I must be forty feet into the tunnel. It’s starting to veer to the left; when I pass the bend, the darkness is complete. It’s quiet as a tomb. There’s a beer bottle on the ground, and some loose chunks of rock, but if Mindy’s in here she’s either not awake or not alive.
The silence is broken by a sudden flutter of wings and a chorus of squeaking that I never want to hear again, followed by a weird shriek and hoof beats on the tunnel floor. A wave of bats flitter around my head and in the slender beam of the flashlight I see a beast charging at me. It looks like a hairy black pit bull with tusks for the tiny second I can see it before it slams into my legs and knocks me on my back. The flashlight goes out as it flies from my hand. The beast’s hoofbeats recede into the darkness while the bats swirl above me in a sonic nightmare of leathery fluttering and squeals.
If it weren’t for Mindy, I’d have given up long ago. I don’t know what gods I’ve offended, but they’re having their way with me now.
¤ ¤ ¤
Time goes by, who can measure? The bats have settled down; somewhere up above they’re happily perched, upside down, grasping the rock ceiling with their claws, folded into their wings, back to their bat dreams. I seem to be indestructible, and yet I feel so vulnerable. Snakes like caves—I read that somewhere. Scorpions, spiders, poisonous lizards, guns with silencers, rat-faced killers, yes!—and rats, too, scurrying here where I’ve made my bed, it seems, for I’ve lost interest in moving.
I paw at the dirt on my right side until I feel the cool metal of the flashlight. I grasp it and hit it with heel of my left hand. Nothing. I push the button and remain in the dark. The batteries fall onto my chest when I unscrew the cap. I put them back in and the beam appears like a comet, slicing through pitch black like a laser through obsidian.
I sit up and swing the light around the tunnel walls and now the floor. No rats and not a snake in sight. I’m glad I left the backpack at the entrance; falling on the C-4 might have left me with too many separate parts to get moving again. I pick myself up and follow the beam back around the bend; the mouth of the tunnel is a circle of sunlight ahead of me.
The view of the desert is like a balm to the soul, space to move and breathe, the sun my friend, the sheltering sky. I tuck the .45 in my pants, put the flashlight in the backpack, and pick up the rifle. East, away from the tunnel and the mounds of dirt and the water tower and the buildings, away from the dead Mexicans and Ratboy’s van and my nice new car, out toward the foothills and the patch of greenery I saw from the main building.
It’s a weird little desert oasis, thick with mesquite and palms and, now that I’m closer, flowering sage. It fills a shallow canyon that cuts into the foothills and veers to my left in a gentle slope for about a quarter mile before tapering off into the surrounding hills.
I climb some boulders and find a worn path through the bushes. It winds through the trees and rocks and brings me to a stream that originates somewhere at the top of the canyon and bends to the south just ahead of me. I wade across and wind up on a sandy beach in the crook of the bend. Footprints are scattered everywhere, and the remains of a fire smolder in a small depression in the sand. I am in Ratboy’s sacred place, the stream where his adoptive father baptized him.
Upstream, to the northeast, the bank to my left rises steeply, becoming a rock wall after about a hundred yards. On my side of the stream, the patch of sand narrows and becomes a muddy path between the water and a grade of boulders and dirt and bush. Two sets of footprints are clearly visible, one fairly small and terminating in a distinct point—I recall Ratboy’s boots—and the other simply enormous, making huge gouges in the soft mud. I follow their lead, rifle ready. A hawk soars overhead and swoops down to my right, emerging from a crevasse between two giant rocks with something gray and furry wriggling in its talons.
The stream narrows and deepens. A cluster of boulders and trees make an island that interrupts the water’s flow so that it quickens where it has cut a path to either side. As I approach I raise the rifle, since I can’t see beyond the fork in the stream. Beyond it, the mud path disappears, along with the footprints. Standing there, upstream from the little island, I look at the opposite bank and see a rock spur jutting out from the cliff. It causes the water to churn before it meets the island and divides. In the crook on the downstream side of the spur is a depression in the cliff wall and a flat rock platform about a foot underwater leading into it.
I wade across to the island through waist-high water. A fallen tree gives me something to grab onto and I climb to the top of the largest rock. I am ten feet above the water, looking down at the depression in the cliff, and I can see now that it darkens as it recedes into the rock wall. It’s a crevasse, deep in the shadows even now at midday. The swirling water looks deep on this side, but it’s only about eight feet to the shallow rock shelf, and there’s a lower boulder I can launch from.
I lay the rifle down and remove the backpack. The .45 and the flashlight will be my friends in the dark once again, if I make it past the mouth of the cave. I put them in the backpack and remove the C-4 and detonator and lay them on the rock and strap the pack on my shoulders. I climb down to the launch-point and study the water. There’s no way to tell how deep it is, but it’s moving and probably over my head. I hurl myself upstream and stroke across and am conveniently swept by the current onto the rock shelf.
I’m ankle-deep in water, but in three steps I’m inside of the rock wall, crouching in the dim light, waiting to be shot once again, the .45 ready in one hand and the flashlight, not yet on, in the other. Four more steps and I’m in total darkness, moving as silently as I can. I hear a clatter and shushing sounds coming from somewhere ahead of me. I freeze and hear the click of a hammer being cocked. I whisper loudly, “Jason!”
Silence. A rustling sound, then Ratboy’s voice, incredulous: “Dad?”
I take three steps forward, four, five. I have no idea where they are. I whisper his name again: “Jason, where are you?”
Now his voice is desperate, grateful, pathetic. “Dad, I’m sorry. They took over the camp.” The voice is coming from right in front of me. I say nothing. He blurts out, “Dad, is that you?” I turn on the flashlight: he’s a deer caught in headlights; his left shoulder is bandaged and bleeding; his gun pointed randomly out to his right; his lazy eye blinks out of synch with the good one. I say, “Nope,” and shoot him in the forehead.
A roar of pain and rage erupts from the shadows and Ratboy’s gorilla-shaped friend charges at me. His unformed features make him look like a thug with a nylon stocking over his face, a giant, dumb bank-robber. He slams me into the rock wall and picks me up and throws me across the cave and charges again. I drop the flashlight as I hit the opposite wall, but this time it stays on. I leave the body and let it crumple to the ground.
From above, in the minimal glow of the flashlight, I can see Ratboy’s body collapsed against the wall in a sitting position where the cave ends in a rounded cul-de-sac. Mindy lies curled up a few feet away, alive or dead I can’t tell. I watch Gorilla-boy raise a fist and smash my face. He raises it again. I float to Ratboy and probe. I move closer; there’s nothing in my way, and I move in. I look through Ratboy’s eyes and raise his gun and pull the trigger. The first bullet hits Gorilla-boy in the ass but he delivers his blow anyway. I fire again, and again, and again. The monster falls over with a groan and stops moving.
¤ ¤ ¤
I exit Ratboy’s body and linger in the dome of the cave space. I feel contaminated, soiled as though immersed in a psychic cesspool, infected by a soul-sickness one can only confront with dread, or with a faith larger than I’ve ever known. I hesitate to take this sickness back to my own body, as though it might take residence there like a stain that can never be washed away.
I re-enter my body because I have to. It’s badly damaged, but serviceable. I put my hand to the back of my head; it’s crushed from the impact against the cave wall and feels soft, like baby fat. My right cheek is smashed and I can feel b
its of bone crunching when I press it with my fingers. I pick up the flashlight and go over to Mindy. She’s inert but breathing, either drugged or knocked unconscious.
I go back to Ratboy’s body and search his pockets. A rabbit’s foot—but no, I check it out with the flashlight and it looks more like it once belonged to a cat; a folding combat knife; a wallet; and a small Ziploc baggie full of pills, but no keys. I have to struggle with Gorilla-boy’s body to turn him over and get to his front pocket, where I find a set of keys and put them in my pocket. I shine the light on his face; he looks like a huge sleeping infant, all malice gone. Ratboy still looks like a rat, his expression frozen into a permanent sneer, his upper lip pulled back so that his canines glint wetly in the flashlight’s beam.
I retrieve the .45 and tuck it in my pants. Mindy feels light as a feather as I pick her up, but is completely unresponsive. I stagger to the mouth of the cave and step down onto the submerged shelf and launch myself backward into the stream. The current carries us a short way until my feet touch bottom and I can walk to the opposite side and climb up the rocks to the mud path. I take Mindy back to the beach and lay her next to the fire pit and go back up the path, across to the island, and retrieve the C-4 and the rifle.
Mindy’s still unconscious when I get back to her. I hoist her onto my back and head toward the sun. My vision is dim; the desert and sky look grainy and dark, even though it’s still, by the sun’s position, mid-afternoon. The trees and bushes are amorphous shapes, without definition or significance, and I know only that I have to get to the building and that in order to do that I have to keep the hillside to my right. I’m obsessed with two things: one is to get Mindy home to safety; the other is that someone set this all in motion, and I’m going to find out who and why.
25
There is no time. There is only another step into shades of gray, and another, the sun a quicksilver plate in the sky. I will the body to move. I drop the rifle; it’s useless to me now. I wear the backpack on my chest, my daughter on my back, my shoes squeak wetly. I trudge onward and try to retrieve the pieces to the puzzle. Tanya, the conflicting geologist’s reports, Ratboy at the restaurant, riding my bike, the gun in the Mustang’s window, waking up at the morgue. Jason senior and his obsession with gold. There is no thread of coherence to it all.
Mindy’s hand twitches where it rests against my elbow. A good sign, I hope. A mound appears to my right, and a structure, a giant can on stilts. I struggle to put a name on it: water tower. I pass the two shacks and arrive at the main building. The body wants to quit. I’ve driven on fumes and flat tires to get where I needed to go, but now the wheels are coming off and we’re not going to make it any farther. I fumble with the door and turn right and shuffle across the room to the nearest bunk, turn and sit and ease Mindy onto the mat, brush back her hair and stare. I am void of thought or feeling.
Her breathing is shallow but steady.
I find myself standing at the workbench, with no memory of walking to it, and no intention. There is light but it seems dark.
I’m sitting in the chair, facing the mirror. In my hand are the long-nosed tweezers from the work bench. I don’t know why. I squint at my reflection and try to remember what I am looking at. For some reason, I’m sitting in a chair at the beach, across a card table from a man with closed eyes. He opens them and stares into mine and says, “Commune with your spirit to begin healing.” The beach dissolves and I am staring into my own eyes, my ruined cheek sagging, my hair plastered to the dried dust on my forehead, blood caked from my nose to my upper lip.
I don’t know anything about communing with my spirit. What I see is the enormity of my neglect, the denial, the procrastination, the hiding behind a haze of opiates; dishonesty, grasping selfishness, and isolation. It hits me with a clarity unthinkable just a moment ago: the fact of my pathetic condition even before Ratboy shot me. I am back on my bike, approaching my driveway, the silver Mustang creeping up behind me, the shot, the sting, the clattering of my bike and the impact of my head on the asphalt, and Ratboy’s voice: “Fuck you, turkey.” The roaring begins.
As the Mustang drives off, a shape appears against the night sky. It’s triangular, like a giant stingray, dark as the space between the stars. It spirals down from above me. The roaring sound intensifies. It obliterates everything else; sound, sight, and sensation are subsumed into the tornado, at the center of which is a weird peace.
And now a new memory, the next part of the sequence. Underneath the roaring I can hear a calm, informative voice delivering instructions like a CNN reporter reading off stock quotes. It seems to be telling me the rules of my new condition, but because of the hurricane I can’t decipher every word. I barely make out something about “re-integration with and repair of the body . . . retribution is allowed” and “killing of innocents . . . permanent dissolution.” I wonder about that phrase, permanent dissolution. How bad can that be, really? Isn’t that what Buddhist meditation is about? Isn’t that what every junky is looking for? And who is an innocent, anyway?
The shape hovers and recedes. The roaring subsides. I hear police sirens and see flashing red and blue lights. And then, oblivion.
I turn my head to the right and with the index and ring fingers of my right hand part the hair and spread the bullet wound. The hole is a little over a quarter inch in diameter. With my left hand I slide the tweezers in. They’re eight inches long and go halfway in with no resistance. I poke slightly upward, trying to feel for the metallic resistance of a bullet and . . .
I’m poolside in Palm Springs, drinking an ice cold Dr. Pepper. It’s spring break and I’m seventeen. My skin is wet, the sun is fierce, and voices are chattering around me. The part of me that’s dreaming pulls back on the tweezers and I’m back in the wooden chair.
I try again. No bullet. I move the steel points slightly to the left. I’m sitting on my father’s shoulders, staring face to face at an ape in a zoo enclosure. He’s only eight feet away. He reaches a black hand toward me. My hand moves and I’m looking in the mirror.
One more try. This time I poke downward. My left-hand coordination isn’t great at the best of times, which doesn’t include right now. Once more I’m transported, this time to only a week ago, picking through apples at the Safeway. The sensation is so real I can feel the texture of the fruit. I wish I could go back to the first time I had sex with Joanie Bennett in college, but now’s not the time.
I once read an article about how memories are stored in the brain, and that every moment is stored holographically in the cells but that there’s no map or indexing system for finding a specific image or experience.
I have another idea. I lean back and leave the body. I hover in the upper corner of the room and look down at my body, then zoom in slowly until all my attention is on the side of my head. I concentrate and move forward and find myself in the tunnel that the bullet made. I have to go all the way across and make a u-turn where the slug bounced off the inside of my skull and backtracked. The walls of the tunnel are pink and glistening, with dried blood lining the bottom. The hole continues back and slightly downward and then—apparently another bounce off bone—makes a new start toward the center and upward before it stops. The lead slug is about two inches in from my skull and a quarter inch lower than the entry wound.
I re-enter my body and probe downward through tissue with the tweezers. A kaleidoscope of memories are triggered and probably erased forever as the steel slides through brain matter and meets lead. I grasp the slug and pull. The resistance is slight, like spooning jello, and, with a slight wet sound, out comes the prize, a .22 caliber bullet. Not much of a prize, but then I don’t even like metal fillings in my teeth.
I see my face as it was when I was a child, unlined and unblemished, weeping silently. I put my hand to my cheek and feel tears tracking through the caked dust. The voice that has been instructing me changes—like in a dream when a car becomes a bicycle—into a book with the words moving across the page, telling me about threads
: my life, and Ratboy’s, and Jason Hamel’s, Tanya’s, Allison’s, all interwoven at this point in a tapestry whose greater image I cannot discern. One of the threads separates out and becomes an image on a page in the book. It looks like a brown smear of feces, Ratboy’s stain on my psyche. It shifts and the edges undulate and change like a Mandelbrot pattern. Brilliant colors and shapes emerge at the center and ripple out concentrically, mandala-like, and melt into the edges of the page. Each iteration is brighter and lighter than the one before it until, in the brilliant white of the paper, I am left not with the blot of Ratboy but the innocence of Jason Junior.
The book changes again, this time to a woman’s voice, an angel I could embrace forever, telling me that healing is my birthright, that the healed state is my natural inheritance, that atonement is the only prerequisite to claiming it. I am presented with a choice and I assent.
I leave the body again and slip back into the hole. As I follow the bullet’s original path, information wells up from an unknown source. Progenitors, directed tissue migration, mTOR pathways, PTEN inhibitors, growth factors, cytokines, all terms I’ve never heard of nor read about and yet now I know them as key terms in a set of instructions. I’m about to embark on a cellular repair project.
¤ ¤ ¤
I’m back in the body. I stand up and examine myself in the mirror. My nose is still too big, one eyelid still droops a bit, but the hole is repaired. And the one in my chest, as well as the shattered cheek and the back of my skull. There’s a bald spot I can fix later, but the baseball cap is history.
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