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the truck. By the time it was accomplished, the tractor had already positioned itself to the rear, its massive blade raised slightly and ready to push. In a stiff-legged hobble, the three men moved as quickly as possible to one side, near the edge of the slope, so they could watch the truck go over.
    Someone should at least say some words, Chuck thought, looking first down the hill that slid into the lake, then back up at sunlight glinting off the truck's windshield. After all, there was a man in that truck, and this was his burial. He had a mental flash of Alvin slumped across the seat, the cab around him splattered with things he didn't want to think about, and the bitter taste of nausea crawled up his throat. He stiffened immediately. Even worse than the memory of what had been left of Alvin was the prospect of throwing up in a contained suit.
    Bless him, Father, for he has sinned,he thought, paraphrasing the beginning of every confession, but by then the tractor's blade had cupped the truck's rear bumper and the big engine was growling.
    There had been some concern about the truck tipping as it rolled down the slope toward the lake, but the distance was short, the angle of descent was steady and relatively shallow, and the truck went in almost gracefully, like some gallant old ship consigned to a watery grave. Momentum pushed it through a bank of cattails to a sharp dropoff, and then its great weight pulled it promptly down to a muddy bottom.
    Thirty feet deep, their diver had said-cold, spring-fed, and apparently stocked with walleye. Chuck smiled a little at that, remembering that Alvin had been a fisherman. He thought of the water filling the cab, buoying the dead man up to gaze sightlessly out the windshield at all those fish.
    He stood at the edge of the hill for what seemed like a long time, staring down at where the dark water had closed over the shiny steel tank, and then he heard the impatient revving of the tractor behind him.
    Turning, he saw the massive blade almost hidden behind a messy pile of black and white and red. As the tractor inched forward, its treads biting into the soft manure-rich soil in the paddock, the pile shifted and started to tumble sickeningly.
    Shit, Chuck thought. Now came the hard part. Dead cows wouldn't roll down that hill to the lake with the same ease and dignity as the truck.
    He shuddered and turned away, imagining a logjam of Holsteins at the bottom of the hill, bobbing around in the shallow water at the lake's edge. There was going to be some handwork involved here, and he wasn't looking forward to it.
     
     
     
    THREE AND A HALF hours into the trip to Green Bay, Grace heard a telltale click and glanced right, where Sharon was slouched in the passenger seat, her hands at war with her shoulder harness. This was the universal background music of women traveling by car, Grace mused-the click and rattle of seat belts being constantly adjusted to pass between the breasts instead of smashing one of them flat.
    "Damn seat belts," Sharon muttered. "If one of these things ever dared press against a man's balls, you can bet your life the designer would end up hanging by his."
    Annie chuckled from the backseat, unbuckling her own seat belt quietly-very quietly, so Grace wouldn't hear.
    "Honey, you think you've got it bad? You should be toting my cargo. I swear I added a bra size at that diner, and I still haven't figured out what the hell I ate. Everything was white. Hey, Gracie, just how lost are we? I haven't seen a house or a car in about a million miles."
    Grace had never understood the concept of being lost. It was one of those things you had to learn in childhood, a sense of time and place that only had meaning if you belonged somewhere, if you were expected. No one had ever expected Grace to be anywhere, and therefore she had never been late, never been missing, never been lost.
    Once when she was very young, she'd ended up in a night-darkened alley in some city or other-cities