The Constant Heart (24 page)

The landscape was dark now and the trees weren't anything but black shadows, a sort of insubstantial gloom. “Now doesn't that beat all? Isn't that amazing?” He looked around again, his arms held out in a gesture of amazed resignation. “So, Sara, are we in business or what?”

“Listen,” I said, “we don't want any trouble.”

“Now, you're one jump ahead of me on that one, bub. I hadn't even thought that far. Not really.” He turned back to Sara. “So, what's it going to be, the money, or something else? I got it all set up.”

“I don't know,” she said.

Sara licked her lips.

The man was silent. The stream seemed louder than before.

“Hey, you've got me all wrong. No one is more reasonable than me,” he said, looking around. Did we have a gun? Had we met any friends up here who hadn't been in the parking lot? Was there another way in? You could see him going through the possibilities. A cautious man.

“Is that right?” I said.

He switched out his headlamp, and we all stood in the dark, but soon the light from the fire let us see each other again, just reddish shapes, like creatures on Halloween. Red shapes against the darkness. The oily smoke from the exhaust of the machine made a cloud. No breeze.

“Just call me MD,” he said to me. He put out his hand and waited, extending it. Then he dropped it. “I'm a friend of Sara's. Maybe she's told you about me. But I bet she hasn't told you everything, has she?”

“Look,” said my father. “We just came to go fishing.”

“Of course you did, of course you did,” said MD. “How's it been?”

Two men walked from below, about fifty yards away, and they had flashlights, which they swung back and forth the way a blind man uses a cane.

“We caught a couple of fish,” said my father.

“How big?”

“Pretty good size,” said my father.

“Where did you catch 'em?” said the man.

“They're all over,” said my father. “Anywhere will do.”

“That's what I heard,” said MD.

Down below, someone shouted.

“Up here,” said MD. “Right over here. Got a fire going and everything. Sara's here, too.”

The two blond men, the partial twins, came out of the dark now, both with enormous packs. Both wore checked shirts, boots that squeaked, but only one breathed hard. The flashlights made their acne scars look deep, as though something had drilled into their skin. Their eyes had dots of orange from the coals in the fire.

“Where are we going to camp?” said one of the blond men.

“Right over there,” said MD. “Right next to Sara.”

He pointed to a flat place about twenty yards away.

“Can't do better than that,” he said.

“All right,” said the man who was breathing hard.

“The funny thing, Sara,” said MD. “No matter which way we think about it, we've got that money problem.”

“Yeah,” said Sara.

“How much are we talking about?” said my father.

“That's between Sara and me,” said MD.

“Forty thousand dollars,” said Sara.

“That's one way of figuring it,” said MD. “But we have to think of it another way, don't we? Jesus, but it's a beautiful night. Little cold. This here . . . ” He pointed to the man who was breathing hard. “This is Bo. Not real talkative. The other one here is Scott. Just Scott. I call them the Blondies.”

“I told you about that,” said Scott.

“OK, OK,” said MD. “Just having a little fun. You like fun, don't you, Sara?”

Scott and Bo stood there, looking at the ground or staring off into the darkness.

“Well, we've got work to do,” said MD. “Jesus, but it's a long way up here.”

He looked at Sara again.

“You can't be sentimental, see?” he said.

“No,” said Sara.

“Well, there we are. Almost done. The first agreement.”

He moved the all-terrain vehicle over to their site, and with the engine running so they could keep the light on they put up a big tent, their voices swearing through the fabric of it, and since they had a lantern all of them appeared like unknown creatures who cast shadows on a sheet put up for a screen.

They unloaded their beer cooler, turned off the light, and
sat there in front of the tent. Bo reached into their cooler and rustled around in the ice for a cold one. The can made a
pffffft
when he opened it. Then the others got one, too, and it was almost like a song or a jingle for a commercial.
Pffffft
.
Pffffft-pffffft.

We sat by the fire. Or what was left of it. One of them threw a beer can into the dark, where it clinked against the cobbles at the side of the stream. Sara tossed another couple of twigs on the fire and they flared up, but the flames just showed her face.

“Can I sleep in your tent?” she said.

“Of course,” said my father.

Sara swallowed. The men across the way got out their boom box and put in a disc.

“Have you got a gun?” said Sara.

“I thought we agreed it wouldn't do any good,” I said.

“Yeah, well, that was sort of abstract,” said Sara. “Maybe I'm changing my mind now that we're here.”

“Now what in the hell would we want with a gun?” said my father. “We don't need a gun. That would be the worst thing in the world.”

“Bo has one,” said Sara. “On his belt.”

“That's his problem,” said my father.

“Uh-huh,” said Sara. “OK.”

“Come on,” I said. “Let's try to sleep.”

“I have to pee first,” she said.

So we went downstream a little and I stood there in the dark, by the water, which was ruffled darkness, but streaked with starlight. A little mist had already started coming off it,
just shreds of vapor. Sara came out of the dark and said, “OK.” She tucked her shirt in. We dug a little hole and put her two pieces of Kleenex in it.

Inside the tent, which was a good fit for two but a little small for three, we lay in the dark, although every now and then one of the men from across the way shined a flashlight in our direction and the beam made a circle of light, about as big as a plate, on the material of the tent. The yellow disk swung one way and another, the erratic motion of it suggesting malice itself. I tried to imagine some of those pictures from work, the golden centers of nebulae where stars were forming. Sara turned over and said, “Well, you want to hear how I got my black eye?”

“Yes,” said my father. “I guess we better hear. How did it happen?”

“Bo and Scott started hanging around my apartment. Or they were there when I got home from work, just at dusk at this time of the year. People don't want to buy a car when it's getting dark. Depresses them. It's better to come home, have dinner, and then go back in the dark. At my apartment, you know, there's the pool, although I wouldn't swim in it if you paid me. Some kids once tried to fill it up with packages of Jell-O and get it to set. The water is sort of clumpy still, like some kind of alligator egg sack or something. And skunks and a porcupine drowned in it. The landlord said he put some disinfectant in it but he just poured in a couple of jugs of antifreeze, so the pool is sort of green, too. Anyway, those two, Bo and Scott, started hanging around. At first I went right by them, and you could see this set them back. Like they didn't
know what to do. They had to ask MD by cell phone. They thought I'd just come right up and ask them what they wanted.

“So, they were there the next day, although this time when I went by them, Bo, the one who thinks he's all muscle, takes my arm. Do you know how many times someone tries that stunt at the dealership or in a bar? I stomp on his ankle. He lets go. I open my door and go inside.

“Then they knock. I tell them to go away.

“‘We've got to talk,' they say. ‘It's business.'

“‘You want to buy a car? Come to the dealership.'

“‘It isn't about a car.'

“I opened the door and shut it behind me. I had my bag with me and I thought I'd go to the dealership. It was dark now. We stopped right next to that greenish pool. It has a light on a timer and it came on so everything looked like the color of one of those emergency flares, the green ones. Bo leans forward and tells me what the deal is. It takes him a couple of minutes because he has to repeat himself, and then I look at one of them and then the other. I ask them if they want to hear what I think of their idea.

“They say, ‘Sure, sure.'”

“What did you say?” I asked.

“There are words I bet you think I don't know,” said Sara.

“I doubt it,” I said.

“Now, there's faith in me for you,” said Sara. “Well, I suggested a couple of things they could do to each other.”

Some parts of their anatomy came to mind, and I considered one and then another.

“Then,” said Sara. “Bo uses his elbow on me. You know, I
thought of you, Jake, because I really did see some stars. Like sparklers. Then Bo asked if I still felt the same way after that, after his elbow, hadn't it changed my mind? I put my hand in the middle of his chest and pushed him into the pool. Scott got on his cell phone to MD. I went to the dealership and sold a Forester.”

“What did they want?” I said.

“See, I thought I was doing some good by giving away what that man needed for his daughter. Nadia, that was her name. So why should there be such a price for that?”

Sara was at the bottom, by our feet, and she moved in her sleeping bag, the slickness of the rayon shell of hers slipping against mine and making a hissing noise.

“It's too bad neither one of you is a lawyer,” she said.

“I have a drink with a lawyer from time to time. Bankruptcy is what he does,” I said.

“I don't think he's what I'm looking for,” said Sara.

Outside someone fell in the dark, going down with a hard thump.

MD said, “My god, you are a clumsy bastard.”

My father moved a little in his sleeping bag.

“Have you ever been in a situation where you knew what the right thing was, but you don't do it right away?” said Sara. “You just delay a little. That's all it takes. Bingo. You're in trouble. It seems like it's not only enough to want to do the right thing, you've got to be able to do it fast, too. You've got to be alert. Otherwise things just get going.”

“Uh-huh,” said my father. “The trick is to know when to do it.”

“No kidding,” she said. “I should have told that doctor in the McDonald's in Juarez that it was a cash deal.”

“Then what about Nadia?” I said. “She'd be dead.”

“That's the way it has always been with me. Damned if I do and damned if I don't.” She squirmed and made that hiss where the rayon bags rubbed together. “So, do you think they'll follow us?”

“Yes,” said my father.

“So what are we banking on?” said Sara.

“That they'll get lost. Or tired. I used to be able to keep up a pretty good pace,” said my father.

“We've got a lot of drugs,” I said.

“I can keep going,” said my father. “I think there's a chance of that.”

“MD works out,” said Sara. “He says he can bench-press three hundred pounds.”

“No kidding,” said my father. “But what's three hundred pounds against that?”

He rolled his shoulder toward the darkness ahead, the wall of dark trees, the movement we could barely hear.

“He's stubborn,” said Sara.

Outside, a beer can landed against a rock. Then after a while the river made that noise. And a couple of other sounds you hear in the dark, some animal moving around, maybe, or the wind, just the woods at night, an owl, little creaks and chirps, the sense of waiting, as though darkness were only a variety of patience.

“I liked it better when they were moving around,” she said.

“At least that way you know where they are.”

“They've gone to sleep,” I said.

“I don't know,” she said. She sat up and turned to us. “All I wanted to do was the right thing. To make up for things. Don't
you see? That was the bottom, or so I thought. Right then I thought, I'm going to do something right.”

My father rustled in his sleeping bag. By the pressure of his leg I could tell he wasn't sure about how long he could keep going.

“It always comes at a price,” said my father.

“You're telling me?” said Sara.

“No,” said my father. “I guess I'm just agreeing.”

“It goes someplace you didn't anticipate,” said Sara.

“Have you got one of those other pills,” said my father. “The hydromorphone. That works pretty well, they say, with the fentanyl. Alternate them every four hours.”

“Sure,” I said. “I've got my watch.”

“We want to stay ahead of it,” said my father. “But I don't want to get hazy.”

His forehead was shiny, even in the dim light that came through the fabric from the last of the fire.

“But that's not the worst,” said Sara.

“What's the worst?” said my father.

“I guess we better know,” I said.

“I don't want to say,” said Sara. The sleeping bag hissed. “But MD wants me to get a job dancing at the Palm. You know, that place where they have nude dancers. That's what they were asking me to do when we talked by the swimming pool.”

“There's not that much money in it,” I said. “Or at least I don't think there is.”