Another Kind of Eden

by James Lee Burke

“With others as well.”

  “Yesterday’s box score.”

  Wrong choice of words again.

  “What?”

  “That’s a baseball term,” I said.

  We were stopped in front of her house now. I cut the engine and the lights. I hoped she was going to ask me in.

  “I’ve helped you when you were in a bad place in your life, Aaron. Maybe you’re mistaking that for something else.”

  “That’s really dumb,” I said. “The fact that you helped me is a positive, not a negative.”

  “I’m dumb?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I know,” she said. Her hands were folded in her lap. “I’m really tired.”

  “Better get some sleep, then.”

  “We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?” she said, opening the door.

  “Sure. Hasta la cucaracha and all that kind of jazz.”

  “Why do you have to say that?” she said, and slammed the door behind her.

  * * *

  I DROVE TO THE bunkhouse and went to sleep in my skivvies with the covers over my head. I could hear the rain drilling the roof. Sometime in the early a.m. the rain stopped, and I woke up and went down to the latrine. Or at least I thought I did. Altogether too often in my life, I could not distinguish dreams from reality. When I was a young boy, I took my difficulty to my father; he told me that perhaps all of life was a dream inside the mind of God. That wasn’t helpful.

  On the return to my cubicle, I looked through the panes of glass in a side door in the hallway. Through the mist, I could see the Lowry house up the grade. A light was burning in one of the peaked towers. Steam was rising from the creek that ran through the property. I thought I saw the boss and horns of wild animals in the mists but could not be sure. I started back to my bed, then saw something from the corner of my eye that should not have been there.

  Do you know the feeling I’m talking about? Caution tells you to flee and not let the flaws of the world possess you. But integrity and conscience tell you not to ignore danger any more than you would ignore someone breaking a bottle on a highway.

  The moon had just broken through the clouds. A man in a hooded raincoat was staring straight at me. At first I thought he wore dark glasses. Then I realized his face was white, almost luminous, and I also realized he was not wearing glasses. His eyes were not eyes, either; they were sockets.

  I rubbed my face and looked again. He beckoned at me as one would from the Great Shade. I twisted the doorknob slowly, automatically releasing the lock, and stepped outside. The air smelled like cistern water and mushrooms that bloom in forests that never see sunlight.

  I have only minutes, he said.

  Who are you?

  I’m from the place where we all go.

  You’re the man they call Bible-thumping Bob.

  Ridicule is the flag of cowards.

  What do you want of me?

  You’re surrounded by evil forces. Your weakness is your guilt for events and deeds that are not yours to bear.

  I think this is a dream.

  But that does not mean it is less than true. Your father taught you that.

  What? What did you say? Come back here and repeat that.

  Then he was gone. I turned around and reached for the door. It was locked. Then I felt myself walk right through it and down the hall to my bed. At 0600, when I awoke, I was balled up under my blankets, my teeth chattering.

  * * *

  AFTER BREAKFAST, COTTON and a couple of Mexican wranglers and I went to work on Mr. Lowry’s horses, twenty of them that needed their yearly shots and quarterly worming and grooming and hoof care and a penile procedure I won’t describe. Spud walked down from Mr. Lowry’s house chewing on a matchstick. “The old man wants to see you.”

  “What for?”

  He tilted up the matchstick to a forty-five-degree angle with his teeth, then rolled it around with his tongue. “Got me.”

  “Is this about the rosebushes again?” I said.

  “No, he asked me if you were out late last night. He must have seen you roaming around. How’s it feel to have people check up on you?”

  “What did you tell him, Spud?”

  “I’m not my brother’s keeper.”

  I took off my leather apron and walked up the grade to the Lowry house. Mr. Lowry was reading the newspaper on the veranda, wearing a straw planter’s hat with a black ribbon around the crown. He lowered his paper. “Oh, hello, Aaron. Come into the library. Mrs. Lowry is shopping with Chen Jen this morning.”

  Why did I need to know his wife was away? “Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Lowry?”

  “It’s something no one can help me with. Nevertheless, I need to explain something to you. Now, come in.”

  His tone seemed totally foreign. I did not want to enter his house under the circumstances. I knew that whatever was on his mind would prove embarrassing for either him or me or both of us.

  “Mr. Lowry, I was hoping to get all the horses back to the south pasture by noon.”

  “You’re my foreman. Now please do as I ask.”

  I removed my hat as I followed him through the French doors into the library. I had seen the library through the door previously but had never been inside it. It was an extraordinary room, with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and deep maroon leather chairs and a large walnut desk and a framed antique map of Salem, Massachusetts, on the wall. There was also a telescope on a tripod by the French doors, one that could magnify either the heavens or the buildings at the bottom of the slope.

  “I saw you standing outside the bunkhouse early this morning,” he said. “Talking to a fellow I’ve never seen before. Want to tell me what that was about?”

  “I thought maybe I had a dream about a man wearing a hooded raincoat,” I said. “I had hoped that’s what it was.”

  He sat down behind his desk and took off his glasses and cleaned them with a soft cloth. “I’m having a hard time sorting through that one.”

  “I have blackouts, Mr. Lowry. Not from alcohol. I go places inside my head and then wake up and can’t remember where I’ve been. A lot of times I can’t distinguish dreams from reality.”

  “Sit down. You want a sandwich?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Whoever the man was, he was not here with my permission. Can you tell me the nature of his errand?”

  “He said I was surrounded by evil.”

  “Let’s see if I have this straight. This man with apparently no name or origins has come here to tell you that my farm, my produce, and my milk and feed business are evil?”

  “He said nothing about you, sir.”

  He seemed to study the antique map on the wall. “This is more than I can deal with, so I’ll say no more about it. If you see this man again, will you ask him to knock on my door? I’d love to meet him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He was smiling now, more like the man for whom I had such great respect. “Now let’s talk about something else,” he said. “Mrs. Lowry told me of your conversation with her.”

  I felt my heart slide into the basement. “I’m not much at remembering conversations, Mr. Lowry. Or talking about them.”

  “I have a medical condition that has taken its toll regarding my conjugal obligations. My wife has a great love of the world and the people who inhabit it. She made a mistake approaching you and admitted it to me. She respects you, as do I. We hope that respect is mutual.”

  “Yes, sir, it is. I don’t even remember what was said. Jo Anne and I hold y’all in high regard.” My batteries were down. I wanted to escape into the sunshine and the coldness of the wind and the blueness of the sky and the smell of snowmelt up in the trees, and most of all, I did not want to talk any longer with Mr. Lowry.

  Then he said something I knew I would never forget, like dirt you can’t wash out of your mind. “I want your promise,” he said.

  “Sir?”

  “I want your promise you will never indulge in gossip a
bout Mrs. Lowry.”

  My stomach had a hole in it.

  “Did you hear me, Aaron?”

  “No, sir, I didn’t.”

  “You’re suddenly hard of hearing?”

  “My hearing is fine, Mr. Lowry. There are instances when I choose not to hear others. Thank you for inviting me to your home. I wish my father were here. He was something of a historian. He would have enjoyed talking with you about the Puritan artifact on your wall.”

  “Are you mocking me?”

  “No, sir. I was just talking about my father and history and all that kind of thing. My best to Mrs. Lowry.” I went out the door and down the slope, my head as weightless as a helium balloon.

  Cotton and Spud and the Mexicans were waiting on me. They had fixed cowboy coffee in a big tin pot and stuck it in the warm ashes of a driftwood fire and were now sitting around the fire, drinking out of tin cups, all of them smoking roll-your-owns, probably donated by Cotton. But their mouths were turned down at the corners, their eyes avoiding mine.

  “Somebody die?” I said.

  Spud pulled a telegram out of his back pocket. He had been sitting on a log, and the telegram had been cupped stiffly into the shape of a half-moon. He handed it to me. “Chen Jen brought it up with the mail. I hope it isn’t bad news, Aaron,” he said. “You’ve always been my buddy.”

  “I appreciate that, Spud,” I said.

  “Last time I got one of those things, I ended up in khaki underwear,” he said.

  I worked my finger inside the envelope and tore it along the top, then read the strips of typed words that were glued onto the paper. I read them a second time and refolded the paper and placed it and the envelope in my pants pocket. I tied on my farrier’s apron and pried up a mare’s hind foot between my legs and began rasping her hoof.

  “Everything okay?” Cotton said.

  “I have a literary agent in New York. He said a publisher just bought my novel.”

  “Son. Of. A. Bitch,” Spud said.

  “You can say that twice,” Cotton said.

  The Mexicans were smiling, too. Spud began to dance around the fire, balancing his tin cup on top of his fedora, whooping like an Indian. “Ain’t that something?” he said. “I always knew you had it. Ain’t it funny how things work out?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  AFTER WORK, I showered and put on slacks and a dress shirt and a sport coat and drove to Jo Anne’s house. It was a grand evening. Indian summer was back, and a song played in my heart. I was going to be a published novelist. When I arrived, the last rays of the sun had filled the clouds in the west with a golden light. I cut the engine on my car and got out with a solitary rose wrapped in green paper that I had bought from a street vendor. Then I saw the school bus parked in the field and heard someone hammering in back of the house. Jo Anne walked out from behind the house, carrying a bottle of Tuborg. She was wearing jeans and beat-up cowboy boots and was not dressed for the place I planned to take her.

  “What are you doing with the Tuborg?” I said.

  “Putting it in the trash for Henri.”

  “Devos is here?”

  “He’s fixing my windows.”

  “What else does he plan on fixing?”

  “Quit it, Aaron.”

  “I’m sure this is a nightmare and I’ll wake up any moment.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Throw him out?”

  “No need. I’ll do it for you.”

  “A couple of days ago he repaid two hundred dollars of what he owed me. He’s trying to make up for his mistakes.”

  “Maybe the Vatican could give him early canonization. What’s up with the bus?”

  “Henri came here with them. They’ve joined up with some Buddhists. They might go up to Boulder.”

  “Is the Dalai Lama on board?” I said.

  “I know you’re mad at me for not giving you an answer about getting married. Don’t take it out on others.”

  I had not told her about the sale of my novel. I wanted to place it like an emerald in her palm. I wanted to tell her I was going to dedicate it to her, then tell her about the new novel I was starting. Instead, I could feel a rumbling in the earth, a train going through my head, my paper-wrapped rose the scepter of the court fool.

  “I’ll get dressed,” she said.

  “Forget it,” I said.

  “You’re acting like a child.”

  “Probably,” I said, no longer looking at her.

  Her eyes followed mine to the bus and the man who had just opened the front door and was swinging off the handrails onto the ground. “Don’t go near that man, Aaron.”

  “Why not? He’s buds with Henri, isn’t he?”

  “Please,” she said.

  “I bought this rose for you,” I said. “Here.”

  Then I went to my car and reached under the driver’s seat. She followed me, rising up on her toes, trying to see past my shadow. “Is that a gun?”

  “Yes indeedy,” I said.

  “What are you doing, Aaron?”

  “I don’t know. I think I feel a spell coming on. Tell me how it works out, will you?”

  I stuck the .38 Police Special in the back of my belt and walked to the bus. Jimmy Doyle, the man who could not let go of Pork Chop Hill, stood barefoot and bare-chested under the bus’s row of windows, an unlit cigar inserted in the center of his mouth. His smooth olive-colored skin was painted with the sunset. He looked like a player on the Elizabethan stage, waiting for the audience to plumb his depths. The windows were crowded with the Greek chorus, mostly female. I didn’t see Stoney or Orchid or Lindsey Lou among them.

  “What’s shakin’, Doyle?” I said. “Loading up at the day-care center?”

  “Beat it, fart.”

  “You said you were going to dust me when you got out of the bag.”

  “I didn’t phrase it that way.”

  “Now is your chance.”

  “I’m simpatico here, Jack.”

  “I’m not. I don’t like you.”

  “I’m all busted up on that.”

  “You hurt young people.”

  “Yeah? They don’t look like they’re hurting to me,” he said. “Maybe that’s because we’re a family.” He popped a match with his thumbnail and touched the flame to his cigar, his eyes hooded. “You got nothing to say?”

  “No, I guess not. To tell you the truth, I’m out of gas.”

  “I saw you looking for something in your shit-mobile. You find it?”

  I lifted the .38 from the back of my belt, my finger outside the trigger guard. I tilted up the barrel so he could see the shells in the chambers. “Want to hold it?”

  He took a contemplative puff off his cigar. “What I want is you out of my fucking life.”

  “You said Saber and I screwed up at the listening post. You said we got people killed.”

  “So fog of war.”

  “You’re saying I got my best friend killed?” I said. “Don’t look away from me.”

  Smoke was leaking from around his cigar. He took it out of his mouth. He had lowered his eyes. I saw his weight shift from one foot to the other, his chest rising and falling. A fly crawled across his face.

  “Apologize to those girls up there,” I said.

  “Apologize?”

  “For pimping them out.”

  “Who’s bopping the teenage poon in the stucco house?” he said. “Not me. Could it be you?

  “I’m glad you said that.” I grabbed his right wrist and pushed the gun into his hand. Then I pulled the cigar from his mouth and slapped his face and shoved him against the bus and pinned him by the throat and stubbed out the cigar three inches from his eye. “Use the gun or apologize.”

  “You’re a section eight, man.”

  “You got that right.” I slammed his head against the bus, again and again, my fingers sinking deeper into the green-and-red dragons tattooed around his throat. Then I pulled him away from the bus and slammed him again. This time his eyes crossed.


  “Apologize!” I said.

  “No!”

  I twisted his right wrist and forced the gun barrel upward and into the soft spot under my chin. “Pull the trigger or apologize.”

  “No.”

  I tightened my grip on his windpipe. He began to gurgle as his face turned color. I pushed the gun’s muzzle deeper into my own throat.

  “Pull the trigger. You can do it.”

  The people on the bus had ducked below the windows except for one. I heard a window in back drop to the sill, then saw Stoney’s head and the top half of his body lean out like a broken jack-in-the-box. His face was streaming with tears. “Ice cream guy! Don’t hurt him any more! It wasn’t him hurt Moon Child! Don’t do this no more, ice cream guy.”

  “Who hurt Moon Child, Stoney?” I said.

  He jerked his head inside the window, almost guillotining himself. I let Doyle slide to the ground. He had wet his pants and was making a sound like someone sucking air and water through a garden hose. I eased the revolver out of his hand. The girls were at the windows again, their faces filled with dismay and disillusion, like they had aged years within a few minutes. “You okay, Doyle?” I said.

  “What’s it look like?”

  “Who tore up Moon Child?”

  “She tripped and fell. I think she tied her shoestrings together.” His cheeks were unshaved and as gritty as emery paper. He started laughing and couldn’t stop.

  I saw Jo Anne out of the corner of my eye. “Give me that goddamn gun,” she said.

  I removed the shells from the cylinder and sprinkled them on Doyle’s stomach. “Here,” I said. “End of problem.”

  “You call this the end of the problem?” she said.

  The sun was blood red between two mountains that seemed to teeter on the edge of the earth, as though the earth were not round but flat and precipitous and all of creation were about to slide into infinity. “Why did you bring Henri Devos back into our lives, Jo Anne?” I said.

  “You’ve still got your mind on Henri?” she asked. “You tried to make a guy blow your face off, for God’s sake.”

  The bus had started. Two boys naked to the waist, with skeletal rib bones and hair a foot long, picked up Doyle and dragged him through the side door. I watched the bus lumber across the field, the dust rising like wisps of smoke from the tires. Stoney’s face was pressed against the back window, out of shape, like a plumber’s helper, his arms pinned behind him by people I couldn’t see, his mouth forming words I couldn’t read.