A Fold in the Tent of the Sky by Michael Hale Page A

around the time the movie A Hard Day’s Night came out, Simon figured. John was posed looking right into the lens with his chin resting on the sleeve of what looked likea pretty spiffy Harris tweed jacket. The words JOHN LENNON were spelled out in gold type above his glossy, momma’s boy, Beatles cut.
    Simon picked the book up and put it in the pocket of his overcoat as best he could, then changed his mind and jammed it inside his coat instead, under the armpit. He moved away from the purse and the stuff on the road and slowly drifted through the gathering crowd toward Granville Street. The ambulance was blaring its way through the congealed traffic now; a cop was trying to open up a space for it.
    A library book on Betty’s card. Like, who in his right mind would actually go out and try and collect the nickel-a-day or whatever it was on an overdue book taken out by a dead person?
    Bonus.

8
    My Rod and my Staff shall comfort me . . .
    â€œI was concerned about the flight number—‘443.’ It’s my age with a four in front of it, the ‘4’ meaning, you know, heaviness, dullness. Which didn’t strike me as being too, what’s the word?—au spic ious a number for a safe flight. Sometimes you just got to hold your nose and jump, you know? Jump into the river of things. So here I am.”
    Some people have a gift for driving people away—a knack for making it obvious to the world they are meant to be alone. They go through life screaming for affection, a deafening roar of neediness pouring out of them.
    Gordon Quarendon was a dowser, a water diviner. Peter couldn’t remember what he called himself; out of all the crap that came out of his mouth, if that crucial bit of information was buried in there somewhere, he couldn’t for the life of him remember if he’d actually spelled it out—his wife left behind sick at home somewhere north of Seattle: endometriosis. His cat “Baker,” named after his first car, a car he found at a wrecker’s yard when he was fifteen, a Studebaker. The cat that showed up on his front porch the day he sold it. Everything had meaning to Gordon. Numerological, meteorological. The letters of the cat’s name adding up to “1,” which meant “independence”—perfect for a cat that came and went as it pleased.
    Gordon carried an old leather suitcase full of his divining rods, his “devices,” he called them. He had names for them too—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John—he’d “Christened” them. It was an old medieval tradition among dowsers to ward off evil spirits, he said. The only time his mouth stopped moving was when he had one of his devices in his hands: eyes scrunched up, his graying black hair pulled back in a ponytail, his Birkenstocks shuffling across the floor as if what he was looking for would bolt if it got wind of him (Anita had hidden one of her earrings under the carpet). The one he used for his little demonstration was a double strip of copper he held as if grabbing a bull by the horns, the joined end of it jerking and twitching its way to the target—water, oil, minerals, misplaced pipelines. He actually made a modest living at it, he said. He came up with numbers again—gross income, net income. Desperate for congratulations.
    â€œI worked on a child abduction case one time, out near Everett—that’s just north of Seattle. I was called in by thecounty sheriff’s office. A little girl had gone missing and I found her shoe in a pile of leaves out behind the factory where her mother worked. Two days later they had enough to charge a guy in shipping. He finally told them where her body was. I’m sort of glad all I came up with was the shoe.”
    Gordon, like most people, was a different person when he was drunk. One night Larry took him into town and someone on the staff had to go out and collect them from a bar outside Philipsburg. Larry had