The Up-Down (3 page)

 

 

10

Once he was in Wyoming, Pace avoided cities, such as Laramie, and tourist meccas like Jackson Hole. He wound his way along two-lane roads and stopped in a mountain town malignantly named, old Hollywood western-style, Dead Indian. Pace parked his pick-up in front of a bar called Frank's X, and went inside.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon. Two men wearing brown Stetsons were seated on stools at the bar and four men wearing brown Stetsons sat singly at four tables. There was one bartender, hatless, with a long ponytail and Fu Man Chu mustache, wearing a gray T-shirt with the words
TRY AGAIN LATER
printed on the front of it. Pace sat down on a stool at the bar.
Above the shelves of bottles opposite him was a large, framed black and white photograph of a nude woman lying on a white fur-covered couch with a black dog, its tongue hanging out, sitting up near her feet, staring at the camera.

“Go ahead, ask me,” the bartender said to Pace. “Everybody comes in here the first time does.”

“Who is she?” Pace asked.

“Frank's ex-wife.”

“Frank own this bar?”

“Used to. After the divorce, she shot and killed him.”

“Why after the divorce?”

“Everything Frank had he put in his mother's name before so Malaysia couldn't take it.”

“What happened to Malaysia?”

“Split after she shot Frank. Word is she's in Cambodia, married to a general in the Cambodian army. Cambodia don't have an extradition treaty with the United States. Don't expect Malaysia coming back any time soon, especially to Dead Indian. What'll it be?”

“Beer. Anything Mexican, if you have it.”

The bartender put a bottle of Negra Modelo on the bar, opened it and placed a glass next to it. Pace laid down a five dollar bill. The bartender picked it up and turned around to work the cash register. Written on the back of his T-shirt were the words
ON SECOND THOUGHT, DON'T
.

The bartender turned back around and put down three singles. One of the Stetsons who'd been sitting at a table went over to the jukebox and dropped in a few coins, all of which clattered into the change receptacle. Skeeter Davis began singing “Am I That Easy To Forget?”

“I haven't seen an old Rock-ola like that for a while,” Pace said.

“Frank's. He rigged it so it don't cost anything to play the records. Just gotta put in the silver, take it back. All the 45s were Frank's, too. Most pretty wore out now.”

“Frank's mother owns the bar, I assume.”

“That's what sent Malaysia over the top. She figured on gettin' the place and when she found out Frank's mother owned it, Malaysia grabbed his Colt Python and ended any debate before it could begin.”

Pace drank his Negra Modelo straight from the bottle.

“You lookin' to buy property? Plenty available.”

“No, I'm just passin' through.”

“We don't get many passers through, Dead Indian bein' somewhere off the beaten track.”

“I'm surprised the politically correct committee haven't tried to make you change the town's name. Or have they?”

“This is Wyoming, mister.”

“I've heard that line before, in a movie, only with a different name. By the way, mine's Pace Ripley.”

“Big Douglas.”

They shook hands.

“Big?”

“Yeah. My brother and I are fraternal twins. I'm the bigger one.”

“Don't tell me your brother's called Little.”

Big grinned. “Shorty,” he said.

Pace smiled and nodded.

“What was the movie?” asked Big. “The one with the different name?”

“This is Ames, mister,” said Pace. “
The Hustler
, with Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson. Only straight pool played there.”

“Only sight worth stoppin' to see around here is an unusual rock formation on the side of a mountain looks like two arrows pointin' in opposite directions. Most people call it Two Way but the Shoshone name for it is the Up-Down.”

“How do I get there?” asked Pace.

Big told him and Pace left without touching the three singles on the bar.

It took him almost an hour on a rock-strewn, unpaved road to get to the Up-Down. As soon as he saw it, Pace stopped, got out of the truck and hiked along a narrow path to the edge of the mountain in order to view the formation more closely. On the side was a tall rock shaped like an arrow on the top that pointed to the sky; appended to it was another rock, also with an arrow-shaped formation at the tip, pointing down. On the right-side ledge of the south pointing arrow was an eagle's nest in which Pace could see the downy heads of two baby bald eagles. He'd never before seen eagles in the wild, so he lay flat and hung over the precipice as far as he could to take a better look.

Just then Pace heard a loud noise that sounded like “frap, frap,” followed by an eardrum-piercing screech. He turned and saw an enormous bald eagle, its talons extended and poised to rip into his flesh, descending upon him. As Pace fell, he remembered what it was that he could not at Dr. Furbo's. In Jack London's novel,
Martin Eden
, when Martin is drowning, London wrote, “At the instant he knew, he ceased to know.” Before hitting the ground, Pace knew he had reached the very end and that there would be no explanation for anything.

 

 

 

Part Two

 

 

1

Pace did not die. After he fell from the ledge, he suffered a severe head injury on impact with the outcropping below, on which he landed and broke both legs. He was found, unconscious, by a pair of hikers, a man and a woman, whose names he never learned and whom he never met. They managed to get him to a hospital and departed. All he was able to learn later, from a nurse who attended him in the emergency room, was that the couple was apparently from Iceland and that the man bore a startling resemblance to the actor Robert Ryan.

Pace eventually made his way to Bay St. Clement, North Carolina, where he took up residence in a cottage on Dalceda Delahoussaye's property, which, of course, he had in turn inherited from his mother, Lula. The main house was rented to a young couple, a high school history teacher and his wife, who worked as a landscape architect. For several weeks after Pace arrived, he was burdened by casts on both legs and was frequently bothered by dizzy spells most likely caused by a concussion. The young woman was of great help to Pace during this period of his recovery, making sure that his basic needs were met, that he ate properly and was as comfortable as possible.

Pace slept often in these weeks and had difficulty determining the difference between dream and reality. After two months, when his mental faculties had returned nearly to normal and he had come to a full understanding of what happened to him, Pace realized that he was most satisfied while in a dream state, abetted as that was by extensive use of pain-killers and barbiturates, from which the doctor who treated him was at this point in Pace's recovery attempting to wean him. Dr. Dacoit had been Dalceda Delahoussaye's physician for the last twenty-two years of her life and had also tended to Pace's mother upon occasion. Though now almost eighty-five years old, Dr. Dacoit was still in possession of his faculties and was the only doctor remaining in Bay St. Clement who made house calls.

“I been meanin' to ask you,” Pace said to the doctor one afternoon when he was checking in on Pace's progress, “where your name comes from. I never ran into it before.”

“Dacoit is actually a Hindu name, son,” said the doctor. “My grandfather, Kapoor, was born in Calcutta and was taken to America before the age of two by an uncle and aunt, who established a dry goods business in Baltimore. Kapoor's father, my great-grandfather, was apparently a member of a murderous gang of thieves. He was himself killed and his wife abducted by a rival band of criminals. She was supposedly sold into sexual slavery and ended up in a cage on the docks of Bombay. Kapoor was taken in by one of her brothers and his wife. The name Dacoit came to be associated with the outlaw band in India and Burma. There are many people who believe this gang is still in operation in the present day, much as the mafia in Sicily and America continue their underworld activities unabated. The word ‘dacoity' is commonly used in India to describe a robbery.”

“That's very interesting, doctor. You ever consider changing it?”

Dr. Dacoit laughed. He had black smudges under both eyes, a large, hawk-like nose, and a full head of wiry white hair. Though an octogenarian, he did not wear eyeglasses either for reading or distance.

“No, why should I have?” he said. “The word dacoit means nothing in this country, and I've never gone to India or Burma. I would like to have but I never got around to it and now I am too old to travel that far and to deal with the everyday difficulties of life in such a confusing place.”

“When can I get these casts off?”

“Next week, I think, Mr. Ripley. How frequent are your headaches now?”

“I usually get them in the late afternoon, but they aren't as bad as before.”

“Good, good. I'll renew your prescription for the headaches, but I believe we'll see if you can sleep comfortably without the barbiturates. If you have any problems with that, of course, call me.”

“Okay, Dr. Dacoit, I will.”

“See you in a week, then.”

“Oh, doctor?”

“Yes?”

“What's your first name?”

“Hoyt. Named after a knuckleball pitcher on the Baltimore Orioles.”

“Just curious. Thanks.”

After Dr. Dacoit left, Pace thought about the randomness of events, how strange that this good and dedicated doctor bore the name of an organization of murderous thugs from another continent. Not very much made sense to Pace these days. His head began to spin and he closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He could not control his dreams any better than he could control the circumstances of his waking life, but he had no desire to try to manipulate his dreams. At least in them, he believed, the unpredictability could do him no harm.

 

 

 

2

Pace recalled the title of the chapter in Herman Melville's
The Confidence Man
he had read prior to leaving Dr. Furbo's house in Wisconsin: “Towards the End of Which the Herb-Doctor Proves Himself a Forgiver of Injuries.” It was up to Pace to forgive himself for his foolishness in Shoshone country that resulted in his near fatal accident. Once he regained the use of his legs he began taking hikes in the nearby woods. The section he liked best was down near a tributary of the Cottonmouth River. Unfortunately, these woods were heavily tick-infested and home to a variety of vipers, several of which were venomous. Having grown up in New Orleans, Pace was largely ignorant of the geography of North Carolina. As a boy he had visited the Delahoussayes a couple or three times with Lula, usually on those occasions when staying with his grandmother, Marietta, but he had never really explored the surrounding territory. His father, Sailor Ripley, a native of North Carolina, once he had established himself in N.O., never expressed the slightest interest thereafter in returning to the state in which he had been raised and for one year imprisoned for manslaughter. Sailor had later done time in Texas, too, for armed robbery, causing him to miss several of Pace's formative years, and had no desire to ever revisit the Lone Star state, either. The remainder of his lifetime had been incarceration-free, and he and Lula enjoyed what most people who knew them considered a marriage of mutual devotion, certainly the closest thing to true love Pace had ever witnessed.

Pace had once read in a book about a group of hired guns who operated on the plains of northeastern Brazil in the 1920s and '30s, mainly in the states of Mina Gerais and Bahía, whose affiliations with the various landowners for whom they worked lasted until they felt they had “lost their understanding.” When this circumstance became unavoidably evident and bothersome to them, this bunch of
jagun
ç
os
would announce their condition to the boss and state their intention to move on and find another situation. It never had to do with money, only with their degree of comfort. They made no attempt to further explain their feelings; once their “understanding” was “lost,” the resulting action was not subject to debate. The men were mercenaries who always did their best for whomever hired them, their work was never faulted and their loyalty during their period of employment could not be questioned. When it was time to go, they went, without argument.

To be without argument was the way Pace desired to live out the rest of his life. He had no intention of remarrying; his occasional spells of loneliness were more than compensated for by a general sense of tranquility. Pace decided during his first days and weeks of confinement to write about his parents; Sailor and Lula were truly the most interesting people he had ever met. To be wild at heart and never waver on the road to one's destiny was how everyone should live their life. Sailor and Lula had done that, despite several serious tests along the way. Yes, this is what Pace would do, not just as a tribute to his parents but as an inspiration for everyone else struggling along the road to salvation.

Pace dug out from his disorganized pile of belongings Dr. Furbo's book. He would write about Sailor and Lula on the empty pages of Furbo's
Guide
; an appropriate context, Pace thought. Perhaps it might even have been Dr. Furbo's intention for those in possession of a copy to fill in the blanks. He opened the book and wrote the first sentence: “Sailor and Lula lay on the bed in the Cape Fear Hotel listening to the ceiling fan creak.”

 

 

 

 

 

Part Three