4
Beau hardly noticed the traffic
through Egeria. The whole sweeping crescent curve of the bay heading south from
Carata had seemed dream-like in a weird ruddy glow under low clouds, the
pungent air smelling of eucalyptus from the long line of trees midway around
the bay. Half his life ago Beau had lived in Egeria. At a couple of different
places, a couple of different times, working a couple of different jobs. All
within a span of a few years, that span seeming a lifetime vastly removed from
the ancient memories of childhood proper, and only a handful of years before.
Looking at the loveliness next to
him, Beau felt like a spider with a fly in its web.
The Karmann Ghia jiggled his tits.
Hers he took as a matter of course. But with him the bony hands of time were
clawing his manly pecs into two sad little frowny mouths right at the areola. As
seen standing sideways nude, Beau’s gut, when allowed to fully relax, expanding
forward, and down, pulled his ape-like body into a great big teardrop of shame,
a shame shaped by pants, and the need for the flesh to spill over the
pants—again, those bastard bony claws of time.
Liliana put a hand on his leg. It
was hard to hear her over the engine and the wind.
“Irish sea beasts won’t suck it?” he
said, raising his voice, somewhat perplexed.
She shook her head, clearing her
hair from her mouth with a finger. “No, I said I wish these seats weren’t
bucket.”
“Oh,” Beau nodded. “Me too. Hey, is
your gas gauge fucked up or what?”
Liliana leaned over. “Goddam! I
forgot. It got under half a tank. This car is restored, but the float in the
tank still needs some work.”
“We just had half a tank.” The needle
was bobbing a hair off of empty.
“How far do you think till the next
gas station?”
“A good ways. I’m not sure. Miles
anyway.”
“Over there!” Liliana pointed out a
greasy-looking farm-type place right off the highway. “Look, there’s some man
over there on a tractor. Pull off. They’ll have a few gallons of gas here.
These places always do, just to run their own machines.”
Beau had no argument. He didn’t
relish the idea of impinging on someone like this, but Liliana certainly seemed
decidedly urgent. Besides, what else could they do?
“However much they want for it,” she
seemed to say as much to herself as to Beau. “We’ll just get it and go.”
“How much you need? Couple
gallons’ll get you to Riverdell.” The farmer hefted a five-gallon can. “Oh
yeah, that’s got a good four in it.”
“Fantastic,” said Beau, producing a
twenty.
“Keep it. That’s way too much.”
“No, really. Please.”
“Don’t need it. That can of gas has
been sitting there forever. It’s still good, though. Don’t worry.”
“I really need you to take this
twenty.” Beau knew he had to be careful what he said. The farmer looked like he
did a lot of backhoe work—as the backhoe. He also had a house a little ways
away with a bathroom that Liliana was using, and this factored into Beau’s
figuring as well.
“All right,” the farmer relented,
looking toward the house and taking the twenty, “tell you what. Come with me.”
Beau followed the farmer into the
barn, surprised to see groovy things displayed on the walls inside—album
jackets of the Grateful Dead’s Aoxomoxoa
and Blues for Allah, a couple of
surfboards in a corner. A sound system somewhere within was playing a song off
The Band’s first album, “Across the Great Divide.” Beau and the farmer were not
gone long, but when they stepped back through the hanging beads, as though from
within a cave behind a waterfall, it was with a new pair of shades for Beau,
polarized now, and exquisitely clear.
“For me,” said the farmer, “it’s all
about ‘The Last Waltz.’ Right from the start, when they hit ‘Don’t Do It’—which
is actually at the end of the concert, you know, but Scorsese put it at the start
of the film, wisely—it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Levon
Helm and Keith Moon, my two favorite drummers. And of course Bill Kreutzmann
and Mickey Hart.”
“What about John Bonham?”
“Bingo. You read my thoughts right
there. You know who else? Charlie Watts. You can’t do better than Charlie
Watts.”
“Don’t forget Ringo. I’ve always
liked Ringo. Ringo’s cool.”
The farmer nodded in strict
agreement. “That’s a fact. I don’t have one negative thing to say about Ringo
and I don’t like people who do. It’s not like I’m going to punch anybody in the
face for it. That’s the exact opposite of what the man’s always been about.
‘Don’t Pass Me By?’ ‘Flying?’ The man’s a Beatle.”
“He wrote ‘Flying?’ I thought that
was George.”
“It was. They all wrote that one.”
“I’ve always liked ‘Good Night.’”
After Beau found the gas cap and
managed to empty the can without either scratching the paint on the car or
leaving any drippage, he noticed how the house, being situated down a subtle
grade among some trees, was actually lost from view to the road. In all his
years growing up in the county and well into adulthood, he’d passed the place by
burning the miles coming and going without ever the slightest clue to the neat
little house on the side of the hill, so green by the trickling brooklets which
fed the threading river.
Liliana came up from the house
bearing a grocery sack in her arms.
“Did you get some of that pie?” the
farmer asked, hefting a bag of fertilizer over a wheelbarrow and slitting it
with a pocket knife. The contents spilled like the entrails of a gutted beast.
“Your wife is so nice. I tried to stop her.”
“Pumpkin or pecan?”
“I think it’s pumpkin,” she said,
looking into the bag, then corrected herself. “No, wait. It’s both.”
“Good,” said the farmer, returning
the knife to his pocket. “I was gonna say.”
Beau thanked the farmer profusely
one last time before driving off. He was tempted to see if Liliana might not be
up to taking the wheel, but then he saw the farmer carting away the fertilizer
and decided he better drive, if only to avoid the visual association in his
mind.
After filling up in Riverdell, a
cosmic battle raged in Beau that may as well have played on the giant screen of
the sky. At the station Liliana had gotten out and stretched. As the cost of
pumping ticked away at its alarming rate, images of what could be assailed his mind. It was all he could do not to turn
off at the entrance to the Avenue on the highway. Somewhere along its moody
seclusion they could pull into a pullout. And dip into the pie. There was
pumpkin to start forkin’. She had an hourglass figure, and the sands of time
were nowhere near running out.
The thing of it was, the whole
situation had been entirely thrust upon him. He thought about this as he passed
by the turnoff
(Ah
say Ah say turnoff, that is)
(Thank
you Foghorn Leghorn, you old cock)
and reminded himself how he never
had gone looking for any of this. Never even asked for it at all. How
completely powerless was he as a person to let this woman he used to (let’s
face it) barely know—as a kid, no less—stalk him, hold him hostage, and
jeopardize the strength of his marriage? Wasn’t he vital enough to recognize
and accept his vitality without having to check and see if it was still there?
Even as he thought these things
(admitting, too, the fact that they probably would be better off doing it in
the road than in the tick-thick, poison oak-filled woods, with the sticks and
the twigs and the bits), on another level he was talking animatedly with
Liliana about he had no idea what. Body
odor, he reminded himself. Moistnessess,
stains. Sexually transmitted diseases.
And even though they weren’t on the Avenue proper, the Scenic Alternate old
road, still the battle raged spectacularly over the trees looming close to the
winding road.
Beau took the exit off the highway
at Darrow’s Bend. Only a few miles to Madrani, now. It was time for him to make
things clear.
“Hey,” he said, breaking what he
thought was an uncomfortable silence, “I had a really great time. This was fun.
Who knows? Maybe again sometime.”
Dammit! That wasn’t right.
“I don’t understand. What are you
saying?”
“Nothing. I’m just saying I had fun.
Didn’t you?”
“Of course I’m having fun. I’m with
you.”
“That’s nice.” Beau looked at his watch:
3:19. “The thing of it is, Liliana,” he said, “I’m already…having…plans—what I
mean is, I have to drop myself off in Madrani and say so long. I’m sorry. I
just…can’t.”
Her expression remained as unbroken
as an action figure’s cellophane window as she said, “Come on, you’re joking,
right?”
“I’m not kidding. I’m sorry, but I’m
not kidding.”
She had her torso turned, facing him
in a manner which he found uncommonly distracting. “I think I understand,” she
said. “You know, I wouldn’t blame you for saying you were divorced if you
weren’t. I would feel…flattered. I want you to know that seeing you again after
all these years, I could have been really disappointed. But I wasn’t. And I’m
not. I think you’re amazing.” She touched his arm. “I would never bother you. I
would never do anything to hurt you. But tonight, if only this once, if you
want me, I’m all yours.”
The redwoods flanking the winding
road provided unique acoustics to the Karmann Ghia’s engine slowing into and
powering out of the curves.
“All right,” he said. “You talked me
into it. We’ll just continue on through town. I’m excited to go to this Gothic
Convention. Let’s stop at the market first, though. I want to pick up some beer
and get some snacks. Maybe a bottle of wine, too.”
Liliana reached over and put a hand
on his thigh as they drove up into town, so that Beau had a hard time indeed,
and had to wait after stopping at Madrani Market for a solid couple of minutes before
he could get out of the car, and when he did they went in together.
They examined a cooler and a couple
of shelves, together like a real couple, he holding a basket and she hanging
onto his arm. At the counter by the door, Beau set down the basket and asked
the cashier for the key to the rest room. She reached under the counter and
presented him with a large metal triple spiral from which the key depended on a
chain. “In the back,” she said. “On the right.” Liliana spun a squeaky postcard
rack as Beau went to the back of the store.
When he turned the corner, he saw
behind the restroom an exit door propped open with a cinder block. There wasn’t
a moment to waste. Leaving the key on the restroom handle, Beau slipped out the
exit, and hustled toward the refuge of the redwoods beckoning beyond.
5
Beau blundered blindly, eventually sitting
down in a secluded spot on a huckleberry hillside where he could watch the
river.
He had been on this hillside before.
It was when he was in the sixth grade. The other kid who waited at the same bus
stop said if they ran across town over to the junior high to catch the bus
there, they could get a hot cinnamon roll. But the bus was already taking off
while they were running across the football field. They tried to run back to
the correct bus stop, but gave up when they saw it was hopeless and instead
crept down to the forest on a trail behind the store, pretty sure that no one
had seen them. The plan had become to simply play hooky. When it got to be
around three, they would hike back up, hide somewhere until they saw the bus
pass by, then go home as though they had been to school. What they hadn’t
reckoned on was losing all track of time.
Looking at his watch, Beau saw it
was a few minutes past four. He was hungry, needed a toilet, had to remember to
call Leif before five, and would have liked to avoid the long hike through the
woods in order to reach the dirt road below his folks’ house, but didn’t want
Liliana to see him walking through town. He decided to take a peek from a
distance to see if her car was still at the store. If not, he could hoof it up
through. But what if she drove past? That could easily happen. Well then, he
decided, he would simply have to say, “Yes, I ditched you.” But hey. At least
he wasn’t a cheater.
On the verge of getting up, pausing
only to work the circulation back into his feet, Beau froze at the sound of
voices coming from somewhere alarmingly close.
Any words in the woods heard
unexpectedly so close would have prompted Beau to pause, just to protect his
own privacy. The ones he did hear though were said with a peculiar coldness
that made his neck hair stand on end.
“She had it comin’.”
Beau peered through a tangle of
branches. In the direction of the voice, appearing much closer than he thought
at first, he could see two things clearly through two apertures in the brush
available to his view with minimal movement. One was a shoe. The other, an arm.
Dark-complected. The shoe moved. The arm didn’t.
“She was practically beggin’ for it,
man,” the cold dead voice went on. “Geez, did you see the way she was dressed?
Them panties? She was beggin’ for it.”
A second voice, less dead than the
first. “Reckon you give it to her, too.”
“You reckon fuckin’ right. Shit,
man. They’re all beggin’ for it. You see, you can’t go lettin’ them go walkin’
all over you, or really, you wanna know what? They’ll take the whole goddam
mile. A man makes damn sure a woman knows who’s in charge.”
“Where you gonna bury that girl’s
body?”
“Shit man, anywhere. Take a fuckin’
look around, pick a goddam spot.”
“Fuck, man. Over there’s nice.”
The two began digging at the soft
ground with sticks.
“Shit, man,” said the first. “The
ground gets fuckin’ hard.”
“What about under this log?” said
the second. “See how it’s all soft? We could dig down a little ways, then fit
the hole of the hollow trunk there over her, pack in the rest of the loose shit
around the edges, maybe put a couple rocks here and there. Whaddaya think?”
“Fuckin’ shit, Chuck, good man.
Fuckin’ stuff the body in the trunk. Yeah, that’s good thinkin’.”
The two proceeded to scrape.
“I’ll tell you somethin’,” said the
first after a minute of that, leaning on his grave-digging stick. “You know why
you gotta show a woman you’re in charge? It’s because, deep down, or actually, right
under the surface or whatever, there are no bosses, only bootlicks. I seen it
on a bumper sticker. It’s true. There are no bosses, only bootlicks. You get
it?”
“Yeah. It’s sayin’ there’s no
bosses. Just bootlicks.”
“Look, clown. You get to the
diggin’, and I’ll get to the tellin’, all right? Now, what it means is—and come
on, move your lazy ass and dig or we’re never gettin’ outta here alive, man.
Shit. What it means is, we’re all
part of the same thing. I mean, if the chain of command goes right on up to the
President, and the President needs you to vote, or whatever, and so has to act
all nice to you, just beggin’ for it, see, then that means nobody’s in charge.
Or else everybody’s in charge. Same difference. Employers need employees, or they got nothin’. And they need customers, or they got nothin’. So, no bosses. But there are bootlicks. Some dumb assholes just
love to play the suck up game. And they’re the reason everything’s set up
against guys like me and you. Hey, are you done there, or what?”
The soliloquy stopped at the sound
of a snapped stick. Both looked back. With the one scraping and the other
talking, neither had heard Beau coming up softly behind them. In one of his
hands he held a large rock.
“This ain’t what it looks like,
mister.” The first speaker had his hands up with his digging stick leaning in
the hollow of his shoulder. Six-foot, overweight, forty-ish. The other, maybe
ten years younger, a hair shorter, trim build, gripped his stick firmly and
seemed to be checking with the other for some sign of what to do. “We found her
in the river already drowned. I swear to you on my skin as a white man, we were
just gonna leave her here safe from predators to go get help.”
The naked body of a girl lay off to
the side. Probably Hispanic. Maybe eleven or twelve. The rock in Beau’s hand,
big and smooth, rose and fell with the force of his respiration. It was as
though he were impelled against his will. He couldn’t believe what he was
seeing. He had to see. His hand had seemed to pick up the rock all by itself.
At first it was just in case. But the closer he got, the higher the hand with
the rock rose. What resulted occurred without thought. Without hesitation. Like
squashing a poisonous spider.
Beau waded in, and the rock
connected heavily on the side of the first one’s head. No sooner had the body
toppled than the rock left Beau’s hand and struck the other full in the chest.
To Beau it was almost like being an impartial observer. The first one’s eyes
were closed and he lay quite still. Blood ran from the swollen mess on the side
of his head. The second one’s eyes were wide open. His wind appeared knocked
out. His sternum might have been cracked.
Beau stood dazed, not even conscious
of wondering what to do. His entire consciousness was a white bed sheet
suddenly snapped outward, which very gently descended. This process of righting
himself was nowhere near complete when the gunshot rang. Beau felt the
displacement of the air near his ear as the bullet hit a tree behind him.
The skinny one of the two, whom Beau
had heard the other call Chuck, had wormed his way over on his back to a jacket
on a log nearby, taking one of his trembling hands away from the middle of his
chest long enough to grab a gun from one of the pockets and quaveringly point
it Beau’s way.
Again it went off, innocuous as a
firecracker, but now Beau was moving. There was nowhere to go but the river,
straight ahead, only a few yards away. For the three longest seconds of Beau’s
life he was sure he would be shot, and he wondered running if the one with the
gun had succumbed to the force of the blow from the rock more fully, or whether
he feared drawing unwanted attention to himself and his friend with the body of
the girl, or whether he was simply taking his time on a clean shot, but then
Beau was in the river, its bracing chill nightmarishly slow, nightmarishly shallow,
and he knew at any moment he would see the gun being pointed at him, and feel
as it fired, but he managed to round a bend, and as the slithering caress of
the current picked up, he took advantage of the deepening center, keeping his
eyes on the bank for any sign of movement, until he felt he had slipped safely
enough away to make toward the rocky bank around another bend and scramble back
into the forest . . .
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