by Robert Stone
They were taking him up to the volcano. When the moment came, he promised himself, he would act appropriately.
The smell of thick-fleshed green things was suffocating. The wind that resisted their climb was heavy and sweet.
“I was once the only white bellhop in Chattanooga,” Willie Wings told them when the joint had been consumed. “Years and years ago at the start of my career. I worked in an eight-story hotel. You see me, right? Youthful in those days, with glossy black hair that indicated my Cherokee blood. Braided uniform, kind of like the staff drape at the Hotel Dixie on Forty-two Street when the bus depot was up there. Only it’s an eight-story hotel in Chattanooga—take it off the stationery.
“Now I couldn’t begin to lay on you the parts of the human heart I witnessed there. Forget the microcosm—it was more than that. Eight stories high.
“You know, don’t you, that I saw lots of shit to appeal to the prurient interest? I saw every variety of sexuality known to the Eastern masters. Dig it! In each and every room was a viewee thing—sometimes it was a little hole, sometimes it was more complicated, because this was in the great age of hotels.”
Fletch listened with growing panic. While Willie Wings paused to do a speed item, he raised his thermos and drank. He tried to do so in absolute silence, and huddled even lower in the seat so that he would not be seen. Willie caught him all the same.
“Fencer!” Willie cried, so loudly that the bird beside him set up a squawk in anxious imitation. “Look at Fletch with that lush! Look at him suck on it.”
Fencer smiled tolerantly. “Fletch is just relaxing.”
“Don’t get so juiced I can’t tell you, Fletch—I’m talking about Chattanooga! I’m talking about that eight-story hotel!” He raised his clenched hand as though he were wrestling with angels.
“Every notion that could be acted upon with the human body was acted upon under my eyes, baby. My nights were rich—they were cloying. But—listen to this, Fletch—of all those fleshy games I saw played, the most spectacular beyond any shadow of a doubt was played by one man! One solitary, ordinary-looking citizen in a room by himself! I have never again seen anything like it.”
Willie Wings paused to catch his breath. He rubbed his hands together.
“So…” he sighed, and a drawling self-deprecation came into his voice, “so waal you could say it was just a cat playing with himself.” He leaned his head on the seat as though overcome. “But let me tell you,” he said softly, “let me tell you, buddies—he really played with himself.”
When Willie Wings settled back, exhausted, Fletch saw that his eyes were filled with tears.
Fencer was flushed with affection. When he spoke it was with difficulty. “Oh God, Willie. Oh, Willie.”
Willie Wings sat with eyes closed, nodding.
“Oh, Willie,” Fencer said.
“Yeah,” Willie said. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
Fencer sought Fletch in the rear-view mirror.
“Fletch,” he said gently, “can’t you get with us?”
“Jesus Christ,” Fletch said. He said it quite involuntarily.
Willie Wings, his reverie shattered, turned and glared.
“I’m sorry I told you, Fletch, you’re such a drag. I’m really pissed now,” he told Fencer, “and I’m a little sorry about what’s happening.”
“Don’t be,” Fencer said reassuringly. “Don’t regret nothing.”
On the leeward side of the mountains, the land was much drier. Jungle clung to the canyons, but there were broad expanses of brushland grown with mesquite and agave and flowering redbird cactus. Occasionally the road ran past shapeless masses of concrete where half-finished constructions had been trapped by floods from the rain-soaked sierra and left to molder.
Whenever a burro or a longhorn cow went by, Willie Wings, who loved animals, had a good word to say for it.
Fletch rested his head on the tire in a state of deep depression. From time to time, he would attempt to bring himself up with a drink from his thermos, but to no avail. They were, he had noted, only a few kilometers from Corbera, the highest town in the valley—from there the road climbed steadily toward the dirt track that led to the crater. If he was to get out of the car and have no more of Fencer and Willie Wings he would have to do it in Corbera, from where a bus ran to the coast. If he flung himself out of the car, as he now and then considered, they would simply stop and come back for him and he would have to explain to Willie Wings.
Corbera was about ten minutes away; one drove through it completely in five minutes—he had therefore only fifteen minutes to devise a ruse or a confusion in which he might make his escape.
He lay back and considered his prospects—Willie and Fencer had fallen silent. They passed the Purina plant which marked the outskirts of Corbera. Fourteen minutes. Fletch took another drink; the parrot squawked to alert Willie Wings. Thirteen minutes.
Fletch considered the peculiar question of whether there had ever been an element of choice connected with his excursion. One thing was certain: he had not refused to come. He thought this significant.
At the moment when his rational process was most acutely engaged, his thoughts were frighted by the hated voice of Willie Wings.
“Now that man in Chattanooga didn’t claim to be no poet,” Willie told him. “But all by himself in that there hotel room he wailed. He set his consciousness on fire! That was life I was witnessing, Fletch, at my peephole. So when I meet guys like you…”
Fletch stared wide-eyed at the telegraph wires outside. Twelve minutes … Eleven minutes.
Willie Wings had raised both arms above his head like a bouzouki dancer and was waggling his thick fingers over the reddened dome of his head.
“Then I think, Wow, man, how groovy it is to be human! What a beautiful thing to be alive and conscious. And I think of that summer night in the shadow of Lookout Mountain—the cat on his own self and me on my peephole—the two of us there, human and conscious, the perceiver and the perceived, man, and I think that’s the most beautiful night of my life spiritually.”
He turned to look at Fletch, but seeing only the rear window he cried out in alarm. “Fencer! Where’s Fletch?”
Fletch had sunk to the floor and was gripping the tire with both hands.
“Fletch!” Willie called and leaned over the seat to discover him. “You once-born emptiness, you better hide.” He bent himself double over the back to shout in Fletch’s ear. “In spite of you, man, the world is rich!”
Fletch twisted on the thought. He pulled himself upright and took a drink.
Fencer watched him in the mirror. “Stay in it, Fletch. Everything’s gonna be groovy.”
“You fucking repulsive baldheaded rat,” Fletch said to Willie. “Who wants to hear about your lousy life?”
Willie Wings stared in astonishment.
Fencer looked concerned.
“Don’t be an asshole,” he cautioned Fletch. “Don’t overreact.”
The world is rich in spite of me, Fletch thought furiously.
“You creepy bastards! All I know is creepy bastards!” Fletch could not contain himself. “My life is poisoned!”
Willie Wings recovered himself.
“Nobody sounds me,” he declared violently. “No literary poet abuses me! It’s love me—love my thing! I got my own thing, Fencer. I got friends that love me and revere me and protect me from the literary poets that want to destroy me because the literary poets have always wanted to destroy me. I don’t know how many times I been bum-tripped and burned by poets and I hate the bastards!”
“You…” Fletch began.
“You think I can’t protect myself from you?” Willie shouted. “You think I’m defenseless?” He laughed derangedly. “I got a hard desperate side for my own protection,” he told them. “I got a piece!” He began to claw at the inside of his leg, which was where he strapped his pistol.
“Yeah,” Willie Wings said. His eyes were fixed as though confronting some inevitability; his hand was on the conc
ealed holster.
Fencer began to slap at him blindly with his free arm.
“Willie, Willie, that ain’t the way.”
“Whaddaya mean it ain’t the way, Fencer? What’s the way then?”
“The way,” Fencer said, “is to go up the mountain and make it all complete.” He sought Fletch in the mirror again. “Right, Fletch?”
Fletch stared glassy-eyed at the bulge along Willie’s calf where the gun was.
“Let me out,” he said dully. “I get out here.”
They were in the zócalo of Corbera. On the left Fletch saw the veranda of the Hotel Volcánico, on the right the Azteca Cinema was playing Sangre y Plata with Errol Flynn.
“No,” Fencer said. “We got to finish it.”
Willie Wings had regained his composure. “I’ll go along with that,” he said. “Fletch stays.”
There was a wall of peanuts on the north end of the square where the vendors had set up their stalls outside the municipal market. Fletch was suddenly inspired. He thrust himself over the seat and seized the wheel. Fencer hung on and decelerated.
“Let me out,” Fletch told him. “I’ll run us on the peanuts.”
A vendor approached them with a basketful of nuts.
“Cacahuetes,” he moaned. “Cacahuetes?”
Fencer and Willie Wings sat in silent fury.
Fletch gathered up his thermos and prepared to alight. He was trembling.
“Cacahuetes,” sang the peanut vendor.
Without warning, Fencer rammed into gear. Fletch saw the market fall away in a spray of peanuts as he flew into the back seat.
“Gringo!” the stricken peanut man called after them. “Gringo!”
Fletch floundered in the seat. His trousers were soaked in Coke and alcohol.
“Take it easy, Fletch,” Fencer said earnestly. “Show him, Willie.”
“Don’t panic, Fletch,” Willie said. “But the Sinister Pancho Pillow was just pulling up behind us.” He pointed tensely through the rear window.
About thirty yards behind them was a new Lincoln with California plates. The driver; barely visible, was a fat, dark-skinned man who wore a goatee and dark glasses. A girl in a straw hat sat beside him, and there was a third person in the back.
Fletch stared at them.
“Well there it is, Fletch,” Fencer said. “You panicked. You balked. And you nearly set us up for Sinister Pancho Pillow.”
“And his woman, La Beatriz,” Willie Wings said.
“And La Beatriz. And Pancho’s Odd Buddy.” Fencer whistled through his teeth. “Don’t that show you somethin’ about how the world is set up, Fletch? There you were, acting like me and Willie Wings was a menace, and in the next fuckin’ instant Sinister Pancho Pillow makes the scene.”
Fletch thought of prayer. He addressed a prayer to his perception, which he felt was in danger of obliteration, together with its frail equipage. He beseeched his perception to overcome panic and confusion.
“I have nothing to fear from Pancho Pillow,” he told them. “What do I care if he pulls up behind us?”
“Let us not leave those evils which we got,” Willie Wings said, “and flee to others which we know not of.”
Fencer nodded vigorously. “That’s a relevant quote, Fletch. Hey, man, are they still behind us?”
“They turned off,” Fletch said. “They’re going back to the coast.”
“That’s a feint,” Fencer said. “They’re gonna stay out there behind us somewhere.”
The sloping plains they drove through were bare, although patches of cypress forest rose in the barrancas below them.
They were above Corbera now. Ahead the road ran quite literally to the clouds.
Fencer was rolling a joint while driving. He was one of the few people in Mexico who could do so. Fletch watched him jab the lighted end toward Willie with an impatient gesture. That, Fletch thought, must be why they called him Fencer.
Fletch had resolved to turn on in order to buy time. If he accepted the new joint, it seemed to him that he would not get very much higher than he was. Moreover the forms of order would be maintained, perception stimulated and panic postponed.
Fencer became philosophical. “Paranoids make their own hell,” he told Fletch. “Here you were with just me and Willie and all aggressive and paranoid. Next thing—wham—it’s Sinister Pancho Pillow time. Don’t that make you think?”
“What’s the matter with Pancho Pillow?” Fletch asked. “I mean, compared with you and Willie Wings?”
“Nothin’ wrong with Pancho for the average person,” Willie said. “Plenty wrong for you though, Fletch—you better believe it. Because we’re with you down deep, Fletch. But Sinister Pancho Pillow ain’t with no one and he’d eat you up.”
“Why?” Fletch asked.
“Why?” Willie Wings sighed. “Because you’re his favorite flavor.”
Fletch affected to laugh.
“Oh now this is really a lot of shit,” he said.
Willie looked at him kindly.
“That really is a lot of shit,” Fletch told them. “It’s utter jive. You’re crazy with speed, all of you.”
“I’m afraid Willie’s right, Fletch,” Fencer said. “But we’re all in the same bag, children, because Sinister Pancho Pillow has hunger and thirst for all of us.”
“Not for me,” Willie Wings said. He rattled the parrot’s cage, making the bird squawk.
“Especially for you, Willie Wings,” Fencer said. “Sorry.”
Fletch shook his head.
“Oh now this really is a lot of shit,” he said.
“Too bad you can’t make your own world,” Fencer said. “But you got to live the world the way it is, I hate to tell you. If I made the world and the firmament, I wouldn’t have no Pancho Pillows in it. But there he is, Virginia, sorry about that.”
“Now this…” Fletch began.
“If Pancho had come on us back in Corbera,” Fencer went on, “he’d have wanted into your life. If he’d seen we was all together—and that Willie Wings was around—he’d have been just overjoyed. He’d have suggested a picnic.”
“And you’d have been sorry quick,” Willie Wings added. Willie had turned morose.
“Pancho’s a body snatches” Fencer told them. “That’s my theory. A body snatcher and an agent and one of the world’s worst bummers.”
“He’s been known to wear a badge,” Willie said. “He showed a friend of mine one once.”
“Sure as shit,” Fencer said. “I’ve seen him appear on the border and the score went bad. I know for a fact he was around that bad Lee Oswald fella in Mex City. When Miss Liz Taylor lost something up in P.V., they went to Pancho Pillow to get it back.”
“You want to freak the cats in Mexicali?” Willie Wings asked Fletch. “Bop over to the One-Eyed Indian Bar and tell them ‘Pancho Pillow’s in town!’ Man, you’ll dig them choke and turn gray and their knees’ll knock together. That’s what they think of Panch in Mexicali.”
“Fuck him, is all,” Fencer said. “Forget him. Let’s go see the volcano.”
They drove over a plateau surrounded by brown peaks. The wind had a taste Fletch had forgotten. It was late in the day; the light was fading in the sky and the peaks cast long conical shadows over the dun sand.
They came to the dirt track. Fencer eased the car off the highway and followed it. The track ran in shadow and Fletch was aware of the mass of the volcano rising above them. Bursts of smoke came at the windshield like yellow flak.
Fletch watched Willie and Fencer in the peculiar light.
“I dig the high windies, man,” Fencer said. “I love it up here.”
There was no life to be seen. Not even goats grazed on the sulfurous pasture. There were no bird calls, not even a buzzard in the sky. The smoke grew thicker.
“Hang in, Fletch,” Fencer said. “We get out in half a mile.”
Their faces were caked with dust. Willie’s parrot had begun to make faint cooing noises.
Fletch turned in his seat and looked with longing at the descending track behind them.
“Maybe,” he said at length, “maybe … we could come to an understanding.”
Fencer smiled. “That’s what we’re up here for.”
“I didn’t really have to come up,” Fletch told them, “but as it is, I did. I could have avoided this. There was plenty of places I could have gotten out—I almost did get out, didn’t I? There were plenty of reasons. But, as it is, I stayed in all the way.”
Fencer nodded. Willie began to hum “The Streets of Laredo.”
“So if I came all this way, it shows some willingness, doesn’t it? It shows some…” He paused and looked uneasily at the sky. “It shows some trust—how about that?”
The road ended in a depression of ocher mud veined with cracks. A wall of black volcanic rock faced them, rising toward the peak and sloping downward toward iron-toothed canyons which they could not see. The wind carried only silence.
“If a man like me can show so much trust to you and Willie Wings, it shows we’ve got something going together; right?”
“Don’t try to verbalize it,” Fencer said. “You’ll just fuck it up.”
They got out of the car and stood before a sign that pointed straight upward. The sign said that San Isobel was five kilometers away; it was riddled with bullet holes.
“If we’ve got this much going,” Fletch told them, “we don’t have to go through with any kind of stunts, do we, Fencer? We don’t have to have sentimental dramas to act out where we’re at.”
Fencer and Willie looked at him sympathetically.
“I mean, we’re all party to the same thing. I proved that by coming up here.”
“You’re sure party to something, Fletch,” Fencer agreed. “But see, we’ve got to go up on the volcano.”
“Literary Fletch,” Willie Wings said.
The path they were to follow led over the rock at the edge of the mountainside. There was no path leading downward.
“It’s gonna be dark,” Fencer said. “That’ll make it harder.”
Fletch saw that they were waiting for him to lead.
He took a drink from the thermos and stepped forward.
“Maybe,” he said, “we could all begin again.”