American rust (34 page)

3. Harris

H
e left Grace's house and made his way directly to the police station, thinking maybe this is what she wanted from you the whole time. Only if this went bad it would be both him and Billy Poe hanging around in that prison. He wondered if it was better for everyone to just let Billy stand trial—Murray Clark was a drunk, he was not going to come off well in front of a jury. Not to mention if anything happens to old Murray the DA will tear up the earth trying to figure it out.

Murray Clark had given two addresses in Brownsville—Harris had glanced at the papers in the Uniontown police station, then gone into the bathroom to write them down. At the time he didn't know why he'd done it, collecting information, the old instinct. I'm bored, he thought. His head felt numb, he tried to focus on his driving. He was justifying.

This will be the worst thing you have ever done, he thought. I am just going to talk to him, he repeated to himself. Back in ancient history, his marine days, there was the man he'd shot in Da Nang. If this was a sin, so was that. At least this would mean something. He had a feeling he had generally done right but there was a way in which that was not true at all. He had lied to put people in prison, he had lied many times in court. Never about what the person had done, he had never said the person had committed a crime they had not actually committed. He had lied only to justify his instincts, why he'd stopped a certain car, why he'd searched the car or decided to frisk someone. He'd lied to explain things he knew, but could not explain why he knew.

As for the man in Da Nang, there had been no point. Another rocket barrage and not quite sunup and Harris was eating Dexedrine, bored and high. He was a year out of high school, it was insane they'd even brought him over there. He was posted in one of the outer bunkers near the helipad. The man was carrying a package, possibly a satchel charge—Harris never found out, he watched him walk a small dyke that edged the perimeter, no one was supposed to be out there, the flat-baked clay no- man's- land on Harris's side and the fertile green rice paddy beyond. He waited to see if the man would go another direction but he didn't and at two hundred meters Harris had led his target slightly and pressed the trigger of the M60, held it down for a long second. Every fifth round was a tracer and Harris watched them meet the body and then continue across the brilliant green paddy. The sapper didn't fall, he stood still for a long time as if not willing to accept what was happening and Harris, confused, offended for some reason, he pulled the trigger and held it long after the man went down, he played the tracers above the area where the man had fallen, arcing them back and forth as if trying to erase the evidence. He used up a belt of ammunition and the floor of the bunker was covered with sooty brass cases.

Later they found the man next to the dyke, human only by the shredded remnants of clothing. It could have been the result of a farming accident. The package was gone. No one else thought about it twice—a dead Vietnamese was a dead VC—but Harris had the feeling that he was owed punishment, killing someone, it seemed he should not get off so easily. He was debriefed, explained what he'd done to a bored lieutenant who made a notation in the file. One confirmed kill. Five months later, May 1971, they handed over their post to the South Vietnamese and Harris was on his way home. All the dead men of the world—they had once been alive. That was what people forgot.

He pulled into the station and thought about Grace again. She had been sleeping when he left the house and he'd kissed her and she hadn't woken up and he knew then, knew because she was sleeping deeply, he knew that she didn't really understand what she wanted him to do.

It would not be hard, it would not take long to find Murray, Carzano wanted to keep his witness around so he was giving him a hundred dollars a week in state funds, calling it witness protection though there was no protection. It was just money that Murray Clark needed and he would stick around the area to keep collecting it unless someone, Harris, made it clear it wasn't safe for him. But he would have to really make an impression.

Murray Clark wasn't a bad type. It might not be hard to get him to run off. Or it might be. You're trading yourself for Billy Poe, thought Harris. I know that.

He parked his truck, nearly forgot to turn it off, he went inside the station then downstairs to the evidence room, he felt like he was running on autopilot, there were all the old boxes of crap stacked up from their move from the old station, there were boxes that dated back to the 1950s and no one would ever go through it, at the time he'd thought about destroying it all but now he knew why he hadn't. It took him several minutes of rummaging but he found a five- shot revolver someone had turned in years ago, the date on the tag was 1974. He looked at it. He thought about Grace. Then he thought: if you're just going to talk to him, why bring it…

He checked the timing and cylinder lockup and squeezed the trigger to make sure the firing pin fell all the way. Then he went back upstairs to his office. There was a box of .38 plus-P hollowpoints and he used a tissue to pick up the rounds and load them in the gun. Looking around the office he could feel his inertia starting to build, looking at the old paintings, it was only a year and a half to retirement. You aren't going to use this thing anyway. Just give him the Talk.

His jacket pocket was sagging with the weight of the small revolver but he knew he ought to bring backup. His duty Sig didn't seem right. He went back to the safe in his office and got his .45, a Gold Cup he'd bought himself when he got back from the marines, he tucked a spare magazine in his pocket and the gun in a rear waistband holster. A final thought occurred to him and he stripped down to his undershirt, put his ballistic vest on, and then got dressed again. You're scared, he thought. When was the last time you were this scared, you're dressing up for combat. Haven't worn this thing in years. Where's your light. He took the small xenon flashlight from his duty belt and put that into his pocket as well. He could tell he was not thinking clearly. He was going to forget something. Usually the mistake that killed people—soldiers, pilots, racecar drivers—was the second one. You lived through the first one and then realized it had happened and you were so distracted by it that you made another one. The second one got you. His father had been a Corsair pilot and told Harris that if you were in a dogfight and you screwed up you were supposed to peel off immediately and put some space around you, get your head clear before you got back into the fight. Which was this? He wasn't sure. Walking out he called to Ho:

“I might be taking the next day off. Call up Miller or Borkowski or whoever else you need if you don't hear from me by seven.”

“Where you going?” said Ho.

“Fishing. You just hold the fort. Better call those two now, actually. Just tell one of them to be here when you get off.”

He got into his old Silverado and drove home. While Fur was out running, Harris put a change of clothes and a pair of running shoes into a backpack, then refilled the dog's food and water, setting the entire bag of food on the floor where the dog could get to it, then a second large pot of cold water on the floor next to it. The dog came back in and immediately sensed something was wrong and Harris had to knee him firmly out of the way to get out of the house. He made his way down the rutted road, eyes focused straight ahead, he thought you better get food and coffee, might be out there all night and all day tomorrow maybe.

In Brownsville he parked at the top of the hill near the old stone houses and sat looking at his map book. He found the addresses and memorized them without making a note on the map and got breakfast and filled up both of the truck's fuel tanks in case he had to drive a long way. There were two houses Murray Clark had given as addresses, and Harris began driving toward the first one.

4. Isaac

A
fter staring out over the rushing traffic for a long time, he finally left the overpass and made his way toward the on- ramp for southbound Interstate
75.
He took off his coat and brushed the dirt off as best as possible and retucked and smoothed his collared shirt and ran his fingers through his hair to get the burrs and tangles out. Student on a nine- day bender, that's all you are. Pure coincidence he looks like a bum. What about the knife? Put the coat on over it.

A purple semi pulling a tanker was pulling out of the gas station and Isaac put out his thumb and stood waiting and the truck stopped. Isaac jogged over and climbed up onto the truck, pulling the heavy door open.

“Where you headed?”

“Pennsylvania, I think.”

“You think?”

The truck driver was a short thin man in his late forties, clean- shaven. He winked at Isaac. “I can drop you at Interstate 70 if you pay for gas. There's probably shorter ways to get there, though.”

“I don't have any money.”

“I'm just kidding you,” said the man. “The company pays gas and I'm going that way anyway.”

The truck was big inside, dark and comfortable. Wizard of Oz, he thought, looks like a huge beast but inside it, perched way up high, this tiny man. They were high off the ground and moving fast. About eighty.

It took a minute before he could focus on the objects they passed, just watching them made his vertigo even worse. Someone made this, he thought. He looked over at the driver, sitting behind the wheel, listening to AM radio. Noises came occasionally from the CB. Mind can adjust to anything—voices coming out of a metal box. Two different metal boxes. Meanwhile you look over the road and the body knows it's going too fast. But it adjusts as well. He watched things appear and disappear, trucks, metal signs, houses, roads, and overpasses. Made all of it. Even the air, radio waves and satellites. Feels like that should all mean something. Doesn't—it's just what we do. What has it gotten us, our difference from animals. Better rifles and antibiotics—they come together. Smart bombs and cancer surgery. Don't get one without the other, even our own nature keeps itself in balance. Colonize Mars, it won't matter— babies and cheatin’ hearts. Democracy and hemorrhoids. Preachers with syphilis. A kid jerking off in his moonsuit, thinking about his older sister. He began to giggle. The kid's on fire, he thought.

“You mind sharing,” said the driver.

“Been by myself for a while,” said Isaac. “Plus it's the first time I've been in a truck.”

“Playin hooky or something? Or you in college—I can't tell, no offense.”

“Neither. I ought to be in college, probably.”

“You're kind of a sight. At first I thought you were one of those Christ lovers, going around converting people in truck stops and whatnot, and then I saw you closer and thought maybe you were one of those people, only you'd gone off the rails. Then I wasn't sure. That's probably why I stopped.”

“Mystery of the day.”

“Basically.”

“Well, I appreciate it.”

“Never know,” said the man. “You might have been Christ himself and I would have been well rewarded.”

“Might still be.”

“Now you sound like a proper crazy hitchhiker.”

“Busted,” said Isaac.

The driver chuckled. “I'm just joking you. Actually you mind listening to the radio at all? They're saying those nuts in Korea just built a rocket big enough to tie a nuke on.”

“You mean North Korea?”

“But I can tell already you're not into that sort of thing.”

“A
little.”

“Myself personally I think we ought to hit them right now, just flatten them. Next thing you know they'll have a nuke in Toledo.”

“They probably think the same thing about us.”

“Well,” said the driver. He was quiet for a few seconds. “You give yourself twenty years and see if you don't start appreciating everything just a little bit more, you follow me? Maybe that's what I'm trying to describe here.” He looked at Isaac. “You don't follow me.”

“No, I do.”

“Wait twenty years, you'll know then. Course you're young so I'm sure there's plenty I'm missing out on as well. I wasn't old enough in the sixties and now I'm missing all this. Sometimes you get it coming and going.”

“I doubt you're missing much,” said Isaac.

“Nah, I watch all the shows, I know. Only thing I feel bad for you is all the girls you can fantasize about, you've already seen them all naked. Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, all the rest, there's penetration shots of all of them. For me, Bambi Woods was big news. That was all you could hope for. But it was probably better like that.”

“Maybe.”

“Well, we sure got to the heavy stuff quick, didn't we.” The driver winked at him again. “You mind holding on a second? You ought to listen to this guy who's coming on.”

“Alright.”

“You know him?”

Isaac could hear the voice chattering away. “I think my dad likes this guy.”

“G. Gordon Liddy” He shrugged. “I don't always agree with him but he's interesting.”

Isaac settled himself while the driver turned the radio up. Then suddenly he turned it down again.

“I realized my point,” he said. “There's no mystery for your generation. But back to our programming.” He turned up the radio again.

Isaac started to disagree but it was okay. The kid will be fine, he thought. Plenty of mysteries. The universe is fourteen billion years old but a hundred fifty billion light- years across. There's quantum mechanics versus relativity. The kid will have to make new rules—immune to the laws of man beast and fruit, he'll live the fourth way. His mind occupied by higher systems, he'll discover flight. The stratosphere. Cold up here, he'll think. Cold and blue. Nitrogen—makes skies blue and plants green. Building block. Who dreams of flying most—men in wheelchairs. The old men of the world, trapped in their humidity. As for the kid, he returns like Odysseus. A long exile. His only allegiance to the king of the cannibals.

“You alright over there?”

“Doing good,” said Isaac.

“You know how to keep yourself amused, don't you?”

“Hope I'm not annoying you.”

“No, I'm glad I stopped. I promised my little girl I'd be home so I've only slept about an hour since yesterday morning, and then when I pulled over to refuel I realized I better find someone to talk to or I'd end up asleep in a ditch. Anyway, there you were. So in a way, if you think about it, you're saving my life.”

“That's the Jesus in me.”

The driver nodded solemnly. “Yup,” he said. “That's exactly what it is.”

    — — —

A few hours later he dropped Isaac off at an on- ramp in Dayton. As he got out the driver said, “You wouldn't spend it on drugs or anything would you, buddy?”

“I never have.”

“Well, at least get yourself some dinner first.” He gave Isaac five dollars.

Isaac walked a mile or so to a truck stop on I-70 and ordered a meatball sandwich. He sat at a table inside but it didn't feel right yet so he went back out again and ate on the curb. There was the hammering of diesel engines and the smell of it and trucks coming and going like a train station. He thought he might have to wait awhile but ten minutes later he was picked up by an eastbound rig with a load of tractor parts. This one asked where he had been and Isaac said Michigan and the driver said you gotta make it a little more interesting than that if you wanna ride free, so Isaac told him he'd been riding the trains and was now going home to his family. The driver was happy to be a part of it and they rode the rest of the way without speaking much.

After dark, the driver turned south on I-79, leaving Isaac a few miles past Little Washington. After walking east for a while, he climbed to the top of a hill and sat looking out over the dark highway, toward the Mon River. How far? Twenty miles, maybe. Probably hitch if you can make it to a gas station. He sat and thought about it. Nah. Go in the same way you came out.

What is Lee doing right now? Used to be you could know it. Still might be able to. The three months between when she got into Yale and Mom dying—think about that. Everything made complete sense. All of us going to the Carnegie Museum, dinosaur bones, looking up at the tyrannosaurus. Old man saying
I don't want to look at anything that can bite me in half. I'm happy they went extinct.
But even he couldn't help staring at it for a long time.
Imagine being the guy who found that thing,
he said.
I mean imagine being him before he'd told anyone else he'd found it.
Think about that, Watson. That was the old man.

He looked out over the hills. He couldn't see the river but of course it was there. If he walked it would probably take two days to get home. No, day and a half. That's okay, he thought. Familiar ground.