by Martin Clark
“Why in the world would your father make it so difficult?” Evers asked Ruth Esther.
“Probably to protect me, in case someone got all three clues when he wasn’t supposed to.” She shifted her eyes toward Artis; he was rubbing his hands together and staring at the table, oblivious to the reference.
“Oh.”
“I got it,” Rudy shouted. “It’s Salt Lake City.”
“How do you figure that? There’s no—”
“Start with the ‘Na,’ then the ‘Cl,’” Rudy said.
Ruth Esther lined up the papers. “Na Cl La ke U.” She read the clues out loud. “I don’t get it.”
“Shit.” Henry snapped his fingers.
“‘NaCl’ is salt. It’s the chemical symbol for salt. So you get ‘Salt Lake U,’” Rudy said. “Salt Lake City, Utah.”
“It could be,” Evers agreed. He read the second row of clues. “One hundred, zero, arrow. One Thousand Arrow Street, maybe? Is there an Arrow Street in Salt Lake? The key looks like a bank key. The second part has to be a street or place.”
“How about One Thousand South Street?” Henry offered. “The arrow points that way.”
“All we need to do is check those addresses for a bank or storage building. I think we’re hooked up.”
“Salt Lake City,” Pascal said. “Huh.”
“That fits. It makes sense. It all works.” Ruth Esther turned toward Evers and smiled. She reached out and squeezed his hand. “That’s bound to be it. I’m happy. Pack your bags. I’m going to call Pauletta, have her meet us in Greensboro at the airport.”
“Meet us for what?” Evers put his hands on his hips. “Was she serious about going with us? To Salt Lake City?”
“Yes,” Ruth Esther told him. “Her goin’ doesn’t affect your deal at all.”
“Why is she going?”
“Because she wants to, and because I invited her.”
Evers caught Pascal’s eye and bent over to put his cigarette out in an ashtray on the table.
“Whatever, Evers. The more the merrier. Does your lawyer enjoy dissolute living and sleeping until noon?”
“Fine with me, too,” Henry assured Evers.
“Who keeps the key?” Evers demanded.
“Yeah, who keeps the key?” Artis asked. He was staring at the clues and the key. His hands were gripping the edge of the table.
“You can, if you like,” Ruth Esther said to Evers.
“Are you going to stay awhile?” Rudy asked Ruth Esther. “There’s plenty to drink and another quarter of pot.”
“I will,” Artis volunteered.
“Sure. For a while.” Ruth Esther got up from the table and poured her beer into a glass. “I wonder what time it is in Utah? Is it two hours difference or three? Maybe we could find out tonight about this address, if that’s what it is. I’ll bet it’s a bank address. It would make sense to talk to them and make sure we’re in the right place before we fly out there.”
“It occurs to me that we’ve done an awful lot for one evening,” Pascal said. “Let’s just concentrate on celebrating our success tonight. We don’t want to take on too much at one time, get rushed and shoddy, that kind of thing. Calling and doing time-zone math might cause a little meltdown.”
Ruth Esther drank some of her beer and looked at Pascal over the top of her glass. “I’m sorry. You’re right; we should all enjoy ourselves. I’ll look into the address tomorrow.”
“Thanks. Given that our lives are—by choice—fairly uneventful, we like to stretch out our triumphs as long as possible.” Pascal smiled and toasted Ruth Esther’s glass with a coffee cup full of cheap scotch.
“I wonder why your father would travel so far—almost across the country—to hide the money?” Evers asked Ruth Esther. “Why not Hilton Head or Pensacola, or for that matter, somewhere nearby like Chapel Hill or High Point?”
“I think he probably felt that Salt Lake City was a good, safe place where our money would be properly watched over. And it’s the kind of place you and Pascal had in mind, isn’t it? Hot and entertainin’ and far away, different from everything around here. I told you it would be a pretty big trip.”
“Entertaining? Are you serious? Salt Lake City’s the damn desert, and Mormons, and no coffee or tea, and the Osmonds. What a terrible spot,” Evers said. “I wanted something a little swank and edgy. So much for a wobbly table outside a crumbling tropical hotel—or a few days in South America, dealing with venal sugar planters who’re sweating circles in their suit jackets and mangling English through a couple of gold teeth. Shit. Maybe we can go to Las Vegas while we’re there or—”
“Hold on, Evers.” Henry leaned forward. “Salt Lake’s a very solid area. I’ve been there … seen it … red dirt bluffs and sandstone and rock castles, stone arches, bands of pale colors—it looks like another planet out in the desert. And the Mormon Temple—this big Edgar Allan Poe deal right in the middle of the city. It’s not like Old Master tripping, but with a bag of hooch and some mescal, the place can treat you right. Trust me, it’s a good call.”
“Sounds great to me,” Pascal offered. “A perfect destination.”
“We’ll see,” Evers grumbled.
“I’m so relieved to get this figured out. Thank you all. Thanks.” Ruth Esther walked around the table and hugged all the men. “The only problem we still have is Lester Jackson. I know he’s keeping an eye on Artis, followin’ him. He’s called me a couple of times, too. And I’m pretty sure he had someone watchin’ Artis before we left to come down here. We went out the back of the lot, left out of the garage, so no one could track us. But the sooner we go, the better.”
“Fuck Lester Jackson … whoever he is,” Rudy exclaimed, drunk and high and sloppy.
Ruth Esther, Henry, Rudy, Pascal and Evers sat in the kitchen drinking and smoking pot out of the bong for several hours, until the morning sky started to arrive; spills and pushes of daylight began to come up over the trees and behind power lines and poles, and turned everything outside into silhouettes and cutouts. Artis had gulped down several beers and some of Pascal’s liquor and had fallen asleep on the sofa after about an hour of hard, unbroken drinking. Pascal still owned a turntable, and just before the sun came into view, he took a Pink Floyd album out of a red Sealtest milk crate. He held the edges of the record between his middle fingers, fitted it onto the silver bump in the center of the turntable, lifted and lowered the needle with a little lever, and, when the music came on, closed the cracked plastic dust cover. Evers heard scratches and jumps in the music, and the needle skipped once.
“I love the idea of records, that you still have them. It’s very nostalgic to hear songs played like this.” Ruth Esther closed her eyes. She’d drunk several beers and tried the marijuana pipe one time. She coughed and her eyes watered after she inhaled the marijuana smoke.
“I have a great idea,” Rudy said. “Let’s use the shrine and all make a wish. Use the good mojo.” He looked at the decanter; someone had set it on the counter beside the kitchen sink. The glass was clear, and most of the frost and ice had melted so it was possible to look right in on the white tears. “Henry won the lottery. It’s lucky.” Rudy waved his hand. “Turn the lights out in here.”
“Let me start the record again,” Pascal said. “This is a superior plan, Rudy. Excellent.”
“This should be an especially good time since Ruth Esther’s with us.”
The four men put the tear shrine in the center of the kitchen table and sat down around it. Ruth Esther stood behind them, in front of a window; her two index fingers were pointed at the ceiling, as they had been when she talked to Evers for the first time.
“Should we hold hands or anything?” Henry asked.
“I don’t think so. Just make a wish.”
“Who’s going to go first?”
“I will,” Rudy volunteered.
“So what will it be?” Pascal lowered his voice.
“I would like a perfect, immaculate, Packard limousine.”<
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“Good wish, Rudy. Good choice,” Pascal said.
“How about you?” Rudy looked at Pascal.
Pascal put his hands behind his head and shut his eyes. “I want to be beatific.”
“Henry?”
“I’ll pass since I’ve already had my turn. I don’t want to risk drawing too much juice off of the relic before everybody’s been taken care of.”
“Evers?”
“I’m not sure.” Evers paused. “Are you going to make a wish, Ruth Esther?”
“I’ve been very blessed. I think it would be greedy of me to ask for anything else.” She was still standing in front of the kitchen window. More and more light was coming in from behind her, around her head and shoulders; it was hard to see her features in the brightness. “I’m sort of like Henry, I guess.”
“Are we embarrassing you?” Pascal asked. “I apologize if we are.”
“I’m not embarrassed, no.”
“So what is it, really?” Evers asked. “Why won’t you tell us?”
“What it is—really—Judge Wheeling, is a plastic top and a little water in a cheap whiskey container. I thought Rudy was goin’ to confirm that for you.”
“I did, ma’am. I told him exactly what he had.” Rudy laughed. “I told you right after you gave it to me, Evers.”
“I’m sorry if we’re embarrassing you,” Pascal said again. “I didn’t really think of all of the connections when we started making wishes.”
“It’s not like I reached down through her mouth into her duodenum and pulled out a fistful of dinner, Pascal. Ruth Esther invited me into the bathroom on my way to work and ended up handing me the sacred contents of the shrine at her car dealership.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
Ruth Esther interrupted Pascal. “So are you going to make a wish, Evers?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?” Henry asked.
Evers stood up. “I wish my wife were dead. How’s that? I wish that Jo Miller would drop dead.”
“Good call, Evers. She deserves it.” Pascal stood up beside his brother. “She does.” He held his scotch in front of him, above his head. “Let’s have a toast. To our wishes. To Salt Lake City. And a good trip.”
FIVE
PASCAL AND EVERS WERE SITTING IN THE LOUNGE OF THE SALT Lake City Hilton, watching the World’s Strongest Man competition on ESPN2, drinking some kind of pale ale with a picture of a bear and a mountain on the label, and enjoying a sterling combination of cold alcohol; gothic, arid culture; and local pot, a bacchanalian trifecta. It was almost ten-thirty at night, and they’d landed in Salt Lake City about four hours ago. Their suitcases and travel bags were all scattered on a bed in their room, still packed except for two shaving kits and two clean shirts.
A picture of James Brown appeared on the television, and then some footage of him prancing and chugging onstage, tucked into a sparkling blue suit that was too snug around his middle, his hair raised into a prom bouffant, spun and stacked the way he wore it a long time ago. Song titles started up the screen, and a voice-over explained how to order all of the Godfather of Soul’s best music on two tapes or compact discs. James was sweating, and all the songs were fast and sounded alike, although the words were different. In a close-up right before the commercial ended, it occurred to Evers that the Godfather looked a lot like a cast member in Planet of the Apes, one of the later films. Beneath the Planet of the Apes or something like that. Evers took a drink from his ale. When he turned up the bottle, the bear flipped over on its back.
“You know,” Pascal said, “James could get work as a sort of chubby swinger in one of those Planet of the Apes movies. Planet of the Apes Dating Game, maybe. Beneath Club Med. Look at him.” Pascal pointed at the TV screen.
“That’s unnatural.”
“What is?” Pascal asked.
“What you just said.” Evers looked at his brother.
“You’ve become an apologist for the Godfather of Soul?”
“No. But that’s just what I was thinking,” Evers said. “The same thing.”
“What were you thinking?”
“That our man James Brown looks like a man in an ape outfit. Planet of the Apes. No shit, Pascal. That’s just what I was thinking.”
“It’s the hair.”
“It’s probably the dope, too,” Evers said, and Pascal laughed and nodded.
“You weren’t really thinking that, were you?”
“Yeah, I was.” Evers rocked back in his chair.
Pascal hit the table with his open hand. “Fuckin’ A. Yeah.”
“How about that.”
“It’s good to have James out of jail. And good to be here with my brother.” Pascal looked around the bar for a moment. “You know, Henry was dead on target about this place. Did you see that temple and the metal seagulls? Metal birds. And then you get all the peaks and canyons and shadows out in this flat, parched plain that goes on forever. With some nice low-grade colors. This is some fine reefer backdrop, Evers. Just superb. And it seems so safe here; you can enjoy your buzz without looking over your shoulder all the time. Just a nice clean city.”
“I miss Rudy and Henry—I think they’d enjoy this,” Evers said.
The car doctor and Prince Hal had both decided to stay at Pascal’s trailer while the brothers headed west. “All four of us can’t be on the same plane—like the president and vice president, same kind of concerns,” Henry had suggested. “And if something goes wrong, Dr. Rudy and I can help out from the East Coast. We’ll be like the command center.” So they’d rented several Star Trek movies and Willy Wonka, purchased a half gallon of gin and vowed to the brothers to always be by the phone, day and night.
“I miss them, too, Evers. They’re good people.”
Evers was tired, tired from the flight and the beer and the dope. He went to the bar and ordered a Miller and some tomato juice. While Evers was waiting for his drink, Pascal got up from his seat and started talking to two women who were about to walk out of the lounge. Pascal turned and looked back at Evers, then took a step closer to the women. One of the women was tall, almost as tall as Pascal, and she was smoking a skinny cigar. Her hair was all over the place, pulled up on top of her head and falling out in long curls on her forehead and on the back of her neck. Her friend was smaller, with short blond hair, small eyes and flawless teeth. Pascal waved Evers over. “Come and meet Marie Curie and Betty Ford, brother.” The women smiled and flirted and the tall one held her cigar between her teeth and pushed back some of the hair in her face.
“Not tonight, Pascal. I have that sunrise meeting with the church elders, but you go ahead.”
“My last name isn’t Ford; your brother just made that up,” the blonde said. “But you probably already knew that.”
“You’re sure?” Pascal asked.
“Come on—we’re going to go to a party out in the desert.” The blonde held up a wineglass.
“I can’t.” Evers watched the glass; the woman had it up in the air, over her head.
“You’re positive?”
“I’d love to, but we’ve got to get cracking on Jedidiah’s barn raising first thing in the morning. You folks go ahead and enjoy yourselves.”
Pascal laughed, saluted his brother, put his arms around the two women and walked out of the bar, leaving his bear ale bottle on a table beside the entrance. Evers heard Pascal and the two women laughing and whooping after they were out of sight; the blonde had missed a step as they were leaving, and she had stumbled out with her glass still raised, the wine rocking and sloshing as she went.
Evers rode the elevator to his room, but he was restless and fidgety and he couldn’t fall asleep. He lay on his bed weary and awake, listening to a quarrel through the wall and ice cubes bouncing into someone’s plastic bucket out in the hall. He went back to the bar and drank two quick scotches and ordered some french fries. He started a third scotch and began to feel drunk, warm and weak and off balance.
Alcohol inc
ites small passions, makes tiny ideas flourish, transforms tatters of sentiment into grand, full emotions, and sometimes causes stale reminiscences to spring to life with an almost supernatural vitality. Evers wanted to keep drinking, to get drunk, to poke around in the liquor and his memory. He thought of landing a trout, a lake at night, a bicycle trip through the mountains, a college sweetheart he should call who in his mind’s eye seemed pretty and solid; and he thought about Jo Miller, the way she stood in the shower when she shaved her legs, and then he decided—a little idea that was becoming unruly—to call her on the phone, to talk to her, without really knowing why he was calling or, on a more practical level, whether she would want to be awakened late at night to talk to him.
Evers asked the bartender to let him use the phone beside the cash register. He was a good barkeep, slow and easy and generous with his pours and ice, and he took Evers’ phone card and punched in the credit card information and then Jo Miller’s number. He handed Evers the phone, and Evers took the receiver with both hands. He heard a ring, barely, and then, very distantly, another voice.
“Hello. Jo Miller?”
“Hello.”
Evers strained to hear. “Where are you?” A drunken non sequitur. “I mean—”
“Evers? Is that you? Do you know what time it is?”
Evers said nothing, just listened. He imagined his wife standing in her panties at the wooden kitchen table, and he just gave the black receiver back to the bartender and walked out of the bar into the city, drunk and a stranger, his big ideas subdued.
When Evers returned to the hotel room, Pascal was lying on one of the beds, his front and face down, his shoulders, back, rear and legs uncovered and bare. He was a beautiful, handsome man, larger than Evers, and since the age of shared baths and cotton pajamas the brothers had developed a rapturous affection for each other. Never a fight, a sulk, a lie or hard word, never a hint of envy, anger or resentment—good companions, Evers and Pascal. They would go days without talking, and Evers didn’t know his brother’s birthday—it was in the fall sometime, during cool weather—but the two men had their own sequences, their own rituals, their own way of getting along.