Stone Junction (45 page)

The man shrugged. ‘I don’t mind.’

Daniel parked behind the cabin. As he came around to the front – there didn’t seem to be a back door – he saw the swimming pool set in the center of the encircling cabins. It appeared to be about six feet wide, and sloped dramatically from three feet deep to nine. There was no water in the pool. Weeds flourished in the long cracks where the cement had buckled and slipped.

The cabin wasn’t locked. The interior, though sparely furnished, seemed even smaller than the outside suggested. But it had four large windows and it was clean. A wood heater dominated the center of the room. The squat lines of the iron bedframe were softened by the sheen of its polyester cover. Half a cord of wood was stacked along one wall, and on the opposite side was a formica table with two straight-back chairs. A TV, a fat seventeen-inch Philco from the mid-sixties, occupied most of the tabletop, its rabbit-ears antenna giving it an odd sense of alertness. Daniel assumed the single door led to the bathroom, but found only a toilet and washbasin behind it. He pissed, then washed his hands and splashed cold water on his face. He soon discovered there were no towels.

Moderately annoyed, Daniel – face still dripping – was standing in front of the TV waiting for it to come on when the manager said from the open front door, ‘It’s not plugged in.’

‘Oh,’ Daniel said.

The man set plastic-wrapped jerky and slices of pumpernickel on top of the TV. ‘Actually,’ he said, looking at the screen, ‘it wouldn’t matter if it was plugged in, because we don’t have electricity. And if we did, they would probably turn it off after a couple of months and send some righteous, brutal men around to collect money. I don’t like to do business with such people. Their hearts are no bigger than mouse shit.’

‘Speaking of business practices, it seems to me that your sign out on the highway is sort of misleading.’

‘Maybe. We do have cabins, food, pool, and TV, but sometimes not all at once. Besides, did I ask you for money?’

‘No, you didn’t,’ Daniel acknowledged, surprised.

‘We don’t charge. It’s shameful to accept money from guests.’

Daniel didn’t know what to do with that information, so he said, ‘Why don’t you put
free
on your sign?’

‘Because nobody would be surprised when they got here.’

Daniel stared at him, then shook his head. ‘I’m sorry – I seem to be having comprehension difficulties. What’s your name? If I’m your guest, I should know who to thank for this hospitality.’

‘Wally Moon.’

‘Mine’s Daniel Pearse,’ Daniel told him, ignoring his cover. ‘If it’s not too personal, Wally, could I ask your nationality?’

‘My mother, Lao-Shi, was Chinese; my father was a full-blood Apache named Burning Moon.’

‘And may I ask why this place is called Two Moons? Did you have a vision?’

‘No, I took up with a woman. She is part Apache and part Seminole and some Cajun. She is not a relative, but her name is also Moon. It’s a common name.’

‘So: Two Moons.’

‘My wife likes it. Her name is Annie. She’s not here right now because she’s menstruating. She goes off to the mountains then. She doesn’t like being around me when she’s menstruating. Says I screw up the reception. Women are all a little strange, but Annie is really something. I love her.’

Daniel felt his face distort as he fought back tears. When he tried to speak his voice cracked so badly there was no point in trying to hide. He quit fighting.

He felt Wally Moon’s hand softly on his shoulder. ‘You just need rest, Daniel. There’s a sweathouse outside and a cold shower. The lamps and kerosene are on the closet shelf. Come over if there’s anything you want. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need.’

Daniel gathered himself and said, ‘Thank you.’ He tried to smile. ‘What is this, some halfway house for fools?’

‘No. Simply a place to rest.’

When Wally had left, Daniel brought in the bowling bag with the Diamond zipped inside. He laid down beside it on the bed. He tried to think about what he was doing or could do or should, but it whirled away like water down a drain and in moments he was asleep.

THE THERAPEUTIC JOURNAL OF JENNIFER RAINE APRIL 5?

I numbed and dumbed it through the day, nibbled my mush, nodded
through my half-hour with the Doc. He said I looked pensive and
withdrawn. I told him Mia was sick. That’s when he chose to make his
stunning-insight move, so contrived and dramatic you could tell he’d
been saving it till I was weak: ‘Jenny, do you know that in Italian
“mia” means “me”?’

I sank my fangs in Doctor Putney’s vanity and let it drip: ‘Doc,
didn’t it ever cross your feeble mind that Mia is the acronym for
Missing in Action? I named her after her father. It was a great
marriage, Doc. We were both Soldiers of Fortune – the only man-wife
team in the world – but his ’chute didn’t open on a jump over Borneo.
No need to even look for his body in the jungle, but since there’s no
body, he’s officially MIA. You get it, or you want pictures? How about
some pictures of my pussy, Doc? Some mental spread shots?’ Cause this
distressed little damsel do declare she don’t know what scares you worse,
her mind or her cunt.’

I’ll say this for the Doc, he had the class to say, ‘I don’t
know either.’

Ain’t that the truth. He suggested we take a week off to consider
whether there was any point in trying to continue working together. He
thought I might have better luck with a female Jungian.

Personally, I think I’m healing, and I’m doing it against a run of
bad luck. What did that crazy gambler in Oakland always say? ‘Your
luck’s bound to change if your chips hold out.’ And I might be digging
for the last handful, but I’m still digging. Or as my new loverboy, the
Dharma Joker, says on his radio show, ‘Dig it all, and when it’s all
dug up, little darling, put it on the line.’ He didn’t actually say that
yet, but he could the next time.

I didn’t tell the Doctor about Clyde. I promised Clyde I wouldn’t,
and I’ve learned how strong it makes me to honor promises. I don’t feel
Clyde will mess with other women, but he might, and her suffering will
be marked on my soul. But I don’t feel guilty about my silence. I’ve
learned about guilt. It’s an abscessed truth, rotting with denial. And I
need every truth I can get if I want to get well. I
need
the responsibility
for my silence and for what I say. I
want
the consequences of my
judgment.

Maybe I shouldn’t have hidden Mia. I don’t know. She could feel my
fear from under the bed, and since she has such a powerful imagination,
that might have been worse. She cried most of the day, but is sleeping
now. I’ll talk to her about it in the morning.

As we’d arranged, I met Clyde after therapy, under the big oak on
the side lawn. It was difficult to make him tell me how he’d gotten into
the women’s wing. He trembled the whole time, mumbled, wouldn’t look
at me. I looked at him with revulsion, and sorrow, and pity, and love,
and helplessness, until the feelings whirled and blurred together and I
had to freeze myself to concentrate on making him tell me how he’d got
in. He gave me ten dollars, two crumpled, clammy fives – he said it
was all he had but he could try to steal some from the other men when
they were asleep. Touched, touched almost to tears again, I told him ten
was enough, and enough was plenty.

Clyde started snuffling then, spreading his arms out in misery as if I
might hold him. When I stepped back, he dropped to his knees like a
broken pilgrim, a doom-struck suitor of my violated affections. I thanked
him for his help, repeated my promise not to tell, and turned and
walked away, hating him for taking what can only be given, loathing
his damaged, presumptuous greed, and loving him because his shame
was greater than my forgiveness.

The moment I turned from Clyde and started walking away, the
lightning scar at the base of my spine started burning like dry ice. I
can still feel it as I write this, but it’s more like a numb warmth now. I
feel an intense desire to open, to be known – I suppose it’s some sort of
balancing response to Clyde. No wonder I’m locked up.

But Mia and me won’t be shut-ins much longer. I told her what
we have to do before I sang her to sleep, and promised to wake
her when it was time. Promises to keep and miles to go before
we sleep, miles before we’re gone. Everything’s packed in a tight
bundle, except this journal and the radio. I’m going to change the
journal to a notebook. We’ll need the radio to beam in on the DJ.
I’ve been running the dial from one end to the other, but either
the DJ’s not sending or I’m not receiving. I need directions to
the grave.

I’m leaving the Doc a note on my pillow: ‘Gone dancing with the
DJ. Don’t wait up.’

Daniel struggled to open his eyes but he was being lowered into a fresh, clay-streaked grave, his naked body glowing in the alkaline light of the moon. Standing in a circle around the pit, twelve old women were singing a wordless incantation of wails and parched moans, their upraised faces shining like oiled leather, their bodies swaying to the feathered tambourines they played. But the music Daniel heard wasn’t the thump and shimmer of tambourines, but the sound of shattering glass.

When his back touched the ground, the music stopped. Above him, framed by the grave, the moon slowly spiraled into itself till it disappeared, the stars following like flecks of foam. People whose faces he couldn’t see began to file past, each silently dropping a white rose into his grave, flowers to cushion the fall of covering earth, flowers to sweeten his decay. Daniel’s hands were crossed on his bare chest. He pressed his right palm against his ribcage, feeling for a heartbeat. Pressed harder when he felt nothing. Harder, beginning to panic, when a voice hollered, ‘Hey! Daniel!’ and he bolted from the bed, heart racing, riding the adrenaline rush as it cleared his senses.

Another holler: ‘Hey, you alive in there?’

It sounded like Wally Moon. Daniel tried to make his voice gruff with sleep. ‘Yeah, hey, who is it?’

‘Wally.’

‘Yeah, okay, just a minute.’ He picked up the bowling bag and slid it under the bed. He buttoned his shirt as he crossed the room, tucking it in before he opened the door.

He need not have been so formal. Wally Moon was standing on the porch naked, dripping wet. ‘The stones in the sweathouse are still hot if you want to get clean. Sorry if I woke you, but I don’t like to waste heat. Besides, it’s about your only chance for a hot bath till the next one.’

‘Thanks,’ Daniel said, ‘that was thoughtful. A sweat would be perfect. And no problem about waking me up; glad you did. I’ve got some work to do tonight anyway, and––’

Wally’s squint cut him off. ‘You work at night?’

‘I’m a writer,’ Daniel said quickly. ‘Religious stuff.’

‘Oh, a poet.’

‘Not quite, no, more like a scholar, sort of a religious anthropologist, I suppose – theological essays, research papers, that general vein.’

‘So you’re going to stay here and work tonight?’

‘If it doesn’t stretch your hospitality.’

‘No, I meant it when I said you could stay as long as you like. But I just wanted to make sure you planned to work, because I need to borrow your truck till the morning.’

‘Ummm, gee,’ Daniel began, ‘I’d really like to let––’

Wally, more as if continuing than interrupting, said, ‘I told you my wife was off in the mountains menstruating? Well, she went in our truck and it broke down – she called me on the CB just before I headed to the sweathouse.’

Daniel said, ‘The front differential on my truck is busted. No four-wheel drive.’

Wally wiped a trickle of water from his cheek. ‘Don’t need four-wheel. She broke down on the highway about thirty miles from here, not out in the hills. Just need to tow it in if I can’t fix it, but Annie said it sounded like the engine was eating metal, so it might not be simple to fix.’ Wally shook his head. ‘Menstruating women should not be around machines. They confuse machines. But don’t worry about your truck, because Annie says she is done menstruating. Annie is always very lustful when she returns from the mountains.’ Wally grinned, looking directly at Daniel.

It was a universal appeal: Let me borrow your wheels so I can get laid. The appeal demanded a generosity beyond the merely convenient. Daniel, feeling vaguely conned, reached in his pocket for the keys.

Daniel was in the sweathouse when he heard his truck rumble past and fade toward the highway, the music pounding from its radio the last sound to dissolve. Faint from hunger and the heat, he bent forward from his squat, lowering his head to his knees. He inhaled strongly, stretching his lungs, but his attempt to keep the exhalation smooth collapsed into a sigh. He tried to imagine Volta’s face. The face flickered but wouldn’t hold.

Daniel mumbled anyway, ‘I know, it was stupid to let Wally take the truck. He and his wife could get nailed, they might turn me, or take the truck and money. Hundreds of shitty possibilities. But even if stupid, it was the right thing to do, or at least that’s how I felt it. I’m working on nerve alone now, out on the edges looking for the center, not a realm that rewards a rational approach. Thought isn’t fast enough. Don’t make me doubt myself, Volta, don’t make me hesitate. Hesitation could be fatal. Let me do it myself. Don’t stand between me and the Diamond. This one isn’t yours. It has a spiral flame through its center, like the one I saw. It wants me to see inside, wants me to know. Let me go.’ He realized he was no longer addressing Volta but the Diamond.

Daniel started laughing and immediately felt faint again. He dipped his hand in the bucket of cold water at his side and flung a cupped handful on the hot stones. The water sizzled into steam. The steam curled through the slender shaft of moonlight from the small, heat-fogged window behind him, coiled, braided, swirled through itself, dispersed. Daniel looked for a pattern, a rhythm. He threw another handful of water on the stones. A dragon’s tail lashed slowly through the light. The durable lines of a pig. A great blue heron ponderously lifted from its fishing roost and glided downriver. A lion’s paw. The bash and plunge of a whale. A twisted question mark. A rose billowing into bloom. A thousand possibilities, but nothing that cohered.

Twenty minutes later Daniel half staggered from the sweathouse and made his way to the shower. When the cold water hit him, jolting him back into his skin, he saw a slender twist of flame flash behind his eyes.

His body steaming in the cool night air, he walked naked back to his cabin, slipped the Diamond from the bowling bag, and vanished.

Calm, steady, focus locked, Daniel gazed into the Diamond all night, waiting for it to open. He reappeared with the Diamond an hour before dawn, so exhausted he didn’t think to put it away. He curled around its light and immediately fell asleep.

Smiling Jack Ebbetts punched the Play button and said to Volta, who was pouring them both a shot of cognac, ‘I don’t know if it’s something or nothing or a load of shit. You tell me.’ He sat down across the table from Volta in the basement of the Allied Furnace Repair building, swirled the cognac in his glass, tossed it back.

The tape began with a ringing telephone. Smiling Jack said quickly to Volta, ‘He gave me his direct line so it didn’t go through the secretary.’

The ringing stopped.

‘Keyes.’

‘Hello, Melvin,’ Smiling Jack’s voice boomed in a hearty Texas drawl, ‘this is Jacques-Jacques Lafayette, Dredneau’s good buddy and brain trust. You got your half of this deal for me?’

‘Yes. Or the best I could. I’m not really pleased with this
deal
, though. I’m––’

‘Well, shit-fire, Mel, it’s simple enough: You talk and I don’t; you don’t and I do.’

‘But suppose I talk and then you talk anyway? Or want me to keep talking so you don’t? Let’s talk about that.’

‘Mel, what you’re talking like is a man with a paper asshole. Haven’t you ever heard of
honor
? Human
trust?
Mutual benefit?’

‘Yes. I’ve heard of blackmail, too. And coercion.’

‘Well, fuck ya then, son. I better do business with this Debritto boy. Besides the information, maybe I could get a few of them two hundred fifty Ks that my little ol’ computer tells me were recently transferred from your very own Whole Corn Distributing Company to a numbered Cayman account. Shit-oh-dear, wouldn’t the
Washington Post
have fun with that on the front page!’

‘I’d like
some
guarantee,’ Keyes whined. ‘You can understand that.’

‘You got a guarantee, hoss! You got my
word
. Now quit dicking me around while you’re trying to slap a trace on my call,’ cause the call’s routed through an empty apartment in San Angelo. Shit or get off the pot, Mel. You’re not playing with kids.’

‘Okay, I’m going to connect you with Shelby Bennett in our Denver office. The information came directly to him about four hours before the bomb was to be planted. His informant is named Alex Three. He’d called Shelby before. There’s no tapes, and Shelby ran Alex Three and Al X Three, and like he expected, got a blank screen. It’s a code name. Shelby says––’

‘’Scuse me, pardner, but why don’t you let Shelby tell me hisself.’

‘Sure, I’m putting it through now. I’m going to stay on the line.’

‘You don’t have a
real
bone in ya, do ya Melvin? Not
one
trusting bone. Reckon it must raise hell with your faith.’

As Shelby Bennett’s phone rang on tape, Volta said to Jack, ‘You’re incorrigible.’

Jack smiled, then he and Volta listened as Shelby Bennett confirmed the information Keyes had already given. On tape, Texas Jacques- Jacques said, ‘Shelby, I’d be obliged if you’d answer a couple of questions for me.’

‘I’ll try, Mr Lafayette,’ Shelby replied.

‘How many times has this Alex Three hombré rang up you?’

‘Nine, starting in seventy-five and ending a few years later with the plutonium tip.’

‘Why do you think that was his last call?’

‘Because his conditions weren’t met.’

‘What sorta
conditions
we talking about here?’

‘Just one, really. That nobody get hurt.’

‘Who fucked it up?’

Bennett paused a moment. ‘Nobody, really. I couldn’t handle it personally because I was here, in Denver. He said he understood, that he was trusting me to put it in the proper hands, but that I’d be responsible if his condition wasn’t satisfied. I told him that anything involving theft of nuclear materials went straight to the director; I had no choice unless I wanted a career change. He said to do my best to retain control. But when I called the director he took it out of my hands.’

‘Why’d this good ol’ Alex Three choose you for these friendly calls?’

‘When I asked him that myself, he said, “I hear you’re honest and reliable.” That’s the only reason he ever gave.’

‘He ever let on how he was getting his information, or why he was passing it on?’

‘I asked his source the first time he called, and he said, “Me.” I never bothered to ask again.’

‘He ever ask for anything in return?’

‘No, but he said he might. I told him I couldn’t make promises, but that I’d do whatever I honorably could.’

‘Ya get that, Mel?’ Texas Jacques-Jacques yelled down the line. ‘This fella knows how to establish a professional working atmosphere. You lissen up and learn something, hear?’ When Keyes didn’t reply, he asked Bennett, ‘Now Shelby, I’m hoping you might be able to tell me what sorta other tips this Alex Three passed along.’

‘I’d rather not – and anyway, I doubt if they’re germane. Nothing even close to the level of the plutonium theft. I
can
tell you that most of it involved small South American matters and internal government corruption. I’ll give you an example: We had some of our own low-level people ripping off emergency medical supply shipments after a big earthquake down south. That sort of thing.’

‘His information always pretty accurate, was it?’

‘Utterly.’

‘You never met him, that right?’

‘Always by phone.’

‘Ever tempted to slap on a trace, see where he was calling from?’

‘He told me not to bother. I didn’t.’

‘Okay now, so all you ever heard was his voice. You can tell a lot about a man just listening to him talk. What did you hear?’

‘Male, mid-thirties or a little older, faint Germanic accent – Swiss maybe – good vocabulary, very precise. But these weren’t long conversations, you understand.’

‘No tapes, huh?’

‘No. He asked me not to. It was a request, not a condition.’

‘You think you’d recognize his voice if you heard it again?’

‘I don’t know. He hasn’t called since Livermore.’

‘Well, thanks for your help, Shelby.’ Preciate it. Mel does, too, I’m sure.’

Keyes said, ‘Yes, thanks Shel; I owe you one.’ He waited for Bennett to get off the line and said to Texas Jacques-Jacques, ‘That’s all there is, cowboy. You satisfied with my end?’

‘You know, my ol’ Pappy, bless his wildcat soul, always told me that if a man’s real anxious to sell, give it some hard, cold thinking ’fore you buy. I got to respect my Pappy’s advice. I’ll get back to you on it soon as I got it mulled over good. Keep your loop tight, Mel.’

Keyes was sputtering, ‘Hold on now, you––’ when the recording ended.

Smiling Jack hit Stop, then Rewind. He glanced at Volta, who was staring into his untouched glass of cognac. ‘You want to hear it again, Volt?’

‘Later, perhaps.’

‘What do you think? Flowers or fertilizer?’

‘Flowers. I think you got everything there was, the whole truth and nothing but, and you had fun doing it. Please reconsider giving me the honor of nominating you to replace me on the Star. The Alliance is losing that sense of fun; you could refresh it.’

‘Damn, Volt, I think you’re getting maudlin in your old age – or else it’s tougher than you thought to sit here waiting for Daniel to call. Maybe you should get some natural light and fresh air on you. Do a bunch of pushups. Jog over to McDonald’s and get back in the world.’

Volta barely smiled. ‘You’re right, waiting has been tougher than I thought. The hardest part is that I’ve had four straight days with time to reflect, and what I see of myself doesn’t please me. I’m losing my effectiveness, and I’m not having fun. I’m tired of excruciating decisions, balancing acts, judgments that must consider the welfare of the Alliance before the good of my heart – though truly they aren’t often at odds.’

‘Jesus,’ Jack said, ‘you’re turning sane.’

‘I’m beginning to cherish that infrequent state of mind, yes.’

‘Well, before your effectiveness peters out completely, how do you want to move on this Alex Three info?’

‘I think we should follow your dear ol’ Pappy’s advice and mull it over
reeeal
good.’

Jack looked skeptical. ‘Way you were just talking, didn’t sound like your muller could take much more.’