by Robert Stone
“I make it myself,” Dieter said, “it’s stronger than beer. I’m sure the Jesuits did better but they had more organization.” He turned to Marge, who was fidgeting. “What would you like to do? Freshen up?”
“I guess so,” Marge said.
“It’s a long climb without the lift.” He stood hospitably. “It’s outside. I’ll show you.”
Marge was going through her bag nervously.
“I know where it is,” Hicks said. “Ill show her.”
He picked up the bag and led her through a curtained doorway at the rear of the altar and down a sunlit passageway that opened to an overgrown garden beside the stream.
“You want the John or this?” he asked, showing her the pack.
“I thought I might as well.”
“You’re going right from dilaudid on to the purest shit in America. I can see you passing the time on a ride but you better use some moderation.”
“What the hell,” Marge said, “I’ve already missed my modern dance class.” She took the pack from him. “It’s the kid, I guess. It bothers me.”
He took the works inside out of the wind and loaded the spike for her.
“Someday,” she said, “I’ll get what Gerald got.”
She held the needle point upward and looked at the sky.
“This might be a good place for it.”
“Now, now,” Hicks said to her.
With her tongue in the corner of her mouth, she jabbed her thigh, lay back, and handed him the needle.
He sat watching her until she smiled.
“Feel better?”
“Are you kidding?” she asked him.
He left her nodding over the stream, dragged the seabag with the gun in it to a corner of the corridor, and went back to his beer.
“To suffering sentience,” Dieter said, raising his glass. “May it endure.”
“I think you’re loaded, Dieter.”
Dieter looked at the bag which he had set by his feet.
“More in the bag, is there?”
“There’s a lot more in the bag,” Hicks said. “I want to move it.”
“Is that why you came out here?”
“We’re hot. We’ve got to get loose of it.”
“I thought you might have come to stay awhile.”
“How about it, man?”
Dieter shook his head.
“Not here. Not me.”
Hicks let his eyes settle on Dieter’s.
“No? But Gibbs was just here. K-jell told me.”
Kjell looked up from Treasure Island.
“Gibbs brought mushrooms for the fiesta. That’s the only dope we have around here now.”
“Nobody asked you,” Dieter told his son. “Go tune your guitar.”
Kjell tossed his book aside and went out the front door. “Gibbs brought mushrooms for the fiesta. That’s the only dope we have around here now.”
“Dieter, man, all you have to do is call some people.”
“I don’t call people anymore.”
“Look,” Hicks said, “I have to take care of it. I really went for this one.”
He told Dieter about Converse and Marge and the things that had happened. Dieter went to the refrigerator and took out another pitcher of wine.
“I envy your energy,” he said.
“It was there,” Hicks said. “I went for it. Maybe next year I’ll do it all over again.”
“And then next year, it’ll be the same. Lots of scurrying around and no payoff. You should have stayed with us.”
“Well, the fishing was good,” Hicks said, “no question about that. I could put myself to sleep fishing that stream in my head. Pool by pool. Like Hemingway.” He rubbed his face and stood up. “I’m dead, man. I’ve got to crash.”
“Yes, crash,” Dieter said. “You know where it is.”
In the pool beside which Marge sat, the fish were nearly tame. They nibbled wrists and sailed confidently into cupped hands below the surface, but they could vanish in an instant at the slightest capturing gesture, leaving a tiny sunlit ripple. Marge sat and played with them beneath the vaults of time and silence to which she was becoming accustomed.
At some point, she decided to put herself in the water. She left her sour-smelling clothes on the bank and eased in. The bottom was pebbles, the water was sun-warmed; she ducked her head under and came up feeling faintly sick. The wind smelled of pines.
Kjell was sitting on a rock a few yards downstream. She turned around and waved to him mechanically.
“Want some soap?” he called to her.
“Sure.”
He ran inside and came out with a square of lye-smelling homemade soap.
“Look,” he said pointing to the edge of the building, “there’s a shower over there. You use that and the soap won’t hurt the fish.”
He watched her soberly as she climbed out of the stream and walked to the shower. The water was cold, much colder than the stream. She soaped herself as the boy looked on, rinsed, and wrapped herself sarongwise in the towel.
“O.K.?” she asked him.
“Sure.”
He walked across the creek from rock to rock and sat down on the bank opposite her.
“Nice place,” she said. “Pretty nice. Nothing like it was though.”
“How was it?”
“Oh, it was full of people all the time.”
“It’s better like this, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know. The fishing’s better.”
“How can you fish,” she asked him, “if you’re worried about soap hurting them? Doesn’t the hook hurt them?”
“I don’t think it’s the same,” Kjell said. “Some people around here used to say fishing was cruel. Dieter says the people who objected to it most are all murderers now.”
“You mean they’ve killed people?”
“Well, it could be symbolic. Or it could be they’ve killed people.”
“I see,” she said. “Have you lived here all your life?”
“Most of it. I was born in Paris though.”
He was quite perfect, an exquisite artifact of the scene like the Indian bells in the trees. He was a child of Advance as she herself was—born to the Solution at the dawn of the New Age.
It was impossible for her not to think of Janey but the drug dulled her panic nicely.
“Where’s your mother?”
“Back east in the hospital. She left here a long time ago.”
“She get tired of the crowds?”
“She thought he was God.”
“Well,” Marge said, “that was silly of her.”
“No,” Kjell said, “she thought he really was God. Some people used to. Once some regular church people came up here to ask him about it.”
“What did he tell them?”
“He kind of let on that he was.”
“Did he think he was?”
“He sort of did. Now he says he wasn’t any more God than anybody else but other people didn’t know they were God and he did.”
“Did you think he was God?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he is. I mean, how could you tell?”
“Now when I was a kid,” Marge said, “there was an organization called the League of the Militant Godless.”
“Goddess?”
“God-less,” Marge said. “They did without.”
“And they were pissed off?”
“Everybody was pissed off when I was a kid. I was pretty pissed off myself.” She stood up and shivered inside the towel. “Hey, it’s nice up here. What is this place?”
“That’s a story,” Kjell said. “It’s called El Incarnaçion del Verbo. It was a Jesuit house in the mission times—then the Mexicans passed a law against Jesuits so the priests buried all their gold and left. Then it got to be part of the Martinson ranch. We go out—me and Dieter—we go out with the metal detector sometimes to look for the gold. We found a whole lot of great stuff. But no gold.”
“How’d Dieter
get it?”
“I guess Mom gave it to him. Her name used to be Martinson.”
“Well,” Marge said. “How nice for him.” She dressed and sauntered into the front room looking for Hicks.
“He’s asleep,” Dieter said. He offered her a beer and she took it. “Couple of hours he’ll be up and hustling and you’ll be on your way.”
“I thought we were on our way here.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you with the heroin.”
“I must have it wrong then. I thought you were somehow in the business.”
“You have it wrong.” He sipped his wine and watched her in what she considered to be a rather proprietary way. “How much are you shooting?”
“I don’t really know,” she said. “There’s so much of it.”
“If it’s Vietnamese and you keep shooting it, you’ll end up with a hell of a habit. You may have a habit already.”
“We think it may be all in my head.”
“How long has it been?”
“Not so long.”
“Good,” Dieter said. “Then you can quit if you want to. I can help you.”
“Can you really?”
“Don’t be scornful,” he said. “It’s ugly.”
Marge stretched. She bore him no ill will.
“Please don’t give me hippie sermons, Mr. Natural. I’m not part of your parish.”
He fixed his small gray eyes on her.
“How important is the money to you? Do you really want him doing this?”
“I don’t give a shit about the money.”
“Good. Throw it over the drop and we’ll go fishing.”
“Talk to him about that.”
He fell silent, sitting with his wine on the bottom step of the altar as though he were trying to gather strength.
“I like you,” he said after a while. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“How nice of you to say so.”
“Has he told you about what we did here?”
“He said you were a roshi who freaked out. I don’t really know what that means.”
Dieter took a deep drink of his wine.
“Years ago,” he said gravely, “something very special was happening up here.”
“Was it something profound?”
“As a matter of fact, it was something profound. But rather difficult to verbalize.”
“I knew it would be. Did it have to do with your being God?”
Dieter sighed.
“I am not now—nor have I ever been—God. In any ordinary meaning of the word. I made certain statements for political reasons. In my opinion they were what the times demanded. If things had worked out everything would have been clear in the end.”
Marge laughed.
“You’re like my father—he’s a Communist.” She wiped the mellow smack tears from her eyes and shook her head. “So many people have it all figured out and they’re all full of shit. It’s sad.”
“Listen,” Dieter announced, “a hippie sermon—When the soul leaves the body it approaches the void and there it is assailed by temptations. In its first temptation it encounters two people fucking—naturally what remains of its prurient interest is aroused. It draws closer and closer until it’s drawn in. It has been visualizing its own conception. It goes back the way it came and that’s the end of liberation. Well, that’s what happened to us,” Dieter said. “I suppose it was the dope that stopped us. We were drawn in because it was so much fun. As a junkie, you should understand that.”
“Absolutely,” Marge said. She closed her eyes. “It’s too bad, it really is. It’s too bad we can’t get out of this shit into something better. If there was a way to do it, I’d say—I’d say—let’s do it.”
“Let’s do it,” Dieter said. “Get him to stay.”
Content within the vaults of the drug, Marge laughed.
“If I could pray,” she said smiling, “I would pray that God would cause the bomb to fall on all of us—on us and on our children and wipe the whole lot of us out. So we could stop needing this and needing that. Needing dope and needing love and needing each other’s dirty asses and each other’s stupid fucked-up riffs.
“That’s the answer,” she said placidly. “The final solution.”
Dieter drew himself up in a magisterial fashion.
“Foolish girl,” he said softly. “That’s the problem, it can’t be the answer. When you say that, it’s cheap junkie pessimism. If you spend your time making holes in yourself and tripping on the cracks in the wall—how else can you think?
“You begin from there,” he shouted at her—“life belongs to the strong!”
“The strong?” Marge asked incredulously, “The strong? Who the hell is that supposed to be? Superman? Socialist man?” She stood up wearily and leaned against the wall. “You’re an asshole,” she said to Dieter. “You’re a Fascist. Where were you during the Second World War?”
Laughing to herself, she staggered out of the room and went down the corridor to the cell where Hicks was sleeping. The bag was beside him; she pulled it out and opened it and spent a long time staring at it with wonder. Her hand absently caressed the outer covering in a ridiculous manner and the notion came to her that it was like a child but less trouble. It was a stupid thought and she was not amused. She got up and went out again to the garden where the stream was and sat beside it with her head in her hands. When she looked up she saw Dieter standing in the doorway.
“It doesn’t get better,” he said.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told him. “Mind your business.”
When she looked up again he was still there.
“If I didn’t have it now, I’d be out of my mind. Things are crazy and it’s been horrible. It’s like I haven’t slept for a week.”
He smiled with his thick hairy lips in a way that she thought at first was extremely cruel but when she had stared at him for a few moments she was no longer sure that it was cruelty she saw there.
“But you’re all right,” he said. “You have it.”
CONVERSE AND HIS COMPANIONS SPENT THE FIRST evening of their journey at a hotel called the Fremont. It was in the mountains, across the road from a yellow slope on which Herefords grazed.
As soon as Converse determined that it was not the last day of his life, he began to drink in celebration. He drank Bacardi because that was what Danskin liked.
Danskin and Smitty sat on the bed playing chess with a portable set that had tiny plastic pins for pieces. In play, Danskin was imperturbable; he slumped motionless over his own belly, his shoulders hunched, his feet on the floor. His a breathing was always audible; for all his size and apparent strength, he did not seem to be very healthy.
Smitty hummed and tapped his foot and licked his lips frequently.
“Check . . .” Danskin said wearily. “And mate.”
Smitty’s eyes narrowed in panic. He removed his king from its fatal position and surveyed the board.
“Where the fuck did that come from? I never seen it.”
“Checkmate,” Danskin said.
He watched Smitty move the king from one square to another, and finally replace it in the trap.
“You got me,” Smitty said.
Danskin sighed.
When they stood up, he struck Smitty across the mouth with his fist—a lightning right cross from nowhere that had the whole weight of his trunk behind it. Smitty caught it flat-footed; he had not even tried to duck. The blow stood him on tiptoes and he staggered backward and caught himself against the wall. He felt his lip, spat blood, and walked into the bathroom. Danskin followed him stolidly.
“You stupid little bastard, I’m tired of your jailbird chess. You better learn to play.”
He turned to Converse, who was pouring another Bacardi.
“I hate jailbird chess,” he explained. “I hate the style. No foresight, no reasoning. Just like a little kid.” He pursed his lips and spoke mincingly, raising his voice for Smitty to hea
r. “Just like a little tweety bird! Oooh, here’s a move. Oooh, there’s a move. It’s fucking degrading.”
Smitty came out of the bathroom holding a face towel to his lip, and sat down on the bed.
“You hit my fucking bridge, man,”
“Tough tit. Why don’t you read a chess book once in your life?”
“Plenty of guys will belt you when they lose,” Smitty said thickly. “Fuckin’ Danskin—he wins and he hits you.”
Danskin shrugged and lay down beside Smitty with a book of road maps of the national parks.
“Where do you think I learned the game, man?” Smitty demanded. “I learned it in the slams, I can’t help that.” He looked at the bloody face towel. “Fuck you, man, I ain’t playin’ no more chess with you.”
Danskin looked up at Converse.
“Play chess?”
“I’m very weak,” Converse said.
Danskin laughed.
“He’s very weak,” he told Smitty.
“I don’t think I have the cast of mind for it.”
“That’s odd,” Danskin said. “It can’t be that you’re stupid, can it?”
“No,” Converse said.
He went to sleep in his chair.
When he woke up, he had the sense that some hours had passed. It seemed to him that there had been sunlight on the drapes before and there was none now. His head ached, and he was thirsty; he was on the floor.
When he tried to stand, his legs would not respond. He twisted round and saw that there were handcuffs on his ankles.
One of the small table lamps was lit. Smitty sat beside it in a blond wood armchair giggling at him silently. Danskin was in bed with a pillow over his head.
“Where you going?” Smitty asked merrily.
“I’d like to get some water.”
“Go ahead,” Smitty said.
“For Christ’s sake,” Converse said. “I agreed to come out here. I don’t see the necessity for this kind of thing.”
“If you want water, get it. I’m not stopping you.”
He drew himself up and hopped to the bathroom.
“I’ll wake up the whole damn place this way,” he told Smitty.
“Fuck the whole damn place.”