The blond boy nodded.

“Jim-you are Jim, right?”

The blond boy nodded, wiping self-consciously at his red eyes.

“Is your mom home? Or your dad?”

“Mom,” he said. “Dad’s still at work.”

“Okay, boys. Go on. Hurry up. You too, Brad.”

“I’ll do the best I can,” Brad said, “but I think I have pretty well fulfilled my hurrying quota for the day.”

The three of them started up the hill, along the west side of the street, where the odd-numbered houses were.

“I’d like to take our kids home, too, Mr Entragian,” Kirsten Carver said.

He sighed, nodded. Sure, what the hell, take them anywhere. Take them to Alaska. He wanted a cigarette, but they were back in the house. He had managed to quit for almost ten years before the bastards downtown had first shown him the door and then run him through it. He had picked up the habit again with a speed that was spooky. And now he wanted to smoke because he was nervous. Not just cranked up because of the dead kid on his lawn, which would have been understandable, but nervous. Nervous like-a de vitch, his mother would have said. And why?

Because there are too many people on this street, he told himself, that’s why.

Oh, really? And what exactly does that mean?

He didn’t know.

What’s wrong with you? Too long out of work? Getting squirrely? Is that what’s buggin you, booby?

No. The silver thing on the roof of the van. That’s what’s buggin me, booby.

Oh? Really?

Well, maybe not really… but it would do for a start. Or an excuse. In the end a hunch was a hunch, and either you believed in your hunches and played them or you didn’t. He himself had always believed, and apparently a minor matter like getting fired hadn’t changed the power they held over him.

David Carver set his daughter down on her feet and took his blatting son from his wife. Til pull you in the wagon,” he told the boy. “All the way up to the house. How’s that?”