Deviations (16 page)

The good news was that he seemed to be getting on
okay with the others. I was too far away to hear them talking, but the body
language looked relaxed. This was what the mom of an underachiever calls
progress: hanging out at the skatepark with a bunch of other dead-enders. A
step up from sitting alone in his room at his father’s house, playing video
games and smoking Spice.

He saw me out of the corner of his eye. He looked
around, like he was hoping nobody would see him looking at me. He kicked down
on the tail end of the board, flipping it up into his hands, and started
walking over toward me. He walked slow, no reason to hurry. He kind of rolled
his hips as he walked, like a skinny middle-class fifteen-year white boy who wanted
to be poor and black, or at least Hispanic.

“Hi, honey.”

He wore an annoyed look. “I asked you not to come
here.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know that.” I just let it hang
there.

“So, what do you want?”

“I just wanted to see you, see how you’re doing.”

“You’ve seen me,” he said. Someone from his group
of lovely friends shouted something at him I couldn’t make out. He turned,
smiled at them, then flipped them off. “And I’m doing okay.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“Anything else?”

“You remember that history assignment that I
called Mr. Hindricks about?”

He just looked at me.

“Did you get a chance to talk with him, see if he
would let you re-do it?”

He shook his head. “No, just spaced that one.”

“You know, unless you can get a grade on that
assignment, you’re gonna flunk history and have to take it again next year—or
do it this summer.”

He looked at me, half bored, half annoyed, waiting
for me to make a point. “Is that it?”

“Well, let’s see,” I said. “Got my job back, on
the force. Working on a case. You know, Dolores Weston, the state senator?”

“Not that into politics,” he said.

“Anything you want to tell me, I mean, about your
life? Anything?”

He looked at me like I had puke running down my
chin. “Just hanging here with my friends.”

“Yeah, I see that,” I said. “Tommy, honey.” I was trying
not to cry. I reached my hand out, my fingers grazing the sleeve of his
sweatshirt.

He pulled his arm back, giving me a dirty look.

“I just wanted to say that I love you, and that I
want you to live a happy life. I don’t care what you end up doing. You can go
to college, not go to college. Doesn’t matter. But I want you to promise me
that you’ll try to be happy.” I pressed at my eyes with my thumb and index
finger. “Really try.”

“I see you’re still drinking.”

“No, honey. I stopped drinking. Three days, now.”
I took a deep breath. “It’s just that I have to …” He had turned his head back
toward his friends and wasn’t listening.

He turned back to me. “Can I go?”

“Yes, Tommy, you can go.” I closed my eyes as the tears
streamed down my cheeks. In my brain I saw him as a little baby, smiling and
laughing as he reached out to me. I opened my eyes and watched him get smaller
and smaller as he walked back towards his friends. He didn’t look back at me. “Goodbye,
honey,” I said quietly, but he was already too far away to hear me.

* * * *

I stood outside the room as
people drifted out. Some of them acknowledged me by name. Others just nodded as
they walked past me. A few didn’t know me. I tilted my head to look in. She was
there, alone, standing next to one of the wooden chairs with little desks
attached to them. Gathering up some papers into a folder and picking up her bag,
she looked up as she heard me enter the room. She gave me a faint smile.

“Hello, Karen.” She put her bag down on the little
desk.

“Hi, Sarah.” I didn’t know how to start talking to
her. She was a tall, concave woman of sixty or sixty-five, with long
broom-handle arms and exhausted hair, now mostly gray and gathered back in a plastic
clip. Her eyes were circled by Bassett hound red rims. She wore a shapeless
peasant dress, the plaid now a watered-down minestrone. When she moved you
could see little U-shaped bumps for breasts, but no hips or stomach or anything
at all until her stick legs emerged from her dress, a couple inches above her
ankles.

She looked at me a second, then said, “I’m sorry,
Karen, but I can’t sign your card unless you’re here for the whole session.”

I smiled. “I know that, Sarah. That’s not why I’m
here.”

“Why don’t you sit, Karen?” She sat down.

“Do you have just a minute?” I sat down next to
her. The chairs were set up in a circle.

“Of course.” She swiveled her chair so that it
faced mine. She looked at me. “You’ve been crying. Is there something I can
help you with?” She reached out her hand, putting it on top of mine.

“I just wanted to say thank you.” I couldn’t look
at her face. Her hand was thin, covered with blue veins and some faint liver
spots.

“You’re very welcome,” she said. “Do you want to
tell me why you’re thanking me?” Her voice was soft, calming. I don’t know what
she did for a living, but I bet it had something to do with helping people
who’ve screwed things up badly—or were dying.

“The other night, you said something I’ve been
thinking about.”

“What was that?”

“You were talking about how sometimes things go
badly, but you have to keep going, keep trying every day, keep fighting to make
the world a little less brutal.”

“That does sound like me,” she said. “I do believe
that.” She paused. “Do you want to talk about that, Karen?”

“No,” I said. “Not really.”

“Are you sure?” Sarah said. “I have time. You
might feel better if we talked a little.”

“No, I don’t have anything to say about it.” I
paused. “I really don’t have anything I need to say. I just wanted to say thank
you. You don’t have to do this. I mean, these meetings. And even though a lot
of people—me, specifically—don’t seem to be getting anything out of them, I
want you to know that I do appreciate what you’re doing. I think you’re trying
to do just what you said—make the world a little less brutal. And you accomplish
that, I think you really do, just by talking with people like me. I’m going to
try very hard to do that, I mean, in my own life.” I stopped talking.

“This is my phone number, Karen.” She took a scrap
of paper out of her bag and jotted it down. “If I’m not here, I’m probably
there.”

I nodded my head.

She stood, bent down over me, hugging my head to
her chest. I heard her heart beating, soft with a steady rhythm.

Chapter 15

Driving west out of
Rawlings was like traveling back in time. In the fifteen years since Bruce and
I settled in Rawlings, it had come to look like every other small city in the
nation—the same big boxes, office-supply, hardware, electronics, linens. If you
wanted to buy exactly the same crapola as your sister in Seattle and your brother
in Boston, just grab your plastic and get on Montana State Road 53.

Less than two miles out of town, the stores
started to change. First came RV Row, five dealers each with hundreds of shiny
white trailers and motor homes, all pimped out with air con and awnings and
those slide-out living rooms so you could pack a widescreen, kick back, and
watch videos about camping and hunting. Next came a bunch of dealers clearing
out the snowmobiles at deep discounts—after all, you wouldn’t want to be seen
on last year’s Ski-Doo.

The restaurants out here weren’t offering a
cuisine
,
like they did in town. No eateries, no urban bistros, no unique dining
experiences. No Thai, no fondue, no sushi. Out here it was
good food
,
home
cooking
, and, in one case,
good eats,
complete with a free pie for a
family of four. Every mile, the stores kept changing as neon signs turned to painted
plywood. Army-Navy, gun shops, small-engine repair, lawn mowers, rabbits for
sale, vegetables, firewood, clean fill, worms.

Ten miles out of town put me in the great, rolling
prairies that dipped down into coulees and then climbed back up to swelling
foothills. Every so often, there was a big old bunch of jagged rocks breaking
out of the grasses, like whoever made Montana was saying, yeah, I’ll give you
picturesque, but show me some damn respect. I can hurt you. The wind was up, as
it almost always was, whipping grit onto my paint, pushing the car back and
forth as I drove down the two-lane, headed west. Weathered fence posts
supported thick strands of barbed wire, although it wasn’t always obvious what
they were keeping in or keeping out. Thunderhead clouds streaked across the
sky, throwing shadows on the endless plains grasses and the occasional grain
silo and elevator. Herds of cattle, miniature black and white shapes, dotted
the vista off to the north.

I had a small suitcase on the passenger seat. I’d tossed
some things into it this morning—some underwear, a few turtlenecks, a pair of
jeans—after I decided to head out to Lake Hollow on my own. It took maybe thirty
seconds. After all, you pack for a trip, you think about what you’re going to
be doing, where you’re going to be staying, what the weather will be. Do you need
something for dress up? Shoes are always a big decision. But this time it was
easy. I was going out to visit the Montana Patriot Front, stop by and chat with
the Reverend Christopher Barry about a murder, probably get myself killed. What
would I need? Nothing special, really. Jeans, obviously, because it’s
definitely casual. Comfortable, sturdy shoes, a warm coat. Where would I be
staying? No need for reservations to sleep at the bottom of a ravine, a bullet
through my forehead, a big black crow pecking at an eyeball.

I’d swapped out my service revolver, a Smith &
Wesson 9mm, for my own Colt Defender. After all, I was off duty. Way off duty
since I’d found out Nick Corelli wasn’t being straight with me and Ryan about
Willson Fredericks’ email. At least about that. What else he was lying about I
didn’t know, but there was a real good chance it was a bunch of other
things—and that I’d find out in the next twenty-four hours or so.

I reached under my car seat and felt the three
extra six-round magazines I’d brought with me. I had them in case my life
turned into one of those shitty video games Tommy used to play. With the fresh magazine
in my Colt and those three extra ones, I could take out twenty-four Nazis—or twenty-three
Nazis and one FBI agent, if he was really just another Nazi. I’d have to shoot
straight, but I’m an okay shot, especially when my target was a black
silhouette of a thug printed on butcher paper hanging on a pulley, coming
straight at me at three miles an hour. Naturally, all bets were off if the guy
was real, weighed maybe two hundred, and carried a brick.

I am truly an idiot.

I’d said all the goodbyes I needed to. I’d have
liked to see Ryan one more time, but he wouldn’t have let me go. My thinking
was if he didn’t know where I was going, he couldn’t stop me. I’d turned off my
phone, gotten in the car, and started driving. I would just do this, just
finish it off. Resolve it. Whatever
it
was. I wasn’t going to sit around
headquarters, doing nothing, while that son of a bitch was out there, smiling
about what he’d done to Dolores Weston.

Driving west out of Rawlings, toward the Continental
Divide and the forests and Lake Hollow, where they keep Swastika City, there’s
a lot of nothing. I’m sure if I remembered anything about glaciers and tectonic
plates and geomorphology and all the other junk I’d studied in Rocks 101, which
I took because I was afraid of bio, chem, and physics, this whole trip would be
fascinating, right up through getting tossed into the ravine, which probably
dates back a couple million years and through its strata reveals many
interesting insights about the region’s history. But I remembered zip from
Rocks 101, so instead of marveling at the magnificent vistas around me, I thought
about the putrid stuff inside me. Not exactly healthy or productive.

I was coming to a stretch where the road snaked
along one of the tributaries of the Missouri, running shallow and turbulent
over the jagged rocks, tossing up silver spray. I liked this part of this
drive, full of tight curves and a couple hairpins, which drove like a car
commercial. I pushed the four tiny cylinders of my Honda, the engine pinging loud,
the body leaning pretty good, not enough to roll it and tumble into the river,
which at least two or three drunken teenagers did every year on this stretch,
but enough to keep me concentrating and therefore not feeling too sorry for
myself.

Then I was in the woods, filled with skyscraper
pines and fir and cedar and spruce, which traced patches of shade on the road. I
could smell the sweet wood and the juicy brown soil through my air vents. Every
dozen or so miles, a little town would appear, not really a town, just a gas
station and a convenience store and a bar. The smaller the town, the larger the
sign telling you when it was started and how many people lived there.

Tommy once asked me what happened when someone in
a little town died or was born. Did they change the sign? I didn’t know. They
couldn’t afford to change it every time someone checked in or out, of course,
but maybe once a year. Or they could make the signs so you could update the
number when things changed. That wouldn’t be too expensive. Yet most of the
signs looked as old as me, and a lot of them had taken quite a few rounds of
small-arms fire. But I didn’t see one where the number gets updated. Life just
goes on—unless you’re one of the ones who died.

That’s not literally true. Life does go on, even if
you’re worm food. If you thought the universe died when you died—well, that
would be crazy. I’m crazy, but I’m not that crazy yet.

Really, there was no reason not to head out to
Lake Hollow. The Nazis were out of their minds, but at least you knew where you
stood with them. Not so much with Nick Corelli and the chief.

I exited 53 at Lake Hollow and followed the
directions I’d downloaded this morning. Spotting the hand-painted sign that
read
M.P.F.
, the Montana Patriot Front, I continued down a pockmarked
asphalt road that looked like it hadn’t been re-paved in decades. The pines
grew thicker and taller. One had a blackened gash easily ten feet long,
exposing the virgin wood. The trunk above the gash dangled awkwardly from the
spot where the lightning had struck.

The road turned to gravel after about a half mile,
and another hand-painted sign told me to keep driving straight on. Seeing a car
approach me on the one-lane gravel path, I pulled onto the grass shoulder. The
driver hit his horn and gave me a big wave, not only to say thanks but also,
presumably, to greet a fellow patriot.

I drove on another quarter mile until I saw the
Montana Patriot Front compound a hundred yards up ahead. I pulled my Honda off
to the side and shut it down. The engine made little clicking noises as I got
out and walked up toward the entrance. There was an entrance gate, like you see
at ranches, but this one was made of three stripped logs, each a good foot in
diameter. Very simple, symmetrical design: two vertical poles, about twelve
feet tall, set fifteen feet apart, a third log spanning the two at the top.

Hanging from it was a black wrought-iron sign with
foot-tall letters saying “Montana Patriot Front,” in a blocky typeface like you
see in the Slow Down painted on the street. Attached to each vertical pole,
level with the sign, was a stylized wrought-iron swastika, with each of the
four arms jagged to look like lightning bolts. The entrance gate was meant to
look real outdoorsy and manly, but it was high-quality work. The three poles
were held together with mortise-and-tenon joints, the tenons sticking out a
little on the sides. The wrought-iron sign alone must have cost thousands, and
the three stripped logs were shiny with varnish.

Radiating out from each side of the entrance gate
was heavy-duty hurricane fencing, eight feet tall, topped with another couple
feet of razor wire. The compound appeared to be a rough circle, enclosing six
or eight acres. Outside the fence was a thirty-yard perimeter where the trees
and brush had been cleared. Inside the compound I saw two buildings in the
distance, a few old pines, and a handful of cars parked off to the side of one
of the buildings. Flanking the two buildings, a hundred yards apart, just
inside the fencing, were a couple of wooden guard towers, ten-by-ten platforms
with corrugated tin roofs, suspended twenty feet off the ground on sturdy
looking studs, held secure with diagonal bracing. One guard on each tower.

I walked up to the entrance gate.

Just inside, off to the left, was a guard booth
maybe four by six, made of aluminum, black panels on the bottom half, glass on
the top half, flood lights on the four corners of the roof.

When I approached the booth, out stepped the guard
in a gray and black phony military uniform. But the AK-47 slung over his
shoulder was real. He didn’t say anything. Neither did I, as I turned and
walked back toward my car.

I drove back out the gravel road, onto the beat-up
asphalt road toward 53. I remembered seeing a blistered-paint motel about a
mile before I turned off, so I headed back that way. The weathered Vacancy sign
suspended from the neon sign that read Mountain Inn looked permanent. I pulled
in and parked under the stucco overhead marked Office. The girl at the desk
looked up from her magazine, as curious as a cow staring at a new gate. Not
even an official smile. She was about twenty five, with an interesting
combination of blond eyebrows and roots but Joan Jett black hair, parted
severely down the middle. A little badge reading Maureen was pinned on her
low-cut sweater, which displayed a good third of her truly remarkable boobs,
one of which came with a nickel-sized purple and red flower tat. Unfortunately,
the sweater also did nothing to hide a pretty significant belly roll.

Sitting in the tiny office that smelled equal
parts Lysol and cigarettes, thumbing through
Us
magazine, she dressed like
she was okay with being all about her tits. Like she’d enjoyed being Big Tits
Maureen in high school, and she couldn’t do anything about becoming Fat Maureen
at forty, so she might as well be Check Out the Tits on Desk Clerk Maureen for
a while. Like she didn’t have any choices, out here in Lake Hollow.

I gave her thirty-nine bucks in cash and she handed
me an old metal key attached to a big plastic oval that had the number 6
written in Sharpie on a piece of masking tape. I walked past the small pool
with candy wrappers, leaves, and crushed paper cups floating in the brown water
on the blue tarp that had covered it all winter. A gold 6 was screwed into the red
plywood door last painted during the Reagan administration. The Lysol smell hit
me as I entered the tiny, dark room. I felt for a light switch inside the door
and turned on the 60-watt bulb in the ceiling fixture.

Right inside the door was a double-hung window, no
screen, so if you left the window open or unlocked, a guy could reach in from
outside and open the door. The double bed, covered with a tattered, stained
floral spread, took up most of the room. On each side of the bed was a pine end
table with a cheap lamp with pictures of fish on the paper shade. A reasonably
clean ashtray sat on each of the end tables, with No Smoking signs on the wall
above them. The message was a weary shrug of resignation about how the world
works: we’re asking you not to smoke, but you’re going to do what you’re going
to do, and we’re not going to do anything about it, and it’s probably better
you use the ashtray than put burn marks in the end table, so we’re good, right?

I went to use the bathroom.

The towel rack had two mismatched towels. One of
them read Crown Motel, Los Angeles, Calif. As I closed the door, I noticed that
the knob had cracked the drywall because there was no doorstop or anything.  I
looked down in the corner and saw a few stray pubes floating around on the
floor from the draft when the door closed. I didn’t really need to pee. I could
hold it till I got to the bottom of the ravine.

Not wanting to get any gross shit on my clothes
from the disgusting bedspread, in case I ever made it back home alive, I put my
big bag on the tiny Formica table that served as a writing desk and sat on the kid-size
desk chair. When I was in school, a couple of teachers had informed me that
failing to plan was planning to fail, which struck me as extremely dorky to say
to a kid. They were right, naturally, but I’d never taken it to heart. So here
I found myself up in Lake Hollow. I’d scoped out the Montana Patriot Front
compound—from outside the entrance, anyway—but I had no idea what to do next.