The Santaroga Barrier

  Santarogans … plural, Dasein thought. He said: “Is some other … Santarogan using your Post Office?”

  “Well—used to be,” the man said. “Negro fellow over there … Burdeaux, as I recollect. He used to send some mail from here. Got a package here once from Louisiana. Long time ago that was.”

  “Oh, yes,” Dasein said, not knowing how else to acknowledge this information.

  “Haven’t seen Burdeaux in quite a spell,” the postmaster mused. “Nice fellow. Hope he’s all right.”

  “Quite all right,” Dasein said. “Well—thank you.” He took his package, went out to the truck.

  With a feeling of caution he couldn’t explain, Dasein left the package unopened on the seat beside him when he drove east on the road to Santaroga until he found a shady spot in which to pull off.

  The box contained a .32 caliber automatic pistol with an extra clip and box of cartridges. Wired to the trigger guard was a note from Selador: “Gilbert—This has been gathering dust in my bureau drawer for many years and I’m probably an old woman for sending it to you, but here it is. I think I’m sending it in the hope you won’t have to use it. The situation you describe, however, has filled me with the oddest sensations of disquiet that I can remember. I hope you’re being extremely cautious.”

  On the reverse side of the note was a scrawled postscript: “No news yet on the investigations you requested. These things move slowly. You give me hope, though, that we’ll get the goods on these people.” It was signed:“S.”

  Dasein hefted the automatic, fought down an impulse to heave it out the window. The thing embodied ultimate menace. What had he said to prompt Selador to send it? Or was this part of some obscure motivational gambit Selador was setting up?

  Could it be a reminder of duty? His bruised head ached with thought.

  A line in Selador’s note came back to him and he reread it: “ … get the goods on these people.”

  Is that what I’m supposed to do? Dasein wondered. Am I to set them up for prosecution?

  He remembered Marden alluding to the reasons an investigator had been sent.

  Dasein swallowed. Selador’s line, read once more, looked like a slip. Had the good doctor tipped his hand? Sending a gun wasn’t like the man. In fact, Dasein realized if he’d been asked, he would’ve said Selador wasn’t even the type to own a gun.

  What to do with the damn’ thing now that he had it?

  Dasein checked it, found the clip full, no cartridge in the chamber. He resisted the impulse to shove it in the glove compartment and forget it. If the truck were searched … .

  Damn Selador!

  Feeling foolish as he did it, Dasein slipped the gun into a hip pocket, pulled his coat over it. He’d settle with Selador later. Right now there was Piaget … and Piaget had some answers to give.

  8

  Piaget was in his office with a patient when Dasein arrived. The gaunt, gray Sarah opened the door, allowed he could wait in the living room. With a grudging show of hospitality, she added that she would bring him some coffee if he wanted it.

  With a stomach-gripping pang, Dasein realized he was ravenous with hunger. He wondered if he could mention this fact.

  As though she’d read his mind, Sarah said. “I’ll bet you haven’t eaten breakfast.” She looked him up and down. “You look like you’d slept in those clothes. You doctors are all alike. Never care how you look.”

  “As a matter of fact, I haven’t eaten,” Dasein said.

  “You’re going to lead Jenny some life,” she said. But she softened her words with a smile.

  Dasein stared in wonder at a double, whiteboned row of false teeth in the wrinkled face.

  “Got a leftover apple roll and some Jaspers cream,” Sarah said. “Bet you’d like that.”

  She turned away, went out through the dining room into a glistening white kitchen, which Dasein glimpsed once through a swinging door. The door went slap-slap behind her.

  Dasein thought about that smile, recalled Jenny saying Sarah liked him. On impulse, he followed her into the kitchen.

  “Bet you don’t like feeding people in the living room,” he said.

  “Feed people wherever they have to be fed,” she said.

  She put a dish on an oval table beside windows looking onto a flower garden brilliant in the morning sun. “Sit here, young man,” she said. She poured a thick flow of cream from a pitcher onto the golden mound of crust in the dish.

  Dasein inhaled a strong smell of Jaspers. His hand trembled as he picked up the spoon Sarah placed within his reach. The trembling stopped at his first swallow of the food.

  The pastry was sweet and soothing, rich with apples.

  With a detached feeling of shock, Dasein watched his hand guide the spoon into the pastry for another bite, saw the food conveyed to his mouth, felt himself swallow it.

  Soothing.

  I’m addicted to the stuff, he thought.

  “Something wrong?” Sarah asked.

  “I …” He put down his spoon. “You’ve trapped me, haven’t you?” he asked.

  “What’re you talking about?” Sarah asked.

  “What’s it …” He nodded toward the pastry. “ … doing to me?”

  “You feel strange?” Sarah asked. “Got a fluttery feeling behind your eyes?”

  “I’m …” He shook his head. Her words sounded insane. Fluttery feeling behind his eyes!

  “I’ll bring Doctor Larry,” Sarah said. She darted out a connecting door at the back of the kitchen and he saw her running along the covered walkway to the clinic.

  Presently, she reappeared with Piaget in tow. The doctor’s face wore a worried frown.

  “What’s this Sarah’s telling me?” Piaget asked. He put a hand under Dasein’s chin, stared into Dasein’s eyes.

  “What’s she telling you what?” Dasein asked. The words sounded foolish as they spilled from his lips. He brushed Piaget’s hand aside. The doctor’s frown, the squinting eyes—he looked like an angry Buddha.

  “You seem to be all right,” Piaget said. “Any strange symptoms of …”

  “You’ve trapped me,” Dasein said. “That’s what I told her. You’ve trapped me.” He gestured at the plate in front of him. “With this.”

  “Is he just fighting it?” Sarah asked.

  “Probably,” Piaget said.

  “Don’t make sense,” Sarah said.

  “It happens,” Piaget said.

  “I know, but …”

  “Will you two stop talking about me like I was a blob of something on a slide!” Dasein raged. He pushed away from the table, jumped to his feet. The motion sent his bowl of food sliding off the table with a crash.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” Sarah said.

  “I’m a human being,” Dasein said, “not some sort of …”

  “Easy, lad, easy,” Piaget said.

  Dasein whirled away, brushed past Piaget. He had to get away from this pair or be consumed by rage. Dasein’s mind kept focusing on the weapon in his hip pocket.

  Damn Selador!

  “Here, now—wait a minute!” Piaget called.

  Dasein paused in the kitchen door, turned to glare slit-eyed at Piaget.

  “You can’t leave like this,” Piaget said.

  “Don’t try to stop me,” Dasein growled. The gun felt large and cold against his hip.

  Piaget fell silent—a stillness that Dasein imagined came up from the toes to stare out of measuring eyes. It was as though the man receded to become a figure seen through a reversed telescope—remote, secretive.

  “Very well,” Piaget said. His voice came from that far away.

  Deliberately, Dasein turned, went out the door, through the living room—out of the house. He felt his feet hitting the concrete of the front walk, the grass parking strip. His truck’s door handle was cold under his hand. He started the motor, wondering at his own sensations—dreamlike.

  A street flowed past, receded—signposts … pavement crawling beneath his
vision … the Inn. He parked facing the long porch, an old green car on his left, make indeterminate, unimportant.

  As though awakening, Dasein found his right hand on the Inn’s front door—tugging, tugging. The door resisted. A sign on the center panel stared back at him.

  “Closed.”

  Dasein peered at the sign. Closed?

  “Your luggage is right there by the steps, Dr. Dasein.”

  The voice Dasein recognized immediately—the infuriating Al Marden: Authority … Secrecy … Conspiracy.

  Dasein turned, feeling himself bundled into a tight ball of consciousness. There was Marden standing halfway down the porch: red-haired, the narrow face, the green eyes, the tight-lipped mouth drawn into a straight line that could have signified any emotion from anger to amusement.

  “So you’re turning me out,” Dasein said.

  “Hotel’s closed,” Marden said. “Health department.”

  “The Inn, the restaurant, too?” Dasein asked.

  “All closed.” It was a flat square of voice brooking no appeal.

  “I can just go back where I came from, eh?” Dasein asked.

  “Suit yourself.”

  “You have other hotels,” Dasein said.

  “Do we?”

  “You must.”

  “Must we?”

  Dasein stared at the patrol captain, experiencing the same sensation he’d had with Piaget. The man receded.

  “You can leave or go back to Dr. Piaget’s,” Marden said. “He’ll likely put you up.” So far away, that voice.

  “Back to Piaget’s,” Dasein said. “How’d you know I just came from there?”

  Marden remained silent, eyes withdrawn … distant.

  “You move fast around here,” Dasein said.

  “When we have to.”

  Back to Piaget’s? Dasein asked himself. He smiled, husbanding his tight ball of consciousness. No! They hadn’t thought of everything. They hadn’t thought of quite everything.

  Still smiling, Dasein scooped up his suitcase from beside the steps, strode down to the truck, threw the bag into the cab, climbed behind the wheel.

  “Best let people help you who know how,” Marden called.

  There was just a faint trace of worry in his voice now. It broadened Dasein’s smile, stayed with him as a satisfying memory as he drove back toward the town.

  In the rear-view mirror, Dasein saw the patrol car following him. They wouldn’t let him park in town, Dasein knew, but he remembered the map posted on a window of Scheler’s service station. The map had shown a state park on the road west—Sand Hills State Park.

  Down the main street he drove, Marden’s patrol car right behind. There was the giant service station directly ahead. Dasein saw the telephone kiosk beside the parking area, swerved in so suddenly that Marden went past, screeched to a stop, backed up. Dasein already was out of the truck and at the kiosk.

  Marden stopped the patrol car on the street, waited, staring at Dasein. The patrol car’s motor seemed to rumble disapprovingly. Dasein turned, looked back at the service station—such a strange normality to the activity there: cars pulling in, out … no one paying the slightest attention to Marden or to the object of his attention.

  Dasein shrugged, went into the booth, closed the door.

  He put a dime in the slot, dialed the operator, asked for the Cooperative’s number.

  “If you want Jenny, Dr. Dasein, she’s already gone home.” Dasein stared at the telephone mouthpiece in front of him, letting the import of that supercilious female voice sink home. Not only did they know who was calling, they knew what he wanted before he could say it!

  Dasein stared out at Marden, attention focused on the green eyes, the cynical green eyes.

  Anger boiled in Dasein. He put it down. Damn them! Yes, he wanted to talk to Jenny. He’d talk to her in spite of them.

  “I don’t have Dr. Piaget’s number.”

  A distinctly audible sigh came over the line.

  Dasein looked at the telephone directory chained to the kiosk wall, felt a wave of guilt, unreasonable, damning, instantly repressed. He heard the operator dialing, the ring.

  Jenny’s voice answered.

  “Jenny!”

  “Oh, hello, Gilbert.”

  Dasein experienced a cold sensation in his stomach. Her voice was so casual.

  “You know they’re trying to run me out of the valley, Jenny?” he asked.

  Silence.

  “Jenny?”

  “I heard you.” Still that casual … distance in her tone.

  “Is that all you have to say?” His voice betrayed hurt anger.

  “Gilbert …” There was a long pause, then: “ … maybe it’d be … better … if you … just for a while, just for a while, went … well … outside.”

  He sensed strain beneath the casual tone now.

  “Jenny, I’m driving out to the Sand Hills Park and live in my camper. They’re not running me out.”

  “Gilbert, don’t!”

  “You … want me to leave?”

  “I … Gilbert, please come back and talk to Uncle Larry.”

  “I talked to Uncle Larry.”

  “Please. For me.”

  “If you want to see me, come out to the park.”

  “I … don’t dare.”

  “You don’t dare?” He was outraged. What pressure had they applied to her?

  “Please don’t ask me to explain.”

  He hesitated, then: “Jenny, I’m setting up camp in the park. To make my point. I’ll be back after I make my point.”

  “For the love of heaven, Gilbert—please be careful.”

  “Careful of what?”

  “Just … careful.”

  Dasein felt the gun in his pocket, a heavy weight that brought his mind to bear on the nameless threats of this valley. That was the thing—the threats were nameless. They lacked form. What use was a gun against a formless target?

  “I’ll be back, Jenny,” he said. “I love you.”

  She began crying. He heard the sobs distinctly before she broke the connection.

  His muscles stiff with anger, Dasein marched back to his truck, pulled it around the police car and headed out the east road, Marden right behind.

  Let the son-of-a-bitch follow, Dasein told himself. He could feel the reckless inanity of his actions, but there remained a driving current underneath that told him he had to do this. This was asking for a showdown. That was the thing. A showdown. Perhaps a showdown was needed to provide answers.

  He crossed the river on a concrete bridge, glimpsed rows of greenhouses off to the left through the trees. The road climbed up through the trees, emerged into scrub country—madrone and mesquite. It twisted down through the scrub and again the land changed. In the distance there were tree-covered heights, but in between stretched low mounds of hills topped by gnarled bushes, scattered weedy growths with bare gray dirt and pools of black water, miasmic water untouched by growing things, in the low spots.

  A smell of sulfur, dank and suffocating, hung over the land.

  With almost a sense of recognition, Dasein realized these must be the sand hills. A broken sign came into view on the right. It dangled from one post. Another post leaned at a crazy angle.

  Sand Hills State Park. Public camp ground.

  Twin ruts led off through the sand to the right toward a fenced area with a doorless outhouse at one end and crumbling stone fireplaces spaced around the edge.

  Dasein turned into the ruts. The truck lurched and growled its way to the parking area. He stopped beside one of the stone fireplaces, stared around. The place was outrageously drab.

  A sound of wheels and laboring car engine brought Dasein’s attention to the left. Marden pulled the patrol car to a stop beside him, leaned across to the open window.

  “What’re you stopping here for, Dasein?” There was just a touch of petulance in Marden’s tone.

  “This is a state park isn’t it?” Dasein asked. “Any law says I ca
n’t camp here?”

  “Don’t get smart with me, Dasein!”

  “Unless you have a legal objection, I’m going to camp here,” Dasein said.

  “Here?” Marden gestured at the desolation of the place.

  “I find it relatively friendly after Santaroga,” Dasein said.

  “What’re you trying to prove, Dasein?”

  Dasein answered him with a silent stare.

  Marden pulled back into the patrol car. Dasein could see the man’s knuckles white on the steering wheel. Presently, the patrol captain leaned back, glared up at Dasein. “Okay, mister. It’s your funeral.”

  The patrol car leaped ahead, made a sand-spewing turn around the parking area, roared out to the highway and headed back toward town.

  Dasein waited for the dust to settle before getting out. He climbed into the camper, checked his emergency larder—beans, powdered milk and powdered eggs, canned frankfurters, two bottles of ketchup, a can of syrup and a half empty box of prepared pancake mix … coffee, sugar … He sighed, sat down on the bunk.

  The window opposite framed a view of the sand hills and the doorless outhouse. Dasein rubbed his forehead. There was an ache behind his eyes. The bruise on his head throbbed. The pitiless light beating down on the drab hills filled him with a sense of self-accusation.

  For the first time since pointing his truck down into the valley, Dasein began to question his own actions. He felt there was an air of insanity around everything he had done. It was a mad pavane—Jenny … Marden … Burdeaux, Piaget, Willa, Scheler, Nis … It was mad, yet with its own kind of sense. His brushes with disaster became a part of the stately nonsense.

  And there was Jersey Hofstedder’s car—somehow the most significant thing of all.

  He felt he had been down once more beneath the lake, rising now into a brutal honesty with himself. Jenny’s “We” lost some of its terrors. That was the We of the cave and the Jaspers, the We that waited patiently for him to make his decision.

  The decision was his, he saw. No matter what the substance out of that dim red cave did to the psyche, the decision was his. It had to be his decision or the mad pavane lost all meaning.

  I’m still fighting it, he thought. I’m still afraid I’ll wind up “ftuttery behind the eyes” and standing on a wrapping line at the Co-op.