"Some people have the gift, some don't."
"The gift? I thought repression was outdated. They've been telling us for years not to repress our fears and desires. Repression causes tension, anxiety, unhappiness, a hundred diseases and conditions. I thought the last thing we were supposed to do was repress something. They've been telling us to talk about our fears, get in touch with our feelings."
"Getting in touch with death is not what they had in mind. Death is so strong that we have to repress, those of us who know how."
"But repression is totally false and mechanical. Everybody knows that. We're not supposed to deny our nature."
"It's natural to deny our nature, according to Murray. It's the whole point of being different from animals."
"But that's crazy."
"It's the only way to survive," I said from her breasts.
She stroked my shoulder, thinking about this. Cray flashes of a staticky man standing near a double bed. His body distorted, rippling, unfinished. I didn't have to imagine his motel companion. Our bodies were one surface, hers and mine, but the delectations of touch were preempted by Mr. Gray. It was his pleasure I experienced, his hold over Babette, his cheap and sleazy power. Down the hall an eager voice said: "If you keep misplacing your ball of string, cage it in a Barney basket, attach some organizer clips to your kitchen corkboard, fasten the basket to the clips. Simple!"
The next day I started carrying the Zumwalt automatic to school. It was in the flap pocket of my jacket when I lectured, it was in the top drawer of my desk when I received visitors in the office. The gun created a second reality for me to inhabit. The air was bright, swirling around my head. Nameless feelings pressed thrillingly on my chest. It was a reality I could control, secretly dominate.
How stupid these people were, coming into my office unarmed.
Late one afternoon I took the gun out of my desk and examined it carefully. Only three bullets remained in the magazine. I wondered how Vernon Dickey had used the missing ammo （or whatever bullets are called by people familiar with firearms）. Four Dylar tablets, three Zumwalt bullets. Why was I surprised to find that the bullets were so unmistakably bullet-shaped? I guess I thought new names and shapes had been given to just about everything in the decades since I first became aware of objects and their functions. The weapon was gun-shaped, the little pointed projectiles reassuringly bullet-shaped. They were like childhood things you might come across after forty years, seeing their genius for the first time.
That evening I heard Heinrich in his room, moodily singing "The Streets of Laredo." I stopped in to ask whether Orest had entered the cage yet.
"They said it was not humane. There was no place that would let him do it officially. He had to go underground."
"Where is underground?"
"Watertown. Orest and his trainer. They found a public notary there who said he would certify a document that said that Orest Mercator spent so many days incarcerated with these venomous reptiles blah blah blah."
"Where would they find a large glass cage in Watertown?"
"They wouldn't."
"What would they find?"
"A room in the only hotel. Plus there were only three snakes. And he got bit in four minutes."
"You mean the hotel let them place poisonous snakes in the room?"
"The hotel didn't know. The man who arranged the snakes carried them up in an airline bag. It was a whole massive deception except the man showed up with three snakes instead of the agreed twenty-seven."
"In other words he told them he had access to twenty-seven snakes."
"Venomous. Except they weren't. So Orest got bit for nothing. The jerk."
"Suddenly he's a jerk."
'They had all this antivenom which they couldn't even use. The first four minutes."
"How does he feel?"
"How would you feel if you were a jerk?"
"Glad to be alive," I said.
"Not Orest. He dropped out of sight. He went into complete seclusion. Nobody's seen him since it happened. He doesn't answer the door, he doesn't answer the phone, he doesn't show up at school. The total package."
I decided to wander over to my office and glance at some final exams. Most of the students had already departed, eager to begin the routine hedonism of another bare-limbed summer. The campus was dark and empty. There was a trembling mist. Passing a line of trees, I thought I sensed someone edge in behind me, maybe thirty yards away. When I looked, the path was clear. Was it the gun that was making me jumpy? Does a gun draw violence to it, attract other guns to its surrounding field of force? I walked on quickly toward Centenary Hall. I heard footsteps on gravel, a conspicuous crunch. Someone was out there, on the edge of the parking area, in the trees and the mist. If I had a gun, why was I scared? If I was scared, why didn't I run? I counted off five paces, looked quickly left, saw a figure moving parallel to the path, in and out of deep shadow. I broke into a shambling trot, my gun hand in my pocket, clutching the automatic. When I looked again, he wasn't there. I slowed down warily, crossed a broad lawn, heard running, the meter of bounding feet. He was coming from the right this time, all-out, closing fast. I broke into a weaving run, hoping I'd make an elusive target for someone firing at my back. I'd never run in a weave before. I kept my head down, swerved sharply and unpredictably. It was an interesting way to run. I was surprised at the range of possibilities, the number of combinations I could put together within a framework of left and right swerves. I did a tight left, widened it, cut sharply right, faked left, went left, went wide right. About twenty yards from the end of the open area, I broke off the weave pattern and ran as fast and straight as I could for a red oak. I stuck out my left arm, went skidding around the tree in a headlong cranking countermotion, simultaneously using my right hand to pluck the Zumwalt from my jacket pocket, so that I now faced the person I'd been fleeing, protected by a tree trunk, my gun at the ready.
This was about as deft a thing as I'd ever done. I looked into the heavy mist as my attacker approached in little thudding footfalls. When I saw the familiar odd loping stride, I put the gun back in my pocket. It was Winnie Richards, of course.
"Hi, Jack. At first I didn't know who it was, so I used evasive tactics. When I realized it was you, I said to myself that's just the person I want to see."
"How come?"
"Remember that time you asked me about a secret research group? Working on fear of death? Trying to perfect a medication?"
"Sure—Dylar."
"There was a journal lying around the office yesterday. American Psychobiologist. Curious story in there. Such a group definitely existed. Supported by a multinational giant. Operating in the deepest secrecy in an unmarked building just outside Iron City."
"Why deepest secrecy?"
"It's obvious. To prevent espionage by competitive giants. The point is they came very close to achieving their objective."
"What happened?"
"A lot of things. The resident organizational genius, one of the forces behind the whole project, was a fellow named Willie Mink. He turns out to be a controversial fellow. He does some very, very controversial things."
"I'll bet I know the first thing he does. He runs an ad in a gossip tabloid asking for volunteers for a hazardous experiment. FEAR OF DEATH, it says."
"Very good, Jack. A little ad in some rinky-dink newspaper. He interviews the respondents in a motel room, testing them for emotional integration and about a dozen other things in an attempt to work up a death profile for each person. Interviews in a motel. When the scientists and the lawyers find out about this, they go slightly berserk, they reprimand Mink, they put all their resources into computer testing. Berserk official reaction." "But that's not the end of it."
"How right you are. Despite the fact that Mink is now a carefully observed person, one of the volunteers manages to slip through the screen of watchfulness and begins a program of more or less unsupervised human experimentation, using a drug that is totally unknown, untested and unapproved, with side effects that could beach a whale. Ah unsupervised well-built human."
"Female," I said.
"Very correct. She periodically reports to Mink in the very motel where he originally did his interviewing, sometimes arriving in a taxi, sometimes on foot from the shabby and depressing bus terminal. What is she wearing, Jack?"
"I don't know."
"A ski mask. She is the woman in the ski mask. When the others find out about Mink's latest caper, there is a period of prolonged controversy, animosity, litigation and disgrace. Pharmaceutical giants have their code of ethics, just like you and me. The project manager is kicked out, the project goes on without him."
"Did the article say what happened to him?"
"The reporter tracked him down. He is living in the same motel where all the controversy took place."
"Where is the motel?"
"In Germantown."
"Where's that?" I said.
"Iron City. It's the old German section. Behind the foundry."
"I didn't know there was a section in Iron City called Germantown."
'The Germans are gone, of course."
I went straight home. Denise was making check marks in a paperback book called Directory of Toll-Free Numbers. I found Babette sitting by Wilder's bed, reading him a story.
"I don't mind running clothes as such," I said. "A sweatsuit is a practical thing to wear at times. But I wish you wouldn't wear it when you read bedtime stories to Wilder or braid Steffie's hair. There's something touching about such moments that is jeopardized by running clothes."
"Maybe I'm wearing running clothes for a reason." "Like what?"
"I'm going running," she said. "Is that a good idea? At night?"
"What is night? It happens seven times a week. Where is the uniqueness in this?" "It's dark, it's wet."
"Do we live in a blinding desert glare? What is wet? We live with wet."
"Babette doesn't speak like this."
"Does life have to stop because our half of the earth is dark? Is there something about the night that physically resists a runner? I need to pant and gasp. What is dark? It's just another name for light."
"No one will convince me that the person I know as Babette actually wants to run up the stadium steps at ten o'clock at night."
"It's not what I want, it's what I need. My life is no longer in the realm of want. I do what I have to do. I pant, I gasp. Every runner understands the need for this."
"Why do you have to run up steps? You're not a professional athlete trying to rebuild a shattered knee. Run on plain land. Don't make a major involvement out of it. Everything is a major involvement today."
"It's my life. I tend to be involved." "It's not your life. It's only exercise."
"A runner needs," she said.
"I also need and tonight I need the car. Don't wait up for me. Who knows when I'll be back."
I waited for her to ask what mysterious mission would require me to get in the car and drive through the rain-streaked night, time of return unknown.
She said, "I can't walk to the stadium, run up the steps five or six times and then walk all the way back home. You can drive me there, wait for me, drive me back. The car is then yours."
"I don't want it. What do you think of that? You want the car. you take it. The streets are slippery. You know what that means, don't you?"
"What does it mean?"
"Fasten your seat belt. There's also a chill in the air. You know what a chill in the air means."
"What does it mean?"
"Wear your ski mask," I told her.
The thermostat began to buzz.
I put on a jacket and went outside. Ever since the airborne toxic event, our neighbors, the Stovers, had been keeping their car in the driveway instead of the garage, keeping it facing the street, keeping the key in the ignition. I walked up the driveway and got in the car. There were trash caddies fixed to the dashboard and seat-backs, dangling plastic bags full of gum wrappers, ticket stubs, lipstick-smeared tissues, crumpled soda cans, crumpled circulars and receipts, ashtray debris, popsicle sticks and french fries, crumpled coupons and paper napkins, pocket combs with missing teeth. Thus familiarized, I started up the engine, turned on the lights and drove off.
I ran a red light when I crossed Middlebrook. Reaching the end of the expressway ramp, I did not yield. All the way to Iron City, I felt a sense of dreaminess, release, unreality. I slowed down at the toll gate but did not bother tossing a quarter into the basket. An alarm went off but no one pursued. What's another quarter to a state that is billions in debt? What's twenty-five cents when we are talking about a nine-thousand-dollar stolen car? This must be how people escape the pull of the earth, the gravitational leaf-flutter that brings us hourly closer to dying. Simply stop obeying. Steal instead of buy, shoot instead of talk. I ran two more lights on the rainy approach roads to Iron City. The outlying buildings were long and low, fish and produce markets, meat terminals with old wooden canopies. I entered the city and turned on the radio, needing company not on the lonely highway but here on the cobbled streets, in the sodium vapor lights, where the emptiness clings. Every city has its districts. I drove past the abandoned car district, the uncollected garbage district, the sniper-fire district, the districts of smoldering sofas and broken glass. Ground glass crunched under the tires. I headed toward the foundry.
Random Access Memory, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, Mutual Assured Destruction.
I still felt extraordinarily light—lighter than air, colorless, odorless, invisible. But around the lightness and dreaminess, something else was building, an emotion of a different order. A surge, a will, an agitation of the passions. I reached into my pocket, rubbed my knuckles across the grainy stainless steel of the Zumwalt barrel. The man on the radio said: "Void where prohibited."
39
I drove twice around the foundry, looking for signs of some erstwhile German presence. I drove past the row houses. They were set on a steep hill, narrow-fronted frame houses, a climbing line of pitched roofs. I drove past the bus terminal, through the beating rain. It took a while to find the motel, a one-story building set against the concrete pier of an elevated roadway. It was called the Roadway Motel.
Transient pleasures, drastic measures.
The area was deserted, a spray-painted district of warehouses and light industry. The motel had nine or ten rooms, all dark, no cars out front. I drove past three times, studying the scene, and parked half a block away, in the rubble under the roadway. Then I walked back to the motel. Those were the first three elements in my plan.
Here is my plan. Drive past the scene several times, park some distance from the scene, go back on foot, locate Mr. Gray under his real name or an alias, shoot him three times in the viscera for maximum pain, clear the weapon of prints, place the weapon in the victim's staticky hand, find a crayon or lipstick tube and scrawl a cryptic suicide note on the full-length mirror, take the victim's supply of Dylar tablets, slip back to the car, proceed to the expressway entrance, head east toward Blacksmith, get off at the old river road, park Stover's car in Old Man Treadwell's garage, shut the garage door, walk home in the rain and the fog.
Elegant. My airy mood returned. I was advancing in consciousness. I watched myself take each separate step. With each separate step, I became aware of processes, components, things relating to other things. Water fell to earth in drops. I saw things new.
There was an aluminum awning over the office door. On the door itself were little plastic letters arranged in slots to spell out a message. The message was: NU MISH BOOT ZUP KO.
Gibberish but high-quality gibberish. I made my way along the wall, looking through the windows. My plan was this. Stand at the edges of windows with my back to the wall, swivel my head to look peripherally into rooms. Some windows were bare, some had blinds or dusty shades. I could make out the rough outlines of chairs or beds in the dark rooms. Trucks rumbled overhead. In the next to last unit, there was the scantest flicker of light. I stood at the edge of the window, listening. I swiveled my head, looked into the room out of the corner of my right eye. A figure sat in a low armchair looking up at the flickering light. I sensed I was part of a network of structures and channels. I knew the precise nature of events. I was moving closer to things in their actual state as I approached a violence, a smashing intensity. Water fell in drops, surfaces gleamed.
It occurred to me that I did not have to knock. The door would be open. I gripped the knob, eased the door open, slipped into the room. Stealth. It was easy. Everything would be easy. I stood inside the room, sensing things, noting the room tone, the dense air. Information rushed toward me, rushed slowly, incrementally. The figure was male, of course, and sat sprawled in the short-legged chair. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and Budweiser shorts. Plastic sandals dangled from his feet. The dumpy chair, the rumpled bed, the industrial carpet, the shabby dresser, the sad green walls and ceiling cracks. The TV floating in the air, in a metal brace, pointing down at him.
He spoke first, without taking his eyes from the flickering screen.
"Are you heartsick or soulsick?"
I stood against the door.
"You're Mink," I said.
In time he looked at me, looked at the large friendly figure with the slumped shoulders and forgettable face.
"What kind of name is Willie Mink?" I said.
"It's a first name and a last name. Same as anybody."
Did he speak with an accent? His face was odd, concave, forehead and chin jutting. He was watching TV without the sound.
"Some of these sure-footed bighorns have been equipped with radio transmitters," he said.
I could feel the pressure and density of things. So much was happening. I sensed molecules active in my brain, moving along neural pathways.
"You're here for some Dylar, of course."
"Of course. What else?"
"What else? Rid the fear."
"Rid the fear. Clear the grid."
"Clear the grid. That's why they come to me."
This was my plan. Enter unannounced, gain his confidence, wait for an unguarded moment, take out the Zumwalt, shoot him three times in the viscera for maximum slowness of agony, put the gun in his hand to suggest a lonely man's suicide, write semi-coherent things on the mirror, leave Stover's car in Treadwell's garage.
"By coming in here, you agree to a certain behavior," Mink said.
"What behavior?"
"Room behavior. The point of rooms is that they're inside. No one should go into a room unless he understands this. People behave one way in rooms, another way in streets, parks and airports. To enter a room is to agree to a certain kind of behavior. It follows that this would be the kind of behavior that takes place in rooms. This is the standard, as opposed to parking lots and beaches. It is the point of rooms. No one should enter a room not knowing the point. There is an unwritten agreement between the person who enters a room and the person whose room had been entered, as opposed to open-air theaters, outdoor pools. The purpose of a room derives from the special nature of a room. A room is inside. This is what people in rooms have to agree on, as differentiated from lawns, meadows, fields, orchards."
I agreed completely. It made perfect sense. What was I here for if not to define, fix in my sights, take aim at? I heard a noise, faint, monotonous, white.
"To begin your project sweater," he said, "first ask yourself what type sleeve will meet your needs."
His nose was flat, his skin the color of a Planter's peanut. What is the geography of a spoon-shaped face? Was he Melanesian, Polynesian, Indonesian, Nepalese, Surinamese, Dutch-Chinese? Was he a composite? How many people came here for Dylar? Where was Surinam? How was my plan progressing?
I studied the palm-studded print of his loose shirt, the Budweiser pattern repeated on the surface of his Bermuda shorts. The shorts were too big. The eyes were half closed. The hair was long and spiky-. He was sprawled in the attitude of a stranded air traveler, someone long since defeated by the stale waiting, the airport babble. I began to feel sorry for Babette. This had been her last hope for refuge and serenity, this weary pulse of a man, a common pusher now, spiky-haired, going mad in a dead motel.
Auditory scraps, tatters, whirling specks. A heightened reality. A denseness that was also a transparency. Surfaces gleamed. Water struck the roof in spherical masses, globules, splashing drams. Close to a violence, close to a death.
"The pet under stress may need a prescription diet," he said.
Of course he hadn't always been like this. He'd been a project manager, dynamic, hard-driving. Even now I could see in his face and eyes the faltering remains of an enterprising shrewdness and intelligence. He reached into his pocket, took a handful of white tablets, tossed them in the direction of his mouth. Some entered, some flew past. The saucer-shaped pills. The end of fear.
"Where are you from originally, if I can call you Willie?"
He lapsed into thought, trying to recall. I wanted to put him at ease, get him to talk about himself, about Dylar. Part and parcel of my plan. My plan was this. Swivel my head to look into rooms, put him at his ease, wait for an unguarded moment, blast him in the gut three times for maximum efficiency of pain, take his Dylar, get off at the river road, shut the garage door, walk home in the rain and the fog.
"I wasn't always as you see me now."
"That's exactly what I was thinking."
"I was doing important work. I envied myself. I was literally embarked. Death without fear is an everyday thing. You can live with it. I learned English watching American TV. I had American sex the first time in Port-O-San, Texas. Everything they said was true. I wish I could remember."
"You're saying there is no death as we know it without the element of fear. People would adjust to it, accept its inevitability."
"Dylar failed, reluctantly. But it will definitely come. Maybe now, maybe never. The heat from your hand will actually make the gold-leafing stick to the wax paper."
"There will eventually be an effective medication, you're saying. A remedy for fear."
"Followed by a greater death. More effective, productwise. This is what the scientists don't understand, scrubbing their smocks with Woolite. Not that I have anything personal against death from our vantage point high atop Metropolitan County Stadium."
"Are you saying death adapts? It eludes our attempts to reason with it?"
This was similar to something Murray had once said. Murray had also said, "Imagine the visceral jolt, watching your opponent bleed in the dust. He dies, you live."
Close to a death, close to the slam of metal projectiles on flesh, the visceral jolt. I watched Mink ingest more pills, throwing them at his face, sucking them like sweets, his eyes on the flickering screen. Waves, rays, coherent beams. I saw things new.
"Just between you and I," he said, "I eat this stuff like candy."
"I was just thinking that."
"How much do you want to buy?"
"How much do I need?"
"I see you as a heavyset white man about fifty. Does this describe your anguish? I see you as a person in a gray jacket and light brown pants. Tell me how correct I am. To convert Fahrenheit to Celsius, this is what you do."
There was a silence. Things began to glow. The dumpy chair, the shabby dresser, the rumpled bed. The bed was equipped with casters. I thought, This is the grayish figure of my torment, the man who took my wife. Did she wheel him around the room as he sat on the bed popping pills? Did each lie prone along one side of the bed, reaching an arm down to paddle? Did they make the bed spin with their lovemaking, a froth of pillows and sheets above the small wheels on swivels? Look at him now, glowing in the dark, showing a senile grin.
"I barely forget the times I had in this room," he said, "before I became misplaced. There was a woman in a ski mask, which her name escapes me at the moment. American sex, let me tell you, this is how I learned my English."
The air was rich with extrasensory material. Nearer to death, nearer to second sight. A smashing intensity. I advanced two steps toward the middle of the room. My plan was elegant. Advance gradually, gain his confidence, take out the Zumwalt, fire three bullets at his midsection for maximum visceral agony, clear the weapon of prints, write suicidal cult messages on the mirrors and walls, take his supply of Dylar, slip back to the car, drive to the expressway entrance, head east toward Blacksmith, leave Stover's car in Treadwell's garage, walk home in the rain and the fog.
He gobbled more pills, flung others down the front of his Budweiser shorts. I advanced one step. There were cracked Dylar tablets all over the fire-retardant carpet. Trod upon, stomped. He tossed some tablets at the screen. The set had a walnut veneer with silvery hardware. The picture rolled badly.
"Now I am picking up my metallic gold tube," he said. "Using my palette knife and my odorless turp, I will thicken the paint on my palette."
I recalled Babette's remarks about the side effects of the medication. I said, as a test, "Falling plane."
He looked at me, gripping the arms of the chair, the first signs of panic building in his eyes.
"Plunging aircraft," I said, pronouncing the words crisply, authoritatively.
He kicked off his sandals, folded himself over into the recommended crash position, head well forward, hands clasped behind his knees. He performed the maneuver automatically, with a double-jointed collapsible dexterity, throwing himself into it, like a child or a mime. Interesting. The drug not only caused the user to confuse words with the things they referred to; it made him act in a somewhat stylized way. I watched him slumped there, trembling. This was my plan. Look peripherally into rooms, enter unannounced, reduce him to trembling, gut-shoot him maximally three times, get off at the river road, shut the garage door.
I took another step toward the middle of the room. As the TV picture jumped, wobbled, caught itself in snarls, Mink appeared to grow more vivid. The precise nature of events. Things in their actual state. Eventually he worked himself out of the deep fold, rising nicely, sharply outlined against the busy air. White noise everywhere.
"Containing iron, niacin and riboflavin. I learned my English in airplanes. It's the international language of aviation. Why are you here, white man?" "To buy."
"You are very white, you know that?" "It's because I'm dying." "This stuff fix you up." "I'll still die."
"But it won't matter, which comes to the same thing. Some of these playful dolphins have been equipped with radio transmitters. Their far-flung wanderings may tell us things."
I continued to advance in consciousness. Things glowed, a secret life rising out of them. Water struck the roof in elongated orbs, splashing drams. I knew for the first time what rain really was. I knew what wet was. I understood the neurochemistry of my brain, the meaning of dreams （the waste material of premonitions）. Great stuff everywhere, racing through the room, racing slowly. A richness, a density. I believed everything. I was a Buddhist, a Jain, a Duck River Baptist. My only sadness was Babette, having to kiss a scooped-out face.
"She wore the ski mask so as not to kiss my face, which she said was un-American. I told her a room is inside. Do not enter a room not agreeing to this. This is the point, as opposed to emerging coastlines, continental plates. Or you can eat natural grains, vegetables, eggs, no fish, no fruit. Or fruit, vegetables, animal proteins, no grains, no milk. Or lots of soybean milk for B-12 and lots of vegetables to regulate insulin release but no meat, no fish, no fruit. Or white meat but no red meat. Or B-12 but no eggs. Or eggs but no grains. There are endless workable combinations."
I was ready to kill him now. But I didn't want to compromise the plan. The plan was elaborate. Drive past the scene several times, approach the motel on foot, swivel my head to look peripherally into rooms, locate Mr. Gray under his real name, enter unannounced, gain his confidence, advance gradually, reduce him to trembling, wait for an unguarded moment, take out the .25-caliber Zumwalt automatic, fire three bullets into his viscera for maximum slowness, depth and intensity of pain, wipe the weapon clear of prints, place the weapon in the victim's hand to suggest the trite and predictable suicide of a motel recluse, smear crude words on the walls in the victim's own blood as evidence of his final cult-related frenzy, take his supply of Dylar, slip back to the car, take the expressway to Blacksmith, leave Stover's car in Treadwell's garage, shut the garage door, walk home in the rain and the fog.
I advanced into the area of flickering light, out of the shadows, seeking to loom. I put my hand in my pocket, gripped the firearm. Mink watched the screen. I said to him gently, "Hail of bullets." Keeping my hand in my pocket.
He hit the floor, began crawling toward the bathroom, looking back over his shoulder, childlike, miming, using principles of heightened design but showing real terror, brilliant cringing fear. I followed him into the toilet, passing the full-length mirror where he'd undoubtedly posed with Babette, his shaggy member dangling like a ruminant's.
"Fusillade," I whispered.
He tried to wriggle behind the bowl, both arms over his head, his legs tight together. I loomed in the doorway, conscious of looming, seeing myself from Mink's viewpoint, magnified, threatening. It was time to tell him who I was. This was part of my plan. My plan was this. Tell him who I am, let him know the reason for his slow and agonizing death. I revealed my name, explained my relationship with the woman in the ski mask.
He put his hands over his crotch, tried to fit himself under the toilet tank, behind the bowl. The intensity of the noise in the room was the same at all frequencies. Sound all around. I took out the Zumwalt. Great and nameless emotions thudded on my chest. I knew who 1 was in the network of meanings. Water fell to earth in drops, causing surfaces to gleam. I saw things new.
Mink took one hand from his crotch, grabbed more tablets from his pocket, hurled them toward his open mouth. His face appeared at the end of the white room, a white buzz, the inner surface of a sphere. He sat up, tearing open his shirt pocket to find more pills. His fear was beautiful. He said to me, "Did you ever wonder why, out of thirty-two teeth, these four cause so much trouble? I'll be back with the answer in a minute."
I fired the gun, the weapon, the pistol, the firearm, the automatic. The sound snowballed in the white room, adding on reflected waves. I watched blood squirt from the victim's midsection. A delicate arc. I marveled at the rich color, sensed the color-causing action of nonnucleated cells. The flow diminished to a trickle, spread across the tile floor. I saw beyond words. I knew what red was, saw it in terms of dominant wavelength, luminance, purity. Mink's pain was beautiful, intense.
I fired a second shot just to fire it, relive the experience, hear the sonic waves layering through the room, feel the jolt travel up my arm. The bullet struck him just inside the right hipbone. A claret stain appeared on his shorts and shirt. I paused to notice him. He sat wedged between the toilet bowl and wall, one sandal missing, eyes totally white. I tried to see myself from Mink's viewpoint. Looming, dominant, gaining life-power, storing up life-credit. But he was too far gone to have a viewpoint.
It was going well. I was pleased to see how well it was going. The trucks rumbled overhead. The shower curtain smelled of mildewed vinyl. A richness, a smashing intensity. I approached the sitting figure, careful not to step in blood, leave revealing prints. I took out my handkerchief, wiped the weapon clean, placed it in Mink's hand, cautiously removing the handkerchief, painstakingly wrapping his bony fingers, one by one, around the stock, delicately working his index finger through the trigger guard. He was foaming, a little, at the mouth. I stepped back to survey the remains of the shattering moment, the scene of squalid violence and lonely death at the shadowy fringes of society. This was my plan. Step back, regard the squalor, make sure things were correctly placed.
Mink's eyes dropped out of his skull. They gleamed, briefly. He raised his hand and pulled the trigger, shooting me in the wrist.
The world collapsed inward, all those vivid textures and connections buried in mounds of ordinary stuff. I was disappointed. Hurt, stunned and disappointed. What had happened to the higher plane of energy in which I'd carried out my scheme? The pain was searing. Blood covered my forearm, wrist and hand. I staggered back, moaning, watching blood drip from the tips of my fingers. I was. troubled and confused. Colored dots appeared at the edge of my field of vision. Familiar little dancing specks. The extra dimensions, the super perceptions, were reduced to visual clutter, a whirling miscellany, meaningless.
"And this could represent the leading edge of some warmer air," Mink said.
I looked at him. Alive. His lap a puddle of blood. With the restoration of the normal order of matter and sensation, I felt I was seeing him for the first time as a person. The old human muddles and quirks were set flowing again. Compassion, remorse, mercy. But before I could help Mink, I had to do some basic repair work on myself. Once again I took out my handkerchief, managed with my right hand and my teeth to tie it firmly just above the bullet hole in my left wrist, or between the wound and the heart. Then I sucked at the wound briefly, not knowing quite why, and spat out the resulting blood and pulp. The bullet had made a shallow penetration and deflected away. Using my good hand, I grabbed Mink by his bare foot and dragged him across the blood-dappled tile, the gun still clutched in his fist. There was something redemptive here. Dragging him foot-first across the tile, across the medicated carpet, through the door and into the night. Something large and grand and scenic. Is it better to commit evil and attempt to balance it with an exalted act than to live a resolutely neutral life? I know I felt virtuous, I felt blood-stained and stately, dragging the badly wounded man through the dark and empty street.
The rain had stopped. I was shocked at the amount of blood we were leaving behind. His, mainly. The sidewalk was striped. An interesting cultural deposit. He reached up feebly, dropped more Dylar down his throat. The gun hand dragged.
We reached the car. Mink kicked free, involuntarily, his body flopping and spinning, a little fishlike. He made spent and gasping noises, short of oxygen. I decided to attempt mouth-to-mouth. I leaned over him, used my thumb and index finger to clothes-pin his nose and then tried to work my face down into his. The awkwardness and grim intimacy of the act made it seem all the more dignified under the circumstances. All the larger, more generous. I kept trying to reach his mouth in order to breathe powerful gusts of air into his lungs. My lips were gathered, ready to funnel. His eyes followed me down. Perhaps he thought he was about to be kissed. I savored the irony.
His mouth was awash in regurgitated Dylar foam, half chewed tablets, flyspeck shards of polymer. I felt large and selfless, above resentment. This was the key to selflessness, or so it seemed to me as I knelt over the wounded man, exhaling rhythmically in the littered street beneath the roadway. Get past disgust. Forgive the foul body. Embrace it whole. After some minutes of this, I felt him come around, take regular breaths. I continued to hover just above him, our mouths almost touching.
"Who shot me?" he said.
"You did."
"Who shot you?"
"You did. The gun is in your hand."
"What was the point I was trying to make?"
"You were out of control. You weren't responsible. I forgive you."
"Who are you, literally?"
"A passerby. A friend. It doesn't matter."
"Some millipedes have eyes, some do not."
With much effort, many false starts, I got him into the back of the car, where he stretched out moaning. It was no longer possible to tell whether the blood on my hands and clothes was his or mine. My humanity soared. I started up the car. The pain in my arm was a throb, less fiery now. I drove one-handed through the empty streets, looking for a hospital. Iron City Lying-in. Mother of Mercy. Commiseration and Rapport. I would take whatever they had, even an emergency ward in the worst part of town. This is where we belonged, after all, with the multiple slash wounds, the entry and exit wounds, the blunt instrument wounds, the traumas, overdoses, acute deliriums. The only traffic was a milk van, a bakery van, some heavy trucks. The sky began to lighten. We came to a place with a neon cross over the entrance. It was a three-story building that might have been a Pentecostal church, a day-care center, world headquarters for some movement of regimented youth.
There was a wheelchair ramp, which meant I could drag Mink to the front door without banging his head on the concrete steps. I got him out of the car, clutched his sleek foot and moved up the ramp. He held one hand at his midsection to stanch the flow. The gun hand dragged behind. Dawn. There was a spaciousness to this moment, an epic pity and compassion. Having shot him, having led him to believe he'd shot himself, I felt I did honor to both of us, to all of us, by merging our fortunes, physically leading him to safety. I took long slow strides, pulling his weight. It hadn't occurred to me that a man's attempts to redeem himself might prolong the elation he felt when he committed the crime he now sought to make up for.
I rang the bell. In a matter of seconds, someone appeared at the door. An old woman, a nun, black-habited, black-veiled, leaning on a cane.
"We're shot," I said, lifting my wrist in the air.
"We see a lot of that here," she answered matter-of-factly, in an accented voice, turning to go back inside.
I dragged Mink across the entranceway. The place appeared to be a clinic. There were waiting rooms, screened cubicles, doors marked X-Ray, Eye Test. We followed the old nun to the trauma room. Two orderlies showed up, great squat men with sumo physiques. They lifted Mink onto a table and tore away his clothes in neat short practiced strokes.
"Inflated-adjusted real income," he said.
More nuns arrived, rustling, ancient, speaking German to each other. They carried transfusion equipment, wheeled in trays of glinting implements. The original nun approached Mink to remove the gun from his hand. I watched her toss it in a desk drawer that held about ten other handguns and half a dozen knives. There was a picture on the wall of Jack Kennedy holding hands with Pope John XXIII in heaven. Heaven was a partly cloudy place.
The doctor arrived, an elderly man in a shabby three-piece suit. He spoke German to the nuns and studied Mink's body, which was now partly clad in sheets.
"No one knows why the sea birds come to San Miguel," Willie said.
I was growing fond of him. The original nun took me into a cubicle to work on my wound. I started to give her a version of the shootings but she showed no interest. I told her it was an old gun with feeble bullets.
"Such a violent country."
"Have you been in Germantown long?" I said.
"We are the last of the Germans."
"Who lives here now, mostly?"
"Mostly no one," she said.
More nuns walked by, heavy rosaries swinging from their belts. I found them a merry sight, the kind of homogeneous presence that makes people smile at airports.
I asked my nun her name. Sister Hermann Marie. I told her I knew some German, trying to gain her favor, as I always did with medical personnel of any kind, at least in the early stages, before my fear and distrust overwhelmed any hope I might have had in maneuvering for advantage.
"Gut, besser, best," I said.
A smile appeared on her seamed face. I counted for her, pointed to objects and gave their names. She nodded happily, cleaning out the wound and wrapping the wrist in sterile pads. She said I would not need a splint and told me the doctor would write a prescription for antibiotics. We counted to ten together.
Two more nuns appeared, wizened and creaky. My nun said something to them and soon all four of us were charmingly engaged in a childlike dialogue. We did colors, items of clothing, parts of the body. I felt much more at ease in this German-speaking company than I had with the Hitler scholars. Is there something so innocent in the recitation of names that Cod is pleased?
Sister Hermann Marie applied finishing touches to the bullet wound. From my chair I had a clear view of the picture of Kennedy and the Pope in heaven. I had a sneaking admiration for the picture. It made me feel good, sentimentally refreshed. The President still vigorous after death. The Pope's homeliness a kind of radiance. Why shouldn't it be true? Why shouldn't they meet somewhere, advanced in time, against a layer of fluffy cumulus, to clasp hands? Why shouldn't we all meet, as in some epic of protean gods and ordinary people, aloft, well-formed, shining?
I said to my nun, "What does the Church say about heaven today? Is it still the old heaven, like that, in the sky?"
She turned to glance at the picture.
"Do you think we are stupid?" she said.
I was surprised by the force of her reply.
'Then what is heaven, according to the Church, if it isn't the abode of God and the angels and the souls of those who are saved?"
"Saved? What is saved? This is a dumb head, who would come in here to talk about angels. Show me an angel. Please. I want to see."
"But you're a nun. Nuns believe these things. When we see a nun, it cheers us up, it's cute and amusing, being reminded that someone still believes in angels, in saints, all the traditional things."
"You would have a head so dumb to believe this?"
"It's not what I believe that counts. It's what you believe."
"This is true," she said. "The nonbelievers need the believers. They are desperate to have someone believe. But show me a saint. Give me one hair from the body of a saint."
She leaned toward me, her stark face framed in the black veil. I began to worry.
"We are here to take care of sick and injured. Only this. You would talk about heaven, you must find another place."
"Other nuns wear dresses," I said reasonably. "Here you still wear the old uniform. The habit, the veil, the clunky shoes. You must believe in tradition. The old heaven and hell, the Latin mass. The Pope is infallible, God created the world in six days. The great old beliefs. Hell is burning lakes, winged demons."
"You would come in bleeding from the street and tell me six days it took to make a universe?"
"On the seventh He rested."
"You would talk of angels? Here?"
"Of course here. Where else?"
I was frustrated and puzzled, close to shouting.
"Why not armies that would fight in the sky at the end of the world?"
"Why not? Why are you a nun anyway? Why do you have that picture on the wall?"
She drew back, her eyes filled with contemptuous pleasure.
"It is for others. Not for us."
"But that's ridiculous. What others?"
"All the others. The others who spend their lives believing that we still believe. It is our task in the world to believe things no one else takes seriously. To abandon such beliefs completely, the human race would die. This is why we are here. A tiny minority. To embody old things, old beliefs. The devil, the angels, heaven, hell. If we did not pretend to believe these things, the world would collapse."
"Pretend?"
"Of course pretend. Do you think we are stupid? Get out from here."
"You don't believe in heaven? A nun?"
"If you don't, why should I?"
"If you did, maybe I would."
"If I did, you would not have to."
"All the old muddles and quirks," I said. "Faith, religion, life everlasting. The great old human gullibilities. Are you saying you don't take them seriously? Your dedication is a pretense?"
"Our pretense is a dedication. Someone must appear to believe. Our lives are no less serious than if we professed real faith, real belief. As belief shrinks from the world, people find it more necessary than ever that someone believe. Wild-eyed men in caves. Nuns in black. Monks who do not speak. We are left to believe. Fools, children. Those who have abandoned belief must still believe in us. They are sure that they are right not to believe but they know belief must not fade completely. Hell is when no one believes. There must always be believers. Fools, idiots, those who hear voices, those who speak in tongues. We are your lunatics. We surrender our lives to make your nonbelief possible. You are sure that you are right but you don't want everyone to think as you do. There is no truth without fools. We are your fools, your madwomen, rising at dawn to pray, lighting candles, asking statues for good health, long life."
"You've had long life. Maybe it works."
She rattled out a laugh, showing teeth so old they were nearly transparent.
"Soon no more. You will lose your believers."
"You've been praying for nothing all these years?"
"For the world, dumb head."
"And nothing survives? Death is the end?"
"Do you want to know what I believe or what I pretend to believe?"
"I don't want to hear this. This is terrible."
"But true."
"You're a nun. Act like one."
"We take vows. Poverty, chastity, obedience. Serious vows. A serious life. You could not survive without us."
"There must be some of you who aren't pretending, who truly believe. I know there are. Centuries of belief don't just peter out in a few years. There were whole fields of study devoted to these subjects. Angelology. A branch of theology just for angels. A science of angels. Great minds debated these things. There are great minds today. They still debate, they still believe."
"You would come in from the street dragging a body by the foot and talk about angels who live in the sky. Get out from here."
She said something in German. I failed to understand. She spoke again, at some length, pressing her face toward mine, the words growing harsher, wetter, more guttural. Her eyes showed a terrible delight in my incomprehension. She was spraying me with German. A storm of words. She grew more animated as the speech went on. A gleeful vehemence entered her voice. She spoke faster, more expressively. Blood vessels flared in her eyes and face. I began to detect a cadence, a measured beat. She was reciting something, I decided. Litanies, hymns, catechisms. The mysteries of the rosary perhaps. Taunting me with scornful prayer.
The odd thing is I found it beautiful.
When her voice grew weak, I left the cubicle and wandered around until I found the old doctor. "Herr Doktor," I called, feeling like someone in a movie. He activated his hearing aid. I got my prescription, asked if Willie Mink would be all right. He wouldn't, at least not for a while. But he wouldn't die either, which gave him the edge on me.
The drive home was uneventful. I left the car in Stover's driveway. The rear seat was covered with blood. There was blood on the steering wheel, more blood on the dashboard and door handles. The scientific study of the cultural behavior and development of man. Anthropology.
I went upstairs and watched the kids a while. All asleep, fumbling through their dreams, eyes rapidly moving beneath closed lids. I got into bed next to Babette, fully dressed except for my shoes, somehow knowing she wouldn't think it strange. But my mind kept racing, I couldn't sleep. After a while I went down to the kitchen to sit with a cup of coffee, feel the pain in my wrist, the heightened pulse.
There was nothing to do but wait for the next sunset, when the sky would ring like bronze.
40
This was the day Wilder got on his plastic tricycle, rode it around the block, turned right onto a dead end street and pedaled noisily to the dead end. He walked the tricycle around the guard rail and then rode along a paved walkway that went winding past some overgrown lots to a set of twenty concrete steps. The plastic wheels rumbled and screeched. Here our reconstruction yields to the awe-struck account of two elderly women watching from the second-story back porch of a tall house in the trees. He walked the tricycle down the steps, guiding it with a duteous and unsentimental hand, letting it bump right along, as if it were an odd-shaped little sibling, not necessarily cherished. He remounted, rode across the street, rode across the sidewalk, proceeded onto the grassy slope that bordered the expressway. Here the women began to call. Hey, hey, they said, a little tentative at first, not ready to accept the implications of the process unfolding before them. The boy pedaled diagonally down the slope, shrewdly reducing the angle of descent, then paused on the bottom to aim his three-wheeler at the point on the opposite side which seemed to represent the shortest distance across. Hey, sonny, no. Waving their arms, looking frantically for some able-bodied pedestrian to appear on the scene. Wilder, meanwhile, ignoring their cries or not hearing them in the serial whoosh of dashing hatchbacks and vans, began to pedal across the highway, mystically charged. The women could only look, empty-mouthed, each with an arm in the air, a plea for the scene to reverse, the boy to pedal backwards on his faded blue and yellow toy like a cartoon figure on morning TV. The drivers could not quite comprehend. In their knotted posture, belted in, they knew this picture did not belong to the hurtling consciousness of the highway, the broad-ribboned modernist stream. In speed there was sense. In signs, in patterns, in split-second lives. What did it mean, this little rotary blur? Some force in the world had gone awry. They veered, braked, sounded their horns down the long afternoon, an animal lament. The child would not even look at them, pedaled straight for the median strip, a narrow patch of pale grass. He was pumped up, chesty, his arms appearing to move as rapidly as his legs, the round head wagging in a jig of lame-brained determination. He had to slow down to get onto the raised median, rearing up to let the front wheel edge over, extremely deliberate in his movements, following some numbered scheme, and the cars went wailing past, horns blowing belatedly, drivers' eyes searching the rearview mirror. He walked the tricycle across the grass. The women watched him regain a firm placement on the seat. Stay, they called. Do not go. No, no. Like fpreigners reduced to simple phrases. The cars kept coming, whipping into the straightaway, endless streaking traffic. He set off to cross the last three lanes, dropping off the median like a bouncing ball, front wheel, rear wheels. Then the head-wagging race to the other side. Cars dodged, strayed, climbed the curbstone, astonished heads appearing in the side windows. The furiously pedaling boy could not know how slow he seemed to be moving from the vantage point of the women on the porch. The women were silent by now, outside the event, suddenly tired. How slow he moved, how mistaken he was in thinking he was breezing right along. It made them tired. The horns kept blowing, sound waves mixing in the air, flattening, calling back from vanished cars, scolding. He reached the other side, briefly rode parallel to the traffic, seemed to lose his balance, fall away, going down the embankment in a multicolored tumble. When he reappeared a second later, he was sitting in a water furrow, part of the intermittent creek that accompanies the highway. Stunned, he made the decision to cry. It took him a moment, mud and water everywhere, the tricycle on its side. The women began to call once more, each raising an arm to revoke the action. Boy in the water, they said. Look, help, drown. And he seemed, on his seat in the creek, profoundly howling, to have heard them for the first time, looking up over the earthen mound and into the trees across the expressway. This frightened them all the more. They called and waved, were approaching the early phases of uncontrollable terror when a passing motorist, as such people are called, alertly pulled over, got out of the car, skidded down the embankment and lifted the boy from the murky shallows, holding him aloft for the clamoring elders to see.
We go to the overpass all the time. Babette, Wilder and I. We take a thermos of iced tea, park the car, watch the setting sun. Clouds are no deterrent. Clouds intensify the drama, trap and shape the light. Heavy overcasts have little effect. Light bursts through, tracers and smoky arcs. Overcasts enhance the mood. We find little to say to each other. More cars arrive, parking in a line that extends down to the residential zone. People walk up the incline and onto the overpass, carrying fruit and nuts, cool drinks, mainly the middle-aged, the elderly, some with webbed beach chairs which they set out on the sidewalk, but younger couples also, arm in arm at the rail, looking west. The sky takes on content, feeling, an exalted narrative life. The bands of color reach so high, seem at times to separate into their constituent parts. There are turreted skies, light storms, softly falling streamers. It is hard to know how we should feel about this. Some people are scared by the sunsets, some determined to be elated, but most of us don't know how to feel, are ready to go either way. Rain is no deterrent. Rain brings on graded displays, wonderful running hues. More cars arrive, people come trudging up the incline. The spirit of these warm evenings is hard to describe. There is anticipation in the air but it is not the expectant midsummer hum of a shirtsleeve crowd, a sandlot game, with coherent precedents, a history of secure response. This waiting is introverted, uneven, almost backward and shy, tending toward silence. What else do we feel? Certainly there is awe, it is all awe, it transcends previous categories of awe, but we don't know whether we are watching in wonder or dread, we don't know what we are watching or what it means, we don't know whether it is permanent, a level of experience to which we will gradually adjust, into which our uncertainty will eventually be absorbed, or just some atmospheric weirdness, soon to pass. The collapsible chairs are yanked open, the old people sit. What is there to say? The sunsets linger and so do we. The sky is under a spell, powerful and storied. Now and then a car actually crosses the overpass, moving slowly, deferentially. People keep coming up the incline, some in wheelchairs, twisted by disease, those who attend them bending low to push against the grade. I didn't know how many handicapped and helpless people there were in town until the warm nights brought crowds to the overpass. Cars speed beneath us, coming from the west, from out of the towering light, and we watch them as if for a sign, as if they carry on their painted surfaces some residue of the sunset, a barely detectable luster or film of telltale dust. No one plays a radio or speaks in a voice that is much above a whisper. Something golden falls, a softness delivered to the air. There are people walking dogs, there are kids on bikes, a man with a camera and long lens, waiting for his moment. It is not until some time after dark has fallen, the insects screaming in the heat, that we slowly begin to disperse, shyly, politely, car after car, restored to our separate and defensible selves.
The men in Mylex suits are still in the area, yellow-snouted, gathering their terrible data, aiming their infrared devices at the earth and sky.
Dr. Chakravarty wants to talk to me but I am making it a point to stay away. He is eager to see how my death is progressing. An interesting case perhaps. He wants to insert me once more in the imaging block, where charged particles collide, high winds blow. But I am afraid of the imaging block. Afraid of its magnetic fields, its computerized nuclear pulse. Afraid of what it knows about me.
I am taking no calls.
The supermarket shelves have been rearranged. It happened one day without warning. There is agitation and panic in the aisles, dismay in the faces of older shoppers. They walk in a fragmented trance, stop and go, clusters of well-dressed figures frozen in the aisles, trying to figure out the pattern, discern the underlying logic, trying to remember where they'd seen the Cream of Wheat. They see no reason for it, find no sense in it. The scouring pads are with the hand soap now, the condiments are scattered. The older the man or woman, the more carefully dressed and groomed. Men in Sansabelt slacks and bright knit shirts. Women with a powdered and fussy look, a self-conscious air, prepared for some anxious event. They turn into the wrong aisle, peer along the shelves, sometimes stop abruptly, causing other carts to run into them. Only the generic food is where it was, white packages plainly labeled. The men consult lists, the women do not. There is a sense of wandering now, an aimless and haunted mood, sweet-tempered people taken to the edge. They scrutinize the small print on packages, wary of a second level of betrayal. The men scan for stamped dates, the women for ingredients. Many have trouble making out the words. Smeared print, ghost images. In the altered shelves, the ambient roar, in the plain and heartless fact of their decline, they try to work their way through confusion. But in the end it doesn't matter what they see or think they see. The terminals are equipped with holographic scanners, which decode the binary secret of every item, infallibly. This is the language of waves and radiation, or how the dead speak to the living. And this is where we wait together, regardless of age, our carts stocked with brightly colored goods. A slowly moving line, satisfying, giving us time to glance at the tabloids in the racks. Everything we need that is not food or love is here in the tabloid racks. The tales of the supernatural and the extraterrestrial. The miracle vitamins, the cures for cancer, the remedies for obesity. The cults of the famous and the dead.
（the end）