by Ken Follett
There was no sign beside the road, no fence or gate, just a track where the sagebrush had been beaten down by the tires of pickup trucks. Star followed the track over a slight rise. The dump was in a dip, hidden from the road. She pulled up beside a pile of smoldering garbage. There was no sign of Mario or the seismic vibrator.
Priest could tell that Star was still troubled. He had to reassure her, he thought worriedly. She could not afford to be distracted today of all days. If something should go wrong, she would need to be alert, focused.
"Flower isn't going to lose me," he said.
"That's good," she replied cautiously.
"We're going to stay together, the three of us. You know why?"
"Tell me."
"Because we love each other."
He saw relief drain the tension out of her face. She fought back tears. "Thank you," she said.
He felt reassured. He had given her what she needed. She would be okay now.
He kissed her. "Mario will be here any second. You get movin', now. Put some miles behind you."
"You don't want me to wait until he gets here?"
"He mustn't get a close look at you. We can't tell what the future holds, and I don't want him to be able to identify you."
"Okay."
Priest got out of the car.
"Hey," she said, "don't forget Mario's coffee." She handed him the paper sack.
"Thanks." He took the bag and slammed the car door.
She turned around in a wide circle and drove away fast, her tires throwing up a cloud of Texas desert dust.
Priest looked around. He found it amazing that such a small town could generate so much trash. He saw twisted bicycles and new-looking baby carriages, stained couches and old-fashioned refrigerators, and at least ten supermarket carts. The place was a wasteland of packaging: cardboard boxes for stereo systems, pieces of lightweight polystyrene packing like abstract sculptures, paper sacks and polythene bags and tinfoil wrappers, and a host of plastic containers that had contained substances Priest had never used: rinse aid, moisturizer, conditioner, fabric softener, fax toner. He saw a fairy-tale castle made of pink plastic, presumably a child's toy, and he marveled at the wasteful extravagance of such an elaborate construction.
In Silver River Valley there was never much garbage. They did not use baby carriages or refrigerators, and they rarely bought anything that came in a package. The children would use imagination to make a fairy-tale castle from a tree or a barrel or a stack of timber.
A hazy red sun edged up over the ridge, casting a long shadow of Priest across a rusting bedstead. It made him think of sunrise over the snow peaks of the Sierra Nevada, and he suffered a sharp pang of longing for the cool, pure air of the mountains.
Soon, soon.
Something glinted at his feet. A shiny metal object was half-buried in the earth. Idly he scraped away the dry earth with the toe of his boot, then bent and picked up the object. It was a heavy Stillson wrench. It seemed new. Mario might find it useful, Priest thought: it was about the right size for the large-scale machinery of the seismic vibrator. But, of course, the truck would contain a full tool kit, with wrenches to fit every nut used in its construction. Mario had no need of a discarded wrench. This was the throwaway society.
Priest dropped the wrench.
He heard a vehicle, but it did not sound like a big truck. He glanced up. A moment later a tan pickup came over the ridge, bouncing along the rough track. It was a Dodge Ram with a cracked windshield: Mario's car. Priest suffered a pang of unease. What did this mean? Mario was supposed to show up in the seismic vibrator. His own car would be driven north by one of his buddies, unless he had decided to sell it here and buy another in Clovis. Something had gone wrong. "Shit," he said. "Shit."
He suppressed his feelings of anger and frustration as Mario pulled up and got out of the pickup. "I brought you coffee," he said, handing Mario the paper sack. "What's up?"
Mario did not open the bag. He shook his head sadly. "I can't do it, man."
Shit.
Mario went on: "I really appreciate what you offered to do for me, but I gotta say no."
What the hell is going on?
Priest gritted his teeth and made his voice sound casual. "What happened to change your mind, buddy?"
"After you left the bar last night, Lenny gave me this long speech, man, about how much the truck cost, and how I don't gotta give no rides, nor pick up no hitchhikers, and how he's trustin' me, and stuff."
I can just imagine Lenny, shit-faced drunk and maudlin--he probably had you nearly in tears, Mario, you dumb son of a bitch.
"You know how it is, Ricky. This is an okay job--hard work and long hours, but the pay is pretty good. I don't want to lose this job."
"Hey, no problem," Priest said with forced lightness. "So long as you can still take me to San Antonio." I'll think of something between here and there.
Mario shook his head. "I better don't, not after what Lenny said. I ain't taking nobody nowhere in that truck. That's why I brought my own car here, so I can give you a ride back into town."
And what am I supposed to do now, for Christ's sake?
"So, uh, what do you say, you wanna get going?"
And then what?
Priest had built a castle of smoke, and now he saw it shimmer and dissipate in the light breeze of Mario's guilty conscience. He had spent two weeks in this hot, dusty desert, working at a stupid, worthless job, and had wasted hundreds of dollars on airfares and motel bills and disgusting fast food.
He did not have time to do it again.
The deadline was now only two weeks and one day away.
Mario frowned. "Come on, man, let's go."
*
"I'm not going to give this place up," Star had said to Priest on the day the letter arrived. She sat next to him on a carpet of pine needles at the edge of the vineyard, during the midafternoon rest period, drinking cold water and eating raisins made from last year's grapes. "This is not just a wine farm, not just a valley, not just a commune--this is my whole life. We came here, all those years ago, because we believed that our parents had made a society that was twisted and corrupt and poisoned. And we were right, for Christ's sake!" Her face flushed as she let her passion show, and Priest thought how beautiful she was, still. "Just look at what's happened to the world outside," she said, raising her voice. "Violence and ugliness and pollution, presidents who tell lies and break the law, riots and crime and poverty. Meanwhile, we've lived here in peace and harmony, year after year, with no money, no sexual jealousy, no conformist rules. We said that all you need is love, and they called us naive, but we were right and they were wrong. We know we've found the way to live--we've proved it." Her voice had become very precise, betraying her old-money origins. Her father had come from a wealthy family but had spent his life as a doctor in a slum neighborhood. Star had inherited his idealism. "I'll do anything to save our home and our way of life," she went on. "I'll die for it, if our children can continue to live here." Her voice went quiet, but her words were clear, and she spoke with remorseless determination. "I'll kill for it, too," she said. "Do you understand me, Priest? I will do anything."
*
"Are you listening to me?" Mario said. "You want a ride into town or not?"
"Sure," Priest said. Sure, you lily-livered bastard, you yellow dog coward, you goddamn scum of the earth, I want a ride.
Mario turned around.
Priest's eye fell on the Stillson wrench he had dropped a few minutes earlier.
A new plan unfolded, fully formed, in his brain.
As Mario walked the three paces to his car, Priest stooped and picked up the wrench.
It was about eighteen inches long and weighed four or five pounds. Most of the weight was at the business end, with its adjustable jaws for gripping massive hexagonal nuts. It was made of steel.
He glanced past Mario, along the track that led to the road. There was no one in sight.
No witnesses.
<
br /> Priest took a step forward just as Mario reached to open the door of his pickup.
He had a sudden disconcerting flash: a photograph of a pretty young Mexican woman in a yellow dress, with a child in her arms and another by her side, and for a split second his resolve wavered as he felt the crushing weight of the grief he would bring into their lives.
Then he saw a worse vision: a pool of black water slowly rising to engulf a vineyard and drown the men, women, and children who were tending the vines.
He ran at Mario, raising the wrench high over his head.
Mario was opening the car door. He must have seen something out of the corner of his eye, for when Priest was almost on him he suddenly let out a roar of fear and flung the door wide, partly shielding himself.
Priest crashed into the door, which flew back at Mario. It was a wide, heavy door, and it knocked Mario sideways. Both men stumbled. Mario lost his footing and went down on his knees, facing the side of the pickup. His Houston Astros baseball cap landed on the ground. Priest fell backward and sat heavily on the stony earth, dropping the wrench. It landed on a plastic half-gallon Coke bottle and bounced a yard away.
Mario gasped: "You crazy--" He got to one knee and reached for a handhold to pull his heavy body upright. His left hand closed around the door frame. As he heaved, Priest--still on his butt--drew back his leg and kicked the door as hard as he could with his heel. It slammed on Mario's fingers and bounced open. Mario cried out with pain and fell to one knee, slumping against the side of the pickup.
Priest leaped to his feet.
The wrench gleamed silvery in the morning sun. He snatched it up. He looked at Mario, and his heart filled with rage and hate toward the man who had wrecked his careful plan and put his way of life in jeopardy. He stepped close to Mario and raised the tool.
Mario half turned toward him. The expression on his young face showed infinite puzzlement, as if he had no understanding of what was happening. He opened his mouth and, as Priest brought the wrench down, he said in a questioning voice: "Ricky ...?"
The heavy end of the wrench made a sickening thud as it smashed into Mario's head. His dark hair was thick and glossy, but it made no perceptible difference. His scalp tore, his skull cracked, and the wrench sank into the soft brain underneath.
But he did not die.
Priest began to be afraid.
Mario's eyes stayed open and focused on Priest. The mystified, betrayed expression barely altered. He seemed to be trying to finish what he had started to say. He lifted one hand, as if to catch someone's attention.
Priest took a frightened step back. "No!" he said.
Mario said: "Man ..."
Priest felt possessed by panic. He lifted the wrench again. "Die, you motherfucker!" he screamed, and he hit Mario again.
This time the wrench sank in farther. Withdrawing it was like pulling something out of soft mud. Priest felt a surge of nausea when he saw the living gray matter smeared on the adjustable jaws of the tool. His stomach churned and he swallowed hard, feeling dizzy.
Mario fell slowly backward and lay slumped against the rear tire, motionless. His arms became limp and his jaw slack, but he stayed alive. His eyes locked with Priest's. Blood gushed from his head and ran down his face and into the open neck of his checked shirt. His stare terrified Priest. "Die," Priest pleaded. "For the love of God, Mario, please die."
Nothing happened.
Priest backed off. Mario's eyes seemed to be begging him to finish the job, but he could not hit him again. There was no logic to it; he just could not lift the wrench.
Then Mario moved. His mouth opened, his body became rigid, and a strangled scream of agony burst from his throat.
It pushed Priest over the edge. He, too, screamed; then he ran at Mario and hit him again and again, in the same place, hardly seeing his victim through the haze of terror that blurred his eyesight.
The screaming stopped and the fit passed.
Priest stepped back, dropping the wrench on the ground.
The corpse of Mario fell slowly sideways until the mess that had been his head hit the ground. His gray brains seeped into the dry soil.
Priest fell to his knees and closed his eyes. "Dear God almighty, forgive me," he said.
He knelt there, shaking. He was afraid that if he opened his eyes, he might see Mario's soul going up.
To quiet his brain he recited his mantra: "Ley, tor, pur-doy-kor ..." It had no meaning: that was why concentrating hard on it produced a soothing effect. It had the rhythm of a nursery rhyme he recalled from childhood:
One, two, three-four-five
Once I caught a fish alive
Six, seven, eight-nine-ten
Then I let him go again
When he was chanting to himself, he often slipped from the mantra into the rhyme. It worked just as well.
As the familiar syllables soothed him, he thought about the way his breath entered his nostrils, went through his nasal passages into the back of his mouth, passed along his throat, and descended into his chest, finally penetrating the farthest branches of his lungs, before retracing the entire journey in reverse: lungs, throat, mouth, nose, nostrils, and back out into the open air. When he concentrated fully on the journey of the breath, nothing else came into his head--no visions, no nightmares, no memories.
A few minutes later he stood up, his heart cold, his face set in a determined expression. He had purged himself of emotion: he felt no regret or pity. The murder was in the past, and Mario was just a piece of garbage that he had to dispose of.
He picked up his cowboy hat, brushed off the dirt, and put it on his head.
He found the pickup's tool kit behind the driving seat. He took a screwdriver and used it to detach the license plates, front and rear. He walked across the dump and buried them in a smoldering mass of garbage. Then he put the screwdriver back in the tool kit.
He bent over the body. With his right hand he grasped the belt of Mario's jeans. With his left he took a fistful of the checked shirt. He lifted the body off the ground. He grunted as his back took the strain: Mario was heavy.
The door of the pickup stood open. Priest swung Mario back and forth a couple of times, building up a rhythm, then with one big heave he threw the body into the cabin. It lay over the bench seat, with the heels of the boots sticking out of the open door and the head hanging into the footwell on the passenger side. Blood dripped from the head.
He threw the wrench in after the body.
He wanted to siphon gas out of the pickup's tank. For that he needed a long piece of narrow tubing.
He opened the hood, located the windshield washer fluid, and ripped out the flexible plastic pipe that led from the reservoir to the windshield nozzle. He picked up the half-gallon Coke bottle he had noticed earlier, then walked around to the side of the pickup and unscrewed the gas cap. He fed the tube into the fuel tank, sucked on it until he tasted gasoline, then inserted the end into the Coke bottle. Slowly it filled with gas.
Gas continued to spill on the ground while he walked to the door of the pickup and emptied the Coke bottle over the corpse of Mario.
He heard the sound of a car.
Priest looked at the dead body soaked in gasoline in the cab of the pickup. If someone came along right now, there was nothing he could say or do to conceal his guilt.
His rigid calm left him. He started to shake, the plastic bottle slipped from his fingers, and he crouched on the ground like a scared child. Trembling, he stared at the track that led to the road. Had an early riser come to get rid of an obsolete dishwasher, or the plastic playhouse the kids had grown out of, or the old-fashioned suits of a dead grandfather? The noise of the engine swelled as it came nearer, and Priest closed his eyes.
"Ley, tor, pur-doy-kor ..."
The noise began to fade. The vehicle had passed the entrance and gone on down the road. It was just traffic.
He felt stupid. He stood up, regaining control. "Ley, tor, pur-doy-kor ..."
But the
scare made him hurry.
He filled the Coke bottle again and quickly doused the plastic bench seat and the entire interior of the cabin with gasoline. He used the remainder of the gas to lay a trail across the ground to the rear of the truck, then splashed the last of it onto the side near the fuel cap. He threw the bottle into the cabin and stepped back.
He noticed Mario's Houston Astros cap on the ground. He picked it up and threw it into the cab with the body.
He took a book of matches from his jeans, struck one, and used it to light all the others; then he threw the blazing matchbook into the cab of the pickup and swiftly backed away.
There was a whoosh of flame and a cloud of black smoke, and in a second the inside of the cabin was a furnace. A moment later the flames snaked across the ground to where the tube was still spilling gas from the tank. There was another explosion as the gas tank blew up, rocking the pickup on its wheels. The rear tires caught fire, and flames flickered around the oily chassis.
A disgusting smell filled the air, almost like roasting meat. Priest swallowed hard and stood farther back.
After a few seconds the blaze became less intense. The tires, the seats, and the body of Mario continued to burn slowly.
Priest waited a couple of minutes, watching the flames; then he ventured closer, trying to breathe shallowly to keep the stench out of his nose. He looked inside the cabin of the pickup. The corpse and the seating had congealed together into one vile black mass of ash and melted plastic. When it cooled down, the vehicle would be just another piece of junk that some kids had set fire to.
He knew he had not got rid of all traces of Mario. A casual glance would reveal nothing, but if the cops ever examined the pickup, they would probably find Mario's belt buckle, the fillings from his teeth, and maybe his charred bones. Someday, Priest realized, Mario might come back to haunt him. But he had done all he could to conceal the evidence of his crime.
Now he had to steal the seismic vibrator.
He turned away from the burning body and started walking.
*
At the commune in Silver River Valley, there was an inner group called the Rice Eaters. There were seven of them, the remnants of those who had survived the desperate winter of 1972-73, when they had been isolated by a blizzard and had eaten nothing but brown rice boiled in melted snow for three straight weeks. On the day the letter came, the Rice Eaters stayed up late in the evening, sitting in the cookhouse, drinking wine and smoking marijuana.