There were a bunch of biting, hurtful things I could have said. But I decided to save it, to think on it a bit more. Besides, we still weren’t out of the woods. Or the desert, as the case may be.
The gully spilled out onto a desert floor and the half-track crossed the shadow line from the hills into searing sunshine. The track ahead was clearly defined for a vehicle, but not for where Nicholas was going with this rampage.
“You still don’t get it, do you? OK, I’ll spell it out for you. I loved Dad, and through my scheming, I ruined his finances and he died trying to recover the money. In effect, I killed Dad. And you loved that puppy, you handed him over to Gabby, and she took him to the vet and had him put to sleep. You killed Arnold. Face it—we both have what people like to call issues. Different kinds of love are at issue, but we’re both afraid of being hurt, of reliving—”
“Did you think this all up? Yourself?”
“—a past that Gabby wiped clean when she took down the house. Yes. I thought of it all myself.” The way he said that made me wonder if the woman in his life hadn’t pitched in.
“I mean, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” He turned and squinted into the distance, and I watched as he took a deep breath of desert air to try to compose himself. “And let’s face it. Gabby hasn’t made any of this any easier. We were brought up in pretty unsentimental circumstances, insular with no extended family. Then she wiped out the house, the only anchor to our family’s past, and lit out. It’s like you and I just came out of nowhere. Well, I did anyway. I was left on the doorstep. All makes sense now, doesn’t it? Yes, I’m scared shitless of getting married.”
I stared ahead at the flat expanse toward the shimmering horizon. Nicholas was certainly a changed man to some extent, more so than I had imagined, despite his dual purposes. For one thing, he was right for a change. I was just plain scared about the dog, because of Arnold, because that possum also represented a bunch of things about our childhood that were disturbing and alienating. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly, and I’m no good at psychoanalyzing, especially myself. But I had the feel for what had been haunting me, and in the end the heart is often a better doctor for the head than the brain.
And perhaps, somehow, all this vuka nonsense, all this sense of being cursed, was a manifestation or extension of having Kit Carson and my past thrust upon me.
The rattle and clank of the truck seemed even louder as it filled the conversation void. I felt I should say something, but I wasn’t sure what to say or how to react to what he’d just said.
Occasionally I follow my own advice, and this was one of those times. If you don’t know what to say, don’t.
After ten minutes, I could discern a dark line in the distance. Then telephone poles. And traffic. And the perimeter fence.
From the back, Vargas’s head appeared between me and Nicholas.
“Garth. Nicholas. Your mother, she is not breathing well. We need to get her to a hospital.”
I pushed the accelerator to the floor.
The half-track made quick work of the fence.
chapter 30
The hospital PA system came alive with a peevish, pissy male voice.
“Attention: whoever has the large military vehicle parked in the hospital’s front driveway, please move it at once or it will be towed. This is the final announcement.”
For once I didn’t care if my car got towed. Besides, there was a lot of other stuff going on that was more important. Nicholas, Vargas, and I were seated in the hospital waiting room. Angie and Otto arrived, tethered up Wilco outside, and joined our vigil. On pins and needles, we waited for word of Gabby’s condition from the doctors.
Otto, the picture of solemnity, approached Angie and me. Standing before us, his eyes were downcast, his suit jacket and tie were folded neatly in his arms. He held them out to me.
“Garv, Otto to make very big wrong, to bring KGB as client to you. I disgrace Garv Carson Critters, and make danger, so it is that I must resignate my command.”
I pushed his beezness uniform back toward him.
“Otto, you brought Angie to me, which was good. You could not have known those three were KGB.”
“But what does matter? All same to danger.”
“Otto, I should apologize to you. It is me that keeps getting you into trouble. It is only when I am in trouble that you get in trouble, yes?”
“Mebe, but…”
“And who always comes to my rescue? You. You come when Garth needs help. You are a very special friend, and I need you to stay and run the Carson’s Critters.”
“Otto,” Angie began, “you are not only our friend but family. You stay with us. And in our hearts.”
He’d transformed from abject humility into a monument of nobility, chin high.
“My friends, Otto, he to make like brother to both you, father to dog, and Stalin for boss of beezness.”
“Holy…” Nicholas began, pointing the remote at the TV and upping the volume. “Get a load of this.”
We all turned to see a CCN news segment with a red banner at the top reading: LIVE—BREAKING NEWS.
On the screen was a live helicopter shot over a small-town main street, where a huge crowd assembled. The announcer was quite excited:
“At 10:10 this morning, in the middle of the Alien Days parade here in Flats Junction, New Mexico, a spectacle appeared in the sky. A silver, disc-like object came over a nearby rise and settled on Main Street to much commotion. Local police restored order and cleared the area. Authorities at nearby Kirtland Air Force Base and the Department of Homeland Security were notified.”
Angie gasped. “You’re telling me that is the laser balloon you saw this morning? It doesn’t look much like a balloon.”
“And if Vargas hadn’t shot it full of holes…” Nicholas groaned.
“Hey…” Vargas folded his arms defiantly. “If it had been an alien ship, and those little bastards came at us with those probes, you and your rectum would be thanking me right now.”
Otto had recovered from his resignation and was winking at a nurse, but paused a moment and focused on the TV. “Of course, balloon very nice, yes? KGB has many balloon to come from outer space. Garv, why balloon on tele-vee?”
I’d long ago given up trying to get him to say “teevee” as opposed to “tele-vee.”
“It’s a secret balloon that landed by accident in a town, and they think it’s a spaceship from outer space.”
Otto stroked his beard, in deep contemplation. “Thinkink maybe balloon not so secret, eh?”
The announcer continued:
“The police are now approaching the craft, to a side of it where there appears to be a tether of some kind…”
“That’s the rope where Fowler was hanging.” I pointed.
We were all leaning forward, riveted to the image on the screen. You could see two police officers looking under the slightly raised craft. They jumped back and drew their guns.
“…there appears to be…” The announcer was at a loss for words.
The crowd behind the barricades surged forward, police running at them with hands raised, urging them to keep back. The helicopter camera zoomed in on the two officers pointing their guns under the balloon.
The cops leaned forward, looking more closely…and a dog raced out from under the craft, vanishing into the crowd.
I looked at Nicholas.
He looked at me.
We both looked to Vargas, who said: “This is not possible.”
“Mr. Carson?” There was a guy in a colorful smock standing behind us, a stethoscope around his neck.
“That’s me,” Nicholas and I said in unison.
“Your mother is fine. She just caught a bit of a chill, I think—she has a slight fever, nothing to worry about.”
Angie jumped up and gave me a big hug of relief.
“Whew.” I beamed at Nicholas. “Nothing to worry about.”
He looked sidelong at the tele-vee.
“Exc
ept maybe the dog.”
chapter 31
It was a few days later, in New York, and I was wearing my grandfather’s tux, one of those I narrowly and dramatically saved from Goodwill agents when I was but a lad. Garth in his tux could mean only two things. New Year’s Eve or a wedding. It was the fourth week of June.
Nicholas had finally been hooked, not that a total of fourteen other women didn’t show up to witness the phenomenon. Or maybe it was to throw the rice? I think it was his fellow snoop and ex-cop Maureen who organized the rice throwing. All fourteen of the women didn’t open the little sacks of rice. They kept the little rice sacks intact, and like a phalanx of baseball pitchers, the gang of ex-girlfriends wound up and threw them at Nicholas. A couple rice balls beaned Nicholas right in the head, and he shot them a dirty look as the bride dragged him into the limo for the ride to the reception.
Which was upstairs on the roof at Gravy’s Tavern, of course, over on Irving Place. The weather cooperated, which in June these days is a minor miracle. Nice spread, too, plenty of champagne, oysters, cracked crab, steak tartar, and expensive scotch. And beer, just for me, I think. The only thing missing were cheese curds.
The crowd wasn’t huge, but it made up for volume in eccentricity. There were a number of lawyers, cops, PIs, insurance investigators, and any number of shifty-looking types who I imagined were reformed art thieves and cat burglars. A little combo thrummed out some jazz in the corner. It could have been a wedding reception for Peter Gunn.
Angie was absolutely glowing, as if she were the bride herself. And not just in the way that certain women do when they become enthralled with the ceremony of matrimonial union. We’d found out the day before that her art jewelry had gotten honorable mention in the Couture Magazine show, which meant that it would be pictured in the magazine’s next issue. Which, aside from my pride in her as an artisan and artist, was a great relief to me in as much as my most recent escapade—having kept her from attending the show—hadn’t thrown a wrench in the works.
Otto was tossing back the Stoli like there was no tomorrow, and chasing it with milk. He was incapable of having a cocktail—hard liquor is only consumed rapidly, no tinkling ice cubes and nuanced tippling. He rarely drinks, but when he does, he removes the bottle cap and throws it away in a ritualistic flourish. And yet he was astoundingly sober for having made his way through two-thirds of a fifth. Nicholas had tried to have me tell Otto he couldn’t come, but I said he’d have to try to explain it to him. So Otto came, and was enthusiastically—albeit none too expertly—dancing with every woman he could get his hands on.
Including Gabby. She’d suffered no long-term ill effects from our adventure, and seemed to have chosen to completely ignore any debunking of her supernatural bent during the ordeal. Like many older people, her convictions were unshakable even in the face of contrary indicators.
As best man, I’d already made my toast, the crumpled speech on the table next to me. Sure, I could have written it myself, but why not bring in the best ringer there is? I’d read Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 116”:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
When I got to the last lines, Angie burst into tears and threw her arms around me. I think Angie’s exuberance was somewhat champagne enhanced. Which illustrates an essential piece of knowledge I would impart to a young male to enhance his understanding of women: they like to cry. Why else do women rent films designed to make them cry?
Anyway, most of the big wedding moments had passed. The city was darkening, candles on the tables were lit, a turquoise glow was framing the western skyline. Little white Christmas lights strung overhead had just popped on, and I was at a table by myself in a corner. A contemplative mood had descended upon me, and I watched Angie and Otto and Gabby and Nicholas and his beaming bride move about the room as though in slow motion. I was conscious that this was one of those occasions that the mind’s eye records to be shown again and again. Weddings and funerals usually make the top ten list at the brain’s retrospective cinema.
And of course the whole event was made more poignant by the previous week’s to-do—which for all intents and purposes had been put to bed. We never did hear what happened to Lanston, but I received a short message from Stella comprised solely of my back wages and my pink slip. I’d decided against lodging a complaint with the Air Force about them trying to kill me. They’d never admit to it anyway, and frankly I didn’t want to remind them of my existence. Besides, their beef was with the Missile Defense Agency now.
Fowler had vanished. Either that or he was in the New Mexico ASPCA. CCN reported that the dog that ran out from under the balloon on TV was captured shortly thereafter and sent to the dog pound. Of course, different dogs can look alike, can’t they? Needless to say, everybody at the Alien Days festival figured out it was a balloon, though I didn’t doubt there would be some skeptics in any event.
All that business about Fowler being a werewolf, about the dog in the half-track not being Wilco…I couldn’t accept it and therefore just didn’t. I have a certain understanding of how the world works, and I rank the power of coincidence and happenstance way over the numinous realm. I stood at the mound that morning staring at a flying saucer, certain of what I was seeing, and yet I couldn’t have been more wrong. It was just a newfangled balloon.
I remember when a pal and I used to frequent a saloon where the bartender could make a cigarette go through a quarter. We’d each watch one of the bartender’s hands to make sure he didn’t substitute a quarter with a hole in it. And yet, each and every time the bartender did switch quarters, somehow.
Vargas was back in Vargo with Wilco and Amber and all the streusel you could shake a stick at. Everything was put to bed as far as I was concerned.
Almost. I sat there in the corner of the family gala wondering:
How did Fowler become so obsessed with his father’s legacy as to start a killing spree?
An old leather document folder landed on the table in front of me, the kind that folds in thirds. The cowhide was dry and cracked.
“It’s all in there, Garth,” Gabby said, sitting down next to me.
I glanced at the cracked leather trifold, then back at her.
“What you wouldn’t tell me at the Pickle Barrel?”
She nodded. “It was your father’s dying wish not to tell you, not to perpetuate this legacy. How could I break that promise?”
“So why now?”
“Because you already know most of it, and the danger has passed.”
I picked up the folder, undid the buckle, and looked inside. It was dated 1948 and began “My Son.” I flipped ahead, spotting words like “vuka” and “evil” and “Tupelca.” It was signed in a great flourish, “Julius Fowler Carson.”
“Fowler?”
“Yes, J. C. Fowler was your uncle, from Julius’s second marriage. ‘J.C.’ stands for Julius Carson, of course. His mother changed her last name to Fowler, your grandfather’s middle name, to keep all this from catching up with them and avoid any connection to the madman who had been her husband. Your uncle J. C. Fowler was married briefly but the woman abandoned him with Nicholas, your cousin. Stuart and I raised him as your brother. All this that just happened, with the vuka and the Tupelca, was your grandfather’s obsession. What you have there is the letter he addressed to his son Stuart, your father, asking him to kill you and the five other grandsons at the time of the next white gecko.”
“Kill me? His grandson?” I tried to scan the letter quickly to get to that part but the light was bad and the handwriting worse.
“He wanted the Tupelca to go home to their planet, and wanted one of his sons to fulfill the prophecy at the next coming of the white geckos.”
“Kit Carson put a hit on me, through my father?” I just stared at her.
“Your grandfather passionate
ly believed that whole vuka and Tupelca story. It came to him in a dream on the mound in New Mexico—he felt he’d been charged with finding the next El Viajero, the one to collect the vuka and return home. And he left one of these documents for each of his sons. Well, you can imagine…Stuart cut all ties with his family and wanted nothing more to do with them. And wanted it kept that way.”
“But not Fowler. He decided to become El Viajero. So if he thinks he has the other four vuka, won’t he still come for me?”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “The time of the white gecko preceding the summer solstice has passed. Fowler would have to wait another hundred years. If he’s still alive.”
“And…” I hesitated, then looked up from the tablecloth into her eyes. “What about my vuka?”
She smiled and patted my hand. “Did it bother you when you didn’t know you had it?”
I considered answering that but changed subjects. “Does Nicholas know?” I tilted my head at the trifold.
“Not all of it. I’ll tell him before I fly out tomorrow. I didn’t want this to overshadow the handfasting.”
“What’s going on here? Why are you sitting in the dark?” A little girl with dark eyes and dark bangs stood before us. Mel’s precocious daughter, Dottie.
I held out my fist and bumped hers.
“Mai Tai!” we said in unison. That was how Nicholas greeted her, and by association Dottie had started doing the same with me.
Gabby leaned toward her. “We were just talking, mother to son.”
“But Garth is too old to have a mom!” Dottie protested. “Gabby, you must be his grandmom.”
Judy the bartender approached, her long yellow French braid swaying. “As bridesmaid, part of my duties are to keep the party going. Garth, it’s your turn to dance with the bride. By order of the groom.”
I stood, the ancient leather folder in my hand.
“So what am I supposed to do with this, Gabby?”
“Do you want it?”
The trifold’s crumbling leather felt like the rancorous, toxic handshake of a mummy, his curse palpable and fairly tingling in my grasp.
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