Thus, a serendipitous stop for gas and a job had led to a personal and professional progression he'd tried since to forget. Marching less to his own drummer and more as if on autopilot, Willy went through the standard evolutionary motions, watching himself like a spectator at a private parade. He met a local girl more confused than he, married her without much thought from either one of them, got transferred to the detective bureau in reward for his good work, and began hitting the bottle as never before.

Over a long, slow, agonizing period of years, he became like a gambler, his stake eroding to nothing, fully aware that his chances of winning were nil, but unwilling to change strategies and unable to leave the table. The alcohol abuse and disillusion led to self-loathing and anger, to wife abuse and a preordained divorce. He was crippled by a bullet in the line of duty, transferred off the police force, and came within half a step of joining the people he'd once been paid to arrest.

Then, in defiance of the gravitational pull he should have followed straight to the bottom, and with much the same disappointed bewilderment experienced by a drowner miraculously pulled back from a death finally become soothingly seductive, he was put back on the police payroll, told to fill in the proper paperwork, and accepted as a member of a newly created, statewide investigative agency called the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, with five regional offices, including one in Brattleboro.

Thus encouraged-almost cajoled-he'd gone from the edge of oblivion to getting on the wagon by his own sheer willpower, finding himself romantically involved with a female co-worker, and being regarded as one of the elite in his profession.

A roller-coaster ride of mixed and paradoxical emotions, and a happy, bittersweet end result entirely due- as he saw it in a typically angry dismissal of his own personal efforts-to a man named Joe Gunther.