by Marc Laidlaw
“Well . . . Edgar seems okay,” Mike said doubtfully.
“He’s intelligent enough, except for his obsession with ESP.” “You don’t think it works?”
“The visualization stuff, it’s meant to be psychological. It’s a form of therapy, but I think he missed the point. It’s all turned into mumbo-jumbo, psychic mush, in his head. I mean really, ESP?”
“I remember when you used to do black magic.”
“That was an experiment. And at least I was drawing on some existing tradition. This is all old hippie bullshit people came up with after doing too many drugs. You know—peace, love and transactional analysis.”
“Maybe Edgar’s experimenting, too.”
“Edgar’s bored and desperate. Having a shrink for a mom has got him all twisted up. Last month he was into Transcendental Meditation and Eckankar. Next month, who knows?”
Mike sighed and banged his head back against the wall, feeling almost secure to be alone for a minute with his friend, with whom he had shared numerous moments that felt dangerous but turned out okay. Scott could keep him from going too far into fear—most effectively by ridiculing him, as he now derided Edgar.
“I should never have brought them all in here. I wish I never had . . . ” His breath sucked back into his throat. He jumped to his feet. “The key!”
He dug stiff fingers into his pocket—his empty pocket. The other one was full of change. He turned it inside out and shook through a handful of coins, hoping one of the silver shapes would turn out to be something more valuable than a quarter.
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “Why is this happening to me?”
He headed for the stairs, slipped and banged his shins, kept going till he reached the top again, gasping for breath.
Up here, the other guys were talking in normal voices now, completely relaxed. Mike grabbed the doorknob, then hesitated, turning to Scott, who was just coming up the stairs.
“Go out on the balcony and look around, make sure no one’s at the door.”
Scott hurried to comply. “All clear,” he called from the deck.
Mike was praying, trying to remain positive, as Edgar had suggested. He remembered putting the key in the lock, but he couldn’t remember taking it out. He’d been so frightened and rushed during the chase that he had forgotten it completely until now.
Please let the key still be there. Let the key still be there, God. If there is a God.
No, that’s wrong—think positive:
The key is there. The key is there. It’s still in the lock where I left it. There is a God and the key is there. It has to be there. Visualize it. Use your fucking imagination!
He eased the door open half an inch, an inch. That was all the room he needed to see the brass knob shining in starlight. Polished brass and nothing more.
No matter how hard he tried to imagine it, he couldn’t make out the faintest sign of any key.
7
Hawk could hardly hear Edgar on the phone. “Hold off a minute, would you?” He was talking to Edgar, but Maggie mistook him and left off chewing on his other ear. Saying nothing—but so expressively—she jumped down from the bed and walked the length of the trailer to where Stoner sat with his knees tucked up on the built-in couch, pretending to read The Cross and the Switchblade, an act he’d been faking ever since Hawk first shoved the book at him half a year ago. Maggie dropped down next to Stoner, took a swig of beer from his bottle, and let it dangle by the neck. She wouldn’t even look at Hawk.
“Hey, Maggie, what’s this word?” Stoner said, pushing the book under her nose.
“Fuckface,” she said, and Hawk didn’t know who she was talking to.
“Say again, Edgar,” Hawk said. “I’m getting a lot of interference here.”
Edgar was out of breath, his words stumbling all over each other. Just when Hawk thought he was getting the drift, the whole trailer began to roar. Hawk jumped up and hammered on the wall, but he could hardly hear himself pounding.
“Stoner! Tell Dusty to lay off a minute, would you?”
“Sure, Hawk.” Stoner looked relieved at having an excuse to put down the book. He was wearing his usual big dumb grin, which got bigger and dumber when Maggie said, “I suppose you want me to move?”
“Naw.” He picked her up as if she were a rag doll, got off the couch, and set her back down in his place. Stoner went outside and shouted at Dusty, his voice louder than the power tools. Everything turned quiet except the Saturday night traffic on Old Creek Road.
“Back up, Edgar. Where are you now?”
“My house.”
“Meet me out front, then. Ten minutes.”
Hawk hung up and got out of bed. Maggie stared at him.
“You ain’t going nowhere,” she said. “Not again—not tonight.”
“Patience, my sweet Magdalene.” He chucked her chin as he passed, and she made as if to bite his finger. “My tiny flock’s in peril. Didn’t you hear them bleating on the phone?”
“Are you trying to be an asshole, or does it just come natural?”
He winced and put his head out the door. “Stoner!”
The cars whizzing past sent crucifix shadows sweeping over the cluttered yard. The smell of motor oil was still strong after the hot day. Stoner was on his knees halfway into Dusty’s van, the crack of his ass above his belt as dark as the gates of Hell. He backed out with a puzzled yet hopeful expression, holding a caged lightbulb on a clamp. Faithful as a dog, Hawk thought. There was a smudge of grease on Stoner’s forehead, just below his curly blond locks.
“Hold it steady, dude!” Dusty said from inside the van.
“Turn it off,” Hawk said. “We’re making a cavalry run.”
Dusty backed out of the driver’s side holding a wrench. He was short and wiry with snarled black curly hair. In his ripped-up, oily jeans and tank top he looked like a real mechanic. Only his friends knew otherwise. When Dusty had finished with the engine, it might never work again. He had a tendency of working on things when he was dusted, as he was right now. That was how he got himself “motivated.” His eyes sat on shelves of bone above pits so deep and dark that the flesh might have been scooped out with a grapefruit spoon; skin seemed to have been applied sparingly to his bony head, laid onto the skull like gold leaf. His shoulders and pectorals were covered with tattoos of hollow, tubular waves—surfers’ wet-dream pipelines, with little Vaughn Bode guys crouched down low at the tips of rakish boards, all ten toes gripping the tapered noses as they shot the tubes on tropical-sunset fantasy beaches. Hawk had never known Dusty to so much as wade barefoot in a tide pool.
“Whatta those little fuckups get themselves into this time?” he said.
“The fag on the hill has a posse out after them.”
“Man, I’m sick of bailing those skinny-ass punks out of their messes. This is the last time, man. The last time. I got my own troubles.”
Stoner said, “I’m not going near that place. That motherfucker Sal tried to kiss me once.”
“Shut up and get the shotgun.”
“Awlriiiiight!” Dusty said. “That sounds more like it.”
Stoner pounded up the makeshift wooden steps of the trailer; he’d destroyed the original metal stairs by coming down hard on them on the same drunken night Hawk invited him to stay until he found another place. Months ago, that had been. Another source of friction with Maggie.
“Come on, Dusty, we’ll take the jeep.”
Dusty nodded. “That’s good, ’cause this mother won’t start.”
“Somehow I had that impression.”
Stoner clambered back down the steps, swinging the shotgun in one hand, clutching something shiny in the other. Hawk took the gun and grabbed his other wrist. Stoner flinched, twisting away, trying to hide what he had.
“Give it, you oaf. You want to get us all killed?”
Stoner hid his hand behind his back, looking sheepish at having been caught.
“Come on, come on.”
S
toner put out his hand. The grenade looked about the size of a grape on his broad palm.
Hawk jumped back a step. “Jesus! Didn’t I fuckin’ tell you to put those somewhere safe? Somewhere if they blew up, they wouldn’t take out half the town?”
“They’re safe, Hawk. They’re all in their crate except a few loose ones I got padded in socks.”
“In socks?”
“Hey,” Dusty said, “them dirty ones are like cast iron. Safer than a lead trunk.”
“Just go put it away, would you? And not back in the trailer! Jesus!”
Stoner took a walk up the hillside.
Maggie stood at the door, staring down at Hawk. “I won’t be here when you get back.” She withdrew and slammed the door.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Dusty said, and turned away grinning.
Hawk stared after her a minute, tracing the lines of the big black cross painted on the door. Thank you, Edgar.
In the splash of floodlights mounted near the edges of the lot, the lines from the Book of Revelations looked wet, still dripping down the sides of the trailer. He tried to find one to calm himself, to give him focus before his mission, but they were all somewhat more intense than he felt he needed.
Have to put some Psalms up there soon. This whole apocalyptic thing was a bit too much for the day-to-day.
Dusty and Stoner settled into the jeep. Hawk joined them and fired it up, thinking of Maggie. The row of glowing plastic Saviors on the dashboard soothed him only slightly. As a man of action, he hated leaving things unfinished. Maggie in her moods was harder to interpret than Elijah’s rant. He finally achieved a one-pointed clarity by focusing on the hood ornament, a polished chrome crucifix that gleamed like liquid silver as they passed under a streetlight on their way out of the lot. He screeched onto Old Creek Road, cutting through a narrow gap in traffic. Stoner howled in delight at the near miss, yet another brush with the oaf’s imminent death. It was for exactly this reason that Hawk treasured the big clod’s company. Stoner knew instinctively how thin the line was between Here and Hereafter. Most who walked that line so boldly had deluded themselves into forgetting the fact that they were essentially disposable. But Stoner knew it—reveled in the fact. Or else he was utterly ignorant of it. Hawk could never be sure which.
Dusty was in his own little world, his fishbowl full of dust, hunched over in the back of the jeep.
Old Creek was dangerous enough at midday; at night it was a constant string of dead man’s curves. He loved to drive it fast, but traffic was too thick.
Crawling along with the summer tourist cars, Hawk wondered if the boys had pushed Sal too far this time. Edgar said he’d dispatched karate assassins, Sal’s personal bodyguards. It seemed unlikely, but one never knew. Hawk believed that under the right circumstances, anyone was capable of anything. You couldn’t always read it in their eyes. What were eyes anyway but a couple of cameras? Forget all that talk about the windows of the soul. Eyes were more like two-way mirrors, and the soul hung out behind them, watching you like a department store detective.
(Have to remember this for next Saturday, he thought. Some good riffs building here.)
No, there were no shortcuts to understanding people. You couldn’t judge from one conversation, or even from a week’s worth of talk. The only way to understand a man was through study over time. Some people had good years the way most people had bad days, years when everything flowed right to them without the smallest hitch; and in such times they appeared perfect saints, wise and compassionate and easygoing. If you were stupid enough to judge them by those fat times, you might be inclined to fit them with a halo. But the next year could start with a flood, followed by famine and drought. . . and suddenly your saint would be devouring women and children to keep his belly soft and fat.
As for Sal, Hawk hadn’t yet made up his mind. There were so many unpredictable elements involved. A lot of complications.
The guy was a faggot, you had to take that for granted. If you let him, he’d tell you all about it, making everything real clear. He didn’t care if anyone thought it was a sin; he wasn’t apologetic or guilty or shameful, and he didn’t show remorse. He was honest about it. Hawk respected that—no matter what other preachers said.
The thing Hawk didn’t really trust—and the reason he still waited to see how things turned out, waited to judge—was the way Sal surrounded himself with boys. Hawk had known some of Sal’s “students” over the years. Wild and mixed up, most of them—though what boys weren’t? A few had hung out with Hawk at first, trying to be part of the One-Way Gang; but they had never really fit in. There was something in them he just couldn’t reach. After drifting away from Hawk, they had hooked up with Sal and suddenly started to pull themselves together. He hadn’t liked some of the changes they went through—the faggy accents, the bangles and makeup and all that superficial shit—but at least they’d managed to get their heads straightened out in some essential way. Sometimes this meant they finally faced up to their parents and moved out on their own, which Hawk had been telling them to do anyway. Randy was like that. A good kid from a fucked-up home. Sometimes they bleached their hair, like Martin Schwann, who called himself Marilyn now.
When Hawk asked them how they were doing, they spoke of Sal in reverent tones: he was a great teacher, a good friend, a wonderful this and that. What Hawk could never figure out was if Sal was really doing all of this for them, or if he was doing it for himself.
With the older boys, it didn’t matter. They’d fuck a gopher hole if they got horny enough. Fine. But the younger ones were a stew of hormones, more desperate than the older kids. All their juices were flowing, but they’d had no time to learn control or discrimination. They were nothing but jailbait with balls. And there were a few like that hanging around Sal’s place, taking tai chi lessons, selling his bad paintings, even slapping them out assembly-line fashion on the floor of Sal’s garage. Hawk wasn’t sure how much more than lessons was involved.
So the jury was still out on the matter of Sal. It might never come in. But better that than snap judgments. Better that than to make up his mind too quickly—and incorrectly—one way or the other.
The jeep lurched to a stop in front of Edgar’s house. Edgar was waiting on the curb. He hopped in back and said breathlessly, “They’re over there!”
“What kind of mess have you got me into, Edgar?”
“Sal did it, not me.”
“All by himself? He’s chasing you around for no reason, saying he’s gonna kick your ass just because you showed up in one of his wet dreams?”
Stoner chortled and poked Dusty in the shoulder.
“I swear to God, Hawk, you know what kind of a dangerous faggot he is.”
“All I got is your word for that. I sure don’t see no army. Where do we go?”
Edgar pointed out one dark house among many. It was silent, unremarkable, the carport empty. Hawk didn’t pull into it, but set the emergency brake on the hill and left the engine idling.
“Watch the car,” he told the men, then followed Edgar to the door.
“Where’s the trouble?”
Edgar looked over the edge of the porch, into the dark space between the houses. “They must have gone back to Sal’s.”
“I noticed. Can we go in or what? My patience is very short tonight. I had something important going on.”
Edgar turned to him with a pleading look. “We needed you, Hawk. We needed you. You always say if we get in trouble, if we really need you, we can call. You always say that, man.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Hawk shoved him toward the door, half fooling now. This wasn’t quite what he’d expected. He felt like an idiot for bringing the shotgun, but what the hell. It didn’t hurt to put on a show for the boys every once in a while. That was the stuff legends were made of. They’d grow up talking about this night for the rest of their lives, weaving him into their futures, telling their children about him. And maybe they would learn something from it, pass a useful lesson
down through the years.
He raised his fist and pounded on the door. “Okay, assholes!” he shouted. “Open up in there!”
He heard excited whispering beyond the door, then a voice he didn’t know: “They’re back, you guys! And they have my key. They can get in without—”
Kurtis Tyre said, “Open the door, you fuckin’ pussy. That’s Hawk out there.”
The door opened and Hawk saw a cluster of boys standing around in the dark.
“What is this,” he said, stepping in, “a slumber party?”
He recognized Mad-Dog Murphy by his chattering laugh. He wasn’t sure about the others. It was too dark.
“We didn’t want them to know we were in here,” Craig Frost said.
“That’s all over now. You can stop hiding.”
Someone turned on a light. Hawk saw blank walls, unfurnished rooms.
“Jesus, what’d you do, break into an empty house?”
“It’s his place,” Kurtis said, jerking his thumb toward a kid Hawk had never seen before. A smallish boy with horn-rimmed glasses was standing next to Edgar’s new pal, the ironical Scott Gillette.
“They took my key,” the kid with glasses said, as if Hawk was his big brother or his dad or something. “It got stuck in the lock and they grabbed it.”
“You practically gave it to them,” Kurtis said.
“Mike let us hide here, Hawk,” said Edgar.
“I’ve got to get it back or my mom will kill me! This is a new house! I can’t tell her we have to change the locks already.”
“Why not?” said Hawk, enjoying the slow terror that consumed the kid’s features. He probably deserved whatever fear he felt.
“Okay, relax,” he said a moment later. “We’re going up to visit Sal.”
“All right!” said Edgar.
“Not you twerps. Dusty and Stoner and me. We’re going to talk, not squabble. Can’t have you kids hanging off my butt.”
“Talk,” Howard Lean said, head bobbing. “Riiiiight.”
“Stay here,” Hawk told them, “’cause when I’m through with Sal, I’m coming back for you.”