Badlands
Page 11
Du Pré mopped the wet spots on his shirt.
“Go and get another shirt,” said Madelaine. “That one, people will think I don’t take good care of you.”
“Coffee stains?” said Du Pré.
“My reputation we are talking, Du Pré,” said Madelaine, “so go.”
Du Pré went to the closet and got out a clean shirt. He put the stained one in the laundry hamper and put the clean shirt on.
Coffee stains.
Du Pré went back down to the kitchen. Madelaine was bent over the sink, rubbing her hair with the herbs she gathered and dried and put in little muslin bags.
Clover, wild thyme, and some Du Pré didn’t know.
“So,” said Madelaine, rubbing, “now you keep your mouth shut, she is going to do ver’ dangerous thing. Don’t tell that damn Ripper. He will charge in there, waving a sword or something.”
Du Pré laughed.
Ripper had gone to arrest some dopers dressed as the Mad Hatter.
Harvey said he had gone into a warehouse after a shooter once in a costume that made him look like the mean creature in Alien. The shooter was so stunned he dropped his gun.
Ripper was crazy.
Brave, too.
“Tongue thing it bothers me,” said Madelaine. “They maybe do that to all them women.”
“I heard one speak,” said Du Pré.
Madelaine nodded.
“One,” she said. “One is not a lot.”
Du Pré looked away. He saw the woman who had run into the badlands, backing away from Tate, putting the little pistol to her temple.
Pop, the gun said.
The woman stood still for a moment.
Then she began to tremble all over.
She fell and gasped for a long time.
She died.
Tate’s kids had screamed.
They would remember it even if they were too young to know what it meant.
“You snap your shirt wrong,” said Madelaine.
Du Pré looked down, to see he had.
He pulled the row of snaps apart.
He snapped his snaps in proper order.
“That’s better,” said Madelaine.
CHAPTER 24
“EVERYBODY GOT THEIR POPCORN and jujubes?” said Ripper. “Big leaky paper cups of watery pop?” He had picked up a Host of Yahweh recruiting tape on his California trip.
“Put the fucking tape in,” said Harvey. “One more word outta you and you go to your room without any fresh blood for supper.”
Ripper grinned. He stuck the tape in the VCR. A massed chorus sang Handel. The picture was a rapid montage of beautiful sunsets, sunrises, and lots of fat white clouds scooting across a blue sky.
“To be the best that we can be,” said a fat voice, “to the glory of God and to the eternal wisdoms, the Prophets here, now, and among us …”
Flights of flamingoes took off from a marsh. A bald eagle twisted its white head and the camera zoomed in on its yellow eye.
“We wish only to be the best that we can be,” said the fat voice.
A smiling young couple dressed in mountain-climbing gear looked up a sheer rock face. They looked at each other with dripping affection, then started to climb it in the wrong place.
“The clouds, the poultry, the precipice,” said Ripper, in his deepest voice.
“Shaddup,” said Harvey.
“The Host of Yahweh is the fruit of God’s healing,” said the fat voice, “for all of us were once in terrible pain, addicted, isolated, miserable, lost, far from God.”
The young couple in the climbing gear were on the rock face about fifteen feet from the ground, grinning joyously.
“Don’t know fuck-all about it,” said Ripper. “Ah, Hollywood.”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” roared Harvey.
Ripper grinned evilly at his boss.
The film changed to a massed chorus of men, women, and children holding hymnals, hands, and massed joyous smiles. The men all wore the old-blood-colored baggy shirts and black pants, the women long gray dresses and bonnets, and the children miniatures of their parents’ costumes.
The picture changed to a city street, where well-dressed people were marching toward some appointment or other. They were passing some ragged beggars, pitiably holding out their hands palms up. Some passersby put coins in the hands.
The beggars were dirty, but the dirt had been painted on. They got up and sneaked off. They bought drugs from a leering dealer. The dealer took one of the women beggars into a room while the others smoked and snorted.
A shot of hands sticking out of the bars of cells.
A shot of prison walls.
The beggars were back at their station, looking beseeching. A beautiful young woman in a long gray dress and bonnet came to them and she smiled winningly.
A light shone down upon her.
The beggars followed her.
They appeared in the middle of the bellowing chorus of costumed people, who smiled benevolently at them and shared their hymnals.
The beggars bellowed, too.
The beautiful young couple grinned down from thirty feet up the rock face.
They had been the beggars. The woman had been taken to the back room by the leering dope dealer.
The dope dealer was singing with the throng, and he was cleaned up and wearing the odd shirt.
“We only wish to be the best that we can,” said the fat voice.
Picture of a schoolroom rich in computers, each with a pair of scrubbed, smiling children in front of the screen.
The teacher was the woman who had been taken by the dope dealer before embarking on the rock face. She smiled radiantly at the children, who smiled back happily.
“Our home schools are the best in America,” said the fat voice.
Picture of Host of Yahweh people picking oranges and handing the fruit down carefully, all the while smiling radiantly.
A Host of Yahweh man sat on a huge tractor, plowing up black earth.
Picture of a burning dump somewhere. Old cars, appliances, bags of trash.
Shot of an oil slick on water.
Shot of a bird covered in oil.
Shot of a huge redwood tree falling.
Shot of power-plant smokestacks belching white streamers.
Shot of a superhighway filled with cars, all crawling at half a mile an hour.
Shot of a small white seal being whacked over the head.
“Our planet, Mother Earth, is ill,” said the fat voice.
Back to the chorus.
Shot of the woman with the fixed smile feeding a baby raccoon.
“The goddamned raccoons where I live steal my mail,” said Harvey. “They are about as endangered as goddamned dandelions.”
Shot of happy Host of Yahweh people cleaning debris out of a creek.
Shot of leaping salmon.
“The Host of Yahweh,” said the fat voice, “will heal Mother Earth’s wounds …”
The chorus bellowed.
The woman with the fixed smile waved down from the rock face.
She stuck the nipple of a milk bottle into the mouth of a baby goat.
She grinned wide.
The chorus bellowed.
“We are not alone in this Universe,” said the fat voice.
Shot of the gigantic stone figures built by Indians on the dry Chilean plains.
“The Wise walk among us,” said the fat voice.
Shot of a man in white robes, standing on a rock by the sea. He held his arms out and turned the palms of his hands face up.
“But one must listen …” said the fat voice.
The man in the white robes stood with his head humbly bowed.
Weird electronic music throbbed.
Shot of a starry sky.
“There are so many worlds,” said the fat voice.
“There is the Force of Good,” said the fat voice.
The chorus, the smiling woman feeding the raccoon, the people cleaning out the creek.
Belching smokestacks.
An oil slick on the ocean waves.
The man in the white robes turned to the camera, and the sea swelled behind him.
His face was entirely swaddled. There was just a slit in the headdress for his eyes.
“The Wise walk among us,” said the fat voice.
The man in the white robes looked heavenward.
“There is our salvation,” said a distorted and mechanical voice. “In the heavens they are watching …”
The man in the white robes watched the heavens.
“I have been honored,” said the weird voice, “with three visitations.”
The starry sky, black and twinkling with lights. A red light moved across the heavens.
It went right to left and then left to right.
“Three times,” said the mechanical voice.
The man in the white robes stood on his rock by the roaring ocean.
Shot of waves crashing into rocks.
“My heart was hard, though,” said the mechanical voice.
The man in the white robes stood defiantly.
“But they loved me,” said the mechanical voice.
Shot of the starry heavens.
“They came for me,” said the mechanical voice.
Shot of the pounding sea.
Shot of the starry heavens.
“In their spaceship,” said the man in the white robes.
“They loved me and did not rebuke me …”
“I flew high above the world …”
“I received their wisdom …”
“It is yours for the asking …”
Swelling chorus.
“Bless you all,” said the mechanical voice, “from the Wise …”
Swelling chorus of Host of Yahweh singers.
“And their humble servant …”
The man in white stood by the sea.
The film ended.
“My, my,” said Ripper. “My, my, my.”
CHAPTER 25
DU PRÉ PEERED AND rubbed his eyes.
Maps of the badlands lay on the big table in Bart’s house. The maps were probably wrong. The Forest Service maps of the Wolf Mountains were known locally as “the funny papers.”
Squiggles. Elevations.
The land was a wind-carved jumble. A surveying crew would have revolted. Like the one that was surveying the border between Montana and Idaho, along the crests of the ridges in the mountains. It began to rain. The surveying crew got drunk, pointed their instruments due north, and did not stop until they came to the Canadian border.
That part of the boundary was still a straight line, silly in a land of folded, faulted mountains and big rivers that were older than the mountains were.
Rivers are almost always older than the mountains they flow through, Du Pré thought. I could not believe it when I was told that. Later I believed it. Them scientists are wrong a lot but Benetsee never is.
“Rock is hard,” said Benetsee once, “water soft, time is very long. Rock never win.”
They had been standing in the bed of the old Missouri River, which a long time gone had flowed to Hudson’s Bay, after joining the Red River of the North.
Benetsee pointed to the old shoreline. It had snowed the night before, and the old shores stood out like dusted fingerprints do.
Long time gone.
Where the fuck’s the other mine? Du Pré thought.
He stared at the maps.
He rubbed his eyes.
Bullshit this is.
The telephone rang.
Du Pré looked at the machine.
He got up and went to it and he hesitated.
Might be for Bart.
Du Pré lifted up the phone.
“I am trying to reach Mr. Gabriel Du Pré,” said a voice, young and tense.
“It is me,” said Du Pré.
“I believe I have some information for you. I am not going to identify myself. You were interested in features in the landscape at roughly the southeast corner of the Wolf Mountains of Montana. I was told you wished any evidences of old mining activity. Specifically, circular tracks …”
“Yah,” said Du Pré.
“There are two sets,” said the voice. “One at …”
The voice recited latitude and longitude. Du Pré scribbled down numbers.
“Got those coordinates?” said the voice.
“Yes,” said Du Pré.
The line went dead.
Du Pré put the phone back in its cradle and he went to the maps spread out on the table. He set them together and found the place in the badlands he had gone to with Billy Hulme.
The other numbers weren’t on the maps.
The degrees were the same but the minutes and seconds were less for both latitude and longitude.
“Son of a bitch!” said Du Pré.
He rolled up the maps and tucked them in a big mailing tube and put them in the closet in his room. He went out to his old cruiser and drove to Toussaint.
Madelaine was tending the bar tonight. Susan Klein had had to go to Billings to get a wisdom tooth pulled. The dentist she went to nearby wouldn’t touch it.
There were ten or so people in the bar, drinking ditches and beers and chaffing each other.
Nobody looked twice at Du Pré when he came in.
Madelaine pulled a couple of beers. She set them in front of the customers and she had change from the cash on the bartop. Then she came down the bar to Du Pré.
Madelaine studied his face.
“OK,” she said, “Du Pré is worried.”
He glanced back at the room. No one was looking at them.
“That mine,” he said, “it is on the Eide place. There were two of them.”
Madelaine nodded.
She looked at him again.
“Them Eide,” she said, “they join that bunch. When?”
Du Pré nodded.
“Ripper,” said Du Pré, “he is in the back?”
Madelaine nodded.
“Left here, twenty minutes ago,” she said.
“I be back,” said Du Pré.
He went out the back door of the saloon and stopped for a moment and looked up at the sky. A meteor streaked brilliant green across the deep blue and the line of strange light went down over the horizon.
He knocked on the door of the room Ripper had rented.
Ripper opened it before Du Pré’s knuckles struck a second time.
Du Pré stepped inside.
Ripper said nothing. He looked carefully at Du Pré’s face.
“There are two old Spanish mines,” said Du Pré. “One, that Hulme kid found. Other one, it is on the Eide ranch someplace. That is the one the guns are in.”
Ripper sighed.
“They were moved here before the sale,” he said, “before the Eides left. Very nice.”
“Benetsee, he see them,” said Du Pré. “He just don’t know which mine, don’t know, there are two of them, which one has the guns.”
Ripper nodded.
He laughed.
“There is magic in the world,” he said. “We have got that at least.”
“Eides, they don’t sell to Bart, now we know why,” said Du Pré.
Ripper waved to a chair. He pointed to a bottle of Scotch.
Du Pré shook his head.
“Harvey will be back about noon tomorrow,” said Ripper. “He’s been after all the Eides who didn’t join the Host. Bud and Millie owned the place. The others were family, but only that.”
Du Pré nodded.
Two other smaller places near the Wolf Mountains had been owned by Eides, but they were too small to live on, so they had sold out and gone to the main ranch owned by more prosperous members of the family.
Du Pré sighed.
“Happens,” said Ripper. “People, they lose things they love, the world changes and makes no sense, so they find explanations. Too bad the Eides found th
is one. But they did. You know more’n three million Americans think they were abducted by aliens? That scares me more’n dope and Ross Perot.”
Du Pré laughed.
“You like that videotape?” said Ripper. “The masked man on the rock? The Guy Who Knows. Terrifying.”
“You don’t got nothing, them guns?” said Du Pré.
Ripper shook his head.
“Nothing direct,” he said, “though there was one theft, a break-in at a National Guard armory, that we’ve never been able to solve. The thieves got away with two hundred assault rifles, some antitank stuff—those plastic bazookas, use ’em and toss, grenades, light machine guns, and some plastic explosives. Good haul. Usually somebody rats out on something like that, when they get busted for something and they want the judge to have an attack of the kindlies. But other’n the usual lies everybody tells when they land in the can, nothing.”
“Where?” said Du Pré.
“Los Angeles,” said Ripper. “We were worried enough so we took tea with the local bad guys. They apologized. As loyal Americans, they feared terrorists, which they do, being your basic Republican businessmen. They had made inquiries, and got nothing.”
Du Pré nodded.
“That Host did it,” he said.
“Sure,” said Ripper. “Did a good job, too. Nothing to go to a judge with and say, my man, I would like a search warrant.”
“I find it,” said Du Pré.
“I didn’t hear that,” said Ripper. “Like I’m not asking you if you might know anything about demolitions.”
Du Pré shook his head.
Yes.
CHAPTER 26
DU PRÉ STARED DOWN from the window of the little plane. He fixed his eyes on a barely perceptible broad line on the land below.
He looked at his map.
He stared at the line.
Then he looked out of the other window. The badlands lay there, their washed-out dead colors even paler in the haze. By afternoon the winds had lifted tons of dust into the air.
“OK,” said Du Pré.
“You see what you need to?” said Bart.
Du Pré nodded.
The pilot flew back to the small airstrip in the field across the road from the Toussaint saloon. He set the fat-tired plane down. When he came to a stop, Du Pré and Bart got out and the pilot nodded to them. As soon as they were fifty feet away, he gunned the engine and turned the plane around and went down the dirt runway and was airborne in seconds.