Apricot brandy (25 page)

Circling upward in a slowly widening spiral, she sought that vantage where the topography would betray the green god’s hidden workings. She had thought it all but certain that Jack Fox’s land must hold a gateway in some secret nook or angle and there, indeed, was… the compost heap, a ridged black scar. She sensed beneath the wound it sealed that a titanic malice stirred and smoldered. By that path, she saw, the enemy’s realm was near indeed, but his power and watchful hunger held the gate.

Like her sister, the great white owl, she hung there watching the labors of Marty Carver, the flash of his hatchet in moonlight, the glint of liquor falling from his arms into the stream. She watched, too, as a furtive glow began to thread its way along the stream from the point where Marty poured his tribute in. This subtle luminescence moved faster down the stream course than the current’s flow could carry it: it moved like a spark down the length of a fuse.

In the water-table of this valley, amid the branchings of its aquifers, there had to be another portal, and surely it would be downstream from here, perhaps right in town, where Xibalba’s harvest would be richest when, in his power, he rose with tomorrow’s moon.

“Look,” she murmured to her brood of spirits. “See how this beast in uniform toils to prepare his god’s coming. See how he fertilizes the whole valley for the birth of Xibalba’s dragons and when he returns to his men, he will still be about his master’s business. Let’s kill him, or at least slow him down. Lupe… Lupita, you let him misuse you so. Stay here, my daughter, ride back with him.”

Quetzal then tilted her great wingspan and, in a majestic glide, sliced southward across the sky, down along the Gravenstein watershed. When she passed above the portal she sought, she would know, and down it she would go to free more captive spirits to her army.

Marty’s work was done by dawn and not a moment too soon. He flung himself behind the wheel of his cruiser and fired it up. Turned on the heat— it was
cold
in the god-damned car for some reason— whipped it into reverse, spun around and roared up the picking lane, pale dust rising behind him in the first gray light of morning.

He drove the top speed he could survive within the Fox acres and when he reached the highway, cranked it up to ninety. So much to do! And by God he was afire with it, was just the general to lead the conquering army! He felt like Hannibal, bestriding not an elephant, but the green god himself, Xibalba his own gigantic mount, the whole round earth his conquest, the endless green horizons of Eternity unscrolling before him. Jack Fox might skulk in the dark below, his deity’s minion, his Morlock, but Marty Carver bestrode the god and ruled a sun-washed world.

First, by oh-eight-hundred, every last department cruiser and van must be deployed to every ag-worker ghetto and labor-camp in the Valley. Marty’s plainclothes people would have to be separately briefed— must be armed with a “special issue” of Jack Fox’s sorcerous sidearms. He would identify their targets as Terrorist Sympathizer Mexes and Pakis, all of whom were armed and dangerous and to be taken down on sight. These officers would, of course, be utilized along with the immigrants they took out. It didn’t matter where the green god got his eyes and brain matter, his DNA for vertebrate structures.

Meanwhile Marty’s uniforms would bring in every brown body their cruisers and vans could hold— pack them in the drunk tank and holding cells. He would use the day-captain, Contos, whom he’d put half in the know, to help him start staging the immigrants down to the old foundation, and down into the portal, and put Contos himself down the portal last of all. Well before that time, everyone else on the force would be responding to frantic calls from all over the county. Soon thereafter, every responding officer would have joined the callers in the green god’s many jaws.

Oh-six-hundred hours, not a moment to spare. The woods and farms and fields had form, though not yet color, as they flashed past him. Christ, it was so
cold
in here, the cold like a muscled shape clenching his skin, squeezing his bones in an icy slippery grip and, just as he roared onto Fast Creek Bridge, the wheel convulsed hard right, breaking his grip, slamming his cruiser at ninety-plus into the parapet, whipping the whole car up ass-to-the-sky. The car cartwheeled in the gray void like a performing dolphin to slam down into the black surge. Marty was surrounded by dark now and upside down, as he fought to unbuckle his belt with at least two fingers broken, and the windows blown to atoms, and freezing water entombing him in the taste of brandy.

A slick naked shape rubbed itself against his face, rubbing big wet breasts against his drowning face. He blacked out still trapped… but still struggling, it seemed, for he came to an eon afterwards, skin and clothing torn, with crippled hands fiercely gripping weeds on the bank, his face barely clear of the current, coughing and sucking air.

Now he remembered his superhuman strength and he called upon it in his wakening rage. Clear enough who’d done this— a dead Mex bitch
not
dead, thanks to a white-haired bitch-witch. Any other man would have been killed, but the hag hadn’t grasped the kind of power the god had set against her.

He dragged his stunned mass up the bank, up onto the bridge, knew he had a simple fracture of the forearm, broken fingers, at least two cracked ribs… and knew it didn’t matter. Fifteen miles from the station and no one on the road this early Saturday and it didn’t matter. His legs were mighty, his lungs were mighty, and fuck the pain of cracked bone. He began to jog and then jog faster, feeling a warming power rise through him, like green sap in the springtime sprig. Began to run outright— long, unflagging antelope strides that ate the miles. In less than two hours, he would reach town. He would muster his troops in time and
strike back
for the Master.

The sun had just cleared the horizon and begun to spread upon the town a peaceful, radiant Saturday morning. The whole Gravenstein Valley— edged and woven with autumn gold— was unbelievably lush and green. A sweet and fruitful smell rode the early breezes and the county’s veins ran loud with bright indigo water. As if awakened by the sheer color of the day, people were up early everywhere.

Duina Tyler, coming out of the kitchen to cut back her roses a bit, noticed what a rich blue-green Crabapple Creek was, running along the border of their property, and noted how plump and brilliant her roses were, despite the lateness of the season, and how rich their scent. All around her, in fact, such a smell of… fertility in the air!

Glancing back at the kitchen window, Duina saw her husband Ry, still sitting at the table, waving a forkful of last night’s peach pie at her and tucking it into his smiling mouth. Duina had to smile, too, and perhaps she blushed just a bit. It was good to be close again and to hell with their age. Neither one of them held much with all these new pills for men— though Duina was not entirely easy in her mind with Fox fruit either, with anything
about
Jack Fox, alive or dead, come to that. Lord, but her roses looked
so
lovely. She had to step close to them again, take and stroke their silkiness between her fingers, just had to place the blossoms against her cheek.

County Clerk Fiona Billings came out just as early, went down to feed the chickens, and paused by their coop to consider the rich color and sharp scent of Fast Creek, which divided her property from the old Sanders house. She was startled to realize both her neighbors— Phil and Jed, the Coroner’s Assistants— were also gazing at the creek from their own bank, still wearing their sweats from their morning exercycle routine. Fiona called, “Morning!” with uncertain cheeriness. She had alerted the pair of them when the Sanders place had come up for rent, but once they had become the Billings’s neighbors, her husband Bob had begun to wonder out loud just how “close” the older and younger man were. Then, right after work yesterday, Fiona had been embarrassed to encounter them both at Fratelli’s fruit stand, lined up for Jack Fox’s peaches and apricots, just like her, there at Bob’s behest. “My!” she exclaimed a little uneasily. “Isn’t the creek
green
today!”

“Yes!” said Phil. “We were just noticing!” An embarrassed pause. Phil, perhaps just searching for something to say, asked, “Have you reached Dr. Harst at home yet, Fiona?”

“I haven’t tried again. Marty Carver says he’s heard from the doctor and he’s just a bit under the weather, will be taking a few more days off.”

“It’s just we had an unusual, ah, subject come in after you left. One of our own— Officer Haynes… . “Oddly, as his partner was speaking, Jed had wandered abstractedly over to their small vegetable garden, knelt down, and was closely inspecting their tomato vines, sniffing their leaves, and stroking the fruit against his cheek.

— From the house, Bob’s voice called out, in a parody of seductiveness, “Oh Fi-ooooo-naaa!” She decided she’d better get back to him, before he called out something more embarrassing, though she was intrigued by Phil’s news and more than a little fascinated by Jed’s strangely intimate behavior with his tomato plants. “You better tell me about it later— I haven’t made Bob’s breakfast yet.”

She made her way back across the yard. As she mounted the back steps, her eyes were drawn to the luxuriant morning glories, so profuse upon their trellises flanking the back door. Their colors and textures seemed irresistibly alluring, compelling her eyes and then her hands, which set to stroking their blossoms.

Closer to the heart of town, at the home of Midge and Kenny Adams, Helen Carver was another early riser. Leaving Skip asleep on the cot beside her bed, she slipped out of the guest room carefully, fearing to wake her hosts, whom she’d faintly heard disporting themselves last night. She’d flung Marty’s peaches out the window on her way over last night, only to find a peach cobbler on the Adams’ table for dessert.

But, padding into the kitchen for coffee, she was surprised to see, out the back window, Kenny pushing a hand mower through the high grass of their big back yard and Midge on her knees rooting in the dense lush weeds that choked their plantings. Amazing. In a county full of green-thumb homeowners, the Adamses— with their shaggy front yard— were notable underachievers.

Helen felt a pang of envy: to be a real couple! Make love one night, then get up early on a Saturday morning and do something on a whim, like groom the yard for the first time in months. How sweet to live with a lover and a friend, to have your life blessed like that.

She watched them as she made coffee, just peeking out now and then. Until, halfway through her first cup, she realized how long it had been since they had changed their positions. Kenny knelt by the mower, his back to her, freeing blades that had been jammed by the long grass. Midge, too, presented more back than profile, also kneeling, with her hands thrust deep into the weeds— even deeper now, it seemed, than when Helen had first started looking.

Were they moving at all? Yes. They both were, unmistakably, but oddly. A gentle, reciprocating movement it was, sort of quietly oscillating backwards and forwards, their faces aimed earthwards. Some private game of theirs she guessed. Helen found herself heading to the back door and stepped out onto the porch, smiling a bit uncertainly. “Good morning! Kenny? Midge?”

Midge answered, but Helen couldn’t make it out. She crossed the lush, dew-drenched grass, “Midge?” It was so… disturbing, Midge on her knees there, making those tiny rhythmic bows towards the ground, her arms sunk up to the elbows in deep weeds, breeze-stirred weeds, though there was no breeze blowing, was there?

“Midge?”

“Helen? Helen, is that you?” Midge’s voice sounded so whispery, so far away. Why didn’t she turn around? Brought to a standstill, Helen stood there gripped by an inexplicable awe as Midge spoke, still facing away from her, spoke in a faint, amazed little-girl voice, dreamy and enraptured. “Oh, Helen, omigod it’s beautiful. It’s an Eden under the earth. Omigod, the green eyes like stars winking open under the earth, a universe of wee green lives rushing up to the sun to greet us to touch us to take us to spread us like laughing windblown leaves across the planet. Oh, we’re meeting and mingling. I’m tingling, I’m tingling, the trees will be my legs and arms, the forests will dance with me, dancing green jungles we will be… ”

Fear struck away Helen’s paralysis and she lurched forward, “Midge! What’s wrong?” Coming to her friend’s side, she leaned over her— and felt her legs cut out from under her in terror, dumping her on her side. Looking up into Midge’s enraptured face, she saw fine green whiskers of grass sprouting all over it, while rising from the ground, a thick sheaf of grass had entered her chest and was thrusting, thrusting, with a gentle insistence like foliage rocked by a breeze, branching within Midge’s thoracic cavity and even now sending up from her spine and out through her blouse a delicate fur of green shoots.

Like an antswarm of tiny sharp jaws, Helen felt the bite of the grass she’d fallen in— and shock thrust her back up onto legs she could not otherwise have commanded. She stood swaying on these unreal legs of hers and looked up at a sky turned an alien, impossible blue as the sun peeked up past the hill. Looked over at Kenny and saw now how the hair spilling down from his head and onto his trembling back was not hair, but a growing mane of grass, a hyena’s spiky dorsal crest of grass blazing an unreal green beneath the sky’s unreal blue as it visibly sprouted a marching line along Kenny’s spine.

Minutes later her car screeched out of the drive, a groggy, scared-looking Skip blinking in the back seat amid the tumbled heap of their belongings. Helen sped back to the house she’d lived in for the last twenty years. She wasn’t going home, she was going to get the Acting Chief Deputy Sheriff, because in her terror, she didn’t know what else to do.

The city of Gravenstein was so
quiet
. Sal Fratelli, stepping out of Cherry’s door on her tree-arched block on the old side of town, stood listening beside his pick-up before getting into it. He should have heard birds everywhere and the squirrels chattering, talking about the sun’s arrival. Five minutes ago, he’d sat straight up in bed, eyes wide open, Cherry still softly snoring beside him, sat straight up thinking:
I’ve gotta cut that dope right now and get it bagged and outta here.
Just like that, and here he had his clippers, a heavy-duty trash bag, and was heading out right now. What was with him?