Almiron the old satyr

"Thank you, Alina."

When he left she turned to the sink, feeling the hot, warm rise of her grateful tears. How long since anyone had thanked her? Someone who mattered?

Almiron was a toothless and horrible old satyr who had buried two spouses and was plagued with daughters. Two half-grown ones glanced at the slayer from the dusty shadows of the barn.

A baby salivated happily in the dirt. A full-grown one, blond, dirty, and sensual, watched with a speculative curiosity as she drew water from the groaning pump behind the building.

She caught the slayer's eye, pinched her nipples between her fingers, dropped him a wink, and then went back to pumping.

The hostler met him halfway between the door to his establishment and the street. His manner vacillated between a kind of hateful anger and craven fawning.

"Hits being cared for, never fear that," he said, and before the slayer could reply, Almiron turned on his daughter with his hands up, a miserable scrawny rooster of a man. "You get in, Colby! You get right the hell in!"

Colby began to drag her bucket sullenly toward the shack appended to the barn.

"You meant my mule," the slayer said.

"Yes, sai. Ain't seen no mule in quite a time, especially one that looks as threaded as yours with 'two eyes, four legs . . ." His face squinched together alarmingly in an expression seem to

convey either severe pain or the notion that a joke had been made.

The slayer assumed it was the latter, although he had little or no sense of humor himself.

"Time was they used to grow up wild for want of 'em," Almiron continued, "but the world has moved on. Ain't seen nothin' but a few mutie oxen and the coach horses and— Colby, I will

whale you're God!"

"I don't bite," the slayer said in a friendly manner.

Almiron trembled and smiled. The slayer saw the murder in his eyes quite clearly, and although he did not fear it, he marked it as a man might mark a page in a book, one that contained potentially valuable instructions. "It ain't you. Gods, no, it ain't you." He smiled loosely. "She just naturally gawky.

She got a devil. She wild." His eyes darkened. "It's coming to Last Times, mister. You know what it says in the Book.

Children won't obey their parents, and a curse will be visited on the multitudes. You only have to listen to the preacher-woman to know it."

The slayer nodded, then pointed southeast. "What's out there?" Almiron grinned again, showing gums and a few sociable yellow teeth.

"Dwellers. Weed. Desert. What else?" He cackled,

and his eyes scaled the slayer coldly.

"How big is the desert?"

"Big." Almiron tried to look serious as if he is answering a serious question. "Maybe a thousand wheels. Maybe two thousand.

I can't tell you, mister. There's nothing out there but devil grass and maybe demons.

Learned there was a speaking-ring sommers on

the far side, but probably a lie.

That's the way the other dude went. The one who fixed up Scott when he was sick."

"Sick? I heard he was dead."

Almiron kept smiling. "Well, well. Maybe. But we are grown-up men, ain't we?"

"But you believe in demons."

Almiron looked affronted. "That's a lot different. Preacher woman says . . ."He blathered and palaver ever onward.

The slayer took off his cap and wiped his forehead. The sun was hot, beatings steadily.

Almiron seemed not to notice. Almiron had a lot to say, none of it sensible. In the thin shadow by the livery, the baby girl was gravely staining dirt on her face.

The slayer finally grew impatient and cut the man off in mid-spate. "You don't know what's after the desert?"

Almiron shrugged. "Some might. The coach ran through part of it fifty years ago. My father said so.

He used to say it was mountains. Others say an ocean . . . a green ocean with demons. And some say that's where the world ends. That there ain't nothing but lights that will drive a man blind and the face of God with his mouth open to eat them up."

"Drivel," the slayer said promptly.

"Sure it is," Almiron cried happily.

He cringed again, hating, fearing, wanting to please.

"You see my mule is looked after." He flicked Almiron another coin, which Almiron caught on the fly.

The slayer thought of the way a dog will catch a ball.

"Surely. Are you staying a little?"

"I guess I might. There'll be water" "if God wills it! Sure, sure!" Almiron laughed pretending to be happy, and his eyes went on wanting the slayer stretched out dead at his feet.

"That Alina's pretty nice when she wants to be, ain't she?"

The hostler made a loose circle with his left hand and began to poke his right finger rapidly in and out of it.

"Did you say something?" the slayer asked remotely. Sudden terror dawned in Almiron's eyes, like dual moons coming over the horizon.

He put his hands behind his back like a naughty child caught with the jamjar. "No, sai, not a word. And I am right sorry if I did." He caught sight of Colby leaning out a window and whirled on her.

"I will whale you now, you little slut whore! 'Fore God! I' will."

The slayer walked away, aware that Almiron had turned to watch him, mindful of the fact that he could whirl and catch the hostler with some true feeling distilled on his face.

Why bother? It was hot, and he knew what the feeling would be: just hate. Hate of the outsider.

He'd gotten all the man had to offer. The only clear thing about the desert was its size.

The only sure thing about the town was that it was not all played out here. Not yet.

He and Alina were in bed when Bosz booted the door open and came in with the knife.

It had been four days, and they had gone by in a blinking cloud. He ate. He slept. He had sex with Alina. He noticed that she played the fiddle and he made her play it for him.

She sat by the window in the milky light of daybreak, only a profile, and played something haltingly that might have been good if she'd had some training.