“You’re being too hard on yourself.”
“I don’t think so.”
“So what exactly—”
“I’m going to quit.”
“What?”
“I’ve already spoken to the head of graduate studies. I haven’t said anything to Rex about it yet, but I will.”
“But how will you live?”
“We’ve got a little savings and Faith will go back to work full-time. If I’m ever going to write anything worthwhile, I’ve got to give it a real shot. I have a friend who has a cabin in Montana . . . he’s offered to let me use it for as long as I’d like.”
“But what about your kids?”
“They’ll stay here, but I think they’ll be all right for a few months. I really need to get away and isolate myself and pour everything into this for once in my life.”
“And Faith is taking it okay?”
“There have been some hard nights. And a few tears. But she’s a trouper, she really is.”
I put my fingers to my temples. It felt as if the roof was falling down around my head. Was I living in a madhouse? These people were nuts, all of them—Wayne, Rex, the students, the Russian guy with the long beard writing his books in prison camp without pen or paper.
“Maybe I’m a fool,” Wayne said, “but I’ve devoted my life to this.”
“So Wayne, what was all that punching about?”
“You mean when you came in?”
“Yeah.”
His face reddened. “I’m sorry, that was a little . . .”
“I know, but what was it? Were you celebrating? Were you trying to psyche yourself up? Or were you just scared?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was because I’d finally done a big thing.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “You don’t think this is a bit rash?”
“I’m just doing what you did.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t have all the responsibilities that you have.”
“You don’t think I should do it, then,” he said.
“I don’t know what you should do. I’m not God,” I said. What I was, was a guy who stole people’s chicken wings out of refrigerators, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. He wasn’t happy with what I had to say. He turned away, pushed aside the blinds, and stared out.
I’d about had it with being an inspiring presence. I sucked at an orange spicy knuckle of my right hand. All I could think of was Wayne’s poor family, living on rice and beans, the kids turning into sullen juvenile delinquents while he pounded away at some third-rate novel up in the wilds of Montana. Really, this whole writing thing was worse than heroin.
“I think it’s brave of you,” I said. “I admire your guts.”
He pivoted to face me. On the shelf above his head was the row of his remaindered books. “But if you thought I was making a mistake, you’d tell me, right? You wouldn’t lie to me?”
What a question. All of a sudden I was supposed to be everybody’s social worker? I liked Wayne. He’d been a huge help to me. He’d cashed my checks, done everything he could to make my life comfortable, taught me everything I knew about the writing game. So did I owe him? Maybe I did. But there was no way I was delivering the bad news, not at a moment like this.
“Wayne, come on,” I said. “I think we’ve gone through too much together for me to start lying now.”
Chapter Seventeen
If you’ve got to cross the state of Texas, a Learjet is the way to do it. The plane and the pilot were on loan from a former Lone Star senator who was thrilled to be doing a favor for the world’s most famous author. Rex sat up front, peering out one window and then the other, as the pilot, Captain Mudslide Snider, pointed out the far-flung towns and dried-up riverbeds. Ramona and I were in the back with a cooler full of snacks.
Captain Snider turned out to be a total Schoeninger fan. He’d grown up in Abilene, had collected Comanche arrowheads all his life, and his great-grandfather had punched cattle for Charlie Goodnight. Our flight was five hundred miles and he peppered Rex with questions the whole way.
As the first rumple of mountains appeared and the Learjet tilted to the south, Mudslide asked me what it was like, working for Rex. Speaking loud to make myself heard over the jet engines, I said it was the experience of a lifetime.
“I learn something new from him every day,” I shouted. “He’s got a heart as big as all outdoors, even though he doesn’t always like to let you know that. He’s made a difference in more people’s lives than you can imagine.” In the mirror, I saw Rex fix me with a long stare. Really, sometimes the guy was as hard to read as the expiration date on your credit card.
We began our descent. Light glinted off the Rio Grande. From a certain height, the raw landscape looked like a skin disease, but as we got closer I could make out abandoned homesteads and thick stands of reeds along the river.
Captain Snider brought us down on a landing strip at the edge of a half-built luxury hotel just a stone’s throw from Mexico. A van waited for us at the hangar. Schoeninger signed a couple of dog-eared paperbacks for Mudslide while Ramona and I loaded our bags in the car, and then we were off, rumbling past an eighteen-hole golf course, a restaurant straight out of Gourmet magazine, and some tin-roofed shacks where brown-skinned workers stared at us from the shade of their narrow porches.
We had an hour-and-a-half drive ahead of us, and the country got wilder and wilder, full of weird rock formations and played-out quicksilver mines. We zipped through a hippie ghost town. The mountains ahead of us kept rising.
I stared out the window at the endless, cactus-riddled expanse. The national park had been pieced together out of what had once been ranches, but I couldn’t imagine how a cow could survive out here, much less a human being. We flashed past a pair of German tourists in short leather pants hopping around in a field of purple sage, snapping pictures.
Ramona was chipper as a chipmunk, pointing out the sights, reading from her guidebook, asking me about my students. She had the glow of victory about her and she was trying to be sensitive about my feelings. Rex, on the other hand, was in one of his foul moods. I ignored it for as long as I could, but I finally had to say something.
“So, Rex, you looking forward to this today?” I asked.
“Not particularly.”
“Something wrong?”
“Yes, something’s wrong. Wayne called me last night.”
“Ahh,” I said.
“He told me that he resigned from the university. He said that you encouraged him.”
“I wouldn’t say I encouraged him exactly . . .”
“He said that you were his inspiration. It wasn’t him that I brought you down here to inspire.”
“I understand,” I said. Far out, I spied what may have been a couple of antelope.
“This is going to be a total train wreck,” Rex said.
“I’m sure you’ll miss him,” I said. “But a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do, right?”
“The man has no talent. Have you ever read anything he’s written?”
“I’ve read a bit.”
“He’s a lovely guy, an excellent teacher, and he does a hell of a job running the institute. But nothing’s going to happen with this book he wants to write.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“I did.”
“Wow. And what did he say?”
“It was hard. But I figured everybody deserves the truth. Right?”
“Right,” I said.
Not that I believed that. I’d been thinking long and hard about what I was going to say today, and in the end I’d decided I wasn’t going to say anything.
What good was it going to do me to blast Stainforth out of the water? It sure wasn’t going to help me get any more money out of Rex. All it was going to do was piss him off and create a big ruckus.
No, I needed to keep my mouth shut and let it happen. Let Stainforth take Rex to the cleaners. Rex seemed happy as a clam about it. What did it matter? I only had thr
ee classess left and one more check to collect. Then I was out of here. I’d gotten away with murder, let’s face it, and I’d be leaving with a nice chunk of change in my pocket. I needed to ride this one out.
We wended our way up into the Chisos Basin and drove to the motel. Schoeninger and I waited in the van while Ramona went inside to get the keys. There were mountains all around us and at five in the afternoon shadows were already beginning to creep up the red rock walls. A man in an A&M hat and fancy cowboy boots lugged a cooler up the steps to his room.
When Ramona came back with the keys, her idea was that Schoeninger should take a nice nap and then we could meet for dinner. Rex wasn’t having any part of it. There was plenty of daylight. We would go splash a little water on our faces and then go exploring.
Thirty minutes later we were poking our way up the Lost Mine Trail. Rex stopped at each of the trail markers, scribbling notes in his red notebook. On the path ahead of us were giant fornicating grasshoppers, brown goo oozing from their mandibles.
We were in shadow, even though the spiny peaks above us were still in light. Rex stopped at the switchbacks to catch his breath, sucking air like an asthma victim, but after a minute or two he would wave his cane at us and we’d be off again.
When we finally came to an overlook, Schoeninger collapsed on a stone bench and beamed at us. He gestured to the view. There were canyons on either side of us, one filled with sunshine, the other with mist.
“Ramona, how about a picture of the two authors here?”
When she didn’t answer, I glanced over my shoulder at her and saw her face go blank with horror. “Rex, I’m sorry. I didn’t bring the camera.”
He cocked his head to one side, disbelieving. “I thought we agreed that you were always to bring a camera.”
“We did,” she said. “I just forgot. I guess in all the rush . . .”
“So where is it?” The ground around us was littered with squashed prickly pear blossoms that looked like purple tulips.
“In the van. I think.”
“Uh-huh.”
“If you want, I can run and get it.”
“And how long would that take?”
“Fifteen minutes,” she said.
Not a chance in the world, I thought. It would take her at least a half hour, and it would be totally dark by then. I couldn’t believe he was going to make her go back, but I was wrong.
“We’ll wait here,” he said.
She disappeared quickly down the trail. Schoeninger lifted his binoculars to his eyes and stared out across the hazy plains of Mexico, looking as forlorn as Robinson Crusoe. I squatted on my haunches. Mountain ranges glowed around us. I’d read in a pamphlet that there were mountain lions up here. It would be just my luck to give the slip to the mob, only to be eaten by a puma.
After a minute he lowered the field glasses. “You want a look?”
“Sure.”
I lurched to my feet and took the binoculars from him. Fiddling with the focus, I squinted through the lenses. It was hard to tell exactly what I was looking at, mountains and desert and sky all swimming together.
“So Ramona said you wanted to talk to me,” he said.
I glanced back at him, letting the glasses fall to my side. He was wearing a white windbreaker with red, white, and blue cuffs and u.s. olympic track emblazoned across the chest. It looked three sizes too big.
“Yeah, but that’s all right,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” I said.
“So what did you think of Stainforth?” he said.
“He seemed like a nice guy.”
“I thought you didn’t take to him.” The hazy air smelled of something burning.
“Take to him? What do you mean, take to him?” Rex was starting to get under my skin. “He may have been a little full of himself, but the man’s entitled. He’s accomplished a lot.” A breeze rattled through the shiny-barked trees.
He took the binoculars back from me, ducked under the strap, and hobbled to the edge of the cliff. A bird shrieked somewhere below us. He raised his field glasses, scouting out stuff over in Mexico.
“Mingo would have had a hell of a time up here, wouldn’t he?” Rex said.
“I think he would have,” I said.
All these years later, I still think about that moment. I don’t know what it was that got to me. Maybe it was just him standing so near to the edge. Maybe I was worried about him falling. He looked so little. I swear, one stiff wind would have taken him right over into the canyon. Maybe I was thinking about us burying his dog together, or about us both being orphans, but I just didn’t want anything more bad to happen to him.
“Before you give the guy any money, though, you might want to check the guy out,” I said softly.
“What’s that?” He was still squinting through the binoculars.
“You might want to check the guy out!” I said, raising my voice.
He rested the glasses against his stomach, looking back at me. “And why is that?”
“Just to be sure,” I said.
Another breeze riffled his wispy hair. “So I take it you’ve done some snooping around.”
“I made a couple of calls.”
“Jesus Christ, I thought we were finally beyond all that.”
Darkness welled out of the canyons. I wanted to stop what was happening, but I didn’t know how. The first truly kind thing I’d ever tried to do for Rex, and it was turning into a disaster.
“Rex, there is a problem here.”
“Problem? What kind of a problem? Aren’t there always problems?”
“The man is a fraud.” Rex was stunned by what I’d said and I guess I was too. A chipmunk scurried out of the trees, rose up on its hind legs, saw us, and scurried back. “For years he’s been going around trying to sell that prize to anybody with enough money to make it worth his while. Stephen King. Dean Koontz.”
As he pivoted, his cane skidded in the loose rock and he nearly fell. “Dean Koontz? Who told you that?”
“Günter Grass.”
“Günter Grass?”
“And a lot of other people. I’ve been making calls for two days. This prize is a joke. There’s not a serious writer in the world who would go near it.”
Rex teetered to the left and the right. “But you were the one who told me to take it!”
“I didn’t know what I know now, Rex! I’m just trying to protect you.”
“Protect me? What do you think I am, a child?” Scrubby trees surrounded us, spooky as monks. “So where the hell is Ramona?”
“I’m sure she’ll be along.”
“Look how dark it is. We’re never going to be able to get any pictures in light like this.”
He sucked on his teeth, making a disgusted little whistle, then spun away from me and set off down the slope. He wasn’t on the regular trail, but on one of the steep shortcuts carved out by hikers over the years.
“Rex, watch it! Let me give you a hand!”
“Ramona?” he bellowed. “Ramona, where are you?”
Appalled, I hesitated longer than I should have, but finally headed after him, skidding sideways through the loose red dirt.
“You think I need any of their awards? I’ve got drawers full of them. I’ve got medals from five presidents! I don’t need Stainforth! I don’t need any of you! You’re a bunch of vultures, all of you, picking over my bones! Ramona! Goddamn it, where is she?”
He zigzagged down the incline, poking his cane this way and that like an out-of-control skier trying to stay upright with only one pole. For an eighty-five-year-old, he was moving at an amazing clip, but I could have caught him if I hadn’t snagged my foot in a tangle of weeds. By the time I pulled free, Schoeninger had put another twenty yards between us.
“Rex! Wait up!”
He was back on the main trail, but something was wrong; he listed to the left like a car with a flat.
“Rex, do you hear me?”
I began to run. When the path cut back sharply, Schoeninger barely managed the turn, careening through some rabbitbrush before staggering back on the trail. Without warning, his cane gave way under him and he fell. I rushed to his side, knelt down, and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Get away from me! Get away!” He struggled to push himself up, but couldn’t do it. Panting, he rested his cheek on the ground. I took his hand.
“Rex? Rex, are you all right?”
He didn’t move his head. His eyes rolled toward me, wide with fear. He tried to form words, but couldn’t. It was almost as if his tongue was too big for his mouth. “I can’t feel my arm,” he whispered finally. “I can’t feel anything.”
I knew there was no time to waste, but Schoeninger had a grip on my sweater with his good hand and wasn’t about to let go. I tried to calm him, tried to explain that I needed to go get help, but he just stared at me with the dumb, needy eyes of a dog. He had no color at all in his face and there were little twigs and bits of dirt embedded in his cheek. I was finally able to pry his fingers loose one by one, sweet-talking him the whole time. As I rose from my knees, I saw a flicker of light on the trail above us. The light wavered, disappeared, and then reappeared again, one switchback down from where it had been before.
“Who is it?” I shouted. “Is anybody there? We need help over here!”
There was no answer, but the light kept moving closer. A young woman ranger finally emerged out of the darkness. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, and a black plastic garbage bag was slung over her shoulder. She had that college softball player look—healthy, a little stocky, blond hair clipped close and combed back into a ducktail. The wavering beam of her flashlight slid from Schoeninger to me to Schoeninger again.
“So what happened?” Her voice was flat, as if Rex was no more than a fallen limb blocking the path.
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