Dog Soldiers (39 page)

Mr. Danskin shrugged.

“
Who said he wasn
’
t smart?
”

“
You
’
re going on the road, fellas,
”
the agent said.
“
You know all about it.
”

“
That
’
s right,
”
Mr. Danskin said.

Antheil clapped his hands.

“
O.K. So do it.
”

“
How long will we be away for?
”
Converse asked.
“
Should I bring some stuff?
”
He had hesitated to ask, fearing that the question might produce silence or even levity.

A brief silence did in fact ensue.

“
Sure,
”
Antheil said.
“
Bring whatever you want.
”

Mr. Smith came into the other bedroom with him to watch him pack. Mr. Smith was the younger, blond one. He picked out some shirts and a sweater. Everything was still in his suitcase; he put the clothes in a cardboard shirt box. When they went back to Janey
’
s room, Antheil was ad miring the drawing on the wall.

“
That
’
s your counterculture right there,
”
he said.

No one disagreed with him.

“
Converse,
”
he declared,
“
I
’
ve enjoyed talking to you. You just confirmed a whole lot of ideas I
’
ve had about the way things are going. I
’
m really glad to have met you.
”

“
You
’
re not coming?
”

Antheil shook his head.

“
You got nothing to worry about. You
’
ll be in good hands.
”
A thought seemed to strike him on the way out.

“
You know I have a kid,
”
he told Danskin,
“
he
’
s twelve now. He lives with my lately wife. Last summer I sent him to survival school. Toughen him up for the big shit storm.
”

“
What do they do there?
”
Mr. Smith asked.

“
What do they do there? They survive.
”

Everyone smiled politely.

Mr. Danskin was looking at Converse.

“
You never went to survival school.
”

“
No,
”
Converse admitted.
“
I don
’
t think they had them.
”

H
icks drove on speed
.
Hi
s fatigue hung the
desert grass with hallucinatory blossoms, filled ravines with luminous coral and phantoms. The land was flat and the roads dead straight; at night, headlights swung for hours in space, steady as a landfall — and then rushed past in streaks of color, explosions of engine roar and hot wind. Every passing truck left in its screaming wake the specter of a desert head-on — mammoth tires spinning in the air, dead truck drivers burning in ditches until dawn.

Marge nodded in the back seat. Now and then she spoke and Hicks could not understand her. She scratched in her sleep.

The state did not seem like sleep to Marge. She had turned inward from the chaos of motion outside. Her head was filled with freakery — that she was turning to rubber, that her mind had been replaced by a cassette.

Security was fled. Sometimes she simply set the bag on the seat beside her. There was so much that she was prof ligate; the seat was sticky with it, grains of it glistened on the rubber matting of the floor. After doing up, she would sit beside him in the front for a while, but they did not speak very much, there
was nothing that would bear ex
change.

They stopped at night — so that Hicks could sleep for three hours or so, drop more speed, and put them on the road again. They avoided the Interstates,
the military re
serves, the Indian reservations, trying for roads that were obscure but not deserted.

Late in the second day, they passed miles and miles of spinach fields watered wi
th sprinklers. Roads met at per
fect right angles; the white farmhouses had groves of pale aspen surrounding them. A town called Moroni had a plaster angel in its dusty main square and they stopped there for gas and bought lunch meat and whole-wheat bread at a Japanese grocery.

By the time night fell, their road led upward over the slopes of half-fallen mountains where broken boulders were piled on each other
’
s backs. In the twilight, the great rocks came to look like statues and the scrub pine growing from the crevices beneath them like offering flowers.

They drove all night to climb the ridge. A few hours before dawn, Hicks pulled over to sleep
.

“
Who
’s
up here?
”
she asked him.

“
My alma mater
’
s up here,
”
he said with his eyes closed.
“
My freaked-out old roshi. They have writing doctors — this guy is a writing roshi.
”

“
You mean he deals?
”

“
Deals isn
’
t the word.
”

While he slept, Marge listened to owls.

Late the next morning, Hicks was laughing to himself as he drove. The sky was obsc
ene in its brightness, the crim
son rocks a bad joke. Then, gradually the route wound downward, switchback after switchback. Trees were thicker, there were wildflowers beside the road. Abruptly they were driving between clapboard buildings on a street of sorts, in a kind of town at the base of a sheer cliff that kept half the place in welcome shadow.

As they followed the road, Marge became aware that there were people among the unpainted buildings. The first group she saw were children — little girls in frilly white blouses with patent leather shoes. Then, before the next shack, a group of men in beige suits and dark ties. Some of the men carried books under their arms. Farther along, a young black haired woman in a pink blouse nursed a baby in the shade.

The road ended with a curving flourish over a sandy pit

in which lay a few car skeletons and the rotting remnants of a tepee. To one side of the pit was a cluster of orange and blue tents; beside the tents
fifteen or so International Har
vester trucks were lined up. The trucks were painted in bright colors, Mexican pastels. They were open in the back; each truck had benches across its van with lengths of knotted rope along the sides for hand grips. They were the sort of trucks which one saw carrying braceros in Mexico and southern California.

A group of silent people gathered slowly near the place where they stopped die Land-Rover. They were Mexicans, Marge saw, dressed with a curious formality. All the men wore the same cut of beige suit with wide lapels and thick stitching. Their dark ties were held in place with cheap tin tie clasps. Waves of lacquer black hair curved above their brown faces. There were li
ttle boys among them, small rep
licas of the men down to the tin tie clasps. Instead of shoes, they wore plastic sandals over socks; their feet were covered with dust. Marge stared at
them through the insect-spat
tered windshield. They returned her stare without hostility and without greeting.

“
Are those people really out there?
”
she asked Hicks.

Hicks turned over the engine and looked at her.

“
I don
’
t know what
’
s really out there.
”

He sat rubbing his temples, laughing at something.

Marge climbed out and faced the group. Hicks came around from the other side of the car.
“
Oh you mean these folks,
”
he said.
“
Yeah, these folks are really out here.
”

“
Hello, brothers,
”
he told them.
“
Hola, muchachos
.
”

They stepped aside for them. Hicks put his arm over Marge
’
s shoulder.

“
Caballeros
,
”
he said clasping her tigh
tl
y,
“
caballeros, muy formal
.
”

More people in the roadway between the shacks, all watching them as they walked holding each other.

“
Do they like us?
”
Marge asked.
“
Do they want us to go away?
”

“
As long as we
’
re not the cops,
”
Hicks said.
“
Or the ASPCA, they couldn
’
t care less.
”

He stopped for a moment, looked up and down the street and then moved her toward the largest of the several buildings. There were people huddled in the doorway, facing the interior. Hicks moved her between two low broad backs and into a large whitewashed room.

The room was crowded with men; there were no women among them, although a line of small boys sat with black books in their hands along one wall. Some of the men had chairs to sit in, others stood or squatted on the floor. Everyone was facing a raised platform at the far end of the room where a small brown-skinned man in a dark rayon suit read aloud from a book he held in his right hand. Beside him on the platform was a banner strung on a brass flagpole. The banner showed a curled shepherd
’
s staff and beneath it a haloed Iamb, hoof raised. A sanctified aura of gold cloth surrounded the lamb
’
s white body.

The man read in a voice which started low in his throat and rose almost to falsetto and then fell again at the conclusion of each phrase. What he read was like verse or the words of a song and he seemed to begin every stanza at a slightly different pitch so that the sound built a tension which coiled farther and farther back on itself without breaking. His voice did not suit him at all.

The men in the room listened with closed eyes.

Next to the platform, closest to the reader of anyone in the room, was a fair-haired boy of about twelve, the only person there beside themselves who was not Mexican. The boy looked up at the speaker with a wide smile, but it was a spectator
’
s smile, not a communicant
’
s.

As Marge watched, the boy turned to them, smiled wider in surprise, and rose to pick his way toward them among the crowd.

The attention of the people in the room followed him as he came up to them. Marge imagined that the people there could see the drug on her or sense it.

The boy led them outside into the sun. He was carrying a faded cowboy hat in his hand and when they were outside he jammed it on the back of his head.

“
How are you, you little shit?
”
Hicks asked him.

“
Last time I saw you,
”
the boy said,
“
you were fishing for steelheads.
”

“
I was too,
”
Hicks told Marge.
“
Where
’
s your old man?
”

“
Up the hill.
”
Hicks looked around him.
“
I see the folks are here.
”

“
That
’
s right,
”
the boy said.
“
You
’
ll be in time for the fi
esta.
”

They walked to the jeep and Hicks took out the pack and the bag in which he had put his machine gun. He strapped the pack on his back and
slung the seabag over his shoul
der.

“
This is K-jell,
”
he told Marge.
“
K-jell, this is Marge.
”