The Orchid Eater (26 page)
“Uh . . . up
the hill? Shangri-La?”
“Shangri-La,
huh? What a fuck. Bailing some kid out of trouble?”
“Well . . .”
“Bailing
you
out, right?”
Mike
blushed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.
It’s not
all
your fault.”
She turned
away, went deeper into the trailer. Mike heard her muttering as she banged
drawers and cabinets. He thought she might be talking to him, so he leaned back
inside. “Excuse me?”
“You know
he’s got, what do you call it, illusions of granger, right?”
“I don’t
really know him that well,” Mike said.
“Oh, just
well enough to ask for help when you’re in trou
ble.”
“I’m in
trouble
because
of him,” he said, which was a lie, but he needed some defense.
“That’s
Hawk. The more he helps, the more you need it.”
She threw
herself down at the built-in Formica table, clutching a pad of paper and a
ballpoint pen. She lit another cigarette and started scribbling furiously,
still muttering. “The fuck.”
He watched
the traffic for a while, acutely aware of her behind him. The glare made his
eyes ache, so he was grateful when the woman, coughing, said, “Hey, come in
here.”
What if she
seduces me?
He knew how
absurd it was, but he couldn’t help imagining her dark hair tangled around him
as her tongue pushed into his mouth, tasting of cigarettes, sort of disgusting
but
real.
He got to his feet without seeing where he was going, moving
blindly toward her voice. Hawk’s girlfriend, an older woman, experienced—she
would show him how it was all done. Finally!
When his
eyes adjusted to the dimness, he saw that she was holding out the pad. Big
shaky words were scrawled across the top sheet. It looked like a third-grader’s
handwriting, with the letters all different sizes, some capitals, some in lower
case. He couldn’t believe an adult had written it.
“Immature,”
she said.
Did she mean
him? “What?”
She thrust
the pad up to his face. “Immature. Did I spell it right?”
He tried to
find something like “immature” in the jumble of words, and found himself
reading a letter he had no right to see—wouldn’t have wanted to read in a
million years. But she had it shoved right in his face and there was no
avoiding it.
Hock
—
Taday I had
all I cud take. Yore obveussly not reddy for a dult rilashinship. I new you
were immithur but I thot you were gone to be a man sumday. Now I see your jus
trine to be a boy agen.
“Uh . . .”
She doesn’t even know how to spell his name! he thought.
“What? It’s
wrong, isn’t it?”
“Well, not
all
of it.”
“Shit. You
do me a favor?”
Standing by
the table, he found his eyes straying to the loose collar of her sweatshirt,
glancing down at bare tan skin. A wisp of smoke stung his eyes, just as she
looked up at him. He squinted, rubbing at the pain.
“Okay,” he
said.
“You look
like an egghead. If I tell you what to write, will you do it?”
An egghead?
he thought, seduction dreams evaporating. Jeez . . .
“Will you?”
“Write . . .
your letter . . . for you? This letter?”
“You owe
me.” She put the pen in his hand. “Have a seat.”
Numb, he sat
down across from her.
“What have I
got there?”
Mike ripped
off the top sheet, put it to one side, and read it back to her as best he
could. She started another cigarette and gazed at the ceiling, pondering.
“How’s that
sound to you?” she asked. “Sound okay?”
“Well—maybe
I’ll recopy it? Just to get it all spelled right?”
“Whatever
you want.”
He wrote a
corrected version of her text; he couldn’t bring himself to make suggestions.
He was terrified that Hawk might return, find him here composing a “Dear John”
letter, and see in his eyes that he lusted after his girlfriend. Then Hawk
would drive him out into the hills, tie him to a tree, and write “Come and get
it!” on his chest.
His fingers
were shaking. He tried to control them because he didn’t want to have to do
this twice.
“Done?” she
said, eyeing him sharply, squinting through her smoke.
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay . . .
let’s see . . . trying to be a boy again, that’s why he prefers their company
to mine. Is that good?”
Mike
shrugged. “If that’s what you want to say.”
“If that’s
what I
want?”
She slammed a fist on the table. “Of course I don’t
want
it, but it’s the fucking
truth, okay? I know him a hell of a lot better than you. I knew him when he
could still admit he was a fuck-up, a regular asshole like everybody else. At
least back then, acting like a jerk kid, he had a good excuse. He
was
a kid.”
Mike shrank
back into the seat. “I just meant, how do you want to say it?”
“I don’t
care how the fuck I say it. Just write it down, all right? How his boys don’t
worship him like he thinks they do. They’re just getting what they can out of
him, and there’s nothing left for me. So I’m going now, Hawk, you bastard.
Going for good. And I sincerely hope you’re very fucking happy with all your little
pals.”
Mike nodded,
writing as fast as he could, repeating after her: “—hope you’re very happy—very
fucking
happy—with all your little pals.”
“Damn
right,” she said. “Does that sound mad? Because I’m mad, and I want him to know
it.”
“It sounds
pretty mad to me,” Mike said. “Pretty
fucking
mad.” He
suppressed a giddy laugh, but she glared at him anyway.
“Give me
that,” she said, and snatched the pen and pad out of his hands. “That’s
enough—more than he deserves.”
She scrawled
her name at the bottom of the page, tore it off, shoved it at him. Maggie, he
read. At least he knew her name now. “You’re sticking around, right?”
“He said
to.”
“Give him
that when he gets back.”
“Muh—me?”
Maggie swung
around on the bench and started pulling on a pair of boots. That done, she
reached for her cigarettes, saw the pack was empty, crumpled it with a curse.
She got up, bootheels loud on the floor of the trailer, slung a big leather
purse over her shoulder, and headed for the door. Mike sat watching her,
folding the note nervously.
“Bye,” he
said as she stepped out.
She glanced
back briefly. “Yeah, right.”
He watched
her through the dusty window. She stood at the edge of the lot with her thumb
out, hitching east. Within minutes, a car pulled over and let her in. Some
surfer-looking guy—definitely not an egghead. Within minutes, he supposed,
they’d be pulling over and having sex in the back seat.
Oh fucking
well.
Mike opened
the note and reread it a few times. Maybe he should rewrite it, he thought.
Soften the blow. Make it easier on Hawk. Make it easier on
himself,
when Hawk
read it!
Then he
remembered Maggie, her constant bubbling anger, and tried to imagine what she
would do to him if she found out. Now, instead of thoughts of seduction (which
had dampened considerably since he’d seen her handwriting) he pictured her long
red fingernails gouging his eyes out, her smoke-stained teeth biting off his
nose.
Leave the
note, he thought, smoothing it on the table. Stay out of this. Go home and wait
for Hawk to call. Give him time to get over her.
Then he
thought about his room, once his sanctuary, and the condition it was in. He
remembered the hole in his wall. After that, he couldn’t bring himself to move.
Hawk stood
at Edgar’s door, the sound of chimes fading inside the house for the third
time. He went back down the path to the Jeep, shaking his head.
“No help
there, huh?” Dusty said.
“I’ll find
it.”
He raced to
the end of Shoreview Road, parking where he had the night they stashed the
grenades. He gave the bug-flecked chrome crucifix a burnishing swipe with his
cuff before jumping the gate. It was too hot to move fast, too dry to talk.
Hawk looked for landmarks along the dirt fire road.
Stoner’s
goofy grin popped into his mind. “Told the fucker to leave those things alone,”
he said suddenly.
“He never
said nothing about them to me, Hawk. And it still don’t make sense. The key . .
.”
“Nothing
makes sense anymore.”
“Well, yeah
. . .”
“The only
ones who knew about that stash were Stoner, Edgar and me.”
“Edgar was
with that kid last night,” Dusty said. “I dropped the two of them at his house
around midnight.”
“Edgar’s
part of this, I know it. He can’t keep out of trouble.”
“What about
that other kid?”
“I’m not
sure about him.”
“He’s in the
shit, though, that’s for sure. I just can’t see Stoner trashing his place.”
They tramped
through cactus and sage and thistles; everything looked brittle and prickly.
It was a different land by day. Down in the Greenbelt canyon a creek ran
through green meadows dotted with grazing cows, but up here everything was
rust-colored, wheat-colored, brown or dead. Foxtails worked their way into his
socks, stinging his ankles with every step. He knew he was on the right track
when they passed through a thistle field and came out at the top of a slippery
sandstone slope. After sliding to the bottom, Hawk slowed to check the base of
every bush they passed.
Before long,
he found a rope twist covered in dust.
“Here it
is.” He knelt and grabbed the rope. In a sigh of dirt, Edgar’s hidden hatch
tilted up.
He fell back
gagging, caught in a cloud of stench. The hatch banged shut.
He had
smelled death before, but never so concentrated. Fresh death, on the road,
blood and bowels, hosed away before it dried, so the place would never stink of
anything more than burned rubber and spilled fuel. He’d smelled mortuary death,
a dusty perfumed pressed-flower odor, no more offensive than a prim old woman
dressed for church. But never anything like this, never so hot and rank and
carrion, so personal.
The closest
thing in his memory was a cow’s carcass, found in the hills in midsummer when
he was a boy. He had smelled it from a distance, and never went farther than
necessary to take a long, fascinated look at bones and flesh blackened like fly-crusted
jerky.
But this. .
. this was like falling head-first into the carcass. Like swimming in it.
Dusty knelt
in front of him. “Jesus, Hawk . . . did you see?”
He had seen
enough before the hatch fell. He didn’t want to think about it.
Dusty left
and came back with a long stick of bamboo. Hawk sat cross-legged, letting him
work. Dusty hooked the thick, splintered end of the stave into the rope loop,
and hauled up on it. The bamboo bent, the hatch groaned open. The second wave
of smell was not quite as bad as the first—that would have been impossible. But
what he saw now, as the hatch fell open, was worse than he’d imagined from his
glimpse.
Stoner’s
head—and it had to be Stoner—was black, as if syrup had been poured all over
his skull and left to coagulate. Beetles and ants had come to feed. His eyes
were . . . boiling. His body was crushed into a corner, as if the stench had
shouldered him aside on its way out of the pit.
“Gaaah,”
Dusty said, pinching his nose. “Stoner, dude. You poor fucking loser.”
Don’t put it
off, Hawk told himself. Do it while you’re still numb. It’ll only get worse.
He got down
on his knees and began to crawl slowly toward the hole.
“What’re you
doing, man?”
It wasn’t so
bad if he looked straight down, avoiding direct sight of Stoner. But why should
he humor his weakness? Couldn’t he face death? Wasn’t exactly this
confrontation at the core of everything he believed, everything he preached?
They would all come to this sooner or later, deserving or not, by means
peaceful or violent.
Fuck that,
he thought. I’m close enough as it is. I don’t have to look him in the face.
That’s not Death there, not some Gothic-lettered symbol. That’s my friend.
That’s Stoner. Or it was.
At the edge
of the hole, he lowered himself to his belly. Eyes narrowed, he thrust his head
over the edge. From inches away, the seethe of insects was deafening; he
breathed through his mouth but it really didn’t help. He didn’t want to puke
here; it would have been sacrilege, defiling Stoner’s grave. But he might not
have a choice.
He pushed
himself forward until he nearly lost his balance and toppled in. At that
moment, without having to be asked, Dusty clamped his hands around Hawk’s
ankles. He wriggled farther over the edge, dangling until he had a view down
the dark tunnel into the little chamber.
There was
just enough light to see that the little cave was empty. Gouges in the dirt
showed where the trunk had been dragged—but that told him nothing.
He tried to
climb back up but couldn’t get a grip. “Okay!” he choked. Dusty hauled him out
by the ankles.
He scrambled
away, gasping for air, and was satisfied to vomit several yards away from the
hole. Willpower . . . Stoner’s expression hung in his eyes, so he forced them
open, looking down to see his shirtfront covered with dust and stickers. He
beat the dust from his chest, started to pull out the foxtails and burrs. It
was something to do while the burning in his throat subsided.
“Well?”
Dusty said.
“The whole
crate’s gone,” Hawk said.
“You sure?”
“You want to
look for yourself?”
“Shit,”
Dusty said, looking philosophical. He had seen more death, and at closer range,
than Hawk had. “I never exactly trusted Stoner with all them grenades, but at
least I knew the dude. You gotta wonder what we’re dealing with now.”
Hawk gazed
into the pit for a minute. He would have met Stoner’s eyes for a farewell, if
the insects had left him any to meet. In a fury he took hold of the hatch board
and flipped it back into place.
“What’re you
doing?”
“Burying
him.”
Dusty
started to say something, then shrugged. “Guess we better, for now. Don’t want
to tip off we were here.”
“I don’t
want to tip off the police either. I want that fucker for myself.”
“You think
it’s the same one who killed Craig?”
Hawk just
stared at him. He got to his feet and started kicking dirt over the board to
cover it again. The smell pervaded everything, but that might have been because
it had saturated every cell in his nose. He knew he would smell it forever.
Olfactory nerves went straight to the brain; they would make sure he never
forgot what had become of Stoner. What became of them all.
“I want to
say a few words,” he said.
“Be my
guest.”
Hawk clasped
his hands and looked down on the hidden grave. He had practiced for years to
prepare himself for moments like this, and the words came in a rush.
Improvisation around a core of grief; a litany that felt polished, rehearsed,
even as he invented it.
“Ashes to
ashes, dust to dust, and all that other bullshit. Why Stoner deserved this kind
of death, I’ll never know. He was just a boy, Lord, a wild boy grown way too
big for his body. He had a boy’s heart, a boy’s head, a boy’s appetites. He was
always searching for the fastest bike, the loudest explosion, the biggest tits.
Stoner was no thinker. He believed everything he could ever need would come
from somewhere outside himself, and for some reason, Lord, you never showed him
otherwise. You never saw fit to raise him up and make him a man. When I talked
to Stoner about the spirit or the soul, I know all he pictured was a spook in a
bedsheet. He looked grown-up, Lord, but I was never fooled. I think that was a
stingy trick to play.
“He never
saw it coming, did he, dear sweet Jesus?”
Hawk turned
on his heel and walked away. Bootsteps came crunching after him as Dusty caught
up.
“Fuckin’
Stoner,” he said. “Amen.”
As they
approached the fire road, going wide through bushes to avoid the thistle field,
Dusty said, “So what’re you gonna do about that kid?”
Hawk felt
mild amazement. “Why is he my problem all of a sudden?”
Dusty
shrugged. “I thought . . .”
“I don’t
even—I don’t know anything about him. He’s Edgar’s friend, and Edgar’s
responsibility.”
“You tell
Edgar that?”
Hawk
stopped, threw back his head, and screamed at the sky: a wordless
curse—something the usual obscenities wouldn’t cover.
As the sound
died, he heard cracking noises in the brush, startled animals. Dusty stood
tense, looking nervously around. “Thought I saw someone,” he said. “Musta been
a deer.” They listened for a minute, but heard only the expected sounds of the Greenbelt. Hawk sighed, spying the road ahead of them, starting forward again.
“Why is it,
every time some kid gets in trouble—why do they come running to me?”
“Hey, I hate
to be the one to break the news, but you set yourself up for it, preacher-man.”
Hawk kicked
a rock from his path.
“The boys
look up to you, Hawk. I mean, you can’t hold yourself up like some kind of
hero, then just pull out when things get rough.”
“I wasn’t
planning on pulling out. I want this guy. I’m gonna get him.”
“Good for
you. But meanwhile, that kid. He has no idea what’s going on, you know? I don’t
think him and Edgar go back very far, you know what I’m saying?”
Hawk
silenced him with a gesture. “All right, you’re right, shut up already. So what
do you think I should do?”
“Shit, I
don’t know. He’s gonna need protection. Someone to cover his ass. You could see
he’s scared—but maybe not scared enough. He don’t exactly look tough, you know.
You gonna let him go it alone against whoever did Stoner?”
“Lupe.” Hawk
spoke the name with certainty.
“Yeah, him.
Looks that way. Sal’s bro.”
“Why do you
think the kid would have to go up against him?”
“Hell, seems
to me the dude left him a calling card. Sort of like, ‘Sorry I missed you, I’ll
drop in later.’”
“You don’t.
. . not a word about Stoner, not to him anyway. I don’t want him more scared
than he already is.”
Dusty
shrugged. “Cool. It shouldn’t matter if he never knows. We’ll all of us fuckin’
take the guy out, that Lupe fuck, we’ll all do it and the kid’ll never have to
know how close he came.”
“All who?”
“All your
boys. The gang. Say Lupe’s gonna come back for that kid; say he can’t help
himself, right? So let’s stake out his house. Like we did Sal’s, but do it
right this time, real thorough. Work in shifts, surround the place. Get some boys
on the hills below the house, some to watch the streets, a couple more to check
the fire roads in case the freak pays his respects to Stoner. It could happen.”
Hawk
considered this for a long time, while they walked on. He’d thought he heard
twigs breaking while Dusty spoke, but they were gone now; nothing louder than
lizards scuttled. Finally, reluctantly, he nodded. “Okay, let’s do it. I just
wish Edgar was in on this. He knows these hills better than anyone.”
They finally
reached the gate at the end of the road and climbed over. Hawk got in behind
the wheel, lost in thought until something jarred him back into the world.
“Jesus.” He
stiffened. “How did that happen?”
His crucifix
was missing from the hood of the jeep. Nothing remained but a jagged chrome
stump.
