
SECOND CHANCE
By Chet Williamson
Crossroad Press & Macabre Ink Digital Edition Copyright 2010 by Chet Williamson & Macabre Ink Digital Publications
Copy-edited, formatted, and checked for accuracy against the original paperback edition by David Dodd
LICENSE NOTES:
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to your vendor of choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author
OTHER CROSSROAD PRESS BOOKS BY CHET WILLIAMSON
Ash Wednesday -- Unabridged Audiobook -- narrated by the author.
Lowland Rider -- Unabridged Audiobook -- narrated by the author.
Soulstorm -- unabridged Audiobook -- narrated by the author.
To the memory of my father, Chester Grover Williamson, and to all who, like him, love the land.
The quotations from Basil Creighton's English language translation of Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf are reprinted here with the kind permission of Henry Holt and Company.
The author would also like to thank Paul Bea, Jr. for information on the machinations of lobbying and the Congress, and a Mayo Clinic physician, who wishes to remain anonymous, for information on airborne viruses.
The discovery would be made . . . that there were floating round us not only the pictures and events of the transient present . . . but that all that had ever happened in the past could be registered and brought back likewise.
---Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf
Fall 1969
The beam of light was as thin as the edge of a razor. Only by constantly moving the taped-over flashlight back and forth could she form any idea of what the hallway was like.
She had an impression of worn floorboards, of institutional green trim framing the doorways on either side. But the boy ahead of her did not stop at any of them. He just kept walking slowly, and so softly that she did not hear a footfall, only the occasional creak of a tired board.
Tired. The whole building was old and tired. It would die easily, come down like the mess of ancient boards and shingles that it was. She imagined the explosion, and the building groaning, giving a massive sigh of wood, a yawn of rusty nails, and then dying, so happy to rest, to cease from holding so much ignorance and cruelty in its walls.
We had to destroy the building to save it.
She snickered at the thought, and Keith stopped.
"What?" he said. His voice was tense and brusque.
"Nothing."
"Then be quiet. We're here."
She heard the knob of a door turn, and waggled her light ahead of her so she could see him push it open.
Jesus. They were there.
For a moment she thought about Woody, thought that she should have listened to him, stayed in her dorm, tried to talk Keith out of this, even turned him in before he could do it. But she hadn't done any of those things.
Instead she was here in the dark with a boy whose sanity she sometimes questioned, and, as a result, she now questioned her own.
But dammit, dammit, it was for a good cause, a violent means justified by a desired end. And no one would be hurt.
That was what she had to remember. No one would be hurt.
"Come on," he said. "Right in the middle . . ."
She followed him to the center of the largest classroom, shining the sliver of light around the room. She saw an American flag, a blackboard with x's and arrows on it, another flag that she thought might be the flag of the Army.
"Drop your light, Tracy!"
Keith's hiss echoed through the room like the burning gunpowder she had seen and heard in movies. But they weren't using gunpowder. There would be no sizzling fuse. Just a clock. A clock and some wires and sticks of dynamite. She hadn't asked where he had gotten it, nor where he had learned to make a bomb. She just hoped that he had learned well.
She dropped her light at his command, but the harsh order annoyed her. "You going to put it in the center?" she whispered.
"Sure. Why?"
"Put it against a wall, and it'll at least take that wall out. This way you might end up with just a hole in the roof."
"Shit, there's enough dynamite in here to take the whole roof off. When that's gone, the walls'll fall down, don't worry. Now come here."
She went grudgingly, bothered more by his attitude than by what they were about to do. "What?"
"Hold these two wires." He held his own flashlight under his arm, shining its line of light onto a section of the crude device. "And don't let them touch."
She wedged her own flashlight under her arm, and took the wires in her gloved hands. "You mean like this?" she said.
She brought the wires close together, but one over the top of the other, so that they were still an inch apart. From Keith's position, however, it looked as though they were actually touching. This, she thought, will wipe that smartass smirk from his face.
She expected him to leap back, or to gasp, or to freeze. What she didn't expect was that he would bring up his hand between hers in an attempt to separate the wires, bring up his hand so that she accidentally and actually let the thin lines of metal make contact with one another.
"N . . ." he started to say as he moved, but he never finished saying No, and she thought that was so strange, since she had time to think about so many things as the bomb exploded in their hands, to think about fire and pain and dying, and most of all, before the blast tore into her arms, her chest, her brain, to think about Woody, God, Woody, and how much she loved him and how she would love him forev...
It couldn't last forever. He had known this time would come. Time for something different.
Woody felt it as he listened to the playback, his long, supple fingers tightening around his Loree oboe. There was nothing wrong with the music, but it was just more of the same that he had composed and played for the last few years, sprightly, flowing patterns of melody interweaving with the other instruments in a latticework fugue, but with a tone that cut the soul like a scalpel. Finally, they had all listened. They came to concerts, bought his records, made him more money than he thought he would ever have.
And now that he was as successful as he ever hoped to be, a glitch in his soul told him he had to change. People had caught up with him, and that meant he had been running too slowly.
Time for something different.
Woody Robinson had grown up in the sixties, and his first songs were of those years. He still remembered the lessons the decade had taught him, of the need to speak in your own voice, sing your own song. And despite the transformation of that ideal into pop songs and slogans, he had held to those tenets, and as the years passed, things came around.
For over twenty years he had played "something different," whether it was called world music, avant-garde, or New Age, a term he loathed. And the audience had caught on. Their ears had become attuned.
So it was time to rattle their ears again.
Yet he didn't want to go any farther over the edge. He loved improvising, experimenting, exploring, but he loved melody too. He loved to make his instruments sing, and he would not trade in his songs for noises.
But then what? For God's sake, what?
Ron Dewey sat on a bare space on the recording console. His head bobbed in rhythm, stopped when his solos on the Kawai K-3 kicked in. Then he listened without pleasure, concentrating only on imperfections, responding with grudging satisfaction when, as usual, there were none, or with fury when there were. Jim Columbo sat on the floor next to Ron, his hands flashing as they did on his percussion set, playing ghost drums, his eyes closed. Michael Lester, the final member of Woody's group, sat quietly in a chair, his arms folded, his face calm, his acoustic bass which he treated like a lover in the corner next to him.
The music was fine, the playing was brilliant. Then why did it all sound so empty, so hollow?
It wasn't the engineer's fault. Woody had used Drake Oppenkott for his two previous albums, and the recording and mix had been flawless. He held back a sigh as he watched Drake fumble in the deep pocket of his khaki work shirt for matches. Drake was the only sound man he knew who smoked in his studio. Though purists claimed that the smoke would degrade the equipment over a period of time, he continued, though now he was smoking a pipe rather than cigarettes. Better for the lungs, worse for the equipment.
Woody listened to the take and watched as Drake picked up his pipe, a straight-stemmed briar darkened from smoking, reached beneath the console and took a tin that looked vaguely familiar to Woody, opened it quietly, reached in, took fingersful of flake, and tamped them carefully into the bowl. Then he closed the tin, set it on the console so that a startled Woody could see its familiar label of MacBaren's Virginia Blend No. 1, and lit a match.
Woody smelled the aroma of the burning tobacco immediately, and at the same time heard himself on the tape improvising a four note riff that repeated several times---three minor descending eighth-notes, the fourth note a minor third below. At once he knew the derivation of the riff, something he had not realized during the recording. They were the first notes of the Doors' "People Are Strange."
And the notes from the song he had not heard for over twenty years, the aroma from the tobacco he had not smoked for even longer, turned back those years, raised the curtain of memory on an evening in 1969, his friends around him, Tracy sitting next to him on the worn gray sofa, the sounds of dark and glorious menace coming from the speakers, the warmth of her against his arm.
And now the thought of looking back, a thought he had so long refused to consider, became a desire, a demand, an irresistible impulse, and he closed his eyes, his own music faded away, and he went back, remembered . . .
\*
. . . the fall of 1969, and he was twenty-one and a senior, and in love.
His inner eyes opened on the apartment, on a pair of legs next to him, revealed by a denim miniskirt, and he turned and looked at Tracy's face, thinking how remarkable it was that a woman should have a face that smooth, the face of a child. Her hair, a lustrous brown, fell to her waist, covering her small breasts. The hair looked black under the light from the red bulb in the corner lamp that tinted the room the shade of blood.
Woody remembered it all, saw it all. The sofa on which he sat looked across the room at another sofa, even more worn, if such a thing was possible. A window behind it was open, but did little to disperse the thick haze born of cigarettes, incense, and the occasional joint. Frank, his roommate, sat on that sofa with Judy, and they both looked decades younger than when he had last seen them in Atlanta. Frank held a can of Iron City Beer, Judy a cigarette. They were both nodding, eyes half-closed, listening to the music.
Keith, the other roommate, was standing in the wide doorway to the dining room, leaning against the pillar, talking in a low but passionate voice to Sharla, whose afro bloomed like a crimson dahlia, and whose coffee-colored skin seemed the same shade as Keith's in the monochromatic glow. And there, sitting and standing about the two rooms, were all his old friends, Alan, Diane, Eddie, Dale, the living and the dead together, immortal in memory.
The walls and the furnishings were just as they had been---thrift shop furniture, posters of the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Jimi Hendrix on the walls, along with Keith's favorite, Jesus holding a rifle, with the words, "Dig It!" Iron City and Budweiser cans were scattered on tables and floors, their metal tops peppered with cigarette ashes, a needle of smoke still rising from the openings in which butts smoldered. A Garrard record changer and a fat, Magnavox amplifier/tuner dominated the wall opposite the dining room. The amp's broad band selector provided the only light other than the red bulb and the orange of burning cigarette ends.
And in the hazy room, in the glow of real and false fire, music reigned. Shamans sang the tribal chants, and Woody Robinson, holding the girl he loved and would lose, heard them all blended into one voice---The Doors, Hendrix, Janis, the Beatles, the Airplane, the Stones, the Dead---heard them young and alive again, singing of a different time, a different song . . .
. . . and the time had come for something different.
\*
He opened his true eyes and found himself back in 1993, in the studio, the newer song drawing to its predictable close, fading away with no real conclusion, and it suddenly sounded to Woody like little more than meandering thoughts, purposeless, meaningless, soulless.
His music sounded empty to him, and the thought deadened him, so that he looked at the expectant faces in the control room dully, shaking his head, his black, shoulder-length hair trembling as if it too were frightened of the truth of which Woody had become aware. Then his deep bass voice, a surprising contrast to the alto and soprano voicings of his reeds, filled the studio.
"It's time," he said, "for something different."
Drake Oppenkott frowned, then spoke through teeth clamped on his pipe stem. Smoke came with each word. "Is it the ambience?"
"No, it's fine. I just don't like the tune."
The six of them sat there for a long time. Finally Ron Dewey spoke. "You don't like the tune?" Woody shook his head. "You wrote it."
Woody nodded. "Yeah, I did. But I don't even know what it's about. I don't even have a title for it."
John Columbo massaged his tangle of hair vigorously with both hands, as if trying to force his brain cells into a coalition. "You said you were thinking about calling it 'Country Lane."'
"Jesus," Woody said. "'Country Lane.' That's what it sounds like, doesn't it? Just strolling along, not a thought in your head. Not even anybody on the lane . . . just the lane itself. Well, where's it go? Why are we on it in the first place?"
John shrugged. "It's just a tune, man."
Woody looked at John and nodded. "You're right, Johnny. And that's the problem. It's just a tune."
"What're you after, Woody?" Ron asked, a hint of irony in his voice. "Social significance? You wanta be Pete Seeger?"
"I don't know, Ron," Woody said. "I don't know what the hell I'm after, but I know it's not 'Country Lane.'"
The door opened and Chuck Hansen came in carrying a cut-off cardboard box with bags of sandwiches and styrofoam cups full of coffee. Although a producer for CeeWhy Records, he thought nothing of doing gofer work, and was not afraid to leave the studio to the musicians and engineers for a few minutes. Woody liked him for that, and for the creative freedom he had given Woody over the years.
But Chuck was also perceptive, and now he stopped in the doorway, feeling the waves of discomfort. "Who died?" he said.
"The album," Ron told him.
Chuck sighed. "Well, in that case, I'm not paying for the sandwiches."
The joke, though feeble, lessened the tension, and they all smiled. "Woody just had a whaddyacallit," said John. "The moment of truth thing."
"An epiphany," said Michael Lester, the bassist. They were the first words he had spoken.
"I'm not happy with the song, Chuck," Woody said. "I think I can do better. But I need some time."
When Chuck looked at him, Woody could tell that he realized that there was something serious going on, more than dissatisfaction over a single tune. Chuck's eyes went from the glow of creative humor to the heavy-liddedness of corporate concern. "You're talking major overhaul." Woody nodded. "I guess we need to talk."
"I guess we do."
\*
Woody, unlike many other musicians, liked to record in the morning. His mind was fresher then, his imagination freer. So the sun was shining when he and Chuck stepped out onto Powell Street. The rest of the group stayed inside to eat lunch, but Woody and Chuck carried their sandwiches to Union Square. The noon crowd was gone, and they easily found a bench. But the bags sat between them, unopened.
"So what do you want to do?" Chuck asked.
Woody looked at the pigeons at their feet, pecking at dropped crumbs. "Go in another direction."
"You haven't mentioned a damn thing about this before. I thought you were happy with the new songs. What happened today? What brought this on?"
"I'm not sure," Woody said. "Maybe a little time travel."
"What?"
"I don't know." He shrugged helplessly. "Look, Chuck, I'm not saying that what we've done on this album is bad. It's not. It's certainly releasable. It's just that I think it's time to take a different direction."
"I can live with that. You've done it before, and it's always been you." He paused. "You want to dump what you've got so far? That's four tracks."
"No. But I want the rest to be different."
"A transitional album."
"Maybe."
"So what do you want to transit to?"
Woody thought, watching the pigeons. Then he whispered, "Get back, Jojo."
"Huh?"
"I want to go back. There are songs back there I never played."
"What are you talking about? Songs back where?"
"You're going to think I'm crazy."
"I already do. Back where?"
"The sixties."
"Sixties. Like what in the sixties---Coltrane or Cecil Taylor or Satchmo singing 'Hello, Dolly' or what?"
"Not jazz. Pop."
"Pop? Oh Christ, what, you wanta do covers? 'A Day in the Life' on oboe? Or maybe 'Purple Haze' on English horn?"
"No, original tunes. I don't know what style or what mix of elements, I don't know anything yet---just that I have to explore this. And I do have the time."
They both knew it was true. A concert album was already in the can for fall release, and the next studio album wasn't contractually due until the following March. Once the music was written, the group could put it together in just a few sessions.
"Yeah, you have the time. But be careful, man. The sixties are gone for good. People really don't give much of a shit. Remember how Woodstock's twentieth anniversary flopped? A cautionary tale, Woody."
"Yeah, but wait until '94. Silver anniversary's the real thing. But don't worry, I'm not going the nostalgia route. I don't want specifics, just the underlying spirit."
"Well, don't go too far off the deep end. The sixties are over. This is the New Age."
Woody laughed deprecatingly, as he did every time Chuck used the term. "Bite your tongue. I don't play New Age."
"Maybe not, but you helped create it."
Woody's face sobered. "I play music. That's all."
"Okay then. Play it."
"I will. But I have to find it first." He stood up, stretched his arms and legs to make himself feel all his muscles prepare for what was to come. "Got to go back and find it."
And just maybe, he thought, find something more. And he remembered how Tracy felt in his arms, just days before she died.
The group was, for the time being, dissolved. Ron and Michael and John would go to other groups, tours, gigs, recordings. A date was made for the following January to finish Woody's album, and Woody, alone in his house in Half Moon Bay, began to think about the party.
His epiphany, as Michael Lester had accurately called it, had been real. The combination of scent and sound had pushed him back into the sixties, made him look at his own past, and the glimpse remained with him, seeming more real than today.
That apartment had more of the truth of living in it than did Woody's home, the simple but spacious three-story beach house he had bought with the royalties from his last three albums and a good chunk of his income from a four-month European tour.
Now he sat in his living room whose windows overlooked the Pacific, glanced at the ceramic ashtrays he kept for his friends who smoked, recalled the beer cans in the apartment, and smiled. No cleaning afterward, true disposables.
The thought of smoking reminded him of the pipe tobacco he had smelled in the studio, so he trotted up the stairs to a third floor room where he kept several boxes that he had dragged on his twenty year odyssey from home to home---New York to Denver to Portland to San Francisco, and finally to Half Moon Bay---without ever opening along the way.
The packing tape that held the flaps closed was so dry and yellow he was able to peel it off, and he quickly found what he was looking for. There were five pipes, each wrapped in a paper towel, and below them a pipe rack and ashtray his father had made for him for his twentieth birthday, in spite of his disapproval of Woody's smoking.
Woody picked up the pipes one by one and sniffed the bowls. The traces of odor smelled more like burned briar than the ghosts of tobacco, but it instilled in him an urge to pack one with moist flake and light it, drawing the smoke down the stem and breathing it into the air, filling the room with its heavy perfume.
He stuffed the largest-bowled one in his pocket and ran downstairs to the telephone, where he looked up tobacconists in the yellow pages. The first one he called stocked MacBaren's Virginia Blend No. 1, and Woody drove to the shop, bought a tin, and hurried back to his house, feeling like a junkie scoring. He knew that what he was doing was absurd, but he was caught in the web of a past he had denied for too long, and its ultimate triumph had possessed him totally.
In the living room, he put the Doors' first album on the turntable, sat on the couch, listened to the music, filled the pipe, and awkwardly lit it. At first the smoke tasted foul, and he accidentally inhaled and coughed several times before the plug was burning. But finally the sweet lump of tobacco ignited, the aroma filled his nostrils, the room grew hazy, and the taste turned back the years, letting him remember how it was.
When the album was over, he arose, the pipe clenched in his teeth. Now he was puffing gently, actually enjoying the taste, disregarding the warnings of lip and gum cancer that had made him stop years before. He riffled through his older LPs, and put on a Dylan record. The first song was an old favorite that Peter, Paul, and Mary had covered, but he scarcely remembered the second song, and could not recall the title.
It was about a dream the singer had. He was in a room again with old friends, and it was as if the intervening years had never passed. It ended with a wish that he and his friends could sit in that same room in reality, and how he would gladly give ten thousand dollars if such a thing could be.
Another song began, but Woody Robinson didn't hear it. His pipe had gone out during the last song, so he set the pipe down on the coffee table, stood up, turned off the stereo, and realized that he finally knew how to go back.
Ten thousand dollars. It might take that much or more. But now that the idea had come to him, it would not go away. It was as inescapable as death, and he sat and wondered if it could be done, and then, deciding that it could, he thought about how to do it. When his mind was filled with ideas, he called his college roommate, Frank McDonald, in Atlanta.
He had seen Frank and Judy three months before, when a promotional tour had taken him through the south. He had done a few radio talk shows, and made an appearance on Atlanta Today, then had dinner at the McDonalds' house and talked until midnight. After Judy had gone to bed, Woody and Frank had gone barhopping, and closed several.
Frank had changed little since Iselin State University. There were some wrinkles, the temples had lightened to gray, and there was a splash of white in the beard. But the figure was trim, the hairline the same strong widow's peak as in 1969, and the liberal politics were intact.
Judy, on the other hand, had gained a good twenty-five pounds. But she bore the extra weight well. Instead of making her look fat, it made her more intimidating, an asset in her position as co-owner of a folk art gallery. Irritated artistic egos were less likely to explode when confronted with Judy's motherly, no-nonsense bulk.
She answered the phone now, with a business-like hello. "Judy, it's Woody. How are you?"
"Don't you ever call when we're not having dinner?"
"Damn, that's right, you're three hours behind, aren't you?"
"If you weren't so simple, Woody, I'd have to get mad at you. You want to talk to Frank." It was a statement, and the next thing Woody knew, Frank was on the line.
"Hey, bud, what's happenin'?"
"A party, Frank."
"Can it wait until I finish dinner?"
"No. I want to have a party, Frank. Back at Iselin. The old apartment."
There was a slight pause. "I haven't been back there in years."
"Me neither. I want to make it as much like the old days as possible. The same place, the same people, clothes, music . . . especially music. Everything."
"You can get the place?"
"I don't know, I haven't checked on anything yet."
Frank paused again. "So when do you want to do this?"
"As soon as we can. I want to ask Alan and Diane, Fred, Eddie . . ."
"What about Curly?"
"Yeah, sure. And Pete and Zipper and Sharla. Hell, there are so many."
"Right, right. Just one question."
"Yeah?"
"Why? I mean, why do you want to do this, after all these years? It's been a long time."
"Just for fun. For old time's sake. They were pretty good times."
"And they were pretty lousy times too. Sad times."
Woody knew what Frank meant. He meant Tracy and Keith and Dale. He meant friends---and lovers---dying young. "Yeah. Yeah, that's a part of it. But we're not going to concentrate on that. It's not going to be a wake, Frank. It's going to be a party."
"This have anything to do with your music?"
There was no point in lying. "Yes."
"Fucking artists," Frank said, and Woody heard Judy caution him about his language. No doubt the kids were at the table.
"I need to make some new music. There was a lot of joy back there, Frank."
"Sure. But there were other things too---there was rage, there was frustration . . . this was the sixties, pal. And confusion and loss, remember them?"
"They can all make music."
"How about pain? Can you make pain sing? And is it gonna be a song that anybody can stand to hear?"
Pain. Frank was right. In all the long years, he had never sung Tracy's song aloud. But it had always been there, floating way in the back of his mind. "You're overplaying this. I just want to party, okay? I just want everybody in bellbottoms and crocheted miniskirts, Jimi and the Doors on the stereo, beer and cigarettes and greasy pizza . . . and us passing around the new Playboy and Judy getting pissed off."
That got him. Frank laughed at the memory they shared of his then-girlfriend grabbing at the centerfolds as he and Woody ogled them with theatrical appreciation. "Better be a 1968 issue," he said.
"1969. A better year for Playboy."
"'69, huh?" Frank chuckled, but Woody heard the knowledge in his voice. 1969 was the year Keith and Tracy had died. "So you're inviting us? This is why the call?"
"Inviting you, but also asking if you want to help. Maybe just the last few days. I want the party to be on a Saturday night---"
"Naturally."
"So I thought if you could get off the Thursday before, you could give me a hand."
"Woody, what's there to do? Get in a keg or something?"
"No, I . . . I think there's going to be a lot. I mean, the idea is to recreate a night in '69. As close as we can come. Just make everything the way it was."
"Woody, this sounds neat, okay? But what makes you think that people are gonna come from all over the country to just a party, for crissake? I mean, we ain't all as rich as you."
"That's why I'm going to pay everybody's way. Put them up and everything."
"And everybody's going to take your charity?"
"It's not charity---it's my party. I'll send tickets along with the invitations. And reservation numbers at the Iselin Holiday Inn. It's far enough in advance that people can make plans."
"What about spouses?"
"I thought about that. Judy's invited. And Alan and Diane are married, and that's cool. But anybody who wasn't really there, well . . . no."
"That's not going to go over real well with Curly's new bride."
"You met her?"
"Last time we visited Judy's mom in California. She's fifteen years younger than Curly. Typical California beach cattle. In fact, I think he met her on a beach. Chick can fill out a bikini. You haven't seen her?"
"I don't get to L.A. much. I bet Curly'll come anyway. He never let girls push him around."
"That's what got him his first divorce. So where you gonna start with this little Saturday night time machine?"
\*
Woody Robinson started by flying to Pittsburgh, where he rented a car for the hour and a half drive to Iselin, home of Iselin State University.
He drove east of Pittsburgh, and then north, driving for miles without seeing another car. The road wound up and down hills, through valleys gently greened by the first shoots of spring. The land, at least, had not changed. It was still as wild as it had must have been when the pioneers traveled through it two hundred years before.
Or maybe, Woody thought sadly, it only looked that way. Maybe acid rain was eating away at those trees even as they budded, ruining the water in the streams and creeks he crossed.
Woody had done benefit concerts for environmental causes, but had not been active otherwise. He was pessimistic about the planet. Pessimism made him fearful, and fear stole his creativity, so he could not afford to be active. But he was aware of the problems. It was impossible not to be, especially among the musicians who played his kind of music and the people who listened to it.
Woody drove on, passing through a series of small towns, none of which contained more than a dozen houses. The terrain was more familiar now. The trees began to thin, exposing hillsides shaved bare by strip mining, pocked by slag heaps, and he wondered how the area had ever been chosen as the site of a university. Did the founders think of it as "Iselin Normal School for Those Wishing to Escape the Drudgery and Early Death of the Mines?"
Still, it had been founded and it had survived and grown from Normal School to State Teachers' College to plain old College, and finally to University status. But when people asked Woody where he went to school, he always said Juilliard, which was where he had done his graduate work, because he quickly discovered that most non-Pennsylvanians had never heard of Iselin.
However, he always thought of Iselin as his alma mater. Iselin was where he had grown up, where he smoked his first cigarette, drank his first beer, lost both his virginity and the solipsism which had been his philosophy in high school, where he learned that there was more to the world than his own needs and desires.
He seldom thought about those days, but now, nearing the college he had not revisited for over two decades, he wanted to look back. It was only natural, he supposed. The past few years had made it more difficult than ever not to look back.
Every week was the silver anniversary of something---the so-called Summer of Love, the release of Sgt. Pepper, the 1968 Democratic convention, the assassinations that shook the sixties---even the Manson killings. Good and bad events alike were rearing their gray and wizened heads. America was aging, and looked to the days of its youth for comfort. Even the Vietnam war had been granted the imprimatur of nostalgia. Jesus, how things had changed.
Iselin had changed too, Woody saw, as he drove into it from the west. As the university had grown, so had the town. Back in 1969, the stretch of road he traveled had only a shopping center, a Burger King, and car dealerships. But now, before he came to those familiar landmarks, he passed two other malls, a Sheraton, and a strip of half a dozen fast food chains. The stores in the old shopping center were all different. The drug store where he had bought a bizarre assortment of cigarettes, including English Ovals, Fatimas, and Gauloises, which he had smoked for several months, had been replaced by a T. J. Maxx.
By the time he got to the campus, things looked more familiar. The utilitarian and boxy dormitories, new in the sixties, were still there, but now there were other buildings around them. He couldn't tell if they were classrooms or dorms, for there was a gray sameness about them. He thought of parking and walking around, seeing what was left of the grove of trees in the campus center, but decided to go to the apartment first. That was what he had really come for.
He swung the car north on Ninth Street, driving past the music building where he had spent most of his undergraduate years, and the theatre on his right, where he had watched Keith and Tracy and his friends act in plays and musicals, and had himself played in concerts beyond counting.
Then he was off campus and into the town, driving down narrow, tree shaded streets, remembering walking down those streets with Tracy, or staggering down them late at night after a party, and God, yes, there was the tree in front of Dr. Leffler's house where he had thrown up a bottle of Orange Driver. He made a face. Frank was right. All the memories weren't so wonderful.
Now he was a block away from Lincoln, the town's main street, and he saw the building ahead on the left, and his throat tightened, his hands clenched the steering wheel.
It hadn't changed. It looked the same as it had over two decades before, when he and Keith and Frank had shared the second floor apartment. Oh Jesus, he thought, 4 South Ninth Street, still alive after all this time, still crazy after all these years.
The entrance was in the back of the building, and Woody drove his car into the loose stone parking lot and parked between a Tempo and a Subaru, both of which had university parking stickers on their bumpers. He got out, locked the car, and stood for a long time staring up at the building.
It was weathered, red brick, three stories high with a flat roof, and semi-detached from the building next to it. Woody noticed that the woodwork needed a coat of paint as badly as it had when he moved out in the spring of 1970. The window sills were chipped into an appaloosa texture, and he saw that one of the windows on the west side of the building was partly open. There was someone living there then.
Before he mustered the courage to go upstairs, he walked past the enclosed stairway onto Ninth Street, but his hopes that the bookstore was still there were dashed when he saw the vacant storeroom through the grimy windows. When he stepped back to the edge of the sidewalk, he could make out the ghosts of letters that had been scraped off the plate glass window---The Alternative Book Store.
It might have been there not too long before, he thought, for apparently no other business had occupied the place since its closing. In its time, the "Alt" had been a gathering place for the local heads. Although it sold rolling papers and bongs, its main business was books and magazines, and, along with the stacks of used paperbacks, it also was the only place in Iselin to go for Ramparts, Evergreen Review, and Grove Press books.
Woody had spent hours there talking jazz with the owner, a short, bald man named Riley, capable of carrying on as reasoned a conversation with Keith about explosives, or with Frank about radical politics. Riley also dealt in military collectibles, and many patrons remarked on the store's weird juxtaposition of peace sign posters and Nazi banners. But it was the sixties, and everything was cool.
And now it was the nineties, and everything was empty. The store may have stood vacant for years, and Woody reevaluated his theory that it closed only recently. The dust was thick, and the walls near the window showed only traces of where the bookshelves had stood. Though the sun had shone on them only a few minutes a day, the paint the shelves had covered was bleached to nearly the same pale shade as that of the rest of the wall.
Woody hadn't really expected the store to still be there. In fact, he had been pleasantly surprised to find the building was there. He walked down the sidewalk to Lincoln Street, hoping that Dom's would still be alive.
It wasn't. Dominic's Atlantic City Pizza had become a software store. The counter was still there, but that was all. The ornate brass cash register had been replaced by a large, gray monitor, and the walls were lined with pegboards on which brightly colored boxes leaned on gleaming metal brackets. Woody gave his head a shake of regret, and walked back the way he had come. No more delays. It was time to climb the stairs and see who he was going to have to deal with.
The bottom door was unlocked as always, and Woody was amazed to see that his old mailbox was still there, mounted on the inner brick wall. He lifted the lid and saw that it had been reattached with wire, but was otherwise intact. Then he climbed the stairs, paused on the boards of the landing, and looked onto the parking lot below, drunk with memories. "Jesus," he whispered. "Oh Jesus."
He walked up the final few steps and paused before the thick wooden door, afraid to knock, afraid the door would open and Keith, long dead Keith, of whom only shreds had remained, would be standing there, that wry grin on his face, saying "Forgot your key again, asshole?" and would stand aside to let him enter the past.
Before he realized it, he was knocking firmly on the door, the chipped paint scraping his knuckles. Guiltily, he thrust the offending hand into the pocket of his brown leather jacket, and listened.
Footsteps crossed a floor, the doorknob turned, the latch bolt grated out of the plate (God, that sound), the door opened, and Woody Robinson was trapped.
"Yeah?"
The student was neatly dressed in a plaid shirt and khaki pants. His hair was styled short, and he was clean shaven. Woody kept his gaze on the boy's face, not daring to look past him into the room. "I, uh . . ." he said, feeling like kicking himself for his discomfort. "This is going to sound really strange . . ."
The boy looked at him noncommittally.
"I used to live here, and I was just wondering . . ."
The boy continued to stare.
". . . who owns the place now?"
"Mr. Parini."
"Still, huh?" The boy shrugged. "Do you have his phone number? Or his address?"
"Yeah. I'll get them. You want to come in?"
"No," Woody said. "No, I'll wait."
Woody turned and looked out the stairway window again at the parking lot. He had thought he would want to go in, but now that he stood in the doorway, he didn't want to see the place filled with someone else's things, the belongings of another time.
"Here you go."
Woody turned around and took the slip of paper. "Thanks. By the way, how long has it been since the bookstore moved out?" The boy looked at him quizzically. "The store downstairs?"
"That was a bookstore? I don't know. Before I came here, and I'm a senior."
Woody nodded and started down the stairs, hearing the well remembered sound of the door closing behind him. He paused half way down, as a snatch of melody forced itself into his head. It was driving, and filled with youthful energy. He imprinted it upon his memory, and thought with grim satisfaction that if a tune came so quickly after just a glimpse of the apartment, he should be able to fill an album easily.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he realized that he was crying, and stood for a while, until he thought he heard the door upstairs open again. The boy, no doubt, curious about not hearing the outside door close.
But as Woody stepped out onto the sidewalk, it was a girl's voice he heard from the top from the stairs, and though the sound of a passing car drowned out most of the words, he thought the voice seemed familiar, like a voice in a movie seen years before, and he thought he heard the words, ". . . come back . . ." but did not heed them. Not just then. It was too soon. The time was not right.
But the voice had told him what he wanted to know, that by returning to the past, he might find more than just music.
Woody discovered, on his visit to Parini Realty, that the Mr. Parini he had rented from had died four years before. But the old man's son was willing to rent Woody the apartment from the end of the spring semester through the start of summer sessions, two weeks during which the place would otherwise be vacant, and agreed to allow Woody to store things in the empty shop downstairs.
After settling with Parini, Woody drove to Sid's Salvage, where he and Frank had furnished the apartment for seventy dollars in 1968. From a back warehouse, Woody chose a worn couch with gray, nubbly upholstery, another of orange plastic that was ripped in several places, an old metal foot locker to serve as a coffee table, a metal table and chairs identical to those that had been in the apartment's dining room, three single beds with bedding, and two battered chests of drawers. The cost was two hundred dollars, but hauling the furniture to the empty bookstore doubled that amount.
That evening, after a deliciously greasy cheeseburger and two Iron City drafts at Parini's Bar, Woody walked out the back door into the parking lot by the apartment building. He looked up at the windows, but the squares were dark. He watched for a long time, wishing to see movement, a ghost, a memory, but there was none.
He got into the car and drove to campus, where he parked near the student union building and, by the gentle light of the tall outdoor lamps, took a walk around the hub of the college.
It had changed. New, square, soulless buildings heaved their bulks above the crenelated, Victorian towers of the earliest structures, whose gingerbread delicacy cowered before the weighty presence of the newcomers. But the grove was still intact, several acres of oak trees intersected by cement paths that led from one building to another. He walked through it, passing several groups of students joking, laughing, or discussing issues with the earnestness of youth.
Coming out from the cover of trees, Woody walked past the library, whose windows were brilliant with light, past the dark bricks of the administration building, and onto a bank that overlooked the tri-dorms, three women's dormitories that had been new when Woody started college. Tracy had lived in Harre Hall, the one on the left.
Woody walked down a stairway toward the dorms, turned left, and went down the street to where the original ROTC building had stood. He hadn't been there for over twenty years, and, after the explosion, he had taken roundabout routes to avoid walking past it. But it was time now, he thought. Twenty-four years ago. A long time.
And time had changed it. There was a new building there now. The Richard K. Eberly Criminology Center, Woody read above the main doors. He wondered if Richard K. Eberly, whoever he was, could have solved the mystery of the ROTC building's bombing any faster than the FBI did. It had taken them two weeks to sort through the rubble, to find the pieces of the detonator, the remnants of the clock, the body parts . . .
He pressed his eyes closed against the thought.
"Tracy," he whispered, and felt the wind take the word, blow it away, sweep him up as well, carry him back, remembering.
\*
"Oh, that is fucking stupid, man."
Tracy and Frank and Keith and Woody on a Tuesday night, sitting in the living room. Tracy has come over to study, and they have for a while, sitting on opposite ends of the couch, books and spiral notebooks balanced precariously on the arms, until Keith and Frank's argument spills out of the dining room.
"It isn't stupid," Keith says, punctuating the words with a jab of his cigarette. "They won't get the hell off campus when we ask, so we've got to push them off."
"Look, you can't justify violence," Frank says, calmly and reasonably, and Woody can see he's trying to calm Keith.
"Yes you can. Violence is acceptable when it brings attention to just grievances, and if this isn't just, I don't know what is."
Tracy nods her head. "Yeah, ROTC isn't an academic course, and the instructors don't have any academic credentials, so there's no reason it should be on campus."
"Let alone compulsory," Woody adds. "I mean, did you guys learn anything when we had to take it?"
"I learned how to clean an M-1," Frank says bitterly.
"I didn't," Keith says, smiling. "I paid a guy a buck to clean mine each week." His face gets serious. "It's worthless, man. I say take it down."
Frank hisses in contempt. "Sure. You and what army?"
"Doesn't take an army. Just somebody with some balls."
"And some dynamite," Woody says with a smile, thinking it all a word game. "Where you gonna get that? Riley downstairs carry some old Nazi explosives?"
"I know some people, man. At Pitt. Weathermen."
"And suppose somebody gets killed?" Frank asks.
Keith shrugs. "Then somebody gets killed. The end justifies the means."
"Somebody innocent?" Frank presses. "Like a mother wheeling a little kid past the building when it goes up?"
"It's unfortunate," Keith says with a wolfish smile. "But if it happens, it happens."
And Woody shivers, thinking of that night several weeks ago when Keith came back late, his clothes dirty, a dark stain on the sleeve of his jacket. While he washed it in the sink, he told Woody he was in a fight with some frat rats. But the next day, when Woody dumped the trash, he found a pair of pantyhose, and a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves with dried blood on their yellow surface. That same day he heard that the Student Commander of the Pershing Rifles had been jumped from behind, then kicked as he lay semi-conscious. He was in the hospital, unable to identify his assailant, who he said was masked. Despite the gloves and the pantyhose, despite Keith's ruthless words, Woody refuses to believe it could be Keith.
"Nobody has to get hurt," Tracy says. "You do it at night. Nobody's there at night."
"Great," Woody says. "Now you're in on this."
"What, you think I couldn't?"
"I think you could---I hope you won't." He says it with a smile, not wanting her to take a dare.
"Shit," says Frank, "you'd probably both blow yourselves up."
Woody knows it is the worst thing he could say. A look passes between Tracy and Keith. He sees the look, but does not realize the bond is formed, the challenge is accepted. And in that moment, in that look, both his friend and his lover are condemned. They die three weeks later.
\*
Woody looked at the clean lines of the criminology building and still saw the rubble where, twenty-four years before, investigators had found the remains of two bodies. Only pieces of jewelry---Tracy's crushed earrings and Keith's twisted and melted class ring---had made identification possible.
\*
The explosion occurs early on a Monday morning, and the blast, eight blocks away, wakes up Woody and Frank. Keith is not in his bed, and when they go into the living room and he is not there, they know that he has done what he said he would. Woody calls Tracy's floor in Harre Hall, to find that her name is on the sign-in sheet, but she is not in her room. When he hangs up the phone and the sirens start to howl, he knows she is dead.
They dress and go to the east end of the campus. But where the back end of the ROTC building once was is now a crater. The remaining part of the building smolders where the firemen's hoses have soaked it. Woody and Frank say nothing to anyone, and decide to wait until Keith and Tracy reappear. They do not.
The next morning some body fragments have been found, and Frank insists that he and Woody tell the police what they know. The local police are more sympathetic than Woody and Frank have imagined, and believe them when Frank tells the truth---that Keith mentioned blowing up the building, but they never took him seriously, and that he had never brought explosives into the apartment.
The police search the apartment and find nothing. At the same time, Keith's car is found parked near the ROTC building. The trunk contains wire, blasting caps, and a box in which dynamite has been stored. Under the front seat is Tracy's purse.
When the FBI agents arrive that afternoon, they are tougher in their questioning, but bring no charges against Woody and Frank.
And the years pass.
\*
"Stupid," Woody whispered to the night. "Stupid, stupid, stupid." Why didn't she tell him? Why did she go? She was always so damned headstrong, taking acid when he had been afraid to, then having the gall to have a fantastic trip, while every moment Woody was tense with fear that she would think she was a bird and jump out the window.
The connection made sense. She was so much like a bird, flighty, mercurial, with a soul that could soar, a spirit that captured his own and took it with her to wonderful places, so that he had noticed things when he was with her, all those dopey clichés that came to mind when people got nostalgic about the sixties, the things of Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins songs. The sky seemed bluer, clouds seemed like pillows. Her face was a never ending source of fascination to him, and he felt as if he could have traced the curve of her cheek with his fingertips for hours on end. She had been exciting and alive and impetuous. And that impetuosity had been her fatal flaw.
"Stupid," he said again, and felt a chill on his cheek, and realized that his eyes were dropping tears. He wiped them away as if they were traitors, and that night he dreamed many dreams.
Dear Diane and Alan,
So how are things in D.C.? Is Alan still peddling nicotine to Congress while Diane makes up for his sins by teaching the youth of America to just say no? Dirty job, Alan. Way to go, Diane!
Consider this an invitation to the Twilight Zone. I've been getting nostalgic lately, missing a lot of people from school and all, and I thought it would be neat to do something about it. So I'm having a party at the apartment . . .
. . . that's right, Sharla---the apartment, site of uncounted late night political discussions, plots to overthrow the world, and Jesus, how many times did you call me a honky muthafuckah? I hope that Cleveland is as dull as it used to be, and that you're continuing to imbue your students with those good, home cookin', revolutionary ideals . . .
. . . So, if you can break away from your power lunches for a weekend, damn, but I'd love to see you again. To help make an offer you can't refuse, enclosed is a ticket from L.A. to Pittsburgh, leaving Saturday morning, going back Sunday afternoon, so I'd keep you away from your new bride for as short a time as possible. Curly, I'm sorry I can't invite her too, but since she wasn't part of the original mob of crazies, she'll have to swelter in the L.A. sun alone. I know making these reservations is forward of me, but if I didn't do it would you come? This way, you put me to the bother of canceling your ticket . . .
. . . and I know you wouldn't want to do that. So hop that plane, Eddie. You probably have to play the organ Sunday morning, but they even gave slaves a day off, right? . . .
. . . I really hope you'll come. If you've got any of those old funky clothes left (and they still fit), wear them. If not, let me know (and your sizes) and I'll furnish you with a wardrobe. Yes, dammit, I have thought of everything. So come, huh? It won't be the same without you . . .
. . . Please try to come . . .
. . . Please come . . .
. . . Please . . .
Woody had his replies by the end of April. He had invited eleven people, of whom seven agreed to come. Three others had commitments and sent their regrets, along with their unused tickets. The only news Woody had of the fourth was his returned letter marked, "Moved. Left no forwarding address."
The first to accept had been Sharla Jackson, who called him two days after he had mailed the invitations, and asked if the "honky muthafuckah flute player" was at home. He recognized the voice and the inflection immediately, laughed, and was delighted when she said she wouldn't miss it, even if her transportation was derived from "a running dog capitalist musician."
"God, it's great to hear your voice," Woody said. "Even if you do sound a little different."
"I don't sound as black as when I went to school, do I?" He heard her laugh gently. "Well, I'm a school teacher now, baby. Besides, a lot of that was put-on. After all, my dad was a doctor in Forest Hills."
"What? You used to tell us your dad was a janitor, and your mom was a cleaning woman."
"It made better PR, okay? You didn't suspect when my folks came to homecoming in that big old Buick Riviera?"
"Well, no, I mean . . ."
"You mean all blacks drove those great big cars, don't you?"
"You're still baiting me, Sharla."
"Just you wait till the party, white boy."
Alan and Diane Franklin had been delighted at the prospect of the party, but insisted the only way they would come was if they could pay their own expenses. Woody refused, explaining that he had to pay for everyone so those who couldn't afford it wouldn't feel like charity cases, and the Franklins agreed.
The same day the Franklins called, Woody also heard from Eddie Phelps, the organist at the Fifth Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. He told Woody he had six weekends a year free, and this, God damn it, was going to be one of them.
The next letter Woody got was from Curly Rider in L.A., who ended:
Linda is pissed off that she's not invited, but when I told her there wouldn't be any producers of teen beach movies (she's an actress, don'tcha know), she felt better. Then when I told her that the evening would consist of a bunch of old farts like myself reminiscing through dope-wasted brains and telling each other why we haven't really sold out, she decided that another Saturday night around the pool looked pretty fucking good. Kids today . . . sheesh.
Woody kept trying to write, immersed himself in sixties music, kept practicing on the half dozen wind instruments he had mastered. Sometimes late at night, unable to sleep, he played records by the Doors, or Jefferson Airplane, or the Beatles, and created fantasias on the tunes with his oboe, its voice piercing the darkness like a laser through ice.
But none of the tunes that he wrote completely satisfied him, except for the one he had heard in his head on the stairs to the apartment. The others lacked what he could only think of as authenticity.
Two weeks before the party he flew to his parents' home in Scranton, Pennsylvania. They had lived in the same house for the past forty years, and prided themselves on never throwing anything out. This was the first time that Woody found their pack rat mentality an advantage, for his years in college still existed in a corporeal form. All his back issues of Rolling Stone, piles of the Iselin student newspaper, the paperbacks he had bought by the armful from The Alt's used bins---they were all there in the large room above the old two car garage.
There too was the stereo he had in college, a little Panasonic component set which he had played through his sophomore year until Frank and his larger Magnavox/Garrard combination moved in with him.
In a back closet, he found his old TV, a GE twelve-inch encased in a plastic, red-orange cabinet. He plugged in the cord and turned it on, but nothing happened. Good, he thought. Who wanted to watch MTV or a film from the eighties when you were recreating the sixties? It would help set the scene, that was all.
The crowning touch was the cardboard tubes that still held the posters he had Plasti-tacked on the apartment walls---a map of Middle-Earth, psychedelic Day-Glo landscapes, a Fillmore West poster advertising Big Brother and the Doors, and Keith's poster of Jesus with a gun. Woody had kept that one. It was hardly the thing to return to a pair of grief-stricken parents.
He felt relieved as he drove his father's big Ford from Scranton to Iselin. Now he wouldn't have to search all over for proper artifacts to help dress the apartment, but, more importantly, the things would be authentic, his own, the books and records and posters that were actually present when he and Frank and Keith had lived there.
His clothes should be all right too. He had tried on an assortment of things his mother had saved in plastic bags that hung like fat cocoons in the attic. They fit, though the bellbottoms were snug around the waist.
Several guests had written to tell him that they could dress themselves, while others, like Alan, said they had thrown away all the old stuff, and enclosed lists of sizes. Ron Dewey's wife was a costumer in the Bay area, and Woody had hired her to hit the thrift stores and outfit his party. At last report she was doing well. After all, if you couldn't find hippie duds in Berkeley, where else could you find them?
It was while Woody was hauling the stereo, TV, and piles of Rolling Stone into the old bookstore that the question hit him, and he sat on the dirty floor, gazed up at the ghosts of bookshelves on the otherwise bare walls, and asked himself aloud, "What the hell am I doing?"
The total recreation he was after, his insistence that no one come who could not have been there in 1969, his concentration on this future night that was, after all, just a party, had blocked out the rest of the world. It was all he thought about. Even his music, when he deigned to write, was bent toward that night, that coming time, future yet past.
Did he really want to go back? Yes. Yes, he did, with a desire that bordered on savagery. But why? To try and see Tracy again, if only in his mind's eye?
And what would he do in that impossible occurrence? Tell her he loved her? Tell her what he had trouble telling himself---that she was the only woman he had ever really loved in his life? Tell her, or God, or fate, that he would do anything to have her back again?
Absurd. Ridiculous. He tried to tell himself that if she had lived and they had gotten married, the same thing would have happened to them that happened with Connie---disinterest, boredom, minor indiscretions, major affairs, cruel divorce.
But even as he told himself that, he knew it was a lie.
Lie or truth, it didn't matter. He would never see Tracy again. She wasn't coming to the party. Only the living were.
And maybe that would be enough. Maybe that was all he really wanted, a sharing, not only of a specific time and place, but of the mass consciousness they all once seemed to be a part of. Something that would, as he had told Frank and Chuck Hansen, give him new songs to sing, music to play. Maybe that would be enough.
But maybe, just maybe there would be more. Was it too much to hope for, he wondered, to recapture some of that magic?
Besides, he thought as he stood up and brushed the dust off his jeans, the party was going to happen now no matter what. Why not just wait and see if there was a little magic?
By May 17th, Woody Robinson had made three transcontinental flights preparing for the party. On that day he made the fourth and last of them, and met Frank McDonald at the Pittsburgh Airport. Frank smiled when he saw Woody, and gave him a brief hug.
"Friggin' 6:45 flight out of Atlanta," Frank said. "Man, as a travel agent, you're a hell of an oboist."
"Have to get started early," Woody said. "We've got a lot to do before tomorrow night." Together they moved toward the Hertz counter. "So how's Judy?"
"Judy's great. Unlike some of us I could name, she absolutely loves her work."
"She still do any painting?"
"Stenciled the dining room a few months ago. Distelfinks, or some goddamned folksy design. Feel like we're eating in a barn."
Woody laughed. "You know what I mean. Any more of those ten foot wide canvases of red and orange?"
"What, like 'Napalm Study No. 7?' Shit, no. She's found her real talent---managing. Makes more money than I do now with that gallery of hers."
Woody picked up his keys, and they started toward the car. "Any avant-garde shows?"
"Jesus, no. I told you about it---'The Buckhead Folk Art Gallery,' man. You never remember a thing, Woody. You always have your head too full of music."
"Come on, I remember stuff."
"Okay, what's my daughter's name?"
Woody looked up quickly and grinned. "Easy. Henrietta."
"You asshole," Frank said, laughing. "Rebecca!"
"I knew it ended with an A."
On the drive to Iselin, Frank told Woody more about Judy's gallery. Then he grudgingly answered Woody's questions about his own work.
"Selling instruments never changes, man. Seen one high school band room, you seen 'em all. I should've kept gigging. If I'd stuck with you I'd be a decajillionaire today."
"I'm not a decajillionaire, Frank."
"No, but I'd be."
Woody smiled. "You played a helluva trombone."
"Yeah, but how many New Age trombonists have you seen on Downbeat's charts?"
"Downbeat doesn't have charts, and I don't play New Age."
"No, but I woulda. Had the whole field to myself. Fame, fortune, sitting with Arsenio, talkin' jazz . . . I saw him with Miles a couple years ago, when Miles was still alive, talking embouchure, that little spitting thing he did? And old Arsenio says it's like spitting out a hair, the audience goes nuts. I don't believe the shit they get away with on TV."
"We only have ourselves to thank."
"Huh?"
"Our generation. We made 'fuck' an acceptable word."
"And fucking an acceptable act. Yeah, weren't we wonderful? You can trace the roots of AIDS and the drug problem right back to us freewheelin' youth of the sixties. And now our kids gotta live with the mess." Frank sighed. 'There are times I think we were shitheads, Woody."
"Everybody's a shithead when they're young. God willing, we're not quite as big shitheads when we get older."
Frank sighed. "I don't know. By that time it's too late anyway. What do they say, reap the wind, sow the whirlwind?"
"Other way around."
"Farming was never my strong suit."
When they reached Iselin, Woody drove to Parini's Realty, where they picked up several boxes of clothing Carla Dewey had shipped, as well as records and other artifacts Woody had sent from California.
"Good God," Frank said as they loaded the boxes into the trunk, "you having a party or a rummage sale?"
"Don't complain. Your clothes are in here somewhere."
"I just hope this friend of yours hasn't costumed me as a tie-dyed hippie."
"No. I gave Carla more than sizes---little descriptions of each person so she'd know the kind of things they'd wear. As I recall, you were country chic---denim bells, Dingo boots, work shirt, bulky knit sweaters."
"Love it," Frank said as they climbed into the car. "God, I was cool, wasn't I?"
Woody laughed. "Groovy, man."
The smiles faded and the laughter stopped as they pulled into the parking lot in back of the old apartment building. "It hasn't changed at all," Frank said softly. "It's eerie."
Woody forced a chuckle as he backed into a space in the empty lot. "And we haven't even been inside."
They both sat for a moment, looking through the windshield at the dark windows.
"Well," Woody said, "are we going to sit here and wax nostalgic or are we going to move some furniture?"
Frank brightened. "I didn't know I had a choice."
Though Frank trailed as they climbed the squeaking stairs, Woody could sense his nervousness. It was the same as his own. He put the key in the lock and turned the knob quickly. The door opened with a soft squeal he remembered well, and he stepped inside.
He drank in the place with all of his senses, and knew what Odysseus must have felt upon reaching home after twenty years of wandering. It was not sight or smell that captured him, but an ambience, a sense of time turning on itself, sweeping over him like a warm blanket, and it seemed that he saw the place, not as it was now, but as it had been, and a great joy filled him.
"Woody?"
It was Frank's voice, but it sounded younger, and Woody knew his friend was with him, sharing the escape back into time, and he turned to him, beaming.
But then he saw that Frank was old, and knew that he was older too, and the joy ran out of him.
"It's really weird," Frank said, shaking his head. "I didn't think it'd hit me like this, but it's really weird."
"I know," Woody said, turning back and looking at the furniture he had never seen before. "I thought for a minute . . ." But he shook his head, denying the past its hold on him. "Let's look around."
The living room still had two sofas, an easy chair, and a coffee table, but the furniture was too contemporary to suit Woody's purposes. The only things that could remain were the tall brass lamps whose style hadn't changed since the fifties, and the brick and board shelves, the perennial college student excuse for bookcases. The walls were no longer their sickly, institutional, pale green, but an off white marred here and there by chipping and dirt, and a wall to wall carpet had replaced the thin, worn, oriental whose design had been lost years before.
As they walked into the dining room, Woody thought he saw, from the corner of his eye, a figure leaning against one of the pillars. He turned quickly, but no one was there.
"What is it?" Frank asked.
"Nothing," Woody said, thinking of Keith's habitual station, holding up the left hand pillar. But then he saw the sideboard, and gave a breathy laugh of disbelief. "My God, it's still here."
They had always called it a sideboard, although it was actually a dressing table minus its top. It had always made a convenient place to put serving dishes if the table was full, though they had filled its three wide drawers with underground comics and magazines rather than tablecloths and linen napkins.
"Table's gone, though," Frank said, examining the dining room suite with its woodgrain formica top. "I liked that old metal table. Made me think I was at my grandma's house."
"Then you'll be happy to know I've got an exact copy downstairs. All we have to do is haul it up."
The kitchen had changed the least. The sink was the same, a hulking expanse of yellowed porcelain that nearly filled one side of the small room. Next to it was a white metal cabinet with an assortment of mismatched drinking glasses and unbreakable dishes. The refrigerator had square corners instead of the soft curves Woody had remembered and hoped for, but it was all right. After all, everything couldn't be perfect. Dressed up or not, the people would still be in their forties, living denials of the illusion Woody wished to perpetrate.
"Still no shower," he said as they looked in the bathroom. Then he turned, walked around the short wall that separated the bedroom from the kitchen and bath, and entered the bedroom, to find that the beds he had bought at Sid's were nearly identical to those in the room. He should have realized it. Frames were sturdy. Only mattresses and springs needed to be replaced. Good.
Fewer things to carry up and down the stairs. Even the dressers looked the same.
The three beds were in the same positions they had been decades earlier, two with their heads against the inner wall, the third with its side against the outer. He heard Frank in the bathroom, pulling open the door to the medicine cabinet, so he sat on the bed in the place where he had slept, where he and Tracy had first made love, and wondered if it was the same bed. There was no way to know. Certainly not the same mattress after all this time.
But still, he lay down, put his cheek against the smooth material, breathed in very gently to see if some trace of her remained, yet fearing that he would inhale some other, unknown, unpleasant scent instead.
There was only the aroma of cheap aftershave, and he sighed and rolled over, staring up at the flyspecked ceiling that had greeted him on so many bright mornings of his life.
"Still a dump, isn't it?"
Woody turned and saw Frank leaning against the door frame. "Yeah," Woody said. "But it was our dump."
Frank looked around the bedroom. It didn't take long. "So what do you think of it?"
"I think," Woody said slowly, "it seems haunted."
"That's . . ." Frank searched for the word. ". . . projecting, don't you think? Haunted by who?"
"You know," Woody said, watching the ceiling. "By Keith. By Dale . . ." He took a shallow breath, then said it. "Tracy."
"Is that what this is all about?" Frank said after a pause. "Tracy?"
Woody shook his head. "No. It's . . . nostalgia, that's all. I'd just like it to be the way it was---just for one night. And if I'm lucky, I might get enough inspiration out of it to make some music." He hopped off the bed and patted Frank on the shoulder.
"Don't worry. I'm not going to go freaky on you, okay? Now, enough nostalgia for a while. Let's get haulin'."
Woody buried the ghosts in his work. Together he and Frank brought the furniture down the stairs and into the bookstore, then carried up what Woody had bought from Sid's. By the time they took a break for dinner, the heavy work was finished. All the furniture and boxes were in the apartment, and they began to put up posters, arrange rows of books, and set up the stereo. They searched their memories for the small details that would make their recreation as authentic as possible, recalling that they always kept magazines here, a pile of records always lay there, there had sat Woody's pipe rack, and there in the corner Frank's trombone case and Woody's first oboe, resurrected for the night, and Keith's Martin guitar, represented by an empty, black simulated leather case.
"I could go for a brew," Frank said, stepping off the couch after putting up the map of Middle-Earth with masking tape. "Wanta get a six-pack?"
"You go," Woody said. "I'll keep working."
"You're so dedicated to illusion," Frank said as he walked to the door. "Iron City?"
"Sure. The good old days."
The feeling overtook Woody as soon as Frank was gone. As he looked about him at the icons of a lost and loved age, he felt that he was in that time, that if he looked in a mirror he would see himself, lines of age vanished, hair untouched by gray.
Then he smiled and shook his head at the conceit, remembering Frank's words---"dedicated to illusion." He was indeed, so much so that in another moment he thought he might be seeing his friends all around him, the living and the dead.
Keep it in perspective, he thought. A party. It's just going to be a party.
And then he saw someone out of the corner of his eye.
He was glancing down at the base of the hall tree in the corner near the door, trying to remember what always sat there, when there was a trace of movement, a blur of white, in the darkness of the hall.
Woody gasped, whirled, looked, his arms held protectively in front of him, a chill burning his spine, the hair at the back of his neck slithering.
But there was nothing there.
There had been, though. He had seen it, and now tried frantically to see it again, to shape the air into the form he had glimpsed. But only unmoving, unyielding darkness remained.
Imagination. Just imagination. It could, after all, do wonders. There was no limit, he thought with grim self-reprimand, to what the imagination could create, if someone wanted to see it badly enough.
Or see her.
The sound of the door opening made Woody jump, and Frank paused in the doorway. "I scare you?"
"I'm all right," Woody said, hoping that Frank didn't notice the way his voice trembled. "But let's call it a night. Drink our beer back at the motel, huh?"
Frank eyed him. "Had enough of this place for a while?"
"I just don't want to overdose on it," Woody said, trying to smile. "Not until it's time. Not until tomorrow."
They turned out the lights, locked the door, and walked down the stairs, Woody in the rear. At the bottom, he listened for a moment after Frank stepped out onto the sidewalk, but heard nothing from above. The building was as silent as an empty building should be.
"Tomorrow," he whispered, and stepped into the night.
Tomorrow came, and Alan and Diane Franklin promptly left their home in Alexandria, promptly checked in at the Delta ticket window at Washington-Dulles Airport, and promptly boarded the plane to Pittsburgh. At all junctures of the trip, conversation was minimal.
Alan and Diane had been married for over twenty-three years, and had not cared for each other for most of that time. They had no children to hold them together and no lovers to pull them apart. Their marriage survived through adhesion. Two people whom God had joined together simply stayed together, neither happy nor discontent. Both had their own jobs and their own friends.
A crisis had occurred two years earlier when Diane's father, a two-pack-a-day man for fifty years, had died agonizingly of lung cancer. Alan had, for the last fourteen years, been a Capitol Hill lobbyist for the tobacco industry. These two facts did not sit well with Diane, who, unfairly or not, blamed her husband for her father's death.
Though Alan insisted the blame was ill-founded, the marriage almost dissolved until Alan showed Diane that a split would be financially ruinous for her. Since Diane was unlikely to get a favorable ruling, she would have to depend on her teaching salary, which would not enable her to continue living in the style to which she had grown accustomed. Whether Alan helped to poison the whole damn country or not, as she claimed, his assistance in those matters was highly lucrative.
So they remained together, made love less than they had before, and talked far less.
They decided to go to Woody's party, despite the fact that the wording of the invitation had inadvertently ripped open the old wounds that oozed when Alan went to work every day. The evening would be a novelty, and Alan hoped that reminders of times past might bring them closer together, so that life could be a bit more well-lived, and some ease could come back into their conversations.
On this particular flight, for example, their dialogue, other than that necessitated by courtesy, consisted of the following: "I hope this will be fun," said Alan.
"It'll either be fun or a wake."
"Why a wake?"
"Woody never got over Tracy. God, you know that."
And that was the extent of their discourse until forty-five minutes later, when Alan said, "We're landing."
\*
Eddie Phelps's flight from Kennedy arrived in Pittsburgh at the same time as Sharla Jackson's shuttle from Cleveland, and they met, as had been planned, at the TWA luggage carrousels. When they saw and recognized each other, Eddie squealed almost as loudly as Sharla, they dropped their luggage, and embraced. Sharla laughed. "Still gay, I see," she said.
"Still black, I see," Eddie replied.
On their drive to Iselin, they caught up on their careers and romances, the former of which were the same as four years before when they had last talked, and the latter of which, on Sharla's part, were modest.
"No, Eddie, I still ain't found myself a man. Unlike you."
"'Ain't?' You use that in front of your students?"
"Shoot, no." Sharla's next words were given in a nearly perfect British dialect. "I know how to speak the Queen's English as well as anyone, my dear, and in class I do." She shifted to street talk. "Hell, I got to. My classes are all white kids except for one little girl, and her daddy's a dentist. I think they cloned her from Rudy Huxtable. Or vice-versa. Little chocolate ofay."
"Don't change the subject. We were talking about getting you laid."
"Oh, hell, I get laid. I just don't get married. Never found a man strong enough to keep up with me for more'n a few nights. Men don't like strong women. We scare 'em away."
They drove for a while before Sharla spoke again. "You know how many of us are gonna be at this shindig?"
"Only eight or nine," Eddie said. "Woody invited over a dozen, but some people couldn't come."
"Not into nostalgia, huh?"
"Maybe. Or not into necrophilia."
Sharla was silent for a moment. "What do you mean?"
"I mean lost loves. The same kind of thing that's currently running through my own dear little gay community. Those not lost, but gone before."
"Like Tracy . . . and Keith."
Eddie nodded. "And Dale, too."
"Dale," Sharla said thoughtfully, as though she had not thought about him for a long time. "God, he was nice. I really liked him."
It had been impossible not to like Dale Collini. He had been two years older than most of them, but taught English at a nearby high school, and so had remained active on campus. Dale and his wife came every weekend to parties at the apartment. Sharla heard later that they had divorced. "How did he die, anyway?" she asked Eddie.
He gave a theatrical sigh. "It was a year after he and Karen split up. He was going to Pitt to get a theatre degree---you know he always wanted to be an actor---and one weekend he just got sick, went to the hospital, and died that night. Leukemia. You never know, do you? You just never know . . ."
"Are, uh . . ." Sharla cleared her throat. "Are you okay?"
Eddie turned and looked at her with a wry smile. "You mean HIV-negative? Yes, fortunately I am, and I intend to stay that way. I have been living with a wonderful friend and lover for the past eleven years, and we are both negative and very, very monogamous. Unlike some ebony-skinned sluts I could name."
Sharla laughed. Eddie had the gift of saying the most outrageous things without offending. "So you bring any old clothes along for this thing?" she asked him.
Eddie shook his head. "I don't have a thing left from back then. I'll have to depend on Woody's sartorial taste---which may be dangerous. How about you?"
"Still got my fatigues."
Eddie chuckled. "You mean that old camouflage suit?"
"Don't laugh, honey. You can't fight a war against the imperialist, racist pigs without the proper uniform. Besides, a lot of revolutionary anger got sweated into those threads. Who knows, I put 'em on, I might feel like offin' Whitey again." She turned and looked at Eddie solemnly. "Maybe you better watch your ass."
Then they both began to howl. Eddie laughed until tears came, and Sharla pounded the steering wheel as they drove on to Iselin.
\*
"Town's sure changed," Judy McDonald observed as Curly Rider drove down Lincoln. Curly had flown to Pittsburgh from Los Angeles the night before, then picked up Judy at the airport in the morning. "Do you get back here at all?"
"Came to homecoming about ten years ago, but that's it. With my business, things come up."
"What do you do? Commercials?"
"Some. A lot of corporate films and videos. I try to keep the company small. That way I get to do everything. You and Frank get back much?"
"No. It's been ages." She sighed. "And now we come all the way back for a costume party."
Curly turned the car left onto Ninth Street, then pulled into the parking lot, where he saw two men muscling a beer keg out of an English Brothers Beverages truck. "Hot damn, a kegger," he said.
They preceded the men up the stairs and knocked on the apartment door. Frank opened it, but instead of letting them in, he stepped into the hall and closed the door, then kissed Judy and shook Curly's hand. "Sorry," he said, "but Woody doesn't want anybody seeing the place before tonight."
"Oh," said Judy, "and I suppose he's going to get all the food and drink ready himself?"
"Don't worry about that," Frank said, and grinned. "Here comes some of the drink now."
The two men had the keg in the entryway on the hand truck. "These steps gonna hold?" one called up.
"They never broke before," Frank said. "Let us get down first, okay? Don't want the whole building falling on us too."
"Where are we going now?" asked Curly when they were in the parking lot.
"The motel," Frank said. "I'll make sure everybody's here and has their clothes, and then we can have dinner."
"Good, I'm starved," said Judy. "How about Bruno's?"
"Great," said Curly. "They used to make the best manicotti in western Pennsylvania."
Frank led the way to the cars. "Maybe the rest will want to join us."
"How about Woody?" said Judy.
"No, he's too excited to eat. He'll see us tonight."
\*
I should have kept them apart, Woody thought. I should have arranged it so that the first time they all saw each other was here.
He sat on the floor, his back against the sofa, looking at his handiwork. There were only a few more things to do---light the incense and the candles wedged in the Mateus bottles, put the ice and fruit in the sangria, set out the chips and the pretzels, all the things that Tracy would help him with . . .
No, that wasn't right, was it? Tracy wasn't here. Tracy was still dead.
He thought about putting on a record, then decided against it. Wait till they come. He couldn't do it alone.
Do what? he wondered. Go back?
"Shit," he said aloud. You couldn't go back. It was a party, that was all, remember, just a party.
And then he thought that it was all right, that he shouldn't have kept them apart after all, that the first things they would want to talk about were what they had been doing since they last saw each other, and they would show the pictures of their children who hadn't existed in 1969, and tell about their jobs and what happened to their parents who the others would maybe remember, probably not, and it could go on for hours like that, and better to have them do that over dinner at Bruno's or the Harris Tea Room or Parini's or wherever they went. Much better for them to hash all of that out before they got here, and have a few drinks together so that they'll all feel mellow and nostalgic and sixties, and then the party can start, yes, then it can really start, and Tracy . . .
Stop it. Just stop it, there is no more Tracy. Just wait. Just wait for them and remember, just a party, just a party, and it won't be long now until they're all here and it can start.
But oh God, oh Jesus, it's been a long time coming . . .
And he waited for it with the excitement and terror of a child in the darkness of Christmas morning, a child who wants a certain gift so much that he fears he will die if he does not receive it.
It was 8:30 when two cars pulled into the parking lot behind 4 South Ninth Street. It was nearly dark, and as the seven people climbed out they heard the sounds of The Mamas and the Papas' cover of "Dedicated to the One I Love" in the evening air. Looking up, they saw the windows of the apartment glowing blue against the dark brick of the outer walls. The light moved at times, and Diane whispered, "Candles," as though she had just set eyes on the Holy Grail. "When's the last time I've been to a party lit by candles?"
"You smell that?" Alan said, just as quietly. "Isn't that incense?"
"Sandalwood," said Frank. "The kind we always used."
"Oh, this is gonna be fun," Judy said, giggling, and no one disagreed with her.
When Woody opened the door, he smiled beatifically at them, sweeping over them with his gaze, registering each face, his own beaming in the harsh glare of the hallway light, the dark beard wreathing cheeks flushed with excitement.
"God, is it good to see you," he said, and they embraced in one huge lump, everyone hugging at once, and laughing, chattering, kissing, they moved like that into the room, into the haze of incense smoke and the babble of old music and their own happy voices, and for a while it seemed to all of them that they had truly come home again.
"You all look beautiful," Woody said, going from one to the next, holding, touching cheek to cheek, awash in friends, drowning with delight in them, and tears of joy touched their eyes as they looked and felt and scented the air and marveled at the masquerade that had taken their eager minds back.
Woody felt himself grasped from behind, and turned to look into Frank's misty eyes. "I'm sorry I ever doubted you, man. This is . . . shit, outasite." He laughed and hugged Woody again. "I love ya, man."
\*
Judy McDonald looked around the room in wonder. How, she wondered, had he gotten so close to what it had been like before? My God, there was the little TV in the corner, and the posters, exactly where they'd been.
She moved with the others into the dining room. Even if it hadn't been otherwise perfect, the bucket of Sangria on the white metal table would have made it so, a bucket, as prescribed, filled with red wine and soda, chunks of frozen fruit bobbing on the surface like . . . yes, like body parts. "Dammit," she said to Eddie, who turned to her in surprise. "I've never been able to touch this stuff since you said it looked like the discards tank in a dissecting room."
Everyone laughed, and Eddie threw up his hands in dismay. "God, dear, that was nearly a quarter century ago! You sure know how to hold a grudge."
She laughed and hugged him, kept looking around, moved with the others as they made their amoebic way through the chambers.
\*
The bathtub brought appreciative chuckles, packed as it was with ice cubes, in the center of which was a huge, dented keg with a ceramic Iron City tap. "I thought these taps were plastic now," Alan said.
"It's the distributor's," Frank explained. "Collector's item. Don't break it or he'll shit."
They made their way up the hall, sticking their heads into the bedroom as they passed, then slowly moved back into the living room, where the candles made their shadows flicker on the walls and ceiling. It was dark outside, except for the street lamp that shone through the window at the end of the room, and they began to form into smaller groups, talking about the perfection of the illusion, and their own wardrobes.
Sartorially, they looked like they did twenty-four years before. Curly's penny loafers, straight-legged chinos, and plain, off-white shirt made him the gentle jock of yore, with the only concession to fashion being the long peaked collars of the shirt, which he began to curl up and chew on.
"Do you still eat your collars at work?" asked Alan.
"Nope. Too short. At least I don't look like Marianne Faithful. Or are you supposed to be Melanie?"
Alan stuck out his tongue and flounced the ruffles that ran down the front of his orange and purple paisley shirt. "You never did understand haute couture. It's always the male who has the bright plumage."
"Jesus, where does that leave me?" said Eddie, lighting a cigarette and looking down at his pin-striped button down shirt and navy slacks. "Was I really this dull, Woody? I look like a gym teacher, except for the cowboy boots."
"Sorry, Eddie," said Woody, "but that's what you wore."
"That's what I still wear, except for the boots. They always gave me blisters," Eddie said, a little laugh bursting from his mouth with the smoke. "Well, better this than Mister Carnaby Street," he said, nodding to Alan. "Although Woody looks equally Love Generation without being garish, Alan. Of course the fact that he's still built like Jim Morrison doesn't hurt."
Woody grinned. The clothing felt good, not at all like a costume. The brocade vest swung free, the loose, tunic-like black shirt was comfortable, the concho belt rode easily on his hips. If he had been wearing leather pants instead of black jeans, he might indeed have resembled an older Jim Morrison, a Morrison who had not died in Paris in 1971, who had lost a little of his dark hair from the front, but replaced it with a full though neatly trimmed beard.
"Hell," Woody said, "we all look good, but the ladies . . . excuse me . . . the chicks look great."
"Groovy," said Curly, getting up and heading toward the rear of the apartment.
"Such a way with words," Eddie said.
But it was true, Woody thought. The women did look groovy. He had been afraid that fortyish women dressed like sixties teenyboppers might have been ludicrous, but it wasn't. The women glowed. It was as if they had slipped on their youth with their clothing. He had forgotten what a little pixie Diane had been. The few times he had seen her since college, she had seemed mousy, dull, crushed by life. But now, as she sat there smiling, her loose muslin blouse showing the contours of her braless breasts, tight jeans hugging her thighs, she actually looked desirable, the quintessential free-love hippie waif.
Sharla, on the other hand, looked unapproachable, but strong and passionate in her fatigues. She even still had the boots, those ankle-high steel-toes that modern skinheads would have killed for. The contrast was terrific between her and Judy, who wore the female equivalent of Alan's lurid threads, an ensemble of red and yellow paisley and bright green sandals, the whole of which was crowned by an orange headband that bound her blonde hair like a skullcap.
"Who's for brew?" Curly said loudly, entering the room with a glass half full of foam. "I've already drunk all the suds---only the good stuff left!"
They wandered a few at a time to the bathroom, drawing mugs, or went into the dining room for sangria, while the gentle tension of Jimi Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary" trembled beside the conversations, like faraway thunder beneath the cries of insects on a clear summer night. But the voices of the insects did not still.
\*
They spoke of the past, drawn back there by the ambience, the music, sights, sounds, themselves. They spoke of courses they had laughed through or suffered through together, of professors living and dead. They sang the song that Curly had written about the ROTC Rangers, to the tune of "The Ballad of the Green Berets":
Fighting soldiers still in school---
Pink berets sure make 'em cool . . .
They nodded grudgingly when the subject of shows came up, recalling Judy as Marsinah in Kismet, Alan as Volpone, Curly as Creon in Antigone ("Wasn't Keith in that?" asked Diane, and others nodded yes, but said no more).
They talked about the music even as they listened to it, quoting lyrics to Arthur Brown's "Fire," Donovan's "To Susan on the West Coast Waiting," The Band's "Tears of Rage," and others that never became standards, but whose lyrics, riffs, melodies, set them all down gently into that time they remembered more clearly with every note.
And they talked about politics, of the marches that had not gotten the sole radical poli-sci professor re-hired, the sit-ins that had caused the library only slight inconvenience, the rallies that had made the board of trustees waver only a jot in their views on minority recruitment.
"There's one thing, though," said Alan. "Our boycotts got the local pool integrated."
"For two years," Sharla said.
"Huh?"
"It closed in 1971, Alan. It integrated all right, but the town fathers stopped supporting it, and it died." Sharla took a drag on the cigarette Alan had given her. "And you know how many blacks joined? Seven. One family of four and three students who never even bothered to go once they got their memberships. So all our weeks of picketing and shouting did was get four niggers wet for two years. Down south the honkies did better than that with fire hoses."
"So are you saying it was all worthless?"
"What are four wet brothers over twenty years ago worth?"
"We wasted a lot of time," Frank said, perched on the arm of the sofa.
"It was a waste of time to protest racial injustice?" Alan said. "Hey, in case you don't remember, we made things a helluva lot better for blacks---"
Sharla snorted. "Thanks a heap."
"Well, we did, you know it. And what if we wouldn't have all spoken out about Nam? We'd still be over there now."
"I don't know," Frank said thoughtfully. "Yeah, we protested racial inequality and Nam, but we protested things like the food in the cafeteria, or because we wanted grass legalized, or because we didn't think female undergrads should have to room in Byers Hall in the summer . . . sometimes I think we protested just for the hell of it."
"Kids do that," Sharla said. "Even my second graders. Part of growing up."
Frank nodded. "Yeah, but we've been congratulating ourselves for it for twenty-five years now, and things are a helluva lot worse as a result."
"What are you talking about?" Alan said.
"Drugs, AIDS, racial problems, the environment. We have to take responsibility for what's here now. We did it."
Judy came into the room and handed him a glass of beer. "Watch it, folks. He's gonna start on the farms," she said.
Alan frowned. "Huh?"
"Yeah, I am," Frank said. "Because it's important." He turned to the others and spoke in the low, passionate voice they all remembered.
"We visited my folks last month up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where I grew up, where the Amish live. Best farmland east of the Mississippi. People I talked to from Canada said that land like that up there would be protected so nobody could build on it. And what's happening here? Developers buy up farmland faster'n hell, drop crackerbox buildings on it, call it Sequoia Acres or Village Square or some other fucking lie. And why? For the quick buck. And if we run out of farmland and have to start buying food abroad, that's just tough shit, they got theirs."
"So what are you sayin'?" Sharla said lazily. "We shoulda protested homebuilders instead of the cafeteria?"
"Not should've," said Frank, "but should. Things are worse now than they've ever been. It's not just a race or a generation, but the whole damn planet's at risk."
"Pennsylvania's not the whole planet," said Alan.
"It's indicative, that's all. My God, we've got acid rain from factory owners who don't give a shit if lakes and everything in them die, as long as they don't have to clean the crap coming out the smokestacks. We've got global warming, and nobody in business is gonna care until the ocean covers their goddam corporate headquarters---"
"You're preaching zealously again, dear," Judy said.
"You want me to ignore it, Jude?"
"It's a party, dear. Lighten the fuck up."
Frank laughed in spite of himself. "God, put a miniskirt on her, and her mouth goes back to the sixties."
"Okay, Frank," Sharla said. "You got a point. But what do we do about it, boycott Exxon?"
Frank smiled as if he were explaining to a child. "Blow up Exxon."
\*
In the dining room, Curly Rider grinned as he looked over the bookshelves. "Wow, Woody, this is great. You kept all these?" Woody nodded, and Curly read the titles. "The Teachings of Don Juan, Che Guevara Speaks, Quotations from Chairman Mao . . . you read 'em all?"
Woody nodded. "The political stuff was kind of boring."
"And the Don Juan stuff was kind of stupid," said Eddie, tapping the ash from his cigarette into his empty sangria glass.
Woody nodded at the glass. "We do have ash trays."
"Where?"
"The beer cans?"
Eddie sighed, walked over to the sideboard where an empty can of Iron City sat, and dropped his butt into it. "Jesus, we were piss elegant, weren't we?"
"Steppenwolf," Curly said quietly. "That was Keith's favorite, wasn't it? He must've tried to get me to read it a hundred times, but I never did."
Curly wandered into the living room while Eddie flipped through a stack of Rolling Stone. He held up a black and white cover photo of Joe Cocker, unshaven, hair unkempt, howling mouth open to reveal crooked teeth, his blooming paunch cut off by the orange bottom border. "A perfect picture of American youth." Eddie weighed the yellowing pile of tabloids in his hand. "I can't believe you even kept these."
"My folks have a lot of storage room." Woody smiled, remembering. "I got those all from Dale. He bought them when the three of us roomed together that one summer before he got married."
Eddie stared into the glass, empty of everything but a tiny pile of ashes. "I still miss him. Dale."
"So do I," said Woody, sitting next to Eddie.
"He was . . . kind." Eddie paused for a minute. "Did you know that we kept corresponding?"
"No." Dale had written two letters a month to Woody, right up until the week he died, but never mentioned writing to Eddie.
"That's like him. He wouldn't have wanted you to know."
Woody felt a psychic stirring, as if about to learn something he should have always known. "Know what?"
Eddie gave a quick little laugh and shook his head. "I . . . think I've had too much sangria. The devil's brew."
"It was a long time ago," Woody said. "It can't hurt anyone now. What are you saying, that Dale was bisexual?"
"No," Eddie said. "I'm saying that Dale was gay."
"But . . . Karen. I mean, he was married . . ."
"We were lovers, Woody. Just once, but that was enough."
"Holy shit," Woody said, thinking that maybe he had had too much sangria too. This wasn't registering the way he felt it should. "When?"
"That summer the three of us roomed together. You were rehearsing with the musical one afternoon. It was hot as hell, and Dale and I were here alone, we had a few beers, listened to music, got a little drunk and giddy with the heat, and one thing led to another." He sat for a moment, then pushed himself to his feet. "Maybe I need a beer instead of more sangria."
Woody followed Eddie into the bathroom, where they drew two beers. The music, the other people, seemed far away. "It was all very natural," Eddie said. "I knew where his preferences lay. But afterward he begged me to forget it. He tried to blame it on too much drink, but it wasn't that." Eddie sipped his beer, licked his lips. "We didn't stay in touch after that summer. Nothing else happened either. He tried to avoid situations where he'd be alone with me, maybe you remember."
Woody didn't, but Dale would have gone to great lengths to keep from looking as if he were snubbing anyone.
"Anyway, after his divorce he wrote to me. I was in Denver then. We struck it off again through the mail. Oh, nothing explicit, just . . . kind, considerate. Like we wanted to see each other again. But we could never link up. All his money went to grad school, and I didn't have enough to fly to Pittsburgh. And before anything could happen he was dead." Eddie smiled. "And I still miss that dear man. I might have even loved him."
His face shifted from unaccustomed tenderness to its traditional cynicism as footsteps and chatter came nearer, so that only arched eyebrows and smirking lips met Sharla and Judy as they appeared at the bathroom door.
"Are we to assume that you ladies wish to utilize the facilities?"
"No," said Judy, "but you may assume that we wish to get a couple more beers."
"All right then, girls, grab your beers and let's all go in the living room and play Thumper, or Truth, or something equally nostalgic and stupid." Woody noticed that there was not a trace of softness remaining in Eddie's voice or face.
When the four of them carried their beers back into the living room, the others were all sitting on the sofas, chairs, or floor. Candles lit the room as before, but now the black light was turned on, someone had put a Judy Collins album on the stereo, and "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" filled the room with a sound sweeter than the incense that lifted strings of smoke into the air.
"My God, who died?" Eddie said.
They laughed at their own quietness, effectively killing it. "We all got serious," Frank said. "My fault."
"Yeah," Alan said. "Frank thinks we all oughta go out and bomb Exxon gas stations and kidnap coal company executives and assassinate people who drive Cadillacs."
"It's going to happen," said Frank calmly. "I'm just surprised it hasn't started already."
"Oh crap," Alan said. "Haven't we all seen what terrorism can do? And I mean, really seen it. Anybody remember Keith? Tracy?"
The room was silent except for the final chorus of the song on the stereo and the soft whisper of Sharla exhaling her cigarette smoke.
"Well," said Alan, "when you talk like that, or when you hear other people talk like that, don't forget them."
The silence came back then, thickening like fog, until Curly broke it, as if anxious to change the subject. "Hey," he said, "how many of us still smoke? Come on, let's see hands. Or butts."
"Not showin' you my butt, turkey," Sharla said, but put up her hand, as did Alan and Eddie.
"My, we've gotten pure in our old age, haven't we?" said Eddie.
"And how many used to?" Curly said, raising his own hand, as did everyone else but Judy. "Well," Curly went on, "since this is a recreation, I always used to bum my smokes from Alan, so . . ." He put on a sheepish look, shuffled over to Alan, and put out his hand as if he expected to have it slapped.
"Once a mooch . . ." Alan said, but extended his pack to Curly who took a cigarette.
"Kents," he said. "I could always count on you, Alan."
"Who else?" said Alan, holding out the nearly full pack.
"God damn the pusher man," said Frank. "You know, Alan, of all of us who sold out, I think you sold out the most."
"And fuck you too."
"I'm serious. Is this the guy who campaigned for Gene McCarthy? Who wanted to become a liberal politician? So he moves to Washington and in a few years he's a whore for the tobacco industry."
"Hey, look---"
"Face it, pal, you're right out of Doonesbury."
Judy gripped her husband's knee. "You'll have to forgive Frank. He tends to get a little obnoxious after a few beers."
Curly raised both hands in the air, palms up. "Hey, let's mellow out, man. Like, everything is supposed to be groovy tonight, right?"
"And I guess you think you're really 'groovy,' Frank," Alan said, leaning toward his tormentor. "What's so revolutionary about selling band instruments? I thought you were gonna be such a great musician---"
"Oh, Alan, don't be so bitchy," Eddie said. "You either, Frank. We all sold out. Me, I wanted to be the next E. Power Biggs. But I let crass money stand in the way of my artistic vision." He looked coolly at Sharla. "And what about the former president of the Huey Newton Fan Club here, who got her teaching degree to prepare little black children for the revolution? Teaching in the whitest suburb in Cleveland."
"I taught inner city, Eddie," Sharla said. "Four years. So don't lay any guilt trip on me." Her hand trembled as she took a quick, angry drag on her cigarette.
"Sorry," Eddie said dryly. "Sharla's hereby registered as having paid her dues. She shall be presented with a gold-plated afro pick in appreciation." He looked around the room. "Anyone else want to justify their lives? How about you, Judy?" Eddie said, turning to the woman next to him. "You used to make statements with your art. So what are you saying now?"
"Plenty, Eddie. Folk art's just as valid an expression as that agitprop crap I used to do."
"Yes, but you don't even do the folk art, do you? Am I wrong, or haven't you become a capitalist gallery owner, feeding off the sweat of the workers?"
"How do you feed off sweat?" Curly said.
"Aw, this is horseshit," Alan said, standing up and pacing in the small space available. "What's this ideals crap anyway? Doesn't anybody stop to think that ideals are something that can't be met? Shit, that's why we call them ideals. But the world ain't ideal. It's hard and tough and it kicks your ass, and the more you think you're going to change it, the harder you get kicked. And the faster you learn you can't change it, the better off you are." He threw himself back down on the couch so that his legs flew up and the people on either side of him bounced.
"Alan's got a point," Frank said. "We were damn naïve about the way the world worked. We didn't realize all the compromises we'd have to---"
"Oh, shit."
They all turned and looked at Diane, sitting lotus position in the corner. "Can we just can all this crap? I can hear this on reruns of thirtysomething, you know? I came to have fun, guys. Hell, almost all of us would rather do something else. I live my life teaching kids how to bang on rhythm sticks for crissake. But for one night I just want to pretend I'm a dumb little hippie again, is that so much to ask?"
The room was silent, except for Judy Collin's sweet voice. Finally Frank spoke. "I'm sorry. You're right. We came to have fun, not to argue."
Eddie dropped his cigarette butt into a beer can and shook it. "I'm sorriest. I started it." He took a deep breath. "I suppose because my own life didn't turn out the way I wanted, I like to think that neither did anyone else's. I'm sorry, Alan. Sorry, Sharla. Judy . . ."
It was the first time Woody ever saw tears in Eddie Phelps's eyes, and the sight shook him. But the discomfort was replaced by affection as Judy gave Eddie a hug from one side, Sharla from the other. Eddie hugged them back.
"Yeah," said Curly, "it's really like being back there, if we let it be. Let's forget now, forget the hassles, the things we don't like." His voice was soothing, hypnotic, and Woody recalled Curly's acting ability. "I mean, listen to the music, look at this place, at each other, smell it, feel it. It hasn't been like this in over twenty years."
And it was true. The accusations that had filled the air were now replaced by a peace that Woody could feel from the relaxed set of his jaw down to his sandaled toes.
"Peace, love, freedom," Curly intoned, and the others smiled in spite of self-knowledge and knowledge of the world, and sat for a long time listening, sensing.
"Just one thing missing," said Curly, a sly grin sliding onto his face. "We need to get stoned."
It was a tribute to Curly's crooning influence and the magic of the night that the protests were feebly voiced. The place, the music, the memories all made the suggestion acceptable, and he went on, Woody thought, with the smoothness of the devil offering to buy souls.
"I don't do this stuff anymore," Curly said, taking a baggie and a pack of rolling papers from his pocket. "But I thought for old time's sake . . . and you can get it so easy in L.A."
"What about the nation's war on drugs?" said Sharla dryly.
Curly winked. "Hostilities can resume in the morning." He began to roll joints with unpracticed fingers. The first one fell apart, and he started again. "Been a long time."
"You brought that in," Alan said with a touch of awe, "on the plane?"
"On my person. Doesn't set off the alarm if it's not metal."
"We really shouldn't do this," said Diane. "Some of us are teachers. We get busted, we could lose our jobs."
"What's life without risk?" said Sharla, a sad little smile tightening her lips. "Just like the old days."
And it was. There was the same potential for harm. In 1969, if they had been found using marijuana, they would have been arrested, and then have had to answer to their parents, the college, and the civil authorities. It was a three-edged sword that maturity had reduced to two.
But there was the same excitement too. Life had never seemed as sharp as when they had smoked grass. There had been nothing like the gut-churning, erection-causing thrill of it, that intoxicating paranoia that gave way to a belligerent euphoria. The act alone was enough to make them high, the flaunting of rules, silent inhalations, secret blows against the empire, the way the smoke filled up the cars with their rolled-up windows, the darkened rooms of rebellious years.
"We need some different music," Frank said. "A little psychedelia. Jimi again? Or the Airplane?"
"The Doors," said Woody. "The first album." Frank found it, took it out of the sleeve. "Just let the first side repeat," Woody said.
"Break on Through" was the first song. The well-known riff began with a measure of drums, a measure of bass, a measure of guitar, and then the cold, cutting, commanding voice of Jim Morrison. The song played on to the end while everyone listened, and it seemed the only movement in the room was Curly rolling joints.
As the Doors began "Soul Kitchen," Diane said, "This is the one with 'Light My Fire,' isn't it?"
Others nodded, and Woody knew what they were all remembering, how it was Tracy's favorite song, and how, when Ray Manzarek's organ riff kicked in, she stopped whatever she was doing and danced, her movements cool and controlled, but her gray eyes revealing the frenzy the song unleashed in her soul. The first time they made love, here in the apartment, "Light My Fire" was playing.
"What is that stuff anyway?" Eddie asked Curly.
"Pure Panamanian, so I'm told." Curly kept rolling, stacking the twisted rolls like a tiny pile of logs. "Very good shit."
"How many are you making?" Eddie said.
"Nine. One for each of us . . ." He paused, licked a final joint twice as large as the others, and said, more quietly, "and one in memoriam. For our friends."
"Like pouring brandy on Poe's grave," said Alan without a trace of a smile.
Curly handed a joint to each person, then picked up the ninth and held it aloft, like a priest holds the host on the paten. "Let's pass the first one. Like the old days. Pass it and remember our friends. Say their names if you want. Let's remember them."
He stood up and gave the joint to Woody. "You made it possible, Woody. You should start."
Woody took the joint, looked at it as if at an artifact of a time far more distant than the sixties, then licked his lips so the paper would not stick, delicately put the joint in his mouth, and leaned into the burning match Curly offered.
He took a deep drag, nearly retching at the bitter taste, the acrid smoke, but held it, held it in strong, reed man's lungs until he felt them burn, felt euphoric heat bubbling upward to his head, felt light and heavy and hot and cold, and closed his eyes and let the little smoke that had not entered him drift out like remnants of a dream. He wondered for what seemed like hours if he should say her name, and then he did, without even being conscious of it.
"Tracy," he said.
"Tracy," the others whispered, and he felt the joint being taken from his hand, and he sat on the floor, watching the others.
Slowly they celebrated their strange communion, sharing the bread and wine of their youth, speaking names of those gone away:
"Keith," said Sharla, and the glowing ember moved on, and Woody's ears were filled with a sound of flame, as if the burning end of the joint was starting to set the world on fire, and the flame seemed so much brighter now, and the name of Keith sang with a crackle of fire.
"Dale," Eddie said, and Dale, they all breathed, the sound reverberating in the air, becoming one with the music, the song of lighting fires, and the fire burned now, it was blinding, and he could not see who bore it, what new Prometheus was passing its wisdom on.
Another name, another voice. Was it Diane? He couldn't tell, because his voice and the voice of the others all chanting, praying, singing the name engulfed his memory, until the name and the flame filled the world.
Other names were spoken, and he repeated them, not recognizing them now, and the fire song had stopped, and another song was being sung again, the song about breaking through, and when Woody peered through the glare of the fire, it seemed to him that his friends' faces were as they had been years before, that time had rolled backward, that the great white flame shone on bright, unlined flesh, glimmered on dark, ungrayed hair, and their eyes looked at him in the same way, filled with wonder and delight, and they came together, slowly, deliciously, as through water they could breathe.
Hands touched, arms embraced, and he thought what they all thought, that they were here now and here then and would be here forever, that they were pure and ideal and immortal, and that all their ideals, their hopes and dreams still blazed inside them, never dead, never dead, but sleeping, and reawakened now, set on fire once more by the night, the music, by each other, by love and peace and freedom and happiness, and they were one, thinking with one mind, speaking with one voice, linked by flesh and soul, a human mandala that spun around and around, until all the faces blurred into one, and he was Diane who was Frank who was Eddie and round and round and Sharla and Curly and round and Judy and Alan and round and round and Tracy . . .
She was alive and in them and of them and everything dead was alive again, dead lover, dead friends, dead dreams, and he moaned and laughed and howled and wept and prayed to God, who was himself and all of them, the living and the dead, all immortal, eternal, ageless, infinitely wise---
until the fire began to diminish, its song to fade in his, their, its ears, fragmenting the holy consciousness of what they had become, the senses of God dulling, the universe leaking through the void so that stars, nebulae, self grew cold, silent, black.
Black.
His eyes were closed.
That was why it was dark, why it was so black. It was like the joke, wasn't it? I can't see . . . so open your eyes.
He did.
They were on the floor, all of them, shoulder against shoulder, hands holding arms holding hands, legs touching, knee rubbing knee, eight of them in a closed circle of flesh. All of them appeared as dazed as Woody, their eyes blinking as if confused, heads shaking in an effort to bring their thoughts back to reality and the present. There was something else too, something Woody couldn't immediately define, a change of some kind.
Woody's left hand was holding Sharla's right, and his right wrist was wrapped by Eddie's long fingers. Slowly they released their holds on each other. Woody's fingers felt stiff as he rubbed the red marks Eddie's grip had made.
"What the hell happened?" said Alan. His voice sounded thick, as though no words had passed through his throat in years.
Curly barked a laugh that sounded mired in phlegm. "Before," he said. "Happened once before, you remember? A mass high. A fucking mass high is what it was. A communal zonk."
"Curly," Alan said in a choked but accusing tone, "what was in that grass?"
Curly shook his head. "Nothing---just grass, I swear."
"Then I'm gettin' old," Sharla said. "Never thought grass would whack me out like that. I mean, I was gone."
"We were all gone," Frank said. "I'm just glad we didn't stay. Does everybody feel okay?"
Woody did a quick self-analysis, taking deep breaths, stretching his muscles, rotating his neck. He did feel good. His lungs seemed to fill with more air than usual, his muscles felt taut, even the extra inch of gut he had been concerned about for the past year or so seemed to have decreased, and he pulled his belt in a notch, then shrugged to indicate that he was all right, as did the others.
"What time is it?" Curly said, stepping into the dining room to look at the wall clock. "Ah. Just a couple minutes since we started."
"What difference does it make?" said Judy.
"I'm just thinking that maybe there was a little opium in that shit---puts you out for what seems like a long time, but it's really only a minute or so. Maybe we got a little extra bonus."
"What the hell?" Woody heard Alan say softly. "My watch is gone."
"You must have forgotten it," Diane said.
"I never forget my watch." Alan was staring at his wrist as though his left hand was missing.
"Forget it, Alan," Eddie said. "You don't have to be anywhere but here tonight. So let's have a beer---and no more dope, if you please---and lighten up."
"God," Curly said, shaking his head. "This'd be enough to turn me into a head again."
"Forget it, Curly," said Frank.
"It was just so weird," Curly said. "It was like we were all one person . . . like that other time."
"You said that before," Woody said. "That it happened once before. What do you mean?"
Curly frowned, trying to remember. "I don't remember when exactly, but there were a bunch of us here, and somebody had brought along some opiated hash or something equally exotic, and we all smoked it, and we all had the same kind of hallucination . . ." He trailed off, deep in thought, trying to bring back the time.
The memory touched something in all of them, and one by one they began to nod, to remember. "We ended up in a circle," Diane said. "We shared a pipe or something, and we were all in a circle."
"Who brought it?" said Judy. "I can't remember who brought it. It's like it was just there."
"It was the future."
They all turned and looked at Sharla, who was staring straight ahead at a poster on the wall.
"We talked about it afterward," she said, as if intoning a mantra. "We thought we'd gone into the future."
"What," said Alan. "You mean like science fiction?"
"No. Don't you remember? It was something about our future. We saw---"
"We saw each other older," Judy said, as though the memory had just hit distinctly. Her face was tight with the effort to recall more. "I can't remember anything else, but it was like we were older." She gave her head a sharp, quick shake. "Damn," she said. "Nothing else comes."
"I remember that night too," said Eddie. "Sort of," and the others nodded.
Woody remembered it as well, just barely, like a dream dreamed long before, but one that had made a tremendous impression on the dreamer.
Silence shrouded the room until Curly roughly cleared his throat. "Well, I'm getting a beer," he said. "I'll stick to legal drugs from now on."
Woody joined him in his trek to the bathroom, and others followed, getting beers and walking back into the living room. As Woody sipped from his glass, he thought the beer tasted different somehow---sharper, crisper, with more of a bite than it had before. It tasted like Iron City used to taste.
And when he sat back down on the floor, the music sounded better too. There was a clarity to it, and it seemed that scratches he knew were there had vanished. Maybe the grass was still doing its magical work, laying a patina of dream over reality.
He felt sure he was right after he took Alan's pack of Kents from atop the foot locker. He tapped one out, slid out the book of matches wedged in the cellophane, and stopped. He turned the pack all around, examining it carefully, then said, "Alan," and tossed it to his friend. "That pack. Where'd you get it?"
"What are you talking about?" Alan said, glancing down at it. "I brought it from home, the carton's in the---" And he stopped, gazing down at what he was holding. "What the hell . . ."
"It's not there," Woody said.
"Jesus." Alan turned the pack over and over, as if it were a stubborn Rubik's Cube.
"What are you looking at?" Frank asked.
"The warning label," Alan said. "It's gone. There's no goddam warning label on this pack." Alan laughed in disbelief. "Wait'll I show them this at the office. What a hoot! We've been trying to get these bastards off for years, and now a printer's error or something---" Suddenly he blanched. "Shit, I wonder how many of these got out."
"Not many," Woody said. "In fact, it's probably one of a kind."
Yeah, Woody thought, trying to keep down his excitement, his thought that something very strange, very incredible was happening, something that Woody, even as he yearned for it, couldn't bear to think about.
He looked at his friends through the dim haze of smoke, saw Curly standing, talking to Diane, noticed that he didn't seem as bald as he had before. It was as if a brush of hair was pushing its way out of his scalp like spring grass, too slowly for the eye to see. And Sharla's hair too, cut short and conservatively, seemed bushier, the patches of gray on the sides lost in blackness.
They haven't noticed yet, he thought. We look like we expect each other to look. Unless you watch for it, like I am, you never notice anything changing, not until it's almost complete.
Complete.
And what would completeness be? he wondered. How far would it go?
"Look at each other," Woody said loudly enough for everyone to hear him. Their conversations stopped as they turned toward him.
"Look at each other's face, hair. Look close."
They did, and around the room, hands went up to touch hair, faces. Others felt their stomachs or hips. Still others examined the backs of their hands, touching gingerly as if expecting the skin to flake off.
Woody stepped between Diane and Sharla. "There are fewer lines," he said, his gaze lying like lead on Diane's features.
"My hair," Curly said softly, running his palm slowly over his head. He gave a queer laugh. "It's coming back."
"You're right, Woody," said Eddie. "I can't see it happening, but it is. Slowly. Like the minute hand of a clock. Jesus, I feel younger."
"Maybe," said Frank, his voice shaking, "what we feel is stoned."
"No, Frank," Judy said. "I don't know what's happening, but something is. Look at my hand." She held it up in front of his face. "I haven't had my wedding ring off since the day we got married, and look. There's not even a pale spot where it used to be. If the ring was ever there, it's not now, and hasn't been for weeks."
"My wedding ring's gone too," said Diane.
"So's mine," said Alan, and Curly indicated that his was also missing.
"Where's yours, Frank?" Judy said.
Frank looked at his hand. Woody saw the fingers tremble. "Probably at home on the dresser, that's all."
"Look at the clock now," said Curly, his voice tense with excitement. The clock's second hand, a thin, dark line against white, was moving not with the usual speed of a second hand, but far more slowly, creeping at a pace that allowed them only to sense the indication of movement rather than see it. "What the fuck is happening here?" Curly said.
"There's something wrong with it, that's all," said Frank.
"Yeah," said Sharla, patting her afro as if it were an animal that might bite. "There's something wrong with everything around here."
"We . . . we're stoned," Frank said. "That's all. We still must be stoned."
Woody shook his head. "I've never felt more straight in my life. We're not stoned, Frank. What we're seeing is real."
"Yeah? What the hell are you saying---that we're actually getting younger?"
"No," Woody said gently. "It's not that. Not just that."
"I think I know what you mean," Eddie said, gazing at the palms of his hands as if at the map of some unexplored country. "The cigarette pack . . . the missing rings, the watches, the clocks . . . and us, for Christ's sake." He looked up at Woody, his eyes haunted by the knowledge. "We've gone back, haven't we?"
Woody nodded. "I think so. I think we've gone back. In time."
"Oh for sweet Jesus Christ's sake," said Frank, at the end of his patience. "That's easy enough to bust a hole in." He went over to the little orange television, plugged it in, twisted the On knob, and turned off the amp. Woody was just about to tell him that the picture tube was dead when an image started to appear on the tiny screen.
"We'll see how far in the past we are when a music video comes on." But it was not a music video that they saw.
"Bill Cardill," said Curly. "We used to watch him every Saturday night. But he hasn't been on for years."
"It's a rerun then," said Frank. "A retrospective or something."
"Listen." Eddie reached over and turned up the volume.
". . . so we'll show it to you again," said the man on the screen. "Man, ever since I was in that movie last year, you guys keep wanting to see this scene. I mean, have I got a Hollywood career ahead of me or what? Okay, roll it . . ."
A scene came on then from the original Night of the Living Dead, where the reporter, played by Cardill, is questioning the police chief.
"He said last year," Curly said. "Living Dead came out in '68." Eddie nodded. "That means that this is 1969, if you can still add."
"Shut up," Frank said, his eyes on the screen. "Now wait a minute, just wait a minute . . ."
The scene ended, and Cardill was on screen again. "Don't tell me, you loved it. Well, Romero's planning a sequel, and maybe if enough of you write in, they might make me the star this time."
"They didn't do a sequel until 1979," Curly said.
"This is an old clip, that's all," Frank insisted.
"We'll be right back to Vincent Price in The Pit and the Pendulum after this," said Cardill, and was replaced by a bald man standing in front of a row of cars.
"Come on down to Randall Chevrolet today! We've got all the new 1970 cars and trucks you've been waiting for!"
"Jesus," said Judy. "And I suppose they're showing a goddam retrospective of car commercials too, Frank?"
"This is stupid!" Frank dug in his pockets. "Look! Look at these coins! We're talking eighties . . ." His voice trailed off as he saw what his hand held.
Woody picked the coins off Frank's palm. Not one of them had a date later than 1967.
"We're younger," and Woody turned to see Diane standing up, squinting at the others in the dim light. "We're all younger now. It's been happening as we've been talking. God, look at us. You're right, Woody. I don't know how, but we've gone back."
"No," Frank said in a far softer tone than before. "It's impossible, it's irrational, it's . . . unbelievable. And I can't believe it."
"My hair is back," said Curly. "It's short, cut just like it was when I was swimming, but it's back. And that's real."
"Look at your wallet, Frank," Woody said, and Frank took a worn brown wallet from his hip pocket, a wallet that bore little resemblance to the Coach billfold Woody had noticed and remarked upon before.
As Frank flipped through the cards, Woody caught glimpses of an Iselin student I.D., an activities card, a Selective Service card, a sorority photo of Judy, and an oversized green-yellow card that had been each twenty-one year old student's dearest possession.
"Your Liquor Control Board card," said Woody. "How long since you've needed that to buy a six-pack?"
The others were going through their personal possessions now, marveling at things forgotten, but here again. Woody opened his own wallet, the brown leather one that fell apart the summer he was graduated, and saw the photograph of Tracy, the one he still carried. Though its edges had worn to a leathery softness, they were now crisp and sharp.
He was back. It was true. He had come back.
"Turn off the TV," said Alan, looking as though he had just become aware of something the others hadn't. "Turn it off." Eddie twisted the switch, and the image faded to a hot pinpoint of light, then vanished. "Now listen."
They did. There was nothing, not a sound except for their own shallow, excited breathing.
"No cars," Alan said. "No music. No voices from people outside. Nothing." He got up and walked quickly to the dining room windows that overlooked the street. "My God," he whispered.
Woody and the others joined him. The cars parked on the street below were a variety of late sixties models---a gold Corvair convertible, a stubby Renault Dauphine, two VW beetles, and a huge, boxy-looking car that Woody thought might be a Buick. But it was not the cars that commanded their attention as much as the sight in, or rather on, the Dodge showroom window across the street from the building in which they stood.
The street level window was only one story high, so they could not see themselves reflected in it, but what they could see was the mirror image of The Alternative Book Store.
Its windows were no longer dark and coated with dust. Instead, two ceiling lights glowed feebly, revealing shelves filled with books and magazines, a brightly colored rack of underground comics (Woody could see the reversed letters, PAZ, and remembered the hilariously obscene contents of ZAP comics), a banner with black swastikas emblazoned on vicious red, a poster of Che Guevara with a gold star on his black hat, a pegboard against the back wall crowded with helmets, like vertical mushrooms.
"Some scientists think," said Alan slowly, his quiet voice sounding huge in the silence, "that time's like a big sheet. And maybe there are places where the sheet folds over on itself."
"I thought that was space," said Frank.
Alan shrugged. "Space, time---same thing."
"With that kind of thinking it's obvious you were a political science major," Eddie said, but no one laughed.
"Maybe we ought to go outside," Curly suggested. "See if it's really the same down there."
"No," Woody said. "We'd better not split up." He looked nervously at Curly. "Suppose the rest of us went back somehow while you were out there? What would happen to you?"
Curly frowned and crossed his arms tightly.
"Can we just go back and sit down for a minute?" asked Diane. "I don't feel so good."
"You look good," said Eddie, mustering a smile. "At least twenty years younger."
Alan started to move into the living room. "We ought to try and figure out a way to get back." He sounded dazed.
Curly shrugged and sat on the floor near the door. "I don't know, maybe we just oughta enjoy ourselves for a while. I could go to Professor McClellan's house and break his windows for giving me a 2 in Pre-Renaissance Drama."
"I wouldn't," Eddie said. "When we get back, it might be on your permanent record."
"Jesus Christ," said Frank, throwing himself onto the sofa next to Judy. "You really think this is funny?"
"I take it as it comes, Frank," Curly said, his face suddenly sober, "and I try to smile at it."
"'I laugh so I do not weep,'" Eddie said. "That's from something, I forget what."
"Funny or not," Woody said, "this is real. Or at least it's real to us. Now we have to decide what to do until . . . we're taken back. Or we can figure out a way to go ourselves. Or something else happens."
"Something else? Like what?" Sharla asked.
Then the door opened, and the light burst in from the stairwell, and dead friends began to come through the door.
Dale Collini was first, wearing a red, quilted ski jacket against the cool autumn air that came in through the door. He was grinning, and carried two pizza boxes, one piled on the other.
"We're back, piggies," he said.
Behind him was Keith Aarons, wearing a C.P.O. coat with its massive collar all the way up, so that his bearded head seemed to be borne in a navy blue vase. An expression halfway between a smile and a smirk was on his handsome face, his hands were pressed deep into his pockets, and a cigarillo protruded from a corner of his mouth like a fang.
Woody's heart had begun to pound the moment the door opened, and now he felt as though it would burst from his chest as Tracy Zampelios appeared in the doorway.
She stood there for a moment, finding him instantly, her gray, Grecian eyes looking at him, her sweet, triangular face softened by the waves of dark hair falling over the shoulders of his brown leather jacket that she wore. He thought in that moment that he would die, and welcomed the prospect, for to wake up now, to return to the reality of the present, would be infinitely cruel.
"Tracy," he said softly.
"Who else were you expecting?" she said lightly, then ran to where he sat, melted onto his lap with the lightness of a dream, and kissed him. Her lips were cold from being outside, but he warmed them quickly, intoxicated by the feel, the scent, the sight of her, by the sheer corporeality of her being.
It seemed a long time before he became aware of the shallow, panicked breathing near him, and when he looked he saw that Diane's eyes were bulging, her mouth was hanging open, and little yips were coming from her throat.
"God," said Tracy, "Diane's freaking out . . ."
By the time Woody got to her, Curly, Alan, and Keith (Keith, Woody thought, my God, Keith!) were by her, but she was looking at Keith in terror, and now the little whines of sound seemed ready to explode into screams, and Keith looked at her as though he understood everything, and said, "Hey, Diane, it's cool. Everything is cool. We're your friends, you dig?"
Her breathing slowed, although she still looked at Keith as if afraid to take her eyes off him.
"What've you guys been doing?" Keith said to Curly. "Bad shit or something?"
For the first time in as long as Woody had known him, Curly seemed at a loss for words. He knelt on the floor, his eyes darting from Keith to Tracy back to Keith, a vacuous half-smile on his face, as though he had found himself in a wonderful if frightening dream.
"Curly?" Keith said in his dimly remembered but compelling voice, "you stoned too?"
Curly laughed. It sounded halfhearted, but under the circumstances Woody thought he did an adequate job of it. "I guess . . ." he said, pausing, then going on. "I guess we're all a little stoned."
Tracy sniffed the air and made an angry little-girl face at Woody. "I smell it. Getting stoned without us, huh? And on some heavy shit, if Diane's any indication. You okay?"
Diane nodded, but her amazed mouth, still open, allowed no smile.
"You all look really far out," Keith said. "You got any of that shit left?"
"Uh, no," Curly said. "Just the one joint. Sorry."
"I'm . . ." Diane spoke. "I'm sorry I . . . freaked out. That was stupid."
"Hey," said Keith, "we've all gotten burned already. It's over now, everything's groovy. Who wants some pizza?" He yelled out to the kitchen. "Hey, Dale, bring in the pizza! And let's get some music. It's like a morgue in here." He went to the stereo and put on Big Brother. A moment later Janis Joplin's wail filled the room.
Dale brought the pizzas into the room, and sat next to Alan, who regarded him with the look a mouse gives an owl about to pounce. Keith settled on the floor by Sharla's feet next to the rickety coffee table. He rubbed her knees and smiled up at her. In return, she looked at him as if he were a ghost. "S'matter, wild thang?" he said. "Curly's magic dope get you too?"
Sharla looked at him for a moment, then at Woody, his arms around Tracy, and she grinned. "Hell, no, white boy," she said to Keith. "Gimme a slice of that pizza. And heavy on the mushrooms."
Frank whispered something, and Dale said, "What did you say, Frank?"
Frank turned to Dale, looked at him, and slowly shook his head. "This proves it. It's a dream," he said.
Keith looked at Woody. "Still stoned, huh?"
Woody nodded. "I guess so. But most of us are okay." He looked around the room at the others. Judy sat next to Alan, a smile of astonishment on her face. Diane looked less delighted, but no longer about to panic.
Eddie, on the other hand, looked like a kid in a candy store.
"God," he blurted out, "it's good to see you guys again." Then, with a face filled with wonder, Eddie took a piece of pizza as carefully and sacredly as if taking the host at communion.
Curly was already chewing. He swallowed, then said, "I haven't had a piece of pizza like this since . . ." Then he seemed to realize the circumstances, strange as they were. ". . . since last week."
"God, you guys are acting weird," said Tracy, getting off Woody's lap just long enough to grab a slice of pizza.
"It's a dream," said Frank again.
"So if it's a dream," Woody said, "enjoy it." He looked around at his friends, the living and the dead, together again. Just enjoy it, Frank."
"Woody? Baby?" Tracy said, her hand on his knee. "You crying?"
"I'm happy," he said, knuckling away tears. "I'm just happy, babe. Happy to be with you. With all my friends."
"No," Frank said, pushing himself up and picking his way across the room as if treading through a vipers' den. "No, this isn't right."
"I'll talk to him," Woody said as Judy started to get up. "Let me talk to him, Jude."
He followed Frank to the bathroom, where he found him leaning against the wash bowl, his head bowed, eyes closed. "Frank . . ."
"This isn't real, Woody. It's what we want to see, that's all. It's all hallucination. You know as well as I do that none of this can be happening."
"All right then. Have it your own way. It's a dream." He sat down on the edge of the bathtub. "But after Tracy died, I dreamed about her. I dreamed that she came back, that we both knew she was dead, but she was allowed to come back to say goodbye to me." He gave a great sigh, remembering. Or was it now, he wondered, foreseeing? "I had that dream over and over, and every time I was glad for it, glad to be able to see her again, to finally have the chance to say goodbye, to tell her how much I loved her.
"We've got that chance now, Frank. It's like that dream again, only during it I always knew it was a dream. But this, tonight, feels real, and that makes it even better." He waved an arm toward the living room. "They don't know they're dead. They don't know we've lived twenty-some years since we last saw them. They're alive, and we're alive, and this is 1969 for as long as this dream lasts. And Tracy's there and God help me but I still love her, and I'm going to spend this time---whether it's seconds or hours, whether it's a dream or as real as my pain---with her. And so is everybody else. They were scared at first, but did you see their faces now?"
He grabbed Frank's arms. "Dammit, Frank, don't question this. It's a gift. Accept it!"
Frank didn't look at him. "It's not real, it's---"
Woody's patience fled. He swung Frank around and slapped his cheek hard enough to stagger the man.
"Is that real?" he said. "Did you feel that?"
Frank looked at him in what seemed like shock. But then his eyes calmed, and he nodded. "Okay. I'll . . . do it. I'll be part of it."
"They were your friends too. And you loved them." Woody put a hand on Frank's shoulder. "Come on."
They went into the rooms where the others were. Woody sat next to Tracy, and watched as Frank sat on the other sofa by Judy. Slowly his friend's face softened, and in another few minutes he was listening to the conversation, and a gently ecstatic smile was arching the corners of his mouth.
They sat, eleven people in a large, dimly lit room, eight of them hiding twice the years of living that their fresh and unseamed faces showed, slowly remembering what being young was like, and starting to enjoy it again.
They ate pizza from cardboard boxes, drank beer from a keg. The pizza tasted better, spicier, the beer colder and richer than they had remembered. The music was fresh, the conversation more alive than any they had heard in years.
They listened to their young friends talk about music, about films and books. Their opinions were frank and unassailable, and they gave the exasperating yet charming impression of being absolutely right in everything they said. There was no subject too lofty, no problem so complex that it could not be encircled and solved by their simple, youthful logic.
For the most part, the eight kept silent, allowing Tracy and Keith and Dale to talk. When they discussed politics, Keith asked Frank why he had that stupid grin on his face, and Frank replied that it just felt so good to be a liberal and not feel guilty about it. The young ones looked around and shook their heads in mock pity, then talked some more, and slowly Woody understood that this was a Saturday night in the fall of 1969, that same fall that---
". . . get the damn ROTC off campus, for one thing."
It was Tracy who spoke, her pretty face aglow with righteous indignation.
"It could be done," said Keith quietly.
"Here we go again," said Dale. "The old blowing up the ROTC building routine. Careful, Keith, or somebody'll take you seriously."
"Maybe they should," Keith said, and gave Tracy a look. It was so quick that it would have been easy to miss, but Woody recognized it for the conspiratorial glance that it was.
And he became aware of the tension that had come over all those who shared his future, his memories of the past, and, it seemed, his consciousness. How long would it be before Keith and Tracy made their dark, fatal, visit to the ROTC building? A month? Weeks? Only days?
His mind whirled. Could anything be changed? He was in the past because of what had happened in the present, and his present (now the future---oh God!) had been dependent on what had happened in the past. If it had not been for the loss of Tracy, his nostalgia would never have been strong enough to make him want to come back. So wasn't his very presence there evidence that he couldn't change anything?
Even so, it didn't matter. Logic, even under the most illogical of circumstances, had to take a back seat to love and friendship. "Dale's right," Woody said. "You ought to forget it. Violence isn't the answer."
"It's an answer," Keith said. "When every other answer's been tried and doesn't work."
"Keith---"
"Woody, you know that old story. Sometimes you have to whack the mule over the head with a two by four to get its attention. We've whacked the mule, so now maybe we just have to shoot the motherfucker. Hey, nobody likes violence." The way he smiled made Woody wonder. "But if it's the only way to let people know you're serious . . ."
"Things will change without it," Alan said. "A couple years from now ROTC won't be mandatory on any campus."
"Sure. And how do you know?"
Alan glanced at Woody, who gave his head a small shake. "I just know, that's all. Things are changing."
"Not fast enough."
"You can't blow up any buildings, Keith," Judy said, lecturing like a mother hen. "Please. Just don't." She turned to Tracy. "That goes for you too."
"Who made you my mother?" Tracy said, surprised.
"Well, I'm old en---"
"Judy." Woody's response came without thinking.
Tracy looked from one to the other. "Jeez, you guys are weird tonight. Let's change the subject, huh?"
"No," Woody said, looking at her, touching her hair. "It's important that you believe us, that you believe us implicitly."
"It won't matter, Woody," said Alan. "I don't think it can change anything . . . we can change anything."
What the hell? Woody thought. Was Alan going to come out with the truth? Maybe it was the only way, the only way to convince Keith and Tracy.
"What are you all talking about?" Tracy said.
"And why," Dale asked, "do you all look like you're sharing a secret? I mean, it's like we've got the pizza-goers and the non-pizza goers, and the nons know something we don't."
"Yeah," said Keith. "What's the deal?"
"Let's tell them." It was one of the few times Eddie had spoken since the others had entered. "They're going to find out anyway."
Alarmed, fearing this sharing of the truth with phantoms,
Woody waved a hand weakly in the air. "Why? How? . . ."
"This night isn't ending," said Eddie. "No time is passing. The clocks? Watches? They slowed down as we got younger. Now they've stopped. There's still no noise outside. My watch, the clock on the dining room wall, all of them, I bet. Check them."
Eddie was right. Woody looked at his wrist, around which was the Timex he had worn in college and lost years ago. The second hand was frozen at 11:28. When he looked up, he could see everyone nodding, everyone except for the three friends.
"How about yours, Keith?" he said.
Keith shook his head. "I haven't worn a watch since Easy Rider. But what do you mean, there's no noise outside?"
"Cars, trucks, voices," said Alan. "Nothing."
"Are you deaf?" Dale said. "Listen." They did. Except for the noises in the room, Woody heard only silence. "You don't hear cars?"
"What's this bullshit all about?" Keith said. "You putting us on? You decide to play a little joke on us?"
"It's a dumb joke, whatever it is," said Tracy, and Woody saw the fear behind her anger. "Knock it off, huh?"
"We're not from this time," Woody said, unable to lie to her. "We're from almost twenty-five years in the future. We came back somehow. In our own bodies. Got younger."
Even as he said it, he realized how outlandish it must sound, even to illusions, hallucinations, ghosts, memories.
"Aw, Woody," Tracy said, shaking her head as though she was disappointed in him. "Come on."
Frank stood up. "I'm going to go outside," he said. "Just for a breath of air, and to see what the hell's out there."
"I'll go with you," Curly said. "I want to see too."
'This is definitely not groovy," Keith said.
By then Frank was at the door. He turned the knob, pulled the door inward, and froze.
Through the open door Woody could see nothing. It was deeper than darkness alone, as though someone had erected a panel in the doorway and painted it a flat black that offered no reflection. Woody stood up, and heard Curly say, "Worse and worse. This is like a computer game."
"Type 'STICK HAND INTO DARKNESS,"' Eddie said.
"Now what?" Tracy said. "You guys see a monster that we don't? Maybe a dinosaur that got in your time machine?"
Woody looked at Keith. "What do you see?"
"The hallway. The floor, the banister, the walls, the light." He stepped to the doorway, walked past Frank and Curly, and was immediately swallowed by the darkness. Diane gave a little scream, and in another moment Keith's head, left shoulder, and hand appeared, as if breaking a vertical surface of black water.
"It's okay, guys. I'm alive." He grinned and stepped back into the room. "Next into the chamber of horrors?"
Curly put his hand on Frank's shoulder. "Let me try it."
"It's not hard," Keith said, then laughed. "You clowns are good. You really look scared, Curly. And Frank, you look like you're about to wet your pants."
"Wait," Woody said. "I'm the host. I got you into this. I'll go."
"'It's my party and I'll go if I want to . . ."' sang Keith. "Take my hand," Woody said to Curly. "I'll step into it." Keith laughed and shook his head in disbelief. "Holy shit."
"It's blackness to us," Woody explained. "Pure darkness. I think it's because we don't belong here."
"Yeah," Keith said. "You all belong in psychiatric care. But go ahead, man, step into the Twilight Zone."
Woody did. Holding on to Curly's hand, he put his own arm slowly into the darkness, afraid that he would be grasped and hauled through.
But he felt nothing. That was the only way he could describe it later. Nothing. Neither air nor water nor heat nor cold. It was as though his hand and arm had ceased to exist. He tried to wiggle his fingers, but although his mind gave the order, he could not feel his nerves and muscles respond. He stepped back then, and his arm and hand reappeared.
Keith laughed. Dale, smiling, shook his head. "You're still alive?" he said.
Woody ignored them. "Hold on," he told Curly, and walked slowly through the door into the soul of night.
His skin and eyes and ears ceased to function as organs of sense. Only his brain retained a spark of consciousness, just enough to realize that this must be death, only the brain still functioning, knowing that the body was dying around it, the heart that supplies it with blood now cold and still, the muscles that did its bidding moving no more. And soon the brain itself would flicker, its electric messages end, and it too would be part of the everlasting darkness, of the black, of death . . .
Sensation screamed through him as his body churned into life in an instant. Unable to cope with the sensory overload, he collapsed into Curly's arms, his legs rubbery, his mind spinning.
"Woody," he heard Curly say, and realized that he had been pulled back by a lifeline of flesh and bone, and knew that if he had gone into that darkness without holding his friend's hand, he would have been either dead or something worse, beyond death.
"Woody? Are you okay?"
"You two are a trip," Keith said. "It's a hall, man. You're acting like it's the gate to hell. Well, if it is, we just got some pizzas there."
"Hold the anchovies and the brimstone," said Tracy, and laughed at her own joke when no one else did.
"We can't go through there," Woody said when he had his voice back. "I felt as if . . . as if I was dying. Or dead."
"What do we do?" Alan asked. "Are we trapped here? I mean, we're obviously not getting out that door, and no time is passing. I'm only a lapsed Catholic, but I remember Limbo well enough. This could be it."
"Hey," said Tracy, "I'm sorry you're all having such a miserable time. But don't you think maybe hell is more like it? I mean maybe your gate there is the way in. You've read No Exit?"
"Tracy---"
"Don't Tracy me, Woody! I don't know what you guys have been smoking, but it's made you all mean and paranoid and really freaky. If you don't like it here, go back to the future or wherever the hell you came from." She stood up and walked into the inner hallway, tears filling her eyes.
Woody stood for a moment looking after her, torn between his desire for the past and his unexpected terror of it. Then he felt Curly's hand on his shoulder, turned, and looked into his friend's pale face.
"Go see your girl," Curly said softly. "Then we'll figure a way out of this."
Tracy was in the bedroom, sitting on the bed next to the window, looking out at the night. She was not crying, but Woody could see that her eyes were moist with denied tears. "Tracy," he said as he stepped into the room.
She gave him a look both accusing and pleading. "What's wrong with you? Why are you acting like this, Woody?"
He sat next to her, not touching her. "I know. It sounds crazy, absolutely insane. But crazy or not, it's the truth." He took her hand, and felt the tears pool in his own eyes. "I love you, Tracy. I've loved you for over twenty years---"
"Stop it," she said, turning away from him, her voice cracking in fright.
"No, listen, please. I want you to know that---that I love you. I think that's what brought me back here, loving you so much, and maybe I dragged everybody else along with me, or maybe it was a communal thing, I don't know. But we can't stay here, because we don't belong. It isn't our time."
"What do you mean? Look at yourself---you're Woody, you're twenty-one years old, you're not some old man!"
"Inside I am. Not an old man, but older."
"Then where am I?" she asked, and he felt ice line his throat. "Where am I in this . . . future of yours?"
"You're . . ." He couldn't say it. In her presence, in the aura of her energy, her vitality, it would have been blasphemous. Just . . . do something for me," he finally said. "I know you want to go with Keith . . . to the ROTC building. Don't do it. For the love of God . . . if you love me, please don't do it."
She looked at him for a long time, her gaze hardening, the lacy lines between her brows growing deeper. "Is that what this is all about?" she said. "You're trying to scare me out of that? What, you gonna tell me that I'm in prison in the future? Or dead?"
"Tracy---"
"You know, being honest with me could work. You don't have to stoop to this."
"It's the truth. I'm sorry. But it's the truth."
Tracy got off the bed. "I wasn't going to, Woody. But now maybe I will. If a certain party we know decides to make a certain political statement. But don't worry, you won't know anything about it. I wouldn't want you to get your clean little futuristic hands dirty." She whirled around and walked out into the hall.
Woody followed her into the living room, where, as if in defiance of his request, she sat next to Keith and glared at Woody with undisguised anger. The look made his heart sick. He stood in the doorway, not knowing what to do, what to say. Limbo was right, he thought. Lost souls trapped forever. And how long would it be, if time could still be measured, before Limbo became, as Tracy had suggested, hell? The dream was already drifting into nightmare.
"Woody?" He turned, saw Frank standing by him. "We've got to try and go back. I was talking to Sharla and Curly, and they think maybe we could do it the way we came."
"The way we came?"
"Do the same things that got us here in the first place. Maybe if we get in a circle again, smoke that grass, join hands, whatever . . ." Frank frowned and shook his head. "I feel like such an asshole. I don't believe I'm actually accepting the . . . warped reality of this whole thing. But when in Rome . . ."
"Does Curly still have the grass?"
Frank nodded. "It's loose in the baggie, like he never rolled those other joints. And the Doors' album is here. The only reason not to do it is that there's no fallback position if it doesn't work."
Woody gestured toward the corner where Eddie was talking to Dale. "What about them? Dale, Keith. What do they think?"
"Keith doesn't believe a word of it, and I don't blame him. Dale, God love him, was trying to talk me down, for crissake. He seemed hurt when I declined his counseling." Frank shrugged. "Shall we try it?"
Woody felt his whole body tremble with a sigh. "We have to." Curly was near the stereo. "Curly," Woody said, "put on The Doors, huh? And then roll another fat one."
"We get a hit off this cosmic shit of yours?" Keith said.
"Sorry. Just us fucked-up travelers through time and space." Woody tried to smile. "See, it's a round trip. Only those who got on in the future can go back again . . . we hope," he added under his breath.
"Don't let the magic door hit you in the ass," Tracy said.
Her words and tone tore into him. He had wanted to come back, to see her and love her, and now everything had turned out wrong. He stood, his hands hanging at his side, while the others gathered in the awkward oval of friends in which they had come through before. They searched their memories to recall who had sat next to whom, for it seemed much longer ago than the few hours that must have passed. A space was left for Woody, and the others looked at him expectantly while Curly held the joint.
Woody did not step into the circle, but around it, to where Tracy sat on the sofa, and looked into her face with such sorrow that her adamantine expression softened, and her mouth dropped open gently, like the petals of a flower.
"I'm not going, not really," he said to her. "We'll all still be here, but changed. I'll be me again---the me you know." And then he said, with great sadness, "The me you love."
He kissed her and she responded with a kiss that tasted of tears and chances lost. He broke away, sat in the space provided for him, his back to her, choking down sobs, biting back the urge to return to her arms.
Instead he surrendered himself to the future, to the music that had brought him to the past, the pungent scent of the joint that Curly was lighting, breathing in deeply, holding, passing. He held Eddie's hand on one side, Sharla's on the other, part of the circle, part of (God, please) the voyage back.
Still, he felt Tracy's presence behind him, felt the air stir as Keith stood, moved closer to the circle, saw from the corner of his eye Dale kneel behind Fred and Judy, glimpsed the closed door to the outer hallway, prayed that when he opened it again it would lead into light instead of darkness, into the world he had left.
And now the joint came to him, and he released Sharla's hand, took it, breathed in the smoke, passed it on to Eddie, closed his eyes, held, held as long as he could, the smoke filling his lungs, his veins, his brain, pushing out the music so that only the overwhelming sense of oneness was left, oneness with the circle of friends, the living . . .
. . . and the dead.
And there they were, near them, around them, within them, without them.
Without them?
No.
It was a universal, communal thought, as if the eight shared one mind. And as that mind began to glow white, to flame and fill the world with its fire, it commanded its arms and hands to reach out, grasp the lost, bring them into the circle of flesh and soul, and Woody's arms that were everyone's arms did as they were ordered, touched other hands, made them one with the fire, with the wheel of life, and he felt Tracy becoming part of him, felt Keith and Dale as spokes of the wheel, the wheel itself, as one, but greater than they had been before.
And the wheel and time and space rolled on, and they knew that they, that it had succeeded, had made the leap once more, but now were greater than they had been, and they drowned happily, stronger, singing in the cool flame as it began to fade once more into the welcome darkness . . .
And something shifted. Wrenched the universe.
Tore the fabric of the cosmos.
They had time to feel only the ghost of terror before the darkness fell completely.
To Keith Aarons, coming to the present was like waking from a dream of his youth. But when he shook off the lethargy that had bound him, he quickly discovered that the dream was rooted in reality. Instantly he realized where he was, and why he was there. But the sense of amazement that he felt was swept aside by the far more important demand of survival.
He must not be there when the closed eyes of his friends opened. If he was, they would all have to die, and that was something he did not want to happen, for he owed his life to them, his life and his existence for the past twenty-four years.
When the eight had grasped the others, Keith had been the last to be drawn into the circle, holding back as the hands reached out for him. Only when he saw the others tremble, shimmer, and actually begin to fade before his eyes did he grasp their offered hands, allow himself to become one with them all, to return to where he belonged and had never been, to be born into a world where he had already lived over forty years, and had performed his bloody and necessary work for twenty of those. Perhaps, he thought, because he had been the last to enter the circle, he had been the first to come out, not as deeply affected by the experience as the others. Too, it might have been due to his ability to come to full wakefulness instantly from sleep, a talent partly hereditary, partly learned, and fully required.
Whatever the reason, he took advantage of his early awakening by gently disengaging his hands and arms from the limbs of those who held him, and rose to his feet. He moved silently and quickly, as he always did, moved like a ghost, like the spirit of the dead man he was.
For, he thought with a twist of irony as he opened the door and stepped into the hallway, he was a dead man. For well over two decades he had been dead to his friends and to the world. In order to continue his work, his quest, his holy war, he would have to remain so.
He stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at each one of his friends with a mixture of nostalgia, sorrow, and gratitude, remembering their faces and names, and thinking that perhaps a time would come when he could thank them. But not tonight. No, not tonight.
He dug his hands in his pockets, but found no money, nothing at all. Los Angeles was a long way from Pennsylvania, but he had crossed the country on his wits before. He could do it again.
When he saw Woody Robinson begin to move, he gently closed the door, and, with a heightened sense of wonder and a firm and renewed sense of purpose, took the first step on the road to California, reentering his legend.
\*
As Woody Robinson slid into consciousness, the first thing he heard was the unmistakable squeal of the apartment door closing. The first thing he smelled was the scent of Tracy Zampelios's strawberry shampoo. The first things he felt were Tracy's hair against his face, and her hand clutched in his own.
And, when he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was his wife sitting next to him.
Tracy.
But not Tracy Zampelios.
Tracy Robinson.
Tracy Robinson.
Tracy Robinson.
He heard the two words over and over in his head, as he looked at the face inches from his own, that face with closed eyes, a face that the years had lined as delicately as an artist touches his pen to rice paper. Her brown hair was as lustrous as it had been twenty-four years before. No gray edged it.
Yes, he thought impossibly, miraculously, unequivocally, she was here, she had not died, she had lived, and he had loved her and been with her all these years, with her, and with . . .
Their children.
He felt and heard the others stir now. Legs and arms moved, stretched, but still Tracy did not move, and panic knifed him. He shifted, so that he could feel her side, to see if the dream he held in his arms was alive, or whether God, fate, or what passed for them had played nothing but a cruel trick.
But her eyelids shivered, and opened, and looked into his, her gray eyes that had shared lives lived for over twenty years, but for him only in memory, like a dim and continuous film he had watched all that time with his mind's eye, never experiencing it, only seeing it, as his life, that other life without her, went on.
That life was over now. And the life with her, the life he had wanted to live, was just beginning.
She smiled at him as she had smiled thousands of times, waking up next to him on thousands of mornings, and squeezed the hand that held hers.
"I know now," she said. "Now I know."
He began to speak, to ask her how she knew, what she knew, to beg for explanations he knew she could not have, but his soul was so filled with her, with new knowledge of old time, that words would not come.
Only tears came, his tears and hers, and as they clung to each other he saw through a dim veil his friends, the people he had gone back with, and then come home again, some staring at him and Tracy, and some at Eddie and Dale, embracing and crying just as hard.
His friends, his fellow travelers between worlds, stared with love and knowledge and wonder, as Tracy whispered a name into his ear, over and over again, her sobs mixed with laughter, until he finally recognized the word, a name:
"Orpheus," she was saying.
"Orpheus? . . ."
"The musician. Who went into the underworld . . ." She looked at him now, her face shining with tears. "Orpheus, who brought back his lost love. But he looked back, and lost her." She pressed her face against his again. "Oh, Woody, don't look back . . . let's never look back . . ."
Then the others were with them, touching, holding, laughing, weeping, knowing and believing. They listened to the sounds of cars outside, watched the hands of the clock moving, twisted their wedding rings, and finally Tracy said to him the words that he had never thought he would hear from Tracy Zampelios, words for which he would have sold his soul.
"Let's go home," she said.
When the soft and confused talk had ended, when ten awed people came out of a door where only eight had entered, when Woody and Tracy Robinson had returned to their room at the Holiday Inn (in which Mr. and Mrs. Robinson were registered), they sat and held each other for a long time. Then Tracy kissed him and said, "It's only nine on the coast. Let's call the kids."
"The kids," he repeated.
"I thought you'd want to talk to them. Hear their voices."
"Yes," he said, hoping the dream wouldn't end before he talked to the children he had never met, never hugged or kissed except in a new memory. He took the receiver she handed him, dialed a number he had never dialed before, but knew as well as his name, waited while it rang twice, and heard the click as a handset was picked up across the continent.
"Hello," said a stranger he knew so well. He could not speak, and again the voice said, "Hello?"
"Peter?" he said, his voice choked with joy and terror.
"Dad? Hey, how's your party?" They were the words of a boy whose voice had not yet changed, shrill and piping, sibilants hissing over the wires.
"The party is . . . over," Woody said.
"Well, how was it? Was it fun?"
"It was fun. Yes. It was . . ." He looked into his wife's gray eyes. ". . . it was really great. The best party ever."
"Darn. Wish I coulda gone."
"Well, it wasn't for, for kids. Is, uh, is Louisa there?"
"Yeah, she's right here." Woody heard the phone being passed, and a female voice, much like Tracy's.
"Daddy? Hi! When are you and Mom coming home? Peter has been such a dweeb ever since you left."
"I have not!" Woody heard Peter say.
"All right, just tell . . . Teresa to keep him in line."
"Oh, Teresa thinks he's cute."
"Listen, Louisa, I just wanted to call and say . . . that I love you."
"I love you, Daddy."
"And tell Peter I love him too. Will you do that?"
He heard a theatrical sigh. "Oh, all right."
"We'll be home soon---Mom and I. Goodbye."
He hung up the phone and took his wife's hands. "Oh God, Tracy," he said. "Oh God, I missed you."
Then they made love. He left the lights on so that he could see her, and it was as if he had not embraced a woman in decades. When they came together, he flowed into her as if binding her to him, making her one with him so that she could never leave him again, so that time and memory would be concepts and nothing else, so that the vaguely remembered past would become, for him, the real one, the only one.
But just before he drifted off to sleep, his arms around her, he thought he remembered the door of the apartment closing as he woke from the journey into, and the reality of, the past, and, for just a moment, wondered what it meant. Then he was asleep, and dreamed of the beach, Peter, Louisa, Tracy in a bathing suit as white as flame.
\*
"I remember," Tracy said on the plane back to their home in California, "I remember a night when we were seniors. It was fall. The weather was cold. Keith and Dale and I had gone out for pizza, and when we came back the rest of you tried to play a joke on us, pretended you were from the future, and then you pretended to go back, and I took your hand, and after that you were yourself again." She looked at him, and he felt pinned by her gray eyes. "Do you remember that?"
"Yes," he said, and he did. "Very dimly. It was a long time ago."
"Do you think the two . . . paths crossed that night? And we just didn't realize what was happening?"
"You didn't realize," Woody said, "and the rest of us didn't remember. Because we never really knew."
"But now we do," Tracy said, looking down, as if she could see through the clouds to the earth beneath. "We know what really happened." She sighed. "Do you know, Woody, I remember dying? I remember it like it happened in a dream, but I didn't until . . . until you came back for me." She looked at him. "What you say our life together seems like to you---that's what my dying is like for me. I can barely recall it, but I can. That night with Keith, the bomb going off, and the world full of white pain, and that's where my memory ends." When she took his hand he gripped it hard. "The memory of that world." She smiled. "Maybe I died and went to heaven."
"No," he said. "This is real. It's earth. Whatever our other memories might be, this is reality. Now."
They sat and watched clouds. Two people, four lives, and a death.
\*
. . . I don't know what caused it. I only know that no one, except for those of us who were there, will ever believe it. And why would they? Every bit of physical evidence we've found here in our apartment---Jesus, our apartment. Woody, it feels so good to write that!---indicates that Dale and I have been living together for seventeen years. Seventeen years! And of course it's as if I never lived with Douglas, even though, before I came to your miraculous, amazing, wonderful party, we'd been together for years. I still know him, you see, he's still in my---our---circle of friends, but we've never been lovers, and he gives no indication of anything like that ever happening. Even though I remember.
It's so strange, but I do. I remember having lived two lives, one with Douglas, one with Dale. But I remember the one with Douglas like I remember life, and I remember the one with Dale, the one that's happening now, like I remember books I've read and reread. Only now the book is real, and I'm in it and living it and love it. Remember how I told you that I thought I could love Dale? Well, I guess I was damn well right, wasn't I? I keep waiting to wake up, for this lovely dream to end, but I haven't, and it isn't.
I don't know what happened, or how, or why. But it happened, and it wouldn't have if you hadn't had that party. So thank you, dear Woody, for giving Dale and me a new life. My love to you, and to Tracy, and to (oh God!) the children.
Eddie
\*
. . . we have your wedding pictures. There they were in our photo album, just as faded as the others that I remember having in real life---if that was real life. There's Judy as the Maid of Honor in a dress she remembers wearing as if it were a dream, and there I am as your best man. I remember it, but I don't remember it, if you know what I mean, and I'm sure you do. I mean, it was your wedding, right? And of course I have photos of Eddie and Dale together too, shots I took in New York when Judy and I went up there to see shows.
What the hell is this, Woody? A parallel world? A world in which Tracy and Dale never died? I'm at a loss to find any other explanation, except for the one that we're all nuts, or in the longest continuous dream in recorded dreamery, and that's just impossible. We're back in the real world now, that much I know, whether it's the real world or some other real world.
I realize I must sound almost as confused now as I did that night, but none of us were much in the mood for talking, and we didn't know what to say anyway. I guess the thing to do is just accept it and be grateful for it. It's just a shame we weren't able to get Keith back too . . .
\*
. . . I had that sweet white boy, Woody. I could swear I did. But I must be wrong. Because he wasn't there, was he? Damn. If only I'd held on a little harder. At least Dale and Tracy are back, nuts as it all is.
I think we made the right decision not to tell anyone about all this. They'd call it mass hallucination, like Frank did at first. Nobody would believe it. What proof is there? Things changed. Everything changed to fit the fact that those two came back. I mean, reality changed. I've got letters from Dale, a whole shoebox full of them, written after he was supposed to have died. And he and Eddie are on my Christmas card list, in my address book, in the Iselin alumni directory, everyplace Dale couldn't have been if he really died seventeen years ago.
I don't get this at all. I think it's really wonderful, I'm glad it happened, but I don't get it. Maybe everything we thought happened before never did. Maybe Tracy and Dale never died. But still, they think they did. Aw shit.
Whatever happened, I just wish we could have brought back Keith too. He still died. Those clippings that I saved are still there. But now they say he was alone. Tracy, thank God, didn't die with him. But still, he's dead. That didn't change.
\*
Eight days after Woody Robinson's party, Keith Aarons sat in a car he had stolen less than a half hour before, and waited for Mrs. Naomi Weeks to come out her front door. Mrs. Naomi Weeks was the chairperson of Los Angeles Citizens for a Free Society, a group of motorists who believed that the air-quality authority had no right to require such controls as mandatory car pooling and the number of cars per family.
Mrs. Naomi Weeks had gotten a lot of airplay and press attention lately. She had appeared on Donahue with the head of the authority, a representative of the mayor's office, and Carl Sagan, where she held that despite the deterioration of the atmosphere around Los Angeles, the rights of the individual citizen came first, and that this whole issue centered around "government intrusion into lifestyles," and that if the government allowed cars to be made and sold, it was the car owner's decision as to how many cars she could buy and how often she could drive them and how many people she wanted to be in those cars.
Despite Carl Sagan's sincere plea, she dismissed any social responsibility whatsoever, demanding that the government concentrate on the auto makers rather than car owners. "If people are allowed to buy gas guzzlers, they will, and that's their right," she said, vowing that her group would "fight to the death" to retain their individual rights as citizens of a free country. When asked what kind of car she drove, Mrs. Naomi Weeks said that it was nobody's damn business, but admitted that she and her husband had two cars, a Buick Riviera and a Ford Taurus, and that they would drive them wherever, whenever, and with whomever they wished, and if they added to the amount of smog or even, as Doctor Sagan suggested, the depletion of the ozone layer, well, that was just too bad.
Keith Aarons did not agree with this point of view.
He tugged his Dodgers cap down further over his forehead, adjusted his sunglasses, and stroked his beard. It was a nice evening to be waiting for Mrs. Weeks, he thought. Except for the air, of course, befouled by Mrs. Weeks's Riviera and Taurus. Keith had stolen a Geo, so as not to compound his crime.
The meeting of L.A. Citizens for a Free Society was at 8:00, and Keith knew that Mrs. Weeks would be driving there alone. He also knew that her husband was in La Jolla on business. At 7:30, Keith was out of the car and standing in the cover of some bushes, watching the Weeks garage. Inside, a light went on, and through the garage's narrow windows he saw Mrs. Weeks come out of the kitchen, walk around the Riviera, and get into the passenger seat.
When the automatic garage door started to open so that Mrs. Weeks could back out, Keith squatted, rolled under into the garage, and yanked open the car door. He reached across a surprised Mrs. Weeks, hit the button that made the garage door drop again, then pulled her out of the car, and struck her on the head so that she slumped onto the cement floor.
There was a small carpet remnant by the kitchen door, and this he placed just in front of the left rear tire of the Riviera. Then he removed Mrs. Weeks's glasses and positioned her head on the piece of carpet so that her face filled the space between tire and floor. He pushed a lawn tractor away from the front of the car, got in, put it into drive, and quickly accelerated, making the car lurch forward two feet, feeling the back end rise and drop quickly down as the tire cleared Mrs. Weeks's head.
Keith put the car into park, turned off the ignition, and climbed out. He efficiently felt for a pulse, found none, took the note from his pocket, and pinned it onto Mrs. Weeks's blouse. It read:
Hope this little mishap doesn't intrude too heavily into your lifestyle.
It was signed with what looked like a simple sketch of a hoof print.
It did not occur to Woody that Ronald Reagan had been assassinated in 1982 until he read the phrase, "After the 1982 Reagan assassination," in a magazine article about the current Clinton administration. The words stopped Woody cold. Then he tried to remember, and slowly discovered that he knew all about it, not as something that had happened during his real life, but as that well-remembered dream that had become reality.
He went to the bookcase, looked up Reagan in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and there found confirmation of what his memory told him, that Ronald Reagan had been fatally shot during an appearance before a National Chamber of Commerce meeting. The assassin, who had apparently been hiding behind a decorative wall panel for several days, had never been apprehended, but his identity was known, to a certain degree.
The day of the assassination, both The New York Times and The Washington Post received letters from Pan, an environmental terrorist, claiming responsibility. Since it was the first such message received, arrived only one hour after the killing, and was postmarked two days before, it was considered genuine. All that had to be done was to find Pan.
The problem was that in 1982 law enforcement officials had been looking for Pan for nearly ten years, and, as Woody found when he searched his memory, over ten years later, Pan had still not been found. Surely, Woody thought, he would have remembered such an event.
But only bits and pieces lingered in Woody's mind concerning this Pan, who was known by no other name. He recalled bombings, assassinations, disasters perpetrated by this misty figure, but nothing more.
And then the thought occurred to him that if Pan existed now, but not in the world in which he and his friends had lived previously, then he---and they---must have had something to do with it.
The thought chilled him as he tried to make sense of it. There were four people in this world who had not been there before---Tracy and their two children (and the idea of any or all of them having anything to do with Pan was absurd), and Dale Collini. By no stretch of the imagination could Dale have been responsible for any acts of terrorism, or, for that matter, any unkindness.
Woody closed the encyclopedia volume and leaned back in one of the leather chairs in the den. He looked out the window at the Pacific, and thought about changes. He was still living in Half Moon Bay, but further north on the beach, in a larger house he had admired but not been able to afford. But now, in this different and wonderful and frightening world, he was living there, with Tracy and Peter and Louisa, living there because he had even more money than before. Tracy's years of supporting him with her commercial art had ensured that he needed to make no compromises with his music, and, as a result, the music was stronger, more intense, more brilliant than before.
It was only one of the remarkable changes that had occurred between Woody's other life and this one. The last few days in Half Moon Bay had been filled with marvels. First, of course, had been the reality of being a husband and father, of Peter and Louisa speaking to him so familiarly, hugging him, loving him, being annoyed with him when he "fathered," a practice he recalled only vestigially. And having Tracy by his side was a dream from which he prayed he would never awaken. Only now, after a week had passed, did he feel confident that if he let her out of his sight, she would not vanish.
So today he sat in the den, listening to DAT tapes of his most recent albums. It made him sad to know that Ron Dewey was no longer with his group, but happy that their success had allowed Ron to form his own band. Besides, the sound of Kevin Marcus, the new keyboard man, was more in touch with the musical ideas Woody now had.
He liked the sound. It was hotter, higher, more intense than before. Woody was surprised, thinking that the stability of his family would have made his music more mellow. But instead of softening his voice, his family life had seemed to harshen it. Funny how things changed.
And maybe tragic. What in God's name could this Pan have to do with what had happened that night a week ago? Or over twenty years ago, if you looked at it a certain way.
He got up and walked out onto the deck, where Tracy was sketching the shore. "Honey," he said, "what do you know about Pan?"
She turned and looked at him, and he caught his breath as the wind billowed her hair like a cape behind her. "Pan. He wasn't there . . . where you were before?" He shook his head. "God," she said, as if stunned by the knowledge. "He's been around for years. About the time we got married," she said, taking his hand, "he started with kidnappings and murders. You remember---" she began to say, then shook her head and smiled. "You may not. But around '72 or so he killed the wife of a guy who owned a paint company in Pittsburgh. The note on her body said it was because her husband was a polluter, and it was signed with a hoof print. So the press called him Pan, I guess because Pan was an earth spirit or something."
"And he killed Reagan."
She nodded. "That's what everybody thinks. Supposedly it was because Reagan messed up the Clean Air Act. There was a letter from him, he always sent letters to the papers. Sends letters, I should say. He's still out there."
"But he wasn't before, Tracy," Woody said softly, and the gentle squeeze of her hand told him that she grasped the implications.
"How could what happened to us have any bearing on Pan?"
"I don't know," he said. "But they say that even the smallest act can have great repercussions. Something must have happened that resulted from your and Dale's . . . survival." He thought for a moment. "If Keith had come back with us, I could almost believe that it was him."
"Keith? Keith Pan? He couldn't have, Woody."
"I don't know. He could be violent. At least he had the seeds of violence in him."
"A lot of that was talk."
"The bomb wasn't. And neither was . . ." He trailed off. "What?"
"Well . . . you remember the ROTC jock who got beat up? I think Keith might have done it." He told her about the stockings and gloves he discovered, about the blood on Keith's sleeve.
"It doesn't matter," Tracy said. "Keith died a long time ago."
And Woody heard the door close again, very soft, but very clear.
\*
That evening he looked under "Terrorism" in the Encyclopedia's most recent yearbook, and found that by 1992 the Federal Bureau of Investigation's list of crimes apparently perpetrated by the individual called Pan numbered well over a hundred, from modest monkeywrenching to the most terrible mass murder and sabotage. Though there was not a single description on file, there were several names which Pan was thought to have used, but many of the bearers of those names had died in infancy, others had simply disappeared, and the rest could not be proven to have existed at all. When Woody closed the volume, he noticed his hands were trembling.
An hour later, Woody and Tracy tucked their children into bed, and Woody thought once again that his heart would burst with the love and gratitude he felt. He sat for a while with Tracy, watching The Awful Truth on cable, then excused himself, went down to the basement studio, and called Frank McDonald.
"Things have changed, Frank," he said.
"You're even more famous," Frank said, his tone guarded.
"That's not what I mean. You know about Pan? And Reagan?"
"Things haven't changed that much. Clinton's still the president."
"Don't fuck around, Frank. What did we do? Did we turn something loose here?"
"No, Woody. We didn't do a damn thing. I've almost convinced myself that our lives before all this happened were just a dream. Because this is reality now---the world where Tracy and Dale are alive."
"But Pan---"
"Yeah, I know about Pan, I know about him shooting Reagan. Hell, the first thing I did when I got home was start filling in, seeing if anything major was different." He laughed hollowly. "And there was. But what the hell can I do about it? You can't trace down cause and effect on something like this."
"Why not?" Woody said. "We're dealing with a small group of variables."
"Crap. You're gonna trace Tracy's every last move for the past twenty-some years? Or Dale's? I mean, maybe Tracy pulled her car in front of a complete stranger back in 1970, and that was the last straw. The guy said, 'Fuck this, I'm gonna become the world's greatest environmental terrorist.' And Pan was born."
"That's dumb."
"Sure, it's dumb, but no dumber than you thinking you can discover why Pan wasn't in our other life but is in this one."
"What if it's Keith?"
There was silence on Frank's end for a long time. "Keith didn't get back."
"How do we know that?"
"Because he's dead."
"I didn't tell you this," Woody said, "but when I was waking up . . . when we came back . . . I thought I heard the door close."
"Oh. So Keith got back early and left?" Frank's voice was edged with sarcasm. "Woody, it's not possible. Keith's dead. In this world and the other one. Old newspapers, the documentation, he's dead, Woody. He blew himself up back in '69."
"I guess so."
"Well, know so. Don't think about all this shit, man. I know I didn't believe it at first, but I do now. And thinking about how it happened or what it might've done is gonna do nothing but fuck you up. And I speak as one who knows. I've been fucked up for days."
"You've been fucked up for years," Woody said.
Frank didn't laugh. "I mean it. You think about this thing too much, and it gets really weird and scary, Woody. So do what you told me---accept what's good about it and forget the rest. Leave it alone. Really. Just leave it the hell alone."
\*
He tried. He tried to let it drift away, to lose himself in the alternate reality in which he now irretrievably lived, tried to adjust himself to a world in which things were different. His personal life could not have been better. The children were wonderful, bright, and loving, and Tracy was the wife and friend he had hoped, when he was young, that she would be.
So Woody immersed himself in his family and his music, trying to accept through indifference a world in which Walter Mondale had become president in 1984, only to be defeated in '88 by George Bush, who thus became the first president since Grover Cleveland to serve non-consecutively. Such things, Woody told himself, did not affect him in major ways, and he wrote music that was different, but still his, planned his next album, readied himself for his approaching Japanese and European tours, tried to fill his mind with all these things so that Keith Aarons would find no room there.
And while Woody attempted to banish his dead friend from his mind, that friend, alive, healthy, and universally dangerous, drove into the east Texas town of Bone, looking for death on the wind, seeking the end of humanity, and the salvation of the earth.
Keith Aarons's car, a 1976 Chevy, was as dusty and weathered and authentic-looking as his new, false identity. Creating identities and backgrounds was, along with assassination, demolition, and unauthorized computer entry, one of Keith's most well-honed skills. Since 1970 he had concocted over fifty of them. Today he was, and would be for several months to come, Peter Francis Sullivan, a man with a past so disturbed and brilliant that he trusted he would be irresistible to those who ran the lab.
Bone, Texas, did not look like the kind of place that housed the lab. In fact, Keith thought, it didn't even look like a place named Bone. Bone should have been situated on a barren strip of desert, with steer skulls next to the single dirt road in and out. But instead it nestled on the southeast edge of Davy Crockett National Forest like a patch of moss among stands of pine trees, actually green there under the summer Texas sun. Keith hadn't known there was anything green in Texas. But Bone was more reminiscent of the woods of his own western Pennsylvania than of the other times Keith had been in Texas.
The first had been in 1979, when he had flown into Corpus Christi to sabotage the Tarbick Oil Refinery after one of their tankers spilled 800,000 barrels of crude off the coast of South Carolina. The little he had seen of the land around the city had been sparse and hellish, and the other Texas cities he had done his work in had been little better, so Bone came as a pleasant surprise. The houses were clean and simple, the streets swept clear of debris. It appeared to be simply a well cared for company town. Funny, he thought, how deceptive appearances could be.
Was this little town the place, he wondered, from which the plague could spring, from which the microbes could come charging across the planet slaying all in their path, the microscopic army of Gaia, the earth, with him as commander?
He smiled at his delusions of grandeur. But perhaps they weren't delusions after all. Perhaps his fondest dream could be very real, and Bone, Texas had precisely what he sought.
He parked his car in the town square, bought a copy of The Bone Courier from a machine, and walked into Red's Tavern, where he sat at the bar and ordered a bottle of Lone Star. At that time of day there were only a few patrons, so the place was quiet except for a country song coming from the tinny speaker of the radio above the bar. Keith scanned the want ads of the eight page weekly, and stopped when he noticed the ad for the very tavern in which he sat.
He looked from the paper to the dour, paunchy man behind the bar. The man's doughy cheeks were peppered with freckles, and his hair, though nearly pure white, was still crowned with sandy patches. "You the owner?" Keith asked, a perfect east Texas twang falling softly in the dark room.
"Yep," said the man, pouring himself a shot of Old Grandad and downing it in one jerky motion.
"Still need a cook?"
"Uh-huh."
"What's the hours?"
"Five pee-yem to eleven, ev'ry night but Sunday. Pays fifty cents an hour over the minimum. You cook?"
"Short-order. 'Swhat you need, right?"
Keith wasn't lying. He had learned to be an excellent short order cook as soon as he had realized that there was a shortage of them in nearly every town in the country.
"Wanna start tonight?"
So that easily Keith had a job. He gave Red Bates his false name and false social security number, both of which would, and would have to, stand up to far closer scrutiny than that given them by an aging, alcoholic bar owner.
Within the next hour Keith also had a home. Though Red recommended a boarding house two blocks away, Keith found an apartment for rent on the other side of town. There were too many people in a boarding house, and Keith required privacy.
That evening Keith began work at Red's Tavern. Red's refrigerator and kitchen were well stocked, and business was slow the first few hours, so by seven o'clock Keith had a large kettle of chili bubbling on the stove. Then the crowd hit. Keith fried burgers, made sandwiches, threw french fries into the deep fat fryer, then slid the plates through the opening where Mae and Sally, the two waitresses, grabbed them and whisked them away to the tables. The chili moved slowly at first, but as people tried a taste of their friends' bowls, more and more bowls went out, and by eleven, when the kitchen closed, the pot was empty.
It took Keith a half hour to clean up the kitchen, and at 11:30 he took off his apron, went out, and sat at the bar. A grinning Red set a Lone Star in front of him. "Nice job," the man said. "You're fast. And that chili was damn good."
A few murmurs of agreement came from the bar and the booths, and a blond young man sitting with two other men held up his beer bottle. "You bet it was," he said, "and when you finish that Lone Star, Cookie, I wanta buy you another one!"
Keith nodded agreeably, and raised his own bottle to acknowledge the offer. In five minutes he was sitting next to the young man, whose name was Bob Hastings. His two friends, Al Freeman and Ted Horst, had graying hair and wore rumpled white shirts and ties loosened at the neck. Keith noticed the bulge of pocket calculators in both men's shirt pockets. These older men were neither as friendly nor loquacious as Bob. Horst drank his beer seriously, while Freeman did so guiltily, looking around as if to apologize for every sip. He smiled more often than Horst, but Keith thought it looked as though it made his face hurt.
Bob Hastings made up for their sobriety. He grinned and joked and went on and on about the chili Keith had made. "Damn," he said, "these guys are good cooks, but they never made nothin' to touch your chili."
Keith raised an eyebrow. "You guys cook?"
Freeman cleared his throat. "Just in a manner of speaking. We, uh, work at Goncourt Labs."
"Don't know it," Keith said. "Just new in town."
"Yeah, we all work there," said Bob. "Just got off our tours. A whole week of lazin' around now."
"Tours?"
Freeman spoke again. "We work for two weeks at a time, live there and everything, then have a week off."
"That's pretty weird," Keith said.
"It . . . aids in concentration. So," Freeman went on, abruptly changing the subject, "where are you from, Pete?" He used the name Keith had given them.
Keith told them he hailed from Galveston, but hadn't lived there for many years. When Bob Hastings asked where he'd been recently, he merely responded, "Up north," and smiled bitterly.
"Finally figured out back down here's where I belong."
"Didn't like it, huh?" Bob asked.
"Didn't like seeing other people eatin' my lunch is the truth of the matter." He waved a hand. Don't rush it, he thought. Don't look too anxious. You have time. "No point talkin' about what's done," he said. "Don't wanta sour you fellas' time off. So tell me," he went on, "what's the high school football team here like?"
\*
That night in his apartment, on a mattress that smelled of stale beer, Keith Aarons lay awake in the darkness, writing in the book of his mind.
It was a book that he had started over twenty years before, after he had dedicated his life and begun his work. He knew, then and now, that he could not yet put anything down on paper. But perhaps someday, when people came to their senses, when the earth was pure again, and there was no need for his work, he could write it all down, tell his story, make them all understand, even the parents and the children of the innocents. He could show them how no one had died in vain.
But on paper? No. Words on paper were a confession, and if he one day made a mistake, if his deeds were less than flawlessly planned, if he were anything less than perfect, they would search and find and condemn. His words would burn him. And though he did not fear death itself, for he had seen too many die to think it terrible, he feared that death would claim him before he had completed his work, and that thought was unbearable.
He was not unlike other men. He needed to talk, to communicate, to tell what he had done, what he thought. Above all, he needed to rationalize his actions. So he wrote in his mind, saw his hand write the words, etched them into the convolutions of his brain, remembered all, and would someday write everything down on paper so that the world would not only know what work it had been, but also what pain it had cost him.
A double fire had burned inside him all these years. He had tried to quench the flames of guilt, while at the same time he strove to keep the coals of purpose burning red. It was hard. It had been hard from the very first. And he knew it would be harder still. But he worked on. And wrote on:
May 31, 1993:
They work for the lab. It's remarkable that Bob should have called me over, made it so easy for me. I'll be inside the place within two months. After I fill them in on the background, all I need is an incident.
It took me a long time to find them, but this has to be the place. Goncourt Laboratories. God, how many company files did I have to hack into, how many records until I finally found them, with their incoming shipments and their outgoing products not quite meshing, a little more coming in than going out. A cover, but not a cover for controlled substances.
Not the usual controlled substances, at any rate, but very, very controlled substances. Controlled. Until it's time to release them.
And then they become uncontrollable.
Like influenzas, viruses, AIDS.
It's unlikely, but maybe if I could trace them back far enough, they'd be responsible for the bubonic plague. Probably wanted it to just kill the Jews, and it got out of hand.
Well.
If things got out of hand once, they can get out of hand again.
Woody Robinson continued to do what Frank McDonald had suggested. He put the instrument of death named Pan out of his mind, and concentrated on life.
The plans for the Japanese tour took much of his time, particularly since Michael Lester, his bass player, had been hit with a new strain of summer flu that the doctors claimed needed three weeks to run its course. The Japanese tour began, inconsiderately, in two. So Woody and the others spent much of their time auditioning bassists, finally selecting Ivan Redburn, who was twenty years younger than the rest of the band, but brilliant nonetheless. The plan was for Ivan to stay with them for the entire two weeks in Japan, giving Michael plenty of time to rest up for their late July invasion of Europe.
They rehearsed heavily the last week of June so that Ivan could lock in to the twenty-odd numbers in the repertoire. During a break, Woody flipped through a month-old copy of Newsweek in the studio's waiting area. When he read of Pan's killing of Mrs. Naomi Weeks in L.A., he felt a nauseating tingle in his throat. He finished the article, closed the magazine, looked at his watch, and went to one of the pay phones in the hall. He dialed directory assistance for the 412 area, got the number for Iselin University, called it, and asked for the Alumni Office.
"I'm trying to find the address of an old classmate of mine," he said when a woman came on the line. "His last name is Aarons, first name Keith. Class of '70."
"One moment, please," the woman said officiously, and put Woody on hold. A minute later, she spoke again. "I'm sorry, but the only student by that name is listed as deceased."
"Deceased?" Woody tried to sound surprised. "My God. Does it say when?"
The woman sighed in exasperation. Woody heard the click of fingers on keyboard, and the woman's next words were the date that Woody had etched in his heart, the date that in some other life had seen the death of the girl he loved.
"Thank you," he said, and hung up.
All right then. Keith Aarons was dead, and he had proof of it, not just some warped memories of people who were there in one lifetime or another. It was on paper in this lifetime, here and now. Keith was dead. And if Keith was dead, he couldn't be Pan. And if he wasn't Pan, Woody was not responsible.
When Woody heard the door to the studio creak open, he gasped.
"What's the matter?" Jim Columbo said. "I scare you?"
He made himself laugh. "No . . . the door . . ." He was about to say, It reminded me of another door, a door opening and closing, but he didn't.
"You ready?" Jim said. "You wanted to get through those other two numbers today."
Woody nodded and followed his percussionist back into the studio. Yes, Keith was dead. Everybody said so.
But why had he heard the goddamned door? And why did he hear it still?
When the ROTC building exploded in the fall of 1969, Keith Aarons's first reaction was one of horror, not because the building blew up, but because of the person he knew was inside the building. As pieces of rubble fell all around him like charred, smoking snow, he struggled to keep from vomiting in terror. Then he turned and ran toward where he had parked his car, anxious to get in and drive away, far away from Iselin, somewhere where they would never find him.
But just as he was about to open the door, he stopped, made himself think. If he ran now, revealing that he was still alive, the charges brought against him would put him in jail for more years than he cared to think about. And then he realized that with any luck the remains in the rubble might be thought to be his own.
And he could be a dead man.
The thought aroused him like a young man's glimpse of his naked lover. A dead man. A man with no identity. A man who could be anyone, go anywhere, a man who could never be a fugitive because no one even knew he was alive. Oh Jesus, a dead man.
There was far more to it than his romantic imaginings, but he did not pause to consider the consequences. He opened the door, put the keys in the ignition, slammed it shut, and ran into the night, as he would run into so many other nights.
Now, he thought as he ran down tree lined streets, clinging to the shadows, ran away from where the sirens were starting to scream, now he must be a ghost, unseen, must live as a spirit, with no friends to help him, no one who would know he still lived.
The first night was the worst night, the first week the worst week, the first year the worst year. He learned quickly that it was not as much fun being Zorro as he had thought it would be. In fact, there was no fun in it at all. The only joy he felt in those first few weeks on the run was reading in a discarded newspaper that Keith Aarons was thought to have been killed while causing the destruction of a campus building. When he read that, he somehow felt that everything else would fall into place.
But that first night Keith slept in the woods near the reservoir. It was cold on the ground, and he awoke before dawn and took inventory of what he carried. In his pockets were a Swiss army knife, a comb, and a handful of change. In his wallet were twenty-three dollars and a number of identification cards, including his social security card, all of which he tore into small pieces and buried beneath a layer of dirt and dead leaves.
There was also a photograph of his mother and father, taken at a picnic table his father had built in the back yard. He thought he could have been no more than five when the shot was taken. His father's hair was dark, his physique full, as yet unravaged by black lung disease. His mother was slim and pretty. They smiled out at him in black and white, and he realized with a grief that choked him that they were now as dead to him as he must be to them.
That moment was the closest he ever came to changing his mind, to going back and turning himself in. He cried for a long time, looking at the picture through a haze of tears, knowing that he could not keep it, that he could keep nothing that would in any way connect him to his past.
He could have no parents now. He must be Adam, sans past, sans navel, born of rage and fire and whatever else his God was, and he cried as he tore the photograph into fragments, placed the bits beneath the heel of his boot, and ground them into the dirt. Then he walked south, through the woods, knowing that he would eventually come out on Route 22, twenty miles away from Iselin, where he could hitch a ride into Pittsburgh. He didn't know what he would do when he got there, but it was the nearest city, and you could be anonymous in a city.
There were so many things he would have to do. He knew what they were, but didn't know how to go about doing them. If he wanted to live he would have to work, and he could not work without identification---a new name, a new history, a new social security card. But how were these things done? He remembered reading a book about a spy or assassin or someone getting a name from a tombstone, but then what? He would either have to find out or figure it out on his own.
As he hiked through the woods, the understanding of what he would have to endure became crushing, and he found himself nearly hysterical over the utter hopelessness of his situation. He giggled when he thought that he did not even have a change of underwear, and, when his bowels started to roil, walked for several more miles before defecating, gingerly used maple leaves for toilet paper, and felt uncomfortably unclean as he walked on. It was not romantic or exciting. It was unpleasant, tiring, difficult, and sordid, and it was the life he had chosen.
But as he walked he began to think about other things to drive his mind from his dilemma. He began to think of the war an invisible man could wage, the damage a ghost could do, the problems of catching a shadow. It would take weeks, months, even years. He would have to live in filth, go without so many things he had grown used to, but he could live his dream now, live his dream and give Amerika nightmares.
A trucker heading toward Pittsburgh picked him up on 22, and took him to the outskirts of the city, where he got out and thought about where to go first. He knew the area around the Pitt campus best, but there were people who knew him there, and they would have heard about the ROTC building. So he took a bus to Shadyside, averting his gaze from the other passengers, as if everyone would recognize his face.
Then he thought, what if they did? What if his photograph had been on the TV news, or in the papers? What if they knew he had escaped, knew that it wasn't the shreds of his body that lay amid the ashes?
He felt suddenly conspicuous, as if he were wearing a sign that said, Hippie Fugitive from Justice! , and bowed his head, looked down at the dirty floor of the bus. When it stopped, he exited it furtively, and saw people looking curiously at him through the windows of the bus as it drove away.
Keith was fast to learn a lesson that many fugitives never did, a lesson he remembered. By trying to appear invisible, he had made himself conspicuous. So, by making himself neither more nor less conspicuous than anyone else, he should prove to be invisible, and it was so. He never skulked again.
However, he did hide when it suited his purposes. He did a great deal of hiding that first year, spending several weeks with a commune of sorts who lived in an abandoned factory. They were homeless hippies, most of whom were hooked on heroin. When they asked him his name, he told them Rocket J. Squirrel, and they accepted it without question.
It was far from pleasant living among them, and one night, after making a score for the group's leader, four men ambushed him in an alley, took the drugs, and beat him. The pain in his stomach was terrible, and he went to the emergency ward at the nearest hospital, where he gave a false name. He was examined, told that there would be no permanent damage, and was urged to press charges. When the doctor left the room, Keith was right behind him, slipping out a door into the night.
He did not return to the empty factory, knowing that the best he could hope for was another severe beating for losing the heroin, and the worst his death. Instead he went to the freight yards and leapt into an empty reefer as a train crawled westward. He got off in Cleveland, forty-seven dollars and his new identity hidden in the lining of his jacket where his attackers had missed it.
The identity was far more valuable than the money. The commune had taught him how to become someone else. They had established a string of identities in order to procure more food stamps, and Keith had created his own, using twenty year old newspaper obituaries to find a person who died young enough to leave only a clean slate, on which Keith could write his own story.
He had used the commune's mail drop to write for a copy of the dead child's birth certificate, then made a false U.S. Steel photo I.D. card from one of the dozens of blanks an underground print shop had made up for the commune, along with blank utility letterhead bills. With those three items, Keith was able to acquire a social security card for Richard Scalera, who had died at the age of five in 1951. It was the first identity of many that Keith Aarons would assume.
Now, on a chilly December day, Keith Aarons checked into a transient hotel in Cleveland, where he was charged five dollars a day for a bed, and found a job as a dishwasher. After receiving his first paycheck, he moved into an efficiency apartment over a liquor store near Case Western Reserve. The rent was sixty-five dollars a month including utilities.
Once he was settled, the first thing Keith did was shave his beard and get his hair cut. Then he went to an optician and bought a pair of tortoiseshell frames with clear glass, telling the woman who fit him that he had to have some eye protection in his work. The minor changes worked wonders, and as he looked in the mirror, he knew that no one would ever recognize him as the bearded, long-haired freak from Iselin U. His sole attachment to his past was to order a subscription to the Ebensburg, Pa. weekly newspaper. His parents lived in Colver, a nearby town that survived by mining coal, and this way he thought he could keep track of them.
He kept his political involvement to a minimum, and joined no campus organizations. He did, however, hang around the Case Western student union, got into numerous conversations, and often bought books at a clone of Iselin's Alternative Book Store. It was in an issue of Ramparts that he read of the upcoming Earth Day. The articles interested him, and he bought several other books on ecology and the environment, and was shocked at what he read in them.
By April, when Earth Day was held in dozens of cities around the country, Keith went to the ceremonies at Case, listened to the speeches, and was stirred in a defense of the earth with a passion he had never felt when contemplating the injustices of Vietnam or ROTC on Iselin's campus. The thought germinated in his mind that politics were irrelevant in light of what all countries and parties were doing to the mother of them all. And now that Keith had no mother, Gaia, the earth, was becoming dearer to him.
In the weeks to come, he bought several used Sierra Club paperbacks, and spent a good part of his days burning the color and black and white images into his mind. Then, in June, he read in the Ebensburg paper that his father had died.
Even though his father had been disabled by black lung for the past four years, it came as a shock to Keith. The last time he had seen his father, the doctors had given up hope of a recovery, but had seen no reason why he should not enjoy twenty more years of life. And now he was dead, "after a long illness," and the only mention of his murderers was the phrase, "formerly employed at the Compton Mines."
For it was murder. Keith was sure of that. He had been devastated when his father began to cough up dark shards of lung, and the doctors had given their verdict. The settlement the company and the government had given him had been fair enough for a man who could no longer work. It paid off his disability fairly, his father had thought, and it was from those payments that Keith was able to go to college. But no amount of money was enough for a man's life.
The bastards, Keith thought, reading the obituary over and over again, noticing that the date of the funeral was already past. All right then, if he had not been able to go, he would at least visit his father's grave. He would at least do that.
During the months in which he lived in Cleveland, Keith had procured an Ohio driver's license, and bought a 1959 Chevy, in which he drove to Colver on his next day off, a dark and gloomy Monday. He arrived at the cemetery at 11:00 in the morning. He wore a windbreaker, a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead, and a pair of sunglasses on the off chance that anyone who knew him might see him.
The cemetery was a mile outside of the little town, and bordered by trees on three sides. He drove past it, and took the first right, several hundred yards away, then parked and walked through the trees, entering the cemetery from the rear. He removed his cap and sunglasses, from respect and the darkness of the day.
The grave was where he had expected it to be, next to his paternal grandfather and grandmother, and Keith's older brother who had died in infancy. He had wondered if there was a stone for himself, and there was. It was small and flat, and bore his name, the year he was born, and the year he had supposedly died. Keith wondered what was buried under the thin grass.
His father's grave was bare earth, and a metal marker was stuck in the ground over it. Individual letters and numbers spelled his father's name and the years of birth and death. It said nothing, Keith thought, about the way he had given his life to the mines and the men who owned them, men who hadn't cared enough about their human livestock to give them respirators until it was too late, until the coal dust had settled forever in their weary lungs, to eat away the tissue, chew it up like mold on soggy bread, and steal their breath.
Keith ground his teeth at the thought, then looked up at the sky. Although it was darkened only by rain clouds, from which a thin drizzle fell, it seemed to Keith to be smudged by the hand of man, blackened with his fires and factories, alive with invisible death, death that would not be content with his father alone, but a death that lusted for all men, even its own greedy accomplices.
Then, as thunder began to roll, he knew his life's calling, knew why he had been spared the explosion, been given a new life, a life of which no one was aware, not even---
The sound of a car made him swing his head around. He had not heard it at first, lost in his own imaginings and the growl of the thunder, but now he saw an old black sedan pull off the road and onto the stones of the cemetery lane. For an instant the beam of its headlights swung across him, and he turned his back, not wanting to be seen, furious at having his epiphany interrupted. He started to walk quickly back into the trees, but the somehow familiar sound of the car's brake being set stopped him, and he knew that the black sedan was his father's car, and that only his mother could be driving it.
Although he knew he should run into the trees and not look back, he found himself turning, looking through the darkness of the day at the woman, old before her time, climbing slowly out of the car, looking at her with an uncovered head and a beardless face his mother would remember as that of her child. She carried a mass of daisies in her arms, and as she straightened several fell onto the stones.
Keith involuntarily stepped toward her, his only thought to help her pick them up, and she looked up at the movement and saw him. Her eyes went wide, and the rest of the flowers tumbled from her arms in a cascade of green and white. She followed them, softly slipping down like an empty dress that wind slides off a clothesline.
When he reached her side she was unconscious, her cheek abraded by the stones on which she had fallen. All thoughts of anonymity, invisibility, and the preservation of his false death had left him. He was only a son concerned for his mother, and he lifted her head from the stones, cradled it in his lap, and held it, knowing as he did that if she awoke and saw him again his mission was ended before it had even begun. No one must know he lived, especially not now, when his work was so brilliantly, startlingly defined.
So he kissed her on the forehead, rested his lips there for a long time, hoping that she would feel the impression of them when she awoke, and think that she had seen the ghost of her son, who had appeared to her as when she had loved him most, when he was young, clean-faced, and innocent, when he was still a boy, the ghost of her son, appearing to her at his father's grave, as if to say, my spirit's here too, at peace, and Dad and I will wait for you.
He waited until she began to stir, then set her head down gently, turned, and ran into the woods, where he hid behind trees and watched her as she slowly got to her feet, looked around, put a hand to her mouth, and cried for a long time. Then she gathered up the daisies that had fallen and put them on her husband's grave, where she knelt and prayed. Still crying, she returned to her car. When Keith walked back to his own car, his eyes were pouring tears that did not stop for a long time.
\*
All the way back to Cleveland he thought about his mother's loneliness, his father's death, thought about the greed of the giant corporate machine that had hurled America into Vietnam to protect it not for democracy but for its own interests, thought about the industrialists who didn't care what they did to other people or to the earth they lived on as long as they made money from it, thought about the way the government was in the pocket of such vultures, pictured every businessman as corrupt and grasping, every factory as a source of poison.
It had to stop. And he could help stop it. He could do things that organizations could not. He laughed at the thought. What could they do? They were all nonviolent, and the only true revolutions came through the shedding of blood.
Well, if that was what it took, he could start it. He could take those who sinned against the earth, pass judgment on them, and see to it that his sentence was carried out. Judge, jury, and executioner, just like the action books he had read---Mike Hammer, James Bond, Nick Carter, and all the others.
Terror was the only way. The same tactics some of the blacks were using, and the Weathermen, and, going even farther back, the underground of World War II. Find the perpetrators, the ones who were getting away with it, paying little fines, and then . . . what?
Kidnap them and hold them for ransom, then give the money to environmental groups? No. Too dangerous. The exchange of money, the idea that you've been seen . . . all those things could get you caught. A prisoner is useless, and a martyr, though inspiring, isn't nearly as inspiring as a hero, a man who goes in, does the job, and walks out free and untouched, ready to strike again and again.
All right then, he thought, strike how? If kidnapping was too risky, then what?
Murder?
No. Assassination. Assassination was warranted. Assassination was murder in the name of a cause, and what greater cause could there be than the preservation of humanity?
It would take him many years to find a cause he felt was even greater than that.
For now, he would be a party unto himself, a movement of his own, a one-man radical organization on ecology. But he would not strike yet. Acting before he was both mentally and physically ready would be foolish. First he would learn the things he must know, learn about the earth and how it should be preserved, learn how to seek out the people most responsible for harming it, and, finally, learn how to kill.
For the next year, in three different cities and with as many different identities, he gathered knowledge with persistence and passion. He audited ecology and biochemistry courses at the University of Cincinnati, studied martial arts at storefront dojos, and took a hunter's training course outside of Detroit, where he joined a sportsmen's club and bought several rifles and handguns, which were among the few things he took with him when he returned to Pittsburgh to kidnap and kill Mrs. Thomas Feeley.
His first intention was to kill Mr. Feeley instead, for the CEO and owner of the paint company had approved the dumping of chemicals into the Monongahela River. The dumping had been discovered, and Mr. Feeley's company was fined $25,000, a sum which Feeley paid magnanimously, saying as he left the courthouse that it would have cost him twice that to have disposed of the chemicals legally. In this arrogant statement, environmentalists, and particularly Keith Aarons, saw a tacit promise to dump again, and continue doing so, until it became more economical to follow the letter of the law.
In an attempt to be scrupulously fair, Keith found out everything he could from public sources concerning Mr. Feeley and his company. But everything he read told him that his initial impression had been correct, that Thomas Feeley cared for no one and no thing that was not to the immediate financial benefit of Thomas Feeley and the company he owned. In other words, Thomas Feeley was a greedy slug who, in the name of profit, had declared war on the Earth. Mr. Feeley had not been dissuaded from his course by law or reason, so perhaps, Keith thought, he might be dissuaded from it by death.
He quickly learned, however, that Thomas Feeley was not as easy to get alone as he had hoped. He was surrounded by subordinates at work, and his house, a mini-estate in Fox Chapel, had a security fence around it. Keith could have shot him from a distance, but he wanted something more, wanted for people to know how and why death came to Thomas Feeley's family.
And family, he decided, was the key. Thinking of how much his own father's death must have devastated his mother, he decided to kill Feeley's wife instead.
It was a brutal idea, and he fought against it for several days, but in the end decided that it had to be done. She was living on the profits too. She had not left him when the world learned what he was guilty of, and in such a case, a wife was her husband's support, her approval his carte blanche. Her death might not be totally fair, but neither would it be completely unjust.
So he planned and prepared, watched Mrs. Feeley's comings and goings, saw the days she was alone and unprotected, the times when she could be approached and abducted.
But all his preparation did not prepare him for the reality of violence, and afterwards, the entries in his book of the mind were bitter.
\*
January 14, 1972:
I apologized to her before I killed her. It didn't make it any easier. I told her that her death would mean something, that it would not only teach her husband, but others like him, people who felt they could ignore the laws, pay their fines, and fuck up the earth all they wanted to.
When she knew I was going to kill her, she started to scream. I shouldn't have told her. I don't think I'll ever tell them again. I only wanted to be honest with her. I didn't want her to think that her death would have no meaning. But I should have just killed her before she even knew what was happening. From now on that's what I'll do. That way they won't be scared. They won't feel the pain.
\*
January 18, 1972:
I keep hearing her screams as I held the gun to her head. The strange thing is that she didn't seem as afraid of dying as of the possibility that I was going to do something to her---rape her, I suppose. I wouldn't have done that. That's no part of what I want to do. I feel almost like a priest. I haven't had a girl in over a year now, and I suspect that will continue. I just can't afford to let anyone come that close. I might say something in my sleep.
But it's funny. Now that I know what I need to do, I don't miss sex. It's as if being celibate makes me stronger, more able to concentrate. I plan to have no other interests in life than saving the world. I think that's enough for anyone.
\*
But there were other interests. Keith Aarons acquired two possessions that he took everywhere he went, that remained permanent no matter how often his identities changed. The first was a small, hardcover copy of Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf, which had been his favorite book in college and had remained so; the second was a print by a man named Kowalski, a copy of which had hung in his parents' living room.
It was of a wolf standing on a hill in the snow at night, looking down on several lit cabins. He had been fascinated by it when he was a child, and when he had seen it on the wall of a pawn shop, he bought it immediately. He took little else with him on his frequent moves. Some of his weapons he dismantled and destroyed when certain jobs were completed. Others he left, without fingerprints, at the scene. He did not drag around things. He did not trust things. Things could be traced.
One other interest was classical music. He quickly tired of rock in the early seventies, and found that the music of Beethoven reflected his passion, Bach his desire for precision, Mozart and Haydn his need for order, and Mahler his neuroticism and complexity of moral thought. Upon moving to a new location, he always bought a portable stereo and a number of records, tapes, and later, CDs. He also bought computers.
He had started to study computer languages and programming in 1976, thinking that the information to be derived through modems might be of some benefit. That thought was the single greatest understatement of his life. After a few years of study, he found that the keyboard had become an extension of his mind. Since he was hacking from the beginning, he found it possible to follow the logic of those who were developing ever more complex security systems. Bypassing the systems was difficult, but Keith was patient and purposeful, and devised several programs to automatically enter passwords until the right one was found. When passwords became too long and complex for the program to work, he developed ways to bypass the locks entirely, essentially reconfiguring the security system itself.
He found that smaller financial institutions were relatively easy to invade, so money eventually ceased to be a worry. His procurements were made from many different companies, and no single theft exceeded three figures. Most of the time he withdrew only $500, an amount that could be excused by one faulty autoteller transaction. When laptops became available, he ceased to use his own temporary phone lines, and instead broke into previously surveyed houses in stable, working class suburbs.
During the day, both husband and wife were at work, and he was able to connect his modem to their phone lines and complete several thousand dollars worth of transactions. When he was finished, the only evidence of his presence would be the slightly higher phone bill from calls to numbers of which his victims had no knowledge.
The computer was useful for other jobs as well. It made acquiring identities far easier, and made finding things, even things that were intended never to be found, possible. It was how Keith Aarons had found the lab.
A month had passed since Keith drove into Bone, Texas. In that time he had established Pete Sullivan as Bone's numerouno chili cook, had made the evening crowd far larger at Red's Tavern as a result, and had formed a relationship with Sally, one of the waitresses.
The relationship consisted of her occasionally grabbing his ass as she came into the kitchen, and sleeping with him two or three times a week. Sally was divorced, had no children, and lived in a trailer on the outskirts of Bone. When they slept together, it was always at her place.
It was the kind of relationship Keith liked. There was nothing of the mind in it. She gave him what he needed, and he reciprocated. There was no dominance, only an exchange of pleasures. It was fair, non-sexist, and as much fun as he allowed himself to have. He had long passed the self-imposed state of celibacy that he had thought necessary to revolutionary ideals, and had learned that his fear of talking in his sleep was groundless. He had formed a number of these relationships of sexual convenience over the years, and was grateful that he had had to kill only one of the women in all that time.
Keith had also established a friendship with Bob Hastings. He found out a lot about the man by talking to him, and what he couldn't find out quickly he learned from Sally. Among the information she shared was that, "He got a lot less dick'n he thinks he has . . ."
Although that sentiment might have been shared by Hastings's wife, who had divorced him five years before, Hastings blamed the split on other reasons. "That bitch," he had said during one of their first conversations, shaking his head and lowering his filmy gaze to his glass of Lone Star. "She had no goddam idea of how important my work was . . . hell, is. She wanted to get outta Texas, go up north, be I don't know what. Met her at A&M, I was majoring in bio, wanted to be a dang high school teacher, but then I found about this G.E stuff, and well I just went apeshit." He looked up at Keith. "That's not General Electric, that's---"
"Genetic engineering," Keith said.
"Well, I'll be go to hell, you ain't as dumb as you look, Cookie."
"What about your wife?" Keith said, not wanting to rush things.
Hastings snorted. "Pretty as a speckled pup under a red wagon, and she knew it. She was in the theater department, wanted to be an actress or something, and knew she wasn't gonna do that in Bone. You know what she's doin' now, Pete?"
Keith shook his head.
"She got her teaching certificate, and she's teaching English in some high school in New York state. Directs the senior class play. Married a fuckin' gym teacher. That's what become of her." He finished his beer. "Mae!" he called toward the kitchen. "Gemme another beer---and a bowla red, hold the fartnuts!"
Mae, Red's wife, who was thirty years older than Sally, stuck her head through the window. "Yore mama didn't teach you to talk like that," she said, and her head disappeared.
"Aw, piss on the fire and call in the dogs," Hastings muttered. "Dang women all alike. You ever married, Pete?"
Keith shook his head. "Never had time for it. Always too busy."
"Busy? Doin' what?"
He shrugged. "Studyin'. Workin'."
"You ain't a queer, now?" Hastings asked. Keith felt the question was serious, even though Hastings tried to make it sound like he was joking.
"You go ask Sally about that." Keith shook his head and made his face go grim. "Makes me sick just to think about queers, what they do and all. Gay people." He paused at the word as if it made his mouth hurt. "Don't know what they got to be so gay about, droppin' dead with AIDS every time you turn around." Then he chuckled. "Best damn disease to come along since sickle cell."
"Think so, do ya?" Hastings grinned slyly.
"Finer'n pubic hair on a pope. Not only got the fags, it gets the junkies too. God himself couldn'ta made a better plague on purpose."
Mae tossed a bowl of red on the table. "Pot's almost empty," she told Keith. "And your break's almost over."
"I'm goin'."
"Where's my beer?" Hastings asked.
"Oh, gimme a break," said Mae. "I ain't even had a chance to piss tonight."
"Always wondered how you filled them kegs," Hastings said, then howled at his joke.
During Keith's first week in Bone, Hastings came into Red's Tavern every night, ate chili and burgers, and drank beer. Some nights he came in alone, and other nights with Al Freeman and Ted Horst, the two men Keith had first seen him with. Although they weren't nearly as talkative as Hastings, they were nearly as friendly. They were married and had children, which accounted for their occasional desire to spend an evening at home.
Keith was glad when he could get Bob Hastings alone. Hastings's tongue was freer about his work when his two older friends weren't there. Too, Keith suspected that Hastings was somehow subordinate to Freeman and Horst. Although he joked with them, he always seemed careful not to push things too far.
The last night before Hastings went back on his two week shift, Keith finally managed to work the conversation around to what he (or what Peter Sullivan) had done before he had come back to Texas. He leveraged the talk so that by the time he told Hastings, the younger man was grateful to learn the secret.
"Biochem," Keith said. "I spent a couple years in the service, then went to Cornell when I got back, did my grad work at M.I.T., then worked at Wyeth-Ayerst for eight years, and at Rider till last year."
"You're not funnin' me now."
"God's truth."
"Where'd you learn to cook?"
"How I paid my way through school."
"Well, I'll be switched. You quit at Rider or get fired?"
"Quit."
"Whycome?"
Keith looked away. "Like I said before, somebody ate my lunch, and I didn't like that. Didn't work all these years to have some damn slant walk in and . . ." He shook his head. "What's done's done. Bitchin' don't change the weather."
When Keith looked at Hastings again, the man was looking at him appraisingly, almost coldly. "That why you come to Bone?"
"What, Goncourt? I thought about it maybe. Night after you mentioned G.E., I called personnel out there, but they're not lookin'. Said I could send a resume when I offered to, but that was all. Right in the old round file." He shook his head. "Nah, fuck it anyway. I'm not up for kissin' any Jew asses or nigger asses or Mex asses---"
"Especially with them beaner farts," Hastings said, and laughed.
"Seriously, I couldn't stand it," Keith said. "Big organization like that, gotta be your minority hiring, huh?"
Hastings's face got smug. "Ain't no niggers workin' at Goncourt. No Jews or Mexes neither. Not even to clean the crappers."
"Bullshit."
"What?"
"If that was true, the EEO'd be over you like flies on a runover armadillo."
"Ways of gettin' around that kinda shit."
"Yeah?" Keith let his voice get more intense. "What makes you so different from Rider? They hadda hire these fuckin' niggers and slants, even though they didn't know near as much as us white guys. We carried 'em, and they're the ones that get the credit when somethin' good comes out of our work---'credits to their race' and all that. So what makes Goncourt so damn special?"
Hastings gave a shrug and shook his head, as if he couldn't say any more. Keith wanted to be careful not to push too far too fast, but at the same time he wanted to seem natural, and any natural man would have been curious at this point. "Y'all doin' government work out there?" he said softly, as though not wanting anyone to overhear.
Hastings shook his head again. "I said enough. But send 'em your resume. They won't toss it, you got my word. Now. How 'bout another beer?"
"Might's well," Keith said. "Cause I can't dance and it's too wet to plow."
The next day Bob Hastings went back to Goncourt for two weeks, and Keith Aarons lived the life of a chili cook in a cheap bar. He filled his days with sleep, classical music, and a strict regimen of exercise, and his nights with beef, chilies, and, afterwards, Sally. Though he passed the time with the customers at Red's, he was unable to establish any relationships that told him more about Goncourt Labs. Those who worked there were reluctant to discuss it, and those who didn't knew nothing, though they implied the opposite.
When Keith was alone with silence, his own thoughts assailed him as they never had before. He had been able to think of little else since he heard about the lab.
His was not an altogether solitary life. There were armorers, craftsmen of the underground, forgers of documents, purveyors of forms, and others, many of whom knew far more than what one could read in newspapers. It was from one of these that Keith had acquired the clues that brought him to Bone.
Four years before, and two months after the Valdez incident, Keith had used the services of an underground gunsmith to design and build the weapon with which he later assassinated the president of Exxon. The armorer, who lived in Atlanta, had also been a white supremacist. Sadly, it was hard to find weapons men who were true professionals, in the game for profit alone. Most had causes now, and often causes meant vocality, vocality meant official surveillance. This particular man was one of the most vocal Keith had met.
"So who's this for?" the man, who called himself Brown, had asked Keith when he ordered the weapon. Keith had looked at him coldly and not answered. It was not a question men of sense asked. "Don't blame you for not telling me," Harris said. "Just hope it's a nigger." Keith clenched his jaw. Next to despoilers of the earth, he hated bigots most. They despoiled mankind in their own twisted way.
But he didn't display his loathing to Brown. Instead he hinted that his vendetta was in some way connected to "the efforts of white Christians to liberate themselves from the domination of the mongrel races." The absurd phrase had been music to the gunsmith's ears.
When Keith had checked on him partway through the construction, the man had mentioned the lab, not by name, but as a place where "things were being done, the one place on the earth where everybody saw the danger and was ready to do something about it." When Keith acted sincerely interested, Brown went on, telling him about the virological research being done, genetic engineering to create microbial weapons capable of extinguishing entire races. "In fact," Brown said, "they got a virus you breathe in and out that'll wipe out everybody. The trick is to get it to wipe out the niggers and chinks. But they'll do it, you betcherass."
"I've heard about this before," Keith lied, "but then I heard it was all bullshit, just rumors."
The gunsmith shook his head. "Not rumors. I talked to a guy worked there, and he told me all about it. It's real all right. Real as the American flag."
"How could anything like that stay a secret?"
The gunsmith shrugged. "How do you and me stay secret, pal? There's money there too. Lots of it. Gotta have money today to fight the race wars, do the research. The government gives the blacks money and they fight the whites with it, so thank God that there are white people with money ready to give it to help fight the damn blacks."
"So where is it?" He tried to make it sound as offhand as possible.
"That's what a helluva lot of people'd like to know, isn't it?" The man who called himself Brown smiled, as if he knew but wasn't telling. Keith didn't know if Brown really knew, but he thought he knew more than he was telling. The supremacists were loose-lipped with the generalities of their hatred, but tight with details.
When, a week later, Keith returned to pick up the weapon and pay the second and final installment, he said nothing about the lab. But three hours later, after he had cached his new weapon, he returned to the gunsmith's shop and interrogated him for what further information he might have.
It wasn't much. Brown had met his informant at a white supremacist rally in Florida a year before, but had not learned his name, and knew nothing more about the lab other than that it worked in conjunction with a legitimate chemical laboratory. Brown didn't even know if it was located in the United States.
Keith believed him implicitly. The man's pain threshold was very low, and Keith killed him quickly, before he could come out of shock again. He did not go through the gunsmith's files, for any information Brown had on Keith could not be traced to the next person Keith would become.
A legitimate laboratory. It had not been much to go on, for there were thousands of such facilities in the country. Keith knew of many of them, since among his successful targets had been several executives of companies that had violated DER ordinances. But at least it was something.
Still, he had shuddered at the thought of beginning the search, as he shuddered now, lying in his bed in Bone, Texas, waiting for morning to come. If what the gunsmith had said was true, and if he was able to join the lab and breach the security, then the decision would be his to make, the most important decision that any man had ever made.
For once an airborne virus was free, you could no sooner call it back than you could catch the wind.
The breakthrough came on the 28th of June. At last it was the chance for Keith to indicate in action what he had only said before.
It was the second full week that Keith had spent with Bob Hastings. Tonight Ted Horst and Al Freeman had come in with him, and the four of them were sitting together at a table near the front during one of Keith's breaks. At nine o'clock a black man walked into Red's Tavern, an event that didn't happen very often. Keith had only seen two blacks inside the bar in the four weeks he had worked there, and they had just bought a six-pack to carry out.
It wasn't that black people didn't live in Bone, it was just that they lived in one part of town, and didn't mingle much with the whites. Even in a town as small as Bone, they had their own bars and restaurants, their own churches, their own stores. So to have a large, young, and handsome black man come into Red's Tavern, sit at the bar, and order a beer and a bowl of chili brought a moment of disbelieving silence to the place. Keith felt like rejoicing. The man was big, but he had taken big men before. In a way he hated to do it. The black, sitting there with a quiet arrogance and pride Keith admired, looked like an ebony god among the leather thin and pasty whites. But it was his chance, and he didn't know when he might get another.
"Look at that," said Al Freeman. "You don't see that very often."
"Looks like that guy in the Rocky movies," Ted Horst said. "Not from Bone anyhow. Bone darkies wouldn't come in here and sit."
Bob Hastings made no attempt to conceal his aversion. "Stranger or not, who the fuck does that nigger think he is?"
The words were loud enough for the black man to overhear a few of them, and he turned and looked at the men at the table with a pleasant smile, as if to give them an opportunity to retract, if not the words, then their attitudes.
"He's lookin' at you, Bob," Al Freeman whispered.
"Mmm." Ted Horst nodded. "I think he likes you, Bob. Think he'd like to get into your pants."
"Wouldn't be surprised," Keith said loud enough to carry. "Hear black studs'll stick their dicks near anywhere."
The black man lost his smile, and looked at Keith for a long moment. Keith looked back, expressionless except for a gentle smile that curved the corners of his thin mouth. The black man took a deep breath, and turned his attention back to his chili.
"Damn," Hastings breathed, "I thought he was gonna come after you sure."
"He's a coward," Keith said. "They all are."
"Yeah," Freeman agreed. "Probably thinks we'd all jump him."
Keith shook his head. "No. He's just afraid of me."
Ted Horst snorted. "He's a heavyweight, hoss. You're just a little ol' middleweight."
"Doesn't matter. Even though they're bred for muscle, they're still genetically inferior and they know it. They've got an instinctive fear of us, not the other way around. They recognize their master."
The three men looked at Keith. "That's what you believe, huh?" Ted Horst asked.
"That's what I believe. Believed it enough that it cost me my job." Keith picked up his bottle and filled his beer glass all the way to the brim, then stood up. "Truth's hard to keep alive. But it's impossible to kill. That's known as a paradox, gentlemen."
Walking carefully, he crossed the several feet between their table and the bar until he stood directly behind the black man. He held his glass near the man's shoulder, and cleared his throat. When the man turned, his shoulder bumped the glass, making the liquid spill over the side and onto Keith's left hand. The black man frowned.
"I believe you tumped over my beer, buck," Keith said.
"Sorry. But you were standin' pretty close to me," the man said in a smooth tenor voice.
"All the same."
The black man smiled and sighed. "All right then, I'll buy you another one. What you drinkin'?"
"No," Keith said, "you won't buy me another one. I don't drink with you."
"Look, I said I was sorry, brother, can't we just let it go at---"
"You're not my brother. My mama didn't fuck orangutans."
The only sounds in the bar were the low roar of the refrigeration units and the air conditioner, and the higher pitched sound of the crowd at the Astros game on the TV.
"You know, I'd get down to the nut-cuttin' on you," said the man, "if you didn't have all your white buddies around."
"Don't let them stop you, black boy."
The man's jaw muscles twitched. "You think they wouldn't?"
"Goddam it, Pete," Red Bates said, swatting the bar with a damp rag. "There's to be no fightin' in here. You let that nigger alone now."
"He tumped my beer, Red."
"I don't give a shit, you let him alone or you're fired!"
"Too late, Red. I just quit."
"Pretty brave with all your redneck friends behind you," the black man said.
"They won't touch you. You and me, that's all."
"Yeah, I really believe that."
"You've got the word of a white Aryan."
The black man laughed derisively. "Well, that ain't worth shit."
"You gonna fight, you sorry two-bit sack of ape crap, or you gonna try and talk me to death?"
"When I get done with you, motherfucker, you'll be pissin' your Triple X root beer out your---"
The black man never said which orifice Keith would be using to urinate, for he tried to take Keith by surprise, shooting out a huge right fist at his face.
Keith was ready for it, and slipped the punch, then pushed his own right fist into the man's throat. When he threw up his hands, Keith grasped them, pulled them to either side, and butted the man in the face with his forehead. There was a dull cracking sound when the nose broke, and blood gushed from the nostrils as the black man wheezed for breath.
He seemed to call upon some deep reservoir of strength, and broke Keith's grip, then threw a roundhouse right that grazed Keith's temple, staggering him so that he stepped sideways and bumped into a table at which a pair of old and stringy cowboys sat. They scattered as the table went over, flinging chili bowls and a pitcher of beer onto the wooden floor.
Keith fell into the mess, and looked up in time to see the black man, face dripping, throw himself at him. He rolled onto his back, wincing as a chunk of broken glass dug into his shoulder and his head struck the bar rail.
His opponent's left hand caught Keith's belt, and tried to drag him closer, but Keith grasped the bar rail with both hands, brought up his legs, and kicked hard. One booted foot caught the black man in the shoulder, the other in the face. The man moaned, and his grip relaxed long enough for Keith to pull away, get to his hands and knees, and leap on the man.
As Keith fought, he felt no hatred for his opponent. His soul was at rest. In that quiet place inside him, he was the consummate professional, doing a job, performing yet another act of artifice, establishing his character with every movement, a Nijinsky of violence. At any moment he could have ended it with the proper blow, but the impression he wished to present was that of a man overcome by rage and by the reverse racial injustice of which he felt himself a victim, of one genius redneck sonofabitch with as much guts as brawn.
Keith grasped the black man's head and began to pound it on the sopping boards. At first it made a wet sound because of the beer, then because of the blood. He was glad when he felt hands grasp him and pull him away. Although he would have killed the man if he had had to, it would have complicated matters.
"All right, all right," he heard Al Freeman say, "no more, that's enough. No more now."
"Y'all saw it," Bob Hastings said. "Nigger took the first swing. He just got what was comin' to him."
Keith shook them off and took a deep breath. "I'd appreciate it a whole lot if somebody'd give me a beer."
"Fine," Red said, slamming a full bottle on the bar. "Take it and get on outta here. You just throwed your hat over the windmill, Pete."
"Jesus, Red," said Bob Hastings, "it's just a nigger."
"Yeah, well, niggers can buy lawyers these days, if you ain't noticed. And this is my goddam place, Bob, and it's my ass can get sued."
"Nobody's suing nobody. Hey you," Hastings said, kneeling by the black man's side and shaking him. Hastings's hand moved to the man's hip pocket, and slipped out his wallet. Hastings opened it and looked at the cards there. "Hey, Mr. Harrison. Mark, boy . . ."
The black man moaned, and his eyelids fluttered. "Hey Mark," said Hastings. "You plannin' on suin' anybody around here? You wanta call the cops, press charges?"
Then Hastings leaned down close to Harrison and whispered loud enough that Keith could hear. "You do, you're dead. And so's your whole damn family. We got your name, we got your life."
Harrison looked out of puffy eyes, first at Hastings, then at Keith, who looked back at him as he took a swig from a bottle of Lone Star. "No," Harrison said. "No, I won't press any charges." He pushed himself to his feet, one hand pressed to his still bleeding nose. "There a doctor around here?" he asked.
"There are real fine doctors in Nacogdoches," Al Freeman said. "That's about thirty-five miles from here."
"Should be able to get that far," said one of the stringy cowboys.
The second one finished the thought. "Without bleedin' to death."
"Wait a minute," said Horst, and looked at the black man with what seemed like grudging sympathy. "You got any friends can take you?"
Harrison shook his head angrily, wincing at the pain the motion caused.
"We got a good infirmary out at the lab. Doc out there could look you over, what do you say? Won't cost you a cent."
"Why you bein' a good Samaritan all of a sudden?"
"I don't recall my beating on you in the first place. I can't help what my redneck friends do, but I can help pick up the pieces afterward."
What the hell, Keith wondered, was going on here? He had found Ted Horst to be as savagely bigoted as anyone else from Goncourt. Why was he offering free medical care to a black man, actually taking him out to Goncourt? It didn't make sense, unless
Unless he didn't plan to let him leave.
Horst was talking quietly to Harrison now, and had his hand on his shoulder. Harrison was nodding, and had not shaken off the hand. In another moment, they were walking together toward the front door, and went out into the night.
Keith turned to Hastings and Freeman. "What the hell?" he said. "Why's he takin' the nigger's side?"
Hastings smiled. "Goddam, but Ted's such a good Christian. Lift up your fallen brother and ease his pain. What a helluva guy." He laughed, and Al Freeman smiled enough to lift his chin.
"Don't you mind Ted," Freeman said. "He knows what he's doing." Then he smiled enough to show his teeth. "You tore into that boy pretty good."
"Sure as hell did," said Hastings. "How you feelin'?"
"Nothin' a couple aspirin won't fix," said Keith, downing his beer. "Think I'll go wash off the nigger blood."
When Keith came out of the men's room, he saw Sally leaning over the table of the booth. Hastings was holding her by the wrist. Keith stayed in the shadows and heard the last part of what Hastings was saying.
". . . won't be fit for fun tonight. Why don't you meet me at one, and---"
Sally pulled away, and Keith could see red marks on her white skin. "I'll take my chances, thanks," she said through her teeth, and hurried into the kitchen with the empty bottles, anger puckering her coarse-featured but sensual face.
Keith strode back into the room. When the others saw him, a few started to clap and holler. But Red, behind the bar, made a face, shook his head, and waggled his fingers at Keith as if to tell him that, hero or not, there was no changing his mind, and Keith was out of a job. He didn't blame Red. The older man had been good to him, and had never joined in the verbal minority bashing that was one of the mainstays of conversation at Red's Bar. So Keith nodded his head, gave Red a smile and a shrug, and sat down next to Hastings.
"Looks like you're out of work," Freeman said.
"Looks like."
"Tell you what. You hang around here for a couple weeks, and maybe there'll be something for you at Goncourt. Interested?"
"Hell, yes."
"Afford to stay in Bone a while?"
"I'll manage."
"Good. You'll be hearing."
They had taken the bait. Keith drank his fresh beer and tried not to smile. He thought about the pain, and that helped. Still, it was hard, so hard, not to smile.
And smiling and the taste of the beer made him think of happier times, and while the other two men chatted about barroom fights of the past, Keith thought about college, about Iselin, about the old friends who had saved his life.
The remarkable magic of that night over a month ago had stayed with him, and later, in his apartment, he thought more about his friends. He had quickly realized that if it had not been for their grasping him as they began to fade in front of his eyes twenty-four years before, he would have been dead all those years. But he had lived, and now he knew why. He knew who to thank, and who he could never thank.
Suddenly he was possessed with the urge to know more about them. He knew what had happened to Woody Robinson, but what had happened to Sharla, his lover, and Alan, and the others? There was a way to find out, and he sat down at his computer and modem, and began.
He searched the files of the major credit card companies first, and found Sharla Jackson living in Warrensville Heights, Ohio. Her credit history revealed that she had never been married, and was employed by the Shaker Heights School District. That disappointed him. He had hoped to find her working in the inner city.
Alan Franklin's occupation disappointed him as well. One of the country's largest tobacco companies was named as his employer, and his home was in Alexandria. With those two facts in hand, Keith came to the correct conclusion.
He found that Frank McDonald was living in Atlanta, and assumed that he had married Judy Reinhart, since "Judy R." was listed as spouse. When he traced Judy McDonald, he found that Reinhart was indeed her middle name, and that she had become the owner of the Buckhead Folk Art Gallery. Folk Art, he thought with a frown, and in Buckhead, the yuppiest section of Atlanta. Christ, had everybody sold out?
No. At least there was Woody. Sure, he was probably wealthy, and certainly well known, but his music was his music, and as far as Keith's ears could tell, he had never compromised.
But sellouts or not, he owed all of them his life. And the irony of it was that if he was able to do what he hoped to, it would mean their deaths.
Woody held the note for what seemed like forever, held it, and let it slip softly away until there was only a toneless whisper of breath hovering in the bell of his oboe, an inaudible aura, a wisp of spirit felt rather than heard.
He paused, then drew in breath and nodded, smiled, and everyone uncoiled. There were outbursts of held breath, relaxed laughs, murmurs of approval, and Ivan Redburn ripped out a funky run on his bass, drawing more laughs from the group of friends and lovers.
There was a click, and the engineer's disembodied voice filled the studio. "That was great, Woody," it said with an unmistakably Japanese accent. "Really perfect. You want 'nother take?"
Woody shook his head. "Let's take ten, Idiro, and then we'll listen to the playback."
Woody hadn't intended to record in Japan, especially without the recuperating Michael Lester on bass, but the group had been so together, the sound so tight and so right, that he knew they had to preserve it in a studio. So they booked Ideko Studios to record "Tracy's Song," the tune he had written the previous month.
It had proven to be the quintessence of what Woody wanted to do with his music. It was highly melodic, but unpredictably so, with sophisticated harmonies and complex rhythms. Best of all, it had bite. There was nothing of the meandering mazes of new age about it. It had a destination and it went there, speaking of the past while looking toward the future.
Tracy had been visible in the theatre of Woody's mind every instant he worked on the piece, and when he finished it he knew he had captured both a certain time and timelessness. She cried when he first played it for her on his oboe, unaccompanied by the rest of the group. When he played it for Jim Columbo, Kevin Marcus, and the then-healthy Michael Lester, they only shook their heads in admiration, then began to improvise their parts tentatively, as if wary of breaking something priceless with an underthought phrase, an unconsidered harmony.
The Japanese audiences, before whom it was premiered, adored it, and went far beyond their usual response of polite applause by standing and calling for it to be repeated at most of the concerts, a communal reaction the native promoter had never before seen from his countrymen. It was only one of many kindnesses the Japanese audiences, and everyone with whom Woody, Tracy, and their party came in contact, showed them. It was, Woody thought, a refreshing change from America, where fans seemed to feel that, along with sharing their music, performers should share their private lives as well. But here there was respect, courtesy, and concern, as if the Japanese hosts would make sure that their guests' needs were met before thinking of their own.
One of the few westerners Woody knew who had that generous attitude was Dale Collini. And now, as Woody sat next to a beaming Tracy and accepted a cup of tea from her, he thought of Dale, and hoped that he was as happy with Eddie Phelps as Woody was with Tracy.
\*
He was. Dale Collini had what he had always considered to be the perfect relationship. His lover was also his best friend, and they had lived together and been faithful to each other for seventeen years.
He and Eddie lived in a small but adequate apartment filled with things they loved, reminders of their trips abroad, and their musical and theatrical pasts. Their circle of friends was close-knit, and, although veiled with occasional sorrow due to AIDS deaths, generally happy. They were relatively secure. Eddie's job as a church organist was steady, and provided him with health coverage, insurance, and a retirement fund, while Dale had for the past eight years been working for a company that did marketing surveys. His schedule was delightfully flexible, allowing him to take off at odd times for auditions and rehearsals. The acting career that he had chosen in the mid-seventies had never flourished, but he had become well enough known in non-Equity circles to keep himself busy and happy, doing six weeks of stock every summer in Connecticut and workshops in the city the rest of the time.
The past that he remembered vividly and Eddie recalled only dimly had been happy and free from pain. And that was why the doctor's news came as such a shock, far more painful than the tests he had finally finished undergoing. Doctor Thomas Tregaski's clientele consisted mostly of gay men, so it was with practiced ease and studied sympathy that he gave Dale the sentence.
"It's not good news," he said across the desk.
Dale thought he would say it first, that by beating the doctor to the word he would have some small triumph even in the face of death. "Is it AIDS?" he said.
Tregaski shook his head. "No, not AIDS. You're not carrying HIV, and neither is Eddie."
Relief quieted the fear for a moment. He didn't think he could have handled knowing that he had AIDS. He knew that he had been faithful, and the alternative would have been that Eddie had not been. "So what is it, Tom?"
"I'm sorry, Dale, but it's leukemia. Acute myeloblastic. Normally I'd offer more hope. It's a treatable disease. But I've never seen it moving as quickly before." He shook his head, and puzzlement replaced the official look of concern. "It's just racing through your body. The lymph is very swollen, as you know. And it's . . ." He shrugged. "It's everywhere."
"Almost," said Dale, "as if it's making up for lost time?" Tregaski looked at him oddly. "Almost."
The doctor went on to tell Dale that treatment would be complicated, expensive, and time consuming, and that there was less than a chance in a hundred it would do more than minimally slow the cancer's progression.
"So off the record, Tom," Dale said, "if you were me . . . ?"
"I'd say the hell with it and enjoy the time I have left."
"And that is?"
Tregaski shrugged. "Half a year maybe."
"Six months."
"Half a year sounds longer."
Dale thought about how lonely Eddie would be, hoped that if he took another lover it would be one as monogamous as they both had been. "When will I begin . . . how should I put it, my final decline?"
"Well, you'll lose some weight, but with luck you shouldn't be uncomfortable until the last few weeks. You'll know when it happens. You'll have to come into the hospital then."
"No I won't."
'The pain will be considerable, Dale. You'll want to. The drugs can make it pretty easy at the end."
"All right. But there's no shame in wanting to escape pain." The doctor shook his head. "I'm sorry, I really am. I've never gotten used to giving news like this, and God knows I've had the practice." He smiled thinly. "It's probably cold comfort, but I've seen so many people die in the past few years. You look at it in one way, you've been lucky, you and Eddie."
Anger roiled inside Dale. "No, Tom," he said. "We haven't been lucky. We've been faithful."
He walked the thirty blocks that lay between the doctor's office and his and Eddie's apartment. He wanted the time to be alone and think.
Making up for lost time. Maybe that was exactly what was happening. Maybe he should have died seventeen years before, as he had in that time he only vaguely recalled---the lassitude that had overcome him, the trip to the hospital in the ambulance, the poking and prodding, and, so quickly, the fading away, what must have been dying, dying so young and so ignorant, before he had even known what life and he were.
And now restored, if what Eddie and Woody and the others said was true. Restored, like Tracy, into a world in which he had never died, a world in which those who had restored him were alien, a world that was the same as their old one, except for three things---the presence of Dale, the presence of Tracy, and the presence of Pan.
Dale had been astounded when Eddie told him of Pan's absence in the life he had lived without Dale. Dale's memory had contained the reality of Pan for over twenty years, and to know that Eddie's did not was disturbing. They were both quick to come to the conclusion that either Tracy or Dale's survival had somehow caused the existence of the terrorist. But then Eddie had pointed something out.
"What if," he said, "we're not the only ones who've gone through something like this? What if other people have too, and haven't said anything for the same reason we haven't---that people would think they were crazy? I mean, mightn't this world, this life, this . . . track that we're in now be the result, not only of us bringing you and Tracy back, but of somebody else doing the same thing, independent of what we did?"
"It's . . . possible," Dale had said, and he supposed it was, though highly improbable. The odds of what happened to them happening to other people was too great to be considered. People simply didn't walk through time every day as through doorways, bringing their dead friends along with them as easily as picking up the kids at day care. In fact, Dale wasn't so sure it all hadn't been a mass hallucination. That was certainly the simplest explanation.
But now here was this death sentence hanging over him, the same fatal malady that eight people vividly recalled (and he dimly remembered) had killed him years before. Had it lain in wait all this time, remained dormant for the twenty years in which it could not kill him because he had not existed? And if so, were all his memories fabrications, constructs devised in order to rationalize the gap in his existence? Then what would happen to Tracy? Would some explosion seek her out so that a dishonest fate could be expiated?
It was all so confusing, so enigmatic. It had shaken his concepts of life and time and space, had even undermined his thoughts of God. What was reality? And was there a being called God that was a part of it? Dale had been raised staunch Roman Catholic, and had kept the faith all his life, going to Mass twice a week. But since the knowledge had come to him that he had lived two different lives, his attendance had tapered off. If there were indeed two tracks of existence in which he lived, did God exist in both? And if he did, didn't that oddly make God less than he was? Didn't it show that there was something more than just God at work here? Or did it, on the contrary, prove the infinite nature of God, world without end and worlds without end? Whatever the answer, it was nothing that he could talk about to his priest. Father Jim would think him mad.
But crisis of faith or not, right now Dale Collini felt the need for the church and its assurances of spiritual, if not temporal, constancy. When he reached St. Bartholomew's, he entered its welcoming darkness, knelt near the rear of the chapel, and prayed for a long time. When he walked out again into the sunshine, he had decided that he would not tell Eddie about his sickness, for it would only add cruelty to unfairness. Eddie did not have the strong memories of their shared past that Dale did, so Dale decided to make the time they had left together as happy and free of care as possible. That could happen only if Eddie remained ignorant of the inevitable. There would be enough time, at the end, to say goodbye and speak of love and weep. But for now, they would be happy.
That night, while Eddie was sleeping, Dale kept his arm around him and thought long into the night.
And very early the following morning, Keith Aarons, his arm around Sally, lay awake thinking about how hard it was to wait.
He had done a lot of waiting in his life, waiting for conditions to be right, waiting for the moment when the gun could speak, the knife could strike. His life was a series of peaks and valleys, periods of inaction punctuated by mighty climaxes that shook countries, awed populaces. Still, he was never bored. Even sitting for four days in darkness, waiting for Reagan, he had not been bored, for he had written and read and written again on that endless ream of convolutions, the parchment of his brain, the book of his mind.
He read it now, as the sun pressed its first, insistent rays around the edge of the trailer's curtains. He had been reading it a great deal in the two weeks he had been waiting to hear from Goncourt. When Sally was at Red's, he went to his apartment and continued to absorb the contents of the technical books and journals he had brought to Bone. But that information was now loaded within his mind as tightly as a full clip in an automatic pistol. When he grew bored, he again hacked into computer networks, learning more about the friends who had returned him to life, and what they were doing with their own lives.
But there was little else to do that was constructive except to read his book again, read it and thus impress it even more firmly into his brain.
He enjoyed the looking back. Since the time was coming when it would end, he found it pleasant to gaze backwards upon a life well lived, years full of noble goals finally coming to ultimate fruition.
The beginning had been difficult. After the assassination of Mrs. Thomas Feeley, he had almost changed his mind about his vocation. The reaction to his statement left with the body had been unthinking and unreasoned. The Pittsburgh press named him Pan as a result of the symbol with which he had signed the note, and both the media and the authorities assailed him as the worst kind of murderer, playing up the two young children left motherless. Keith was appalled to see that there was not a word about the lives of entire generations to come who would be left far worse than motherless by the depredations of Thomas Feeley and his kind. They would be left landless, airless, waterless, and there was no double indemnity life insurance to assure their survival.
He had not expected to be hailed as an ecological Robin Hood, but neither had he expected the universal outcry against him as a merciless slayer. The papers had not even printed his message, but had described it in the words of a police psychiatrist as "the ravings of a violent paranoid revolutionary with a persecution complex, extremely dangerous and likely to strike again."
What Keith's note had said was:
This act grieves me, but it is necessary. There must be no safety for those who dishonor the earth, or for their families. As they would kill without thinking let them be killed. It is no longer safe to defile Gaia.
And he signed it with the symbol that was taken to be a hoof print, and for which he was named Pan.
What was even more disheartening than the response of the public was the fact that the assassination seemed to have no effect on either Thomas Feeley or his associates. Six months later Feeley was taken back into court, where he pleaded guilty on charges of pollution, and paid his fine. This time, however, he made no comments to the press as he left the courtroom.
Slowly, Keith Aarons grew to realize that people like Thomas Feeley could not do what they did if society---the courts, the government, and the people who approved and elected those leaders---did not allow them to.
\*
December 19, 1972:
Everyone is guilty. Everyone who stands by and allows these things to happen must bear the guilt.
But some people are more guilty than others.
The store owners who stock the paint that Thomas Feeley's company produces, the clerks who sell it, even the people who use it, must share in the guilt. The executives in Detroit who decide to make big cars that devour the world's fossil fuel and spew out carbon dioxide are aided and abetted by the people who buy those cars and drive them.
Attacking those who actively pollute---people like Feeley and his family---does nothing to change the attitudes of the typical consumer. But what if there was a risk to the consumer himself, or to those just further up the chain, the individual auto worker or car owner, the salesman, the clerk, the delivery boy?
What if no one was safe?
What if the most tenuous supportive connection between the citizen and the despoiler was punished with death, and what if people were made aware of that, given fair warning?
Then it wouldn't take long for things to stop.
Look at it this way---if you have a bag with a thousand pieces of candy, and just one of those pieces is filled with cyanide and will kill you a few seconds after you eat it, will you have a piece of candy? I don't think so. So if you are one of a thousand store owners who stock a certain brand of paint, and one of those store owners has been assassinated for that very thing, and the person who did it is still at large, will you continue to stock that paint?
That remains to be seen. I don't think people are that stupid, but I might be wrong. They may like the candy so much that they'll just keep eating.
There's only one way to find out.
\*
There was another, more practical reason for Keith Aarons to lower his sights to the merchant and working class, and that was that the anonymous and weak were far more accessible targets than the well-known and powerful. However, he was not willing to admit that to himself until much later, when he decided that the pawns were victims rather than malefactors, that their collaboration was born of ignorance, not greed, that the only people truly worth killing were the vultures who profited directly and obscenely from their crimes.
These future revelations did not come, however, until some time after he killed John Reyminster.
\*
February 8, 1973:
I tried to keep in mind what the Duke yells at the end of the film of Romeo and Juliet: "All are punished!" to remember that the man was guilty. But it really didn't work.
I pitied him. I almost spared him, but it had gone too far by then. He saw my face, he could have identified me. But it was so hard to do. I never used a knife before today. It's quiet, but that's all I can say for it. I thought he would die quickly, but it must have struck bone. He howled so, even through the gag, that I had to pull it out and cut his throat right away, and that was very unpleasant, with all the blood. And even then he didn't die right away. It's not at all like the movies, even the Peckinpahs. There's nothing really pretty about it. I guess it's what being a butcher must be like, killing an animal because it's your job.
I had to push back the feelings, shut out the pity. I left him in the alley, the note pinned to his chest. But as I was walking back to where I parked my car, I passed someone on the street who stopped and said something to me. I kept going, of course, didn't turn back and look at her, didn't want her to see my face any more than she had, and I only glimpsed her face for a second, but I know, damn it, I know, that I've seen her before, probably at Iselin, and I think she must have recognized me.
Thank God I'm dead.
\*
From February of 1973 through August of 1975, Keith Aarons killed fourteen people throughout the United States. With one exception, he left notes explaining the dead person's transgressions. The texts of these notes were never published in the papers or read over the air. All the public knew about Keith's motives was what the police allowed them to know, that the terrorist named Pan was responsible, and that the murders were committed due to some warped and misplaced sense of ecological justice on the part of the killer.
In early 1975, Keith sent a manifesto to Rolling Stone, where it was printed only in part. Rolling Stone's once angrily radical pages now seemed quaint, and he was considered a villain there as well.
There were no changes in environmental policy.
After giving it a great deal of thought, and reading several columns in counterculture magazines and newspapers, Keith reluctantly came to the conclusion that the assassinations were too random to be seen as threatening, and thus be effective. By the end of 1975, he had decided to put an end to these low-scale, symbolic killings, but not to his goal.
\*
December 29, 1975:
I may have done more harm than good. The public looks more negatively upon environmentalists now because of my actions. So be it. The ineffectiveness of these groups is remarkable. Those who try to effect change through minor pressure will bring about none. The only language polluters understand is violence. I have not changed my mind on that subject, and I never will. I intend to give them violence the likes of which they've never seen.
One thing that my assassinations of the past few years have done is inure me to destruction. I am ruthless now, for ruthlessness is necessary when you kill men and women simply because of the brand of products they stock in their stores. I killed people solely for that reason, and I looked into their faces as they died and knew that they had no understanding of their guilt or my motives, but I killed them anyway. I felt guilt, but I suppressed it. I cannot afford emotion. I have never enjoyed killing, but it has been necessary. Those deaths by example could save thousands, perhaps millions of lives.
And the missions have produced in me more than ruthlessness. They have given me confidence, knowledge that I can be a ghost, a phantom, the dead man I am, moving unknown among people, striking, moving on unseen. No one has described me, no one has seen me except for that first time, and that error on my part has long since been corrected.
Now, with this new confidence, I feel as though I can proceed to larger targets, both in terms of size and fame. I can vanish, reappear, wait, strike. And all of it alone, with no one to betray me. Only the machines, and they remain silent. There were never more faithful co-conspirators.
\*
Even before the spate of bombings for which he was responsible from 1976 to 1979, Keith Aarons had begun to study computer language. He continued his research into biochemistry out of interest in the ways the science both conceivably endangered and gave promise to the environment. But biochemistry remained a hobby, while computer science became an indispensible part of his vocation.
He had been quick to see that those who controlled computers and the vast networks that tied one to another could control many things, such as money, knowledge, power. Through textbooks and several audited university courses, he learned the basic languages quickly, and read everything he could find about protection devices. What money he needed came to him over the silicon webs, and so, after a while, did identities.
By cross-indexing a number of pertinent factors from data sources such as the I.R.S., credit companies, and employer records, Keith was able to find single, unattached men in solitary jobs whose identities he could commandeer for as long as he needed them. Physical attributes were of little consequence. Although Keith was able to change his appearance to some extent, he was also able to change the data to correspond to his own. Among those changes were eye and hair color, and often weight. Keith could gain as much as thirty pounds and lose as much as fifteen off his normal weight of 180, if it was necessary.
What was nearly always necessary was the death of the man whose identity Keith assumed. The ideal candidate was a man about to move from one city to another, whose disappearance would cause little concern. It was remarkable how many people fit Keith's requirements, and from 1976, when he began these computerized identity switches, to the time he drove into Bone, Texas, he had become 34 people, of whom he had killed 31. Of the others, two had been heavily in debt and had disappeared, undoubtedly to assume their own new identities, while the third had committed suicide. Keith found and hid the body, not caring that the man's medical history revealed AIDS. He needed to become him only long enough to assassinate two people.
Explosives were his modus operandi for three years, and by 1979 he had destroyed six corporate headquarters and seventeen branch offices of offending corporations. At first he had used only homemade explosives, creating crude but powerful plastique from bleach, salt, aspirin, and other household items, as well as gelatine explosive from antifreeze. But eventually, after several of his improvised blasting caps failed to detonate the explosives, he made contacts through several different identities to purchase professionally manufactured products in what remained of the underground.
Because terror was his chosen weapon, he set the charges to go off when employees and chief executives were in the buildings. 148 people died in the 23 explosions. Many more were injured or maimed. Keith sent out press releases that arrived in the mail the same day as the explosions occurred, and signed them with his usual symbol. Only portions of the messages were ever printed.
In their September 18, 1978 issue, Time did a cover story on Pan, in which they discussed some of the identities he had used and discarded, and described him from his past identities as "a white male in his late twenties or early thirties, between 5'9" and 6'2" and weighing from 165 to 205 pounds. Color of eyes and hair unknown. As is apparent," Time dryly stated, "the list of suspects is a long one."
But bombings, for all their destructive effect, were impersonal, and by 1979 Keith had decided to go back to one on one.
\*
November 4, 1979:
I'm hurting them, but too slowly. They've had insurance up to now to pay for the damages, and there are always people willing to go to work to replace the ones who are killed. But now their liability insurance is devastating enough to cut into their profits. My idea of sending a list of environmentally offending corporations to the insurance companies was a stroke of genius. If they think that Pan might be planting a little bomb in their insured's headquarters, they send the rates through the roof before I send their employees there. Still, things don't seem to be improving all that much. But God only knows what they might be like if I never did a thing, if I had stayed in college and been a good boy. We might be breathing our air in lumps.
But now it's time for more. Now it's time for personalities. America is the home, after all, of the cult of personality. Time to begin to use that. So far the people who have died have been relatively faceless. Who knows executive vice-presidents in charge of production? Can anyone name a single corporation comptroller? I doubt it. They're like the poor, stupid drones I used to assassinate.
Not assassinate, no. Murder is more like it, although murder would seem to suggest an act done in anger, and I felt no more anger killing them than a butcher does slaughtering sheep. I thought it was necessary, and I suppose it was. It was something that I had to go through in order to bring me to the bombings, and the bombings were something I had to go through to bring me to this next plateau of true assassinations, statements of violence against the individuals most responsible, bringing me right back to where I was with long-departed Mrs. Feeley.
In retrospect, I was very lucky to get away with that woman's death. I was so stupid then that it would have been only fair if I'd have gotten caught. I knew nothing, neither about people nor the system. I was ignorant of survival as well.
But no longer. I feel as though I can go anywhere, do anything, and come out alive and unknown.
And now I shall prove it.
Love Canal. A tragedy. A monstrous act that will cause cancer deaths in children. A shameful crime. A corporate crime. Who is responsible? Occidental Petroleum.
Who is the head of Occidental Petroleum?
Armand Hammer.
His company murders children. He is responsible. So he pays. Not with money, but with his life.
I am in their system as snugly as anything can be. I know where he goes, how he goes, and with whom. Next month. New York City. Olivieri's Restaurant.
\*
The man was old, and the heavy food he had for lunch had slowed him considerably. Satiated, he walked out of the restaurant with an associate on his right and two bodyguards flanking them, heading for the open door of the limousine.
He scarcely noticed the man in the top coat, hat, and dark glasses as he briskly walked up to the bodyguard on his left, and only looked at him when he heard the first of three dull reports that the silenced pistol made. Less than three seconds later, the man in the dark glasses was next to him, wrapping an arm around his head, pulling it back, and the old man felt something very cold and very hot slide across his neck, such a strange sensation that he felt no pain when he fell onto the pavement. He realized as he lay there that the man must have cut his throat, although he felt no pain, no pain at all, just a numbing chill that seemed to be coming from his throat up and around on all sides, as though someone was pulling an icy plastic bag over his head from beneath. A great many things passed through his mind. He realized that the sounds he had heard must have been his associate and his bodyguards being shot, and that the man who shot them must have then cut his throat with something, and he wished that his glasses had not fallen off so that he could see who it was so that he could describe him when the police asked him, but then the man was a blur leaning down over him, and he said in a voice that sounded like a waterfall, "Love Canal," said it right into his ear, and he would have to remember to tell the police that he said that when they asked him about it.
\*
December 6, 1979:
It went just as smoothly as I knew it would. I took out the three in as many seconds, and then his throat opened like a pound of warm butter. I stuffed the note in his pocket and walked away. People saw me, but they saw only a hat, a nose, and a coat. They saw as much as they ever see. They only stood and watched. That seems to be what people do. That's part of the problem. People only stand and watch.
\*
It was the biggest coup of Keith Aarons's career. He had sent the letters to the papers and television stations, and this time they printed them in full. Keith was pleased to see that some members of the counterculture press did not categorically condemn his actions. Indeed, one magazine with circulation in five figures ran a cover story, "PANdemonium---Backlash from the Oppressed," with an illustration of the late Armand Hammer with his neck in a guillotine. Behind him, dressed as French aristocracy, was a long line of identifiable caricatures of corporate and political leaders identified by the magazine as anti-environment. Keith bought the magazine and read the article, then, pleased, threw it away, keeping it in his memory.
In all the media, the act was hailed as the "return of Pan," as if he had been away. The bombings had apparently become too commonplace, and Keith knew that he had been correct in returning to assassination. This one death netted him more publicity than his entire previous body of terrorist work. He felt like a writer who achieved his first bestseller, or a film director who finally made the movie that captures both the critics and the public. He was, at long last, successful.
But with the success came increased investigation, and increased protection of his targets. Nevertheless, he persisted, and made two kills in 1980, two more the following year, and in 1982 began the year by shooting James Watt, the Secretary of the Interior, with a .300 Weatherby Magnum. The bullet did not kill Watt, as Keith had intended. He had gone for a head shot, but instead it struck low, just above the sternum, passing through the neck and shattering a vertebrae. Instead of being killed, Watt was only paralyzed, which Keith thought was still an effective outcome.
Later that year, after President Reagan gutted the Clean Air act, Keith decided to act in the tradition of John Wilkes Booth, Charles Guiteau, Leon Czolgosz, and possibly Lee Harvey Oswald. However, Keith had determined that he would not join those four assassins in capture or death.
Knowing through his computer taps that the Secret Service would begin surveillance on the Houston Convention Center three days before Reagan spoke to the annual meeting of the National Chamber of Commerce there, Keith established himself in the building four days ahead of the speech. He first committed the computerized blueprints of the building to memory, then entered openly, taking in a briefcase the weapon, food, heavy plastic bags for urine and stool, and toilet paper. He had eaten little the previous days, and had purged himself with diuretics and enemas the night before.
Unobserved by anyone, he went to the basement and entered the labyrinth of heating ducts, where he removed the dark suit, necktie, and white shirt he was wearing, folded them neatly, donned thin latex gloves, and made his way to the place he had chosen.
This was inside a large, decorative wall fixture that disguised air conditioning baffles. The space through which he would have to fire was less than an inch wide, but it would be enough.
So he sat and waited in darkness for four days, sleeping, eating infrequently, and defecating and urinating into plastic bags so that he would leave no physical residue behind for blood typing. He read, reread, and wrote in his inner book. Finally the day came, and he heard footsteps moving near him, on the other side of panels, but no one came into the space where he was, no lights blinked on. He placed the sealed bags of his stool and urine into the briefcase, closed the separator, and put his folded suit, shirt, and tie on the other side. Then he waited for the hall to fill, the meeting to begin.
When it did, he cleared his mind of everything except the weapon and the target. He heard only the words of the speakers that presaged the coming of the president, and when the old man (old men, he allowed himself to think, always old men with nothing to lose) came onto the stage, he continued to wait, to wait until the old man said something that would make them all applaud, fill the space with sound.
It was an explosive shell. He did not need the firepower, for a bullet in the brain was deadly, explosive or not. But this way it would be much more difficult to trace the trajectory. One could draw no lines through a head blown to pieces. He nearly chuckled at the thought that shooting the old man in the brain could be the least harmful place, but realized instantly that now was not the time for jokes. So he took a deep breath, centered his attention once more on the target, and waited for agreeable words.
They came. The applause began and swelled as he breathed and released halfway, holding his arms as steady and inexorably as death, and squeezed the trigger. The silencer did not betray him. Indeed, even he scarcely heard the dull pop. No one below did, nor did secret service agents in the ceiling, crouching among the cove lights.
To those in the audience of thousands, it was as if a bomb had gone off inside the president's head with no other sound than the wet and crackling roar of skin and bone and brain tearing apart. The chunky cloud hung in the air for a moment, then fell like heavy rain. The half-headless body stood at the podium for seconds longer, as if not quite knowing how to respond to this unexpected occurrence for which it had not been coached. Then it too fell, as the applause continued automatically, finally becoming lost and dying in the shouts and screams and the shriek of feedback from the public address system.
Keith smiled. But there was no time to congratulate himself. He set down the weapon, which he had rubbed free of fingerprints. Then he picked up a flashlight and his second weapon, a silenced automatic pistol, closed the briefcase, and went through the duct work until he came to a small cul-de-sac where he lay in the dark and began to wait once more.
Once they found the perch from which he had fired, a dog could track him, but he knew they would not bring in dogs until the agents had done a preliminary search. So all he had to do was wait. Wait and be calm and cool and fast, before they could call for backup. Two head shots. He could not let them fire their own pistols, or scream.
It was a risk, the greatest risk he had taken. But it was worth it. Even if he was caught, it would be worth it. But he would rather be dead than caught. Dead, he could be a martyr.
It was twenty minutes before he heard them. He set the flashlight on the floor so it that illuminated the area from which they would come, then swung himself up onto a concrete supporting wall, wedging himself into a foot and a half high space. Sheltered by darkness, he saw the first man in the outskirts of the flashlight's beam.
"Flashlight," the first man said.
"Careful. He could still be there," said the second.
"Cover me." The first moved forward steadily, his weapon drawn. In the haze of light, Keith saw the close-cropped hair of the second, twenty yards away. He shot him in the head. The agent in front dropped immediately, raising his gun, but Keith's second shot dug into his right eye, and the weapon clattered on the concrete without firing.
Keith jumped down from the wall, left his pistol on the floor, grabbed the light, and examined the corpses. The advance man was more Keith's size, but the cover man was closer to him in appearance. He opened his briefcase, a duplicate of those used by the service, and quickly donned his shirt, tie, and suit. Then he picked up the briefcase and walked over to the cover man.
From the dead man's jacket pocket, Keith removed his credentials and glanced at them. Crenshaw, David. All right then, for the next five or ten or however many minutes it took, he would be David Crenshaw, just as, for the past dozen years, he was whoever he had to be.
\*
November 3, 1982:
It shouldn't have been that easy to get out of the building, but it was. Sometimes I think that destiny is with me, that I'm fated to make changes even greater than those I've already made. It was as though God was walking with me, striding along as though I knew exactly where the assassin was and what to do about it, and that every time I held up my credentials opposition just melted away. But everyone was in such a state of panic, even the agents, that when they saw a person they thought was one of their own, they just nodded and went on with what they were doing, leaving me to walk out into the sunshine, free.
I've never enjoyed walking into the sun more.
\*
And now, lying in bed next to Sally's warm body, her breasts softly molded into his side, the memory of walking into that bright light from four days of darkness made him shudder with an ecstasy that aroused him, and he turned toward her and gently kissed her awake.
She looked at him for a moment, then asked what he was lying there thinking about.
"Happy days," he said, and kept kissing her until her passion was equal to his.
After they made love, when she was sleeping again, he thought of how few changes had come about from his assassination of Reagan. The Clean Air Act had taken another seven years to pass, and even then, with far greater evidence of global warming, was not nearly as strong as the original 1982 bill had been.
Keith had no doubts that Reagan deserved death, but he had not reckoned on the tremendous popularity of the man. The letter he sent to all the news services was published in full, but his reasoned words were balanced against the martyrdom of a fallen leader who had all the charisma of a well-loved grandfather. The words of a terrorist, no matter how sincere (or how sane, he thought), were no match for the loss. It had harmed his cause if anything, particularly the savage manner of the death. News magazines ran the photos, and after several months the entire video footage was shown. The first time Keith saw it on the news, then saw the sickened face of the usually imperturbable Peter Jennings, he realized what a mistake he had made in the execution of his scheme.
He had made no mistake in the act itself, for he knew Reagan had to die. Left unchecked, he would have brought ecological disaster to the country. But if only Keith had been able to kill him peacefully, if only he had been able to do what they did in the lands that were destroying their rain forests, and disappeared him, things would have been better.
But people couldn't disappear. Abrupt endings of public figures had to come violently. They were too well protected to scurry them away in a car. There would be no more Jimmy Hoffa vanishings.
Still, his situation wasn't so bad. He had made mistakes, but he liked to think he had done more to help the earth than harm it, which was not true of the people he destroyed.
What he had undoubtedly harmed, however, was the public's attitude toward the more peaceful environmentalists, the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society, even the Earth First! people. Though he cared little for them, he had never acted against them, and once had even worked with them, but only to get closer to a Louisiana senator he had been able to assassinate with a minimum of effort. To his surprise, he had liked the people. They had been earnest and sincere, not at all the yuppie dilettantes he had imagined them to be.
One of the women in particular had impressed him. She was the vice-president of a New Orleans branch of the Sierra Club, and they became lovers for a few weeks. The 1986 killing took place far away from Louisiana, and the woman never suspected Keith (who at that time was named Thomas Sears) of the act.
She had been a childless widow, a few years older than he, and, although she was a loan manager at a bank, put her real energy into environmentalism. She had been leaning in the direction of ecotage, and had attended several Earth First! meetings, but drew the line at violence toward people, and had condemned Pan's actions to Keith. Not once was he actually swayed by her arguments, although he pretended to agree with her implicitly. It was hard not to make her happy.
It was the only time he had become involved with a woman who shared the same basic goals as he did, and afterward, when he had vanished from her life, he had realized that he had come as close to loving her as he ever had to anyone.
The call from Goncourt Laboratories came five days later. A Mr. Gresham from personnel told Keith to come in the following day at 10:00 AM. When Keith asked if he should bring anything along, Gresham told him that he already had Keith's resume, and that was all he needed.
The Goncourt facility was unimpressive. It looked, thought Keith, like what it was supposed to be---a small and moderately successful chemical company, much like others he had seen and sabotaged in the seventies. He thought it interesting that a chemical company, that epitome of pollution, should be responsible for the final, death-dealing pollution he might be able to unleash, if the story was even partly true.
The facility was a mile outside of Bone. Its thirty acres were enclosed by a large, chain fence topped with barbed wire. Keith saw seven buildings as he drove up to the gate, with hints of others behind. They were a bizarre conglomeration of styles, from thirties WPA adobe to seventies metal and glass.
He told the guard at the gate his name, then waited while the man called it in. The guard hung up the phone, told him to park at the third building on his right, and opened the gate for Keith to drive through.
The third building was a long, flat-roofed, one-story brick slab that Keith guessed had been built in the early fifties, reaffirming what Keith already knew, that Goncourt Laboratories had progressed slowly and steadily for a long time, a growth rate typical of the family business it was. He parked and went inside, where a fiftyish receptionist dialed Mr. Gresham while Keith waited on a salmon-colored plastic chair.
Gresham was a short, waspish man in his late fifties. He was nearly bald, and looked at Keith suspiciously through thick-lensed bifocals as he shook his hand. His gray suit was too tight in the chest, and the red foulard handkerchief fluffed in his breast pocket seemed like a flower blooming on a forsaken grave.
"I'm Donald Gresham," he said reluctantly, as if making a confession. "We'll go to my office."
Gresham's office was down a long, dimly lit hall that reminded him of his high school. There were no names on the doors they passed, only numbers on the translucent glass, behind which glowed what Keith took to be desk lamps. The number on Gresham's door was 118.
"Right here, Mr. Sullivan." Gresham's voice was unaccented, like that of a TV anchorman, but with none of an announcer's depth and resonance. It was high-pitched, and threatened, thought Keith, to break if it became more than soft. "After you." He held the door open, and Keith entered.
The office was as bland as the hallway, and Keith began to worry that Goncourt Laboratories was not the secret, high-tech lab he had thought it, that instead it was merely what it appeared to be---a shabby, hole-in-the-wall company that kept its head above water by formulating pharmaceutical additives. Either that, or the cover was flawless. He had never seen such a perfect example of lower corporate stage setting and casting.
"Now," said Gresham, sitting behind his gun metal gray desk while Keith sat in another plastic chair near it, "this resume is up to date, is it?"
Keith nodded. "Yes sir."
"It's very impressive. Your education is . . . impeccable." He smiled as if proud of using the word. "And you've worked for some extremely prestigious firms---Wyeth, Rider . . . Tell me, did you know Tom Veasey there?"
Keith shook his head. "Afraid not. He mustn't have been in bioengineering while I was there."
Gresham smiled again. "No. I guess he wasn't." The man turned and looked through the venetian blinds out at the ragged lawns. "How about Frank Donovan?"
Keith didn't answer until Gresham turned back to look at him. "He was in my department. I knew him," Keith said.
He hoped it would be enough. He had done thorough background on Peter Sullivan, had learned the names of his co-workers and associates. He could not, however, know anything past what was accessible online. He hoped Gresham couldn't either.
"Well," said Gresham after a moment, letting the previous subject fade, "you're certainly qualified. But tell me, why did you leave Wyeth?"
"I . . . I guess you'd call it a personality conflict."
"You were . . . abusive toward a superior?"
Keith nodded. "I called him a nigger sonofabitch."
Gresham smiled. If that was all it took to make Gresham smile, Keith thought he was in. "And why did you leave Rider?"
Keith shrugged. "Pretty much the same thing," he said softly.
"Only this time I understand it was a gook sonofabitch, correct?"
"Yeah." Keith allowed himself a smile. "I guess there's a difference there, huh."
"You don't seem to get along well with minorities, Mr. Sullivan." Keith said nothing. He only looked at Gresham without apology. "I understand there was an altercation at a bar recently. Red's?"
"Yes. I guess you could call it that."
"And I also understand that you've been a member of Patriots for a White America?"
Keith frowned. "How do you know that?"
"Oh, our personnel inquiries are pretty thorough, Mr. Sullivan. Will you tell me why you're no longer active in the group?"
Keith smiled bitterly. "I guess I might as well. Looks like I've already blown this anyway." He snorted a laugh. "They were all talk and no action. They would . . . rave and rant and blow off steam, but when it came to actually doing something, something constructive, they'd bail out. There just wasn't any . . ." He waved his hand in the air. ". . . tenacity there. They said things, but they didn't believe them enough to act on them."
"Act on them. What exactly do you mean?"
"I mean act. Do something about the way the blacks and the gays and the Jews and the Hispanics are grinding this country to hell." He feigned catching himself, and said more calmly, "Sorry. Nobody wants to hear this."
"That's right, Mr. Sullivan. A lot of people don't. A lot of people would call you a bigot, even call you insane and dangerous." Gresham took a deep breath. "But there are some who would call you a patriot."
Keith looked at him, feeling the role, trying to portray caution and a burgeoning hope.
"Charles Goncourt might call you a patriot." He smiled again, and Keith felt like smiling too, but did not. "But that remains to be seen. I just have one question for you, Mr. Sullivan, before we go and meet Dr. Goncourt. And that is, did you come to Bone by accident? Just cruise in like some Texas gunfighter of old?"
Keith gave his head a sharp shake. "No."
"Then did you come here because of Goncourt Laboratories? Because you wanted a job here? Or for some other reason?"
"Because . . ." He licked his lips. "Because of some other reason."
"Something you heard about."
"Yeah."
"And you thought maybe this might be the . . . place that you had heard about."
"Yeah."
"And what do you think now?"
"I think maybe I'm right."
"And how did you decide on us?"
"I'm pretty good with computers. I narrowed it down to certain parameters." He shrugged. "You were the company that fit them best. So I took a chance. That you were the ones with . . . with the lab."
Gresham nodded. "You took a chance telling me that too. But if you hadn't, if you'd have lied to me . . . well, we wouldn't have believed you. It would have been too great a coincidence. You know that scene from Casablanca? `Of all the laboratories in all the world, you walked into mine?' Something like that? No, we wouldn't have believed you."
The silence was long, and Keith finally broke it, asked the question he knew Gresham wanted to hear. "And then what?"
Gresham tried to purse his thin lips. "Then we'd have had to kill Peter Sullivan."
It was a dramatic curtain line, but Keith felt good knowing that he could have offered a better. He could have told Mr. Gresham that Pan had already beaten him to it.
Gresham led Keith out of his office and down the hall. After traversing several cross-corridors, they came to an oak paneled door whose ornateness looked out of place in the otherwise purely functional environment. Gresham knocked.
"Come . . ."
The voice sounded strong even through the heavy door, and the word remained eerily suspended in the air, fading only when Gresham opened the door and walked through. Keith followed. "Mr. Sullivan," he said, "this is Dr. Charles Goncourt."
Goncourt did not rise from behind his massive desk. Keith guessed that he was as small as Gresham was, and seemed old beyond his years. His hair was as white and smooth as paper, and his eyes glared out from pouches of flesh so seamed with wrinkles that Keith thought at first they were scarred. His features were thin and sharp and furrowed, like a knife scratched by frequent and careless use. His suit coat was well tailored, his shirt front smooth and clean, his tie subdued and knotted perfectly. A tiny, enameled American flag glimmered on his lapel.
"Come in, Mr. Sullivan. Sit, please. Donald, you may stay." In the same room, Goncourt's voice was even stronger. Its long, Texan drawl filled the large office, and seemed to hang in the air as it had in the hall. When Keith looked at the little, wizened man from which the voice came, he nearly laughed at the incongruity, but instead turned it into a grateful smile.
He sat in the chair Goncourt had indicated. No plastic seat here, but leather and wood. The office was fin de siècle elegant, and Keith wondered if Goncourt had another, public office, artlessly decorated in corporate tack.
"So, Mr. Sullivan," said Goncourt, "you want to work for us. In bioengineering, eh?"
"Yes sir."
"Interesting field. A lot's being done there." It wasn't a smile Goncourt gave, but a wolfish grimace that seemed to painfully cramp his face. "A lot's being done here. But I imagine you already suspect that."
"I've heard . . . rumors."
"Why don't you tell Donald and me . . . exactly what rumors. And then we'll know why you came to us."
Keith licked his lips. "I heard . . . certain things. People saying that there was special research being done here---"
Goncourt interrupted with an impatient, guttural snarl so surprising that Keith didn't have to feign being startled. "I'm old and getting older, Mr. Sullivan. So spare me the time and the bullshit and get on with it. You're already in the crap so deep that being subtle's not going to save your sorry ass if we decide you're full of it. Now talk."
"I . . . all right, I heard that you develop . . . viral strains here. Mutate them to affect only certain genetic types. Or subjects who would be susceptible to certain methods of infection."
"Genetic types. Like which?"
"Blacks, Jews, Hispanics . . ."
"And the methods of infection?"
"IV drug users, gay men, maybe other sexual contact."
"And you believed there's a place like that. And you think you found us, huh? Tracked us down."
"I know that you specialize in genetically engineering pharmaceuticals that could only be acquired very expensively from natural sources. So you've got the people who could do that kind of work. I also know that your production is far less than your incoming materials would indicate. It doesn't tally. So it's safe to assume that you do a lot more research than it appears at first glance."
Goncourt looked at Keith for a long time. "Well, you appear to be a pretty damn clever fella, Mr. Sullivan. And tell me, what biological sins would you lay at our research doorstep?"
"I heard," said Keith carefully, "that the AIDS virus came out of here."
The two men said nothing, and Keith elaborated on his theme in an attempt to swell them with the self-importance of their legend.
"I also heard that it goes back farther than that, and that maybe the lab is descended from a long line of scientists who studied---and spread---diseases, plagues, that it might even go back to the middle ages, to the Knights Templar, and that they were responsible for spreading bubonic plague in the belief that it would infect only Jews and Saracens."
"You'll forgive me, Mr. Sullivan," said Goncourt, "but that sounds like so much fantastic horseshit to me. Right, Donald?"
"Right, sir." They were the first words Gresham had uttered in a long time.
Goncourt nodded in agreement, then leaned over the desk toward Keith. "You heard crap, son. There are no Knights Templar in laboratories anywhere. And I'll tell you something else. No single person or group of people developed the AIDS virus. It sprang up on its own, like a plague from God. From everything our research indicates, it came out of the filth of darkest Africa, the same place that spawned the black human filth that's helping to ruin our great nation today." Goncourt snorted in derision. "To believe that somebody invented it---hell, that somebody would have been capable of coming up with such a divine visitation that targets two of the most vile groups of people around---your homos and your junkies---well, it's just not to be believed. Nobody could come up with something that perfect. No, that's the kind of horseshit you read in tabloids and those flying saucer stories."
Goncourt squinted his eyes so that they nearly vanished in the pockets of dry skin. "But once God gives you a gift, it's a piss-poor excuse for a man who doesn't use it."
Keith allowed himself a little smile. "Then it's true? Are you mutating the virus?" He tried to indicate excitement, barely restrained. "I heard about an airborne strain, a plague that---"
"Hold on," Goncourt said. "That excites you? The idea of a virus that could spread through respiration? That could kill whole races of people? Men, women, children, just because they happen to be a certain color?"
Keith made his face grow stern. "Sometimes tough questions call for tough answers. Sometimes, when everything else fails, you have to go down some pretty bloody roads." The context was different, but the words were the code that Keith had lived by, and he in no way had to pretend that he meant them. "Yes sir. Tell you the truth, it does excite me. It sounds to me like some magnificent dream."
Goncourt nodded, and his painful smile reasserted itself on his thin, white lips. When he spoke, the words were quieter, haunting. "It excites me too, son. Maybe together we can make our dream real." He drew a deep breath, and the smile blew off his face. "Just one little thing first. A little test."
Oh Jesus, Keith thought. This is where he could blow it. He knew a great deal about biochemistry on paper, and had audited several college classes in which he had done lab work. But that was different from actually working in a gene-splicing situation. Being thrown into such circumstances, in spite of his inherited credentials, could topple his plot.
Then he told himself to relax. He knew that the actual lab work of genetic engineering was extremely time-consuming, and that knowledge and experience of it could not be proved in an hour, or even a day. He felt prepared to deal with anything of a short-term nature that Charles Goncourt could throw at him, be it assaying for DNA polymerase or purifying a bacteriophage. So he was surprised at the old man's question.
"Are you skilled in the use of firearms, Mr. Sullivan?"
"Well, I did serve in Vietnam." Keith paused for a moment, then gave an uncomfortable chuckle. "And I hunted with my dad when I was a kid."
"All right," said Goncourt. "Not that it really matters." He nodded to Gresham. "Donald?"
Gresham stood up and went around Goncourt's desk and behind the old man's chair. He reached behind the wooden posts with both hands and lifted handles into place with a soft click. The chair had been so well disguised that Keith had not realized it was a wheelchair.
And now, as Gresham rolled the chair around the side of the desk, Keith learned something else he had not known before. Charles Goncourt's legs ended at mid-thigh. "My badge of courage," the old man said. "It happened in Germany. I was nineteen. Do you have any idea what it's like for a nineteen-year-old boy to lose his legs?"
Keith shook his head. "No sir. I've got to admit I don't."
"But you were in Vietnam."
"Yes sir, but I was lucky. I saw boys get hurt bad, I saw their pain, but that doesn't mean I knew what it was like. From their point of view."
Goncourt looked at him for such a long time that Keith did not have to feign discomfort. "That's a damn good answer.
Because you can't know. Not until it happens to you." He gave a nod to Gresham, and they left the room.
They went down several short hallways, then descended in a service elevator. Keith estimated that they were four stories beneath ground level when the doors opened. They stepped out, and Keith followed as Gresham pushed Charles Goncourt down a wide hall, which ended at a cement block wall. Gresham took a small remote control from his jacket pocket, pointed it toward a spot on the wall ten feet up, and pressed a button. The wall slid aside. Keith had noticed the indentation, but expressed surprise nevertheless.
"Secret panels," he said admiringly. "Pretty neat."
"This is only the beginning," said Gresham proudly. They went through the opening, and the wall closed behind them.
As they approached a wide double-door, Goncourt spoke again. "Did you ever kill anyone while you were in Vietnam?"
"Not to my knowledge, sir. Never close up enough that I knew it."
The doors opened to some unseen electric eye, and they entered near the front of what Keith took to be a small lecture hall. To his left was a small curtained stage, and to his right were half a dozen rows of seats with ten seats per row. Over half the seats were filled with people in white lab coats, and Keith saw Bob Hastings, Al Freeman, and Ted Horst in the third row. Hastings grinned at him, but the other two men showed no recognition. There were a few other men Keith had seen at Red's Tavern, but had never met.
Gresham turned Goncourt's chair toward the assembled men. "Good morning, gentlemen," Goncourt said. "Thank you for interrupting your important work to welcome a new candidate who wishes to assist us in our research. Every one of you knows that in order to work in our secret facility, a man must be more than talented, more than skilled, more than brilliant. He must be dedicated. Dedicated to a cause which others might find reprehensible. But those of us here know that there is only one way for the white Christian race to survive, and here we are struggling to develop the means to that end. Thanks to your dedication, we are approaching that goal.
"And now here is a man, Peter Sullivan, who would join us, and who we feel is qualified. He has the mind, he has the desire." Goncourt turned his cold eyes on Keith. "But does he have the dedication? Does he have the loyalty? Does he have the will? There is one final test to take before joining us, Mr. Sullivan. Every man here took it, and every man here passed. And every man who passed watches every new man---witnesses, you might say. There is no ceremony, no oath to swear. Simply one act. One simple act which binds us together forever."
He nodded to Gresham, who stepped up onto the small stage and drew back the curtain. Behind it was Harrison, the black man Keith had beaten at Red's two weeks before. He was tied securely to a chair, and his mouth was gagged. His eyes were open, however, and looked at the men, at Goncourt, at Keith, with terror, as if he knew that, no matter what else happened, he would die very soon.
"I believe you know this nigger."
Keith turned and looked at Goncourt. The old man was grinning, and a thin trickle of saliva touched a chalky corner of his mouth. Keith surmised that this was as close to sexual excitement as Goncourt ever got.
"We've met, but we ain't howdied," Keith said.
Goncourt gave a gargle of phlegm that seemed intended as a laugh. "Well, you can howdy now. And then you can say goodbye. Steve?"
A man in the first row got up, took a Colt .38 revolver from a holster, and held it out to Keith, who looked at it but didn't take it.
"Go ahead, Mr. Sullivan," said Goncourt. "There's one bullet in it, just one. But that's all you'll need. You cock the pistol, it'll come under the hammer."
"You want me to kill this man?"
"Mr. Sullivan, if we're successful in doing what we want to do here, niggers will fall like sprayed fruit flies, and it won't be an easy death. You don't shoot him, all you do is make it tougher on him down the road."
Keith nodded. "All right," he said. "All right."
It was the easiest thing in the world. What was difficult was making it look hard. Keith took the gun, stepped up onto the stage, and stood at Harrison's right side. The black man turned his head so that he looked at Keith. His eyes, so tough in the bar, even after he had been beaten, were soft now, like a doe's, yielding, pleading.
"In the temple, if you please," said Goncourt, his voice shaking. "Toward the other side. We wouldn't want to get anyone messy."
Keith cocked the gun, tried to look like a man trying hard to look firm, took a deep breath. Harrison winced at the sound of the hammer cocking, and shook his head at Keith, little sharp, quick shakes. Of course Keith felt sorry for him, wished he didn't have to pull the trigger. He would much rather have turned the pistol on Goncourt and blown a hole in the old man's withered stomach. But it had to be done. And what was one more life? Harrison had sealed his own fate when he walked into Red's that night.
Keith raised the revolver to Harrison's right temple. The man stopped shaking his head, and instead pushed against the muzzle as though he could keep the bullet inside if he pushed hard enough. Keith pushed too, until Harrison faced the other men, his eyes squeezed shut with his futile effort to hold back the bullet.
"Sorry," Keith whispered. "Nothing personal."
If Keith had been able to hold the pistol even a short distance away, Harrison would have died far less bloodily. As it was, the contact of muzzle to flesh made the bullet enter raggedly, the muzzle blast charring the skin and hair. The exit wound was far worse, and sodden tissue splashed the floor eight feet on the other side of Keith.
In the few seconds after the pistol's explosion, Keith realized that he was being too professional. The firmness he had cultivated over years of assassinations had come back now to allow him to tolerate the taking of human life, and he felt the steel in his eyes, the set of his lips, the rigidity of his face that permitted no quavering, no room for remorse or guilt or pity to make his features tremble and melt.
But he had to let it tremble, had to show them that he was what he seemed to be---a scientist, unused to killing, a man to whom such slaughter was something new and terrible. So he dropped his mental shield enough for his hand to shake, his lip to quiver, enough for his gorge to rise at the ruined head, the debris on the floor, the droplets of red and gray that spattered his arm. He turned and retched, panted, took deep breaths with his eyes closed.
The sound made him open them. It was the rain-like patter of polite applause, as though he had just made a speech that his audience had approved of, and they were discreetly showing their endorsement.
"Well done, Mr. Sullivan," Goncourt said, when the applause died down. Keith looked at the old man and saw that his eyes were sparkling. "Quick and efficient. The same kind of efficiency I'm sure you'll put to good use here at Goncourt in our . . . special section. You're one of us now. You've drawn blood. You're a soldier in the army of Christ and white survival, and we welcome you."
Goncourt held out his bony hand, and Keith shakily stepped off the stage and grasped it. The strength of the grip startled him for only as long as he could be startled. Then someone closed the curtain, someone else took his gun, and the others got out of their seats and came up to him, smiling, congratulating, welcoming.
"I knew you had it in you," said Bob Hastings, pumping Keith's hand. "I been talkin' you up here ever since I found out you were in bioengineering. Goddam, I knew right off you were prime material." He slapped Keith on the shoulder. "What's the matter, pardner? You just joined the club! Look happy about it!"
Keith put on a sickly smile. "I'm happy about it, Bob. I just didn't get up this morning expecting to bag me a nigger."
Bob and the men who overheard laughed, and Keith joined in with a chuckle.
"That's all right, son," said Goncourt. "There's nothing wrong with having a little respect for the sanctity of human life . . ." He gave the obligatory two beats before his punch line. "Even a jigaboo's." He laughed and the men laughed with him. "Now," he went on, "you go with Don and get all those forms filled out. Then you go home and get packed up. Come on back here when you're through, Bob here can give you the tour, and you can start your first tour of duty tomorrow."
Beside the forms, there was a picture to be taken for a pass, but the process went quickly, and within an hour Keith was driving back to his apartment in Bone. He called Sally and told her he had gotten a job at Goncourt, and wouldn't be able to see her before he went in for his shift. She told him she was glad for him, and said she couldn't wait to see him when he got out, and he promised he would call her as soon as he did.
Then he packed and returned to Goncourt Laboratories, carrying only several changes of clothes, his book of the mind, and universally deadly intent.
July 18, 1993:
This time the joke is on me. At least it seems that way from what I've seen here so far.
I expected much more. It started out all right, what with the secret door and the execution/initiation scenario. But I had in mind the dreams of paranoid sci-fi fantasies, of great conspiracies backed by the great fortunes of great but misguided men. I envisioned a sprawling subterranean complex, like something out of Jules Verne. I saw a legion of scientist/ racist/scholars determined to wipe out every group that was dissimilar to their own. I saw the inventors of AIDS, gifted with the talent to create things far worse.
That was the rumor, damn it, and I bought into it with all sincerity. It seems, however, that the best gift I could bring to the world from this place would be to blow up Goncourt Labs, along with everyone in it.
They are indeed the kind of minds that have brought us to our current dilemma. Bigots. Shortsighted fools. The trashiest of white trash. The legitimate business does nearly seventeen million in sales a year, and nets Goncourt in the neighborhood of four million, most of which goes into the lab. They save even more money by---naturally---cutting corners on hazardous waste disposal. The typical small-plant-small-mind mentality, almost a cliché of itself. Unfortunately the cliché doesn't extend to the secret lab.
There are more delusions of grandeur here than grandeur itself. I had pictured hundreds of scientists, but instead there are only thirty-five or so, and that includes those who work on the legitimate end. Ten are pure research, theorists, and the rest of us are technicians. The only thing that can be said for the place is that it is truly secret, sixty feet beneath the ground, and accessible only by two service elevators that require a special key to take you below. At least that much of my fantasy remains true.
But what I've seen of it so far is pretty dull. The facility itself is off either side of a long hall. On the right is the living area, with sleep cubicles, cooking facilities (we do our own cooking, and it looks as though I'll be called upon to make my famous chili), and a rec room, with TV, a video library (Stallone, Eastwood, and Steven Seagal films are favorites), and a pool table, as well as a Nautilus and some other exercise equipment. The sleep rooms are private, but that's all that can be said for them. Room for a bed and a suitcase, and little more. Still, it was quiet, and I slept well last night.
On the other side of the hall are the labs. There are five of them, small, spare rooms without any decoration. One of the rooms is used for pure research, lined with chalkboards and bookshelves, while ranks of computers occupy the floor space. Another is culture storage, while the remaining three are used for the lab work. That's what I'll be doing. Thank God they didn't throw me into the theoretical side of it. It would have exposed me right away. But I know enough to clone genes if somebody gives me genes to clone. Freeman will be setting up the experiments, and I'll be performing them along with Hastings. I have, however, been told that I may feel free to make any suggestions I want. That's hardly likely. There's also a large storage area where they also keep the experimental animals, but I haven't seen that yet.
If what I'm looking for is really here, I'm going to be very, very surprised.
\*
"You finished?" Bob Hastings asked, and Keith nodded. "Christ, Pete, I don't know how a little yogurt and a bran muffin can make a guy ready for the day." Hastings picked up what remained of his third slice of toast and wiped the egg yolk off his plate. He popped the sodden morsel into his mouth and chewed. "First thing this morning," he said with a full mouth, "I'll show you the storage area." He grinned, showing a gray clump of chewed toast stuck to an incisor. "And the lab rats. And then Freeman'll fill you in on what exactly the hell we're doing here."
In a few minutes Keith and Hastings were standing outside a wide door next to the service elevator. "Storage. Some of the most amazing drugs in the world are in here," Hastings said with mock solemnity, then opened the door.
"And it's not locked?"
"What's to lock? Everybody here trusts each other. We're all on the same side, aren't we? Besides, we do inventory every so often. A few years back we found something missing, and then we found the guy who took it. Tried to make a little deal on his own, you know? Took him two weeks to die, and he screamed most of the time. Come on."
Inside were row upon row of metal shelves on which sat containers. Some were liter sized, but most were smaller. The vast majority were in test tubes, each carefully labeled with numbers and code letters that meant nothing to Keith. "What is all this stuff?" he asked Hastings.
"Most of it's government work. Along with the pharmaceuticals, a real profitable part of the business is putting together stuff for government."
"I thought our government had its own people doing that."
Hastings chuckled. "I didn't say our government, did I?"
"That's pretty un-American, isn't it?" Keith frowned. "Supplying foreign governments with chemical weapons?"
"Not weapons. More for intelligence use. Hypnotics, truth serum . . ." He picked up a vial from several labeled ZF723. "Now this little baby, for example, is a suggestibility drug. You nail somebody with a hypo full of this, just suggest that they do something, and if they've ever had a thought about doing it or anything like it, they will. Removes the inhibitions."
"Dispenses with morality," said Keith.
"Hmm. Never thought of it like that, but I guess it's as good a way to say it as any."
"You formulate it here?"
Hastings nodded. 'Ted Horst. About two years ago. Can hardly keep up with demand."
"So who do you sell all these to?"
"Little countries. Mostly Latin American and African, though we did cut a deal with the Serbs last year. We could care less if the niggers and the beaners use them to kill each other with, long as they're willing to pay for them. Hell, they're supporting the R&D that's ultimately going to wipe them off the face of the earth. Come on, let's see the animals."
Hastings led the way between the shelves until they reached a large double door. "Wild Kingdom," he said, chuckling, and pushed it open.
Keith followed him into a room filled with several dozen cages. Rabbits and rats were in many of them, and in the rest guinea pigs squealed and ran about in circles at the sudden disturbance. Some of the containers were made of glass with covered tops, and respirators made a sighing counterpoint to the rodent's cries.
"Cute little buggers, aren't they?" Hastings said. "The ones in the glass we're using for airborne experiments."
"Any simians?"
"Simians. Hell, yes. Right over here. Now this we do keep locked," he said. "But not to keep us out. It's to keep them in. You got a key. It's the big silver one. Go ahead."
Keith took the key ring from his pocket and unlocked the door. When he opened it, the sharp tang of urine and feces made him wince. There were four compartments in the room, all glassed, but they didn't contain animals. Instead Keith could make out human figures lying on cots in three of the four cells. They were naked. None of them moved, but he could see their eyes were open.
"The Airborne Rangers, we call them. Gotta be isolated from us, otherwise who knows what we'd pick up?"
"Jesus Christ," whispered Keith. "People . . ."
"Yep. Human guinea pigs. It's a helluva lot more efficient when it gets past the rodent stage. There's another reason too. You have any idea how much research chimps are? At least fifty K each, and the price goes up every year. Frankly, we can't afford 'em. But these little beauties are absolutely free in nearly any city. Come on and meet the gang, even though they can't hear us to say howdy."
Hastings pointed to the six inch wide tubes going into each cell. "Each one has its own ventilation system, filtered to the max. We go in to take blood and tissue samples, but we always wear sealed suits. Knock 'em out too, so they don't try anything funny. This one's Remus, least that's what we call him. His real name doesn't matter anymore."
Keith looked through the glass at the black man lying on the cot. He didn't look back, but kept his eyes on the glass ceiling of his cell, blinking occasionally.
"We'da kept Harrison if we didn't already have this guy. Now over here is Big Wang. You can see his name doesn't fit him real well."
The cell across from the black man held an old oriental man whose penis, as Hastings had suggested, was just as shriveled as the rest of him. "Damn," said Keith. "How do you know this one isn't dying already? He looks ancient."
"The older they are, the easier they are to catch." Hastings laughed, and Keith laughed a little too. "But don't worry about that. We can isolate the infection, no matter how old they are or what else is wrong with them. All they got to be able to do is breathe."
Hastings stepped in front of the sealed door of the next cell. "Now here's as close to a looker as we ever get in here. White woman. Killed two birds with one stone on this bitch. Little old outside agitator snooping around, followed one of our trucks when it made its delivery to the river. One of the boys came up behind her in a car, saw her taking pictures of the dumping. She was all alone, so we had a new lab rat. Hard to get white ones, 'cause we feel too damn guilty. But this bitch was a different story. Check her out."
He flipped a switch and the cell was flooded with light. The woman, naked as the men, pressed her eyelids shut and started to throw up a hand, but the effort was too great, and the arm fell back to her side, so that Keith was able to see her face. It took all the self-possession he had not to let the recognition show. Next came the urge to back away, so that she could not see him, but her lassitude allowed her no curiosity about who had disturbed her.
"What's the matter with them? They all drugged?"
"You bet. Keeps them nice and calm. Just slip a little into the ventilation system, and they're gentle as kittens. And speaking of pussies, pretty nice, huh? A little older than I like them, but not bad."
Keith nodded, remembering warm New Orleans nights in the arms of the woman who now lay naked on the cot.
"We all had a field day with her, I don't mind tellin' you. Popped her myself. Got a little rough, but she deserved it."
He nodded again, thinking of her spirit, her sincerity, her naïve need to do something for the earth.
"Made her squeal like one of those guinea pigs, boy."
Keith kept nodding, seeing himself taking Bob Hastings's head and twisting it until he heard the neck crack.
"Too bad you're too late for a piece, but she's isolated now. You'll just have to wait two weeks for Sally."
Then Keith turned and smiled at Bob Hastings. "She's worth waiting for," Keith said. "Rather wait for her than screw some commie, nigger-loving, save-the-earth whore."
Hastings's smile faded. "Uh . . . yeah. Okay then. Let's go see Freeman, right?"
He turned and walked toward the door. Keith followed, but not before turning out the light in the woman's cell, so that it would no longer hurt her eyes.
When he saw her victimized on the cot, he knew that he might actually have loved her when they had been lovers. What went through him was more than pity. That she should have been investigating Goncourt came as only a mild surprise. Eight years ago he had seen the desire for more than activism in her, with her sympathy toward the more radical end of the environmental spectrum. And Texas was, after all, not that far from Louisiana. She had probably come west to wage some other ecological battle, heard rumors that Goncourt was dumping illegally, and decided, while she was in the area, to try and prove it.
She went out alone, intending to return a hero, and she was caught. Caught by a band of rednecked bastards who resembled not so much Dr. Strangelove as Dr. Mengele.
Naked people in glass cages? Gang rape? Racial experiments on human beings? Jesus. This was sick, neo-Nazi behavior all the way. Keith strongly suspected that these people weren't scientists, but sadists, using science as a mask behind which they could get their jollies abusing women and minorities. He had seen the look on Goncourt's face when he shot Harrison, and damned himself for doing it. It wasn't the killing that bothered him as much as it was the reason he had had to kill---to get some crippled old bigot off.
It made him sick, especially when he thought of the hopes he had had for the lab and what he might find there. Still, he would give it a little time, wait and see if these inbred cretins might actually have stumbled on some of the things they had been credited with by the gunsmith. There were, after all, the behavioral drugs Hastings had just showed him. Keith was already thinking of ways he might be able to use the suggestibility drug he had been shown, so the effort wouldn't be totally in vain.
Hastings led him into Freeman's office, a small, closet-like space created by walling off a corner of one of the labs. There was only one chair beside Freeman's, so Hastings excused himself and left. Freeman smiled at Keith as gingerly as if he felt his face might crack.
"What do you think, Pete?"
"Pretty impressive," Keith lied.
"Not what you expected?"
"Well, the . . . the cages were . . ." He let it trail off. "I didn't expect that."
Freeman nodded soberly. "It's hard sometimes to accept that the ends justify the means, but we think they do. Otherwise we wouldn't be down here at all. We feel we have a very great mission, a great destiny. We hope that out of this humble laboratory will come the technology to save the white Christian world, Pete." He tried to smile again. "That sounds pretty high-falutin', but it's true. I know sometimes the boys get a little carried away."
"Like with the woman?"
Freeman frowned. "Yes, like with that woman. I don't really approve of that. I don't like seeing people, even people like her, suffer needlessly."
"What is it," Keith said tentatively, "that you're working on exactly? I saw the glass cells, and Bob said something about airborne. So is it true? Did you really develop an airborne AIDS virus?"
"Well . . ." Freeman stretched the word out for a long time. "It's not exactly AIDS. Not anymore. We started with the virus, got hold of it about twelve years ago, and been playing around with it ever since. It's been dangerous, and we've paid a price. Lost two of our boys to AIDS back at the beginning before everybody knew how it spread. Accidents. I mean they weren't homosexuals or anything like that. We check our people out pretty good. But we paid our dues. They were good men, but they died like homos, heck, some folks in town thought they were homos. It was an ugly time."
"You said you started with AIDS. What do you mean? What do you have now?"
"Well, we mutated it. You know the incubation period for AIDS is long---you can get it and carry it around for years before it starts kicking up its heels. In '86 we finally figured out how to speed that up, and now it's got an incubation period of just a couple weeks. Once it's in the bloodstream, you've got a month at best, probably less."
"Before the symptoms show?"
"Before you're dead. As soon as it's in there, the virus starts gobbling up T-lymphocyte cells like there's no tomorrow, helpers and suppressors both. Even if you went into a plastic bubble, the germs already in your body'd kill you. Which is why we're so dang careful with this thing. Those cells are airtight, with sealed ventilation systems. Once the subjects are inoculated, the boys have to go in to draw blood and get some cell samples---you'll be doing that too---but they wear sealed suits with tanks, and go through airlocks. You follow procedure correctly---and there are always two men to make sure that one doesn't get sloppy---and there's no risk of contracting the stuff."
"Then you've actually made it airborne."
"Mmm-hmm." Freeman nodded. "Stays alive four hours outside of a host. The airborne thing took us less time than anything else, except of course for what we're working on now. There hasn't been all that much work done in genetic virology. Heck, there hadn't been anything done in mutating blood-borne viruses into airborne either. Who'd want to do that in the first place? But we found it was pretty easy." He chuckled, a sound like shotgun pellets on a tin roof. "Better not tell Saddam about that."
Keith rubbed his chin with a fist. "But what if it would get out? If there was an accident?"
"Never happen. The virus is aspirated directly into the air of the subjects' cells. If they die, and that's been the only outcome so far, the air's filtered and replaced before the bodies are removed, and after we take tissue samples they're immediately cremated in a closed system. But if the airborne virus did somehow escape, we have a way to shut this lab off from the rest of the world." Freeman took a deep breath. "Unfortunately it'd be the tomb of anybody who was inside at the time. But it won't happen, believe me."
"So it's deadly, and it's airborne," said Keith. "Where are you now?"
"I'm kind of curious. What did you hear as far as where we are now---what we're working on?"
"I heard you were trying to tailor a virus to spare whites. And I heard about the possibility of it being airborne too, but really didn't give that much credence." He smiled. "It seems I underestimated you."
Christ, did I ever, Keith thought. For this relatively small staff to do what they had done was astonishing. Perhaps, he thought, strong minds and wills were enough to accomplish what unlimited money and manpower could not. He was proof of that himself, having brought more attention to the environment with his solitary acts than the large and well-financed organizations that tried to do the same thing.
"Well, we've done the best we know how for the best cause we know," Freeman said with an affecting modesty. "As far as what we're doing now, it's what we've been doing for the past couple years, and that's trying to develop a racially selective strain, one that infects negroes, Hispanics, Orientals, but doesn't touch Caucasians. And that's tough. What we have now infects every single racial type, with no exceptions.
"So what we've been trying to do get this thing to narrow its sights. First we tried to get the virus to attach to certain genes---sickle cells in blacks to start---but that was a bust. So recently we've been isolating genes that we think might be unique to Caucasians, and then telling the virus to react to it as an antibody. We thought we had a breakthrough about six months ago, but the white subject died." He shook his head. "I feel awful sorry about having to use white folks, but it can't be helped. There's no way animals can begin to give us the kind of results we need. We just do our best and try to find white people who are hurting the cause. In the cities. Poor sections. Lots of junkies, or kids."
"Kids? You don't mean---"
"No no!" said Freeman, waving a hand to dismiss such a thought. "Not little kids. More like nineteen or twenty. Trash, you know. Only thing going for them is that they're white. Other than the color of the skin, they might just as well be negroes. Born to be frybabies."
Keith didn't understand the word and looked at Freeman.
"Doggone," he said, chuckling. "I'm sorry. That's what the boys call the subjects . . . afterward. You know, when they're taking them to the crucible to burn."
"Frybabies," Keith repeated, the word tasting bitter, childish, stupid in his mouth. Frybabies on their way to the crucible. Or the ovens. Funny, mused Keith, how Nazis were always true to form, whatever their nationality.
"Well," said Freeman, standing quickly, as if embarrassed by what he had just said, "if you don't have any more questions, let's step out to the lab, and I'll show you where to start."
"Just one. Have you developed any kind of antidote for this virus. Any cure?"
Freeman looked at him kindly, and his voice was soft, as if explaining to a child. "Son," he said, "down here we're not in the business of curing."
July 16, 1993:
The work is mind numbing, so simple that they could get high school seniors with a high boredom threshold and good eyesight to do it. I spent most of the day cloning selected genes, washing paper with bacterial cultures on it, then putting x-ray film over it to find the colonies with the DNA they need for further experiments.
The four others in the lab, Hastings among them, laugh and joke and tell stories as they work, and though I talked a little, I had to concentrate too hard on my handiwork to join in their idea of fun. This bed feels wonderful, and after I record this, I'll fall asleep quickly, exhausted by the fine detail of my labors.
It doesn't matter, though. It's worth the effort, worth as long as I have to stay here, now that I've found out it's true.
The virus exists. It's here. And so am I. My whole life, everything that's ever happened to me, everything I've ever done and seen and heard has led me here.
Freeman mentioned a very great mission. A great destiny. And he was right. But it wasn't his mission of white supremacy that will be fulfilled here. It's my mission. My destiny. It took me so long to realize it. I went down so many false paths, wrote so many red pages in the book of my mind, before I realized the truth.
No matter what I did, it didn't matter. Nothing mattered, until now.
\*
In 1984, Keith Aarons assassinated Warren Anderson shortly after the toxic gas disaster at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. He managed to get into the corporate president's hotel suite posing as a room service waiter, and quickly dispatched a bodyguard with a pistol hidden in a tray. Then, holding Anderson at gunpoint, he took from beneath the room service cart a small tank of natural gas. A hose led from it to a breathing mask.
When Anderson saw the device, he tried to run for the door, in spite of the gun, but Keith tripped him and then hit him until he was helpless enough to tie up. Then he pulled him back to the tank, held the mask over Anderson's nose and mouth, and told him, "Here's a goodbye kiss from Kali." Anderson lived for only a few seconds after Keith turned on the gas.
It was a dramatic gesture, but the fact that he had been able to get into the suite so easily resulted in tighter security on all of Union Carbide's officials, including the new president. Pan was blamed, since Keith had contacted all the proper sources in advance, and left a note taped to the gas tank, a note that ended with Pan's symbolic signature.
From 1985 to 1992, as environmentalism became more of a political and social issue, Keith waged a saturation campaign, emblazoning the name of Pan across the nation. He targeted major developers who were destroying wetlands, derailed freight trains carrying coal, killed mine owners, corporation CEOs, even corporate lawyers who defended polluting companies. As conditions grew worse, the tempo of his crimes increased.
And things were, he felt, growing worse. Admittedly, there were a few improvements. Legislation made some controls stricter. But the passages of important government acts were still held up by bipartisan politics and pork barrel thinking, by politicians who did only what was best for the financial well being of their more powerful constituents, and not the nation---and certainly not the earth---as a whole.
Worst of all, the voters of America seemed to see no need to change things. They promised to recycle their beer bottles and aluminum cans, but that was merely a concession. Most of them still drove the three blocks to the convenience store in their gasoline burning cars, they still bought Exxon gasoline (despite Keith's execution of Exxon's president eight months after the Valdez oil spill), and they nodded in agreement when President Bush said that economic impact would have to be taken into account before any further anti-pollution legislation could be passed.
Economic impact. It made Keith laugh grimly. How much would they think about economic impact ten or twenty years from now when their skins were furrowed sheets of carcinoma? Would economics be South America's prime concern when the fatal tumor born of poverty had choked the lungs of the earth, and there was nothing in the rain forests but dry brush? Would the congressmen think about farm subsidies when no sunshine touched the few fields that were left unpaved?
Eastern Europe was already suffocating, the world's forests were being defoliated, the lakes and rivers poisoned their denizens, and the only chance that Keith Aarons saw for survival came from the tortured words of a white supremacist gunsmith, words that would eventually bring him to Bone, Texas.
\*
September 4, 1989:
The earth is dying. Dying. It's that simple. But men refuse to stop the bleeding. And that bleeding can't stop tomorrow, it has to stop today.
But it won't. There is no way it will happen. I suppose it really should have stopped yesterday, but it's too late for that now. In order for the ecology of the planet to survive, organisms have to adapt. But technology ran ahead too fast for humanity to keep up. There's been no chance for adaptation, no chance for genetic transition to occur. Maybe in ten thousand years we could have evolved tougher layers of skin, or lungs that could safely breathe the particles in the air. Maybe filtration systems of some sort. But there's no time left. And we won't just kill ourselves. We'll take everything else too---the vegetation, the birds, the animals, the things in the sea.
Sometimes I think the best thing for me would be to die and end my struggles against a world that neither understands nor appreciates what I'm trying to do. Maybe man is just meant to be a suicidal, short-lived species. Stubborn. So damned stubborn and selfish.
I can't help but think that whatever I've done is of no use, that all my efforts have been futile, that the only way to save life on the earth is to kill all the people on it.
That's a fine irony, isn't it? Like that officer in Vietnam who had to destroy the village to save it. Nevertheless, it seems to be true.
But how? How do you assassinate an entire species, a species spread throughout the world in all lands and climates?
Nuclear war is one way, of course, but that means nuclear winter as well, the ultimate pollution. Every living creature dies, not just man. Besides, how could I start a nuclear war? It's so impossible it's laughable.
Disease is the only other way. This secret lab that the gunsmith talked about may offer something in that direction. The odds are long that it even exists, and longer that I could find it, but at this point it seems to be the only effective option.
In a way, I hope it doesn't exist. Supposing it did, and that it really had within it the seeds for the destruction of mankind? Could I bring myself to do it? Every man, woman, and child of a species that has created such beauty and joy along with such death and destruction, that knows love as well as hate? Could I completely eradicate them all?
\*
And that question was one he now struggled with four years later, when the phantom laboratory had taken on a crude if efficient reality.
\*
July 16, 1993:
The question remains, if I am able to find a way---and I'm sure I can, else why would fate have brought me here?---can I bring myself to do it? The physical ability is one thing, the mental another.
Some would survive, at least there is that. If the virus is able to live outside a host for four hours, that means that isolated pockets would survive---Indians in the Amazon and New Guinea, Eskimos, primitive African tribes, South Pacific islanders, Australian bushmen, all people who live on the land and respect it, poor bastards who have been screwed ever since the white men hit their shores.
Odds are that after everybody else is dead and technology fades, the surviving tribes will still have their own little wars. But they'll be fought with bows and slings, not with tanks and planes and bombs. The clock will be turned back, that's all, and poor old Earth will have a chance to breathe fresh air again, and drink clean water.
And I can do it. An airborne virus, released among the general population---in no time at all, the earth would be depopulated. Just as in Steppenwolf.
I know the way. Now all I have to do is find the means.
And one more thing---the motivation. I am not sure that if I was handed a tank full of virus-laden air that I would be able to release it. I've steeled myself to do many things in the past, but they've always been impersonal---people I didn't know, or people who, for one reason or another, deserved to die.
But how do you rationalize killing everyone, guilty and innocent alike? For I'm not so far gone that I don't realize there are those who are innocent.
Flow do you rationalize becoming the greatest mass murderer in history?
Or doesn't it really matter, since history dies as well?
And if history dies, to whom will I ever read or dictate this book of my mind?
It doesn't matter. Nothing matters except saving what can still be saved, and maybe the survivors will be wiser than the rest of us, and save what was worthy in history and culture, and discard the rest, all the lies that brought us to this sad end.
I haven't much time. I must learn more, establish trust, find a way to take the virus out.
And then I must find within myself the strength and the will to release it.
Woody stared into darkness. He wanted to turn on the bed stand light, but Tracy would not release him long enough.
"Just hold me," she whispered. "Just let me know you're here . . . that I'm here . . ."
He had woken her less than a minute before. She had been moaning in her sleep, and sweating through the oversized t-shirt she preferred to nightgowns. The nightmare recurred every few weeks.
"Same dream?" he said gently, and felt her head nod against his shoulder.
The same dream she had told him about before, the dream of being with Keith in darkness, except for one little beam of light, a beam that danced on the boards of a wooden floor, and she could feel her hair long over her shoulders, touching her upper arms, so she knew that she was young again, and Keith saying something that she couldn't understand, telling her to take something and not touch something else, but she didn't know what, so she took something and he told her to hold this, but don't do something else and she was angry and wanted to scare him and moved her hands together and Keith saying no
---and then the world hot and bright and pain she had never dreamed of, pain that stopped time and burned her, kept burning her with white steel heat until
---Woody woke her up, shook her until she stopped moaning and started to cry from the relief that she was here, alive, and that the dream had been both less and more than a dream, a memory of another life, a life that had never been.
Her tears stopped, and she said, "Yes, I'm sorry, turn on the light. I want to see you." He did as she asked, dimly illuminating the bedroom in their Russell Hotel suite, and she touched his face and said, "Oh yes, my sweet boy, you're here, and I'm here."
"And everything's all right," he said, touching the back of her hand, pressing it against his cheek for her to feel the corporeality of his flesh, the reality of his love.
"Why do I keep seeing it?" she asked. "Keep reliving it?"
"You've got to remember that all it is is a dream, a dream of a past that never was."
"It was for you," she said. "And for me too. Somewhere else. Some other time." She looked away from him. "Maybe it won't let me go. Maybe it's what should have been, and that's what the nightmares are trying to tell me."
That's stupid was his first response, but he didn't say it. Instead he held her again. "What should be is what is and what was. This life was what you've always known. It's what's real."
"But you knew another life."
"I did. But that life was the dream. I'm here now, with you, and our life together is what's real. Everything else is a lie. And there's no 'should' or 'shouldn't' involved. It's what's here. It's where we are. And we can't change a thing about it." He kissed her nose and smiled. "And you know what? I don't want to."
She smiled back. "I don't either. I love you, and my family, and I loved Europe and I love England, and let's stay here another week and be tourists again."
He laughed. "I can't. Tomorrow night's the end, babe. Next morning back we go, like it or not. Haven't you been on the road enough?"
"Not really. The kids have though. I'm glad we brought them."
"Me too." And he was. It was the first time they had ever come along on a tour, and they had somehow held on to their excitement through the long weeks of strange languages and stranger food. Peter was generally a picky eater, but for the first time his adventurousness crossed over into cuisine. He ate everything, and the odder it was the more he wanted to try it. Tracy had mentioned sotto voce to Woody that the boy never would have touched such dishes at home.
Louisa, on the other hand, stuck to American food when she could, and was much more sedate about their new surroundings than her younger brother. Still, she looked at nearly everything with wonder in her eyes, and even took his hand from time to time when they were walking in foreign streets. Woody felt blessed many times over that he had children, and, most of all, that he had Tracy.
"It'll be good to get home," he said, and leaned over and turned out the light. She turned her back to him, and he nestled against her like a second spoon, putting his arm around her. She took his hand, kissed it, and pressed it against her. It was the way they usually slept. He wondered how she was able to fall asleep with his breath fluttering against the back of her neck, but she always did, and quickly.
"How I love you," he whispered, but there was no response. She was asleep, and he closed his eyes too, trading gray darkness for black.
Sleep did not come, however, and in a while he rolled over on his back, opened his eyes, and stared at the patterns the London street lights made on the walls as they crept around the edges of the curtains.
She had dreamed of Keith again, of being with him and dying with him. Several weeks before, after the second similar dream, she had told him that she felt as if Keith wanted her somehow. Woody didn't understand at first, and then she explained to him that she thought he didn't want to die alone, and what Woody and the rest had done in taking her away, into her other life, had upset some cosmic balance, and that she was having the dreams because it was Keith's way of telling her that what had happened was wrong.
As he had tonight, Woody told her that it was foolish, that she was talking about vengeful ghosts, and that Keith was not a ghost. Of that much he was sure.
But his certainty was not the result of a disbelief in the paranormal. The presence of his family was proof that there were more mysteries to existence than he had ever imagined. His doubts about Keith's ghostliness came rather from the conviction that Keith was no longer dead, that the closing door he recalled was more than a fancy.
He hadn't told Tracy, but he had been having his own dreams about Keith, dreams in which Keith and he were both young, and were sitting in the apartment drinking beers, and Keith was talking about bombing something, and Woody said No, you can't bomb that building, and Keith said Not the building, but everything, and just looked at Woody. Then Woody said Everything? And Keith said Yes, you, me, everything, and just sat and looked at Woody with no expression on his face, and Woody was afraid in the dream, and it seemed as if he sat there looking at Keith looking back at him until he awoke in the morning, very tired, as if he had not slept at all.
He had not wanted to have that dream again, but he had, several times. Keith seemed to be making his way into both his and Tracy's mind.
He wondered what his children dreamed about, if they saw a man they didn't know, who said strange things to them. They could have no dreams of the other life, for they had never lived in it. Their existence was in this life, this time, this track only, so how could they dream of Keith Aarons?
They could not, and he would not either, he told himself, as he rolled onto his side and put an arm around his sleeping wife. He thought of music, keeping tunes in his head until sleep took him again, and when he awoke he was refreshed, and did not remember if he had dreamed.
The matinee that day at the Albert Hall marked his last performance in Britain, and the end of the European tour. A recovered Michael Lester had joined the group in Paris, but they had made Ivan Redburn, who had so competently replaced him, a fifth member for the tour, playing piccolo bass in counterpoint to Michael's double bass. Woody liked the sound of it, and thought about keeping Ivan on permanently when they returned to the states, if Ivan agreed and Michael was willing to share the bass lines.
After the first set, Woody went backstage, got a drink of water, and swabbed his oboe. He set it in the case and walked about backstage to stretch his legs and get the blood flowing, after standing still for so long.
Then, on a production table, he saw a dogeared paperback copy of Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf.
He had not seen the book in years, and recalled that it had been Keith Aaron's favorite novel. He had read it, but it had been well over twenty years before, and he remembered nothing, not even the framework of a plot.
Woody picked up the volume and opened it at random, near the back. The first thing he read was:
Make a little room on the crippled earth! Depopulate it so that the grass may grow again, and woods, meadows, heather, stream and moor return to this world of dust and concrete.
The lump that had come to his throat at the first sentence now thickened, and he knew what Keith had meant in the dream, and he knew that he had heard that door close in reality, and knew that Keith was alive, and because he was alive he, and no one else, was Pan.
It came as less a surprise to Woody than he thought it should, and he realized that he had known it all along, but had not wanted to admit it to himself. It meant too many things.
It meant that he had been responsible for everything that Pan had done, the lives he had taken, the property he had destroyed, the families he had ruined. It meant that if they had not gone back in time and returned the way they did, that none of Pan's actions would have occurred.
It meant that in exchange for Tracy, Peter, and Louisa, he had turned loose a monster on the world.
Orpheus. Yes, he was Orpheus, all right, playing his music and leading Eurydice out of the hell of fiery and painful death. But he had led out the demons as well.
"Oh God," he said softly, "I knew it. I knew all the time."
"Yo, Woody!" He looked up and saw Jim Columbo's shaggy head around a curtain leg. "Almost time, bud." Woody nodded. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." He made himself walk toward the dressing room. "I'll get my horn."
"Would be advisable," said Jim, then smiled as if to alleviate whatever downer he thought was bothering Woody. "Come on, man, that's an evening crowd in the afternoon, huh?"
Woody smiled back and nodded, got his oboe, and placed the reed in his mouth to moisten it. But he couldn't think about the music. All he could think about was Keith Aarons and Pan and people dying and Jesus but what have I done.
He knew now, but he had to be sure. And he thought of the way just as he stepped onto the stage and the applause began and swelled, and people began to cheer, and he stood in the light.
Woody would play. He owed them that. He would try to put everything out of his head but music. And afterwards, when he returned to the states, he would go back to Iselin and, if he could, learn just what had happened at the ROTC building all those years before.
He would find out who had really died that night, leaving Keith Aarons free to become Pan.
And as he began to play, the music took control as it always did, weaving its web through the hall, binding everyone who listened, until, bound too, Woody Robinson surrendered his mind to it.
He ended the set, not with an up tempo tune as he usually did, but with "Tracy's Song." The crowd applauded for twenty minutes afterward, but he gave them no encore.
Woody flew to Pittsburgh six days after he returned to California. There he rented a car and drove once again to Iselin.
By the time he pulled in to the Holiday Inn parking lot, it was dark, and raining heavily. In his room, he paced like an angry bear. There was nothing he could do until the next day, but he knew he could not sleep, not yet. He tried to watch television for a while, thinking about Tracy and her questions about his return to Iselin and his insistence that she should not come along. He knew that his reasons had sounded feeble---something about tying up a few loose ends, and just checking on some things he still didn't understand. She had been reluctant to let him go, especially after they had been away from home for so many weeks, but when he told her that it was important, and to trust him as she had always done before, she relented, but told him not to be gone long.
Thinking of her made him pick up the phone and call their home. Hearing her voice was wonderful. There were still times when he scarcely believed in the miraculous reality of her existence, and to touch her or hear her speak at such times was nearly epiphanic. He told her he had arrived safely, told her he loved her, told her he would be home as quickly as he could. If he could have, he would have told her everything in his heart, the fears of what he had done, the unforeseen crime that may have been committed in the name of her resurrection.
But he said nothing of that. Even if he learned that everything he suspected was true, he did not know how he could bring himself to tell her.
After he hung up, he lay on the bed for a long time, then closed his eyes. He thought about getting in the car and driving over to the apartment, but it was still raining hard, and besides, what would it prove? The summer session had ended, so the place would be vacant, and he could not get in anyway. What would he do? Sit in the car and look at the dark windows through the wet windshield? Did he think he would see Keith there? Or Pan? Or whatever it was that Keith had become?
No, he would try to sleep. He had to rest, because tomorrow could be tedious, and he could not afford to go to sleep before he found what he was looking for, before he found who the hell had died in that explosion instead of Keith Aarons.
And suddenly exhaustion caught up with his racing mind, and he fell asleep on the motel room bed with his clothes and shoes on, the lights burning, and the sounds and water color images of the television set. He awoke several hours later to white noise, shed his clothes, turned off the lights, and slept again until dawn.
\*
"It's a pretty weird state of affairs," Woody told the young woman behind the reception desk of Iselin's administrative building. The way she had smiled when he told her his name indicated that she had at least heard of him.
"I knew this kid back in the sixties. . . well, he wouldn't be a kid anymore," Woody said, smiling. "He was in this blues band. Played harp, uh, harmonica, and sang. And he wrote this one song that I never forgot. And I'd kind of like to do a cover of it with my group---you know, record it? But I sure don't want to steal it, so I'd like to get in touch with him and make some arrangements."
"Well," the young woman said, "the Alumni Association sends out questionnaires every few years, so if he's returned them his current address should be on file. What's his name?"
Woody grinned sheepishly. "That's the problem. I don't remember. I don't recall if I ever really knew his name."
"Did you look through your yearbook? Maybe you'd recognize his face."
"That's another problem. I've looked through the yearbook for my class of '70, but I don't know if he was my age or younger. I don't even know if he graduated. Seems to me he kind of dropped from sight. Maybe he dropped out or was drafted or something."
The woman pursed her lips. "Then how do you expect to find him?"
"Well, I kind of remember when he sort of disappeared---sometime in the fall of '69."
Woody held his breath, but the woman's face gave no response to the mention of the date. The bombing had, after all, been more than twenty years before. It might linger in campus legend, but who this girl's age would draw a connection?
Woody went on. "I thought I might be able to get the names of the students who left school around that time. Then maybe check against the pictures you have on file here. We all had photos taken as freshmen, I think."
"Oh yes. They're stapled to all the files. Before 1975 we just have student cards with photos, addresses at the time, height, weight, that kind of thing. There's also a space that shows when they graduated or left the school. But since you don't know what class this student was in, someone would have to check every single card from several years." She shrugged helplessly. "And we just don't have the manpower to do it. It could take hours, even days of digging to come up with your name."
"It's not computerized or anything?"
She shook her head. "Not that far back."
"I'd be willing to do the digging. Unless, of course, there's some regulation against it."
"Well," the woman said, "the grades are kept elsewhere---they are all computerized because of transcripts. There's really no confidential information on the cards, so I don't see why you couldn't go through them. Would you mind waiting for a moment while I check?" she asked, gesturing with her head to the chairs in the waiting room.
Woody walked back into the room, but was too nervous to sit down. Instead he stood and listened as the woman pressed a button on her phone and spoke softly into the mouthpiece. He tried to overhear what she was saying, but could not. So he walked around the room, looking at the black and white framed photographs hanging on the wall, photos taken as long as fifty years before, showing different sides of student life.
There was a picture dated 1956 of ROTC pledges standing at attention in what Woody recognized as the Haines Hall parking lot. Another was dated Homecoming 1944, and showed a young woman with wavy hair waving from a float laden with paper flowers. Behind her was a cutout of an American Eagle with the legend, "V for Victory."
Unofficial campus activities were pictured too. Woody smiled at the photo of a thirty foot long human chain hanging from a balcony of Coombs Hall, which had been torn down in the seventies. There were even a few shots from Woody's era---a candlelit campus protest, with three students' faces visible. He recognized one of them, an English lit major even more flaky than most of them had been. He didn't know the other two.
There was also a shot of the Student Union coffee shop, scene of so many political and/or jock discussions. It seemed to be the only place on campus where everyone from football jerk to ROTC creep to math nerd to semi-pro radical could get together and not call each other commies or faggots or pigs. In the foreground of the shot were six students, three men and three women. He recognized a couple of them---the black student who had been his freshman lab partner in bio, and the girl, a year younger than himself, who he had come on to once at a party just for the hell of it and could have easily slept with if he hadn't remembered Tracy.
He drew closer to the picture and squinted, trying to make out the title of the books that sat in piles on the table in front of the students trying to look oh so mature and sophisticated with their too relaxed postures and cigarettes that drifted smoke into one another's faces. Maybe, Woody thought, that's why their eyes were half closed.
The photo was too grainy for him to make out the print on the book covers, but by drawing close to the picture he saw something else. There were two male students sitting at the next table. One had his back turned, but Woody recognized him anyway. There was a certain way the boy held his long-haired head, cocked to one side, chin thrust toward the other student like a spear.
It was Keith Aarons. Woody had no doubt of it.
But it was the other boy that gripped his attention, a boy with long dark hair much like Keith's, but parted in the middle. His face was only a small blur, but there was enough of it to make out the expression of awe, of intense concentration on whatever it was the student across the table was saying.
No, Woody thought, Keith wasn't saying. Keith was pontificating, preaching, proselytizing. Keith was making another convert to the cause, a follower who would be willing to follow him into . . .
Into what? Into the hell of a bomb blast that would rip him apart, make him unrecognizable, sear the flesh off his fingertips, destroy his face, even shred the teeth blasted from his jaw?
And Woody remembered, remembered in this life, the boy he had seen Keith talking to, not just in the coffee shop, but at some of the rallies. He thought that one time Keith had even introduced him to the boy, but he couldn't recall his name.
Woody hissed air between his teeth. It was hard enough to remember the details of things that had happened twenty years before in his original track of existence, let alone in a life that had happened only vaguely, in remote and seemingly manufactured memory. But at least now he had a face, if ever so obscure, and the frail thought that the boy had been younger.
"Mr. Robinson?"
He turned around guiltily, and saw the receptionist standing in the doorway smiling at him.
"It's all right for you to go through the photo cards if you like. There are thousands of them, though."
He smiled back gratefully. "That's all right. I think I can remember what he looks like. Could I start with the class of '71?"
It took Woody four hours to find Benjamin Wallace, three of which were spent in futile roamings through the class of '71. When he started looking through the class of '72, he covered the A's and B's, then went backwards, flipping from Roberta Zielinski toward the front. When Wallace's moony face looked into his, Woody knew he had his man. Beneath and beside the photo the data read:
BENJAMIN THOMAS WALLACE
Ht. 5'10" Wt. 158
335 Park Circle Eyes: Brown Hair: Brown
Pittsburgh PA 15219 PH: 412-555-5398
Billing: Thomas M. and Rose Wallace (pts./s.a.)
Entered: 9/68
Major: PolSc
Graduated: Inv.withd. 1/70
Woody tried to keep his hands from shaking as he read the information. 5' 10" and 158 pounds was within hailing distance of Keith Aarons's vital statistics at that time. And a poli-sci major would have been ripe pickings for Keith. But what did "Inv.withd." mean?
"I think I've got my man," Woody told the receptionist. "But what's this?" and he pointed to the enigmatic abbreviations.
"Involuntary withdrawal," she said. "Seems to fit what you thought. It means that he left school for some reason without making a formal statement. Maybe just stopped attending classes, hit the road, who knows?"
"Would that information be here somewhere?"
"Yes, but that's confidential. You couldn't get access to that."
"It says 1/70," Woody said, pointing at the card. "Would that be when he stopped attending classes, or something else?"
"Oh, that's probably when he was withdrawn. It would be the end of the first semester. If he left any time during that fall semester, he would have gotten all incompletes, and then been withdrawn if he hadn't re-registered for the spring."
Woody thanked her, jotted down the boy's parents' names, phone number, and address, and left the building.
It was only three o'clock, so he drove to the county courthouse and asked the clerk if there was a missing persons file from 1969 or 1970 on a Benjamin Wallace. The clerk looked at him with bored eyes and asked if he was a representative of a law enforcement agency. Woody said he was not.
"Then what's your interest in this person?"
Woody gave him the story about the song, but the clerk showed no recognition. "One moment," he said, and disappeared behind a opaque paned door. When he came back in ten minutes, holding, Woody noticed, a fresh cup of coffee, he nodded his head at Woody. "That person is on file, yes."
"Ah." Woody nodded back. "May I, uh, see it?"
The clerk made his head go back and forth rather than up and down. "Oh no. It's still an open file. So unless you're a law enforcement official or the representative of a law enforcement agency, you're not permitted access to that file."
"So he's still missing?"
"Pardon?"
"Benjamin Wallace. If the file's open, that means he's still missing?"
"It means the file's still open. That's all I can say about it."
It was enough. Woody nodded, but didn't thank the man.
Back at the Holiday Inn, he called Pittsburgh directory assistance, and learned that Thomas Wallace's phone number had not changed. Over a light dinner in the coffee shop, Woody decided what he would tell the man---that he was a classmate of Ben's who had been thinking about him lately, and wondered if he had ever turned up. Just curious. Curious to know if the loose ends had ever been tied up.
It was 6:30 in the evening when he called the Wallace home. The phone rang four times, then was picked up by a machine. "This is Tom Wallace," a voice said. "I'm not in, so you can leave your message at the tone and I'll get back to you."
The beep came, but Woody left no message. He called several times that evening, and tried again the next morning, but the only answer was the dull, mechanical sounding voice of the older man.
All right then. Woody had to know. So if the man didn't want to answer his phone, he would go see him. He had to drive back to Pittsburgh anyway.
He reached the outskirts of Pittsburgh in less than an hour, but it took another forty-five minutes to find Park Circle. It was in a suburban area west of the city. Woody thought the ranch style development might have been built in the mid-sixties to house the ever more affluent steel workers.
The Wallace house was one of five in a cul-de-sac, and Woody pulled into the driveway. There was a car visible through the garage windows. Woody went to the door and rang the bell, but there was no answer.
"Hey!"
He turned and saw an elderly man on his hands and knees, digging in a garden. "You lookin' for Tom?"
"Tom Wallace, yes."
"He's fishin'. Won't be back till Sunday."
Woody nodded. "What about Mrs. Wallace?"
The man shook his head. "Rose died about five years back."
"Sorry to hear that."
"You knew her?" asked the man, as if familiarity was a prerequisite for sympathy.
"No," Woody said guiltily. "No, I didn't. Maybe you could help me out then."
"You sellin' anything?"
Woody grinned and shook his head. "No. I just wanted to find out about their son. Ben? I went to school with him, and I just happened to be in the city, and was wondering . . ." Woody stopped talking.
The man's face had gone sour, and he was pushing himself to his feet, brushing off the knees of his dark green pants. "Shame," he said. "A real shame."
"He . . . never showed up?"
"No. Never did. He talked about going out to California, so Tom and Rose figured he might've tried to hitch out there. Only thing is, he didn't take a thing with him. All his stuff was still in his dorm room."
"Didn't that seem kind of strange?"
The man squinted at Woody. "You said you knew him."
"I did. Not very well, though."
"Well, if you knew him at all, you'd know what kind of communist stuff he babbled about, not believing in private property and all that." The man's eyes narrowed impossibly further. "Hey," he said. "You a reporter?"
There was suspicion there, but there was also a flare of interest, and Woody decided to capitalize on it. "Ah. You found me out."
"I knew it. Paper? Magazine?"
"I'm a freelance, but I hope that Time picks this one up." Time, he thought. Jesus. If you lie, might as well lie big. The man's eyes were alight now.
"Time, huh? What's it about?"
"I'm doing a piece on the runaways of the sixties---you know, the kids like Ben Wallace who dropped out, ran away to San Francisco or wherever, and whether or not they ever reunited with their families. In fact," Woody went on, his mind racing, "it was knowing Ben slightly in college that gave me the idea."
The man was smiling now. "You won't get much out of Tom that I can't tell you. Ben never came back. The cops tried to trace him, but couldn't find a thing. Rose never stopped hoping, though. In fact, every year she took out a couple classified ads in the San Francisco and New York and L.A. papers. Got some responses, too. But it was never Ben. People tried to make her think they were Ben, asking her to send money and things." He shook his head, brushed again at his knees. "Somethin' how cruel people can be."
"Yes," Woody said. "It is."
"That's really all there is to tell. I guess you'll want to talk to Tom anyway, though, huh? Human interest and all."
"No, you've told me enough. And I have other places to go, families to visit."
"You, uh, want my name? For the article?" Woody smiled and nodded. "It's Edward Mihalick. M-I-H . . . aren't you gonna write this down?"
Woody tapped his temple. "All up here."
"M-I-H-A-L-I-C-K," the man said, looking dubious. "You gonna keep looking for Ben?"
"I don't know, Mr. Mihalick. You think it would do any good?"
Mihalick twisted his mouth, and shot a spray of spit onto the lawn. "No," he said. "No, I think Ben's dead. Maybe he was murdered on his way out to California, maybe he died out there where nobody knew him. I think he's long dead, though I don't know how it happened."
I do, thought Woody with a mixture of horror and certainty. I do.
Woody, without solid evidence, still felt certain what had happened. Keith had politically seduced the younger student, talked him into helping blow up the ROTC building, and gotten him to plant the bomb, which had gone off early. Then, weighing the options of being a live convict or a dead martyr, Keith had chosen the latter, taking the chance that Ben Wallace's body would be identified as his own.
But there was also the possibility that Keith and Ben Wallace had changed roles---that Keith had truly died, and Ben Wallace had become Pan. But in that case, Woody thought, wouldn't Pan have existed in the track of existence in which Tracy had died?
No, because then Ben Wallace wouldn't have gone to the ROTC building with Keith in the first place.
Would he?
Jesus. Oh Jesus, it made his head hurt to think about it, and it was the only thing he could think about.
He had to do one more thing now. He had to find out everything he could about Pan, read every note ever published, examine every act, study every nuance of violence to see if there was anything he recalled of Keith Aarons in them. Deeds, even anonymous ones, could bear signatures of a personality as much as the music he wrote bore the traces of his own character. If there was something Keith had left behind, some hint from when he had been his friend, Woody would know.
He checked into the Holiday Inn at University Center, and that evening went to the library of the University of Pittsburgh, where he began to trace Pan's career chronologically. He was surprised to find that no books had been written about the shadowy figure except for a few paperback originals the library did not carry, and which, if he could believe the book review journals, were nothing but sensationalistic and relatively worthless chronicles of the crimes and their aftermaths.
He started with the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature for 1972, and worked his way forward in time. He read everything he could find on the murder of Mrs. Thomas Feeley, which seemed to be the first of Pan's acts, but found nothing that linked the act to Keith. What, Woody wondered, had he been doing for the three years between the explosion and the Feeley killing? Priming the pump with hatred? Oiling the engine of destruction with revolutionary tracts and the companionship of others who felt the same animosity toward corporate Amerika?
Woody read on, feeding rolls of microfilm into the machines, pushing the buttons to make the wheels turn, months and years pass in a monochromatic blur.
The next act he found that could be attributed to Pan was the slaying of John Reyminster, a True Value hardware store clerk in Aliquippa, a town just northwest of Pittsburgh. Reyminster had been found bound and stabbed to death in an alley behind the hardware store on February 8, 1973. Though Woody read every story listed, none printed the text of the note that had been left with the body. Most, however, reproduced the one-character signature of the stylized hoof print, and stated that the man had been slain because he worked for a store that sold paint manufactured by Thomas Feeley's company.
Most of the stories and many accompanying editorials condemned the act as something worse than murder, an atrocity committed by a mind directed by an insanely malformed sense of justice. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette stated that it "brings to a new low the already abysmal acts of terrorism that plague modern life." Even the responses in the counterculture press were negative.
Woody found a detail in several of the stories that bolstered his suspicions. It was a mention of an eyewitness who had seen someone near the alley at the time of the murder, someone the witness identified by name. The witness was not named in any of the stories, but was referred to as a teacher in the Aliquippa School District. The stories further reported that the testimony was dismissed upon learning that the suspect named had died three years earlier "in the process of performing a terrorist act."
Had someone seen Keith? And if they had, how had they recognized him? The answer was simple---they must have been classmates. Iselin turned out a large portion of western Pennsylvania's teachers, so it was not unlikely that the witness had gone to Iselin with Keith and recognized him three years later.
Woody read every story, but none named the repudiated witness. He read on until the library closed, grabbed a small pizza on the way back to his hotel room, and slept poorly.
The next morning he returned to the library and continued his research, appalled at the seemingly senseless murders of store owners, clerks, warehouse workers, secretaries, and others whose connections to corporations Pan (or Keith, as Woody had started to think of him) condemned were absurdly tenuous.
He's crazy, Woody thought time and again. He's more than a fanatic, he's insane. Such a person would be capable of anything.
It got worse. The bombings began in 1976. The targets had been corporate headquarters, branch offices, and, in one case, the visitor's center of an oil corporation, in which four elementary school students on a field trip were killed, and seventeen more were injured.
Going through those three years worth of stories took Woody all day, but that was nothing compared to the stories generated by the string of assassinations that had begun in 1979 with the death of Armand Hammer. The Reagan shooting three years later had inspired so many millions of words of print that Woody despaired of ever finding amidst the celluloid rolls of verbiage any clues that would further link Pan to Keith Aarons.
He spent two more days reading about the incident. He called Tracy every night, apologized for the time spent away from her, but promised that he would be home soon. And every night she sounded more concerned, upset with him that he would not tell her what he was doing, what was the nature of the loose ends he was supposedly tying up. Tonight her impatience was greater than before.
"I want to know," she said, and her voice sounded cold over the line. "What are you doing, Woody? What are you looking for?"
"It's . . . just something I don't understand about what happened."
"Something about me?"
"No, not you."
There was silence for a moment. "It's Keith then." He didn't respond. "Keith. Isn't it?"
He sighed. "Yes. Keith. I think . . ." He was going to have to tell her eventually, but he wouldn't tell her about Pan. Not until he was sure. "I think he's still alive. I think we brought him back."
There was silence at the other end of the line. He didn't even hear her breathing.
"What I'm doing now is checking, trying to find out, to come across some trace of him, to prove that he's still here." Her voice was no more than a whisper. "And . . . is he?"
"I'm still looking. But I'll only be here a few more days. I promise. I'll come home to you very soon."
At the end of the next day Woody found what he was looking for. In August of 1989, Pan had planted an explosive device at a ribbon cutting ceremony outside of Denver, Colorado. The ceremony was held to begin the development of condominiums on seventy acres of wilderness. The state senator who had helped to push through the development was also present, and was also killed when the developer cut the ribbon, releasing the slack to make the fatal connection.
Only one Denver paper, the one that had been opposed to the development, ran the note that it and the other papers had received the day of the explosion. Among other things, it read:
It's time to make a little room on the crippled earth. Depopulate it of men like Senator Schindler and Gus Violetto so that the grass may grow again.
Woody's breath caught, and he freed it with a barking laugh of triumph that made the other researchers in the room turn their heads with glares of annoyance. He ignored them.
All he could see was the paraphrased quotation from Steppenwolf, Keith Aarons's favorite book then, and maybe now.
"Hello, Keith," he whispered. "It's really you, isn't it?"
He read on, but he was sure now, and the near joy he had felt in his discovery turned to melancholy as the thought came over him that he was responsible, he and no one else, for what Pan had done.
By the end of the day the melancholy had turned to depression. Pan's crimes filled Woody's mind, a blazing chronicle of twenty years of violence, so that by the time he rewound the last roll and gave 1992 back to the librarian, he almost prayed that the whole thing had been self-delusion. But it wasn't, and he knew it.
Now there was only one loose end, and that was the Aliquippa school teacher. If he or she could positively identify Keith Aarons as being in the vicinity of John Reyminster's murder, there would be no doubt whatever that Keith was Pan, and then Woody could either live with the guilt of what he had released into the world, or . . .
Or what? Find him? Track down a man no law enforcement agency had ever been able to find?
Maybe. At least Woody knew something they didn't. He knew who Pan was.
\*
Woody found the last chip in the mosaic of proof unexpectedly. That evening, on the way back to his hotel, he passed a large used book store, and went inside on the off chance that they might have one of the critically maligned paperbacks written about Pan. A half hour's search and fifty cents procured him a dogeared edition of PAN---Nature's Terrorist!, held together with a rubber band.
Back in his room, he ate a Burger King supper and began to read the book. In the second chapter he came across what the more respectable media had ignored, the name of the eyewitness in the Reyminster murder.
Her name was Kathy Scavullo, and she was a first year teacher at Aliquippa High. The name wasn't familiar to Woody, but he figured that if she was a first year teacher in 1973 she must be several years younger than he. He read on:
Miss Scavullo told police that she saw a man resembling a student with whom she had attended Iselin State University near the alley where the body was found, but police dismissed her account when it was discovered that the man she identified had been dead for over three years. Even more bizarre was the fact that the man, whose identity was never revealed by authorities, had been killed in an unspecified terrorist act.
That was all. There was no follow-up, no revelation of Keith Aarons as the man who was identified. The circumstantial evidence was overwhelming, but Woody thought he might as well contact Kathy Scavullo and ask her if it was indeed Keith she thought she had seen. That way he would know for sure.
After so many years, he had not expected to find Kathy Scavullo still in the Aliquippa exchange, and did not. But there was a Scavullo, Paul J., and Woody called the number, thinking that it might be a relative who could tell him to what town Kathy had moved, or give him her number. When the man who answered admitted to being Kathy Scavullo's father, Woody found it hard not to smile at the success of his amateur sleuthing.
But when Paul Scavullo told him that Kathy had been killed in a car accident in the summer of 1973, he didn't feel like smiling at all.
He offered the man belated sympathy and hung up, knowing now, far beyond any suspicion.
Keith was alive. Kathy Scavullo had seen him, and Woody felt certain he had caused her death, unwilling to leave a witness behind, especially one who had seen him in college, who suspected that Keith Aarons was not dead after all. No, Keith could not afford to be alive, and Pan could not afford to take any risk.
So another innocent had to die.
Jesus, it was all true, wasn't it? What had started as a bitter fancy had become a terrifying reality.
Keith Aarons, alive and well and vicious. And he owed his life---and how many hundreds owed their deaths?---to Woody Robinson, the dark Orpheus who piped demons up from hell with the nostalgia of Doors records, Day-Glo posters, and Panamanian grass.
Woody didn't sleep that night. He called the airport, made return reservations for early the next morning, and sat looking out at the brightly lit Pittsburgh night, trying to decide what to do with his new, cruel knowledge.
Tell the police or the FBI? That would be interesting, wouldn't it?
Well, you see, I happen to know who Pan is. That's right---the guy you've been looking for for twenty years. His name's Keith Aarons, and he was my roommate. Everybody thought he died in an explosion, but it was some other guy.
How do I know? Well I just got curious after all these years, and did a little investigating. A regular Hardy Boy, aren't I?
Pretty lame.
Okay then. I'll tell you the truth. We had a little party, and brought my wife and Keith Aarons and another friend back from the dead. See, in the world where I first came from, there isn't any Pan, so since my wife and the other guy aren't Pan, it has to be Keith, see?
Yeah. Sure. And who would believe the truth, even though it was so simple. "The fact is," said Woody aloud to himself, "that there are two different worlds. And in the one where Keith Aarons is still alive, Pan exists."
It was that simple, and, even though he said it over and over again, that impossible to believe.
It became no more possible when morning came.
\*
Exhausted, he fell asleep on the plane somewhere over Indiana, and did not awake until they entered California air space. He dreamed about his music and about Tracy, and actually awoke humming, though not from nonchalance. His mouth tasted bitter, and he asked the stewardess for some juice. It washed the taste from his mouth, but not from his mind.
He would have to tell her. In this life, she had shared his every secret, helped with every decision. She would have to help with this one too. But what he was afraid of was that she would see it as her burden, not his. Her guilt. Still, he knew he had to tell her, if for no other reason than to ask her what they should do.
For something had to be done. His friend, a boy with whom he had lived, eaten innumerable pizzas, downed countless beers, had become a merciless mass killer to whom no target was sacred. Men, women, children, guilty and innocent alike were cut down without a trace of conscience, by a boy with whom he had traded secrets and fears, shared joys and sorrows.
Woody had seen the traces of violence in Keith, the angry persona of the rebel railing against the establishment, the beating of the Pershing Rifles officer, and finally the bombing of the ROTC building. But that could be seen as a political statement that had tragically gotten out of hand. If it had gone as originally planned, no lives would have been lost, no one would have been injured. And even though the beating he had given the ROTC jock was brutal, there had been no permanent damage.
So what, in the space of three years, had turned his friend into a killer?
And how could the killer be stopped?
And even if he was, that did nothing to erase the twenty years of violence Keith had caused.
Jesus, talk about guilt, Woody thought as the plane landed. His car was in the parking lot, and he drove home quickly, anxious to feel the presence of his wife and children, reluctant to think about what their presence had cost the world.
When Tracy ran to meet him at the door of their home, he grasped her as if twenty years had separated them. His children seemed puzzled by his strong and lengthy embraces, and Peter groaned and extricated himself from his father's arms. "Yo, Dad, don't have a cow," he said, and Woody laughed and ruffled his hair.
It wasn't until after lunch, when the two of them were alone, that Tracy asked him about his trip to Pennsylvania. They were on the deck overlooking the Pacific, sitting side by side, holding glasses of iced tea.
"All right," she said softly, her hand in his, her eyes, hidden by sunglasses, turned toward the sea. "Tell me. Is Keith alive?"
"Yes," he said, looking at the profile of her face. Her fingers made no reaction. "But it's worse than that. Much worse."
"I know," she said. "He's Pan, isn't he? The terrorist." Woody didn't answer right away, and she went on. "When we first talked about it months ago, about Pan not being in . . . in your other life, I started thinking about it then. Thinking about what if Keith had come back after all." She sighed and looked at him, and he saw his own face in the reflection of her lenses. "You're sure."
"I'm sure." And he told her about his memory of the door closing in the apartment, about Ben Wallace's disappearance at the time of the bombing, about Kathy Scavullo's identification and subsequent death, and about the quotation from Steppenwolf. "It's all circumstantial," he said, knowing that the rationalization sounded absurd, "but when you add the major factor . . ."
"That Pan exists in one life and not the other. I know." She took a long drink from her iced tea. "I know."
He squeezed her hand. "Honey. . ."
"I was too happy, Woody. You know what they say---when you're too happy, look out, because that's just when God's all set to dump on you." When she laughed, there was no humor in it. "But how can I be happy now? How can I be happy when hundreds of people are dead because I'm happy? Because you have to be alive to be happy, and because I'm alive---and Keith's alive---those other people . . . oh God . . ."
The last word shuddered away, and the wet glass slipped from between her fingers, landed and broke on the wooden boards of the deck. She did not move as the pale liquid poured between the boards and ran onto the sand below.
They sat for a long time in silence, until Woody saw tears glide from beneath the frame of Tracy's sunglasses. "I shouldn't have told you," he said. "And it's only a theory anyway."
"It's not. It's true. It's like I told you that night, the night you brought me back? Like Orpheus."
"I know," he said. "I've thought about that."
"You should've looked back, Woody. Looked back and left me there."
"I couldn't. And we didn't know what it would mean . . ." He left it unfinished.
"If you had, if you knew then what you know now, would you have left me behind, left things the way they were?"
"I went back," he said slowly, "to find you. Not for real, but in my heart. My soul. That was why I had the party in the first place. I didn't know what would happen, I just hoped something would, and it did, and because of it you're here, and Peter and Louisa are here---"
"That's three lives, Woody," she said. "Three against hundreds."
"It's not your fault! Not your guilt, if there's any guilt to be borne---it's mine! And who's to say it's wrong? It's the way things are!"
"Pan isn't wrong? All the bombings and the murders and the terror aren't wrong?"
"Look, look," he went on, as if enough words, no matter how illogical, could turn things around, make everything all right again. "What if it was meant to happen like this? If Pan or Keith is important to the way things are, to the environment, if these things he's doing will be for the good in the long run, make people see that---"
"Christ, Woody . . ."
"---see that what we're doing to the earth is wrong?" he continued, grasping at fluttering, unformed thoughts. "Yes, it's hard, it's cruel, but it's the way things are, so what if it's meant to be? Or what if Peter or Louisa are the key? If it's necessary for the world that they exist, and if Pan is the price we pay for that? If because of the deaths of thousands, millions are saved, if---"
"Shut up!" She jerked off her sunglasses, and her eyes looked huge and furious. "Listen to yourself! It's stupid! And it doesn't work, Woody! You think Peter's going to become a scientist who will . . . will make dirt edible? Or Louisa will find a way to use seawater to run engines? Forget it, Woody, it won't happen! And as far as Pan being a source for good, if there's one thing I've learned in all the extra years I've had, it's that evil means don't justify the ends, and goddam it, you know that too."
Then she said, more quietly, "You're not stupid. I didn't marry a stupid man." She took his hand and looked into his eyes with infinite love and endless sorrow. "And I don't love one now . . ."
Then she broke. Her face quivered, sobs shook her, tears rolled from her eyes, and she fell into his arms crying as though she would never stop.
August 31, 1993:
I had it. It was there in my hand, and I couldn't take it.
Pure, deadly, apocalyptic germs, the virus itself in a small, sealed, glass tube, ready to be released into the ventilation system of the oriental's cell. And it was my job, mine and Magruder's, and Magruder would never have known. I could have pulled a switch so easily, taken another tube, installed the fake in the system and pocketed the real one, taking it out, driving to Houston, and releasing it into the ventilating system of the airport terminal, sending it on its fatal journey around the world.
But I didn't. I couldn't. I trembled every second I held it, and sweated so that I thought it might slip from my fingers. I think I finally realized what it was that I was planning to do.
It's a difficult thing to bring yourself to destroy billions of people.
Up until now, I've been selective. There has always been a connection between those I killed and those who defile the earth. Even the children, tragic as that was, didn't die in vain. The attendance at visitors' centers of oil companies and nuclear plants fell off considerably after that sad occurrence. The fewer people who went there, the fewer people there were who would be exposed to and believe the lies. So something was accomplished after all.
Still, after fifteen years, I can't forget the children. Sometimes I dream about them. But then I awake and I know that by now they would be grown up, driving cars, working for the same companies that I've killed to cripple. The problem is with the society itself, a society unwilling to change the way it's governed, unwilling to make the sacrifices that need to be made to keep the earth alive and healthy.
All right then. If they will not, I'll make the sacrifices for them. If I can.
But killing faceless people, guilty people is one thing. Killing all the people I've ever known, people I loved and who loved me, is something else. It is ruthless, and it is cruel, and although I know it must be done, I still have doubts about my ability to do it, to actually spread so much death to the world I've sought to save. I can rationalize it by telling myself it's nothing more than destroying disease causing microbes on an organism in order to save that organism's life, but these microbes are human---my mother, still living in Colver, my friends from college, people I've met who are also struggling to save the earth in their own, less potent ways.
The responsibility that rests on me is so great. At least I have a week of rest to think about it all, to try and become something beyond humanity, and above mercy.
\*
September 1, 1993:
Woody Robinson knows who I am. He knows I am alive, and I believe he knows I am Pan.
Filled with nostalgia, as well as eternal gratitude, for my old friends yesterday, this morning I sat down at the computer to find out more about their lives. Out of curiosity, I wondered if they kept in touch beyond the party at which they "resurrected" me, so I began to check phone records, listing the long distance numbers they recently called, and then cross referencing them to names.
Wallace and Scavullo were two of the names on Woody's list. Wallace, the father of Ben Wallace, who died in my place. Scavullo, the father of the girl I killed, so that she could never identify me again.
He called them from Iselin and from Pittsburgh. And why would Woody Robinson have been in Iselin and Pittsburgh calling those two people? Because he was looking for me. And those calls prove that he found me.
Not physically, but he found that I was still alive, and that I am the one they call Pan.
I have no idea how he did it, how he gathered those disparate cigarette ends of clues and came up with the truth, but I am certain he did, and his knowledge creates a complication I can ill afford. At the very least, he could report my identity to the authorities, who could get a college vintage photograph of me and computer enhance it to show what I might look like today, and plaster it on the front page of every newspaper in the country. Even in Bone, people read newspapers.
I can do two things. The first is to run. But if this grim scenario of mine were to take place, where could I run to? I have only one goal left, and that must not be compromised nor endangered. So I will not run.
I probably don't have to. These things take time. If Woody goes to the authorities, they certainly won't believe him immediately, particularly if he tells them the truth about the party. But they might eventually.
Even if they don't believe his story, his knowledge poses another problem impossible to ignore. He and his friends---my friends---somehow brought me to the present in which I live.
So might it not be possible for them to return me to the past?
That is the chance I cannot take. For that creates the possibility of my never having existed beyond 1969. My death then means the death of the earth. And it is a possibility. No one except my mother knew me better than they did, and no one would have a better chance of tracking me down.
I have to do something. Tomorrow I return to Goncourt. Perhaps I shall find an answer there.
\*
Al Freeman leaned over Keith Aarons's table and stared down at the agar plates as though he could see the teeming bacterial colonies with his naked eye. "How's it going, Pete?"
Keith nodded. "Same old thing. You give me the recipe, I try and mix it, and let you cook it. Gettin' any desserts?"
"We may be on to something with that gene we isolated earlier this week, but we want to make a few more tests before we try it out on her."
"How much time?"
"Three, four days maybe. Then we'll see. It's happened like this before, though. Looks great theoretically, but when we infect subjects, kills them deader than dirt. We'll hope for the best."
Bob Hastings came over and sat in the chair next to Keith. "Good to see you're finally takin' a break, Pete. Lookin' down so long I thought you had a crick in your neck."
Freeman smiled. "Don't you knock this boy for being a good worker. It'll be no fault of his if we don't succeed with this project." He turned to Keith. "You've been doing a helluva job. Probably the fastest cook we have."
Keith grinned. "Not that much difference between genes 'n beans."
Freeman laughed. "So what are you up to in your week off?"
"Goin' out into the fresh air. Backpackin' up in Sam Houston---just some grub, a sleepin' bag, and a few books."
"You going along?" Freeman asked Hastings.
"No way, Jose. He ain't invited." Keith chuckled. "After two weeks cooped up with this ugly bastard, I wanta get as far away as I can from him. Nup, just clean air and deer and bunnies."
"And what's your woman say about that?" asked Hastings.
"Sally?" Keith said, frowning. "Hell, she understands."
"Man's gotta do what a man's gotta do," Hastings said with a barely recognizable John Wayne drawl. "Don't worry, though. I'll keep the women folk company."
"Just bet you'll try," Keith said, slipping a dose of venom in his words.
Bob Hastings had been coming on to Sally more and more. On their week off, which had ended two weeks ago when the current shift began, Sally told Keith that one night at Red's when Keith went to a movie, Hastings seriously asked her to come home with him. When she laughed it off, he waited until Mae took her break, then followed Sally into the kitchen, pressed up against her, and tried to make her kiss him. He had his hand under her skirt when Red came in to see where the hell Sally was, and told the two of them to quit fucking around, and gave Hastings a shove.
"I thanked him later," Sally told Keith. "Red knew what the problem was. Bob had too goddam much to drink or I don't think he woulda tried nothin'. But he tries it again and so help me I'll knee him in the balls."
"That's my girl," Keith said. "Want me to say somethin' to him? Tell him to keep the hell away from you?"
"Nah. You two gotta work together. It ain't worth the hassle. You know you're the one." And she had kissed him hard.
He knew all right. He liked Sally. She was honest and open and friendly and as uninhibited in bed as any woman he ever knew. Joey, her little boy, was in second grade, and a nice kid, as spunky as his mother, but not at all mean with the meanness a lot of poor kids had. His mother had taught him right from wrong, good from bad, and punished him when he needed it, without hitting. There were even times when Keith saw the appeal in being a real, living person, married to a wife you loved and who loved you, bringing up kids, doing work you liked.
But then he remembered what he had to do, remembered that Sally and Joey would have to die with all the others, and the sweet thoughts went away, the reality of the lab and what went on there returned.
Keith glanced up at the wall clock and saw that it was nearly two in the afternoon. The shift ended at four, and with both Hastings and Freeman in the lab, now would be a good time to take what he needed.
"Well, boys," he said, standing, "time to drain the vein and release the grease."
"Jesus, Pete," said Hastings, "you are one piss elegant sonovabitch."
Keith laughed, walked through the door into the empty hall, and turned left toward the rest rooms. He had chosen this time because during the last two hours of the marathon shift, most people were either relaxing around the lab tables or working like hell trying to finish what they had put off for too long. No one, at any rate, was in the storage area.
Keith took one more look down the hall, then pushed open one of the double doors and slipped in. He went directly to the rack of vials marked ZF723, took four of them, and slipped one into each pants pocket. Then he turned around and walked out again.
He knew there would be no check when they left the complex later that afternoon. There was no need for any, Hastings had told him when he had asked at the end of his first two week shift. "We're not like those South African niggers smugglin' out diamonds up their assholes. If Christian white men can't trust each other, well then I don't know what."
Keith left the storage room unseen, and walked back into the lab. He worked until a quarter of four, then cleaned up and went with the other men whose shift was over to the living area and grabbed his duffel.
When the elevator door opened, Hastings, Keith, and several others waited until their replacements got off. Hellos were exchanged, and as they rode up to the first floor, Hastings shook his head. "Poor fucks," he said.
"What?"
"Yearly inventory," Hastings said.
Though it hit Keith like a hammer, he showed no reaction other than to ask, "Inventory?" disinterestedly.
"All the supplies, raw materials, storage stuff, alla that shit."
Storage stuff.
"Even test tubes and petri dishes. It's bullshit, but the old man has a fly up his ass about it. His daddy did it, so he does it. Waste of time and energy, you ask me. Least this year it's two-three shift has to do it and not us."
"They don't . . . work at all?"
"Oh yeah, they'll start the inventory end of their first week probably. Way we've done it before."
End of the first week. That meant they could find the four vials missing as early as the 19th, and since Keith's shift wouldn't start until the 23rd, it would be impossible to replace the empty tubes.
Another complication. Besides what he had to do with the vials, he now also had to come up with an explanation for their disappearance.
As they walked to the parking lot, Hastings said, "So when you leaving for your wilderness trek?"
"Soon's I can get home and pack up."
"Tonight, huh? That means we won't be seein' you at Red's?"
"Nope."
"Sally's gonna miss you somethin' awful."
"You'll just have to keep her company then, won't you?"
"Sounds like you're givin' me permission."
"We ain't married. Sally's a free woman. She wants to mess around with polecats, that's her lookout."
"Don't you worry, Pete ol' boy. I'll keep them polecats away from her."
Yes, Keith thought as he drove through the gates of Goncourt Laboratories, the vials pressing against his hips, I think I can find a way to explain their disappearance all right.
Back in his apartment, he removed a piece of quarter round from one wall of his bedroom, and took out four vials of insulin and a plastic bag of disposable syringes, which he had bought two weeks before with a forged prescription at a pharmacy in Lufkin. Using one of the syringes, he withdrew the insulin from the bottles and squirted it down the drain. Then he opened the vials from the lab and, with a second syringe, drew out the ZF723 serum and injected it through the rubber caps of the sealed insulin bottles.
He packed everything he would need in his nondescript duffel, wrapping the vials carefully in his socks. Then he took a plastic pint bottle of rubbing alcohol, poured it down the drain, refilled it with chloroform, closed it tightly, and added it to the bag. He had the prescription for insulin and syringes in his wallet, just in case anyone from airport security asked for it.
Diabetes was the perfect cover. It explained the bottles of serum, the syringes, and the alcohol bottle, used to sterilize a diabetic's injection sites. Security people would be far more likely to give him sympathy than a hassle.
He wrapped the empty vials from the lab in a t-shirt which he rolled inside a sleeping bag, then carried the bag and the duffel, both fitted into a backpack frame, down to his car and put them in the trunk. If anyone from the lab was watching, it would appear that he was off on his camping trip.
On the way out of town he stopped at Sally's trailer. Joey was playing with G. I. Joe figures on the tiny porch, and he stepped over the boy and walked into the trailer. Sally was fixing dinner and watching Entertainment Tonight on a small black and white TV that sat on the counter between canisters. She looked up as he came in.
"You're really goin'?" she said.
He nodded. "Just gotta get away for a while."
"All right," she said. "I know how you are." Then she smiled. "I know how men are. Long's you come back."
"I'll come back," he promised, meaning it.
"Ain't you awful horny after two weeks, though?" she asked him, cocking her head.
"Yeah, a little," Keith said, "and you look awful cute in that pretty apron."
"You gotta go right now? This minute?"
He shrugged. "Won't you burn your supper?"
"Not if I turn off the stove for a while," she said, and reached out and did just that.
He got on the road a half hour later, a ham sandwich on a paper plate on the seat next to him. He headed southwest on US 59, but didn't turn off at the exits for Sam Houston National Forest, since no one had been tailing him. Instead he drove on, and arrived at Houston International just before nine o'clock. He parked, took the duffel off the pack frame, and shuttled to the terminal, where he paid cash for a ticket on the 11:30 flight to Atlanta.
There were no problems at the security gate, and he slept during the first half of the flight, waking up at the stopover in New Orleans. From there to Atlanta, he thought about Judy McDonald. And he wrote about her in his mind.
\*
September 13, 1993:
I have to rationalize her destruction. Hers and the others I can reach in these few days. For only by securing their ruin can I ensure that I will remain free to finish my mission. Paranoia? Perhaps. But only paranoia, a constant state of awareness of every danger, has kept me alive this long.
I owe them my life, I know that, and it seems the height of ingratitude to destroy them. But perhaps their destruction will help to further steel me for what I have to do, help me find the ruthlessness that is required.
Besides, I have no choice. And it isn't as though it's murder. Their murders would only arouse suspicion. No, they'll be the ones to do the killing. All I'll be doing is releasing what's already there inside them, triggering the anger that lies in everyone's mind. Let them talk then. Let them tell as much as they want to about Keith Aarons, for who will believe the ravings of violent psychotics?
Still, I have to rationalize her destruction, and it's hard. I loved her in college as a brother loves a sister. We were both imbued with revolutionary ideals, and we expressed them as effectively as we knew how. She did it with her art.
Looking back, her technique was naïve. But there was a purity about her canvases, with their great slashes of orange and red and yellow, and the faces we saw in them. The longer you looked, the more faces you saw, Vietnamese faces, tortured by Amerikan flames. It was as though Amerika wasn't content with torturing its own people with the filth it spewed into the air, but it had to go to untouched places as well and spew napalm into it, destroy its forests and jungles and birds and animals, and Judy knew that. That was what her paintings said.
But between then and now, what happened? I can't believe that she simply forgot. I think she was given a choice between holding on to her ideals and making things better for the world, or making things better for herself. She chose the latter, and became a whore. I know. I found out all about her. I found out all about my old friends---Judy and Alan, who sold out, and Woody and Sharla, the two I loved most.
But Judy is the one now who I have to think about. Judy, who became not an artist, but a seller of art, who pays the people of the mountain cheap and sells to the people of the city dear. Someone who masks the dangers by saying, Look, your life isn't ugly---it can be beautiful. Pretend that things haven't changed. Lie to yourself. Pretend it's a hundred years ago when people hand crafted tools from wood, when women quilted every day, when artists did no more than proclaim how wonderful was the world and God's creations.
Ignore the filth, the pollution, the destruction of the earth, the things of which art can speak and scream.
Because things like that don't sell, do they, Judy? No, truth doesn't make you money.
Well, it's time to get your spirit back. Time to find your soul again.
Time for golden oldies.
Frank McDonald was feeling hassled even before Woody Robinson called him and told him that he was sure that Keith Aarons was the terrorist known as Pan. Judy was late getting home, the kids were tearing around the house like banshees, the dog had just thrown up a whole bowl full of Kibbles 'n Bits on the dining room carpet, and he just realized that he had forgotten to put the chicken in the oven at 4:00, as Judy had instructed.
"What the hell are you talking about?" was his first reaction, as he held the phone with one hand and, with the other, picked up chunks of vomit with a paper towel. "You told me about this before, Woody. You were full of shit then and you're full of shit now. Keith was dead then, he's dead now."
"No he's not. The body was a kid named Ben Wallace."
"Horseshit. He ran off to the coast."
"And never turned up again? I also learned that Keith was identified after one of the killings---by an Iselin graduate, who later died mysteriously."
"How mysteriously?"
"A car crash."
"Oh yeah, real mysterious. Probably drunk---that's why he kept seeing dead guys."
"It was a she, and she wasn't drunk. And there's another thing---"
"What?"
"Oh, I just got some dog barf on my fingers. What's this other thing?"
"In one of his notes, Pan paraphrases Steppenwolf."
"So?"
"That was Keith's favorite book."
"Shit, that was a lot of people's favorite book. It doesn't mean a damn thing."
"Not until you remember that Pan wasn't in our other life, Frank---and then it means everything."
Frank wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder and dropped the mess he had cleaned up into the waste can. "Well, hell," he said cavalierly, "maybe it's this Ben Wallace you're talking about. Maybe he's Pan."
"If he is, that only means that bringing Tracy and Dale back---but Tracy specifically---still created Pan, whether it's Ben Wallace or Keith."
Frank sighed and sat on the kitchen floor, his back against the cabinets. "Look, pal. You've got Tracy, you've got your kids, and that's great. Eddie and Dale have got each other, and that's great. We also have Pan, and that's not so great. But it's life. It's real. It's the way things are in this world, and it's the way they've always been to everybody but eight of us. So don't kill yourself with this. What's done is done, and it can't be changed back to the way it was before."
There was a long silence on the other end. "Can't it?" Woody finally said.
"No, it can't. Now look, I'd love to feel guilty with you some more, but I just heard the car pull in. Judy's got an opening tomorrow, she's wired as hell, and I've got no time to commiserate about metaphysics."
"But, Frank---"
"Enjoy what you have, my friend. God's been good to you, huh? He gave you a second chance. Don't crap all over it because you're too happy. Forget it, Woody. Just forget it and enjoy, okay?"
"Christ, I've tried to. I've known this for two weeks, Frank, and I've tried to forget about it, just hold it in until it dissolves or goes away or something. But it doesn't go away, and I had to talk to somebody who'd understand."
"I don't understand, Woody, and I don't want to. I don't even want to think about it---"
"Frank, do you know how many people have been killed by---"
"No, man, and I don't want to know!"
The back door opened and Judy came in, her attaché case under her arm. Frank thought she looked puzzled.
"Hey," he said into the phone, "I gotta go. Now just relax, will you? And forget it, huh?" Woody said nothing. "There's no trying involved, man. Just do it. Forget."
"Okay." The voice sounded weak, farther away than California. "Yeah."
"That's my man. Give my love to Tracy. Bye." And he hung up.
"Woody?" said Judy.
"Yeah. He's still whacked out. I don't know if he can't deal with happiness or what." He kissed his wife lightly. "So where've you been so late?"
She gave a little laugh. "I . . . don't know. It's like I lost some time somewhere."
"What? First Woody, now you?"
"No, it's . . . I mean, I was on the elevator in the parking garage, and I stepped off, and the next thing I knew I was sitting in the car. And at least twenty minutes had gone by."
"Well, are you all right? Somebody knock you out or what?"
"No, no, I'm fine."
"You still have your money?"
"Oh yeah. I don't remember seeing anyone. But all of a sudden there I was behind the wheel, and it was twenty minutes later."
"Dammit, Jude, you've been working too hard. I told you, you need to take a break, a week off. Trish can run the gallery by herself."
"I don't know," Judy said. "Maybe you're right."
Frank was amazed to get that much of a concession out of her. Usually when he criticized her workaholic nature she shot him down immediately.
"After the opening tomorrow," she said, "I'll take a week. Maybe I'm just tired. I mean, I feel tired tonight . . ."
They went to bed earlier than usual, and Judy complained, just before she fell asleep, of an ache in her arm. When Frank examined it, he thought he saw a small mark, but couldn't be sure.
\*
September 14, 1993:
I think she recognized me, just for an instant as she turned, before I slapped the chloroform over her face. It didn't matter, though. I told her to forget, just as I told her to forget everything else I said until 5:00 tomorrow afternoon, an hour after the opening. I injected her as carefully as possible. I didn't want her to hurt, to be concerned, to go to a doctor. I want what happens to be a total surprise, for her and for everyone else.
Now on to Cleveland, and Sharla. Sharla, who I loved. I never found another woman with her strength of will, with such purity of purpose. She believed in her people, but not to such an absurd extent that she shut others out. Her lover, after all, was a white boy.
But she turned her back on her people. Taught a few years in the inner city, then maybe couldn't take it anymore, turned her back and went and taught good little white children from good white families.
When I saw her lying there that night at Woody's party, I felt as though time had really turned back. But now there was something about the way she wore the clothes that she believed in back then, something that said she believed no longer, that it was just a costume, that she could as easily have dressed up like a princess or a fairy or a majorette or something else equally white. And then when I found what she was doing, who she was teaching, I knew that she had sold out too.
Thus my rationalization for what I must do. Now she pays, and by making her pay I not only protect myself, but I thicken my skin even further, forge upon my flesh another layer of that armor of ruthlessness.
\*
The show at the Buckhead Folk Art Gallery was the season opener, so Frank McDonald understood his wife's tension. Its title was "The Fall Sampler," since it showed several of the best pieces of the artists who were due to have their own shows later in the year Last fall's sampler had been a huge success, with front page coverage in the Constitution's Style section. It had greatly expanded the mailing list, and the gallery's sales had increased by 150% over the previous year.
This fall, Judy had added five new artists to the gallery. She had discovered two at rural craft fairs, and had lured two from other galleries, but her prize was Bridie Finch. Bridie was a robust, heavyset woman from McCaysville, a small town on the Tennessee border. Frank had liked her the first time he met her, several weeks ago, when she drove her husband's pickup truck, its bed stacked with quilts under a plastic tarp, to the McDonald's house.
Bridie was the real McCoy, a mountain woman born and bred, who used traditional patch designs because she knew no others, and fabric left over from dresses and blouses and yes, quilts that her aunts and her mother and grandmothers had made.
Judy had found Bridie Finch three months before, shortly after returning from the party in Iselin. She was driving to a flea market and craft show near Blue Ridge, but had taken a wrong turn and had to ask for directions at a general store with gas pumps outside. The man she assumed was the owner told her how to get back to Route 5, and she was just about to pull away when she saw a small, hand lettered 5 x 7 inch card in the window. She was barely able to make out the word QUILTS, for the sun had bleached the letters to nearly the same shade as the yellowed sign.
Judy joked later that the odds were that whoever had put up that sign was long dead, but she rolled down the window and asked the man, who turned out to be Bridie's husband Arthur, if he did indeed have any quilts for sale.
"Bridie does," the man said, pointing a grimy finger into the woods behind the store. "In the house."
The whole place looked, Judy told Frank, like something out of Deliverance. Old cars were up on blocks, gaunt dogs lay in the shade as though they were dead, or snuffled amid piles of boards and sticks, as if hoping to drive out something they could eat. She felt certain that if she got out of the car and walked up to the house, she would never be seen again, and the Volvo would be up on blocks and rusted in a month or two.
But QUILTS was the magic word that would send Judy through a legion of chainsaw-wielding rednecks, so she parked, walked up the dirt trail to a small one-story cabin, and knocked.
The instant she saw Bridie Finch's face, she knew she had nothing to fear, and when she saw Bridie's quilts, she had everything to gain. There were seven of them that Bridie pulled out of a large, painted-grain chest, all stunners, capable of bringing $1500 each from browsers in her gallery, and far more from her regular clientele.
When Judy asked if she had any more, Bridie said a flock of them, out in the shed in storage chests Arthur built to keep the squirrels from them, but they couldn't get to them right now because Arthur had a lot of farm equipment parts piled in front that he'd have to move first.
Judy asked her how much she wanted for them, and Bridie told her a hundred and twenty-five each, except for the big one, which was a hundred and fifty.
"My God," Judy said. "That's all? Where are you from, lady?"
Bridie smiled, and gestured to the room they were in, the mountain they were on, her life. "I'm from right here," she said, and Judy understood.
She told Bridie she would take all seven quilts and pay her three hundred dollars for each, and would pay another three hundred when each quilt sold. She also asked to represent her exclusively. Bridie was grateful, but not amazed. Judy told Frank it was as if she had always known the quality of her quilts, but had merely been waiting for someone else to come along and validate them.
There were thirty-eight quilts in the bed of the truck Bridie drove to Atlanta. All were superbly crafted, with tiny quilting over nearly every inch. The colors varied from bold and brash to subtly rustic. Bridie had, thought Judy, the best eye for combining colors she had ever seen. She was quick to offer Bridie a handsome commission agreement which Bridie was as quick to accept.
And now, four hours before the sampler's opening, Bridie was at the gallery, beaming at the five quilts she and Judy had chosen to show. Arthur, her husband, trailed behind her, head down, plainly uncomfortable in his suit. Frank noted with amusement that the tightness of Arthur's clothes, the narrow lapels, and the broad, colorfully figured tie made him look oddly in vogue, and he wouldn't have been at all surprised if Arthur was mistaken for one of the city's more quirky art critics. The sour expression of disapproval the man wore did nothing to dispel that image.
Slowly the other featured artists and craftspeople came in, in differing states of tension. Rick Dodgson, who crafted intricate puzzles out of mahogany that sold north of $200 each; Bev Dickers, painter of American primitives; Tom Ricard, a hulking man who produced delicate folk dolls with cherubic, ceramic faces. There were a total of fourteen artists, all of whom had arrived by 3:30, a half hour before the gallery was due to open.
Trish Wilson, the assistant manager, supervised the caterers with her usual lack of calm, leaping from table to table, picking up the occasional champagne glass with a hankie and examining it for finger marks, or leaning over the chafing dishes and sniffing with the suspicions of a Borgia.
"Any mouse droppings in the cannelloni, Trish?" Frank couldn't help asking.
She looked at him with a glare intended to melt lesser mortals. "I just want everything to be right, Frank."
"Everything is as right as it can be," said Judy, coming up to them. Frank was pleased to see her smiling. She actually looked relaxed for a change. "The artists are here, the work is gorgeous, and our R.S.V.P.s have been overwhelming."
"The TV people still coming?" Trish asked.
"Yes. Don't be nervous, they won't bite. They'll be here at five."
When Trish scurried away, Frank slipped an arm around Judy's waist and kissed her cheek. "Everything looks great, hon. And you seem very together."
She smiled and shrugged. "I guess I figured you were right about that rest I need. I've been pushing too hard. This show is going to go great, and then I'm going to take a well-deserved break . . . before I have a nervous breakdown."
"Not you, tough mama. Even if you do fade out in parking garages." Her smile slipped a little, and he was sorry he said it. "Just kidding. Everything's cool. You're cool. Did I mention you look just great today? The very model of the modern upscale galleria owner?"
"Screw you too," she whispered, but kissed him. "And I will. Later." Then she looked at her watch. "Time," she said, and swept off to tell Trish to open the doors.
No one was there, of course. But they began to come in at 4:15, and by 5:00 the gallery was packed with well-dressed Buckhead residents (or Buckhead Fuckheads, as Frank still thought of them). He found a few that he felt comfortable with and stayed in their company.
He hated meeting Judy's new customers, because they always asked him what he did, and he had to tell these business execs or doctors or lawyers that he sold musical instruments and band uniforms to schools. And these rich people invariably looked as though they had just been called away by some mental beeper, and found some new piece of folk art to distract them.
The thought, born of years of stifled liberalism, intruded into Frank's consciousness like a worm in a bright red apple. Sure, Judy's show was great. The food was great, the art was great, the response was great.
But so fucking what?
What did it do to make things better? All it really did was give rich people a new way to spend their money. Maybe the occasional deserving soul like Bridie Finch got a decent piece of change out of it, but what the hell did it do?
In a way, he thought, the kind of folk art that Judy sold did more harm than good. It gave people the illusion of better and cleaner times, so that they could forget the ugly and filthy world they lived in. And because they were more easily able to ignore it, they did nothing about it, so it grew uglier and filthier every day.
It was an unhappy, despairing thought, and he felt guilty for thinking it in his wife's moment of triumph. He tried to sigh it away, but it would not leave, and he thought that if he found Judy, exultant and proud, her own high spirits might rub off on him. So he grabbed a morsel of sushi, popped it in his mouth, and started to look for her.
He was just pushing delicately past a jabbering foursome when he heard a loud crash that brought dead silence to the multi-leveled gallery, followed by the clatter of metal and wood. He tried to look past the crowd to the source of the sound, but could only tell that it came from the end of the room that held Rolf Anderssen's pieces. Anderssen's work was as close as Judy came to showing anything abstract, hulking masses of iron and timber, made from assemblages of old farm tools, scythes and sledges and axes and mauls and pitchforks wired into astonishing shapes, like arachnids bred for manual labor. Even the smallest, Judy complained, required twenty square feet of display space.
As the crowd parted and a communal gasp of disbelief filled Frank's ears, he saw Judy, and, a second later, heard her shriek.
"Bullshit! Reactionary jerkoff bullshit!"
In her hands she held a scythe with a four foot long blade. One hand on the snath, the other on the handle, she looked as formidable as he had ever seen her. Even twenty yards away, he could hear her panting, see her shoulders rise and fall with every breath.
"You call this fucking art?" She took a few steps toward the people near her, who backed away, bumping into each other, losing their balance, but never taking their eyes off her.
"BULL! SHIT!"
A woman fell, cried out, crawled away from Judy's advancing form.
"Art instructs!"
Judy swung the scythe at the wall, ripping into a Bev Dickers primitive of a wide eyed cat sitting by a stove, slashing the canvas to behead the beast. Frank wanted to run to her, to stop her, but found he couldn't move.
"Art makes statements!"
She swung again in a vast, wide arc, ripping the hand carved wooden figures of checker players off their polished base and sending the rustic missiles flying into the crowd.
"Art warns! . . ."
The glass framing a piece of antique patchwork shattered and rained like hail.
". . . and burns! . . ."
She ripped again, skewering one of Tom Ricard's dolls through the chest and waving the sweet-faced cherub aloft before shaking it off roughly and stamping on its ceramic head.
". . . and scars!" Another swipe, and a four foot landscape of a Victorian town at Christmas was slashed. The point caught on the frame, and Judy yanked it from the wall, tossing it against the TV cameraman so that the eyepiece of his videocam slammed against his face, he fell, and the machine, still whirring, dropped from his shoulder onto the boards of the gallery floor.
"You shit!" she said, and kicked at him. "Get up! You want a story, then get up!" The cameraman staggered to his knees, picked up his camera, got to his feet, continued shooting. "So everybody knows!" Judy said. "So everybody knows what art is! Art is the servant of the people, a way to bring Amerika---and that's with a K, Mister Media Whore---Amerika to its senses and its knees! It isn't this backward looking bullshit! What the fuck is this crap anyway . . ."
Through this tirade, Rolf Anderssen, undoubtedly annoyed at how his assemblage of tools had been disassembled and how one of the pieces was being used, had slowly maneuvered his way behind Judy. Most people's eyes were on her, but Frank noticed the furtive movement, and saw with horror that Anderssen was about to grab his wife from behind. It was for fear of what could happen to Anderssen that Frank began to raise his arms to warn him away. But by then it was too late, and his caution to Anderssen became a warning to Judy, who whirled around just as Anderssen closed in.
The scythe whirled with her.
Its point caught Anderssen just above his left hip, and sunk into his bowels with a dry rip of tearing cloth and the wet squelch of tearing flesh.
Judy pulled it out immediately, straight out the way it had gone in, instead of across. If she had done that, Anderssen's viscera would have spewed onto the floor. As it was, blood and yellow fluid ran from the man's side like a fountain as he fell, and most people looked away in horror. But the cameraman and Frank and a few others kept watching, and saw Judy's amazed, wide-eyed face, as though realization of what she had said and done had suddenly come upon her.
Then the concern passed over her as quickly as the shadow of a cloud in a strong breeze, and the hardness returned. Without another word she turned away from Anderssen and raised the scythe again, now dripping with blood, and swept it toward Bridie Finch's Feathered Stars quilt. The blood arrived first, marking a crimson path the blade followed into the reds and blues and browns. The scythe snatched the quilt from the wall, and Judy waved it like a flag, trying to extricate the blade from the mass of fabric.
But before she could, Bridie Finch was on her.
The woman moved with a swiftness that belied her girth. With a massive left arm, she batted aside the quilt wrapped scythe, and with her right, she caught Judy with an uppercut that snapped her teeth together and sent her eyes rolling upward so that only the whites showed. Bridie caught her as she fell, and lowered her gently to the floor.
The gallery erupted. Voices cried out, people wept, some ran to help Anderssen, others to restrain Judy should she awake. The cameraman kept taping.
Frank walked slowly to where Judy lay, pushed through the people surrounding her, heard Bridie say, "Let 'im through . . . let Frank through now." When he found himself standing next to her, Bridie put a hand on his arm. "Sorry, Frank," she said. "Couldn't let her keep that up."
Judy's eyelids were fluttering, and he knelt next to her. Her jaw hung slackly, and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. Frank saw that a front tooth was cracked. Her eyes opened, and he gave an involuntary moan at the horror in them.
"Frank . . ." she said, sobs choking her. "Frank, what . . . what did I do?" She turned her neck stiffly and looked at the ruined walls of the gallery, the people trembling, and finally at Rolf Anderssen, lying in his blood, his chest rising and falling in stuttering jerks.
"What did I do?"
The cameraman kept taping.
\*
And Frank, hours later, waiting in the precinct house, kept hearing something Keith Aarons had said to Judy over twenty years before, but Frank had no idea whether it had been in this life or in the other he had known.
You'll sell out someday, Jude.
Bullshit I will.
Yes you will. Because of things. You like things too much. Pretty things. Expensive things.
Fuck you, Keith.
And when you start painting family portraits of rich people, I'll come back and I'll haunt you, Jude.
You gotta be dead first, moron.
Oh, I'll be dead. And I'll haunt you and freak you out so much that instead of painting those rich bastards you'll stab them to death with the pointy end of your paintbrush.
And Keith laughed, and Judy laughed and told Keith to fuck himself again, and they all laughed and drank their beer or smoked a joint and talked about something else.
Stupid. Stupid, Frank thought. That was twenty-five years ago, and this is now, the nineties, and Judy was working too hard. First that blackout in the garage---god damn, but he should have taken that as a warning, had her see a doctor right away. It could be a brain tumor or half a dozen other things.
But it wasn't, damn it, it wasn't. It was a breakdown, that's all. She went temporarily . . . insane. And she didn't mean to hurt Anderssen---she had turned at the wrong time, that's all. If he hadn't sneaked up behind her . . .
They said he would live. That the scythe had cut through a lot, but nothing that couldn't be sewn up again. Thank God the ambulance had gotten there so quickly. If it hadn't, he would have bled to death. So they couldn't try her for murder.
But for attempted murder . . .
Oh Christ. He had called their attorney, and he had contacted the offices of a criminal lawyer (criminal, Frank thought with a bowel-churning sense of panic), but he had not yet arrived. Soon, Frank prayed, soon.
Meanwhile he sat on an institutional green chair, unable to see Judy, who they had taken away in handcuffs, and he couldn't do a damned thing but sit in that chair and wait for the lawyer to show up or for some policeman to come out and talk to him. He couldn't do a thing but sit there and remember what had happened, and think about that look of bewilderment and realization on her face, as though she had done something awful without even knowing what or why.
He couldn't do a thing but sit there and every few seconds remember Keith Aarons, dead Keith Aarons, saying Oh, I'll be dead with so many different meanings in so many different lives.
When Sharla Jackson woke up that Monday morning, she felt no different than usual. A little tired, maybe. She hadn't slept too well the night before. Bad dreams, she thought, though she couldn't recall what they were about. There had been that other thing, too. That little blackout or whatever it was she had the evening before, walking back to her apartment from the pool after one last swim.
It was the last weekend the pool was open, and she had wanted to spend as much time in the water as possible. Fortunately the air was still balmy, and she lay at poolside through most of Sunday, going inside only to eat and get a second Danielle Steel paperback when she finished the first one. Reading them made her feel guilty, since she knew she should be reading someone like Toni Morrison or Alice Walker, sisters who knew what the world was like, and not some rich white woman who made a helluva living out of sunsets and happy endings.
The thing was that Sharla liked sunsets and happy endings. She had seen too many sad ones during the years she taught in the inner city. Children didn't die all the time, but it happened, and it happened a lot more often there than it did where she worked now, near Shaker Heights. There the children were relatively polite and well behaved, though there was the occasional problem kid. Hell, there was anywhere. But poverty and broken homes seemed to cause a lot more problems than affluence and family stability. Sharla liked being away from the battle zone, teaching behind the lines, working with kids who really wanted to be there in her class.
But it didn't help the guilt. She had felt for the past dozen years that she had betrayed her people. She taught mostly white kids now, children who didn't need her love and understanding nearly as much as those she had tried to reach in the city schools. Sometimes she had helped, but most of the time she hadn't, and her frustrations grew as quickly as the virus of drugs spread, even in the lower grades. She had had no users at that early age, but there were plenty of little ones who held onto drugs for older siblings or friends, or who even sold packets at their elders' commands.
What drove her out had been when a fifth grader she had in class three years earlier was found dead in a booth in the boy's rest room, a crack bowl beside him. His name was Martin, and as a second grader he had been very serious about his school work, looking at Sharla with big, solemn eyes. "Diligent. A hard worker," she had written in the comments space on his report card. More honestly, she could have said that he wasn't bright, but he tried. And he had given the other teachers that impression right up until the morning he died.
So Sharla had moved from Grover Cleveland Elementary to Parkway Elementary, from Alice Walker to Danielle Steel (who she would only buy used, never new, to cheat the author out of more royalties). She moved from dreams of saving the children to the reality of saving her sanity. It was not as rewarding, but it was stable and non-threatening, and she worried less at night.
But last night she had worried, just a little, before going to sleep. Dusk had come, and she had been walking back to her apartment, her beach bag in one hand. She was just entering a covered walkway between two of the complex's buildings, and the next thing she remembered she was standing by her front door, the key in her hand. She didn't remember taking the key out, didn't even remember leaving the walkway. But there she was.
There was another thing too. It was darker, maybe ten or fifteen minutes darker, as though she had blacked out for that time. Still, other than feeling displaced in time for a while, she felt all right physically, except for a little bruise on her left thigh that she didn't know how she had gotten. Probably scraped it on the edge of the pool, she thought.
Now, on another Monday morning, she showered, and as she did so she noticed the bruise was gone. Then she had a quick breakfast, gathered her plan book and the materials for the banner she planned to put over the blackboard before school started, left her apartment, walked to her car, and opened the door.
That was when she stopped and listened to the voice.
\*
It told her what to do, and she knew that it was right, that this was the only way.
She drove the mile and a half to her school, got out, opened the trunk, and took from it a wide tube four feet long with metal caps at each end. She carried this under one arm, and her bag with the other. As she entered the building, her principal, Mr. Newman, smiled and nodded.
"Morning, Kevin," she said with a big grin.
You fuckin' white pig.
"Hi, Sharla. What's that, a poster?"
"Mmm-hmm. Huge Brian Wildsmith---all kinds of animals. Come on down later and see it."
So I can drop your lily white ass.
She walked to her room, unlocked it, and set the tube in a corner near her desk. Then she put up the banner, a series of scenes from fairy tales illustrated by Tomie de Paola. But instead of putting it over the blackboard, she taped it up over the translucent glass panes next to the door. When the children came in, she smiled at them, settled them gently in their seats, and, when the time came, closed the door, taping the final 2x2 panel over the little inset window.
"Good morning, children," she said. "I have a big surprise for you today. I think you'll find this very interesting."
The children whispered excitedly as Sharla walked to the corner, picked up the tube, opened one end, and put it on her desk. She reached inside, and slid out the automatic rifle with the clip in place, just like the voice had said it would be. It hadn't told her what kind of weapon it was, but it looked like the kind the people on the TV news wanted to ban. The voice had told her that as long as she held the trigger down, the gun would keep firing. And when it stopped, there were six other clips. The voice had told her how to remove the empty one and load a full one. It looked very easy, she thought.
"Now, children, I want you to stay in your seats and not get up and not make any noise. If you do, I'll have to punish you. You know I don't do that very often, but today I will, if you don't obey me."
"Is that a real gun?" one boy near the back asked.
"Yes, it is, Brian. Now. Francis, Chris, Jenny---I want you to take your desks and put them in front of the pretty pictures I put up by the door . . . that's right, just slide them over there. William, Sam, Richard, you pull all the blinds down, please . . . No, Elizabeth, I didn't ask you to help, did I? You stay in your seat. It's very important that you do everything I say. . . That's fine, boys, thank you. Now sit down."
When everyone was seated, Sharla picked up the phone connecting her to the office. "Sarah," she said into the mouthpiece, "put Kevin on . . . I don't care if he's in a conference, Sarah. Put him on now . . . What's it about? It's about inequality and injustice, Sarah. It's about political prisoners who must be freed. It's about the nation's jails filled with my brothers. Now put Kevin on right away, or you're going to hear something, and you won't need the phone to hear it. You're going to hear some gunfire, you white bitch.
"You're going to hear the voice of black revolution."
Woody was tired. He had been working in his home studio, trying to write, but it had been hard. He was too worried about Tracy. Ever since their conversation two weeks earlier about Keith, she had been depressed. She smiled at and joked with the children, but when she was with Woody, or when she thought she was alone, she was another person, holding the weight of the world on her shoulders.
And maybe, Woody thought, that wasn't so far from the truth. He felt the burden too, though he tried to dismiss it, and tried to ease it from Tracy, suggesting things to do as a family, or places she could go during the day when the kids were at school. But still, the sorrow hung blackly over their white and airy house.
He had broken his self-imposed code of silence on the matter only once, when he had called Frank McDonald to share his discoveries and concerns. But Frank had not wanted to be a partner in Woody's paranoia and guilt, and Woody couldn't blame him. So he and Tracy bore the burden of proof alone.
Now, exhausted from trying to force joy from his reeds, Woody sat down in front of the television in the family room adjoining the kitchen, where Tracy and Louisa were preparing dinner. He found a moment of solace amid the domestic clatter of pans and mixing bowls, then picked up the remote and pushed the button so that Dan Rather's grave face appeared.
". . . in a suburb of Cleveland today. The woman, identified as Sharla Jackson of Warrensville Heights, and a teacher at Parkway Elementary School where the incident took place, apparently hid an automatic rifle in a poster tube, and held her second grade class hostage for six hours while she made Black Nationalist demands over the school's telephone system. At three o'clock eastern time a S.W.A.T. team attempted to enter the room, and gunfire was exchanged, leaving Jackson and one student dead. Three other children were wounded in the melee . . ."
Rather went on to a story about flooding in a Mississippi town, but Woody did not hear it. He sat, scarcely believing what he had heard, then punched the channel buttons to ABC.
"Tracy . . ." he said, but there was no reply. "Tracy! Come here!"
She appeared in the rectangle of the open serving bar, a wooden spoon in her hand. "What?"
He could only point to the television, which displayed the face of Peter Jennings and a window behind him that read, Terror in Cleveland, with a silhouette of a rifle. Jennings's story was similar to Rather's, and Tracy gasped when he gave Sharla Jackson's name and her picture filled the window. Jennings added that there was a possibility "that no shots were actually fired by Sharla Jackson. We've received no official word on this, but preliminary reports indicate that this may indeed be the case. Ted Koppel will cover the incident on Nightline tonight, and hopefully ABC will receive either a confirmation or a denial by that time. In other news . . ."
"Sharla?" Tracy whispered. "Sharla, Woody? My God, how could she? She'd never do something like that."
Woody swallowed. He felt as though tar were stuck in his throat. "No," he said, turning off the TV. "She wouldn't. Maybe she didn't."
"What?"
"What's up, you guys?" said Louisa, appearing over her mother's shoulder. "Mom, how long do I have to keep stirring that stuff?"
"Just a minute!" Tracy said, then shook her head. "I'm sorry, hon. I've got to talk to Daddy. Just . . . keep stirring it, okay?"
She came into the den and sat next to Woody. "They said she didn't fire any shots," Woody said.
"They don't know."
"No." He shook his head again. "It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. She wouldn't have done this on her own."
"Oh Christ, Woody, you think it was . . ." She broke off, as if she were unwilling to say the name.
"Yeah. Keith."
"I don't know," she said, looking so vulnerable that Woody's grief became even deeper. "Sharla was always angry when she was young. Maybe she just wasn't able to bury it. Maybe it just grew inside her until it came out . . . But like that . . . and Sharla dead . . ." Her voice was tight with tears. "Woody? Where are you going?"
"I've got to call Frank," he said, leaving the room and going down the hall toward their bedroom. "He's got to know about this," he shouted to Tracy as he ran.
Frank answered on the first ring. His hello sounded impatient, excited.
"Frank, Woody. Did you hear about Sharla? On the news?" He had not, and Woody told him that their friend was dead, and how it had happened.
"I'm sorry," Frank said when Woody was finished. His voice sounded uncaring.
"Sorry? Frank, did you hear me? Sharla is dead."
"Woody . . . God damn it . . ." Woody heard Frank start to cry, heard words come up out of the bubbling. "Judy . . . went crazy . . . wrecked the gallery, nearly killed a guy . . ."
"Frank, Frank, easy . . . easy. Now what happened? Take your time and tell me." He looked up and saw Tracy in the doorway, and mouthed Extension to her. She nodded and vanished, and a moment later he heard the soft click of a pick-up. "Tracy's on too, Frank. Just relax and tell me what happened."
Frank did, disjointedly, but clearly enough for Woody to understand that Judy had also suffered some sort of breakdown. Woody told Frank to let him know if he could do anything, and they said goodbye. He met Tracy in the hall.
"You heard?"
She nodded. "It's not a coincidence, Woody."
"Isn't it?"
"Violent sixties idealistic-politico-flashback? Two people we know in as many days? I can't believe that. What I believe in is Keith. Or whatever it is he's become. He did something to them." She went into his arms, and gripped his shoulders as if to draw strength from them. "That bastard. What's he doing to our friends?"
"I've got to call the others. Got to warn them, tell them to be careful."
"Will they believe you?"
"I don't know. But I have to tell them."
Woody called Curly first. He prefaced his remarks with the warning that what he was about to say would sound crazy, but he believed it to be true, at least true enough to warrant caution for the next few days. Curly, surprisingly enough, seemed to believe him. The double tragedies of Judy and Sharla dulled his usual satiric edge, and he promised to keep an eye out for strangers.
"You know, Woody," he added, "if this is really true---about Keith and this Pan guy, and I think it could damn well be---maybe we ought to do something. Like a letter or call to the FBI? Anonymous, you know?"
"I've thought about it, but I don't think it would do much good. He's changed his identity so many times over the years, how would they ever find him? He's probably changed his appearance too. And they might be able to trace the call or the letter back to us, and then we'd be the ones in deep shit, not him."
Curly reluctantly agreed, and Woody made his next call.
Dale Collini answered the phone at the apartment he shared with Eddie Phelps, who was at a wedding rehearsal, and had not yet heard about Sharla. Dale had, on the news, and seemed numb with grief. He was speechless for a long time when Woody told him about Judy McDonald's violent breakdown, but then typically asked if Woody thought there was anything he, Dale, could do to help.
There was one thing, Woody said, and that was to watch out for himself. Then he told Dale about Keith, and how he thought their old friend had come into this second life, and how he might have somehow done something to Sharla and Judy.
Dale was quiet again, then admitted that it could be possible. He promised to be careful, and added, "It wouldn't surprise me at all, Woody. Maybe it wasn't meant to be like this. Maybe . . . mistakes were made that night."
He said little more after that, except to give his love to Tracy and the children, and promise that he and Eddie would keep their eyes open.
Alan Franklin, however, was neither as accepting nor believing. He had arrived home late to find Diane at a Friends of the Library meeting, so had not heard about Sharla. But when the initial shock had passed, along with his surprise on finding out about the incident in Judy's gallery, the cynic returned.
"Woody, listen, I'm really sorry about Sharla. I mean, I grieve, and I feel awful about what Judy did. But let's face it, these were not stable women, pal."
"Alan, I know it seems hard to believe, but---"
"Hear me out. Judy was a workaholic just begging for a breakdown. Hell, she was even in school. It was incredible that we ever got her to come to a party---all the time painting in the fucking studio. And Sharla? Angry lady, pal. She never got her shit together, never got married, lived alone and probably kept brooding about this racial shit . . ."
"Sharla wasn't like that, not at all."
"Look, we want to believe our friend wasn't a nut, but normal people don't do the kind of thing she did."
"It wasn't her, Alan. And it wasn't Judy either."
"Oh, you're saying that Keith came back like a ghost or something and possessed them, made them do it? Maybe we oughta get an exorcist, Woody."
"Keith's alive, I swear to God, and he had something to do with what the girls did---maybe some sort of weird revenge, who knows how his mind works? He's proved he's crazy."
"Wrongo. Pan's crazy. Yeah, yeah, I know he wasn't in that first . . . life or track or plane of existence or whatever the fuck you call it, but that doesn't mean he's Keith Aarons. Maybe it's just plain inexplicable, how things happened, pal. Hey, metaphysics aren't my game. Look, Dan Russell's offering a tobacco subsidy amendment on the floor tomorrow, and I'm writing his speech for him, so I don't have any more time for paranoid fantasies, okay?
"Now---you heard anything about Sharla's funeral? I mean, do we send flowers or contributions or what?"
Keith Aarons looked down at the lights of Washington, D.C., smiled, and wrote, as the plane landed.
\*
September 16, 1993:
This is all working out so well. Bob Hastings didn't exaggerate the potency of the drug at all. An injection, a pause of ten minutes, then words whispered into the ear, instructions given, a trigger action planted, and bingo, no more will.
Or rather a will given over to older, buried thoughts and intents. So that someone who remembers those things, remembers youthful dreams and ideals and rages, can resurrect them, bring them forth like some shrouded revenant from a quarter century before, can guide them and drive them to violent ends. It isn't perfect. Sharla harmed no one before she was shot, but she never had it in her to kill. Nor had Judy. I'm sure that wounding the man was unintentional. The drug operates the way that pseudo-science, hypnosis, supposedly does. You can't get someone to do what they wouldn't do under any circumstances.
So I wasn't able to get Sharla and Judy to kill. They were too nice for that, too moral.
But niceness and morality were never Alan Franklin's strong suits.
\*
"Are there any further amendments to H.R. 236, The Agriculture Advancement and Agrarian Reform Act of 1993?"
The Chairman of the Agricultural Committee, serving as the Floor Manager, turned to the Speaker. "Mr. Speaker," he said, "all amendments that I'm aware of have been disposed of, except for that of the gentleman from South Carolina . . ." He looked at a staffer behind him, and began to ask if he had seen Dan Russell that morning, when a voice came from the gallery.
"The gentleman from South Carolina has been disposed of too!"
At the first word, the doorkeepers and Capitol Hill police were on their way toward the man who had spoken, but they could not reach him before he tossed an object over the balcony. Congressmen ran from among the seats where it landed, but there was no explosion, and in another moment the man was restrained.
The Capitol Hill policeman who ran to the spot on the House floor found a yellowed human hand, crudely severed and glistening at the wrist.
\*
September 17, 1993:
I feel no grief for Alan. His radicalism in college was more a vent for his rage than anything else. He was one of the most angry people I have ever known, yet was always the first to accuse other people of unreasoning anger.
I feel sorry for Judy, however. Her bewilderment must be overwhelming. I'm sure she must feel that she has gone insane. I liked her, yet I did this to her, and that knowledge is nothing I cannot endure.
Then there is---was---Sharla. What I did to her was cruel, unforgivable. Yet I feel little remorse. It's really very easy to bear. Sometimes I think I may be beyond remorse. I suppose I'll have to be. I loved her, yet I caused her a painful and violent death, made her last hours a nightmare she couldn't begin to understand.
I'm not sorry. It was something I had to do to protect myself and my plan.
What irony. In attempting to save humanity, I've lost my own humanity, which in turn enables me to destroy humanity.
But one more now. All I have time for, but it will be enough. Woody. The brightest of them, the one who found me out. This may be the hardest of all, but I have no doubt in my ability to do it. The only thing I doubt is Woody's ability. But from time to time, every man gets mad at his wife. Every father gets angry with his children.
It was after midnight, and Woody Robinson was leagues and eons away from sleep. Both he and Tracy had heard the news about Alan, first from the TV and then from Curly, though what Curly said added nothing to their knowledge.
The facts were that Alan Franklin had gone into Congressman Daniel Russell's office for his 9:15 appointment, and had come out fifteen minutes later. When the secretary buzzed Russell to remind him that he was due on the House floor, there was no reply. She glanced into the office, saw no one, and assumed that Russell must have left through his private entrance. It was not until after the incident in the House Chamber that Russell's body was found behind his desk. His throat had been cut, and his right hand hacked off with a small Swiss Army Knife that lay open next to the body. Alan Franklin's fingerprints were all over the handle.
After killing the congressman, Alan had apparently hidden the hand inside his shirt. Naturally, it did not register on the metal detectors, and the guards, used to seeing Alan in the gallery, did not notice the extra inch of girth around his already substantial middle. Alan was being held in a federal maximum security facility north of the city, and, according to the news, had disavowed any knowledge of what he had done.
Tracy had become physically ill after hearing the story, and spent much of the evening lying down and getting up only to vomit. She finally took two sleeping pills, and was now asleep in their room. The children were sleeping too, but Woody was still awake, thinking. He had gotten a small .22 caliber revolver down from the back of a closet where it had sat for fifteen years, and had loaded it with bullets whose brass casings were still surprisingly shiny. His father had bought him the weapon when he moved to California, and had told him that he probably couldn't kill anybody with it, but it would make a lot of noise and could do a little damage.
Woody doubted that a lot of noise would do much to discourage Keith Aarons if Woody was next on his list.
What the hell had he done to Judy and Sharla and Alan? A drug of some kind? Hypnosis? Brainwashing? It was possible, wasn't it? They had done that kind of stuff back in the fifties, for God's sake. What, in Korea? Or had that been just a movie he had seen, about a POW programmed to kill a political candidate? Wasn't Frank Sinatra in it? He wasn't sure.
But this was the nineties, and even if that kind of thing was only science fiction back then, odds were it was reality now.
Woody held the gun in his left hand, and went through the house once more checking the doors. They were all locked, as were the windows. He went down to his studio, turned on a dim lamp, closed the soundproof door, and sat in the dead silence.
Orpheus, Tracy had called him, first in delight, and later with a sense of horror. Leading demons from hell. But he didn't feel like Orpheus. Now he felt like nothing less than Doctor Frankenstein himself, having created a monster out of selfishness and pride.
He sighed, looked at the gun in his hand, and thought, for the first time in many years, about suicide, about lifting up the gun and putting a bullet into his brain, ending all the doubt and the fear.
No. That was stupid. Even if the little .22 bullets could have penetrated the bone or the soft palate of his mouth, he could do no such thing to his children or to Tracy. Along with ending fear, death also ended joy and love and hope.
Hope was always there, Woody thought. He had based his life on hope, on the hope of some day being with Tracy again, and what he had hoped for so many years had come true. He would continue to hope. No matter what else happened, he would not let hope die.
After a few minutes, the dead, flat silence made him uncomfortable, and he put Joe Henderson's Lush Life on the CD player. He listened to two tracks, but was unable to get into the music as he usually did, so he turned it off, opened the door, and walked up the stairs.
At the top something took him, held him, buried him.
\*
Coming to the light was like coming out of a grave. He could almost feel dirt running off his nose, crawling over his cheeks, as he was finally able to breathe again, breathe the sharp tang of ocean air.
He was sitting on the white sofa in the living room, looking out onto the sea through the open glass doors. He wondered what was wrong. He had closed those doors. Closed and locked them. Why would he open them again?
He became aware of something in his right hand, and he thought that it might be the gun he had been carrying. But when he looked, he found it was a knife instead, a long, thick, sharp knife that Tracy used to carve meat in the kitchen. But why did he have it?
Then he looked up again at the moon shining on the sea, and he knew. The voice told him.
You see the knife. You see the moon.
"Yes," he whispered.
Go to the bedroom now. To the woman.
"Tracy."
To the woman. She does not belong here. She never should have lived. It was a mistake. The only way to correct it is to make it so that she does not live. Neither her nor the other two. Go now and kill them, all three. It is the only way to make things right again.
"The only way," Woody repeated. Then to his horror he stood, turned from the twin moons in sky and sea, and walked across the room, down the hall, up the stairs, into the bedroom where Tracy
the woman
slept peacefully, safe only in her dreams.
Woody did not pause, but walked directly to the bed, where the moonlight fell upon Tracy's olive face and dark hair. Her lips were parted, and he heard the soft breaths, the signs of
kill them, all three
life within her sweet body, and he wanted to kiss her, but
It is the only way to make things right again
instead the knife came up and up and up and he knew that he was going to drive the blade down into her until she was dead, and then he would go to the children's rooms and do the same thing there, and the knife was going higher and his eyes widened and he screamed nooooo deep within himself, but the scream was too soft, far softer than the other voice that he had to obey, that told him
kill them, all three
but he would not, he would not, oh Jesus not for all the world---And the knife came down.
And buried itself in the meat of his own thigh.
His shriek drove away the voice, and the pain drove away sight and sound and everything, and he sank into a deep red dream, and in the dream he saw Keith, Keith as he was now, his face lit by moonlight, and heard Keith's voice as it had spoken to him only minutes before, words that had not belonged to The Voice---
I liked you best, Woody. But I have to do this, and you know why. You know everything. It's because of that that I have to do this. I know you brought me back. I owe my existence to you. The world owes Pan to you. But you have to be silenced. I can't let you jeopardize this. And if I do you and yours, and feel nothing . . . well then. I'll be ready. I can do the world.
Then Keith's voice stopped, joined the other Voice, the great Voice that had demanded the obedience that Woody had refused, joined it in the silence, and the red dream grew black.
The night of September 18th, Keith Aarons returned to Bone, Texas. No one saw him come into town, and no one saw him leave again. He had rented a car in Houston, and first drove past Red's Tavern. Bob Hastings's car was in the parking lot, but Sally's little Datsun was not. That was good. He had known this would be her night off. If she had been at Red's after all, it would have made things difficult. Not impossible, but difficult.
He drove to Sally's trailer then, and parked the car three blocks away. The trailer wasn't part of a court, but sat by itself on a little lot with a few pine trees in the corners. None of the neighbors were outside, and he was able to walk to the door unseen. He rapped on it gently, and called out, "Honey? It's Pete."
The door opened in a few seconds. "Well, look at you," she said, beaming. "The frontiersman back from his trek." She looked over his shoulder. "Where's your car?"
"Long story. Joey in bed?"
"Not here. He's sleeping over Bobby's house." She touched his cheek. "We can be loud as we want, Dan'l Boone."
"Sounds good to me. Let's hit the sack."
As he followed her down the short hall into the bedroom, Keith reached in his pocket and took out the chloroform and a handkerchief. When he saw the curtains were drawn, he opened the jar, saturated the cloth, and closed the jar tightly.
"What's that smell?" Sally said, starting to turn around. But before she finished he had the cloth over her face, holding her firmly so that she wouldn't struggle. He wanted her to go out as easily as possible, to feel no pain when the time for pain came.
He lowered her gently to the bed, unzipped her robe, and removed it and the panties she was wearing. Then he left the trailer and drove back to Red's.
He didn't have long to wait. Bob Hastings came out the back door with two other men from the lab, said goodnight, and headed toward his car. "Hey . . . Bob!" Keith said.
Hastings, startled, jerked around and saw Keith standing in the shadows. "Pete? What the hell you doin' back so soon? And what you hidin' for?"
"Aw," Keith said, coming up to Bob, "I had enough of that outdoor shit. Skeeters were fierce. And frankly, I was gettin' a little horny."
Hastings giggled. "Nothin' to fuck but mule deer out there, huh?"
"That's about it. Anyway, I got a real strange favor to ask you . . ." Keith tried to sound a little embarrassed, a little excited. ". . . but it's one I don't think you'll mind doin'. Let's get in your car, huh? I don't want anybody to see me here."
"Why not?" Hastings asked as he climbed into his Camaro.
"This has gotta be secret," Keith said as he got in the passenger side. "Sally's been gettin' a little, well, kinky, you know what I mean? And I need to find . . . a third party."
Hastings's face was vacant at first, then he started to grin. "Holy shit. You talkin' about a threesome?"
"Not exactly. We were screwin', okay, and Sally told me---I mean, damn, but she's insatiable---that she has this fantasy about wakin' up to find somebody she never screwed before on top of her, humpin' away. Not rapin' her or nothin', but just makin' sweet, deep love."
"Jesus . . ."
"And I said, in so many words, that it could be done. A little ether---just enough to put her out for a while---and she'd probably wake up partway through it. Well, you'da thought I dumped a load of spanish fly in her chili, she got so hot. 'Let's do it,' she says, and tells me just to make sure I got somebody clean, you know. And hell, you're my buddy, and you're clean, aren't you?"
"Hell yes."
"And you been wantin' to screw her, haven't you?"
"Hell yes, too."
"You up for it?"
"Man, it's pretty kinky, like you said. Like a . . . dead woman or somethin'."
"Yeah, at first. But she'll come out of it partway through, and I gar-on-tee she'll drain you, boy. Then, maybe a threesome after all, huh?"
"Jesus Christ, I never done nothin' like this before."
"First time for everything. But no talkin' about it afterward. Gotta be a secret."
"Hey, mum's the word. You sure you ain't gonna mind? Won't hold it against me?"
"Tell the truth, I can get jollies outta watchin' too. Meet you over there, all right? You get there first, go on in. She's out of it, stark naked, and ready."
Hastings nodded. From the sweat on his upper lip, Keith thought he was ready to pop then and there. He got out of the car, and Hastings's Camaro took off with a shower of stones. Keith's face went grim, and he walked the block to his rental car.
When he arrived at the trailer, Hastings was already inside, but had not yet gone into the bedroom. They went in together, and Hastings took a deep breath and blew it out when he saw Sally lying there naked, her legs parted slightly.
"She really out?" Hastings said.
"Won't feel a thing till you give her that swing."
Hastings laughed tightly, and Keith realized that he was embarrassed.
"Look, Bob, you, uh, want me to leave while you get started? I mean, hell, I don't have to be here at all if that'd make you more comfortable. Let you sorta break the ice on your own, so to speak?"
Hastings nodded. "You're a helluva friend, Pete." He looked down again at Sally. "This is sure weird . . ."
"Hey, look, she's breathin', ain't she?" And she was. Her breasts were rising and falling peacefully. "So make her breathe faster. Be the handsome prince and wake up Sleeping Beauty." He punched Hastings playfully on the shoulder. "I'll be out here, you need me." And he closed the door on Sally and Hastings.
He walked down the hall so Hastings could hear his footsteps, then waited, felt the subtle shifts in the raised floor of the trailer, the motions as Hastings undressed, then a larger shudder that must have been from his climbing onto the bed, onto Sally. There was a moment of stillness, then a pulse began, and the sound of springs lightly squeaking.
Keith stood up. He saturated the cloth with chloroform once more, and walked down the hall, listened outside the bedroom door to the noises Hastings made. When the man gave a shuddering moan, Keith opened the door, went in quickly, slapped the cloth over Hastings's mouth and nose, and in a few moments there were two unconscious people on the bed.
Then Keith took the four empty vials that had been filled with ZF723, and pressed Hastings's fingers onto the smooth glass. He took the needle with which he had injected Woody Robinson, jabbed it into Sally's upper right arm, pressed Hastings's fingers on it, then dropped it and the vials on the carpet by the side of the bed. He did the same with the chloroform bottle.
Hastings was dead weight, but Keith managed to pull him off Sally and put him in a chair near the bed. Then he took a rolled note from his jacket pocket, straightened it, dropped it on the floor next to Hastings, along with the pen with which he had forged Hastings's handwriting. Now it was time to do what he most dreaded.
\*
September 18, 1993:
I went into the kitchen, emptied a beer bottle, took it into the bedroom, and did what I had to do. I nearly cried. I have never killed anyone with greater regret. She loved me in her way, and I had to watch her die, make sure that she would not survive. I don't think she felt any pain. She never moved.
She was dead by the time Hastings started to stir. I slipped on gloves, opened the window, fit his fingers around the pistol grip, lifted it to his head, and pressed against his finger to pull the trigger, letting go immediately so that the gun fell to the floor by his side. In another second I went through the window, pulled it closed from outside, and dashed across the back yard into the pines. I made my way through their sheltering darkness back to the car, and drove back to Houston. My theft of the vials is covered now, but at a terrible price.
Sometimes things just don't work out very well. If only the inventory had been put off another month, things would have been easier. I'm afraid that this is going to make it that much more difficult to achieve my main purpose.
But there is one way. It is desperate, but what has my life been filled with if not desperate acts?
Desperate acts, and self-sacrifice?
\*
Two days later, Keith Aarons drove back into Bone, Texas, in his own car. It was six in the evening, and he went to Red's Tavern. When he entered, the soft cushion of talk from the regulars stopped immediately, and all faces turned to him. Beer glasses paused half way to open mouths, chili spoons hovered in the air, dripping red sauce into bowls.
Keith gave a lopsided grin. "What the hell, is my fly open or what?"
A few people chuckled, some smiled, most remained solemn. Keith glanced to his left into the kitchen, as if looking for Sally, but instead he saw Red's wife, Mae, her eyes dripping mascara as she looked at him.
"Mae?" he said. "What's the matter?" He looked down the room. "Where's Sally?"
Al Freeman got up from a table near the back, put a hand on Keith's shoulder. "Come on out on the back porch a minute, Pete."
"Al, what's this about?" he said. "And where's Sally?"
"Come on," Freeman said again, and Keith followed him through the door, glancing back at the sad faces.
Freeman sat on the porch steps, patted the boards, and Keith sat next to him. "Something terrible happened, Pete," said Freeman. "To Sally. Bob Hastings . . ." His voice started to get hard, and he cleared his throat. "Hastings took one of the drugs from the lab. Stole four vials---"
"Sally," Keith said, grabbing Freeman's wrist. "Is she . . ."
The man nodded. "Yes. She's dead. He killed her. Gave her a suggestibility drug, she . . . her abdomen was punctured, she bled to death."
Keith shook his head, pretending to try and understand. "What . . . he stabbed her?"
"From . . . Internally," Freeman said, unable to look at him.
"A bottle. You understand?"
"Oh my God," Keith whispered. "Oh God."
"He's dead too. Shot himself. Left a note asking for forgiveness for what he did to her. And the way he betrayed us, stealing." Freeman shook his head. "'The son of a bitch wanted her, Pete. He used the drug on her like an aphrodisiac, overdosed her like crazy, I'm surprised that didn't kill her. Must've told her that she wanted . . . you know, and it worked too damn well. So he tried to . . . to keep satisfying her."
"What . . ." Keith said slowly. "How's Joey?"
"He was sleeping over at a friend's house. Sally's sister from Nacogdoches came and got him. He'll live with them. The, uh, the funeral's next Tuesday. You don't have to come in on the next shift if you don't want to. We'll understand."
"No. No, I'll come in. Maybe I could get the day of the funeral off."
"That's no problem now. We're changing things. Dr. Goncourt thinks maybe these two week shifts aren't such a good idea. Might cause a kind of cabin fever or something. Might even be why Bob . . . did what he did. We're on three day shifts now, not two weeks. Yours will start tomorrow, if that's okay."
"Sure. That's fine."
"Changing security too. Going to put in metal detectors next week, and we'll be doing actual patdowns as the men leave the lab. It's just too easy to hide a vial, and after what happened, we can't take any chances." He hawked and spat into an ironed, white handkerchief, which he replaced in his hip pocket. "I mean, my gosh, consider what might happen if somebody would get it into their head to take out the virus."
"You're right," said Keith, the knowledge of what he would have to do now clear as breath. "That would be . . . disastrous. Better safe than sorry. I won't mind, and I don't think the others will either, after what . . . what Bob did." His voice choked, and he began to cry. There were no audible sounds, but tears streamed down his cheeks. Freeman saw them, Keith was sure of it.
The next morning, when Keith went back to the lab, Tracy Robinson was at Woody's bedside when he opened his eyes for the first time since the night she had found him screaming by the side of their bed, a kitchen knife piercing his leg.
She was reading a magazine, and he tried to speak, but his mouth was too dry. His leg ached terribly. He licked the inside of his mouth, then his lips, looked around and saw that he was in a hospital room. IV bottles hung at his side, and he felt a pressure in his penis. He dared not move, but he was able to say, "Hey," loud enough for Tracy to hear and look up, startled.
"Hey," he said again.
"Oh God," she said, somewhere between shock and delight. "Oh God, you're back with me . . ." She moved toward him as if to hug him, then stopped, and gave him a small kiss on the cheek. Then, as if thinking of something momentous, she pressed the call button by the bed.
"My leg hurts," he said. "And my dick," he added quietly.
"That's a catheter. I knew you weren't going to like it."
"But you let them do it." He smiled. "I can't see. Is my leg still there?"
Tracy nodded and took his hand, squeezed it hard. "It'll be fine. You went into shock, and by the time the ambulance got there you were in a coma."
"How long? I'm really hungry. And thirsty."
"A little over three days. They said you'd come out of it, but I . . . I wasn't sure. Oh, Woody . . ." She cried and he held her until she straightened up again. "What happened? What were you doing? Were you . . . on something?"
"What, you mean drugs?"
"They found a needle mark on your arm."
He looked up at the ceiling, understanding. "That's how then, how he did it."
"Woody?"
He looked at her and his face trembled from the fear of what had visited him and the relief that he had not heeded it. "It was Keith. He was in the house. He must have drugged me or something. He wanted me to . . . to kill you." He didn't tell her about killing the children. He couldn't bear to say the words, and didn't want to terrify her further.
"I was standing over you, and I had to bring the knife down, I just had to. But I couldn't hurt you. He couldn't make me do that. So I stabbed myself instead. And the pain drove him away, drove the need out of my head." He held out his arms and she embraced him. "I never would have hurt you, Tracy. Never. No matter what. He couldn't make me do it."
A nurse came into the room then. Her surprised smile made her seem more attractive than she really was. "All right, Mrs. Robinson," she said with a laugh, "don't bruise the groceries. Glad to have you back with us, Mr. Robinson. Now you can sign my cassette."
It was another fifteen minutes before a doctor came in to examine Woody. He told him that the wound was healing nicely, but that they wanted him in the hospital for two more days. After that, he could go home, but would have to stay off his feet for another week.
"I'd be interested," said the doctor, "in knowing just exactly how you did it." He looked at Tracy. "Your wife tells me it was a bat."
Woody looked at Tracy. There hadn't been time for her to give him her story, so, as ever, he improvised. "That's right. One got in the house. I was trying to slap it down with a towel, but it always got right back up again. So I ran down to the kitchen and got a knife. Damn thing sat right on the edge of the bed. When I swung at it, it took off at my face, scared the hell out of me, and before I knew what happened, I had a knife in my leg. Pretty stupid."
The doctor nodded. "Do you ever indulge in recreational drugs, Mr. Robinson?"
"No," Woody answered with a firm shake of his head that made his neck ache. "I did the usual stuff years ago---grass, hash---but not for a long, long time. That's not part of my life."
The doctor nodded again. Woody thought he'd look perfect on the back ledge of somebody's car. "I had to ask. There were no drugs found in your blood or urine samples. But there was a needle mark. Left a pretty nasty bruise on your arm." He pointed to Woody's left arm, and Woody pushed up the short sleeve of the hospital gown to reveal a dark blue, mottled spot.
"I don't know how that happened," he said with a flatness intended to assure the doctor that further questioning would be futile. "I have no idea at all."
Rose Parmalee had begun to feel sick.
It wasn't just the dopiness, the sense of lassitude that had bound her ever since she had been placed in the glass cage, ever since the men had caught her, stripped her, raped her over and over again. It wasn't due to that humiliation, or the assurance that she would never leave this place, whatever this place was, alive. It was even worse than that.
She had felt listless, her muscles refusing to obey her. Her appetite for the barely edible food they gave her diminished until she ate nothing at all, yet bloody diarrhea dripped from her, her sphincter muscles too weak to contain it. Lesions had broken out over her flesh, red blotches that opened if she so much as touched them, oozing a thin, pale yellow pus followed by blood. She knew she was dying, and it seemed so unfair.
When the men came in, wrapped in their suits of what looked like thick plastic, their heads encased in flat-topped hoods, she asked them why they were doing this to her, what was happening, how much longer it would go on. But their eyes, barely visible through the darkly transparent panels of glass that covered them, gave no answer, and their voices never spoke. If they did, the words never escaped the confines of their shroud-like garments.
They touched her with heavy gloves, lifted her arms to take her blood, wiped her filthy buttocks, held plastic mouthpieces over her mouth and nose to steal her breath, forced open her mouth and pressed swabs against her cheeks and tongue. Nothing was her own. Everything her body produced was theirs, and they took it as though it was their right. Everything but her tears, for she had no strength and no heart left to shed them.
She had wanted to kill herself, but she had not had the strength to smash her head against the glass walls, and they kept her nails cut too short for her to try and rip open her own throat, or claw at the veins in her wrists. When the sores began, she rubbed at them in the hopes that she would bleed to death, but when they saw what she was doing, they strapped her down. They would not even let her die.
"What did you do?" she asked them every time they came in. "Why did you do it?"
Goncourt. Goncourt was the name that she remembered with her mind that was gradually fragmenting, splitting apart under the torture, the disease, whatever they had done.
She remembered caring, centuries ago, about something other than death. The earth, and making it pure again. A silly and stupid dream, it seemed now. Nothing was clean, nothing was pure. The earth was a glass lined cage, and inside it everything was sickness and filth, and only death could end that. Only death could stop the pestilence. In her shattered, decaying mind, the cage was the earth, and the earth was a cage, and the only freedom was in death.
And when she had decided that, she tried to embrace the men who came into her cage, tried to lift her arms and tug off their hoods and take their flesh in her corrupted hands, breathe her fatal breath into their lungs, kiss and slay her slayers. But her hands, bound, would not rise. She had such a sacred gift to grant, but she could not, and the frustration chipped away even more of her sanity.
Until one day, when she heard a voice other than her own asking for answers, for reasons, for death. It sounded muffled, as if from far away, and her short-term memory bore the sensation of intrusions, her mouth and vagina and buttocks and flesh recalled recent violations of smooth metal and glass that felt as rough to her tattered skin as sisal.
And suddenly the voice became a sound she had not heard for so long that at first she thought she was dead and dreaming. It was a voice other than her own, and she was hearing it clearly, without the filter of heavy plastic, the muffling of ghostly hoods.
And the voice said her name, said Rose, and she worked and worked until she was able to open her eyes, the dry inner surfaces of her lids scraping the eyeball so that she would have screamed if she had the breath. Then she saw, through a red haze, his face.
She knew it, though the name that went with that face no longer lived in her rotting brain. She equated warmth and love and tenderness with the face, and thought that now, at last, this was death, and in another moment she knew it as his beautiful face became larger, swam into her sight like a bright planet, like the earth gleaming blue now, no longer red, and the sweet coolness of its seas touched her face, and its soft winds blew into her mouth and blew back out again, taking her breath, her life, her very soul, so that as she died she knew that she had saved it after all, that by taking her life, the sweet earth would live.
\*
Keith knew he should put his headgear on quickly in case Billy Magruder reentered, but he could not. He stood over her, entranced, breathing in the vile odor of her body, her last breath from riddled lungs, and found in it such ineffable sweetness that tears came to his eyes.
She knew. Somehow she knew why he was there, what he had come to do. He still tasted the bitter dryness of her lips on his own, and thought he could feel the virus dance joyously as it swirled into his lungs, swam into his veins, burrowed in his cells, claiming him. And its joy became his own as well, and he knew that what he had done was right. It meant his death, and the deaths of billions, but life for something far greater.
Keith pulled on the hood, turned it so that he could see through the transparent plastic plate, and connected the seals. He had purposely left the blood collection tube in the supply room, and when he and Magruder discovered it was missing, he had gestured to Magruder that he should exit the cell, remove his suit in the airlock, get the tube, and place it in the airlock for Keith. Magruder had shrugged in agreement, far from anxious to go through the complicated airlock procedure twice, especially since the end of their three-day shift was only an hour away. Strict procedures went by the board when it was time to punch out, and Keith knew that Magruder was one of the least punctilious of Goncourt's staff.
So he had been left alone for priceless and fatal minutes with Rose Parmalee, just long enough to take her blood and her kiss out into the world that was waiting for its deadly salvation.
The airborne virus had been introduced into her cell two weeks before, and the onset of illness, much to Freeman and Horst's dismay, had been immediate, her decline rapid. The selected gene had either failed to act as an antibody, or the virus had once again refused to obey the genetic commands imprinted upon it.
Whatever the reason, the search for the unique gene would have to be continued. This attempt had been a total failure, leaving the germs free to tear through her body like fire through dry grass. Never had a subject sickened so quickly. They took tests and samples every six hours, in order to trace the path of the illness, find the weakest breaches in the defense.
But now, thought Keith as he followed the painstaking procedures in the airlock, it didn't matter any longer. All the tests, all the cloning, all the experiments, none of it meant a thing.
He smiled as the tainted air was drawn from the chamber, and the bath of water washed his garb until nothing clung to the smooth plastic. Then the lock filled with filtered air, and the light went on, signaling that it was safe to remove the suit, which would be sterilized. He took it off and put it into the container, left the lock, dressed in his clothes, and carried the blood sample into the lab.
Magruder came up to him and said softly, "Dumbass. Freeman woulda checked on us while you were in there alone, we'd be dead."
We'd be dead.
Keith laughed gently, so much aware of the air leaving his lungs that he could almost see it as a pale cloud drifting toward Magruder's frowning face, surrounding the man's mouth and eyes, vanishing as Magruder breathed in Keith's breath, and the deadly things that flew on it.
I just killed you, he thought.
"What the fuck are you grinning at?"
Keith shook his head. "Nothin', Billy. Ain't nothin' funny 'bout a dead redneck."
"You know, Pete, you are fuckin' weird sometimes."
Don't crow, Keith thought. Not yet. You're not out of here yet."Well, you know," he said, "I just lost somebody close to me."
Magruder's face was softened by pity. "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry, man, I forgot. Sally was a helluva nice lady."
"She was indeed. Sometimes I guess I ain't myself."
"That Hastings was a real prick," Magruder said, as though that observation was the epitome of sympathy and empathy.
"He was that," Keith agreed, and patted Magruder's shoulder. "Gotta find Al. You have a good few days off now." Infect your family. Infect your friends.
Die in pain.
Burn in hell.
He found Freeman at his desk, going over the results of Rose Parmalee's tissue and blood samples. "Pete," he said. "So how'd the days go? Get through them all right?"
Keith nodded. "Work's good for you. Makes you forget things." He walked over to Freeman's desk, sat across from him, sighed a sigh of death at the man sitting less than three feet away, saw in his mind the virus enter the air and spread like blood in water. "The woman's damn near dead. Might be by now. Better have the next shift check on her soon's they come in."
Freeman stuck out a lower lip. Keith imagined the virus germs landing on it, some pressing into his mouth, others drifting up his nostrils, into his lungs, still others settling on his eyeballs, riding the mucous membrane like tiny boatmen into his system. "I thought we might have hit on it this time. Shame. Dr. Goncourt will be sorry to hear it."
"When'll you tell him?" Today. Please, today.
"Today. Right after your shift leaves."
"When you do . . ."
"Yes?"
"Well, just give him my best. If he remembers me."
"He'll remember you. You impressed him very much . . . the day you joined us."
"It's everything to me, Al. I can't tell you enough what being here means to me. I feel as though . . . it's changed my life."
There must have been something in Keith's smile that made Freeman self-conscious, for he glanced away and cleared his throat, and as he did, Keith imagined a cloud of death floating out onto the air from the man's mouth. "Well, that's . . . I'm glad to hear it. You're a good worker. You'll, uh, be at the funeral tomorrow? Most of the men are coming. And their families."
"That's good. It's good for a community to share . . . their grief. But I don't know. I don't think I'll be there."
"Why not?"
"Well, you may not think it to look at me, but that little gal's death hit me hard. Frankly, Al, I don't know if I could stand up to bein' there."
"I think I see," Freeman said. "And I don't think there's anybody who wouldn't understand, Pete."
"Thanks." Keith looked at the clock on the wall, and stood up. "Almost time to get checked through. You remember now, please give my best to Dr. Goncourt."
Say my name. Let it come into his face on the breath of my name.
"I'll do that, don't you worry."
"No worries. None at all."
Billy Magruder was first in line to be checked out. The two security men went over him carefully, patting him down everywhere a vial or a pack of tablets might be concealed. They were efficient and thorough, and Keith counted twenty slow breaths before they were finished with Magruder, passed him through, and turned to the next man in line.
Take your time, check their chests, their necks, come close to them, breathe slow and strong.
The air was shared, passed from one set of lungs to the next, drawn in, breathed out, passed along, and he wondered how long it would take them before the symptoms started to show, before they began to bleed and hurt. By that time he would be far away, beginning to bleed and hurt himself. But the sight of blood had never bothered him, pain had always been his lover, and his inevitable death, he knew, had only been postponed many times.
He talked to them as they finally patted him down, the last man in line, and they shared jokes and laughter and death in air.
Keith waited until midnight, then packed the few things he needed, left the rest, got in his car and drove away from Bone, Texas forever. He drove southeast again, to Houston. He drove and dreamed and wrote.
\*
September 23, 1993:
It's free, and so am I. Death's messenger now, spreading the gospel of plague to all the nations.
It was much easier than I thought it would be. Maybe I wouldn't have had to do what I did to my old friends. Still, they posed a menace that I could not allow to exist. I think, however, that I was already tempered to the necessary hardness. Still, in the long run, no harm was done. Death will take us all now.
But if I had not done what I did to them, might I have lost heart at the end? Maybe I wouldn't have unsealed my hood, kissed her, drawn in the fragrance of Rose. Or maybe I would have after all.
My words and thoughts are disjointed---back and forth, first thinking one thing, then another. I wonder if it's the virus, already scurrying into my brain cells.
No. Probably not. It's more logical to assume that it's the effect of the terrible choice I've made, the great responsibility I've assumed in condemning most of my species to death. Better this way, though, quickly, in weeks and months, no longer. Since it exists for four hours outside a host, and with wind speeds of 50 mph, it's safe to assume that people living more than 200 miles away from cities and towns will survive, and will eventually find towns of the dead in which even the virus is dead, with nothing left to feed on.
Or perhaps it will live in the rotting tissues, waiting for more people to come. I don't know. There's so much about it I don't know. But I do know that it kills.
Even if I changed my mind now, went back, confessed everything, it would be too late. The men have gone home, kissed their wives, hugged their children, who have gone to other towns. No. Far too late. So I'll spread it quickly and without mercy, the Gaetan Dugas of the apocalypse.
\*
Keith Aarons left his car in the Houston Intercontinental Airport parking lot, locking the keys inside it. Then he went to the international terminal and walked around for an hour, asking the waiting passengers questions about flights in different languages, trying to make them understand by coming closer and speaking directly into their faces, breathing the gift of death on wings to England, France, Japan, Germany, India.
Then he took his two pieces of baggage, and bought a ticket to Los Angeles International Airport. He planned to sleep on the plane so that he would be rested when he landed in L.A.
The next day, while Keith Aarons spoke to hundreds of international travelers at one of the world's busiest airports, Woody Robinson left the hospital. He balanced on one crutch to keep pressure off his healing right leg as he got into the car, and talked to his children all the way home.
Peter told him about the soccer games he had missed while he was in the hospital (Peter's team had won one, lost the other), and Louisa begged to be allowed to stay over at her friend Megan's the next weekend. He agreed gladly, happy to have some way to make up to them the nightmare that had occurred a few days before.
'They're resilient," Tracy told him later, as they sat on the deck overlooking the ocean. "They were so good the night it happened, did exactly what I told them. Didn't doubt it was an accident for a minute." She kept looking at the ocean, and felt for his hand. "I'm glad you're home. I've been scared."
"Of what?" he asked, knowing.
"That he'd come back. For me and the kids."
"I almost wish he would come back. Give me a chance to . . ."
He let it trail off, and she looked at him. "To kill him?"
"Maybe. How's Frank doing? Hear from him?"
"They've still got Judy under observation. It must be a terrible place. Frank's lawyer hasn't been able to get her out. The man she . . . attacked is doing all right. Frank's just this side of a basket case. He blames himself. I think."
"You think?"
She shrugged. "He said he should've seen this breakdown coming. But there was something else. Something he didn't tell me."
"You think he knew it was Keith?"
"I didn't mention it. Neither did he."
"How about Diane?"
"I finally talked to her yesterday. She sounded so strange. Very cool, but with . . . an edge. Almost like she didn't care."
"I don't think they've loved each other for a long time." He leaned over and kissed her, bumping his crutch so that it clattered to the wooden deck. "Everyone else is okay? Nothing's happened to Curly or Eddie or Dale?"
"No, I talked to all of them, and they're okay. Curly's taking it real seriously. He even hired a bodyguard."
"We have to do something. I don't know what, but something. Will you get me the phone? I want to call Curly."
A strange voice answered the phone, and put Curly on. "That was my bodyguard, Jocko," he said.
"Jocko?" Woody laughed in spite of himself. "Seriously?"
"Nah, his name's Kevin, but I think a bodyguard ought to be called Jocko or Bruno or something. He doesn't mind."
"You haven't seen anything of our . . . friend?"
"You mean Keith? No."
"It's him, Curly. It really is him. He came here the other night, tried to make me . . . well, let's say I wound up hurting myself instead."
Curly was quiet for a long time. "Tracy didn't give me the details, just that you had an accident. Son of a bitch. You're sure it was him?"
"I can still hear his voice, still see him. He said something about . . . about doing the world."
"Doing the world? What's that supposed to mean?"
"I don't know. Unless---"
"Like with gangsters, you do somebody, you---"
"Kill them."
"Yeah." Neither one spoke for a while. "Damn. Talk about your delusions of grandeur. He's one sick puppy. You think he was serious or just bragging or what?"
"I don't know. God only knows what he's capable of. Stealing a nuclear device, setting it off in New York or L.A. or someplace? Trying to start World War Three? I just don't know. How else would you do the world?"
"But would Pan do something like that?" Curly said. "I mean, that's kind of the ultimate pollution. Out of character, huh? But then he's gotta be nuts to begin with."
"Maybe. But from everything I've read about him, there's a terrible logic to his insanity."
"I almost wish he'd show up. I'd shoot his ass. Or Jocko would."
"I know. I told Tracy the same thing. But I don't think he'll come back. It was almost like he was getting ready, preparing himself for something."
"The mind boggles. What the hell is it?"
"I don't know. But you can bet your ass we'll find out before too long. We and a lot of other people."
\*
That evening after the kids were in bed, Tracy brought Woody a beer. A CD of Stan Getz ballads was playing softly. She had been thinking about Keith Aarons and Pan most of the day, feeling sicker by the minute. "I have a question," she said as she sat on the carpet near his chair.
"What?"
"Do you think . . . that we could send Keith back?"
"Send him back? You mean to the past?"
"I just wondered if it was possible. Send him back the way we . . . you brought him here. I know it would be hard to find him, maybe impossible. But if we did somehow, could we send him back?"
"And leave him there?"
She nodded. 'Then come back without him, and it would all be as though Pan had never been. Keith would have lived, but no longer than he had---what should I say---been intended to?"
Woody was long in answering, and it took great patience not to push him. "I . . . think it could work. If everything was the same. It worked before. I don't know how, but it did. You're proof of it.
"If it did. And then we came back. Things would be different again. Because when Keith died . . . I died with him."
"So we'd have a third world," Woody said. "One in which there was no Pan because Keith had died, but you'd be there. And Peter and Louisa." He smiled. "The best of all possible worlds."
"Would it be?" she said. "Possible, I mean. How many different tracks can there be? I think it's incredible that there can actually be two, let alone more."
"Why not?"
"How many times can reality break apart and reform itself, Woody? How many tracks can the universe hold?"
"If it's infinite, an infinity of them, I guess."
"But you don't know."
"Jesus, who does? What's your point, Tracy?"
She couldn't tell him. Not yet. "Nothing. No point. Metaphysical pedantry, that's all." She went over to the silent sound system, and hit play again, too weary to choose another disc. "I'm going to get a bath."
In the tub, she thought about what she had not told Woody, let her mind lay immersed in fear as her body lay in the warm, soft water. She was afraid that once she went back to the past, to that same apartment on a fall night twenty-odd years before, that she would not be able to return, that the cycle would stop, that the life she loved and knew so vividly had been only a visit, a gift of grace from some unimaginable god who now realized that he had made a mistake, and saw a chance to set things right again.
For Keith's existence was wrong. Some huge cosmic error had saved his life along with Tracy's. Thousands of people had died because of that mistake, and their friends' lives had been ruined. And now Keith was planning . . . what? A still worse offense? A disaster on a massive scale?
She closed her eyes and let herself slide down into the water, until it covered her chin, her mouth, her eyes, until her head was under, and she thought that if she had ceased to draw breath on that night long ago, how many other dead people would be alive today?
And then she thought about her children, and let her face break the surface of the water, and breathed again.
Her children.
She got out of the tub, dried herself, put on a robe, and walked into Peter's room. He was asleep, his arm around a stuffed rabbit. He held it every night, though he thought he was too old for stuffed animals, and compromised by refusing to acknowledge it or admit to its existence, even to his mother. Still, there it was in his arms.
Isn't that funny, she thought. He loves you, but you're not supposed to exist. Isn't that funny. And sad.
What would happen to you, little boy? What would happen, not if Mommy went away, but if she never was your mommy? Where would you go?
Heaven? Limbo? Someplace where dream children live? And could I be there with you?
Please?
She sat on the floor next to his bed for a long time, just watching him breathe, watching him be. She finally fell asleep, her head against the wall, and Woody had to wake her up so that she could go to bed.
September 25, 1993:
. . . and O'Hare International waits below. Already the virus is spreading through the world. I could stop now, but I feel the need to hurry it along. After so many years of struggle, what I sought has finally come, and I feel happier than I have in such a long time.
Again I am in coach class. I want to be among people, to reach as many as possible. A nun is sitting next to me, one of those new-style nuns with the shortish skirt and part of her hair showing. She's very friendly, and is going to some nun convention in Chicago---I don't know why that sounds so silly---nun convention, with maybe a man popping out of a cake naked except for a priest's collar.
That may be the first bit of levity I've ever written in my book of the mind. There was never any reason for it before. In any event, the nun will take some extra guests to her convention---millions of them on her breath. And, like a good Christian, she will share. She will multiply her loaves and fishes.
I've been sharing. In Los Angeles I shared over and over again. I picked up a little girl's Ninja Turtle doll that she had dropped, gave it to her, got my face close to hers, told her to hang on to her friends, that friends were very important, and her mother and father smiled and thanked me, because I'm dressed so well and look so good, and am so kind and polite and forthright, looking everyone in the face, with the touch of mint and death on my breath.
Now Chicago. Then New York.
Then, after all this time, home.
\*
When Pete Sullivan didn't show up for work at Goncourt Laboratories Thursday morning, Al Freeman asked the other men if they had seen him. They said they hadn't, not at all during the break, and assumed that he had gone camping again. When Al called Pete's apartment, there was no answer, so he called Leonard Brambaugh, the man who owned the building. Brambaugh said that he hadn't seen Pete either.
The orders were to call in if you were sick or couldn't come to work, and the fact that Pete hadn't done so made Al Freeman nervous. Pete had admitted that he'd been pretty depressed by Sally's death. Supposing he'd done something stupid?
"Leonard," said Freeman, "do me a favor. Go up to Pete's apartment and make sure everything's okay."
"Hell, Al, he's not here---his car ain't here."
"Well, check anyway, all right?"
Brambaugh muttered an obscenity, said he'd check and call back, and hung up. Ten minutes later he called for Freeman. "He's gone."
"What, did he leave a note?"
"No, he's gone. Gee-ay-dubya-en. Packed and scattered. Nuthin' left but the furniture. Won't see that boy again. Damn good thing he paid in advance."
Freeman slammed down the phone and went to Ted Horst's office. "Pete Sullivan's gone," he said. "Run out."
"Sure he wasn't grabbed?"
"No. His stuff's gone too. He left. Without a word to anybody."
Horst sat back in his chair. "God damn. All right, let's get down to it. Have 'em run a full inventory. Talk to the security guys who checked him out last Monday. I'll fax his picture to our friends, get them lookin' for his car, lookin' for him at airports, train stations, alla that. What was he workin' on last?"
Freeman tried to swallow, but it stuck in his throat, and he coughed. "The woman. He was taking samples from the woman who died."
Horst went pale. "Jesus. Who with?"
"Billy Magruder."
"Get him."
In less than a minute Magruder was sitting in Ted Horst's office, Horst and Freeman standing over him. "Billy," Horst said, "was Pete Sullivan ever in that cell with that subject alone? Ever, but especially last Monday?"
Magruder shook his head. "No sir."
"Listen to me now, Billy. No lies. I know we've always said how important proper procedures are, and that you can get your ass fired for not followin' them. But if you didn't, you better say so right now, because there are things a helluva lot worse than tellin' me you broke the rules, get it?"
"No sir. Pete and me were in there together. All the time. He's never been alone in there. And neither have I."
"Did he do anything strange in there this week?"
"Like what?"
"Like anything! Goddam it, anything struck you as weird!"
"Well, well no. He . . . he forgot the blood tube Monday, but . . . we went and got it."
"We? Both of you got out of the lock and got it? At the same time?"
"Well, sure. According to procedure. We're not supposed to be alone in there, we know that."
"And you weren't? You didn't go out and get it, then leave it in the lock for him while you got dressed?"
"Hell no, Ted! I know better'n that."
"All right . . . all right. Al, get that inventory started right now." Freeman disappeared through the door. "Billy, help Al. But you remember now, you better've told me the truth. There are worse things than breakin' the rules. Lots worse."
Billy Magruder nodded, stood up, and followed Al Freeman down the hall, thinking bullshit. There's nothing stupider than admitting you broke the rules, and there's nothing worse than getting fired for it.
Nothing.
By late afternoon, when the Goncourt inventory was completed and nothing was found missing, Keith's plane was landing at Kennedy International. He would have gone directly to the International Arrivals Building, but was too tired, and instead took a cab to the J.F.K. Plaza near the airport, got a room, and slept for several hours.
When he awoke, he took a swim in the pool, had a late dinner, and sat in the bar until midnight, observing the women. He toyed with the idea of picking one up for the night, but decided he was too tired. Then he went back to his room and slept until dawn.
He checked out, took a cab back to International Arrivals, and spent several hours at different gates. He went through the metal detectors, smiling each time, knowing that they would never beep at what he carried, a weapon far more deadly than guns or bombs.
He began to feel tired again at noon, so he bought a Times, paid the admission to the third level observation deck, and sat reading. In the music section he saw a small announcement that the forthcoming week-long appearance of Woody Robinson and his quintet at Fat Tuesday's had been postponed due to "a minor accident," and that Kenny Barron's group would appear in Robinson's place.
Keith smiled, stood up, and walked to the windows, looking out at the planes rising and falling.
\*
September 27, 1993:
Good for Woody. I always knew he was strong-willed. He had to be to go through all those years of musical changes and keep his vision intact.
He's very similar to me when it comes to single-mindedness. We both had goals, and we never lost our concentration, never stopped seeking the final prize. His music may still live, though. Maybe those who survive will retain enough technology to play it. There will be far fewer people, so their needs won't be as great. Electricity will survive, I'm sure. They'll keep some things. But it will take thousands of years before the earth sinks to the state of dreadful waste it's in now.
Good old Woody. He's no threat anymore. I should call him. Congratulate him.
Tell him what I've done, and let him congratulate me. That's the one thing that bothers me---people won't know. To save the world and not have them know.
Maybe there's some way to tell them. I'll have to think about that. At least I can tell Woody.
It's ten in the morning in California. He'll be up by now.
\*
Keith left the third level and began walking in the direction of the gates, looking for an isolated bank of pay phones. As he walked down a less than busy corridor, he became aware of someone following him. To make sure, he stopped at a candy machine and bought a pack of gum.
The man stopped too. Keith saw his reflection in the machine's glass. Medium height, wearing a denim jacket zipped halfway up. Sunglasses, blond hair cut short, no facial hair.
Typical little Nazi.
The lab.
All right, he'd make it easy.
Keith kept walking down the corridor until he came to a men's room. He walked inside, saw that it was empty, put down his bag, and stood at the urinal. But instead of his penis he held a small penknife that the airport security people always assumed posed no threat. In most peoples' hands it didn't. But most people were not Pan.
In the reflective chrome collar above the urinal, Keith saw a bent and curved version of the man come into the rest room, his white teeth smiling. His hand became hidden in the folds of his denim jacket, and when it came out Keith saw the gleam of a pistol.
The man came up behind him and started to say something, but Keith didn't wait for the words. He whirled around, plucked the pistol from the man's right hand as easily as picking a ripe apple, and pressed the point of the penknife into the hollow directly above the man's sternum.
It sank in easily, and Keith smiled at the look of surprise and pain on the man's face. Then he flicked out the knife and stepped back. The man stood there, unsure how to breathe with two mouths. His hands waved feebly in the air, and he began to look around him, as if for help.
"Instant tracheotomy," said Keith. He pushed the man backwards so that his back hit a booth door and he went down in a sitting position, his sunglasses clattering to the floor. "Don't try to talk. You'll bleed too much. Just nod. Answer my questions and maybe you'll live. Are you from the lab?"
The man, blue eyes wide with shock, nodded.
"They're looking for me?"
The man's hands fumbled at his throat. He looked at his fingers. When he saw they were red, he began to make mewling noises.
"I said don't try and talk. It's only fatal if I want it to be. Now. They're looking for me?"
A nod.
"Everywhere? All over the country? Airports?"
Another nod. And a whimper.
It was time to stop then. Time to go home. The lab had a longer reach than he had thought.
He knelt by the man and pushed him over so that he could take his wallet. He flipped through it, but found nothing that linked the man to the government. At least he wasn't FBI or CIA. More likely a soldier for one of those shabby white supremacist groups. They were the kind of trash Goncourt would use.
He shoved the wallet in his pocket, then turned and washed the few drops of blood from his fingers.
"You'd be dead anyway," he told the man while he dried his hands. "I breathed on you." When he looked back the man's eyes were even wider with fear. "Don't worry, though," said Keith, turning so that the man could see his own silenced pistol, held in Keith's paper towel-wrapped hand. "You won't suffer."
He stuck the barrel of the pistol into the hole in the man's throat, but instead of pulling the trigger, he ripped the barrel sideways, opening the man's throat, tearing the jugular. He rammed the gun into the hole, and stepped back, out of the path of the leaping blood.
Then he picked up his flight bag, patted his hair into place, and left the rest room. People were in the corridor, but no one gave him a second glance, and he kept walking, left the International Arrivals Building, and stopped at an outdoor pay phone.
He dialed Woody Robinson's number from memory, using one of a list of memorized access codes, and when a young girl picked up the phone, he said, "Hello, Louisa. Is your dad home?"
"May I ask who's calling?"
"An old college friend. I want to surprise him."
Woody came on the line a few seconds later. His "Hello" was tentative.
"Hello, old friend," Keith said.
" . . . Keith?"
"What do you think?"
There was a long pause. "You bastard." Keith could barely hear it.
"That's not very nice, Woody. I was relieved when I learned you were all right. What did you do? Hurt yourself instead?"
"Yes. Keith---"
"My God, do you know how many years it's been since someone has called me that? I never used that name, you know, in my hundreds of identities. I suppose I should have. If some clever official had made a list of my assumed names, he might have seen that 'Keith' was never among them, and then figured out it was because that was my real name." He laughed. "But no one ever did. And it doesn't really matter now."
"What . . . do you mean, it doesn't matter?"
"I'm finished, Woody. I made my dream come true. You probably don't remember, but it's from Steppenwolf: 'Make a little room on the crippled earth! Depopulate it so that the grass may grow again---'"
Woody interrupted with the rest. "'. . . and woods, meadows, heather, stream and moor return to this world of dust and concrete.' Yes, I know."
Keith was silent for a long time. "How did you know that?"
"It's what convinced me that you were still alive, that you were Pan."
"Well. Well. But who would ever believe you? And even now, what if they do? It's too late."
"Too late for what?"
"Too late to call back my dream. You should be hearing about it very soon. My judgment, Woody. I gave us all every chance, every warning, every slap on the wrist I could think of. I weeded out the cruelest lions from the pack. But no one listened. So I did what had to be done. It wasn't easy. But I did it. And I can live with it. And die with it."
"What . . . do you mean?"
"A plague. A plague with no cure. A plague on all our houses," Keith said, put the phone gently back in the cradle, and smiled as he heard the siren, saw the ambulance rush past, thought about the man he had left in the rest room.
He took a cab into the city, had it drop him off at Third and 19th, walked a few blocks to a long-term parking garage, paid the fee in cash, and picked up the keys to the 1986 light blue Ford Tempo which he had put there months before. He went over the car quickly, found nothing amiss, climbed in, and started to drive home.
Curly answered his phone on the first ring. His wife was swimming, and he was sitting by the pool waiting for a client's call, but it wasn't a client. He recognized Woody's voice immediately.
"He called me, Curly. It was him."
"Holy shit. What'd he say?"
Woody told Curly Rider everything he could remember.
"What the hell's he mean? An actual plague?"
"That's what it sounds like."
"Have you seen anything on the news like that?"
"Not yet. But he said 'soon.'"
"Well, there's only one thing to do, Woody. Call the police. We know who it is now. We can tell the cops he called you and admitted to being Pan. With what we know about him, and the whole damn resources of the FBI and the CIA and whoever else, we can find him now. And you saw him too---you know what he looks like."
"I've thought about it. I thought about it for hours before I called you. And so did Tracy. We can't bring in the police. Not yet."
"What? Why the hell not?"
"Suppose they find him? What'll they do?"
"They'll throw him in jail."
"And suppose he has somehow released a plague---something with no cure that he expects to . . . to reduce the population, killing millions, even billions. Hell, everyone, for all we know. What good does locking him up do?"
"So you let him go?"
"No. We find him. You, me, Tracy---Frank and Eddie and Dale and Diane. Everybody who knows what happened, everybody who would believe."
"Okay, assuming we find him when nobody else has for twenty years, then what?"
"Then we take him back. Or try to."
"Take him back to where? . . ." Then he realized what Woody meant. "Oh hell---to back then?"
"We try. The same way we got him here."
"Jesus, why?"
"It's the only way to prevent it. We take him back, he dies in the ROTC bombing, and Pan never exists. No Pan, no plague. No assassinations, no bombings. Sharla's still alive, Alan and Judy are free."
"But those things have happened. They're history."
"And I lived alone for a lot of years too. Eddie had another lover. Those things happened too---but they changed, didn't they? You remember when Tracy died---that was history too. But she's not dead, Curly. We changed that, and we can change this."
"Maybe. But look, we don't even know if he was serious about this or not. Maybe he was just bragging, you know, to scare you or impress you. Let's at least wait a few days, see what happens, if there are reports of any disease. And if there aren't, let's turn the sonofabitch's ass in."
"Curly, I've researched the hell out of Pan, and we both knew Keith. He doesn't bluff."
"Yeah, but maybe what he thinks is the Black Death'll just be another flu strain. I think you're jumping the gun. Let's let it go just for a few days, see what happens, if anything."
"And if something does?"
When Curly spoke again, his voice was subdued. "Then we do it your way."
They said goodbye, and Curly hung up. His wife was toweling herself dry, and he patted her tight, bikini-clad bottom indifferently. "You talking about a sci-fi script or something?" she asked him.
"Something like that."
She knelt next to him and crossed her arms, shoving up her breasts to make her cleavage a deep, dark line. "Think there's a part in it for me, Mr. Producer?"
He looked at her face, utterly devoid of understanding, and felt very old and very sad. "There may be parts for all of us, babe," he said, and finished his tall, cold, strong drink.
\*
That evening Woody and Tracy heard about it on television. The newscasters labeled it the Texas flu, since it seemed to be centered in the eastern area of that state. Victims became weak, lost their appetite. One little girl had died from whatever it was.
"Although reports are sketchy, the disease does seem to be caused by a virus, and a team from the National Institute of Health have come to the area. Isolated cases of what may be the virus have been reported in cities as far away as Seattle and Miami, but there is as yet no proof that these cases are linked by anything other than similar symptoms."
"My God," Woody said. "My dear God, it's real."
When the network news was over, he switched to CNN, and he and Tracy remained in front of the TV all evening. Eventually Woody's exhaustion overcame his apprehension, and he drifted into sleep at midnight. When he awoke at three in the morning, Tracy was still next to him, her hand on his arm. Her smile was sad, made of love, confirmation, and acceptance.
"Anything new?" he said, nodding toward the TV.
"There are cases all over the country. Europe, Japan, Asia too, you name it. Twenty some deaths so far, mostly older people and kids. It can't be a coincidence, can it?"
The taste in his mouth was worse than just sleep. He closed his eyes, feeling more afraid than he ever had before, thinking that if he could go back to sleep, maybe when he woke up everything would be different.
"No," he said. "It's no coincidence." He opened his eyes and suddenly anger replaced his fear. He stood up, fists clenched. "The bastard," he said. "The stupid, crazy bastard! He was really serious. The son of a bitch is after everybody." He moved toward the phone in the kitchen. "I've got to call Curly . . . and the others."
"Wait," Tracy said. "They'll be asleep. Call in the morning, first thing. God knows we're all going to need our strength. To find him." She sighed and lay down on the wide sofa. "If we do, I'll go back. I'm not afraid."
"You won't have to stay," he said, pressing his anger back. He sat next to her and took her hand.
She kept her eyes on the ceiling. "I've been thinking about it. About staying. Because if I stayed and I died again, the kids wouldn't have been born. It's not that I care so much for myself as for them. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that it doesn't have to happen that way again." She looked up at his face, inches away, and he thought she had never been more beautiful, not even when her face was young and unlined.
"I think there can be different ways," she said. "Not just one or two. And if I have to stay to keep Keith there, it'll be all right."
"You won't have to stay," he said again. "I won't let you."
"No. I think I will have to. Because if I don't, it could happen just the way it did before. Why wouldn't it? But this time if I stay, I'll remember. And I'll change things. Keith never has to go to the ROTC building at all." She turned her head and looked at the solemn face of the newsman on the TV, at the stylized world map with the lights showing where cases of the virus had been reported. There were many lights.
"And if he has to go, he'll go alone. And he'll die alone." She bit her lip, and Woody saw tears in her eyes. "This won't happen. If we can get him, and take him back, I swear to God that this . . ." She thrust a fist toward the TV. ". . . will never happen."
It was something that Woody hadn't even considered, and he felt a surge of panic. How could he have thought that just to take Keith back and leave him there could make everything all right? The very same thing could happen all over again, and they could return to the same world in which they now lived, in which Pan, still alive, had released some deadly plague. And now, as he thought about it, and the sweat of loss crept out of his flesh, he realized that Tracy was wrong too.
They could be sure of Pan's non-existence only if the original scenario was restored, if both Tracy and Keith went to the ROTC building that fatal night.
And that meant no Tracy. No Peter. No Louisa.
But was that logical? Was there any logic in what they had experienced? Did logic exist in the magic of desire, his desire to have Tracy alive again?
Maybe the dead should have stayed dead, and he had made some terrible cosmic error in doing what he did, in wanting the past so much that he had broken laws he had never known existed, a crime for which the penalty was execution of all.
But he shared none of these fears and theories with Tracy. He only put his arms around her, drew her to him, and whispered, "We'll work it out. I love you, and we'll work it out," into her soft, dark brown hair.
He would do what he could, prepare for every possibility, be ready for fate to be a friend or a monster.
\*
By eight o'clock the next morning, the news was worse. Several dozen more deaths were attributed to the virus, thousands of cases were reported in every major city, and hundreds in smaller towns. It was a worldwide epidemic, and an NIH spokesperson said in a press conference that the speed with which it had spread was unparalleled. "We have to assume that it is airborne," the woman said, and added that a remedy was expected shortly. When she was asked if there had as yet been any recoveries from the disease, she evaded the question clumsily, and gave a final, indefinite reassurance that there was no need for panic.
When Woody made the calls, he felt as though it was six months earlier, and he was once more making invitations, but this time it was by telephone and not by mail. And this time it was not for fun or nostalgia. This time it was for life and death:
" . . . I know it sounds incredible, Diane, but we've lived through the incredible. Keith is alive, and he's put the whole goddam world at risk! Somehow he caused what happened to Sharla and Alan and . . ."
\*
". . . your wife, Frank. Judy would never have done that on her own. It was a drug, the same drug he gave me that nearly made me kill Tracy . . . Yes, Jesus, of course I'd testify to that, but there's more at stake now than just Judy. It's this fucking plague, Frank, this Texas flu! There's no cure, damn it, except to take him back . . ."
\*
". . . it's the only way, Dale. Otherwise, honest to Christ we're going to die along with everybody else. It's apocalypse time, man, the end of the world! So tell Eddie when he comes home. I'll call you if and when . . ."
\*
Dale Collini hung up the phone with a trembling hand, and thought about going back, leaving his lover, his life.
He still hadn't told Eddie about the leukemia, and now maybe he would never have to. If Woody found Keith, and if they were able to go back---and those were major "if"s---Dale had decided to remain as well.
It had all been wrong. It was not as things had been intended, and if the dual plagues of Keith's violent life and this virus wasn't all the proof he needed, there was also the fact of his own illness. The cancer hadn't been fooled, hadn't been banished by the instant passage of years. It had only been put off, and now had come surging into his blood cells, furious at having been made to sleep for twenty years. Everything, including his Catholic upbringing, told Dale that it had all been wrong.
All right then. If he had the chance to make it right, he would. After all, he had twenty years of life he would not have otherwise had. Or twenty years of memories, at any rate. And if he forgot them when he returned to the past, so be it, he thought. Or should that be so was it? Or will it be? He started to chuckle, but stopped, and looked around the room that was filled with the souvenirs of his and Eddie's life together.
"Whatever happens," he whispered, "thank you, God, for these years with him," and he began to weep, thinking about the youth, that time of ignorance and confusion and happiness, to which he might return.
\*
Curly was the last person Woody called. He was the strongest, the one whose help Woody would most need. Curly had been waiting for the call.
"It's all real, isn't it?" he said to Woody.
"All real. We're beyond a choice now, Curly. We have to try this. And if it works . . . maybe we save everybody's life."
"And you mean everybody."
"Yeah."
"All right. We try to find him. And then we try to take him back. Twenty-four years back. So where do we start?"
"Where we lost him. And where he came back again. Iselin."
October 1, 1993:
Home. Like many another grizzled and fading old soldier, I have at last come home to write my memoirs and pass my final days. And in my case "days" means precisely that.
I had hoped that I would be granted several weeks, even months, in which to tell my story to whoever might find it, but such is not to be. I think the virus has attacked my lungs. Breathing is difficult, and just yesterday I began to cough up blood with my mucus. Blood is visible in my stool as well, and my abdomen aches incessantly.
I've been able to keep my malady from the few people with whom I've had to deal---the rental agent, primarily. God, how the town has deteriorated. When the mines ran out, the vultures ran out on the people. House prices and rentals are remarkably cheap. There is only one real estate agent in Colver, and he told me that were it not for his remodeling business, he would have had to move long ago.
So now I sit here, I write, and I wait for death. It's so pleasant to write outside of my mind, to see the words held within for so many years form themselves into straight rows, first as green phosphor dots, then as black letters on white paper, spewing from the printer at the speed of thought. For if I don't tell my story now, it will never be told.
For three days and nights I have transcribed my Book of the Mind onto this computer, pausing only to sleep, eat what I can, and pass bloody stool. Though I recall everything, I know I won't have the time to record it all, so I write what seems to me most important, leaving out many of the hows that I thought necessary to record, but including all the whys. Those who find this must know why. I must make them understand.
It's begun in earnest. The deaths are increasing. I have no television, but I do have a radio, and that keeps me informed of the spread. It's remarkable how they lie about it. I suppose the government and the media would rather have people die peacefully than panic. They don't talk about the danger to the entire populace, but rather about the heartbreak, the children, the parents, whole families dying, and of course the mythical cure that is just around the corner, down the road, at the end of the tunnel.
As yet they've said nothing about Goncourt, but surely they know by now. It would be impossible not to locate Bone as the epicenter, and from there to the Goncourt employees I infected is an elementary step. Still, they've said nothing. Maybe they know it's no use. They probably invaded Goncourt before the Nazi bastards could even start looking for a cure, as if they could find one in time.
As if anyone could find one in time.
And the thing is, they're not warning people. They're not saying that this is an airborne, deadly virus that will kill anyone it reaches. Don't they know? Or don't they care? Do they, accepting the inevitable, refuse to add the extra agony of terror to mankind's death throes? Or is it just that the politicians are afraid even now of alienating laboratories who may provide campaign contributions to next year's election? I wouldn't be at all surprised. However, they may be surprised to find that attendance at the polls will be considerably reduced next year.
So it goes. Not the way the world ends, but the way it begins again.
I can see my mother now, out my window, over the top of my monitor. She's hanging out the laundry, just as she did when I was little, and lived with her and my father in that small house below.
When the real estate man brought me here, my breathing became even more labored from nerves, ragged enough that he looked at me oddly before I was able to clear my throat and breathe normally again. It shouldn't have come as any great surprise that the house overlooked my boyhood home, for Colver was always small and has gotten smaller with the years, like my mother, a little widow shrunk and withered by cares.
Our old house is less than a hundred yards down a slope, and I placed the computer by a window so I could see it. The houses on either side of my mother are vacant, and on my street (an ironic appellation for a strip of crumbled asphalt) there are only two occupied dwellings, my small two-story and another diagonally across from mine, in which lives an ex-miner in his eighties who somehow gets by on social security. He is near-blind and partially deaf, if the volume on his television set is any indication, and seems unaware of my presence here.
My mother looks so tiny down there, so I took a pair of binoculars and looked at her. She's aged so much, far more than you'd think twenty-five years could do to a person. Living alone all that time, without anyone to love or love her.
I'll visit her soon. When I grow weak, but not too weak to walk down that hill, I'll visit her and tell her who I am. I'll go home to die. I could never go home before, just in case anyone was looking for me. But it doesn't matter now. Everything is settled. Everything is fine. I've done what I was put on this earth for.
So now I must go back and fill in more of the blanks, tell my story, and someday when the survivors find it and read it, they'll know why I did it, know and forgive me, and know that I was not a villain, but a hero.
I thought that now I might feel like a villain, having planted the seed that will kill so many. But I don't. I feel so much at peace, so happy. I can't hear the children crying, but even if I did, I don't think I could feel guilty. They would have died hereafter, to paraphrase Shakespeare. He will live, because he left words. I, because I left deeds.
No. I don't feel like a villain at all.
Curly Rider felt like a jerk. While he was talking to Woody it all sounded possible. But trying to explain it to Donna, well, Jee-zus.
First she thought he was kidding. Then, when she realized he was serious, she thought he was on drugs. Then, when she realized he was straight, she thought he was crazy.
"Look, man," she said, "just because I'm a native Californian doesn't mean I believe all this cosmic bullshit. Woody Robinson's melted your mind or something . . . I knew I shouldn't have let you go to that sixties party alone."
Trust me, he told her, and she gave him a look just like the one Brenda, his first wife, gave him a week before the lawyers descended. I have to do this, he told her, and she shook her head and told him it was his life, and if he wanted to play Double-Oh-Seven it was up to him.
At least she drove him to the airport, kissed him goodbye, and told him to be careful.
Still, he felt like a jerk.
Here he was, once again driving from Pittsburgh to Iselin, but not to reclaim a taste of lost youth. "I'm going to help my buddy," he said aloud, to convince himself of the reality, "catch a terrorist who's turned loose the Black Death and when we get him we're gonna take him back in time so he gets blown up when he's supposed to. And I'm also Anastasia, Queen of all the Russias," he added, thinking that it made as much sense as the rest did.
It all sounded so stupid that he didn't say it aloud anymore. Instead he sang old Doors songs, and said, "Believe. Believe. If you believe in fairies, Tinker Bell will live."
It didn't work. He still felt like a jerk.
Woody was where he said he would be, in a booth at Parini's Bar. Curly was going to hug him, but changed his mind when he saw the intensity in Woody's eyes. "So what's happened?" Curly asked.
"I've been busy," Woody said. "Took me a couple days, but I made all the arrangements with Parini and the kids who were living up there. Paid them off and moved them out. Parini still had the old furniture down in the bookstore, so that's back upstairs. I'd kept all the stuff I got from my folks' house."
"Frank didn't wanta help?"
Woody shook his head. "I asked him, but he'll only leave Atlanta now if he has to."
"But if we get Keith . . ."
"He'll be here for that. Everybody's ready on a moment's notice. And I've got the apartment indefinitely." He lowered his voice. "Did you get the grass?"
Curly nodded. "Same as last time, he guaranteed it." A waitress came up and Curly ordered an Iron City, Woody a bourbon. "So where do we start?"
"When he talked to me," Woody said, "there was a finality to it. He said his dream had come true, that it was too late, it was over, and something about dying. So if he's the one who spread this disease, I'm thinking that he might have used himself as the carrier."
"Typhoid Mary," Curly said. "Typhoid Keith."
"Yeah. So if he's dying, where would he go? Someplace he hasn't been able to go to for twenty years."
"Home."
"Yeah."
"Was he close to his folks?"
"He was, but his father died years ago. His mother's still alive, though."
"Where did he live?"
"Little town called Colver. His mother's still there."
"It's an off chance he'd go back."
"Where else has he got to go? And what does he have to lose? Besides, it's not just a lead---it's our only lead."
"How far is it?"
"Near Ebensburg. Less than an hour."
"Go now?"
"Tomorrow morning. We'll have to check the motels, if there are any, talk to real estate people. He's got to buy or rent from somebody. Go to the Ebensburg library and check the past few days' papers, see who's renting or selling, and contact them. If the places are gone, we check them out, see who's there."
"And maybe it's him."
"Maybe it is."
\*
The next morning Curly and Woody arrived at the Ebensburg Public Library only to find that it didn't open until 1:00, so they drove on, and were in Colver by 10:30.
"Helluva town," Curly said, and Woody snorted in ironic agreement. Colver was all too typical of the western Pennsylvania coal towns in which the veins had been cleaned out. The Compton Mines had closed over a decade before, and those who were still young enough to keep working moved away, seeking greener pastures and blacker mines, leaving the town to tired old men, widows, and the giant slag heaps, mountains of dark gray grit, that greeted the visitor.
Main Street cut through the center of town, with smaller, residential streets branching off of it. Along Main was a grocery store with gas pumps out front, two churches, a state liquor store, three taverns, one of which was boarded over, a hardware store, and a small video rental shop.
They stopped at the grocery store, where the proprietor told them that the only person who handled real estate in town was Gus Pulaski. "But he's down in Nanty Glo this morning working on a house---does basements, bathrooms, that kind of thing. Should be back around lunch time. Has a little office down on Second Street."
Back in the car, they decided to drive around rather than walk the streets. "If he's here," Woody reasoned, "and he sees us, he's gone."
At 12:30 a van with "Pulaski Renovation & Remodeling" painted on the side pulled up in front of the office, and a short, squat man in his fifties got out. Woody introduced himself and Curly as Bob and Tim Parsons, brothers from Pittsburgh who were looking for rental investments. Pulaski looked at them warily.
"Investments? In Colver? Are you kidding? This town isn't exactly booming."
"I know," Woody said. "The mines closed." He paused, then said quietly, "But factories can open."
"Factories? What factories?"
Woody smiled. "Factories that might be built."
"You know something?" Pulaski said. "You know something I don't know?"
Woody put a finger to his lips. "You haven't heard a thing from me, okay? I'll just say that if I were looking to get into real estate right now, Colver might be a good place to start."
"Jesus," Pulaski said. "Jesus H. Christ." He shook his head in disbelief, picked up an account book from the top of his battered desk, and waggled it at Woody. "You know how many places I've sold this past month? None. Not a one. And how many I rented? Just one. A whole damn house for three hundred and fifty bucks a month, for which I get fifty-two dollars and fifty cents. Half the goddam houses in this town are available, and I'm the agent on nearly all of them."
"Then I'd say you're in a very favorable position. Now frankly, Tim and I are looking to buy buildings with more than six rental units. Anything like that available?"
Pulaski filled his cheeks with air, blew it out in frustration, and dropped the book on the desk. "That I don't have. Last apartment house around here was torn down long ago."
"Double houses then? Places that could be broken up into four apartments?"
His face brightened. "Yeah, a lot of those." He grabbed a thick, three-ring binder from a shelf. "You wanta look?"
"Sure." Woody took the binder and opened it, flipping slowly through page after page of watery Polaroids with typed data beneath each.
"Say," Curly said, "you have a bathroom in here? Long drive from Pittsburgh."
"Sure." Pulaski pointed through a door. "Down that hall, second door on the right."
Curly left the room, and Woody kept paging, murmuring, "Hmmm" or "Uh-huh" every now and then.
After a minute, Curly called from the rear of the building. "Mr. Pulaski? Something's wrong with the toilet."
Pulaski got up and walked back into the hall. Woody immediately opened the account book on the desk and riffled through it until he found the listing of the most recent rental. It was dated several days before, and was for a property at 75 Eighth Street. The name of the tenant was Harold Hall.
The name stopped Woody cold, and for a moment he didn't know why. Then the memory came over him like a second skin, chill, damp, and pale, the name of the protagonist of a book he had read long ago.
Harold Hall.
Harry Haller.
Steppenwolf.
Keith Aarons was there.
The sound of returning footsteps made him slap the book shut and slide it back to its former position. ". . . damn thing never did that before," he heard Pulaski say.
"Sorry," said Curly. "Must've been my fault."
"Nah nah, don't worry, no harm done." The two men came into the office, and Pulaski grinned at Woody. "So, Mr. Parsons, you find anything?"
"A few . . ." Woody's voice was shaking, and he cleared his throat. "A few look pretty good."
"Well, great. Let me take you and your brother around, and you can---"
Woody shook his head. "Not today, I'm afraid. We've got to get back to our office by four. How about next week? We'll give you a call."
"Swell. Here's my card. Call me at home if I'm not here. Both numbers are on there."
"Fine." Woody stood up and shook Pulaski's hand. "But not a word now, huh?"
Pulaski mimed zipping shut his lip. "Not from me. You, uh, have a card?"
Woody nodded and took out his wallet. "Damn, Look at that. Forgot to put them in last time I ran out."
Pulaski looked at Curly like a puppy expecting a treat, but Curly shook his head. "Bob's the card carrier. I like a thin wallet."
"Here, I'll write down our number," Woody said, and scrawled seven random numbers on a note pad. "But we'll be in touch."
As soon as they got in the car, Woody said, "He's here."
"What, he used his name?"
"No. Harold Hall. The main character in Steppenwolf is Harry Haller."
"Shit, I thought he was smarter than that."
"He never would have done anything so obvious before. I bet he just doesn't care anymore. Of course he wouldn't use his own name, but a variation of Harry Haller keeps his anonymity while it shows a little bravado at the same time."
"And gives us a clue."
Woody shrugged. "Like I said, I don't think he cares." Woody gripped the steering wheel with trembling hands, looked down, breathed out shakily.
"What's the matter?"
He gave a little laugh. "I didn't think it would come to this. I didn't really think we would find him." He turned and looked at Curly. "Now that we have . . . I'm scared."
"Yeah. He's one dangerous guy. He's going to be hard to get."
"No. I'm not scared of him. I'm afraid of going back. Afraid we won't be able to get there. And afraid that we will."
They drove out of town for several miles and ate lunch at a roadside burger stand. It was 1:30 when they tossed their napkins in the trash.
"So now we go get him?" Curly said in the car.
"No. We wait till dark. That way nobody else sees us, and maybe he doesn't either. But now we buy some guns."
"Shit, this is getting nasty."
"He's not going to come with us on his own."
"But he's gonna have guns too, isn't he? I mean, this is Pan we're talking about---assassin, bomber, terrorist, fellow alumni."
"Not a fellow alumni. He never graduated."
"Oh, that's cool. Then we can kill 'im."
"No. We can't kill him. We have to take him back."
"Bring 'em back alive. If he lets us."
"We can shoot him. But we can't kill him."
"Okay, leg and arm shots only. I'll remember that fine point when the bullets start flying in the dark." Curly flapped out air between his lips. "Well, let's go buy our AK-47s, Rambo."
The gun shop in Ebensburg didn't sell AK-47s. They did, however, carry pistols, but the proprietor told Woody and Curly that there was a waiting period of several days. There was no waiting period for sporting arms, so they bought a lever action 30/30, a lightweight double-barreled .20 gauge shotgun, and a box of ammo for each. They figured they could use the rifle to wound Keith if they had to, and the shotgun would be an emergency measure, to be used only if their lives were at stake. At a K Mart Woody bought a hacksaw, and in a country lane outside of Colver they sawed off twelve inches of the .20 gauge's barrel.
"Sawed-offs are against the law, aren't they?" Curly said as the foot long piece of metal fell into the dirt.
"Yeah, but so is kidnapping. They hang us for one, they might as well hang us for the other."
"You want to saw off the rifle barrel too?"
"I never heard of a sawed-off rifle, did you?"
"No, but I don't hang around with the NRA crowd. Crap, I hope we don't have to use these."
"Just to save our lives if we have to. And he won't go with us on his own."
They talked about driving back to Ebensburg for dinner, but decided they were too nervous to eat, and drove to Colver instead. It was dusk when they arrived, and they went directly to Eighth Street. It was on the west side, part way up a natural bluff so that it overlooked the main part of town. Number 75 was partially hidden by large maple trees that were badly in need of trimming.
They drove past, and parked several houses away, so that they could see two of the first floor windows through the columns of tree trunks. Most of the other houses on the street had sale or rent signs with Gus Pulaski's name and phone number wedged into the ground in front of them.
But one house was obviously occupied. Lights shone inside, and a dog chained to a metal stake in front of the house had begun barking as soon as Woody and Curly's car went by. Even now, forty yards away, it still yapped.
Woody and Curly saw an old man limp out, look toward their car, and walk back into his house. When he came out again, he was carrying a taped baseball bat, and used it as a cane as he approached them. His mouth was partly open, and there were only a few teeth in it. Through the open window, Woody thought he smelled of urine and Clorox. "What are you doin' here?" the man said, stopping at the passenger side.
"We're in real estate," Curly said. "Checking out some of these houses."
"At night?" The old man started to cough heavily, and spit a gobbet of something dark on the sidewalk.
"There a law against sitting here?" Curly asked.
"You burglars? If you're burglars, I got a dog. Damn mean." Curly sighed. "We're not burglars. Why don't you just go back in your house and---"
"I'm gonna," the old man said. "Gonna go in and call the cops is what I'm gonna do. Don't belong here."
Something caught Woody's eye, and he snapped his attention to the house in the maples. A light had appeared on the first floor.
"Hey," Woody said, and got out of the car. The old man stopped, looked at him, hefted the baseball bat in both hands. "You live alone?"
"Got my dog. Dog'll take care of me, boy. And I can take care of myself. You wanta try me, huh? I'm callin' the cops." He raised the bat over his head and waggled it.
Woody glanced around, saw that the street was empty and the other houses were dark, yanked the keys from the ignition, went around to the back of the car, and unlocked the trunk. He reached in and took the sawed-off shotgun, came up with it pointing at the old man. "Come here."
The old man's eyes widened. "Shit," he said in a voice suddenly gone dry. "Shit."
"I said come here," Woody repeated, and reached in with his left hand to grasp the 30/30.
"Shit," the old man said again, the bat still over his head, as if he had forgotten about it.
"What's your name?" Woody asked.
"Rooney."
"I'm not going to hurt you, Rooney. Just get back here and get in the trunk."
"What are you doing?" Woody heard Curly ask, and a second later the door opened and his friend got out, one eye on the old man with the baseball bat, the other on Woody holding the guns. Woody was relieved that Curly had sense enough not to call him by name. "What the hell are you doing?"
"We're not going to be screwed up at the last minute by Rooney here. Now get in that trunk, Rooney. Or I'll have to hurt you. And drop that damn bat."
Rooney did as he was ordered, and his arms fell limply to his side. "You're burglars," he said, as if grieved at being proven right.
"We're not burglars," Woody said. "We're CIA, and we're here to capture a dangerous criminal. Now do your country a favor and get in the damn trunk."
Curly turned toward the old man and shrugged. "Better do it, Rooney. We've got a license to kill, just like James Bond."
Rooney tottered back to the trunk and Curly helped him climb in. "We'll let you out later," Curly said. "If you're quiet and don't cause any trouble. Otherwise, we'll have to kill you." And he slammed the trunk shut.
Immediately Woody put both weapons in the back seat of the car, and he and Curly got in. "It's almost dark," Woody said, "so nobody else should see us."
"What are we gonna do with him?" Curly asked, gesturing to their rear.
"Let him go later. Out on the road somewhere. And hope he didn't see the license plate. I just couldn't take a chance that he would actually call the police."
"He be all right in the trunk?"
"Did you hear that cough? He won't be all right anywhere. Not for long. You remember who his neighbor is?"
It took a moment for it to sink in. When Curly answered, his voice was low with dread. "The virus?"
"Probably. If it's really Keith in there and not a guy named Harold Hall."
"But he. . . he talked right into my face. That means that I'm . . ."
"Exposed. Right. But if it's any consolation, Gus Pulaski probably infected us already, if we weren't before. So we've got our own lives to save now by taking him back."
"You knew that? You realized that before, and never mentioned it?"
Woody shrugged. "If this plague of his is what he implied, we'll all be exposed sooner or later. So now we've got to save our own lives too."
Curly sat silently for a while. "It's like gathering all the demons and putting them back in Pandora's box," he finally said. "Not quite. More like sending one demon back to hell."
It is finished. The last day has come. Breathing is so difficult. It's as though I have to pull in ten times the normal amount of air for every breath, as though my lungs have a hundred small pinholes through which the air escapes. My bowels are burning now, and sometimes I think I actually lose consciousness without knowing it. I write, I lose my way in the middle of a sentence, and by the time I find the path again, ten, fifteen minutes have passed. I'm very afraid that I'll slip into a coma without being aware of it, slip in, and never come out.
So it's time to visit my mother. I've written as much as I can, something from all the years, and nearly everything from the past six months, the most important time. All that's left is to hail the survivors who read this, and beg them to learn the lessons I've tried to teach. May you and the great mother earth live in harmony forever.
Your friend, and I hope your savior,
Keith Aarons
Carrying the bag, he walked out the back door and down the hill, tripping several times, falling once, lying still for a long time. Then he pushed himself to his feet, tried to ignore the agony that burned him from groin to neck, the ache that stretched his legs and filled his head, and walked on, stumbling through the brush until he was in the back yard where he had played cowboys and cops with his friends, been Wild Bill Hickok and Joe Friday and Superman and Dick Tracy, been all the heroes who made things better for the people of the west and Metropolis and Los Angeles and everywhere.
And he stood there in the dark yard, the bag in his hand, and he thought that he really was a hero now, the greatest hero of them all, and he smiled and coughed black blood and spat and shuffled on, until he was at the back door. He put his hands on the wood, thinking that it felt warm and alive, like an old dog happy after all these years to see its master home again.
He stayed there for a long time, leaning against the door, listening to soft music inside, the same records that his mother had played when he was little, some man crooning. Was it Como? Crosby? He didn't remember, it was so long since he had heard that kind of music. The music and the light streamed out between the cracks of the door and the windows, warm and welcoming, and now he heard another song, a deeper voice, tell him that he should come home if he was weary, come home, come home, and he took a deep breath that tore him as it sustained him, and he knocked on the door.
She knew him as soon as she opened it.
She stood there, the bright, round fluorescent light on the kitchen ceiling illuminating her gray-white hair from behind like a halo. "Keith?" she whispered, and when he heard her voice he couldn't breathe at all for the love that was choking him, and he pulled air in, pulled it with all his strength, until something inside him gave way, and the air and the blood mixed inside him, and he staggered, grasped the door frame, and she grabbed him and held him up.
"Keith," she said again, sure now, and moved into the house, pulling him along. One arm was around her, and the other clutched the bag to his side while the hand hopped along from door to kitchen chair to table to counter, holding him up, grasping for balance, gripping to keep the pain at bay.
"Come on," his mother said, and he did what she said, he came on, through the kitchen, the little dining room, and God, he marveled, how so little had changed, how so much was the same. The tears came on too, and he heard himself cry and heard his mother cry, and then they were on the sofa together, the bag between them, and he let her hold him.
"I saw you," she said between sobs, "that day in the cemetery. I thought it was a ghost . . . or a dream . . . but I knew that somehow you were still alive . . . somehow."
"I kissed you," he told her, the pains making him shudder spasmodically. "I wanted you to feel it when you woke up . . . I wanted to help you, kept track of you through the years. But I couldn't . . . thought about putting money in your account . . . but they might've traced it to me . . ."
She sat up straighter. "Where have you been? What have you been doing?" There was no anger in her words, only the yearning of a mother to know about her child.
"Been . . . saving the world. Trying to. Finally doing it."
"You seem so sick . . ."
He nodded. The movement hurt his neck, and the pain pushed into his upper chest so that he gagged before he spoke. "Am. Dying. But what kills me, kills us, saves the world. Got to believe." He made himself smile, and the pain in the decaying muscles of his face brought more tears. Then it passed, and he seemed momentarily free of the agony.
"I'll get a doctor, call the ambulance." His mother started to get up, but he clapped a hand on her leg.
"No. Too late. Couldn't do anything anyway. It's the virus, you see. The virus."
A look of pity claimed her face, pity instead of fear, and it was the first time in so many years that someone had been concerned for him rather than for themselves. There was no terror at being so close to the death he carried. 'That . . . flu? That Texas flu?"
He nodded. "I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry. But it couldn't be helped. I had to come home. You would have gotten it event---" Pain knifed him in the stomach, and he broke off.
"I don't care," she said, and hugged him again. "You're home, and I don't care how or why or what happens now, but my boy's home . . . oh Keith . . ."
"Had to come," he said when the cutting was finished, and he could breathe again. "Couldn't let you hurt like this . . . have to keep you safe."
He held his left arm around her, and opened the bag with his right hand, hoping she didn't hear the paper crinkle.
"We'll keep each other safe now," she said. "Whatever happened, whatever's wrong, it'll be all right . . . but let me call the doctor, get someone to take care of you . . ."
She pushed away from him, and it was then that she saw the silenced pistol in his hand.
"I don't want you to hurt," he said, bringing up the muzzle to stare into her eyes. "I don't want you to suffer like this."
His trained hand did not fail him. No pain racked him, made the pistol tremble, yanked the trigger before he was ready. He killed his mother as coolly and smoothly and efficiently as he had ever killed anyone. The pistol hurled the bullet through the barrel and the silencer, trapping the sound of the explosion so that only a flat, sharp bark escaped, like the parody of a smacking kiss, a deadly kiss that left the imprint of bloody lips on his mother's forehead, one more kiss, twenty years later, from her lost son.
A hundred yards away, in the silence of early night in a dying town, Woody Robinson and Curly Rider heard the muffled sound of the gun.
They were standing on the back porch of Keith Aarons's rented house, holding their weapons as though wearing clothes too big for them. They had approached the house only five minutes before, after having watched the lighted windows for a half hour, seeing and hearing nothing inside. Their weapons loaded, they had walked quietly through the trees and peered through the windows, but saw no one inside. Woody had gingerly tried the front door, but found it locked. They had just moved around to the back porch when they heard the sound from below.
"Know what that is?" Curly whispered.
"A gun?"
Curly nodded. "Silenced. They still make a noise. Think he's down there?"
Woody turned and tried the back door, which opened so easily that it startled him. "Come on," he said, and they went inside.
As they blundered through the house, Woody thought that if Keith Aarons had been there, he would have had plenty of aural warning that he had company, but the place seemed to be empty.
"Hey, Woody," Curly said from a window near the rear of the house, "look at this." He held a thick pile of white papers in his hand.
Woody flipped through it, and as page after page made their grim confessions, he realized what it was. "Jesus," he said. "It's Keith all right." He turned to the last few pages, anxious to see how this all could end, and scanned them.
"His mother," he said finally, looking up at Curly. "That's his mother's house."
They went back onto the porch, and trotted carefully down the bank, holding their weapons at the ready, but their fingers outside the guards. Curly had the safety off the shotgun, and Woody had cocked the rifle.
When they arrived at the back yard, they moved slower, keeping away from the slash of light the open back door threw onto the grass. At the door they paused, listened, smelled the scent of burnt gunpowder, wrapped their fingers around the triggers of their guns, and went inside.
From the kitchen they walked into a small dining room, wincing at each creak of the floorboards. A floor lamp was on in what Woody figured was the living room, and he moved very slowly and quietly around the separating wall until he saw the end of a sofa, and a person's hand resting on the worn fabric of the arm.
He held up a warning hand to Curly, brought his rifle to port arms, and moved his head by inches until he saw the old woman to whom the hand belonged. She was sitting there, eyes closed, her head down, but not down far enough that Woody could not see the small, neat hole in her forehead just above her right eye, and the stippling marks like black freckles on her face.
Woody's mouth opened, and he stifled a gasp, but heard it anyway, then realized that it was not he who had gasped, but someone else, someone still hidden by the separating wall. He took a deep breath and moved farther to the left, until he could see Keith Aarons sitting on the sofa next to the dead woman. His eyes were closed, but he was breathing, albeit raggedly. He held a pistol in his right hand.
Woody moved back again and motioned for Curly to keep still. Then he pointed toward the room and nodded vigorously.
Keith? Curly made his mouth form the word, but Woody heard no sound, and he nodded again, then mimed holding a handgun, and Curly nodded back.
Woody decided he would let Keith know he was there before he left the shelter of the wall that separated dining room from living room. He hugged the wall and spoke his old friend's name.
\*
Keith.
Keith Aarons's eyes opened. He had not imagined it. Someone had called his name. It wasn't his mother, because she was dead now, free from pain and plague. But it was a voice he knew, a voice he had heard recently. Someone from Goncourt? Had they somehow tracked him down? No. Impossible. Then who? There was no one in the room.
"Keith!"
Oh God, of course. Now he knew. The voice was coming from the dining room, and it was---
"Hello, Woody." He chuckled, tasted blood in the phlegm the chuckle brought up. "Welcome to Colver."
"I need to talk to you."
"Feel free. But you better hurry."
"You've got a gun. How do I know you won't use it?"
"You've probably got a gun too, Woody. You wouldn't be stupid enough to visit me without one, would you?"
There was a pause. "No. You're right. I have one."
"All right. I promise not to use mine on you if you promise not to use yours on me." The pain hit him, heart, lungs, gut, and his head twisted, but he made no sound. He bit through his lower lip until the worst of it was gone. He would have wiped the blood from his mouth, but he wanted to save his strength.
"All right," Woody said. "Deal. And that goes for Curly too."
"Curly? Curly here too? Who else?"
"Just us two."
"Come on then, come where I can see you."
The two men rounded the corner, Woody first, his rifle pointed toward the ceiling, then Curly, his bald head shiny with perspiration. Keith kept his right hand at his side on the sofa. "What a nice reunion," he said. "Curly, I haven't seen you in ages."
"Hi, Keith," Curly said. His voice sounded hushed, filled with awe. And why not? thought Keith. He was meeting a legend, the savior of the world.
"Your mother?" said Woody, nodding to her.
"Yes. I didn't want her to suffer, to go through . . ."
"The virus."
"Mmm. My doing. It's becoming very popular, isn't it?" Keith coughed, then cleared his throat, swallowing what he had brought up. "I'm not really surprised to see you. Knowing what you did . . ." He tried to smile. ". . . what I told you, it didn't take the Hardy Boys to find me. And at this point, I don't really care. But why you? Why didn't you call the police?"
"The police wouldn't have done what we have to do."
"And what's that---kill me?"
"No. Take you back." Woody smiled grimly. "Back to where you once belonged. You never should have been, Keith. And I think it can change. It can be what it was before---a world without you after 1969. A world without Pan."
Keith tried to lick his dry lips, but there was no moisture on his tongue. It was like rubbing leather with a dry sponge. "Afraid not," he said, and his words, coming on each breath, sounded to his dying ears like cornstalks brushing together in the wind. "It's too late. But I know . . . you're right in theory. I do have . . . you to thank. I still remember dying . . . in that building. I dream about it . . . But you brought me back . . . so I could do . . . what had to be done. From the first time . . . I knew what I would do." His eyes went down to his heaving chest. "Knew here." He looked back up, gave his head a little shake. "Wasn't a hoof print. Never meant that. Was. Omega."
"Omega," Woody said. "The end."
"Final warnings. What I gave. And now . . . final solution. Poor Woody. Even if . . . there was time . . . too late. Won't go back. Won't let you . . . take me . . ."
He turned his head to the right to make it easier, and focused all the strength remaining to him down his right arm, into his right hand that held the pistol. Even then, it came up so slowly that Woody had time to move, but not quickly enough, not before Keith took the barrel in his mouth like a weary child sucking at its mother's breast one last time before sleep, pulled the trigger, and died.
"Oh Christ! Oh holy hell, Woody!" Curly said.
Woody stared, arrested halfway on his leap to the couch by the sound of the silenced gun merging with the wet sound of the bullet splitting flesh. He stared at Keith, slumped on his dead mother's lap, stared at the family portrait above the sofa splashed with blood and other things, things gray and pink and tan, stared at the end of the world.
"No," he said quietly.
"We'll never get him back now, oh hell, it's over, there's not a flicking chance . . ."
"No!" Woody said, and the single word dammed the verbal stream that flowed from Curly. "We'll get him. We will." He set the rifle on the floor. "Pick him up. We've got to carry him to the car.
Curly only stood, his jaw hanging. "Woody . . ."
"Pick him up, dammit! It's our only chance. For any of us."
"But he's dead!"
Woody gave his head a furious shake. "He wasn't dead back then. He wasn't dead yesterday. Curly . . . Curly, what else can we do?"
Curly looked around wildly for a moment, at the bodies, at the shotgun he carried, at Woody. Then he nodded jerkily. "All right." He set down the shotgun. "All right."
They wrapped Keith's head in newspapers they found in the kitchen, and held the sheets together with masking tape. Then they put his legs in one large garbage bag and shoved a second over the top half of his body. They had to rest several times carrying the body up the slope, but didn't want to take the chance of having their car seen outside Mrs. Aarons's house.
Eighth Street was empty when they reached it, and as they lugged their burden across it toward their car, they heard a pounding from the trunk and a feeble voice inside.
"Jesus, what about him?" Curly said.
They set Keith's body down next to the car on the curb side, and Woody struck the trunk lid. "Quiet. I told you to keep quiet, damn you." He turned to Curly. "Don't let him out. Stay here. I've got to get the guns and close up the house."
Woody ran across the street, down the slope, and into the house through the kitchen door. He picked up the shotgun and the rifle, then looked at Keith's silenced pistol. After a long moment of thought, he took that too, jamming it into his belt. Then he turned out the lights and closed and locked the back door. He stopped at the house Keith had rented, and did the same there. He thought about taking the manuscript along, but left it, figuring that by the time it was found and read and understood, everything would be over, for better or worse.
Curly was waiting at the car, and Woody threw the rifle and shotgun into the back seat, then put an arm around Curly and drew him away, several yards down the street. "I've been thinking," Woody said softly. ""This is hard, but it's the way it is. We can't let the old man go."
"What!"
"Listen to me. He tells the police, they find Mrs. Aarons, they've got our description, the description of the car, and they get us before we get back to Iselin. We need a day, Curly. A day to get everyone back for tomorrow night. And he's dead anyway. He's got the virus just like we do."
"You mean . . . kill him?"
Woody nodded his head. "I don't know what else we can do."
"Tie him up, take him with us, Jesus . . ."
"He could get loose, and what would we do with him? No. Don't you see, if we can do what we have to do, then he won't be dead, because none of it happened. None of this happened."
"Yeah, great---you gonna shoot him in the head and then tell him he's not dead?"
"We can't jeopardize this."
"And we can't kill a guy either!"
"It's like a dream, Curly. None of it's real. It's like killing somebody in a dream."
"And is Keith a dream?" Curly said, pointing to the wrapped corpse several yards away. "Is Tracy a dream too? Are your kids a dream? It's reality, Woody. And you'll really be killing someone!"
Woody looked at his friend for a long time, thinking about pulling the trigger, thinking about Tracy and Peter and Louisa. "It doesn't matter," he finally said. "It doesn't matter if it's a dream. And it doesn't matter if it's reality. Because if this is real, and this is the only reality, then we're all dead anyway."
"Dead but not damned," Curly said. "And that's what you are if you murder that old man."
"I already took a monster out of hell. I already set him loose on the world. One murder's nothing next to that. I can't be any more damned than I already am."
Woody pulled the pistol from his belt, walked to the car, shoved the key in the trunk, opened it. "Get out."
"Woody . . ." He heard Curly coming up behind him, and turned, pointing the gun at Curly's chest.
"Just wait here," Woody said. "Mr. Rooney and I are going to make a phone call. Come on, Rooney. Get out."
Rooney climbed out with difficulty. "I was only yelling because I thought you guys had forgot me. Who we callin'?"
"The police," said Woody, wondering if he could do what he had to do. His arguments had seemed sound when he had talked to Curly, but there was a difference between hypothesis and reality, however tenuous that reality might be. "We're going to call the police. From your house."
"Woody . . ." Curly said again. His voice was pleading, and in the dim glow of the streetlight Woody thought he saw tears in his eyes.
Woody shook his head, steeled himself. "Wait for me."
He gestured with the gun, and Rooney walked ahead of him toward the house. The dog started to bark again. As they passed it, Woody asked Rooney if there was some way to keep the dog quiet.
"Had him for ten years," Rooney said. "If I knew some way, I woulda done it by now."
Woody wanted to laugh at the comment, but did not allow himself to. This man is a dream, he told himself. And when things are right again, he'll be alive, and he'll never know that I killed him, not even in dreams. He's a dream, I'm a dream, this gun is a dream, and as they walked through the house, Woody told himself to believe it, over and over again, until he did believe, believed long enough to point a gun, and when Rooney reached for the phone, Woody put the pistol against the back of his head and pulled the trigger.
And nothing happened.
Woody had tensed for the now familiar sound, but the dry click was far more shocking. It froze him, as a dozen questions and options ran through his mind. But it didn't freeze Rooney.
The old man swung around and smashed the handset against Woody's left ear. A crashing sound exploded inside his head, and he staggered, and the next thing he knew the man was on him, legs wrapped around Woody's thighs, one arm choking him, the other hand battering the top of his head with a bony fist.
"Try'n shoot me, y'sonabitch!" Rooney howled, and the dog howled too, and Woody twisted around, dropped the empty pistol, buried his head in the man's reeking shoulder, shook him like a bull trying to shake off a terrier. But the old man held on, still hitting, hitting until weakness joined the dizziness, and Woody knew he was going to fall, and thought that if he did more than fall, that if he threw himself to the ground---
He did, and felt his chin smashed back by Rooney's collarbone when they landed, but the old man was underneath, and took the brunt of the impact, cushioning Woody's fall. The pinioning legs went limp, the arm stopped choking, the fist stopped beating, and the curses turned to a groan.
Woody ignored the hot pain in his jaw, and pushed himself away from Rooney, who was flailing his hands and starting to roll over. He looked about in panic, and saw a rack of rusty kitchen knives on the cluttered counter. He glanced from the knives to the man on the floor and sobbed, unable to imagine the sensation of pressing sharp metal into flesh, afraid to grasp the worn wooden handles.
But then Rooney had the handset of the phone, was pushing himself to his feet, and his other hand was reaching for the buttons of the wall phone's dial.
Woody dove at him, knocked him to the floor again, grabbed the cord and jerked it out of the wall. Rooney came at his face, his wiry fingers hooked into claws, and his long, yellow nails raked Woody's cheek.
There were no words or curses now. All energy had gone to the physical, and Rooney kicked out for Woody's groin. Woody turned just in time, taking the blow on his thigh. Then he grabbed the edge of the counter and got to his feet. His hands scrabbled on the countertop until he reached the knives, and he clutched a grease-covered handle. But just as he pulled it from the wooden rack, he felt Rooney grasp his buttocks, and suddenly the world was filled with a terrible, nauseating pain.
Rooney, holding Woody's hips like a lover, had slammed his head into Woody's crotch, and was doing it over and over, and with every blow the pain became sharper, dulling Woody's reason so that the only thing in the world that mattered was stopping the pain.
The blade of the knife he held was only three inches long, and he buried it in the back of Rooney's neck so deeply that most of the handle entered as well.
Rooney's head fell one last time, softly, against Woody's groin, and his hands dropped as he toppled over sideways, hitting the floor with his shoulder. He looked up at Woody as though he was suddenly confused, not knowing what to make of this carbon steel wild card sticking in his neck.
Then he coughed blood and lay back gently, the weight of his head pressing the base of the knife handle against the yellow linoleum so that the patchily shaven wattles of his neck stretched, and the skin parted, and the point of the knife peeked out like some shy, rusty parasite, tenderly severing the jugular as it passed. Blood pumped, and the old man's face twitched with every heartbeat, and Woody watched in horror as the puddle on the floor grew wider.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "Oh God, I'm sorry . . ." But Rooney didn't answer.
Woody looked away for a long time. He told himself it had to be this way, and that he had to stay, to make sure Rooney was dead. His heart was sick at having killed this man, but what made him even sicker was not knowing why.
It had been the only thing to do, as he had told Curly. But had he stabbed him to save the world, or to stop the pain Rooney was causing? If the former, he could feel like a soldier. But if the latter, he thought, he was no more than a murderer. And with a knife, feeling the blade slip in, like cutting a piece of meat . . .
The knowledge of what he had done and the sickness the physical pain had caused brought up what little was in his stomach, and he vomited into the sink, then leaned on the counter, resting his head on his forearms, and breathed deeply until the spasms stopped threatening. By that time Rooney was dead.
Woody took the empty pistol, turned out the lights and went out the front door, locking it behind him. The dog barked at him savagely, but he didn't look at it as he walked toward the car.
Curly was still standing in the dim glow of the street light, his face tense. "Did you . . . do it?" he said. "I didn't hear a shot."
"I didn't shoot," Woody said, spitting away the bile that had come up with the words. "But he's dead."
Curly frowned. "What'd you . . . how'd you do it?"
"I stabbed him. I stabbed him to death. Now let's get this . . . piece of shit in the trunk. Then you drive. I'm tired."
They put Keith's body inside and slammed the trunk lid, then got in the car and drove out of Colver without speaking. But after a few miles, Curly said, "You were right."
"About what."
"Having to . . . kill the guy. I couldn't have done it. I'm . . . I'm glad you could."
Woody said nothing in reply. The ache in his groin was nothing compared to the other ache he felt, farther in.
Ten miles away from Colver, they approached a closed gas station where a telephone booth gleamed like a squat lighthouse in the ocean of night. "Pull over," Woody said. "We'll call them from here. The faster they all get to Iselin the better."
Eddie Phelps answered on the first ring. "We have him, Eddie," Woody said. "You and Dale come out as soon as you can. We'll be at the apartment in a few hours at most."
Eddie didn't answer right away. Then, "You have him? You found Keith?"
"Yeah."
"My God. This is really real, isn't it? I never thought you'd find him. I never thought it would come to this."
"Well, it has. So get out here as soon as you can."
"Woody . . ."
"What?"
"Does Dale have to go back with us . . . when we . . . if we can take back Keith?"
"Yeah. Sure he does. There were eight before, Eddie, so there should be eight now. The more there are, the stronger our, what, I don't know, aura will be."
"I'm not going to leave him back there, Woody. I just want you to know that. I'm not leaving him there."
"Nobody's leaving anybody there, Eddie. Except for Keith. Now get your ass out here, okay?"
Frank McDonald was even more difficult to talk to. "Woody, Woody, Woody, this is crazy," he said, after Woody told him to fly up immediately. He sounded near tears.
"Listen to me, Frank. Everything else is crazy too. Your wife was crazy. The world is going crazy. Have you heard about the plague? Or don't you listen to TV or read the papers? Keith did it, goddammit, and I've gotten myself in so deep I can't get out unless we do this. But it's not just for me---it's for everybody. And it's for Judy too. You don't get out here right away, Judy rots in some mental home, if she and your kids and all of us don't die of this fucking virus first. You got me?"
Now he was crying. "All right . . . all right . . . I'll come. I'll leave now . . ."
Diane Franklin gave him no argument. She just said, "He's really there? It's Keith?" and then, when Woody told her that it was, she said, "I'm going to the airport now," and hung up.
Tracy was the last he called. "We have him."
"Keith?"
"Yes."
"Was it hard?"
"Harder than I can ever say. I don't know if it'll work, but there's no alternative. He's . . . dead."
"Dead?"
"He killed himself. But we have his body." He gave a shuddering sigh. "I don't know if it'll work. I don't know anything anymore, don't know myself . . . I had to kill somebody, Tracy. An old man."
"Woody . . ."
"If I hadn't, it would have been all over before we even got started. But I don't know why I killed him . . . he was hurting me, and I knew I had to do it, had to, but . . ." He trailed off, wishing that she was there to hold him or to hate him. Just that she was there would have been enough. "Will you come?"
"You know I will. I told Teresa I might have to leave quickly. I'll call her, have her come over right away. I'll be there as soon as I can. Oh, Woody," she said, "I love you. I don't care what you've had to do. I know that you had to do it. Take care of yourself, my darling, and I'll be with you very soon. As soon as I can."
"All right," he said, tears blinding him. "All right. I love you too. And . . . give my love to the kids. Please. Kiss them real hard for me."
"I will. I promise I will."
Kiss them, he thought as he hung up. A kiss from their father who loves them and may have to do something that makes it so they can never live, have never lived. Oh God, let them know how much I love them both. And let her know.
They arrived at the apartment just after midnight, parked the car by the door, and waited until the parking lot of Parini's was empty of late night drinkers. Then they opened the trunk and carried Keith Aarons's green plastic-wrapped body inside the door. Woody waited with it, while Curly moved the car into a less conspicuous parking place.
As he waited in the night with a dead man, Woody thought about how much the past few months seemed like a dream. It had started that way, after all, as a dream of a better time, a time when life tasted both sweet and sharp at once. A time that had died when the girl he loved had died, and he had wanted nothing more than to make that time live again.
He had succeeded. Oh God, how he had succeeded. The time had lived, and the girl had lived, and something else had lived too. He looked down at the corpse, and had to keep himself from kicking it in rage.
"Why didn't you stay there?" he asked it. "Why the hell didn't you stay dead?"
The door opened and Curly came in. Woody turned to look at him, and from Curly's startled expression, he knew that his own face must be awash with rage. He looked away, and wrung his hands together until his fingers hurt. It drained away some of the fury, and he knelt and slipped his hands beneath the stiffening arms and around Keith's chest. Curly took the legs, and they climbed the stairs.
Inside the apartment, Curly began to set the body down, but Woody grunted, "The kitchen," and they kept moving, setting Keith down just inside the kitchen door. Woody then opened the refrigerator and began removing the wire racks.
"You want to put him in there?" Curly asked.
Woody nodded. "Go down to the machine in back of Parini's and get some ice. Four, five bags."
Curly started to say something, but instead shook his head and left the apartment. Woody finished taking out the racks, then slid out the meat drawer from its bracket and set it on the floor next to the racks. Then he took the bags from Keith's body, and was surprised to find how quickly the joints had begun to stiffen, the flesh to turn a pasty yellow. Keith's pants were soiled with the wastes that had leaked out of him, but there was little blood, even on the newspaper that Woody left wrapped around the head.
He lifted the upper part of the body until the buttocks were resting on the solid bottom shelf, then pushed in the torso, bent the stiffening legs, turned the body to the side, and shoved the legs in under the bracket of the meat drawer so that Keith's left shoulder was against the back wall of the refrigerator. Then Woody closed the door and waited for Curly to return.
He brought back five ten-pound bags of ice, and was sweating despite the amount of cold he held in his arms. "This really gonna do any good?" he asked, coming into the kitchen. When he saw the refrigerator door was closed, he lowered the bags gently to the floor. "Jesus. You got him in there already?"
Woody nodded and opened the door. Curly looked and shook his head. "Oh man. I don't believe this."
"I don't know if it'll help," Woody said. "But maybe the closer to life he is the easier it'll be. Come on. Let's get the ice in."
Together they poured the cubes wherever they could get them to stay---in Keith's lap, behind his shoulders, around his legs. They loosened his clothing and poured cubes inside so that they were held against his flesh by his shirt and pants.
It was grim work, and Curly once tried to lighten it with a remark about sangria being a lot easier to keep cold, but Woody didn't laugh, and they finished in silence, Curly pushing the door slowly closed as Woody dribbled in the last of the cubes.
"All right," Woody said as he bunched up the plastic bags and threw them in the waste can. "We better get some sleep."
"I don't tend to sleep too well with a stiff in the fridge."
"We have to. We don't know when the others will start showing up, and we have to get some rest. There are no sheets on the bed, but they're soft. I'm exhausted and you are too."
Curly nodded reluctantly. "Yeah. You're right as usual."
Woody smiled without a trace of humor. "We'll see how right I am tomorrow night. When it's party time again."
\*
Despite what Woody told Curly, he couldn't sleep. He lay on his back, listening to the sounds of night in the apartment, hearing the compressor of the refrigerator turning on and off at long intervals. Then he heard a voice, and jerked in his bed before he realized it was Curly's.
"You awake?" Curly had said softly.
"Yeah."
"Bitch to sleep, isn't it?"
"Yeah, it is."
"I mean, why waste time sleeping when in a couple weeks we might both be taking the big sleep, y'know?" They lay in silence for a time. "Woody?"
"Mmm?"
"You afraid to die?"
"I guess so."
"You believe there's anything afterwards?"
"I don't know." It seemed, Woody thought, like the discussions he had had a hundred times in college, lying in the darkness with your roommates, talking about the things you couldn't learn in your classes the next day. "I guess I think there's more of a possibility now than I did before."
"Yeah. What's happened to us . . . isn't natural."
"No," Woody said, trying to think it through. "It is natural. Because it happened. We just don't understand how, that's all. So we call it supernatural. But if it happened, it's part of . . ." He looked for the word, but when he found it, it tasted sour in his mouth. ". . . part of reality."
"There's more than one reality, though," Curly said. "We've lived in two already, and we're trying to what, create a third one? So how many can there be? No end to them?"
"That's what scares me," said Woody. "What if there's really only supposed to be one? And we screwed it up?"
Curly had no answer to that, and soon Woody heard the deep, regular breathing of sleep coming from the other side of the room. But he couldn't follow his friend. So he got up and walked into the living room, and sat on the sofa, and imagined friends in the dark. He was there when dawn came, but the night and the room had taught him nothing more.
When Curly woke up at seven, he and Woody locked the apartment carefully and went out for breakfast. When they returned, Curly took a pack of cards from his bag and they played gin. At one point Curly got up and started to put a record on the turntable, but Woody told him not to. "Save it for tonight," he said, and Curly glumly nodded.
Eddie Phelps and Dale Collini pulled into the parking lot just after one o'clock. Woody and Curly were there to meet them. "Where's the man?" asked Eddie as he climbed out of the car.
"He'll be there," said Woody.
Dale cocked his head. "You mean he's not really here?"
"Oh, he's here," Curly said. "Just not up to receiving visitors right now."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Eddie said, and his eyes narrowed. "He has this flu, that's it, isn't it?"
"Eddie," said Woody, "you live in New York, and we've been with Keith. We all have this flu."
"But . . . the government . . . they say that---"
"Fuck the government. You think they're going to tell everybody that they're going to die?"
Dale bit his lip and looked down at the ground, but Eddie began to shake his head, slowly, then faster. "No, you've got to be kidding---you telling me that we've kept AIDS away only to buy the farm from some contagious plague our old college chum started?"
"Basically, yes. You've heard the news, you know how it's hitting New York. The authorities are scamming. It's only a matter of time before you . . . before we all start to show the symptoms. But we're here to try and make sure that doesn't happen, that none of this happens or has happened."
Eddie had stopped shaking his head, and now he leaned back against the car and shaded his eyes with his hand. "You live your whole life careful. You don't go to bathhouses, you don't go home with guys in bars, you wait for Mister Right, you live with him faithfully for years, and then you pick up something out of the air." He put an arm around Dale and looked up at Woody. "Don't seem right somehow, do it?"
"No. It don't. Come on. Let's go upstairs."
"So where's Keith?" Dale asked as they walked into the apartment. "He tied up or what?"
"Sit down," Woody offered, and they did.
"He is here, isn't he?" Dale said.
"He's here. But it's going to be . . . tricky."
Curly jerked his head toward the kitchen. "He's in the fridge."
"What?"
"He's dead," Woody said. "He shot himself, right in front of us. But we brought him back. And we'll take him back."
Then Woody explained how they had found Keith and what had happened. He didn't tell them about Rooney.
By the time the story was over, they heard footsteps on the stairs. Woody opened the door and saw Frank and Diane climbing the steps. They explained that they had arrived at the car rental counter in the Pittsburgh airport at the same time, so had driven out together. Frank was smiling uncomfortably, but Diane's face was hard and cold.
"Where is he?" she said. "Keith."
When Woody told her that he was dead, her expression didn't change, but Frank's did. He gave a guttural cry, turned, and struck the wall with his fist. "Christ! Fucking Christ, Woody! As if this all isn't crazy enough, now we're going to go on a time trip with a dead guy? What do you think, he's gonna come back to life?"
"He did before, Frank," Curly said. "Or do you think Judy went nuts on her own?"
"Don't you talk about her like that, you sonovabitch---"
"All right, Frank," Woody said, "that's enough. It's not going to do any good for us to be anything other than cooperative with each other. We've got to be together to go back, physically and mentally."
"Go back? Go back with a dead man?"
"That's why we're here, it's why you came, and we're going to do what we came here for. Keith killed himself, it's not our fault. But he wasn't dead in the past. We changed when we went back. We became what we were, and if we can feel what we did before, if we can go back again, there's no reason not to believe that Keith will be what he was before. Alive." Woody put an arm on Frank's shoulder. "It's our only chance to save Judy. It's the only chance for all of us."
Frank put his hand on Woody's, patted it, nodded. "All right. I'm sorry. Nothing makes sense anymore. My whole fucking life's upside-down."
"The world's upside-down," Woody said, and smiled.
"Where is he?" Diane asked. "Where's Keith?"
"He's . . . we have him in the refrigerator."
"I want to see him."
"I don't know if that's . . . a good idea."
"I want to see him, Woody. Right now."
Woody led the way into the kitchen, and Diane followed, while the others stayed in the living room. He opened the refrigerator door slowly. Cold water ran over the bottom edge, and ice cubes rattled onto the floor.
"All the way," Diane said. "I'll clean it up."
Woody opened the door fully, revealing the body. The clothes were wet, and partially melted ice cubes sat in the nest of the hollow abdomen like watery, shell-less eggs.
"Take that off," Diane said, pointing to the newspaper wrapped around the head. "I want to see him."
Woody hesitated, then pulled the tape off the paper, lifted the head away from the back wall, and removed the paper. The eyes were closed, and the skin was sallow. The exit wound, already small, had crusted over.
He stepped away, and Diane crouched in front of the open door. Her lips pursed for a few seconds, and her jaws moved subtly. Then she drew back her head and spat. The saliva came out in a thick spray, and several droplets landed on Keith's right cheek and neck. Woody would no sooner have stopped her than he would have grasped a lightning bolt.
"You bastard," she whispered, closed the refrigerator door, and looked up at Woody. "The only regret I have about taking him back is that he won't keep burning in hell." She looked at the ice cubes and the puddles on the floor. "I'll take care of this."
"Diane," Woody said. "Do you want to . . ." He shrugged. "Talk about this?"
She stood up. "There's not much to talk about. I haven't loved Alan for a long time. But he's still my husband. He's still my family. And what . . . that . . . made him do . . . and everything else that he's done . . ." She clenched her jaw, as if forbidding tears to come. "It's unforgivable. I can't believe he's even human."
"He had his reasons," Woody said. "I don't pretend to understand them, but he did what he thought he had to do."
"Yeah. You tell that to Alan. Tell it to the thousands of people whose children have died. Tell it to the dead, Woody. But don't tell it to me."
\*
When Tracy arrived, just before six, Woody and Curly were the only ones in the apartment. The others had decided to walk to the campus, fill their minds with the memories of happier times, prepare themselves psychically for what the night would bring.
Tracy was pale but smiling, and when she stepped into his arms he was suddenly afraid of losing her, and decided that he could not let her go, would not leave her behind in the time from which he had plucked her.
"Where is everybody?" she asked him.
"They're out. I don't think they like this place anymore."
"I know what you mean. It doesn't feel enchanted now. It feels haunted. By something bad."
"It has to be magic," Woody said. "It has to be enchanted enough for us to get back."
"And back again."
"Yeah. Back again."
Frank, Diane, Eddie, and Dale returned together just before dusk, greeting Tracy like people welcoming the widow to the funeral. But after hellos were exchanged, a dead silence descended.
"Hardly sparkling conversation tonight, is it?" Eddie said.
Curly chuckled. "What do you chat about just before you try to save the world?"
"Old things," Woody said. "Things from long ago, to get our thoughts moving backwards again."
"And then we can get our asses moving backwards," Eddie said, lighting a cigarette, and taking in a prodigious drag. "No need to worry about the big C anymore, is there? So where's the condiments, Woody? The keg, the sangria, the incense?"
"We've got the incense, the candles, the music . . ."Woody looked at Curly. "And the grass. Same as last time."
Curly nodded. "Identical. From the same stash."
"So I guess it's time to get into costume. Same as last time, like I told you on the phone. Diane, Tracy---you want to get dressed first. Then the guys."
When the women came out of the bedroom after fifteen minutes, it seemed to Woody not only as though the months had rolled back to May, but that the years had rolled back as well. Diane's brown fall, muslin blouse, and tight jeans made her look years younger, but when Tracy followed her out of the hall, Woody grew sick with love and fear.
She looked exactly as she did the night he had brought her back, the night he had played Eurydice out of hell. A patch-pocketed, blue work shirt was visible beneath his old brown leather jacket. Light blue jeans hugged her slim legs, and her painted toenails peeked out from heavy sandals.
"You look . . . groovy," he said.
She kissed him lightly. "So go get groovy yourself."
The men dressed in what they had worn at the previous party, and it seemed to Woody that they were not so much revelers dressing for a party as determined soldiers donning their uniforms for a battle from which they might not return alive. Curly buttoned his long-collared shirt slowly and deliberately. Dale dressed with equal purpose, a grim smile on his face. Eddie put his feet into the long shaft of his cowboy boots, then grasped the pull straps and pushed his leg in like a cavalryman preparing for Balaclava. And Woody slipped his concho belt through the wide loops of his jeans as though a sword would hang from it, and straightened his brocade vest like a suit of lights.
Only Frank seemed slow and languid, and Woody sat on the bed next to him while he zipped up his Dingo boots. "What's wrong?" he asked his friend. "What is it?"
Frank ran both hands though his hair, then rubbed his neck and looked at the ceiling. 'This isn't right, Woody," he said reluctantly. "It wasn't right when we went back the first time, and it isn't right now. Who knows what'll happen?"
Woody thought about it for a moment, then laughed. "What's so damn funny?"
'Think about it," Woody said, grinning. "What could be worse than the end of the world?" He put his arms around Frank and hugged him. "Come on now. Let's do it. It can't get worse. Let's save Judy and Sharla and Alan and all our lives. Let's go back again and set things right."
"You make it sound so damn easy."
"It won't be. But we're gonna do it anyway."
Then he stood up, and slipped his hand into the right front pocket of his jeans to make sure that what he had put there had remained, and not vanished like a lover's illusion. It was easy for things to slip out of pockets, easy for things to get lost.
"Let's go," he said, smiling at all his friends.
"Party time."
"Put the music on, Tracy. The Doors. Diane, light the incense. Curly, you want to start rolling the joints? Frank, get the shades." Woody turned to Eddie and Dale. "Want to help me with Keith?"
They followed him into the kitchen, and Woody opened the refrigerator. "Oh God," Eddie said. "Look at him."
"Poor . . ." said Dale, but didn't finish.
"You were going to say, 'Poor Keith,' weren't you?" Woody said, and Dale nodded. "It's all right. You can say it. We'd better all be able to say it, because I don't think hate's going to take us back. All we need is love, right?"
Dale smiled, reached in, and touched Keith's hand. "Poor Keith." He tried to bend the hand. "His wrist is stiff."
"Probably rigor mortis," Woody said. "He's been dead about a day. And the cold doesn't help. Let's take him out."
It was fairly easy to get Keith out of the refrigerator. They each grabbed a part of his body, and pulled straight out. But once Keith was on the floor, his limbs remained in the fetal position, legs nearly touching his chest, arms across his body.
"Oh God, that's awful." Woody had never heard Eddie sound so upset.
"I'll try and loosen him up," Woody said, getting on his knees and rubbing Keith's cold, stiff arms.
"I'm sorry, but I'm going to be sick." Eddie turned and moved toward the bathroom.
"It is a little disquieting," said Dale, who nevertheless knelt and began to rub Keith's legs. After a while, he straightened the leg. "It's working. The muscles are getting looser."
"I think I read somewhere that rigor only lasts for a while. Then the muscle breaks down. Maybe we're speeding the process."
They rubbed for a while in silence. "If I decided to stay," Dale said softly, "do you think it would matter?"
Woody stopped rubbing and looked up. "Stay? Why? You died back there. A couple of years later."
"I'm dying here."
"We're all dying here."
Dale gave a little laugh. "No. Not the plague. Leukemia. Eddie doesn't know." Woody said nothing. "See, it happened anyway, didn't it? And that Catholic guilt of mine can't help but think it was meant to be. That you can't cheat death. So why not stay back there, if it could help make things right again?"
Maybe Dale didn't mean it at all, but Woody couldn't help but bring it up. "Then you think Tracy should stay too?"
"Oh, Woody," Dale said, rubbing Keith's dead legs all the harder. "I don't know. Nobody knows, do they?" He pressed his eyes shut, though out of exertion or because he didn't want to see the world, Woody couldn't tell. "Maybe you'll just have to wait and see. Maybe you'll have to go back over and over again until you get it right." He laughed again, louder than before. "That's a pretty horrible thought, isn't it? Worlds without end, Amen."
"No," Woody said, bending Keith's arm, "no more. This is the last time. Whatever happens, happens. Tonight it's over."
"Over for me, anyway. Do you think I'll remember? Once the rest of you are gone?"
"Why would you? Why remember what hasn't been?" He shook his head. "Come on. I don't want to talk about this anymore. Let's take him out. Curly!"
In a few seconds Curly was at the door. "You want help?"
"Yeah. Let's keep him straight. He's not a bag of groceries."
Woody propped Keith up and put his arms around his chest, while Dale took his legs and Curly supported the midsection. They carried him into the living room, and the others looked, then looked away, even Diane. All of them moved back when the men lay Keith's body down on the floor.
The red light turned his yellow skin the color of too ripe mulberries, and the blood at his mouth looked black. The eyelids had begun to recede, and beneath them his eyeballs showed as cloudy slits of pink.
Woody sat on the floor next to the body, and took the head into his lap. He looked into the still face, and pressed down upon the eyelids until they remained closed. Then he looked at the others standing around the room, trying to pretend they were anywhere else but there. Woody had to bring them together again, for only then could they make their return.
"He was our friend," he began. "No matter what he did, no matter how twisted and bent his ideas became, he was our good friend once. I loved him like a brother, and the first time he died I cried." He looked at his wife, whose chin was quivering. "I cried for Tracy. But I cried for Keith too. He didn't mean to hurt people, not then. But something went wrong inside of him." He pushed back the hair from Keith's forehead. "Everything that . . . that Pan ever did was because he loved the earth, and because he didn't want to see it die. He did terrible things, and this last was the most terrible of all.
"But he didn't do it out of evil. He thought that the ultimate end justified those dreadful means. I think he was wrong. But he never had any doubt that he was right.
"Being with him now," Woody went on, "doesn't mean that we approve of what he did. All it means is that we were his friends once, and that only by being his friends again can we take him back to what he was before, and right the wrongs he felt he had to commit. Yeah, this is Pan, this is the assassin and the terrorist and the genocide . . ." He struggled to hold back the tears, but his voice shook, broke. "But it's Keith too! And I'm sorry for what happened to him, and I want all that blood to be off his hands---and off our hands. Help me. Sit with me. Make our friend what he was---not this. Please . . ."
Tracy, softly crying, was the first. She sat next to her husband, and took his right hand. Dale sat on her other side, followed by Eddie. Then Curly sat on the other side of Keith's body and took his left hand. Frank sat next to him, and his expression was dreamlike, faraway.
Only Diane was left standing, and while the line of her mouth stayed firm, Woody saw the muscles of her jaw throbbing. Then her eyes closed, her left arm hugged her body, and her right hand went to her mouth, where she pressed the knuckles of her fist against her mouth, and her whole body shook with the effort of holding in her cries. A high whining like the keening of mourners escaped from her, and the harder she pressed her eyes shut the more freely the tears ran. No one touched her. No one said a thing. They just let her cry it out, until the cries were nothing but silent pulses, the sobs a series of heavy breaths. Her fist came away from her mouth, she breathed in deeply, and let it shudder out again.
Then she opened her eyes, nodded, smiled with tight lips, and sat between Eddie and Frank, clutching their proffered hands. "I love all of you," she said, looking around the circle until her gaze came to Keith.
"All of you," she repeated, and Woody believed her.
The music played on, and they held each other's hands, until Curly took from his pocket a box of wooden matches and a joint as thick as his thumb and as long as a pen. "Break on through," he said, echoing the lyrics of the song that filled the room. "The other side's waiting."
Across Keith's body, he handed the joint and the matches to Woody, who took them and looked at them, knowing that there was no stopping now. He had thought that when the time came, he would not be willing to return Tracy to that time from which she had come. He had envisioned taking her hand and leading her from the room, down the stairs, into the darkness, and home.
But going home would truly be going into the darkness. They were all dead now, and his children would be orphans for the little time it would take for the virus to reach them, if it had not already. And then they would be dead too.
Dead. Non-existent.
No. There was nothing to lose.
Then he thought his way back along the route that had brought him to this place, now and the first time. He thought about the sweet scent of tobacco in the dimly lit studio, the riff from the Doors' song that had gone through his head, the memories it had resurrected, and the desire, the need those memories had brought. It had been a need great enough to not only take him back, but to take his friends too, a need strong enough to bring back the woman he needed.
And to bring back a nightmare.
"Remember them," he said. "Bring them back. Take them back."
He put the joint between his lips, struck a match, breathed deeply, ignoring the pain as the hot smoke surged down his windpipe and into his lungs, breathed and breathed until his chest seemed filled with the smoke, held, eyes closed, held, until he felt tendrils wriggle like tiny worms down his veins and nerves and arteries, down all his limbs to the ends of fingers and toes, to ears, penis, hair, all. And still he held, and when at last he opened his eyes and breathed out, nothing visible drifted from his mouth and nose.
"Keith . . ."
"Keith . . ." the others replied.
Woody passed the joint, and after an infinite time heard Tracy whisper, "Sharla . . ."
And he whispered with the others, "Sharla . . ."and it blended with the music, the throbbing of the drums, felt rather than heard, the erotic drone of the organ, the dying scream of the guitar, the shaman's voice singing Sharla's name, and when Woody turned to look, the joint was a joint no longer, but a torch that Tracy passed along, and Tracy was glowing, gleaming like a burnished bronze statue, hollow and heated from within. And when Dale took the torch she offered, he breathed in red flame, and Woody watched with half-closed eyes as the fire went through Dale, burned from inside so that Dale's body gleamed. He was Dale no longer, but another bronze statue, heated in the crucible of time. The statue breathed the fire out then, but only enough to relight the torch. The rest of the flame he kept inside, and Woody knew that if anyone mortal were to touch Dale or Tracy, they would burst into flame, that the divine heat would turn them to ash in seconds.
Then he held his hand in front of his face and saw that he too had become a fiery statue, and he could hear the hiss of steam and the crackle of flame as his fingers moved, and he knew that he and his friends were becoming a Great Engine, fired and stoked and ready to . . . do what? Go back in time, like some complex Victorian machine, fueled by mind-coal, churning into life one cylinder at a time until soon all eight would be ablaze with power?
Now Eddie burned, and Diane . . . and now Frank's eyes were wide with the searing exhilaration of the flame, and Woody heard names and repeated them, but they were no more than the rushing of a mighty furnace in his head. And now Curly had the torch, and now he burned with its fire, and Woody looked around the circle again, and now they all were huge, massive colossi joining bronze hands, fusing together at fingers and palms, and the music had taken on the tones of madness, organ shrieking from pipes scalded by steam, guitar fretted by fire-tortured fingers on burning strings, drumsticks flailing into tubs of molten iron, and the shaman in black leather screaming now, hair ablaze, no words, only shrieks of agony.
And Woody realized what they all were.
They were not statues. They were not parts of a machine. They were demons.
And they were going to hell.
He heard, through the screams of the flames, a laugh, high and frenzied, coming from below him. Then he looked down, as from a great height, and saw what he held in his flaming lap.
Keith Aarons's face was bubbling, and a harsh, wet laugh arose with every pop of the boiling flesh. Woody closed his eyes, but his eyelids had melted away, and he saw Keith's own eyes open, alive now, filled with terrible knowledge and power, and Woody knew that if they were demons, here was the Devil, here in his arms.
Now the flames began to rise higher, and Woody's first thought was that Curly must have dropped the torch, and that the apartment, and perhaps the world itself, was on fire. For everything was fire now, and Keith's laughing, pitchy face vanished behind a curtain of red and orange, and in only a moment the flames devoured until there was nothing more to burn, and they faded and died and the heat dissipated, and everything was black, and cold, and silent.
Then, impossibly, Woody saw blackness against blackness, forms of darkness in the dark, saw piles of bodies strewn across an ebony landscape, tossed like dead leaves in a fatal storm. He flew on the wind over the dead earth, and saw the faces of the corpses on the piles, and though in blackness they were white and yellow and brown, all dead.
Among the millions he saw Tracy's face, dead, and Peter and Louisa, dead. Curly and Frank and Eddie and Dale and Diane and Curly, all dead. And Keith's face, dead, smiling.
All the faces, all the world. Dead. Dead.
Dead.
And there among the millions, the billions, was his own face, eyes open, mouth open, still, a dead face like all the others, and the wind let him drift down upon his body, and he sank into its infinite stillness and silence, and knew that he was dead.
Eternity followed.
If he was dead, why did his blood sing?
If he was dead, why was his flesh tight and his muscles strong?
If he was dead, lying on the surface of a dead world, why then was he a young man sitting on the floor of a shabby apartment, with his young friends stirring into life around him, and familiar music playing in the corner?
My God, he thought, forcing his eyes open all the way. My God, we're here.
His hand was clutching Tracy's, and both hands were smooth. The flesh above the wrists was not cross-hatched with years, and the fine hair on his knuckles was still transparently pale. When he moved, the concho belt felt loose around his waist.
"We're here," he said through a throat thick with the haze of dreams. "We're back."
"Yeah. But it was definitely not a good trip," a voice said, and Woody recognized it as Curly's, though with the higher pitch of youth. "What about Keith? Is he . . . ?" He left it unfinished.
Woody looked down at the man---the boy---whose head still lay in his lap. The flesh of the cheeks above the black beard was pink again, and the chest rose and fell beneath the blue work shirt. The hair was long and dark, and curled around Keith's shoulders. His eyes were still closed, and he looked as though he was sleeping peacefully. Woody lifted his head, felt the back of it. There was no wound.
"He's alive," Woody said. "Alive again."
"Okay," said Curly. "Is everybody else with us?"
Woody looked around at his friends, their flesh untouched by the years. They were all conscious, younger eyes open, wide with the horror of what they had just seen, individually and with a single mind, and one by one they nodded.
"Then let's get out of here, okay?" Curly took another fat joint from his shirt pocket. "Return ticket. The music's still playing, so let's say goodbye to our resuscitated buddy here and smoke a little."
Curly took Keith's legs, and Woody his shoulders, and they moved him out of the circle, lifted him up onto the couch. They had just sat back on the floor, when Woody noticed Dale getting to his feet.
"What are you doing?" Eddie said. "Sit down."
"No. I'm sorry. I'm staying too."
Over the confused babble of the others, Eddie shouted, "What?" and leapt to his feet on young, strong legs.
"I didn't tell you before. I couldn't." Dale took Eddie's hand and looked at Woody. "Is there time?" he said. "Can I talk to him alone?"
Woody nodded, and Dale led Eddie around the corner and into the kitchen. "Woody?" Tracy said, and he noticed her face had grown pale. "What is it?"
"Dale's sick," he told all of them. "Leukemia. He told me he was thinking about staying behind. It's . . . an escape."
There was nothing else to say, and new sorrow aged their unseamed faces. Woody thought he had never seen eyes so old peering out of faces so young.
In a few more minutes, Eddie and Dale came back into the room, their arms around each other. Eddie's eyes were wet, and he turned and embraced Dale and cried some more, while the others looked away, giving them what privacy they could.
"Goodbye," Eddie said, and sat between Tracy and Diane. He didn't look up again, and Dale turned and walked into the darkness of the hall.
"Light it up," Curly said, passing the joint to Woody. Woody struck the match, ignited the tube, and drew in, drew as hard as he could, until his lungs felt close to bursting, then exhaled, and passed it on to Tracy.
But there was no sensation other than a slight giddiness, and he pressed his eyes shut, waiting for the rush to hit him. After a moment he opened them, expecting to see Tracy handling a torch or a ball of fire or bolt of lightning, drawing it within her and changing, transforming into something unexpected and awesome.
But she stayed Tracy. And the joint stayed a joint, shorter now. Tracy passed it on, and when she turned back to Woody, he saw confusion and disappointment in her eyes. But most of all he saw fear.
She looked at him, saw him looking back at her, concerned, puzzled, and anything but stoned, and she gave her head a quizzical shake. He shook his head back, as if to say no, nothing. Then they both looked at Eddie. Then at Diane. And at Frank, who passed the joint to Curly. None of them seemed affected.
Curly took the joint, but only held it, and didn't smoke. "Uh-oh," he said. "Um . . . are you all straight?"
They all looked guilty, as if they should be censured for not instantly flying into the future under the effect of the cannabis. "I don't feel anything," Frank said.
"Me neither," said Diane, and the rest agreed.
Curly eyed the joint suspiciously. "Well, shit, this is the same stuff as before---the same damn stuff we smoked five minutes ago---or twenty-four years from now, as the case may be." He took rolling papers and a baggie full of the grass from the pocket of his chinos, opened the bag, and sniffed it. "What the hell's wrong?"
"I'm wrong."
They all turned to Tracy, who had crossed her hands in her lap and was gazing at the floor. "I'm not supposed to go back," she said, and her words put the taste of metal in Woody's mouth. "I'm not supposed to be there. I know it, and all of you know it. The first time it happened without anybody thinking, but now we all know, we know that things can go wrong."
Woody touched her hand, held her fingers in his. "Maybe things can be better too."
She shook her head, though she didn't take her hand away. "No. It's not natural, what happened. If I don't go back, if Keith and Dale and I stay here, then things will be the way they should have been, for better or for worse."
Dale had come back into the room when he heard their voices, and now he stood in the doorway. "Tracy," he said, "I don't pretend to know what this is all about. I'm not even sure I believe that it's happening. But I do know that you haven't brought any sorrow into the world. There's no reason why you shouldn't go back. I think you all ought to just try again, and keep on trying."
"No," she said. "It didn't work, and it won't work. I don't know the rules either, but it's almost like the first time was some . . . cosmic quirk, some little experiment. But maybe the experimenter didn't like the results, and doesn't want to try it again. Maybe . . . order has to be restored. No. You won't get back with me."
She squeezed Woody's hand. "It's our turn to say goodbye now."
Holding Woody's hand, she got up, and helped him to his feet. They walked down the short hall and into the bedroom, where they sat on the bed and held each other. "I loved my years with you, Orpheus," she said. "Because that's what I remember, what I lived. Not just a few months, but years."
"I remember the months best," he said. "The rest . . . like dreams. Wonderful dreams."
"I love you so much. I always will, wherever . . . whenever I am. Say good---"
She broke off, and he knew what she had been about to say. Say goodbye to Louisa and Peter for me. But there would be no Louisa and Peter. They would not be dead, for how could what never existed die?
"Maybe I'll remember," she said against his shoulder, and he breathed in the smell of her, luxuriated in the feel of her against him so that it would last the rest of his life. "Maybe when you're gone I can remember it like a dream, and I can change things . . . keep Keith away from the building, talk him out of it . . . I can try."
No, he thought, but he didn't say it. When they were gone, the past would take over completely. She would remember nothing, and nothing would change. She would die again. Unless . . .
He moved his hand to his right thigh, felt the thin ridge of the paper in his pocket, then put his arm around her again.
"I'll be with you," he said. "I will be with you."
"I know. Always. Always." She drew back from him and looked into his eyes. "I don't feel like crying, isn't that odd? I feel happy---happy that I had a chance to live a lifetime with the person I love. I wouldn't have had that if you hadn't loved me so much. Loved me enough to come back for me. Oh Woody . . ."
When she kissed him, it was as if the smoke of the drug had suddenly hit him. He wanted only to drown in her embrace, to die in that instant, to hear no other sound forever than her soft breath.
But instead he heard a shout.
"You bastards!"
It was Keith Aarons's voice. They had waited too long.
Pan was awake.
\*
Keith Aarons didn't open his eyes when consciousness came to him this time. He had before, but now he heard voices very near him, and his first thought was that it would be wise to learn what was being discussed before revealing his awareness.
His second thought was the memory that he had died, had stuck a gun barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger before those two old friends of his could take him back---
Take him back.
Back to a time before his life had a purpose, back before Pan existed, before the virus was released, before he had written one word in his book of the mind. They had taken him back so that he would die young, die as he had in his dreams for the last twenty years . . .
It was then that he snapped open his eyes and screamed at them.
The way they jumped was a delight, and he rolled off the couch, landed on his feet, and stood towering over them. "Took me back, didn't you? You really weren't bullshitting, were you, Curly?" Woody and Tracy came into the room, and Keith laughed. "And there's the ringleader of the little plot. Turn back the hands of time and make everything nice again, huh?" He stepped through the people on the floor, who twisted themselves away from him, and stopped in front of Woody.
"Hello, Keith."
"Hello, Keith?" Keith mimicked. "That's all you can say about fucking up my plan? I had the earth saved, Woody. I saved the earth, and then I died, happy and peacefully, if violently, and you have tried to fuck the whole thing up. But it's back there---or forward there---waiting. And it's a future that I won't allow to be aborted."
"And what do you plan to do about it?"
"Go back with you. Go back to where I'm dead. Because that's what I lived for---and what I died for."
"What if we won't take you back?"
"Then you don't go back either. I won't let you leave without me."
"Then we'll all stay here. Forever in this limbo if we have to. We won't take you back, Keith. We won't. I don't think we could if we wanted to."
Keith stared into Woody's eyes, trying to break him, but Woody didn't break. He looked back, and Keith saw that he was telling the truth, or the truth as he knew it. "Okay," Keith said. "Then I disappear now, in this time, in this world. I'll have to wait twenty more years, but I can. What goes around comes around. And it will. And so will I." He walked to the door and yanked it open.
And started to walk into a heart of darkness.
He stopped, amazed and terrified. Only his hand had entered the thick blackness that covered the doorway, but that was enough to make him take in a squealing, panicked breath. His hand felt like ice and fire at once, and he pulled it away, back into the apartment.
Then something shattered over his head, and his last waking thought was that he was falling forward, into that darkness, and that if he did he would never see the light again.
\*
"Get him," Woody cried, leaping to where Keith Aarons lay, his lower legs the only visible part of him. Woody grabbed Keith's ankles and pulled. Curly was at his side in an instant, and together they hauled Keith out of the inky plane and back into the apartment.
There was a wet spot on the back of Keith's head where the Mateus bottle had splintered apart, breaking the skin. Diane stood there, the broken neck, with a candle still sticking in it, in her right hand. "Is he okay?" she said. Woody didn't think she sounded very concerned.
"Yeah," said Curly. "Breathing all right. You put him out though. Nice work."
"That's not Keith," she said coldly. "Whoever it is, it's not the Keith I knew."
There was cord in the kitchen, and they tied Keith's hands and feet tightly, then carried him into the hall. When Woody and Curly set him down, he began to come to consciousness, and spoke to the old friends who surrounded him, looking at him with a mixture of fear and pity.
"Let me go," he said when his eyes opened. "You've got to let me go, you don't understand. If I don't go back, it'll be just like it was, the world will die, damn it, and everyone with it. My way, there'll at least be a few who survive. You've got to let me go, Woody!"
"No, Keith."
"God damn you---you don't know what you're doing! You need me, the earth needs me---" He stopped abruptly, staring at an empty spot on the wall, his expression changing from angry pleading to horrified realization.
"What is it?" Woody said. "What's wrong?"
"My book . . ." Keith answered in the tones of a frightened little boy. "My book of the mind . . . it's fading . . . fading . . . I can't remember . . ." Then he shrieked. "I can't remember!"
Woody dashed into the kitchen, grabbed a tea towel and some cord from a drawer, then went back to the hall, where he jammed part of the towel in Keith's mouth and wound the cord around his head, tying it tightly in back. Keith gasped for breath, choked on the towel, started to breathe fitfully through his nose. "Woody," Tracy said. "Do you have to? . . ."
"He can't be screaming. We can't have anything else affect the return." He stood up and looked down at Keith. "The earth will have to take its chances without you. It did before. It can again. Maybe we can help it along. You were at least right in that." He looked at the others. "It's time. Time to go home."
He took Tracy's hand and led the others into the living room, all except Dale, who kissed Eddie, and walked alone into the bedroom.
Tracy sat on the couch, and Woody kissed her again, but said nothing. Then he got into the circle with the others. The music played on, repeating as it had before, a psychedelic mantra to focus their attention. There were only five in the circle now---Woody, Eddie, Diane, Frank, and Curly. The others watched as Curly took the baggie and papers from his pocket and rolled what they hoped would be the final joint. When he finished, he held it up and smiled sadly.
"Should be enough for a good half a dozen hits," he said, and lit it, drew in and held the smoke, released, then grinned. "That's more like it," he said. "That's the way. The truth. The light." And he passed it to his right. "Woody?"
Woody did not turn and look at Tracy on the couch behind him. He merely took the joint and drew in, held for as long as he could, holding Curly's right hand with his left, passing the joint to Eddie, then taking Eddie's hand, and feeling the links in the chain of souls draw together, and seeing Diane smoking, and the breath of God drifting out upon the air, and knowing that the way was opening, opening, then Frank welcoming the sweet and bitter smoke, and his face drowning in the bliss of oneness, and what remained of the smoke in Woody's lungs and heart and mind now was more than enough, and he saw the walls about him tremble as though they were underwater, but the water was a blue flame that burned so cool, and now there was the sense of mystic union with the others in the circle, as though they once again had but one mind, and the wheel that he and his friends made began to roll, the Great Mandala rolling into the future, lifting them up, taking them home . . .
But Woody Robinson was home. For Tracy sat behind him.
He pushed himself back and away from the circle, took Curly's hand and Eddie's hand, and pressed them together, then released them.
It was like being torn from a cosmic womb. The physical agony was unbelievable, the psychic sensation unbearable, but it lasted for only a moment, and he saw the faces of his friends grimace in sympathy with his pain, then saw the calm return in another instant. He pressed his mouth against Curly's ear, and whispered, "None of it has to happen now . . . because I don't belong here . . . and I'll know. And I'll remember. But I won't leave her again."
Then Curly's face and Diane's face and Eddie's face and Frank's face, all the same, glowed with love and compassion and hope, and their eyes opened, and though Woody saw that they were looking ahead and not at him, he still felt their gaze upon him, their minds in his, and he gave one last thought to Curly who was all of them before they were gone forever
Check . . . on Rooney, will you?
There was a laugh somewhere in their shared consciousness, and an unspoken promise, but just before the four friends faded, their number seemed to increase so that there were other dim shapes in the half-darkness, and then Woody felt Tracy's arms around him, and her warm tears on the back of his neck, and he turned and held her too.
"I couldn't leave you," he said. "I never intended to."
"Oh Woody . . ." She was crying hard, sobbing against him. "Oh God, Woody," she said. Then they looked at each other, and he saw in her eyes that she knew what he had done for the love of her, that he had chosen to remain with her in the past, and face a future in which he might not exist.
"I don't want it without you anymore," he said. "This time Orpheus stays with Eurydice. Once you live in Heaven, earth itself is hell."
"Hell," his word echoed. But it was not his voice.
He turned and saw Frank and Diane and Curly and Eddie sitting in a small circle, and his first thought was to wonder, with a surge of panic, what went wrong, why they were back. He was just about to speak when Frank went on. "These damn séances never work, stoned or straight."
Then he realized that the past had reclaimed itself, that the people he was seeing were not the friends of twenty-four years hence, but the friends of now, of a fall night in 1969.
"God, they're back," he said softly, then turned to Tracy. "They must have made it."
"What?"
Her expression curled the hairs on the back of his neck. It was a look of quizzical humor, the look a college girl would give a boyfriend who was putting her on, a look that told him he was alone, a stranger in another time.
"You've forgotten," he said.
"Forgotten what?" Her eyebrows drew together, but the teasing smile remained.
He smiled himself. It would still be all right. "Don't worry," he said. "I still remember. And I can't forget," and he patted his jeans pocket.
He felt different, younger not only outside but inside too, as though the cares and concerns of adult life had not yet borne down upon him.
"Forget what?" she asked.
"Forget this," and he reached into his pocket and felt the piece of paper on which he had written everything important---the trip back in time, the date of the ROTC building bombing, the deaths, the fact that Keith would become Pan, everything that he would need to remember, and need to make Tracy believe, so that, even if he forgot, their future could still be changed, could still be happy.
"You're not gonna believe this," he said, in an intonation that had grown higher and so much younger. He took out the single white sheet of paper and opened it, opened it and looked at it and saw that it was a flyer from the Iselin Theatre that advertised the forthcoming Midnight Cowboy, Putney Swope, and True Grit.
"The paper . . . it didn't exist back then . . ." he said to himself. "Didn't exist now . . . oh Jesus . . . oh Christ . . ."
He was forgetting. What did he mean, back then? Something about time, about Tracy and Keith and the ROTC building. He could barely recall why he was so upset, but he knew that if he got a pen and thought real hard that he could probably remember enough to write down on the back of the flyer what was really important.
"A pen," he said, and went into the dining room, but there was no pen there. He tossed aside piles of underground comics, textbooks, and Rolling Stone, whose tabloid pages were supple and pure white, then went into the hall, nearly tripping on a tied up Keith Aarons mumbling through his gag, and Woody wondered what the hell Keith was doing like that, but he couldn't stop, couldn't stop because he had to find a pen and write down something important, so very important, and Dale was coming out of the bedroom, and Woody passed him, and yeah, there in the bedroom on the dresser, yeah, was a nineteen cent Bic, and he grabbed it and flattened out the folded flyer on the dresser top and held the pen over the paper and . . .
. . . couldn't remember why he was there.
His mind was empty, empty of everything but young Woody Robinson's time, young Woody Robinson's existence.
He thought as hard as he could, but the voices in the hall broke his concentration:
"You were stoned, man . . ."
"Yeah, started sayin' somethin' about destroying the world and shit---"
"Bullshit! What are you talking about, Curly?"
"Hey, Keith, you had a bad trip, okay? So we just tied you up so you couldn't hurt yourself . . ."
"Fuck you, man . . ."
The voices moved toward the living room, but it was too late now. It just wouldn't come. The pen hovered over the paper for a moment longer, and then he set it down, thinking that he had lost something very important.
The front door opened, and he heard Alan and Sharla and Judy come in with the pizzas. Maybe he should just forget about it, go out and have a beer and some pizza. But still, it had seemed so important.
"What's with you, jazz man?"
He looked up and saw Tracy standing in the doorway.
"You look like the only one who saw a ghost at the séance." She put her hand on his hand that had held the pen.
"I thought . . ." he said slowly. "I thought I remembered . . . that there was something I had to write down. And I came in here for a pen . . . and I forgot what it was."
"Maybe a tune?" she suggested.
He thought for a moment, then recalled a snatch of melody that he had written in another world, and hummed it. "That's pretty," she said. "What is it?"
He shrugged. "You like it, it's your song."
She kissed the tip of his nose. "Thanks. I like my song."
"But that's not what I came in here to write down."
"Don't worry about it. If it's important, you'll remember."
She put her arms around him and gave him a hard hug. "There's one thing," he said. "One thing that I do remember."
"What's that?"
"That I'm not supposed to leave you. No matter where you go, or what you do, I'm gonna stay with you."
"I hope so. I hope you do."
"I will." He shook his head at the wonder of her. "Dear God, I love you, Tracy."
"Love you, Woody."
On a warm May evening, twenty-four years later, a group of people in their mid-forties found themselves in a shabby, poorly furnished room at the end of a journey they had started long before. Although only four people started that journey, seven completed it.
Sharla Jackson, garbed in camouflage gear, now sat between Curly and Eddie. Alan Franklin, ablaze in Carnaby Street colors, sat next to his wife, holding her hand, and looking at her face as though it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. And Judy McDonald sat between Frank and Curly, and when she saw her husband she sobbed and pressed herself into his arms.
"It worked," Curly said in awe. "It really did."
"I'm . . . alive." Sharla touched her own face, and ran her hands down her neck and chest, and let the feel of her heartbeat stop her.
"Oh God," whispered Alan. "What I did . . . did it . . . what happened?"
"You didn't," Curly said. "You didn't kill that senator. And Sharla, you didn't hold your class hostage, and Judy didn't go nuts in her gallery."
"But I remember it," Judy said, clinging to Frank. "I remember it, Curly."
Curly looked down at the carpet, remembering, thinking back through the years, back once, twice. And again. After a moment he looked back up, and the others saw a tear in his eye. "Yeah. I remember too. Just like we all remember Keith and Tracy dying together, and Woody's life in music. Just like we remember Tracy alive, and the world Pan lived in. But what else? What else do we remember now?" He glared at all of them with a dreadful intensity.
"Look," he said. "And remember."
They all concentrated, thought back, and knowledge and new memory settled on them like an outwardly soft coat lined with barbs.
"It's another," Frank said. "Dear God, another memory." Diane nodded. "Tracy and Keith . . . they died. They both died this time, but Woody . . ."
"Yeah," Curly said. "Woody died with them. The three of them, together." He smiled. "He did what he said he would. He didn't leave her again."
"I remember." Frank put a hand over his eyes. "Tracy and Woody said they had a date that night, but they didn't come back. And Keith went with them---they said they were giving him a ride to the Student Union. And then I heard the sirens, and the police came . . ."
Sharla continued their shared memory. "They identified the bodies, except for Woody. He took most of the blast. But Tracy and Keith . . . them they could tell."
"And now there's no Pan," Eddie said. "Keith's really dead." Then he added sadly, "And so is Dale."
"And so is Woody," Curly said. "Dead for over twenty years." He cocked his head like a teacher testing his students. "So who planned this party?"
Alan pointed at Curly. "You did. You called us, told us what a great time we'd have---" He paused, then laughed in disbelief. "It's May! I just remembered, it's still only May."
"That's right," Frank said. "Because what happened between the first party and the second one . . . didn't . . . couldn't, not if Woody was dead. But we had to have the party, because we had to have, what, a reason maybe, a reason to be here?"
"Too many questions," said Diane. "Dozens of them. Like why did we become young right away the last time?"
"Maybe," said Curly, "because we knew what was happening. We were expecting it. Maybe it was something we did. Christ, why did any of it happen in the first place?"
"You forget," Eddie said. "It didn't."
\*
The next day Curly Rider drove into Colver, Pennsylvania, and stopped his car in front of a small, white frame house. Across the street, hidden among trees, was another house, with a For Sale or Rent sign stuck in the soil of the unmowed lawn.
When Curly got out of the car, a dog that was chained to a stake in the front yard of the white house began to bark, and an old man holding a taped baseball bat came out the front door.
Curly got back into the car, started the engine, and drove away, ignoring the shouts of the old man. "Rooney's fine, Woody," Curly said with a grin. "Rooney is just fine."
\*
Eight months after that May night, Al Freeman went into the office of Dr. Charles Goncourt to give him the bad news. When he finished, the old man stuck out his lower lip.
"No way then."
"No sir, I'm afraid not. The virus is fatal, and it's airborne, but there just isn't a unique Caucasian gene that it'll respond to as an antibody. No matter what we've done to it, it's killed every white subject we've tried it on. Ted Horst and Bob Hastings and I all agree that it's simply not efficient to continue, that the danger it poses is far greater than any chance that we'll be able to make it into what we need. We could keep working on it for decades and never find the answer."
"Damn," Goncourt said. "Damn, damn, damn." Finally he nodded. "All right then. Eradicate it completely. We can't take any chance on its ever being released. It could mean the end of civilization, and after all . . ." He smiled thinly. ". . . we're not madmen. We'll just have to start again."
"Yes sir. You can bet your bottom dollar that's just what we'll do."
On a Saturday night in the following May, seven friends had dinner in a restaurant in Iselin. It was Alumni Weekend, and they had all returned to campus and met there at Bruno's, to eat manicotti and salad with the special blue cheese dressing, and to talk about their old friends.
Two of them had made changes in their lives. Alan had left his position with the tobacco industry and was now lobbying at lower pay for an environmental organization. "Going through what we did---and what I did," he explained to the others, "makes you see things differently. I really might have gone nutzoid after a while. I was dealing with Congress, dealing with guilt, and dealing with my bosses at the same time. This way, I at least eliminate the middle man. How about you, Sharla? That old devil guilt a factor in your move?"
Sharla smiled. For the past nine months she had been teaching learning disabled children in one of the Cleveland city schools. "Not really. Just felt like a challenge again. Sometimes I hate it, sometimes I love it. When I was in the suburbs, I just did it.
"Did you think," Alan asked Curly, who had made the initial calls, "about meeting at the apartment at all?"
"No. I don't ever want to see that place again. The present---this present's just fine. With one or two sorely missed exceptions."
"It's not all that much better," said Eddie, swirling the ice cubes in his bourbon. "The things that Keith hated are still around. We could kill ourselves yet."
"Yeah, we could," said Judy. "Maybe we will. But this way the decision's ours. And maybe we can still save ourselves too."
The waiter brought a wine bucket, and presented Curly with a cork and a small amount in a glass. Curly sniffed the cork, sipped, grinned, said, "Yep, that's wine all right," and the others laughed. Then the sommelier filled the glasses while Curly held up a hand, as if signaling to someone at the other end of the room.
"Don't drink yet. I want you to hear something first."
The Italian music on the ceiling speakers stopped, and then, over the chatter of the other diners came a tune played on a solo oboe, so pure and clear and lovely that the talk hushed, and forks paused halfway to mouths, and the people listened until the music faded into silence. Then, slowly, talk resumed, silverware sang, and the music of Italy was heard again.
"Tracy's Song," Diane said. "But . . . how?"
"It's a demo," Curly explained. "Frank wrote it out, and I have some contacts in the music business, so I was able to get it to Kevin Marcus's group. He loved it, wants to record it with his reed man, so I asked him if he'd just have the guy do a solo cassette I could play for you. And he did."
"There'll be more," Frank said. "I remember most of the tunes. I played them over and over. Now I'll be able to again." He smiled. "Curly and I told Marcus that we want to use a pseudonym for the composer credits."
"Woody Robinson?" Sharla asked.
Frank nodded. "Woody Robinson. At least his music will live."
No one spoke for a few moments. Then Diane said, "It's wonderful. But it's so strange. I mean, Woody never wrote those songs here---in this world. So how can they exist? How can we remember them?"
"It's what you call a paradox," Curly said, then chuckled. "Life's full of the damn things."
He picked up his filled wine glass. "Maybe there are lots of worlds besides the ones we've known. And maybe in one of them Woody and Tracy---and Dale too---are sitting here with us."
"Maybe even Keith," said Sharla.
Curly nodded. "Maybe. So let's drink to them. Let's drink and remember." He raised his glass high. "To our friends, wherever, whenever they are."
"To our friends," they all said.
Then they drank, remembering what never was, and dreaming of only what could be, until it was time to say goodbye again, and go home.
THANKS FOR READING!
FIND MORE GREAT eBooks at Crossroad Press and Springbrook Digital
Table of Contents

