan’s foot, but he didn’t budge; the second he withdrew his foot, he’d lose his last chance to find his brother. “Frank Cable only gave me your name because—”

“Frank’s real good at giving names.” The grey-haired woman’s bony fingers tightened on the hem of her bath robe. “That’s how he got off the blacklist, giving the FBI my husband’s name. That’s how we lost everything.”

“This isn’t like that. Tommy Gould’s my brother!”

“Even if he is, what the hell would that prove?” The door opened, then closed even harder against his foot, forcing a gasp from Steve’s lips. “My own brother hasn’t spoken to me since I was blacklisted, said it was what I deserved for turning my back on AMERICA.”

“But that’s over. There’s no blacklist any—”

“Tell that to my brother! And there’s still a federal warrant out for Tommy, right? He was a good kid; if I did know where to find him, I’d never tell you.”