The Orchid Eater (19 page)

“My God,”
Raymond said. “The poor boy. What he went through . . . 
”

“I know,”
Sal said, “but that only goes so far. We can’t blame him for what happened when
he was younger. But we have to protect ourselves from whatever it is he’s
become.”

“Then you
don’t trust him either?”

“A boy died
a few weeks ago, I don’t know if you remember.”

“You mean
the one at Central Beach?”

Sal nodded.

“And you
think . . .”

“I have
reason to think Lupe and that boy had a run-in.”

Raymond
suddenly went pale. “That was the night I met him. I remember they were talking
about it at the bar.”

“The night I
saw you together,” Sal said.

Raymond
suddenly bolted from his seat, stumbling toward the reception desk. The nurse
rose, white-faced. “What’s wrong?”

Raymond
barely made it to the trash can near the desk; he bent over it, heaving, his
whole body racked by spasms.

“Oh dear,”
the nurse was saying. “I thought it was only a
burn.”

Sal hurried
to put his hands on Raymond’s head and back, offering what comfort he could.
“We’ve been waiting almost an hour!” he said while he held on to the other man.
“Even if it was only a burn, don’t you think he needs care?”

She gave him
an embarrassed look, and set off down the hall. The things one had to do to get
attention; you had to make a lot of trouble.

Sal looked
down at Raymond, who relaxed and sank back on
his knees, panting for breath. Sal patted his head and left his
hand there. It was sort of absurd to be the one comforting Raymond. “My God, my
God,” Raymond moaned.

Imagine how
I feel, Sal thought. He’s my brother.

15

“Come on,
Dusty,” Stoner kept pleading as they played cards in the van. “Crack a window,
woncha? It’s an oven in here.”

“I see you
know fuck-all about surveillance,” Dusty said. “Our only advantage is this
tinted glass. We crack a window, anybody going in or out of Sal’s place can
look over and see your big dumb face grinning at ’em. You might as well stand
on his lawn, watch him through the fucking picture window.”

They sat in
the dark rear of Dusty’s van, a dim grotto stinking of motor oil and spilled
beer. They were parked on the wilderness side of the street, where the
windshield gave them a poor view of Sal’s house, about a block away. Sweat
covered Stoner like suntan lotion; his T-shirt was drenched in it. If the
playing cards hadn’t been waxed, they would have swollen up like sponges,
sopping sweat from his hands.

Stoner threw
down his cards.

“I’m dying,
man!” he choked. “Hawk wouldn’t do this to a fucking dog!”

Dusty slowly
put down his own cards.

“You gotta
learn patience—bide your time. You ever watch the surfers, man, sitting out
there all day waiting for that perfect wave? It’s transcendental, Stoner. You
gotta transcend.”

“Don’t talk
about the ocean, Dusty. It’s bad enough already.”

“No? You
don’t like me to talk about the cool, wet, refreshing ocean? Those nice icy
waves, frosty as a big glass of beer? Just salty enough to quench your thirst?”

“Dusty!”

“Come on, be
a man.”

Stoner set
his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet with painful effort, like
a clawhammer pulling an old bent spike from hard wood. He staggered toward the
door, making the whole van tip like a boat about to capsize.

“Where you
going?”

“I need
air.”

He opened
the side door, stepping into the dead grass at the embankment.

“Jesus
Christ,” Dusty swore.

Stoner
hesitated, then reached back in and pulled a wad of Kleenex from a box on the
floor.

“What’s that
for?”

“Not that
it’s any of your business, but I have to take a shit.”

“Oh, great.
Why don’t you ask Sal if you can use his toilet?”

“Plenty of
bushes in the hills, asshole.”

“Just hurry
it up.”

“What do you
think I’ll do?”

“I seen you
spend half the afternoon in the trailer’s little shitter, and you hardly fit in
there. I can’t imagine what you’ll do when you got the whole outdoors.”

“Fuck you.”
He started to slam the door, then remembered to ease it shut.

“If Lupe
comes around . . .” Dusty said.

“That’d be
just my luck.”

He shut the
door and heard it latch, but not before Dusty called, “Remember to light a
match!”

There was no
one in sight, not even at Sal’s place, but he tried to keep between bushes as
he scrambled toward the ridge. A couple guys had come out Sal’s front door
fifteen minutes ago, lugging a big black painting that looked like Venice: canals, lights, those canoes with the big fruity curves at one end, the kind you
rowed with a pole. He couldn’t imagine who liked that crap, until he remembered
how he saw them all the time in restaurants, motels, bars. The paintings were a
good front. Just about anyone might have reason to buy the ugly things.

He wondered
if Sal had any black velvet bullfight pictures. Stoner kind of liked those. Or
dice and cobras, that real Mexican stuff. Or maybe one of those big burly Aztec
dudes in a feather headdress carrying some native chick up the steps of a
pyramid like he was about to sacrifice or maybe rape her. That was the kind of
thing he’d hang on his wall, if he had a wall to hang things on. He knew Hawk
wouldn’t want stuff like that in the trailer, even if there was room.

Jesus on
black velvet, that was more Hawk’s speed. Yeah!

He reached
the top of the slope and stood figuring out how to get through the barbed wire.
The fence was a joke: three rusted strands strung between bug-eaten posts.
Flimsy, but it was still more than Stoner could slip through easily. He found
the rottenest post and kicked till it cracked and snapped at the base, spewing
dust and termites. He walked down the post, over the wires, and into the Greenbelt.

On the far
side of a thick growth of sage, he came out in a cactus patch. Deer trails,
marked with pellets and paw prints, suggested an easier path. He sauntered
through the late afternoon; it felt cool and breezy after hours in the
stinking van. It was useless, staking out Sal’s house. Lupe was probably in Mexico or Canada by now. He’d have seen Alec, known they were after him, and split town.

Looking
back, all he saw of Shangri-La were the tips of poles and the wires they held
up. He cut north through the brush until he found the fire road they’d followed
the night they’d hid the grenades.

He quickened
his stride, looking for thistles. The stickers had worked their way through his
boots for days afterward. He was still finding them in his socks, weeks later.
If he forgot every other landmark, he would remember the field of thistles.

Everything
was different by daylight, but Stoner knew the hills from years of hiking and
riding dirt bikes up here. He used to live in Rim of the World, before he
failed so miserably at school so many times that he’d had to drop out, causing
his father to kick him out of the house since any kid old enough to leave
school was old enough to leave home, as the old man said.
When I was your age, I was working fifteen hours a day blah blah
blah . .
. But Stoner had never held a job
for long. He couldn’t concentrate; it was the same problem he’d had in school.
He did odd jobs, helped out here and there (a car theft here, fence some stolen
weapons there), with no steady friends till Hawk came along.

Hawk had set
him up with jobs and places to stay, but always put him up again and again when
things didn’t work out. Hawk put up with a lot. Stoner owed him more favors
than he could count. He felt obliged to wait in the van and watch Sal when Hawk
asked him to. Still, that didn’t mean he had to do everything Dusty said. He
could take a break every once in a while.

As the vast
field of thistles appeared ahead, he grinned. He cut off the road, kicking up
clouds of bristly down, anticipation quickening his steps. Sitting in the van
with Dusty, he had thought of a way to relieve his boredom with a little
walk—and a lot of privacy. Oh, it had looked like good stuff, way better than
the cheesy crap he usually got ahold of. He wondered if he could smuggle it
into the van without Dusty noticing. If he didn’t hide it, Dusty would lay
claim to the stuff, and then so much for privacy. Besides, getting caught with
the stuff would be embarrassing. Dusty would know why he’d taken so long, and
tease him about it for days, or forever, like those stickers that were even now
working back into his boots. And what if Hawk found out? Would he kick him out
of the trailer?

A huge shape
bounded out of some bushes. Stoner’s heart nearly stopped. He was mortified, as
if he’d been thinking aloud.

But it was
only a deer, a big buck with sprawling antlers startled by his approach. It
leapt away from him, springing over a ridge, and was gone.

He laughed
with relief, but he could feel his cheeks burning.

Fucking
deer! Why was he ashamed? What did an animal care? It was thoughts of Hawk that
made him feel guilty.

He kept
hearing the deer for some time, crackling through the underbrush. It seemed to
circle back behind him, sometimes loud and close at hand, then cutting out
abruptly. Echoes were weird in the hills. It all made him feel even more
apprehensive. The thought occurred to him that Dusty might be following. But
why would Dusty want to watch him take a crap? And Dusty was dedicated. He’d be
watching that house twice as hard now that Stoner was gone. Playing solitaire.

Stoner went
slipping down a dusty slope and found himself in a little canyon. The sandstone
walls were pitted and pocked with caves, the biggest of them hardly enough to
shelter a dog from the rain. Years ago, he and some neighbor kids had scouted
the whole Greenbelt—the name was new back then—looking for caves. The only
decent one in the whole region made up for all the measly little pockets. It was
enormous. They dubbed it the “Forty Thieves” cave because it was the sort of
place you could imagine Ali Baba hiding treasure chests and pots of gold. The
Forty Thieves was a steep tunnel that went upward fifty feet or more into the
rock, on a dusty slope. At the end of the climb was a high round chamber. An
owl lived way up inside it; you could see the hole it nested in, and its
pellets were scattered all over. Stoner hadn’t thought about that cave for
years, but the memories were amazingly clear. Forty Thieves: little wads of
bone and fur; the taste of the dust every movement stirred up; how good it felt
to enter cool shade after toiling over hot, dry trails.

He would
like to see it again sometime, but he couldn’t remember where it was anymore.
All the gulleys and canyons in the Greenbelt looked alike. He’d have to set up
an expedition with Edgar. Edgar knew the Greenbelt real well. He probably knew
the Forty Thieves cave, though only Stoner and his friends had called it that,
and sworn themselves to secrecy. All the kids who roamed these hills and
canyons probably found that cave and thought themselves the first to discover
it.

Skulking
through manzanita and juniper bushes, Stoner wondered if he’d passed the
place. Suddenly the ground beneath his feet let out a splintering sound and
began to sag. He threw himself back, barely in time. He’d stepped on the
plywood trapdoor, nearly broken right through.

After the
cracking sound, he heard branches breaking softly nearby. That deer was still
banging around. He looked for antlers briefly, but saw nothing. He couldn’t see
how it had gotten down the slope, but it probably wasn’t the same beast anyway.
There were other animals in the hills, even wildcats—or so they said. In all
his years of roaming the Greenbelt, Stoner had never seen anything worse than a
rattlesnake.

He got down
quietly, not wanting even animals to see him now, and swept at the dirt with
his hands, uncovering the rope handle. As he pulled the trap open, earth sifted
into the hole. He leaned the door against the juniper tree, then lowered
himself into the pit.

He had to
get on hands and knees to move deeper into the hideout. He could see the trunk
full of grenades on the foam pad, exactly where Hawk had left it. His pride and
joy, souvenir of the best night of his life, a raid on Camp Pendleton that he’d made with some pals (all of them now in jail for other crimes) just to
prove the U.S. Army was no match for a handful of wild boys. Stoner had walked
off with the biggest box he could carry; the other guys had left with a few
guns and small demolition bombs that looked like nine-volt batteries. The crate
was his baby, and he was happy to pay it a visit, just to see that it was safe.
Hawk always complained it was too dangerous to have around, but Stoner held
onto the thing. You never knew when it might come in handy.

He waited
for his eyes to adjust, then looked around for the shelves he remembered. First
he saw candle stubs, but he wouldn’t be staying down here.

Ah. There
they were. Hawk had shoved them back on a shelf, out of sight. Grinning, Stoner
squeezed in a few more feet. The ceiling scraped his back; dirt grated down his
pants and made him cough. He felt like Winnie the Pooh, stuck in Rabbit’s hole,
as he reached for the stack of porno magazines.

They were
cool to the touch. Slick paper. Good stuff. He was almost unbearably excited.
He considered going ahead and lighting one of the candles, sitting down to look
them over in the dark, where it was nice and cool. But the place was built for
boys, and too tight for him. Reluctantly he backed out, dirt falling in his
face and gritting up his eyes. He crouched on his knees in the sun, coughing
and wiping his hands on his shirt, then trying to wipe his eyes with some shirt
cloth from his shoulders.

Brush
crackled behind him. He dropped the magazines instinctively. He’d seen a
shadow move over the sun, and it didn’t have antlers. He opened his eyes before
they were quite clean; dirt chafed his eyeballs.

“Dusty?” he
said, though he could see right away that it wasn’t. It was some kid he didn’t
think he knew, though it was hard to tell because he was standing right over
the hole, silhouetted against the sun.