by Robert Stone
Converse was certain there would be no flats, no place where tracks crossed the road. The clarity of freshness of the dawn had encouraged him to aspire toward a reality in which there was no place for such corners.
“Why does this shit happen to me?” he asked Marge. “Do I like it?”
“You manage to handle it,” she said.
“Handle it?” He was outraged.
“One thing I hate,” he told her, “is tough-mindedness. It repels me.”
“Sorry,” she said.
“When the bomb fell on Hiroshima, my father was working in Twenty-One.” Marge stirred in pain and turned her face toward the window. She had heard about it before.
“He kept the papers away from me when he came home. He never told me about it. He thought it would upset me.”
“He was a nice guy,” Marge said.
“Yes, he was. He was a very sensitive man. He never saw a light-up hidden valley, or an Elephant Bomb. Neither did his father. He would never have imagined such things.”
“He’s lucky he’s dead,” Marge said.
“They say the world is coming to an end. They say that’s why it’s so fucked up.”
“Wishful thinking,” Marge said. “The world will go on for a million years.”
At the mention of a million years, Converse nearly fell asleep at the wheel. He caught himself in time and kept them on the road.
As they drove farther, the hills were lower and dryer—before long there were no more oaks to be seen and no more yellow grass. At last, the land was flat on both sides of the road, and they came to a grassless plain of mesquite and creosote bushes that stretched northward to the brown rims of the mountains. The outer ridges were steep and spired, capped with wind-worn fantasies that gave jagged edge to the horizon line. After several miles, they came to narrow tracks crossing the paved road. The tracks led northward into the emptiness, toward the ridge.
Converse stopped the car and climbed out. There was no one in sight, no other cars on the road in either direction. He leaned his folded arms on the square hood and put his head down.
“Listen to it,” he said, when he had raised his head again, “it’s incredible.”
Marge shook her head impatiently.
“What?” she asked, almost pleadingly.
“The silence of it,” he said. “It comes out of nothing to nowhere.”
Marge got out and looked down the line of tracks.
“He’s walking out there.”
“I don’t believe it, do you?”
“Yes,” she said.
Converse got back in the Land-Rover.
“O.K. then. Let’s get him.”
She walked back to the vehicle and looked down at him in pity.
“Look,” she said. “You could have gotten out. You were driving—you could have gone to a bus stop. You could have stayed back at that filling station.”
“Don’t trifle with me,” Converse said. “We’ll see if he’s out there. We’ve got nothing better to do.”
She got in.
“He’ll have the dope.”
“I daresay he will. And you’ll like that, won’t you? Because you can use some.”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Converse said. “You must know whether you need to get straight or not. Everybody knows that.”
“I want to get straight.”
“Just give me a little reinforcement,” he told her, “that’s all I require.”
He held the Land-Rover as close as possible to the tracks. Ruts and sinks that were insignificant to look at sent them off the seat. The road behind them became invisible; they dodged black ore-bearing rocks and ocotillo shrubs with whiplike branches.
“You want to get straight and you want to pick him up.”
“I have to,” she said.
“Don’t you want to?”
“It’s not a matter of what I want. I have to.”
“So we’ve reached the level of inchoate need,” Converse said. “That’s the level we’ll work on. That’s where it’s at.”
Marge looked at him impatiently.
“I told you, you didn’t have to come. What’s the matter with you?”
“I’m tired.”
It had become very hot inside the Land-Rover. Converse opened his shirt.
“Jesus, you’re a drag,” she said. “The way you are now.”
Converse was not offended. He increased his speed as his familiarity with the nature of the ground increased. He wondered what the way he was now was like.
A short time later, Marge covered her face with her hands.
“It’s insane. They’ll get us for sure out here.”
“There’s nothing out here,” Converse said. He was not certain what he meant by it. There was sand, and wind whipping the creosote and the shrouds of the jeep. There was the risk of cracking up. All real. He felt as though he had awakened from sleep to find himself driving within his own mind.
“It’s a lousy place,” he told Marge. “It’s no place to be.”
“I haven’t been this scared ever,” she told him.
“Probably physical. The mind-body problem extended.”
“Please stop talking shit,” she begged him.
The grim brown wall of the ridge grew larger before them.
“I see something,” Marge said.
Because of the dips, Converse kept his gaze on the ground immediately ahead. At length he caught a glimpse of something blue beside the track. It had metal parts that the sun glinted on. He slowed as they came up to it.
When they got out, Marge started to run. Converse left the engine turning. Following her, he saw that it was Hicks beside the tracks. There was a rifle slung across his shoulder and a pack on his back. One side of his body was covered in dried blood; one of his hands rested on the rail. Some bluebottle flies had gathered over the wound under his arm.
Marge stood looking at him and then ran back to the jeep. She came back carrying a canteen full of water.
“He’s in shock,” she said softly.
“No,” Converse said, “he’s dead.”
He walked over, looked down at Hicks, and at the mountains beyond. They were miles and miles away. It was incredible to Converse that he had carried so much weight so far. Lifting the flap of the pack, he saw that the dope was inside.
Marge started to sit down on the rail, but it was hot and she rose from it quickly. She sprawled on the white dust, brushed the bluebottles from Hicks’ side, and cried.
Converse watched her. For all her wastedness she looked quite beautiful in her tears. He might, he thought, if things were different, have fallen in love with her again right there. He was not without emotions and it was very moving. Real. Maybe even worth coming out for.
He looked around him at the blanched and empty land to see what it was he felt. Fear. Sparkling on the gun metal, twinkling in the mesquite. A permanent condition.
Marge swayed in her grief; the wind that stirred the dust blew her hair and molded her skirt to her body. When she stopped crying, she lifted the flap of the backpack and scooped some of the dope from it with the sleeve of her jacket. She picked up the canteen she had brought and went back to the Land-Rover.
Converse came and stood over Hicks—in a moment he found himself trying to brush the flies away. He had seen so much more blood, he thought, than he had ever thought to see.
Marge’s teared eye measured the liquor in her needle. Converse watched the throb of blood rise in the tube.
“We lost him,” he told Marge.
She was bent at the waist; she rested the top of her head on the seat next to her.
“He wasn’t the only one. Sauve qui peut.”
When she did not straighten up, he became concerned.
“Marge?”
She came up out of it.
“Marge, can you see me? Can you hear me?”
“Yes, of course,” she said.
“We have to go, baby. We can’t stay and grie
ve or we’ll be just as dead as he is.”
She seemed less pale, her eyes less dull. She made a sound in her throat.
“Marge?”’
“Does it matter?” she asked him with a smile.
Converse considered her question.
“I don’t know. But nobody’s replaceable.”
“John,” she said, “you are so full of shit. Honestly—you’re a bad guy.”
He had begun to pace beside the sputtering jeep, turning on his heel.
“We came after him, for Christ’s sake. I’m really going to try not to regret it.
“In the worst of times,” he began to tell her, “there’s something.”
“Ha,” Marge said. “There’s smack.” She watched him pace in bewilderment. “In the worst of times there’s something? What?”
“There’s us.”
Marge laughed.
“Us? You and me? That’s something?”
“Everybody,” Converse said. “You know.”
“Sure,” Marge said, “that’s why it’s so shitty.”
Converse shook his head and walked back to where Hicks lay. It was a difficult point to make in the circumstances. He hunkered down beside Hicks and wondered if he would have understood what it was that he sought to say.
The thought came to him that if, years before, in the Yokasuka geedunk, they had been able to see how everything would end, they would probably have done it all anyway. Fun and games, amor fati. Semper fi.
“Peace,” he said to Hicks.
Turning away, he looked toward the mountains and saw a column of dust rising from the valley floor along the edge of the tracks. It rose at the wake of something that moved; the wind carried it upward and whirled it.
He stood for a moment fighting panic; then it occurred to him that one thing to do would be to button down the pack flap so that the dope would not blow away—so that it would be there for them. When he had buttoned it, he took a folded Kleenex from his pocket and tied it on the strap of the pack. Then he sprinted for the jeep and threw it in gear.
“We’re running, baby,” he told her. “The bastards are behind us again.”
He could not see what it was at the core of the cloud, but it moved slowly; in a few minutes he had put a comfortable piece of barrenness between themselves and the thing that came.
“If they come up,” Marge said, “if they have guns—if they say stop—we won’t stop. We’ll just keep going.”
“Right,” Converse said. He watched the cloud approach in the rearview mirror.
“Who is it?” Marge asked.
Watching it, Converse began to laugh as he pressed down harder on the gas. The column rose, a whirling white tower with a dark core, spewing gauzy eddies from its spout, its funnel curving to the shiftings of the wind—the gross and innocent measure of some drugged, freakish process. In the mirror it seemed to fill the sky.
“Look at it,” he said to Marge. “Look at it in the mirror.”
Marge leaned over to where she could see the mirror, turned to look behind them, then turned back to the mirror again. Her face flushed, her eyes grew wide.
“Oh God,” she cried. A burst of spitty laughter broke over her lips. “Oh my God, look at it.”
She leaned out of the window and screamed back at the column.
“Fuck you,” she shouted. “Fuck you—fuck you.”
When they reached the road again, the column had settled, the thing had stopped. There were still no cars in sight.
“Let it be,” Converse said.
ANTHEIL AND HIS COLLEAGUE ANGEL RODE ACROSS the flats on a Michigan articulated loader. It belonged to Galindez and it had dug several of Dieter’s trails.
The loader was a reliable vehicle for rough country and very expensive but it had a speed of less than twenty miles an hour. It was no good for chasing anyone unless he was on foot.
Antheil swept the plain with his binoculars, perched, like Rommel, on the wing of the machine. When he saw the parked Land-Rover, he picked up his Mossberg and cocked the hammer but he did not fire—in the hope that its occupants might be asleep or stoned.
“As I said,” Angel told him.
It was Angel who had suggested that Hicks might walk out and who had found the loader.
As Antheil watched, the Land-Rover started up and sped southward toward the road, in a trail of white dust. It was not even worth a shot at the distance. Antheil became extremely upset, but he kept his temper in bounds because he did not want to seem undignified before Angel. There had been far too many lapses already.
He let his binoculars dangle and turned his gaze upward to see if there were any aircraft in view—but the morning sky was untroubled. When he scanned the flats again, he saw Hicks’ body beside the track.
He jumped down from the loader’s cab before Angel had parked it and ran to where Hicks lay. There was a pack on the corpse’s back with a little pennant of white tissue tied to it. He lifted the flap and saw that the heroin was inside.
He stood up with a tense smile.
The sight of Angel sitting above him on the loader’s seat made him a bit uncomfortable.
“It’s there?” Angel asked.
“Yes,” he said after a moment.
“Well, you bastard,” he said to Hicks, “you led us a merry goddamn chase.” He kicked the corpse’s shoulder. Angel nodded in sympathy.
He stood for a moment, staring after the Land-Rover’s dust, and then looked down at the pack again. Reaching down, he tore the rag of Kleenex from the strap.
“What the hell’s this?”
“Surrender,” Angel said.
Antheil wiped the sweat from his eyes.
“Is that what it is?” He crumpled the tissue and threw it away.
“These people are so fucked up, it devastates the mind. They’re utterly unpredictable—absolute mental basket cases. You have no idea what associating with them can do to you.”
He did not trouble to translate for Angel.
It was a bedlam, a Chinese fire drill. He would have to draw strongly on his reputation for efficiency and rectitude, and then leave the country at the very first practical opportunity. It was a bit untidy, but there was no compromising evidence and even if some entertained doubts, the agency might be content to let him withdraw gracefully. Others had left the service in circumstances as potentially compromising. In the place to which he planned to repair with Charmian, he might do them some service from time to time, should they discover him. He had many friends there, and no one would trouble him. It was a country where everybody did it.
In many ways, he thought, the adventure had been instructive. His heart filled with native optimism.
If you stuck with something, the adventure demonstrated, faced down every kind of pressure, refused to fold when the going got tough, outplayed all adversaries, and relied on your own determination and fortitude, then the bag of beans at the end of the rainbow might be yours after all.
The Converses were a sore, an itch—but he would have to live with them. It was not likely, being who they were, that they would undertake to spoil things.
He took the parcel of dope from the pack, showed it to Angel, and put it in the loader’s toolbox.
“The bag of beans,” he said.
“Beans?” Angel asked.
Angel was causing him some anxiety. It was a lonely place, and the dope was very valuable; he would have to be on his toes. With Mexicans, he reminded himself, and with people like them, it was command voice and assured presence that counted.
“We’ll bury him,” he told Angel.
“We can dump him over the line,” Angel said.
Antheil grimaced at the indolence and fecklessness such a proposal indicated. The mañana spirit.
“No, hombre. We can bury him in the hills. We have the very machine.” He looked at his watch. “Then we call for assistance.”
He leaned an arm against the loader’s tire and looked skyward.
“We have been holdi
ng the property under surveillance,” he informed Angel. “You and I—old friends from neighboring countries, working on our own time. A hunch. During our surveillance a ripoff ensued, a dispute among smugglers of dope. Some were killed, others escaped.”
“With the dope,” Angel said.
“Precisely,” Antheil said. “Precisamente.”
They got Hicks aboard the loader, and Angel looked over the horizon for a suitable wash. The wind played hell with tracks, and in a day or so even the traces of a substantial displacement would be obliterated. They could put thirty tons of desert over him.
Riding toward the hills, Antheil’s uneasiness about Angel began to dissipate. He slapped him on the back and Angel smiled in gratitude.
Angel, Antheil thought, was the sort of officer who was bent out of principle, so as not to be thought of as a fool. It was not venality that made him a crook, merely tradition. Antheil reflected that his service had brought him in contact with many peoples and cultures other than his own.
An anecdote occurred to him, and he thought it was one that Angel might particularly appreciate.
“Someone told me once,” he said, “something that I’ve always remembered. This fellow said to me—if you think someone’s doing you wrong, it’s not for you to judge. Kill them first and then God can do the judging.”
He began to translate for Angel, but then thought better of it.
About the Author
ROBERT STONE is the acclaimed author of seven novels and two story collections, including Dog Soldiers, winner of the National Book Award, and Bear and His Daughter, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His memoir, Prime Green, was published in 2006.