The Best of Lucius Shepard

by The Best of Lucius Shepard (v5. 5) (epub)

  One of the Sikorsky’s pilots cracked the cockpit door. “Y’all can catch a ride into ’Frisco at the PX,” he said, his voice muffled by the black bubble of his visor. The sun shined a white blaze on the visor, making it seem that the helmet contained night and a single star.

  “Where’s the PX?” asked Gilbey.

  The pilot said something too muffled to be understood.

  “What?” said Gilbey.

  Again the pilot’s response was muffled, and Gilbey became angry. “Take that damn thing off!” he said.

  “This?” The pilot pointed to his visor. “What for?”

  “So I can hear what the hell you sayin’.”

  “You can hear now, can’tcha?”

  “Okay,” said Gilbey, his voice tight. “Where’s the goddamn PX?”

  The pilot’s reply was unintelligible; his faceless mask regarded Gilbey with inscrutable intent.

  Gilbey balled up his fists. “Take that son of a bitch off!”

  “Can’t do it, soldier,” said the second pilot, leaning over so that the two black bubbles were nearly side by side. “These here doobies”—he tapped his visor—“they got microcircuits that beams shit into our eyes. ’Fects the optic nerve. Makes it so we can see the beaners even when they undercover. Longer we wear ’em, the better we see.”

  Baylor laughed edgily, and Gilbey said, “Bullshit!” Mingolla naturally assumed that the pilots were putting Gilbey on, or else their reluctance to remove the helmets stemmed from a superstition, perhaps from a deluded belief that the visors actually did bestow special powers. But given a war in which combat drugs were issued and psychics predicted enemy movements, anything was possible, even microcircuits that enhanced vision.

  “You don’t wanna see us, nohow,” said the first pilot. “The beams fuck up our faces. We’re deformed-lookin’ mothers.”

  “’Course you might not notice the changes,” said the second pilot. “Lotsa people don’t. But if you did, it’d mess you up.”

  Imagining the pilots’ deformities sent a sick chill mounting from Mingolla’s stomach. Gilbey, however, wasn’t buying it. “You think I’m stupid?” he shouted, his neck reddening.

  “Naw,” said the first pilot. “We can see you ain’t stupid. We can see lotsa shit other people can’t, ’cause of the beams.”

  “All kindsa weird stuff,” chipped in the second pilot. “Like souls.”

  “Ghosts.”

  “Even the future.”

  “The future’s our best thing,” said the first pilot. “You guys wanna know what’s ahead, we’ll tell you.”

  They nodded in unison, the blaze of sunlight sliding across both visors: two evil robots responding to the same program.

  Gilbey lunged for the cockpit door. The first pilot slammed it shut, and Gilbey pounded on the plastic, screaming curses. The second pilot flipped a switch on the control console, and a moment later his amplified voice boomed out: “Make straight past that forklift ’til you hit the barracks. You’ll run right into the PX.”

  It took both Mingolla and Baylor to drag Gilbey away from the Sikorsky, and he didn’t stop shouting until they drew near the forklift with its load of coffins: a giant’s treasure of enormous silver ingots. Then he grew silent and lowered his eyes. They wangled a ride with an MP corporal outside the PX, and as the jeep hummed across the concrete, Mingolla glanced over at the Sikorsky that had transported them. The two pilots had spread a canvas on the ground, had stripped to shorts and were sunning themselves. But they had not removed their helmets. The weird juxtaposition of tanned bodies and shiny black heads disturbed Mingolla, reminding him of an old movie in which a guy had gone through a matter transmitter along with a fly and had ended up with the fly’s head on his shoulders. Maybe, he thought, the helmets were like that, impossible to remove. Maybe the war had gotten that strange.

  The MP corporal noticed him watching the pilots and let out a barking laugh. “Those guys,” he said, with the flat emphatic tone of a man who knew whereof he spoke, “are fuckin’ nuts!”

  Six years before, San Francisco de Juticlan had been a scatter of thatched huts and concrete block structures deployed among palms and banana leaves on the east bank of the Rio Dulce, at the junction of the river and a gravel road that connected with the Pan American Highway; but it had since grown to occupy substantial sections of both banks, increased by dozens of bars and brothels: stucco cubes painted all the colors of the rainbow, with a fantastic bestiary of neon signs mounted atop their tin roofs. Dragons; unicorns; fiery birds; centaurs. The MP corporal told Mingolla that the signs were not advertisements but coded symbols of pride; for example, from the representation of a winged red tiger crouched amidst green lilies and blue crosses, you could deduce that the owner was wealthy, a member of a Catholic secret society, and ambivalent toward government policies. Old signs were constantly being dismantled, and larger, more ornate ones erected in their stead as testament to improved profits, and this warfare of light and image was appropriate to the time and place because San Francisco de Juticlan was less a town than a symptom of war. Though by night the sky above it was radiant, at ground level it was mean and squalid. Pariah dogs foraged in piles of garbage, hard-bitten whores spat from the windows, and according to the corporal, it was not unusual to stumble across a corpse, likely a victim of the gangs of abandoned children who lived in the fringes of the jungle. Narrow streets of tawny dirt cut between the bars, carpeted with a litter of flattened cans and feces and broken glass; refugees begged at every corner, displaying burns and bullet wounds. Many of the buildings had been thrown up with such haste that their walls were tilted, their roofs canted, and this made the shadows they cast appear exaggerated in their jaggedness, like shadows in the work of a psychotic artist, giving visual expression to a pervasive undercurrent of tension. Yet as Mingolla moved along, he felt at ease, almost happy. His mood was due in part to his hunch that it was going to be one hell of an R&R (he had learned to trust his hunches); but it mainly spoke to the fact that towns like this had become for him a kind of afterlife, a reward for having endured a harsh term of existence.

  The corporal dropped them off at a drugstore, where Mingolla bought a box of stationery, and then they stopped for a drink at the Club Demonio: a tiny place whose whitewashed walls were shined to faint phosphorescence by the glare of purple light bulbs dangling from the ceiling like radioactive fruit. The club was packed with soldiers and whores, most sitting at tables around a dance floor not much bigger than a king-size mattress. Two couples were swaying to a ballad that welled from a jukebox encaged in chicken wire and two-by-fours; veils of cigarette smoke drifted with underwater slowness above their heads. Some of the soldiers were mauling their whores, and one whore was trying to steal the wallet of a soldier who was on the verge of passing out; her hand worked between his legs, encouraging him to thrust his hips forward, and when he did this, she pried with her other hand at the wallet stuck in the back pocket of his tight-fitting jeans. But all the action seemed listless, halfhearted, as if the dimness and syrupy music had thickened the air and were hampering movement. Mingolla took a seat at the bar. The bartender glanced at him inquiringly, his pupils becoming cored with purple reflections, and Mingolla said, “Beer.”

  “Hey, check that out!” Gilbey slid onto an adjoining stool and jerked his thumb toward a whore at the end of the bar. Her skirt was hiked to midthigh, and her breasts, judging by their fullness and lack of sag, were likely the product of elective surgery.

  “Nice,” said Mingolla, disinterested. The bartender set a bottle of beer in front of him, and he had a swig; it tasted sour, watery, like a distillation of the stale air.

  Baylor slumped onto the stool next to Gilbey and buried his face in his hands. Gilbey said something to him that Mingolla didn’t catch, and Baylor lifted his head. “I ain’t goin’ back,” he said.

  “Aw, Jesus!” said Gilbey. “Don’t start that crap.”

  In the half-dark Baylor’s eye sockets were clotted with sha
dows. His stare locked onto Mingolla. “They’ll get us next time,” he said. “We should head downriver. They got boats in Livingston that’ll take you to Panama.”

  “Panama!” sneered Gilbey. “Nothin’ there ’cept more beaners.”

  “We’ll be okay at the Farm,” offered Mingolla. “Things get too heavy, they’ll pull us back.”

  “‘Too heavy’?” A vein throbbed in Baylor’s temple. “What the fuck you call ‘too heavy’?”

  “Screw this!” Gilbey heaved up from his stool. “You deal with him, man,” he said to Mingolla; he gestured at the big-breasted whore. “I’m gonna climb Mount Silicon.”

  “Nine o’clock,” said Mingolla. “The PX. Okay?”

  Gilbey said, “Yeah,” and moved off. Baylor took over his stool and leaned close to Mingolla. “You know I’m right,” he said in an urgent whisper. “They almost got us this time.”

  “Air Cav’ll handle ’em,” said Mingolla, affecting nonchalance. He opened the box of stationery and unclipped a pen from his shirt pocket.

  “You know I’m right,” Baylor repeated.

  Mingolla tapped the pen against his lips, pretending to be distracted.

  “Air Cav!” said Baylor with a despairing laugh. “Air Cav ain’t gonna do squat!”

  “Why don’t you put on some decent tunes?” Mingolla suggested. “See if they got any Prowler on the box.”

  “Dammit!” Baylor grabbed his wrist. “Don’t you understand, man? This shit ain’t workin’ no more!”

  Mingolla shook him off. “Maybe you need some change,” he said coldly; he dug out a handful of coins and tossed them on the counter. “There! There’s some change.”

  “I’m tellin’ you…”

  “I don’t wanna hear it!” snapped Mingolla.

  “You don’t wanna hear it?” said Baylor, incredulous. He was on the verge of losing control. His dark face slick with sweat, one eyelid fluttering. He pounded the countertop for emphasis. “Man, you better hear it! ’Cause we don’t pull somethin’ together soon, real soon, we’re gonna fuckin’ die! You hear that, don’tcha?”

  Mingolla caught him by the shirtfront. “Shut up!”

  “I ain’t shuttin’ up!” Baylor shrilled. “You and Gilbey, man, you think you can save your ass by stickin’ your head in the sand. But I’m gonna make you listen.” He threw back his head, his voice rose to a shout. “We’re gonna die!”

  The way he shouted it—almost gleefully, like a kid yelling a dirty word to spite his parents—pissed Mingolla off. He was sick of Baylor’s scenes. Without planning it, he hit him, pulling the punch at the last instant. Kept a hold of his shirt and clipped him on the jaw, just enough to rock back his head. Baylor blinked at him, stunned, his mouth open. Blood seeped from his gums. At the opposite end of the counter, the bartender was leaning beside a choirlike arrangement of liquor bottles, watching Mingolla and Baylor, and some of the soldiers were watching, too: they looked pleased, as if they had been hoping for a spot of violence to liven things up. Mingolla felt debased by their attentiveness, ashamed of his bullying. “Hey, I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I—”

  “I don’t give a shit ’bout you’re sorry,” said Baylor, rubbing his mouth. “Don’t give a shit ’bout nothin’ ’cept gettin’ the hell outta here.”

  “Leave it alone, all right?”

  But Baylor wouldn’t leave it alone. He continued to argue, adopting the long-suffering tone of someone carrying on bravely in the face of great injustice. Mingolla tried to ignore him by studying the label on his beer bottle: a red and black graphic portraying a Guatemalan soldier, his rifle upheld in victory. It was an attractive design, putting him in mind of the poster work he had done before being drafted; but considering the unreliability of Guatemalan troops, he perceived the heroic pose as a bad joke. Mingolla gouged a trench through the center of the label with his thumbnail.

  At last Baylor gave it up and sat staring down at the warped veneer of the counter. Mingolla let him sit a minute; then, without shifting his gaze from the bottle, he said, “Why don’t you put on some decent tunes?”

  Baylor tucked his chin onto his chest, maintaining a stubborn silence.

  “It’s your only option, man,” Mingolla went on. “What else you gonna do?”

  “You’re crazy,” said Baylor; he flicked his eyes toward Mingolla and hissed it like a curse. “Crazy!”

  “You gonna take off for Panama by yourself? Un-unh. You know the three of us got something going. We come this far together, and if you just hang tough, we’ll go home together.”

  “I don’t know,” said Baylor. “I don’t know anymore.”

  “Look at it this way,” said Mingolla. “Maybe we’re all three of us right. Maybe Panama is the answer, but the time just isn’t ripe. If that’s true, me and Gilbey will see it sooner or later.”

  With a heavy sigh, Baylor got to his feet. “You ain’t never gonna see it, man,” he said dejectedly.

  Mingolla had a swallow of beer. “Check if they got any Prowler on the box. I could relate to some Prowler.”

  Baylor stood for a moment, indecisive. He started for the jukebox, then veered toward the door. Mingolla tensed, preparing to run after him. But Baylor stopped and walked back over to the bar. Lines of strain were etched deep in his forehead. “Okay,” he said, a catch in his voice. “Okay. What time tomorrow? Nine o’clock?”

  “Right,” said Mingolla, turning away. “The PX.”

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Baylor cross the room and bend over the jukebox to inspect the selections. He felt relieved. This was the way all their R&Rs had begun, with Gilbey chasing a whore and Baylor feeding the jukebox while he wrote a letter home. On their first R&R he had written his parents about the war and its bizarre forms of attrition; then, realizing that the letter would alarm his mother, he had torn it up and written another, saying merely that he was fine. He would tear this letter up as well, but he wondered how his father would react if he were to read it. Most likely with anger. His father was a firm believer in God and country, and though Mingolla understood the futility of adhering to any moral code in light of the insanity around him, he had found that something of his father’s tenets had been ingrained in him: he would never be able to desert as Baylor kept insisting. He knew it wasn’t that simple, that other factors, too, were responsible for his devotion to duty; but since his father would have been happy to accept the responsibility, Mingolla tended to blame it on him. He tried to picture what his parents were doing at that moment—father watching the Mets on TV, mother puttering in the garden—and then, holding those images in mind, he began to write.

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  In your last letter you asked if I thought we were winning the war. Down here you’d get a lot of blank stares in response to that question, because most people have a perspective on the war to which the overall result isn’t relevant. Like there’s a guy I know who has this rap about how the war is a magical operation of immense proportions, how the movements of the planes and troops are inscribing a mystical sign on the surface of reality, and to survive you have to figure out your location within the design and move accordingly. I’m sure that sounds crazy to you, but down here everyone’s crazy the same way (some shrink’s actually done a study on the incidence of superstition among the occupation forces). They’re looking for a magic that will ensure their survival. You may find it hard to believe that I subscribe to this sort of thing, but I do. I carve my initials on the shell casings, wear parrot feathers inside my helmet…and a lot more.

  To get back to your question, I’ll try to do better than a blank stare, but I can’t give you a simple Yes or No. The matter can’t be summed up that neatly. But I can illustrate the situation by telling you a story and let you draw your own conclusions. There are hundreds of stories that would do, but the one that comes to mind now concerns the Lost Patrol…

  A Prowler tune blasted from the jukebox, and Mingolla broke off writing to listen: it was a furious, jittery music, fu
eled—it seemed—by the same aggressive paranoia that had generated the war. People shoved back chairs, overturned tables and began dancing in the vacated spaces; they were crammed together, able to do no more than shuffle in rhythm, but their tread set the light bulbs jiggling at the end of their cords, the purple glare slopping over the walls. A slim acne-scarred whore came to dance in front of Mingolla, shaking her breasts, holding out her arms to him. Her face was corpse-pale in the unsteady light, her smile a dead leer. Trickling from one eye, like some exquisite secretion of death, was a black tear of sweat and mascara. Mingolla couldn’t be sure he was seeing her right. His left hand started trembling, and for a couple of seconds the entire scene lost its cohesiveness. Everything looked scattered, unrecognizable, embedded in a separate context from everything else: a welter of meaningless objects bobbing up and down on a tide of deranged music. Then somebody opened the door, admitting a wedge of sunlight, and the room settled back to normal. Scowling, the whore danced away. Mingolla breathed easier. The tremors in his hand subsided. He spotted Baylor near the door talking to a scruffy Guatemalan guy…probably a coke connection. Coke was Baylor’s panacea, his remedy for fear and desperation. He always returned from R&R bleary-eyed and prone to nosebleeds, boasting about the great dope he’d scored. Pleased that he was following routine, Mingolla went back to his letter.