Stone Junction (57 page)

Daniel felt lighter and lighter.

THE FIRST NOTEBOOK OF JENNIFER RAINE

APRIL/LEAVING RENO

Life is still great.

My name is Susanna Rapp. Says so right here on my driver’s
license, birth certificate, and passport. Rapp is an old Germanic
word meaning ‘young raven’ or ‘brilliant counselor,’ depending on the
root. I do like to talk, and Rapp sounds tough. ‘Susanna’ because I
always liked that song, ‘Oh Susanna, don’t you cry for me…’ Hey
sweetheart, I’ll cry if I feel like it. Even though I’m not the sort of
woman men serenade.

When Longshot got up this morning, I had to tell him that as much
as I liked him – which is a lot – I’d have to be moving on. I told him
about meeting the DJ at Jim Bridger’s grave. Longshot understood. And
because he
did
understand, because he honestly cared to, I told him the
short version of my life.

When I had finished, he said, ‘I don’t think you’re crazy. You’re
kinda intense and slippery and taken with some fancies. I’ve gotten out
there myself, more than once to tell the truth, and I always got back.’

‘How?’ Imagine my eagerness.

‘Well, I have a kind of
unusual
method. Works good for me,
but it’s on the order of fightin’ fire with fire. I get an ounce
of blow and a fast car and drive straight to Kansas City, then
turn around without stoppin’ and drive right back. Reams out
the sludge.’

I tell you, that man is charming. And since I’d hoped he’d beg me
to stay, preferably forever, I was a little depressed. But let me tell you,
a little depression is
no problem
for a woman with nearly two hundred
thousand dollars in her purse.

First, with Longshot’s help (he seems to know everybody), I spent
five grand on a new identity. Clicked my picture and rolled my thumb,
and an hour later I was Susanna Rapp.

I bought a brand-new cardinal Porsche. Seventy thousand. I was
cheering up.

I felt good enough about myself then to buy clothes. Ten thousand
dollars – but that includes luggage and shoes.

I bought Longshot a big silver belt buckle with two glazed plastic
eyeballs glued to it. Engraved around the edges is the motto: ‘The eyes
of Texas are upon you.’

Longshot said, ‘The best thing about being crazy is you can do
crazy things.’

From Longshot I bought an ounce of cocaine and an ounce of weed
and twenty Quaaludes – all for a grand. He claimed that since the
drugs were for therapeutic purposes, not recreational, he was honor
bound to sell at cost. When I asked point-blank if he was a drug
dealer, he said with that easy grin, ‘Not really. I stock up for hard
times when there’s quality available. Long shots wouldn’t be long shots
if they always came in.’

His farewell kiss had true affection. He said his arms would always
be open. As we said in junior high, ‘Is that cool, or what?’ He was
wearing his ‘Eyes of Texas’ belt buckle when he waved good-bye.

I decided I couldn’t spend a thousand dollars on drugs without
spending at least that much on Mia. She’d been sleeping ever since
her nightmare in the barn. I tried to wake her up for a little mother-
daughter shopping spree. When I couldn’t wake her, I almost panicked.
But I could hear her heartbeat, slow but strong.

I tried to imagine what she was dreaming, what she was doing, but
I couldn’t get inside her. I think she’s in a trance, maybe trying to
imagine something herself. We have to imagine each other to reach each
other, so maybe that’s why I feel blocked out. That’s okay. I have to
trust her to know what’s best for herself.

But for that moment I thought she was dead, so scared my first
instinct was to rush her to the hospital. That’s what I’ve got to be
careful about – acting as if she were real. That’s when I get in trouble.
Terror makes me forget. Pain makes me forget.

I bought Mia an amazingly soft, thick, pale-blue silk comforter
big enough for a double bed. I wrapped it around her in the backseat,
fluffed the two matching plush pillows to cushion her head.

I’m sitting in my Porsche at Uncle Bill’s Bugle Burger Drive-In,
where I’ve just finished half a Bugle Burger and both a large and a
medium Pepsi. As Longshot warned, cocaine discourages gluttony for
anything but cocaine. Sure makes you thirsty, though. Better buy a case
of mineral water before I hit the road.

My new Easter outfit, a back-zippered sheath with a slit skirt, is
made of raw silk, the color of buffed cream, the lines clean and supple.
My Easter bonnet is a wide-brimmed straw hat, airy and light, with a
rainbow of silks braided around the crown, the unraveled ends trailing
down my shoulders like a waterfall of color. I’m wearing these crazy
platform shoes with a four-leaf clover cast into each of the three-inch
clear-plastic heels. Keep luck rolling. I also bought a sleek black
suit with a black hat and veil for the meeting with the DJ on Jim
Bridger’s grave.

Now for a few toots and the long highway to Wyoming. I’ll have
plenty of drugs left for the DJ. I’m already a little tired of them.
That’s how I’ve always been – I adore them for a while, but then I get
tired of the same point of view all the time.

On my road map, I–80 looks like the straightest shot to eastern
Wyoming. But I’m intrigued by Highway 50, which is so barren on
the map there’s plenty of room to note: ‘Highway 50, the Loneliest
Highway in the World.’ That sounded like a tourist attraction for
explorers of the psyche, something of a lonesome highway itself. From
50 I can cut north to Wyoming. A difference of hours. If the DJ is
serious, he’ll wait. If he isn’t there, I’ll be so heartbroken crazy I’ll give
Longshot’s cure a shot and fight fire with fire, wired to Kansas City
and burning the return. I shall return. But now I’ve got to go.

Four:
FIRE

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

—Shakespeare,
Macbeth
IV.i

The mind is a full moon rising in a warm spring rain.

Daniel felt lighter and lighter and lighter, despite the rain soaking his buckskins, despite the Diamond in his sack that seemed to be gaining an ounce every fifteen minutes, lighter and lighter until he thought he might actually rise with the moon. He stood where his ride from the Reno Shell Station had left him. The old guy had apologized for not being able to invite him for the night, but space was cramped what with the granddaughter and all, and Ma wasn’t much on strangers.

Daniel had been sorry, too. The granddaughter was no toddler but a drop-you-to-your-knees smoldering redhead about nineteen years old. Daniel had gathered from the old guy’s brief conversation while waiting for the women to return from the restroom that she had been sent to her grandparents’ desolate ranch because she’d gone boy-crazy in Santa Rosa. Twice in the course of the ride he’d pressed his hand against the cab’s rain-streaked rear window in an unconscious attempt to touch her hair. He’d been sorely tempted to vanish, go sit on the dashboard, and just watch her. He’d resisted, cursing his strength.

Now, as he watched the moon rise, he tried to imagine what she was feeling miles away, and he received a sensation of alien pleasure, the friction between pressed thighs as the old truck seat vibrated down the dirt road. The sensation made him feel lighter yet.

Blinking against the rain, he watched the blurred moon rise with a majestic inevitability so erotic he wanted to vanish. He sensed a powerful and mutual receptivity slowly opening in the warm, moonlit rain, a rain so warm for a Nevada April the old guy had said he damn near couldn’t believe it. Daniel believed it. Daniel believed if he vanished he could rise with the moon, float up through the top of his skull and join the moon’s constancy, its fastness, its light. He was gathering himself to vanish when a low sexual growl snapped his focus.

The cardinal Porsche shot past in a blink, but one blink was sufficient for a glimpse of the striking woman at the wheel.
Stop
, he thought, as the rain-smeared glow of taillights faded.

When the car was almost out of sight, he caught the sudden brightness of brake lights. Daniel ran toward the car, hoping his glimpse of her hadn’t been some rain-blurred moonlight mirage.

The mind is a mirage with real water.

When he reached the passenger door and bent to look inside, her loveliness took his breath away. The door was locked.

She leaned across the seat – to unlock it, he hoped – but only rolled the window down a crack.

She examined him a moment then said, ‘Are you Jim Bridger?’

She might as well have said,
You’re in love with me now
.

‘No ma’am, I’m not,’ Daniel said with the drawl of an old beaver- trapper, ‘but I knew the Bridger boy when he was greener’n a mountain meadow. Fact is, he an’ that worthless John Fitzpatrick left me in the mountains to die. I’d gotten chawed on somethin’ pitiful by a she-grizzly. The Mountain Code is to stay till you’re sure, but the Bridger boy and that Fitzpatrick fool was in a tizzy about some marauding Indians nearby, so they left me for dead. That wasn’t so bad, but they took my rifle and my possibles with ’em. Had to live on what the wolves left on buffler carcasses, and had to fight the damn buzzards for that. Had a broken leg and back tore raw, so I had to go it on my hands and knees. Made pads out of dried buffler hide. Two hundred fifty miles to Fort Kiowa and the only thing that kept me going was revenge. You shoulda seen that Bridger boy’s face when he spied me crawling through the gates, like I was nightmare turned real, come to collect.’

The woman bent closer to the crack in the window. ‘Did you kill him?’

Daniel, bending close to hear the question, caught the scent of cinnamon on her breath. ‘No, ma’am, I didn’t. Revenge is a powerful lure till it’s time to pull the trigger. Then it’s thin justice, weak murder. Don’t get me wrong, now. I didn’t kill ’em, but I didn’t forgive ’em either. Well actually, I forgave the Bridger boy some. He was a tenderfoot, hadn’t grasped the fine points of the Code. He went on to be a genuine mountain man. Ol’ Gabe – that’s what he come to be called. Fitzpatrick, though, he stayed worthless, and unforgiven.’

The woman said, ‘When was this?’

Daniel squinted up at the moon. ‘Musta been eighteen forty-five, forty-six – sometime close.’

‘That was a hundred and forty years ago.’

Daniel smiled at her. ‘Only if you keep track real close.’

‘But you couldn’t have been alive then.’

Daniel squatted so they were at eye level. He said, with careless conviction, ‘Ma’am, I can be whoever I want to be as long as I know who I am.’

‘Get in,’ Jenny said, unlocking the door.

Daniel obliged.

Jenny watched him as he slid in and settled, then asked, ‘Do you know the DJ? Guy on the radio?’

‘Ain’t much for this modern stuff, but I did hear a guy named David Janus on a program called “Moment of Truth,” all about the mind, and this David Janus sounds like he lost his oars in some swift water, if you follow my drift.’

‘What did he say about the mind?’

Daniel, taken aback, was slow to reply. ‘Lots of things, but I guess the nut of it would be that the mind is everything you can think about it.’

Jenny nodded. ‘The DJ. When did you hear him?’

‘Let’s see. Two nights back, comin’ into Reno.’

‘I knew he was around,’ Jenny smiled. ‘I’m supposed to meet him at Jim Bridger’s grave in eastern Wyoming.’

‘You might find a
Fort Bridger
there around the Green River, but they didn’t bury ol’ Gabe where he belonged. Shipped his body home to Saint Louie. I don’t know, but I think it’d be hard to rest easy on city ground. All that bustle and traffic and chatter.’ This piece of information from his youthful reading had particularly moved him.

Jenny looked at him appraisingly. ‘Who are you?’ she said.

‘Name’s Hugh Glass, ma’am.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Jenny said. ‘Take off your foxy cap.’

Daniel removed it, turning to face her.

They looked at each other, both afraid they were going to start trembling.

Jenny said, ‘You’re a kid like me, barely twenty.’

‘My name’s Daniel Pearse.’ He felt light-headed speaking his own name.

‘I’m Jennifer Raine,’ Jenny said. ‘Susanna Rapp if anyone should inquire.’

‘Am I to take it we share outlaw status in the culture at large?’

Jenny cocked her head, smiling, the rainbow tassel on her hat sliding across her left shoulder. ‘And am I to take this radical change in diction and voice as an indication of candor?’

‘Please do,’ Daniel said.

Jenny said, ‘I’m not sure
what
I am. I escaped from a mental hospital in California and won about two hundred thousand dollars last night on three rolls of the dice and here I am, no longer sure where to go. But it’s odd – just before I saw you staring at the moon, I was thinking about what I am. Not
who
– I’ll be working on
that
one for a while – but what. What I
am
. For now I’m an apprentice poet and I’m a Lover of Fortune. Not a
Soldier
of Fortune. A lover. And I suppose that’d make me a borderline outlaw.’

‘You forgot something else you are,’ Daniel said.

Cautiously, Jenny said, ‘What?’

‘A mother. Unless you’ve kidnapped that child bundled in back.’

Jenny stared at him, stunned by terror and relief.

Afraid he’d offended her, Daniel said quickly, ‘If you’re offering me a ride – and I
want
you to – let’s agree to respect necessary secrets.’

Jenny reached over and lifted his left hand into hers, pressing it softly between her palms. ‘She’s my daughter,’ Jenny said huskily, ‘but Daniel – she’s imaginary. She’s my
imaginary
daughter. How can you see her?’

‘I don’t know,’ Daniel said. He thought he would faint. She squeezed his hand harder. ‘I saw her swaddled in that lovely blanket when I got in the car and I still see her now. Certainly I have a strong imagination, but I’ve never experienced anything like this before.’ Then he remembered that he could see a spiral flame inside the Diamond when he was invisible, and added, ‘Well, there is one similar.’

‘You can imagine my imaginary daughter? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Yes. But probably only because you let me.’

Jenny released his hand and reached for her door handle. As she opened the door, she glanced back at Daniel and said, ‘C’mere, sailor.’

He followed her about twenty yards away from the car into the scrub-sage desert. She told him to stop. He did. She walked another ten yards then turned around to face him. She kicked off her four-leaf clover shoes. Took off her hat and shook her dark blond hair, the color of sugar just before it burns. She said, ‘Tell me what you see,’ and turned around, deftly unzipping her dress down the back, gracefully shedding it with a wiggle of her hips.

Over her shoulder Jenny said urgently, ‘Daniel, what do you
see?
’

‘I see,’ Daniel began, his voice quavering, ‘a scar at the base of your spine, shaped like a lightning bolt, and I see a beautiful woman, her shoulders wet with rain, who I want to hold in my arms so bad I can’t keep my voice from shaking.’

Jenny turned around.

If it weren’t for the Diamond’s weight, which seemed to be gaining an ounce every five minutes now, Daniel would have lifted off the earth. He watched her delicately touch herself, the moonlit whiteness of her exposed inner thigh, rain dripping from her tight nipples. He saw the nakedness beyond her flesh. Her eyes promised what they might know together: fearless hunger, fearless trust. He wanted to meet the offer with all of himself, heartbeat to heartbeat, breath to breath. Though he felt his assent with a serene clarity, light without shadow, he was speechless.

Jenny wasn’t. She nodded toward the Porsche and told him, ‘Bring Mia’s blanket.’

When Volta arrived home he cleared the living room of every stick of furniture except a long low maple-top table and a cushion to sit on while he worked. He put the goldfish’s bowl directly in his line of sight on the far side of the table. He finished listening to various messages – nothing urgent – and turned off the tape deck. He gathered a pen and pad of paper and began to compose his letter of retirement from the Star. The tiny goldfish was darting wildly around the bowl.

On impulse, Volta leapt up and ran to his bedroom. He returned a few minutes later, wearing only his old magician’s robe, indigo silk randomly patterned with small golden stars, the phases of the moon emblazoned on the back and up each sleeve. He sat cross-legged on the cushion and cupped the goldfish’s bowl in his hands. The goldfish was circling around the glass edge of the bowl, but now less frantically. The fish kept slowing as Volta watched. With a flick of its tail, it swam to the center of the bowl and stopped, suspended, fins barely shimmering. Volta could feel the Diamond grow denser in Daniel’s mind.

The mind is the light of the shadow it seeks.

When they finished making love, Daniel and Jenny rolled onto their backs on the blue silk comforter and let the light, warm rain fall on their bodies. Daniel had never felt so clean.

A half hour later, without a word, they began gathering their soaked clothes. Jenny shook the rainwater off her straw hat. The unraveled cascade of rainbow threads was plastered into a dull rope. She took the silk between her circled thumb and index finger and stripped it from soaked to damp with a smile that snared Daniel in its sweet contentment.

But Daniel didn’t smile when he picked up his possibles sack. Something wasn’t right. The Diamond had doubled in weight – either that or the buffalo-skin pouch had soaked up a gallon of water. He wanted to take the Diamond out and examine it, but he couldn’t risk implicating her. He’d decided to ask her if she’d mind waiting for him in the car while he attended to some necessarily private business, when the moon vanished and the rain stopped.

Jenny had thrown the wet comforter over them both. She put her hand on his chest, right over his heart, a fingertip barely brushing his nipple, and whispered, ‘Let’s pretend we’re a double ghost, two spirits who have become each other – not become
one
, you understand, but two who have created a meeting point through which their forces join.’

Daniel slipped his arm around her waist and held her closer. He asked softly, ‘You want to play for pretendsies or for keeps?’

Jenny murmured, ‘You don’t know how happy it makes me to hear you say that. But Daniel, look at us: naked lovers whispering sweet nothings under a soaked silk blanket in scrub-sage, having met an hour ago under false identities and true hearts. We’re fools, Daniel, fools trying to perfect their foolishness. We’d be unfaithful to ourselves if we didn’t imagine something for our double ghost to do.’

‘I love the way you talk.’ Daniel nuzzled her wet hair.

‘So what should we pretend?’

‘Whatever your heart desires,’ Daniel whispered.

‘
No
,’ she said, so sharply Daniel pulled away. ‘We have to imagine it together. That’s the fun of it, the importance.’

Daniel understood exactly what she meant, understood how the solitary imagination could not imagine itself. Maybe that was what Volta had been trying to tell him.

‘Let’s pretend,’ Daniel said, ‘that our double ghost has been temporarily blinded by pleasure. Without looking, it must find a red Porsche with Jenny and Daniel’s imaginary daughter asleep in the back. They have to rely solely on their other four senses, their instincts, and their joined imaginations.’

Jenny said, ‘And if they find the car and daughter, their joined ghosts will separate into their seats, but they’ll remain naked, driving the lonely road as outlaw Lovers of Fortune until the moon sets. They’ll only talk to each other if it’s necessary to keep the junction open. Otherwise, they’ll be silent, trying only to imagine each other and what the morning might bring.’