Koko (16 page)

If you were in a village, say—

If the smoke from the cookfire wavered and rose straight into the air again. If the
chicken lifted one foot and froze. If the sow cocked her head. If you saw these things.
If you saw a leaf shaking, if you saw dust hovering—

Then you might see the vein jumping in Koko’s neck. You might see Koko leaning against
a hootch, the vein jumping in his neck.

This is one thing Koko knew: there are always empty places. In cities where people
sleep on the pavement, in cities so crowded
people take shifts in bed, cities so crowded no one single person is ever truly quiet.
In these cities especially there are always hollow realms, eternal places, places
forgotten. Rich people leave the empty places behind, or the city itself leaves them
behind.

The rich people move everything out and forget, and at night eternity quietly breaks
in with Koko.

His father had been sitting in one of the two heavy chairs the rich people had left
behind.
We use everything
, his father said.
We waste no part of the animal.

We do not waste the chairs.

There was one memory he had seen in the cave, and in memory no part of the animal
is wasted.

This is one thing Koko knew: they thought the chairs weren’t good enough for them.
Wherever they went had better chairs.

The woman didn’t count, Roberto Ortiz had just brought her along. There weren’t even
enough cards for the ones that counted, much less the ones they brought along. When
they answered the letters they were supposed to come alone, but the ones like Roberto
Ortiz thought where they were going was nothing, who they were going to see was nobody,
and it would all be over in ten minutes.… They never thought about the cards, no one
had leaned over them at night and said:
We waste no part of the animal.
The woman was half-Indian, half-Chinese, something like that, maybe just a Eurasian,
someone Roberto Ortiz had picked up, someone Roberto Ortiz was planning to fuck the
way Pumo the Puma fucked the whore Dawn Cucchio in Sydney, Australia, just someone
dead in a chair, just someone who wouldn’t even get a card.

In his right jacket pocket he had all five Rearing Elephant cards, all the regimental
cards he had left, with the names written lightly, penciled lightly, on four of them.
Beevers, Poole, Pumo, Linklater. These were for when he went to America.

In his left jacket pocket he had an ordinary pack of Orchid Boy playing cards, made
in Taiwan.

When he had opened the door wearing the big Tim Underhill smile, the hey baby how’s
it shakin’ smile, and seen the woman standing next to Roberto Ortiz wearing her own
hello don’t mind me! smile, he had understood why there were two chairs.

In the cave there had been no chairs, no chairs for the lords of the earth. The cave
made Koko shake, his father and the devil made him shake.

“Of course it’s okay,” he had said. “There’s not much here, but you have a chair apiece,
so come in and sit you down, sit you
down, don’t mind that the place is so bare, we’re making changes all the time, I don’t
actually work here.…”

Oh, I pray here.

But they took the chairs anyhow. Yes, Mr. Roberto Ortiz had brought all his documentation,
he brought it out, smiling, just beginning to look curious, beginning to notice the
dust. The emptiness.

When Koko took the documents from the man’s hand, he switched on the invisibility
switch.

It was the same letter for all of them.

Dear (name)
,
I have decided that it is no longer possible for me to remain silent about the truth
of the events which occurred in the I Corps village of Ia Thuc in 1968. Justice must
finally be done. You will understand that I myself cannot be the one to bring the
truth of these events to the world’s eyes and ears. I was a participant in them, and
have besides turned my horror at these events to account in works of fiction. As a
representative, past or present, of the world press, as one who visited the scene
of a great unknown crime and saw it at first-hand, would you care to discuss this
matter further? I myself have no interest whatever in the profits that might be made
from publishing the true story of Ia Thuc. You may write to me at (address) if you
are interested in coming East to pursue this matter. I ask only, for reasons of my
own security, that you refrain from discussing this matter with, or even mentioning
it to, anyone until we have had an initial meeting, that you make no notes or diary
entries pertaining to myself or Ia Thuc until we meet, and that you come to our first
meeting with the following proofs of identity: a) passport, and b) copies of all stories
and articles you wrote or to which you contributed, concerning the American action
in the I Corps village of Ia Thuc. In my opinion, you will find our meeting more than
worthwhile.
Yours sincerely
,
Timothy Underhill
,

Koko liked Roberto Ortiz. He liked him very much. I thought I could just show you
my passports and drop off my material, he said, Miss Balandran and I had planned to
see Lola, it’s getting late for a meeting now, Miss Balandran particularly wanted
me to see Lola, it’s a form of entertainment well known in this city,
could you come around to my hotel tomorrow for lunch, you’ll have time to look over
the material in the file.…

Do you know Lola?

No.

Koko liked his smooth olive skin, his glossy hair, and his confident smile. He had
the whitest shirt, the glossiest tie, the bluest blazer. He had Miss Balandran, who
had long golden legs and dimples and knew about the local culture. He had been going
to drop something off and arrange a meeting on his own ground, as the Frenchmen had
done.

But the Frenchmen only had each other, they did not have Miss Balandran smiling so
prettily, urging him so quietly, so sexily, to agree.

“Of course,” Koko said, “you must do as your beautiful escort says, you must see all
the sights, just stop in for a second, have a drink and let me take an initial look
at what you’ve brought …”

Roberto Ortiz never noticed that Miss Balandran flushed when Koko said “escort.”

Two passports?

They were sitting in the chairs, smiling up at him with such confidence, such assurance,
their clothes so beautiful and their manners so good, knowing that in minutes they
would be on their way to the nightclub, to their dinner and their drinks, their pleasures.

“Dual citizenship,” Ortiz said, glancing slyly at Miss Balandran. “I am Honduran as
well as American. You’ll see all the Spanish-language publications in the file, besides
the ones you’re familiar with.”

“Very interesting,” Koko said. “Very interesting, indeed. I’ll just be back in a moment
with your drinks, and we can toast the success of our venture as well as your night
out on the town.”

He went behind the chairs into the kitchen and turned the cold tap on and off, banged
a cabinet closed.

“I wanted to say how much I’ve enjoyed your books,” Roberto Ortiz called from the
living room.

On the counter beside the sink were a hammer, a cleaver, an automatic pistol, a new
roll of strapping tape, and a small brown paper bag. Koko picked up the hammer and
the pistol.

“I think
The Divided Man
is my favorite,” Roberto Ortiz called out.

Koko put the pistol in his coat pocket and hefted the hammer. “Thank you,” he said.

They were just sitting in the chairs, looking forward. He came gliding out of the
kitchen and he was invisible, he made no noise. They were just waiting for their drinks.
He came up behind Roberto Ortiz and he raised his arm and Miss Balandran didn’t even
know he was there until she heard the squashy sound of the hammer hitting Roberto
Ortiz’s head.

“Quiet,” he said. Roberto Ortiz collapsed into himself, unconscious but not dead.
A snail trail of blood crawled out of his nose.

Koko dropped the hammer and quickly moved between the chairs.

Miss Balandran gripped the arms of her chair and stared at him with dinner plate eyes.

“You’re pretty,” Koko said, and took the pistol from his pocket and shot her in the
stomach.

Pain and fear took people in different directions. Anything having to do with eternity
made them show you their real selves. No part of the animal was wasted. Remembrance,
the whole thing they had been, just sort of took over. Koko figured the girl would
get up and come for him, move a couple of steps before she realized half her guts
were still back in the chair. She looked like one hell of a fighter, like a scrapper.
But she couldn’t even get out of the chair—it never even
crossed her mind
to get out of the chair. It took her a long time even to move her hands off the arms
of the chair, and then she didn’t want to look down. She shit herself, like Lieutenant
Beans Beevers, down in Dragon Valley. Her feet went out, and she started shaking her
head. She looked about five years old all of a sudden.

“Jesus Christ,” Koko said, and shot her in the chest. The noise hurt his ears—it really
bounced off those stucco walls. The girl had sort of melted back into the chair, and
Koko had the feeling that the sound killed her before the second bullet did.

“All I got is one rope,” Koko said. “See?”

He got down on his knees and put his arms between Roberto Ortiz’s twisted-up feet
to pull the rope out from under the chair.

Roberto Ortiz didn’t as much as groan the whole time Koko was tying him up. When the
rope tightened over his chest and clamped his arms, he pushed out a little air that
smelled like mouthwash. A red knot the size of a baseball had flowered on the side
of his head, and a trickle of blood matted the hair behind the knot in a way that
reminded Koko of a road on a map.

From the shelf in the kitchen he fetched the cleaver, the roll of strapping tape,
and the brown paper bag. Koko tossed the cleaver on the floor and took a new washcloth
out of the bag. He
pinched Roberto Ortiz’s nose between his forefinger and thumb, pulled up, and stuffed
the washcloth into Ortiz’s mouth. Then he peeled off a length of the tape and wound
it three times around the bottom half of Ortiz’s face, sealing in the washcloth.

Koko took both sets of cards out of his pockets and sat cross-legged on the floor.
He placed the cards beside him and rested the handle of the cleaver on his thigh.
He watched Ortiz’s eyes, waiting for him to wake up.

If you thought there were good parts, if you were a person who thought about the good
parts, this was the good part now, coming up.

Ortiz had webby little wrinkles next to his eyes, and they looked dirty, full of dirt,
because his skin was that olive color. He had just washed his hair, and it was thick
and shiny black, with the sort of waves in it that looked like real waves, one after
the other. You thought he was handsome, until you noticed his boxer’s dented little
blob of a nose.

Ortiz finally opened his eyes. Give him this much, he got the whole situation right
away and tried to jump forward. The ropes caught him short before he even got started,
and he wrestled with them for a second before he got that too. He just gave up, sat
back and looked from side to side—tried to take everything in. He stopped when he
saw Miss Balandran melted into her chair and he really
looked
at her and then he looked straight at Koko and tried to get out of the chair again
but kept on staring at Koko when he realized he couldn’t.

“Here you are with me, Roberto Ortiz,” Koko said. He picked up the regimental cards
and held the good old Rearing Elephant out toward Ortiz. “Recognize this emblem?”

Ortiz shook his head, and Koko could see pain floating in his eyes.

“You have to tell me the truth about everything,” Koko said. “Don’t go out on a lie,
try to remember everything, don’t waste pieces of your own brain. Come on, look at
it.”

He saw how Roberto Ortiz was concentrating. The awakening of some little cell way
back in his head flared in his eyes.

“I thought you’d remember,” Koko said. “You showed up with the rest of the hyenas,
you must have seen it somewhere. You walked all around, you probably worried about
getting your spit-shine boots all dirty—you were there, Roberto. I asked you here
because I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to ask you some important questions.”

Roberto Ortiz groaned through the washcloth and tape. He issued a plea with his big
soft brown eyes.

“You won’t have to talk. Just nod your head.”

If you saw a leaf shaking.

If the chicken froze on one foot.

If you saw these things, no part of the animal was wasted.

“The Elephant stands for the 24th Infantry, right?”

Ortiz nodded.

“And would you agree that the elephant embodies these traits—nobility, grace, gravity,
patience, perseverance, power and reserve in times of peace, power and wrath in times
of war?”

Ortiz looked confused, but nodded.

“And in your opinion, did an atrocity take place in the I Corps village of Ia Thuc?”

Ortiz hesitated, then nodded again.

Koko was not in a darkened room in a pink stucco bungalow on the fringe of a tropical
city, but on a frozen tundra under a sky of high hard blue. A constant wind skirled
and rippled the thin layer of snow over a layer of ice hundreds of yards deep. Far
off to the west sat a range of glaciers like broken teeth. God’s hand hung hugely
in the air, pointing at him.

Koko jumped up and rapped the butt of his pistol against the knot on Ortiz’s head.
Just like a cartoon, Ortiz’s eyes floated up into his head. His whole body went loose.
Koko sat down and waited for him to wake up again.

When Ortiz’s eyelids fluttered, Koko slapped him hard, and Ortiz jerked his head up
and stared wildly at him, all attention again.

“Wrong answer,” Koko said. “Even the court-martials, unfair as they were, couldn’t
say there was any atrocity. It was an act of God. A literal act of God. Do you know
what that means?”