Needles

by William Deverell

  “You on a pay phone?” Cudlipp asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “I’m doing the talking.”

  “I want to earn some money. I can tell him where he can find a guy.”

  “I see.”

  “I know where they’re going to put him. I’ll take payment when it’s over. Say, five down, and I’ll take twenty-five on the balance. Less isn’t worth the risk. But no deal unless I hear his voice. That’s my guarantee. I got other terms.”

  “Okay. The guy in the drug-store will give you another phone booth. The call will be at six minutes to four.”

  At exactly the appointed time Cudlipp received his call.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Yes, my friend.”

  “Uh, can you say something else?”

  “It is a pleasure to hear an old friend’s voice.”

  “Okay, thanks. I have to stick to the five and twenty-five.”

  “It is fair, if you deliver.”

  “Well, I wasn’t sure. The guy —”

  “Let us not waste time. There were other conditions?”

  “I get to kill him,” Cudlipp said.

  “No. That is reserved.”

  “Well, I want a part.”

  “I understand that. It would be cruel of me to refuse.”

  “And payment of the balance when we meet.”

  “Yes. When we have him. How certain are you of this?”

  “I have . . . a friend.”

  “Yes. It will be appropriate if you join us. In the event that the information you provide is false, we would want you there. Do you understand that?”

  “Yeah, well . . . yeah, I understand.”

  “That would be our guarantee of your honesty in this dealing. I will not accept further failure. That is understood?”

  “I know what you mean. But trust works both ways.”

  “I think you have found me honorable.”

  “You will need a boat.”

  “Yes.”

  “A cabin cruiser, lots of horses.”

  “Yes.”

  “On the west coast of Vancouver Island, there is a town. Glenda Bay. G-l-e-n-d-a Bay. There is a café. Only one. Nine a.m. Friday? The day after tomorrow?”

  “Do I understand that is all you care to divulge at this time?”

  “I would prefer to do it that way.”

  “Friday. It is the day Jin Feng arrives.”

  “What?”

  “Perhaps you will perform a small service. It would be stupid of me to go to the airport. And my people are being watched.”

  “Uh, I’m sorry?”

  “My dear cousin of the fourth generation will arrive at the airport on the overnight flight from Hong Kong. He shall be taking over my duties here until the various problems have been resolved. I must speak with him before I leave this country.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Perhaps you will be good enough to escort him to Glenda Bay, so that we might have a reunion, however short.”

  “All right, I guess.”

  “My contact is to meet him at the cp Air information counter. You will be my contact. You are not being followed?”

  “Naw.”

  “Very well. You do not wish to divulge the specific whereabouts of our friend near Glenda Bay?”

  “I just want to make sure I’m there when it happens.”

  “You have lost much trust in humanity, my friend. But you have suffered.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The rest waits until Friday. He is a cancer.”

  “What?”

  “He is a cancer, a scourge that must be eradicated before our bodies are fouled with disease.”

  “Well, yeah, sure.”

  “Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “Even now he is eating at our brains.”

  “Yeah. Well. The down payment?”

  “Reach under the telephone. You will find an envelope taped there. In the envelope you will find fifty bills, each of one-hundred-dollar denomination.”

  Thursday, the Twenty-third day of March,

  at Half-past Two O’Clock in the Afternoon

  The lowering mass of morning clouds had passed overhead and retreated to the east, carrying its burden of rain to Vancouver Island and the mainl and, and the afternoon was sunny and majestic, splendid and rare. There were still stragglers in the sky, scurrying puffs of cloud which scudded eastward, then atrophied and faded before reaching the low mountains of Vancouver Island, where they built again and clung like wisps of wool to the cliffs and tops of trees. Spring’s sun sent warm messages. Steam rose from the silver shakes upon the roof of the rambling house, and about the clearing the hot rays pried open the buds of daffodils and crocus, and the flowers radiated flashes of color — yellow, and yellow edged with red, and mauve and violet and orange.

  The house was set on a ten-acre island in the coastal rain forest, and its clearing of flowers and untamed grass was surrounded by looming giants — red cedar, Douglas fir, and hemlock — beneath which grew sword fern and vanilla leaf and trillium, and great tangles of salal, the evergreen shrub that finds refuge everywhere in the North Pacific woods, and grows seven feet tall, a thicket of leaf, branch, and bush that rivals in density the jungles of the wet tropics.

  The clearing extended from a curving beach on the westerly windward side of the island to a small bay on the leeward side. The island was narrow here — four hundred feet across a slight rise — and on the rise was the house, commanding a view from the front porch westward to the beach and the long horizon. The view eastward, from the back of the house, was over the bay to the shredded coast of Vancouver Island, a few hundred yards away across a channel. The inlet at the back provided sheltered mooring, and a pier led to a floating wharf to which a small outboard was tied. Across the channel were sand and rock beaches strung along the shores of Vancouver Island, and above them were cliffs, and beyond the cliffs, mountains.

  The island of Judge Hugo Land was narrow, running parallel to the opposite shore, and a path ran around it, leading from the wharf to rock points at the north and south ends, and back to the western side to the beach. Another path led across the isthmus from the dock across the clearing to the house and the nearby outbuildings. The path then continued west and disappeared in the soft grey sand of the crescent beach, which today was being gently slapped by the waves in slow, unceasing beat. The beach was guarded on either end by high rock promontories — granite columns seventy feet high. Upon their crests, shore pines grew, grotesque and knobby-limbed, groping landward as if in sluggish flight from the battering westerly winds.

  Although the breezes had slackened by mid-day, and now only softly buffeted the waves, the ocean rollers still carried the energy of old Pacific blows, and they lashed the rocks at the feet of the promontories, pounding with the sound of artillery. But the waves that licked up the beach had spent their strength getting there, and were now subdued.

  A flock of wintering plovers scurried along the sand, picking food at the tide-line. Offshore, on rocks, a pair of cormorants sat, while grebes and Arctic loons dipped and rolled nearby. Farther at sea, a family of guillemots scuttered about the waves.

  Foster Cobb stood barefoot on the beach, waves rolling up his feet and ankles, then falling back, running to the ocean.

  On this glorious day, he was regurgitating clam chowder, returning it to the sea.

  Clam chowder had been his lunch, tenderly and lovingly prepared by Nurse Tann.

  Tann watched him from the front doorway of the house. She hollered: “Once again, the chef is insulted.”

  Earlier, Cobb’s angry stomach had similarly rejected breakfast.

  They had arrived at nine a.m. The police Cessna had stopped
only long enough to unload them and their supplies. For the first hour Tann had followed her jittery friend as he prowled about the house, examining its great stone fireplace, its well-larded pantry, its driftwood ornaments, and its collection of Japanese fishing balls, arrayed on shelves and counters. In the spacious den he had discovered (unexpected treasure) an eight-foot slate pool table.

  After breakfast, and Cobb’s subsequent apologies, they had strolled around the island, dug razorback clams on the beach, collected shells and sand dollars, and exchanged greetings with a pair of foraging seals. The seals, full of wonderment, poked their noses and eyes above the water and for a time solemnly squinted at the two land creatures: the slim, dark-haired woman and the tall blond man — shivering, quaking, flailing his chest with his arms. Then the seals submerged and went fishing.

  Inside the house again, he paced and fought withdrawal. Back outside, he vomited once more, and paced again along the margin of the water.

  For a while, for a change, he tried potting shots with his borrowed police revolver at a tin can on a stump. The can remained inviolate throughout, and the noise made his head jangle, so he quit, returning the gun to the table in his bedroom.

  Inside, he paced again, his hot pipe clenched between his teeth, which left gouges on the pipestem. The airtight woodstove crackled and spit, the ocean thundered, the generator added a soft and constant putt-putt, and the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto sang from the stereo speakers. Cobb paced to rhythms of his own. He clutched his chest with folded arms, then banged them on his sides, trying to beat back the waves of nausea that sent ripples of gooseflesh across his skin. He had had no sleep on the previous night, and was wan and grey from lack of it and from the warfare in his body.

  It would take another two days to get over the hump. After that, the descent would still be hard, and it would be a ragged march down, with jumps and jitters all the way. About three or four weeks of gritty pain before his habit was finally beaten into submission.

  Tann watched him warily, chatting and flitting about like a wren, observing his every move, assessing every complaint, smiling when she could.

  She told him of the yoga method of dealing with pain.

  “Concentrate upon it,” she said. “Focus every part of yourself upon the pain. Don’t run away from it. Search out the worst of it, and centre on it. It will go away.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Cobb. “Centre on the pain.”

  He focussed all his energy, and the pain dulled for a while. When he relaxed and tried to enjoy his pipe, it caught up to him again.

  He paced, jumpy as a sand flea.

  He concentrated on the pain. It went, came back. He paced.

  He paced into the recreation den and studied the pool table. He wondered if he could do it, if he could control his line and make a clean shot. He picked up the cue ball and threw it with others onto the table, chalked a stick, took quick aim, and, to his astonishment, sank a ball dead into a corner pocket. He tried the different spins and banged a few more in. A better shot with cue stick than handgun, he found he could play with old instinct, running off series of up to a dozen balls, somehow mastering his shakes at each shot.

  “I’ll play you,” Tann said, smiling at the door.

  “Ever held a pool stick?”

  “Um, sort of. I mean, well . . . no.”

  “Great,” he snorted. “You can’t do anything I like to do.”

  “Well, Mr. Cobb, if we keep working at it, we’ll find something. I could learn to like Mozart.”

  Cobb put his arms around her, directed her hands into place around the cue, and demonstrated the stroke and follow-through. She tried it for a while, and did not do very well. Then he felt her relaxing against him, leaning back into his body. He took his hands from the cue and put them around her middle and held her close to him for a few minutes. He kissed her hair around her neck and ears. Then the shakes got bad again, and he let her go. And paced.

  Outside, for a while he chopped wood, splitting cedar from dry butts piled in the woodshed.

  Back inside, he paced.

  “All right,” Tann said, looking at her watch. “I’ll make you some strong peppermint tea. It will either cure you or kill you.”

  Cobb watched her fuss about with her herbal potions in this new attempt to establish a beach-head at his stomach. A pot of hot water sat heating on the stove. When it boiled, she poured it into a teapot, and after it steeped for a while, she poured some in a mug and gave it to him. Sweet with wild honey, it went hot down his throat, tasting strangely bitter. He sat gingerly on an old stuffed couch, praying the tea might stay inside him. Another thirty-five or forty hours of this.

  The thing was to keep his mind together.

  He centred on the pain, trying to keep the tea down. He centred on the pain. . . .

  Need. Need. The need throbbed in his brain, beating to a slow drum.

  Need. Need. Need.

  Prickling, biting, sticking, jabbing.

  Needles on the table, needles on the rug, needles on the walls.

  When had his withdrawal taken on this new, strange form? The bottle on the windowsill was a syringe; its neck, its point. The coal-oil lamp: a bulbous needle. The candle: a long, slim needle. His pipe on the table: Could it enter his arm?

  When had this begun? Needles of sunlight stabbed through the window and ricocheted off glasses and seashells and the colored glass fishing balls, and these coruscated richly, sending shafts of color through the room. When had the colors become so lustrous, so dazzling? And the sound: each note of the guitar was a single singing, liquid quaver suspended in the silence around it.

  And he was shaking, and sweating, and needing.

  And he was in fear. Why? Something foreboding. . . . Where was Jennifer Tann? No, don’t look. Because there is something . . .

  Was that the sound of his heart? The generator outside? No. No. Something else. It was harsher. An engine noise. A boat engine? A boat?

  He tried to sit up. What was it? There were psychotropic colors, sounds, rhythms.

  Something hallucinogenic?

  Waves of pure color from different parts of the room. . . . The notes of the classical guitar up and down his spine, pricking at his arms.

  The engine sound. Louder. Filling his ears. Approaching.

  Outside, through the window: clouds and trees, caricatures of demonic faces. Faces in the fir needles. Needles. . . .

  Something terrible and lonely. His mind splitting into many parts, debating the many theories. Was she near? Behind him? He sensed it. Mushrooms in the soup? No, there had been tea. A peppermint tea. lsd in the tea? Acid herbal tea?

  What?

  He could stand by grasping the fireplace mantel and leaning heavily against it, woozy, wobbling. He knew she was behind him.

  Outside, the engine coughed, sputtered, died. If he moved to the window, he would see the boat. And the men in it.

  “What is it?” he asked. His voice came from a far place.

  “Five thousand micrograms.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. Too calm.

  “What?” He revolved slowly toward her, his hands grasping the fireplace stone for support.

  “Orange sunshine,” she said. “Blotter acid.”

  She was smiling. Serenely. Her eyes were ice. She had the eyes. They sent thin needles to his heart. There was no birdlike shrug. No laughter. Her face was composed, without expression, without feeling.

  His police handgun was in her hand, its barrel drawing a line to his abdomen.

  He took a step to the window. Men walking up the path. Then Dr. Au. Yes, Dr. Au. Strolling leisurely. Dr. Au. Of course. It seemed natural. He had known they would come. The men were laughing, chatting, gesturing.

  Sunshine flashed from the water of the ocean, blinding Cobb. Orange sunshine.

  The forest green was black-green, the forest rec
esses were cold caves.

  Dr. Au smiled at him from the dock and waved cheerfully. Compelled, Cobb waved back. And smiled, a death-like smile.

  He turned back to Tann and tried to move toward her. Better a bullet. He moved lumpishly, dreamily, and fell against a chair, then against the wall, and was on his hands and knees, a dog on the floor.

  “What else?” he said.

  “I cannot betray my people. There are laws.”

  Cobb nodded. He understood. There was a sudden cataclysm of meaning, of insight. Those closest to him would cause most pain. Those closest would destroy him. Those to whom he had given himself.

  Centre on the pain.

  There had been failures of friendship and love. Paul Quade, who had given him his wings. Bennie Bones, who had given him crutches. Ed Santorini, who had given him horns. Deborah, who had given him pain that only a needle could dull. Jennifer, the last . . . Jennifer Tann.

  Centre on the pain.

  “Do it quickly,” Tann said as the men entered.

  Dr. Au nodded. “Yes, it is your right,” he said.

  Someone nudged him with a boot and he fell on his side, then rolled onto his stomach, crawling again. Crawling. Crawling. He would return as a slug or worm. He felt someone turn him over.

  The faces were strange, distorted, cruel, laughing.

  Tann was looking down at him, shaking her head slowly. “How little you understand,” she said. Her eyes hard, mocking. “You tried to destroy him,” she said.

  The laughter of Dr. Au.

  Hands touched him, moved him, stripped him. The quickness and the dexterity of the Surgeon. Deft and sure. Time collapses inward. The needles. Penetrating, sticking. Needles in his veins, his arms, his thighs, his feet. Needles. (Centre on the pain. There is no pain.) The clean scalpel slitting across his skin. The high, slow glissando of the guitar. A thin strip across his abdomen, glowing red. The heavy, dull explosions of the surf, pounding pulsing. The stylized dance of bodies swirling through the room. A red line from throat to pelvis, artistic, clean, immaculate. The blood: rich, blinding, hot, and pumping from naked red orifices. Dr. Au, triumphant, displaying between thumb and forefinger the sticky trophy of a long hunt . . . applause . . . laughter . . . his own tears . . . no pain . . . no pain. . . .