“Nothing comes in.”
“Garberville’s got a station.”
“Not on this piece of equipment.”
Thompson managed to contain himself for a while, looking out at 101 and the tracks running in a ravine alongside it.
Falls tried to distract him by bringing up the Mexican girl again: “Hey, you know that Mexican girl?”
“What about her?”
“She wasn’t half bad. What’s your opinion?”
But Tommy gave out with something that combined a sigh and a laugh. They’d met the Mexican girl two days ago, and both had agreed at the time that she was an ugly dog. “Okay, Bart, back to the thing. Straight, no bullshit. Mano a mano.”
“Mano a mano? You mean hombre to hombre.”
“Goddamn! Fine!”
“Okay—”
“No. Way to go, man.”
“All right—”
“Way to go.”
“Can I answer your question?”
“Yeah…”
“It’d be best in a war.”
“Were you in a war?”
“No, I’m really just guessing is all.”
“Okay.”
“But it’d be easier to lay it down later. You take off the uniform, and you lay it all down.”
“Yeah, okay,” Tommy said, “I gotta lay it down.”
“That’s the message.”
“I just didn’t know how I’d feel afterward. Now it’s afterward and I still don’t know.”
“Man. I’ll never understand you.”
“You don’t have to.” Thompson watched things go by out in the world. “In fact I don’t want you to.” He wrinkled his nose. “It stinks around here.” A brown atmospheric haze had followed them down from the fires in Humboldt County.
They ate cold sandwiches at a picnic stop north of the Leggett turnoff. “We going to eat in a restaurant one of these days?”
“It wouldn’t be smart. I don’t wanna be remembered,” Falls said.
Thompson stood up and attempted a jump shot with his wrappings toward the rubbish can. “Two points,” he announced, although it hit the rim and went wrong. He sat down backward at the table and reached for his Michelob and told Falls, “We should be bringing back an ear or a finger.”
“He’s got a private swimming pool from which he looks down on the ocean. He don’t wanna see nobody’s ear.”
“Shit, man. Why are you keeping that thing?”
Falls had taken out the pages again and begun shuffling them around in his lap. “This is like a hundred pages long,” he said in wonder.
“Why’d you keep it in the first place?”
“You can’t leave it to fly out all over the world like when they let down leaflets out of a plane, man.”
Thompson said, “You’re in a mood.”
“I knew that before you did.”
“I don’t feel nothin’.”
“Look. It’s not about that.” Falls bent close over the pages in his lap. “I think it’s in a foreign language. Or I think it’s in code.”
“I’m gonna get a fire going.”
“Be my guest.”
“Gimme some of that diary to get her lit, please.”
Falls said, “Here’s some good shit. This bark is dry.”
He was putting it back in its envelope in the morning when Thompson woke up and said, “So. Breakfast is not served, I guess?”
“This thing,” Falls said, “is as good as a finger or ear or whatever.”
“I think this conversation started before I joined in,” Thompson said.
“You can get an ear just about anyplace.”
“Excuse me? Did you say something stupid again? Did you say you could get an ear just about anyplace?”
“It would take me a year to write this much,” Falls said.
“You can’t even read it, man.”
“Good. Because I looked at it, and I could read it.”
“You gonna read it?”
“I don’t wanna see it or even know about it. No, I’m not gonna read it.”
“Just don’t go giving it to Lally. We need genuine proof of completion.”
“After we dig in the garden, we’ll have proof.”
“If we find it,” Tommy said. “That guy was delirious. He was meat anyway, and he knew it. He could’ve given us a totally false location.”
“He didn’t lie. He wouldn’t.”
“He might’ve lied about it just to be funny.”
“That’s why he told the truth. Just to be funny.”
After they’d finished their business in Fairchild’s garden and washed up at a gas station, the men and the dogs celebrated with pizza, canned all-meat Alpo, imported Dos Equis beer. Well past the supper hour they parked in the pullout in front of the client’s gate and killed the engine. No lights showed in the house. The wind moved little floating toys around in the swimming pool. Tommy started chewing on a cuticle. It looked like he was sucking his thumb.
“Wish he’d take a bleeding phone call. I mean we could’ve said something neutral like, hi, your order’s ready.”
“He’s paranoid. Probably keeps him outta jail. We should be paranoid too.”
They heard quarreling in the camper. The truck rocked slightly.
“Damn their shit.”
Thompson whapped the back windshield. “SETTLE DOWN!”
“If those two get into that bundle, they’ll have a hell of a party.”
“Can dogs get stoned?”
“Sure. They’re animals. All animals can get stoned.”
“Crayfish? Salmon?”
“Can I say something, please? I’m enjoying our success, and you seem to wanna mess with me. It ain’t fun. You’re bringing me down.”
“I’m just prodding you, man, to be a little more accurate in your statements.”
“Hey, you asked, I answered.”
“Really I’m just trying to think. I feel like some sort of other plan is coming out of left field.”
“That’s a powerful shitload of dope, man,” said Falls.
“I see. Great minds think alike.”
“Unfortunately it ain’t drying right.”
“Sure. And it’s picked too early. But still.”
“It might not be quick. You might have to practically retail it. Meanwhile Lally hires somebody to come after us.”
“That one car was on us for a while.”
“That jeep, yeah.”
“Bullshit.”
“Probably bullshit—but. I wouldn’t put it past him to have us tailed, see if we stick to business.”
“This whole entire thing,” Tommy said.
They napped awhile, waking whenever somebody’s headlights swept through the cab. Lally hadn’t shown by midnight.
Hadn’t shown by 1 A.M. They’d slept more than they could be expected to, all folded up like this. The dogs were kidding around in back, but in a stealthy way. Before too much longer somebody would have to set them loose to do their business. Falls wondered if they missed Sarah, the dead one. They hadn’t exhibited any particular signs of it.
“Okay,” Falls said, “open that glove box there. No, man, no. The notebook. Gimme that, please.” Falls opened his notebook on his lap. “I got a sequel for you. Part Two of the Ballad of Tommy Thompson.”
“Oh, brother,” Thompson said.
“You remember about loving the waitress and—”
“Desperado in the parking lot, yeah. You should make that the title. Not the Ballad of Tommy Thompson.”
“Here’s the part that’s really like you’d do it, if this would be you,” said Falls.
“Did you hear me?”
“Of course.”
“I wish to remain anonymous.”
“Desperado in the Parking Lot,” Falls agreed. “Second verse.”
Later down the road it’s midnight,
people sleeping in their beds.
You’d like to come up soft on tiptoe,
put a bullet in their heads.
Go downstairs and get a sandwich,
pop a beer and turn on the news,
put your feet up, get the phone book,
call her and say, You got the blues?
I got ’em too, hey, come on over,
no one home but me these days,
just like you, let’s burn their albums,
warm our hearts around the blaze.
Thompson sighed, cleared his throat, jerked up the handle of his door, and spat out onto the ground. “Well, what that is,” he said, “is sick.”
“It’s not sick if it’s from the heart.”
“That’s not like me. I’d never cap some poor family asleep in their beds at midnight just to use the phone, man.”
“Well, I just launch it and let her drift.”
“I hate to tell you, but you drifted way the hell past me. I have no beef whatsoever with regular folks. Just assholes. I know who that’s about. And what it’s about. I know.”
Falls closed his book.
“Aaah,” he said.
“What.”
“I can’t talk to you when you start running tickets.”
“I’m just responding,” Tommy said.
“You’re just repeating shit that you heard.”
“I’m giving you an honest response.”
“No,” Falls said. “You’re just running tickets.”
Tommy rested his head against the seat back and jammed his knees against the dash. A car passed and lit them up briefly, but it was just nobody again.
“Look,” Falls said after a silence. “I’m feeling responsible about the various shit-disturbances, man. Like maybe not all of them, but too many of them.”
“Aah. It’s been tense. All these unexpected variables.”
“We been ragged-out by this deal, understandably. It’s been seven ways from Sunday and every bit of it wrong. But you’ve hung on every inch of the way, man. You hung on, you made one. You done good.”
“Wo. Wo. I had to keep you on. Or you would’ve booked two days in.”
“Yeah. Yeah. This is my acknowledgment of that.”
“I had to knot the end of your everlovin’ rope and put it in your teeth for you, man.”
“Acknowledged. You done good.”
“Apology accepted.”
Then Tommy laughed, and Bart also laughed, and both said together, “‘It’s a growth experience.’”
“Ah, man. Ah, shit,” Tommy said. “I should’ve fucked her.”
“You told me you did fuck her. You told everyone.”
“And you believed me? Educated bitch like that always wears flat shoes and glasses? The only one of us who could’ve fucked her was Yates. And Yates did fuck her.”
“Yates? Yates is a ridiculous wimp.”
“He’s a deeply sensitive mass murderer.”
“Yeah. I can see the attraction. From her point of view. From her semiclinical but still cuntly point of view.”
“Well, I never touched her. But when she transferred, Yates lost his mud and he confessed to a few people. I mean, the way it came out, you had to buy it.”
“How come all this got by me?”
“You were gone.”
“She took him out of group. They went to one-on-one, I remember that.”
“You were already out when she transferred.”
“‘Please, you can just call me Doc’…You could’ve fucked her if you wanted to. You just don’t have the confidence,” Falls said. “You don’t understand your own…you know. What about the Mexican girl?”
“Who?”
“You know.”
“With the baby?”
“Why do they always wear T-shirts with American words all over them? It’s kind of pitiful.”
“I wonder if I’ll ever meet her little baby again,” Tommy said, “like later. When he’s all grown up.”
Neither said anything else until Bart said, “Anyway…”
Tommy said, “Yeah…”
Thompson settled back, breathed once, sat forward, ran his fingers over his scalp. He reached under his seat for the Casull. “I’m going in.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m gonna climb that gate and sit by that pool in one of those poolside-type chairs and relax.” He got out. “I might take a dip, man.” He slammed the truck shut.
Falls watched him shake the gate in the dark like the door to his own personal cage. “It ain’t locked. Come on,” Thompson called.
Falls followed him in and they stood there beside the pool.
“Where are the chairs?” Thompson asked. “He doesn’t have any chairs.”
“I don’t know,” Falls said.
“Well, I’m going for a little moonlight swim, only there ain’t no moonlight.”
Thompson shed his T-shirt, his shoes, his pants and briefs, and weighted down the pile of them with his Casull. He mounted the diving board and stood on it and spread his arms and said, “Ah!”
“Kind of breezy for such a number,” Falls pointed out.
“Ah!”
“Bullshit,” Falls said.
But Tommy launched himself and went in cleanly without much of a splash.
Falls watches him swim, this almost undiscernible thing in the dark water cutting toward the shallow end and standing upright with a seething liquid sound and saying, though out of breath, “You coming in?”
“Okay.”
His hands shaking, he strips himself down. He can hardly manipulate the buttons on his shirt.
Thompson says, “Your teeth are chattering, man.”
“Yeah.”
“Mine too, huh.”
“Yeah, I guess!”
“Come on in, it’s heated, man.”
Falls sits naked at the pool’s edge and let his left leg in up to the knee. “Heated? Fuck you!”
Thompson turns and kicks off and out into the deeper water, spins in a balletic somersault, the words coming up with his face from under water: “Fuck you!”
Falls lets down both his legs, shivering, his throat pumping in his neck. He slips forward and stands in the shock of it up to his waist. “Not as bad as a trout stream!” he cries, and sets out into the cold dark toward his friend, and swims past, and Thompson grabs his ankle. He spins around, grabs at Thompson’s crotch. Thompson heads to the side in the deep end, clutching the ladder one-handed, laughing, saying, “Hey!” as Falls passes his fingertips over his groin again very lightly. “Hey. Don’t do that, man.”
“What?” Falls grips his thigh and squeezes hard.
“Just wait, just wait, just wait. Hang on. What’s the story on Lally, man?”
“He ain’t here. End of story.”
“He’s in the wrong place, if he ain’t here. Because I just came to a decision concerning a shitload of stinky green sinsemilla.”
“We keep it.”
“He can send somebody after us if he wants.”
“Anybody he sends—we’ll send back the bastard’s pecker in a FedEx pack.”
“We been killing people lately anyway!”
“Oh, yeah.” Falls runs his hand along Tommy’s belly and crotch, and Tommy swims off leaving Falls alone standing in water up to his chest. With the plunging sounds of water Falls strides toward the shallow end. He can’t tell what’s going on here. Is he supposed to be angry or happy?
Thompson faces him, but Falls can’t see his face. “We’re moving now, man, we’ve stirred the waters. It’s kind of a lustful thrill.”
“Let’s go see some people.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?”
“Let’s do it.”
“Piss on that,” he says as Tommy makes to get his pants on. He walks away toward the gate without touching his own stuff. “I’m breaking out, I wanna feel it all.”
“Wo. Do it.”
“Super-sensitized all over. Not even shoes,” he hears himself saying, “are in style this particular evening.”
“
Oh. Oh. I like it. I mean—”
“I mean it’s like this marauder bonzai fuck.”
“It’s a party,” Tommy says. “This is all I’m wearing,” he says, picking up the Casull. “It’s so delightful.”
“It’s so delightful,” Tommy said. He spat out the open window and said, “What happens to your spit in a wind like that? Does it disintegrate?”
“I don’t know. Who knows?”
“My skin should feel freezing, but it don’t.”
“Past a certain boundary, freezing equals hot.”
“I like it.”
“It just lifts you up and sails you, don’t it? How we doing?”
“One set of lights about a million miles back there. Otherwise the world is ours. Unless we’re walking into a scene full of armed security.”
“If they had security they’d be stationed at the gate.”
Falls killed the engine and they looked at the temple’s dome like a storm cloud blacking out the constellations.
“You got them cutters?” Tommy said.
“They’re electrician’s cutters, man. That’s number-one chain link.”
“We gotta scale it and cut the bob-wire.”
“No we don’t. We just climb that spiky gate.”
“One slip and you’re castrated.”
“Probably the best thing for me,” Falls said.
Any front entry to the building itself was impossible. These Buddhists had barred the big, medieval castle doors from within. Thompson stooped and panted for breath, still tired from the climb over the gate, one hand on his knee and the other dangling his Casull. “Right or left?” he asked.
“The least-resistance thing,” Falls said, walking a ramp off the side of the vast porch down to the ground and feeling along the wooden siding.
“We need a moon,” Thompson said.
“This is the place,” Falls said.
“Where?”
“We’re standing on it. It’s a root cellar. Maybe it’s connected.”
“It don’t open.”
“Get off it.”
The door pried upward as they felt along it edge by edge and heaved. “The question is, are there steps. And how deep is it. Other shit like that,” Tommy said, but Falls just lowered himself into the hole and dropped and slid backward and went down in blackness amid a multitude of dirty spherical things he guessed were potatoes.
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