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it, we’ll find the head come sunup. Not likely a wolverine’s drug it off—hasn’t been a wolverine in the Wolverine State in two hundred years.” He gives another semi-laugh, a sound that could become seriously annoying if Nate hadn’t caught on early that it was intended to distract, to keep despair at bay a little longer.
    “If I’d knowed I woulda brung the dog to sniff out the head,” Bill goes on. “I don’t think you said the extent of her injuries . . . or that you hadn’t found the head when you said she was dead . . . back at the house there.”
    Nate listens for anything beyond mild admonishment, anything resembling an accusation or a threat, and it’s not there. Nor is there anything in Bill’s expression to set off any alarms when he produces professional-grade foam earplugs from a pocket and hands two sets to Nate.
    “Here, put these in your ears and a pair in the mister’s ears. “I’m startin’ on the tree now and there’ll be a lotta noise at close range. My saw’s prob’ly a little louder than that musical racket you folks are used to.” Bill plugs his own ears and displays the snaggletoothed grin again.
    Nate quick inserts a set of earplugs rather than endure the laugh he knows is coming, then does his best not to look at the pink foam in the corner of Colin’s mouth when he plugs Colin’s ears as well.
    Once the tree sections are cut away, they’re able to open the door on the driver’s side without using the acetylene torch.
    “I don’t mind sayin’ that woulda worried me,” Bill says after they’ve removed their respective earplugs. “Usin’ the torch, I mean. I wasn’t lookin’ forward to usin’ the chainsaw either.”
    The old guy’s in the lengthy process of explaining why those tools held inherent dangers in a field of spilled gasoline when siren sounds interrupt his talk. He lifts his head, cocks an ear in a northerly direction: “Them’ll be the emergency team from the hospital in Portage St. Mary,” he declares, “and just in time, I reckon.”

1987

FIVE
    Afternoon, March 25, 1987
    At his usual spot near the far end of the bar, Hoop Jakeway orders a shot and a beer with plans to nurse both for a half hour or so. He’s not about to get all worked up about what’s coming; on the other hand, he can’t skip over admitting this place has been his home-away-from-home for longer than he cares to count. Before the liquor commission stiffened up on the rules, he came here as a little kid, and with real family, not the standins that surround him now.
    Charcoal Pete cadges draft beers at his regular place at the bar, up front by the big window so he can see street activity if there is any. The used-up, rail-thin old Indian wears stiff new overalls of a size that fits him like a stovepipe fits a broom handle; to stand next to him and look down his pants on either side is to look at dirty floor. At one of the tables next to the window, Big Bill, the woodsman, plays a solemn game of cribbage with his former lumberjack partner, Einar, the Swedish import with the black hole behind his ear where an infected mastoid was once tapped.
    Bill’s hefty sister, Dottie Belle, over from Newberry for a visit, hangs off a barstool on all sides while she tries to convince the bartender to bring down the special jar from on high. Whenever strangers visit Kings Tavern and she happens to be around, it’s become tradition for her to tell the story of the two pulp cutters who blew themselves to kingdom come after drinking up their paychecks one bad Friday.
    The outsiders she works on today don’t look very convinced as she explains how the two drunks thought to place their empty wallets in the crotch of a distant tree before they sat down on a case of explosives and set it off. And then, right on cue, Clive, the bartender, produces the dusty Mason jar holding preserved man parts found in the selfsame tree after the dust and other body parts had settled.
    One of the female strangers