by Edward Es
“Mr. Holmes, Bud Meyerkamp, FBI. I think we should talk.”
“I’m not much of a talker.”
Bud looks down at the ground, then rolls his eyes up toward Tom. “I’m trying to make this as easy as possible. We’ll keep this... private. For now. Just the two of us.” He turns partway around, motioning toward the restrooms on the side of the service station.
“What do you say we step into my office?”
Sam forces himself in between and the two agents respond quickly, both of them formidable, but together still smaller than Sam. They’re academy clones, complete with government issue dark glasses and snide expressions. Sam growls, “Wait a minute here.”
One of them walks up and pokes Sam in the chest. “Hold on there, Jazbo.”
Sam looks at the finger on his massive chest, then up at the agent. “Jazbo?”
Tom intervenes. “Meet my personal friend and attorney, Sam Brown. He’s just trying to protect my interests.”
Bud pushes everyone apart. “Now, now, boys, there’s no need for all this. Just a little talk. Mr. Holmes and me. Is that asking so much?” The two agents and Sam stare off like alley cats. The agents, chewing gum in unison, smile sarcastically, unlike Sam. If looks could kill, they’d be dead.
“Why do I feel like I don’t have a choice?” Tom asks.
“Sure you do. This time.”
Tom looks around at the bizarre scene, clashing against such peaceful surroundings, and sees most of the population of mainstreet Springdale gathering. “All right. Let’s go.” Sam grabs his arm. “It’s OK, Sam,” Tom says, and hands him his cup.
“I don’t like this. I’m standing right outside.”
They walk toward the restrooms and the two agents follow half a step behind. Bud opens the door to the men’s room, motioning for Tom to enter, but Sam steps in the way, looking straight into Bud’s eyes. “I, uh, have to take a leak. Why don’t you use that one?” he says, pointing to the ladies’ room.
The other agent joins in. “Well, why don’t you just pucker up and hold it, hot shot?”
Sam moves toward the agent, but Bud, squirming at the thought of entering a ladies’ restroom, stops him. “All right, all right. That’s enough.” Tom opens the ladies’ room door and shows Bud the way, watching Sam enter the men’s room, followed by a clone.
Inside the ladies’ room, Bud is blatantly distressed at being in such uncharted territory, much to the amusement of Tom, who enters the stall, then turns. “Do you think I should... sit down? Out of respect?”
“Oh for chrissake, Holmes. Knock it off.” Tom urinates loudly, amplifying Bud’s already frayed nerves.
In the men’s room, Sam throws the cup in a trash can, pokes around at its contents, and walks into the stall. He searches around, the agent watching his every move. Sam looks inside the water tank and, finding nothing, proceeds to the urinal, pretending to relieve himself while looking up at the ceiling. The agent sniffs the air as he looks at himself in the mirror and needlessly primps his butch.
“Jesus Christ, man. You smell like a friggin’ sweat horse.” Sam ignores the comment, feels under the sink, and finds what he was looking for. He rips a wire loose and yanks out a microphone transmitter, which he sticks in his pocket.
Sam washes his hands and pulls a paper towel from the dispenser as the agent glares. “Yeah, well, you know why us ‘Jazbos’ smell, don’t you?”
“Why’s that?”
“So blind people can hate us, too.”
The agent starts to laugh, but stops. Sam exits the men’s room and, passing the door to the ladies’ room, throws the microphone through the partly opened window-vent above the door.
As Tom is drying his hands, the microphone hits the floor by his feet. He and Bud look at it, then at each other. “Nice private little talk? Just you and me?” Bud stares a hole through the door. “All right, let’s see it.”
“Hey, I—”
Tom’s expression halts him. Bud removes his coat, pulls the transmitter from his back, switches it off, and balances it on the sink edge.
“All right, you got me.”
“What do you want?”
“I know what you’re up to and I’m giving you a chance to call it off before you get in any deeper.”
“And what is it that I’m up to?”
“Let’s just say we cut the crap right here.”
Bud removes an overstuffed envelope from his jacket pocket and hands it to Tom, a series of photos which Tom peruses. “What’s all this?”
Bud outbursts, “You know damn well what it is. We took these this morning overhead your little ‘hideaway’. Camouflage or not, my people tell me there’s a launch pad under there.”
Tom hands the pictures back. “I don’t see any such thing.”
Bud shakes his head. “Don’t play games with me, Holmes. We stopped your truck last night. One thousand gallons of N2O4 in one tank, and seven hundred gallons of Aerozine in the other. What kind of bread is it that you make with hypergolic fuel, anyway?” Tom doesn’t answer. “And then there’s that little fireworks display down in Mexico.”
Tom is clearly caught off guard. “What are you talking about?”
Bud, a trained judge of body language, sees Tom is surprised. “The one that just happened to shoot across the top of one of your boats?”
Both men are struck awkward by this delivery of news. “If you’re so sure about all this, why the choreography? Why don’t you just club me over the head and drag me off?”
“A lot of important people are giving you the benefit of the doubt,” Bud says, annoyed. “Why, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you one thing, I’ll have a warrant here sooner than you think. So why don’t you just cooperate and get this over with?”
“Why is this so important to you?”
Bud finds himself on the defensive and doesn’t like it. “You’ve got to be kidding. I can see I’ve been giving you too much credit. Let’s not mention it’s plain illegal. How about all the people you might blow up?”
Tom looks at him in the mirror. “There’s more to it than that. Why are you really here? I think you should be honest. Let it out.”
Bud stares at him in disbelief. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a quarter, and throws it noisily into the sink. “Here’s a quarter for your advice. Now, about the crap we were cutting?”
Tom looks at the quarter. “I think it was Caesar who said a man’s worst enemy is most like himself.”
“I doubt it. If I have anything in common with you, I’ll cut it off.”
“You lost your only son in Vietnam. Since then you’ve been in one jam after another.” Bud tenses so hard he can’t move. “First the Iran scandal, then the Marcos evacuation. A few Marines get killed, it’s reported as a helicopter crash on maneuvers.”
“What’s going on here?” Bud snaps.
“You play your game, I play mine.”
“You sonofabitch, I ought to break your neck.”
Tom turns around and sits on the edge of the sink. He looks down at the floor, scratching at a crack in the grimy yellow tile with his shoe. “I was out riding a few weeks ago and saw a cougar chasing down a mountain hare.” Bud rolls his eyes in frustration. “One’s chasing, one’s trying to get away. But they’re both running, driven by pain. The pain of hunger, and the pain of death. They’re both just trying to survive.”
“I’ll tell you what my pain is.”
“What’s that?” Tom asks.
“You.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Tom picks up the quarter from the sink and looks it over, sobering. “1980. That was the year my son was born.”
Bud looks away. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Tom looks at Bud. “Do you know what your son’s favorite color was?”
Bud looks back up and their eyes meet. He
reels imperceptibly. At first he motions with his hand, an angry, warning reflex, but stops, confused, choked back. He begins to speak, then stops. Then, “I... don’t know. I can’t remember. Orange, I think. Why?”
“That’s it, you see. Of all the things, all the many terrible things you miss, I’ve come to realize it’s not just the big things, the obvious ones. It’s the little ones that hurt most. How they tied their shoes, the way they held a glass. How they cried.”
Bud finds his hand shaking and places it in his pocket. “And what their favorite color was.”
“Yeah,” Tom says. “I knew that, I knew it was silver, but I never asked him why. I didn’t take the time to ask. And now I’ll never know.” Tom’s eyes glass over, but he stops it there. “I’ll never know.”
Bud exhales the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. He walks over to the door and faces it, as if he could see through the chipped paint and metal. “Rusty, my son, he liked pumpkin pie. He liked it more than anything. It started when we mashed some up on Thanksgiving when he was one. Ever since, when he got older, he made his own. He baked it from real pumpkins, had this recipe he invented with molasses and brown sugar.” Bud closes his eyes. “God, was it good. I can almost smell it, the way it came hot out of the oven. That bittersweet taste. It got better every year, talk of the family. He took real pride in it.”
Bud turns around and rubs his nose, as close to tears as he’s ever come with a stranger, barely able to shake it off. “That was the last time I sent him anything. At Thanksgiving I sent a pumpkin over to him in Vietnam. He never got it. He was gone before it got there.” The room is suddenly filled with the thick air of memories. Tom folds his arms as Bud searches for composure. “But I don’t know what his first word was.”
“That just cuts like a knife, doesn’t it?”
“He always used to ask me, and I couldn’t tell him. All the other kids knew what theirs was. I was gone, of course, whenever it was he said it. Off on another save-the-world mission. And my wife, she was there but didn’t care to tell me. She didn’t like me much. Hell, I didn’t like me much. The thing is though, I didn’t ask, before she—”
“It’s OK, Bud. I know the story.”
“He’d ask me, over and over. Damned if I didn’t even get mad at him over it. Damn me. I’ll never know. He never knew.”
Bud mounts onto the defensive after a moment of silence, snapping back as if he’d been kidnapped. “I can tell this isn’t getting anywhere. Maybe we’d all be better off letting you blast yourself to kingdom come.” Tom stares him in the eye, puts the quarter in his pocket, turns, and departs the restroom. Bud stands there, perplexed, forcing resentment. “Fruitcake. 100% Grade A.”
Tom bolts out of the restroom toward Cirrus and Sam catches up. “What’s going on, Tommy?”
Tom stops. “Did you know about the probe?”
Sam gives a poor performance. “What?”
“Damnit! I thought so. It’s all right, I’m sure Kirshner gagged you.”
“Take it easy, now. You know he did what he thought was best.”
“Best for what? I know what he’s trying to do.” Tom looks around at the disbanding crowd. “And it obviously worked.”
“Where are you going? What about all this?”
Zion sits ready in his basket as Tom mounts Cirrus. “I’ll be at the Shack. And DON’T call me.”
He turns Cirrus around and looks at the circle of cars. With an angry kick of the stirrups, he charges one that has two agents sitting on the hood. They dive off as Cirrus vaults over onto the street, galloping off. The agents get up and dust off, then turn toward Sam who walks away in a hurry.
The colossal ship drifts laterally from the pier amidst fanfares of streamers, deep horn blasts, and waving passengers. Isabel and Nonna lean against the railing, looking down at whirlpools churned by the side thrusters as a stray streamer spins down and ties them together. Nonna is able to stand for short periods, even take steps occasionally, but that has been the extent of her mobility since back surgery. She runs the red, white, and blue streamer through her fingers. “You mean to tell me he didn’t even tell you where this blasted boat is going?”
“He didn’t even bother telling me I was going with it until yesterday. Why should I care where it’s going?”
“He’s thrown just about everyone he cares about in the world on this thing.”
“Obviously this has been in the works for a while. Why are we always the last to know?” Isabel asks as she picks the streamer apart.
“That’s why I don’t like the looks of it all. If we’d known what he was doing, we probably wouldn’t have come. I tell you, this isn’t right.”
Isabel looks at Nonna. Despite Nonna’s redoubt of tenacity, her love for her grandson stands above all else in her life, and this cruise to nowhere has served only to increase her distress. Isabel knows this, and her resentment at being postured so far from Tom transfers to his having left this wonderful woman behind.
“Damn him,” says Isabel.
“No, darling,” Nonna says, turning away from her. “Damn us, for not being able to help him.” They both stare back outward as a lowering Sun casts their shadows across the pier.
Patrick Herlihy sits still in the oak-lined chambers of a federal court justice, anticipating the arrival of one whose authority breathes from the walls and yards of books covering them. Even the Attorney General looks small in these surroundings. Tall doors open and the Honorable Shiela Bridges enters, a handsome woman of fifty, looking ten years younger and ten years wiser. She glides in wearing a black robe, which she removes and hangs on a rack, unveiling the sexy red dress that was lurking beneath. She walks over to a complicated desk and sits, leaning back in the leather chair.
“Good evening, Patrick.”
“Your Honor.”
“‘My Honor’ is hanging over there on the rack. Shiela, please. I’ve looked over the file on Holmes.”
“What do you think?”
“You were right. This is shaky ground, but Meyerkamp’s correct in claiming this could fall within the scope of national security. The incident with the fuel trucks will probably be reduced to an infraction, but since it crossed state lines, we’ll retain jurisdiction. Some of his evidence borders on circumstantial, but there are enough points to tie a lot of this together. He’s got a reasonable case for probable cause.”
“Do you think we should turn him loose?”
She puts on glasses, then looks up. “I’m more concerned about your position if you don’t. If this rather absurd story comes true, you could look pretty foolish considering the warning signs.”
“It’s Tom I’m concerned about. Perhaps we’d better talk to him.”
“My sentiments exactly.”
They both mull over the situation. She signs a paper on her desk. “I’m issuing a warrant. You might remind Mr. Meyerkamp this allows only a limited search and question, not an arrest. Unless, of course, he finds something to back it up.”
Herlihy stands. “I understand. And I appreciate your attention to this matter. I know how full your docket is.”
“No bother.” She hands him the warrant. “Maybe you better sleep on this one.”
Herlihy nods and exits respectfully. Shiela removes her glasses, closes her eyes, and rubs the bridge of her nose. She picks up a newspaper clipping from the file and looks at it. Silhouetted through the newsprint is the head of a little boy.
Tom rides up under a sky darkening with clouds to a small guardhouse that sits near an opening in a six-foot adobe wall. Trimming the top of the wall are two feeble strands of barbed wire. The guard, Tall Tree, a Navajo whose size befits his name, sees Tom and opens an iron gate to let him pass.
“Good evening, Mr. Tom. I didn’t expect you coming.”
“I didn’t expect me coming either. How’s that
new foal of yours?”
“Oh, he’s growing much bigger today. Eats almost half a bale now.”
“Bring him over to the ranch and have Billy give him a nice rub and comb.”
“Oh, thank you Mr. Tom. I’ll do that,” says Tall Tree as he closes the gate.
“And Tall Tree, nobody comes in here tonight. OK?”
“OK! Nobody comes in here. OK.”
Cirrus strides in and Tom dismounts. He lets the horse walk away, then stands, looking grimly at the Shack. It’s not really a shack, a name he and Francine gave it when they first moved in. It’s a tiny two bedroom house, the exterior made entirely of red-brown boulders, standing exactly as it did some twenty-five years ago when the newlyweds arrived. The Sun is half set behind the distant cliffs to the west and casts severe shadows off the rock house, striking the compound wall on the eastern side.
The wall is new compared to the house, making the small structure look as if it were the surviving ruin of something that was once there. Such is not the case, however. Tom created a monument, protected from the outside world, unchanging. The wall keeps out time as much as anything, for time became the enemy shortly after a happy young family started. It was here the baby was born, and everything was good. And it was here that all good began to end. This little house was both the beginning, and the end, of happiness.
Tom climbs the wooden steps to the creaking verandah, each step more difficult than the last. There he stops to watch a moth flail itself against the window toward faint light within. Then, pulling the squeaky screen door open, he walks in.
Even with all the time Tom spent here, all the days and nights of his life that seemed so normal, and those that didn’t, he feels decimated every time he enters. Each article, each flower on the faded wallpaper has become something foreign, viewed through cracked eyes, something he sees for the first time, every time. He moves languidly through the room, wishing to float above the dried-out floorboards where happy people used to walk, across which final steps were taken. He settles where he always does, on a worn tweed couch next to a small end table on which sits a dime store lamp atop a dusty, curled doily. A soft glow from the yellowing lampshade is all that lights the room. The lamp is never turned off, not since the last night they left.