Underground

He couldn't lay any lower. He couldn't go any deeper underground without being dead and buried. He didn't even remember everything he had done. Telling lies was so natural now he didn't even know he was doing it. He didn't talk to people very much anymore, but when he did he was always Cal, never Peter. The first month he'd felt self-conscious every time he introduced himself. He thought he was giving himself away with a look or a twitch. But no one thought twice. Not too many people moved from Chicago (where he said he was from) to Deer Tree, Idaho, but this Cal was a nice enough sort, they thought.

The Sixties had pushed him here, and he tunneled all the way from the University of Texas. It started out exciting. Pickets and protests and occupations. They all had bandanas over their faces and he thought he was a hero. He ate brown rice for dinner.

He had a college student's mental flexibility, so when Janice (was that even her name?) had suggested that they free the animals in the bio building, he thought that was a fine idea. It didn't hurt Janice's case that she wore tight sweaters, and had fine, long legs. Peter was in. And the next night, four of them went to Borden Hall, smashed their way in, and Peter put a bullet through a security guard's forehead.

He left that night, for Oklahoma first. Buddy from high school went there. And then it was one friend-of-a-friend's floor after another until the wind blew him to Deer Tree. At first he thought they'd be after him. He'd read the papers. Nothing in the Upper County Reader, so he'd drive into Coeur d'Alene to read the New York Times. He didn't exist. No one was looking for him. His face had been covered the whole time, and no one knew his name. Then paranoia settled over his mind like insecticide.