Whether or not he would tell Kurtz remained to be seen.
At last Brodsky turned Owen's head, placed the bulb of his own mask against Owen's ear, and began to talk. The story was a little more detailed this time, but essentially the same. He had been walking across the field next to the store, talking to Cambry beside him and to an approaching fuel-supply convoy at the same time, when all at once he felt as if his mind had been hijacked. He had been in a cluttery old shed with someone he couldn't quite see. The man wanted to get a snowmobile going, and couldn't. He needed the Dawg to tell him what was wrong with it.
"I asked him to open the cowling!" Brodsky shouted into Owen's ear. "He did, and then it seemed like I was looking through his eyes . . . but with my mind, do you see?"
Owen nodded.
"I could see right away what was wrong, someone had taken the plugs out. So I told the guy to look around, which he did. Which we both did. And there they were, in a jar of gasoline on the table. My Dad used to do the same thing with the plugs from his Lawnboy and his rototiller when the cold weather came."
Brodsky paused, clearly embarrassed either by what he was saying or how he imagined it must sound. Owen, who was fascinated, gestured for him to go on.
"There ain't much more. I told him to fish em out, dry em off, and pop em in. It was like a billion times I've helped some guy work on somethin . . . except I wasn't there--I was here. None of it was happening."
Owen said: "What next?" Bellowing to be heard over the engines, but the two of them still as private as a priest and his customer in a church confessional.
"Started up first crank. I told him to check the gas while he was at it, and there was a full tank. He said thanks." Brodsky shook his head wonderingly. "And I said, No problem, boss. Then I kind of thumped back into my own head and I was just walking along. You think I'm crazy?"
"No. But I want you to keep this to yourself for the time being."
Under his mask, Brodsky's lips spread in a grin. "Oh man, no problem there, either. I just . . . well, we're supposed to report anything unusual, that's the directive, and I thought--"
Quickly, not giving Brodsky time to think, Owen rapped: "What was his name?"
"Jonesy Three," Dawg replied, and then his eyes widened in surprise. "Holy shit! I didn't know I knew that."
"Is that some sort of Indian name, do you think? Like Sonny Sixkiller or Ron Nine Moons?"
"Coulda been, but . . ." Brodsky paused, thinking, then burst out: "It was awful! Not when it was happening, but later on . . . thinking about it . . . it was like being . . ." He dropped his voice. "Like being raped, sir."
"Let it go," Owen said. "You must have a few things to do?"
Brodsky smiled. "Only a few thousand."
"Then get started."
"Okay." Brodsky took a step away, then turned back. Owen was looking toward the corral, which had once held horses and now held men. Most of the detainees were in the barn, and all but one of the two dozen or so out here were huddled up together, as if for comfort. The one who stood apart was a tall, skinny drink of water wearing big glasses that made him look sort of like an owl. Brodsky looked from the doomed owl to Underhill. "You're not gonna get me in hack over this, are you? Send me to see the shrink?" Unaware, of course, both of them unaware that the skinny guy in the old-fashioned horn-rims was a shrink.
"Not a ch--" Owen began. Before he could finish, there was a gunshot from Kurtz's Winnebago and someone began to scream.
"Boss?" Brodsky whispered. Owen couldn't hear him over the contending motors; he read the word off Brodsky's lips. And: "Ohh, fuck."
"Go on, Dawg," Owen said. "Not your business."
Brodsky looked at him a moment longer, wetting his lips inside his mask. Owen gave him a nod, trying to project an air of confidence, of command, of everything's-under-control. Maybe it worked, because Brodsky returned the nod and started away.
From the Winnebago with the hand-lettered sign on the door (THE BUCK STOPS HERE), the screaming continued. As Owen started that way, the man standing by himself in the compound spoke to him. "Hey! Hey, you! Stop a minute, I need to talk to you!"
I'll bet, Underhill thought, not slowing his pace. I bet you've got a whale of a tale to tell and a thousand reasons why you should be let out of here right now.
"Overhill? No, Underhill. That's your name, isn't it? Sure it is. I have to talk to you--it's important to both of us!"
Owen stopped in spite of the screaming from the Winnebago, which was breaking up into hurt sobs now. Not good, but at least it seemed that no one had been killed. He took a closer look at the man in the spectacles. Skinny as a rail and shivering in spite of the down parka he was wearing.
"It's important to Rita," the skinny man called over the contending roar of the engines. "To Katrina, too." Speaking the names seemed to sap the geeky guy, as if he had drawn them up like stones from some deep well, but in his shock at hearing the names of his wife and daughter from this stranger's lips, Owen barely noticed. The urge to go to the man and ask him how he knew those names was strong, but he was currently out of time . . . he had an appointment. And just because no one had been killed yet didn't mean no one would be killed.
Owen gave the man behind the wire a final look, marking his face, and then hurried on toward the Winnebago with the sign on the door.
3
Perlmutter had read Heart of Darkness, had seen Apocalypse Now, and had on many occasions thought that the name Kurtz was simply a little too convenient. He would have bet a hundred dollars (a great sum for a non-wagering artistic fellow such as himself) that it wasn't the boss's real name--that the boss's real name was Arthur Holsapple or Dagwood Elgart, maybe even Paddy Maloney. Kurtz? Unlikely. It was almost surely an affectation, as much a prop as George Patton's pearl-handled .45. The men, some of whom had been with Kurtz since Desert Storm (Archie Perlmutter didn't go back nearly that far), thought he was one crazy motherfucker, and so did Perlmutter . . . crazy like Patton had been crazy. Crazy like a fox, in other words. Probably when he was shaving in the morning he looked at his reflection and practiced saying "The horror, the horror" in just the right Marlon Brando whisper.
So Pearly felt disquiet but no unusual disquiet as he escorted Cook's Third Melrose into the over-warm command trailer. And Kurtz looked pretty much okay. The skipper was sitting in a cane rocking chair in the living-room area. He had removed his coverall--it hung on the door through which Perlmutter and Melrose had entered--and received them in his longjohns. From one post of the rocking chair his pistol hung by its belt, not a pearl-handled .45 but a nine-millimeter automatic.
All the electronic gear was rebounding. On Kurtz's desk the fax hummed constantly, piling up paper. Every fifteen seconds or so, Kurtz's iMac cried "You've got mail!" in its cheery robot voice. Three radios, all turned low, crackled and hopped with transmissions. Mounted on the fake pine behind the desk were two framed photographs. Like the sign on the door, the photos went with Kurtz everywhere. The one on the left, titled INVESTMENT, showed an angelic young fellow in a Boy Scout uniform, right hand raised in the three-fingered Boy Scout salute. The one on the right, labelled DIVIDEND, was an aerial photograph of Berlin taken in the spring of 1945. Two or three buildings still stood, but mostly what the camera showed was witless brick-strewn rubble.
Kurtz waved his hand at the desk. "Don't mind all that, boys--it's just noise. I've got Freddy Johnson to deal with it, but I sent him over to the commissary to grab some chow. Told him to take his time, go through the whole four courses, soup to nuts, poisson to sorbet, because this situation here . . . boys, this situation here is near-bout . . . STABILIZED!" He gave them a ferocious FDR grin and began to rock in his chair. Beside him, the pistol swung in the holster at the end of its belt like a pendulum.
Melrose returned Kurtz's smile tentatively, Perlmutter with less reserve. He had Kurtz's number, all right; the boss was an existential wannabe . . . and you wanted to believe that was a good call. A brilliant call. A liberal arts
education didn't have many benefits in the career military, but there were a few. Phrase-making was one of them.
"My only order to Lieutenant Johnson--whoops, no rank on this one, to my good pal Freddy Johnson is what I meant to say--was that he say grace before chowing in. Do you pray, boys?"
Melrose nodded as tentatively as he had smiled; Perlmutter did so indulgently. He felt sure that, like his name, Kurtz's oft-professed belief in God was plumage.
Kurtz rocked, looking happily at the two men with the snow melting from their footgear and puddling on the floor. "The best prayers are the child's prayers," Kurtz said. "The simplicity, you know. 'God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food.' Isn't that simple? Isn't it beautiful?"
"Yes, b--" Pearly began.
"Shut the fuck up, you hound," Kurtz said cheerfully. Still rocking. The gun still swinging back and forth at the end of its belt. He looked from Pearly to Melrose. "What do you think, laddie-buck? Is that a beautiful little prayer, or is that a beautiful little prayer?"
"Yes, s--"
"Or Allah akhbar, as our Arab friends say; 'there is no God but God.' What could be more simple than that? It cuts the pizza directly down the middle, if you see what I mean."
They didn't reply. Kurtz was rocking faster now, and the pistol was swinging faster, and Perlmutter began to feel a little antsy, as he had earlier in the day, before Underhill arrived and sort of cooled Kurtz out. This was probably just more plumage, but--
"Or Moses at the burning bush!" Kurtz cried. His lean and rather horsey face lit with a daffy smile. " 'Who'm I talking to?' Moses asks, and God gives him the old 'I yam what I yam and that's all that I yam, uck-uck-uck.' What a kidder, that God, eh, Mr. Melrose, did you really refer to our emissaries from the Great Beyond as 'space-niggers'?"
Melrose's mouth dropped open.
"Answer me, buck."
"Sir, I--"
"Call me sir again while the group is hot, Mr. Melrose, and you will celebrate your next two birthdays in the stockade, do you understand that? Catch my old drift-ola?"
"Yes, boss." Melrose had snapped to attention, his face dead white except for the patches of coldinduced red on his cheeks, patches that were cut neatly in two by the straps of his mask.
"Now did you or did you not refer to our visitors as 'space-niggers'?"
"Sir, I may have just in passing said something--"
Moving with a speed Perlmutter could scarcely credit (it was like a special effect in a James Cameron movie, almost), Kurtz snatched the nine-millimeter from the swinging holster, pointed it without seeming to aim, and fired. The top half of the sneaker on Melrose's left foot exploded. Fragments of canvas flew. Blood and flecks of flesh splattered Perlmutter's pants-leg.
I didn't see that, Pearly thought. That didn't happen.
But Melrose was screaming, looking down at his ruined left foot with agonized disbelief and howling his head off. Perlmutter could see bone in there, and felt his stomach turn over.
Kurtz didn't get himself out of his rocker as quickly as he'd gotten his gun out of his holster--Perlmutter could at least see this happening--but it was still fast. Spookily fast.
He grabbed Melrose by the shoulder and peered into the cook third's contorted face with great intensity. "Stop that blatting, laddie-buck."
Melrose carried on blatting. His foot was gushing, and the part with the toes on it looked to Pearly as if it might be severed from the part with the heel on it. Pearly's world went gray and started to lose focus. With all the force of his will, he forced that grayness away. If he passed out now, Christ alone knew what Kurtz might do to him. Perlmutter had heard stories and had dismissed ninety percent of them out of hand, thinking they were either exaggerations or Kurtz-planted propaganda designed to enhance his loony-crafty image.
Now I know better, Perlmutter thought. This isn't myth-making; this is the myth.
Kurtz, moving with a finicky, almost surgical precision, placed the barrel of his pistol against the center of Melrose's cheese-white forehead.
"Squelch that womanish bawling, buck, or I'll squelch it for you. These are hollow-points, as I think even a dimly lit American like yourself must now surely know."
Melrose somehow choked the screams off, turned them into low, in-the-throat sobs. This seemed to satisfy Kurtz.
"Just so you can hear me, buck. You have to hear me, because you have to spread the word. I believe, praise God, that your foot, what's left of it, will articulate the basic concept, but it's your own sacred mouth that must share the details. So are you listening, bucko? Are you listening for the details?"
Still sobbing, his eyes starting from his face like blue glass balls, Melrose managed a nod.
Quick as a striking snake, Kurtz's head turned and Perlmutter clearly saw the man's face. The madness there was stamped into the features as clearly as a warrior's tattoos. At that moment everything Perlmutter had ever believed about his OIC fell down.
"What about you, bucko? Listening? Because you're a messenger, too. All of us are messengers."
Pearly nodded. The door opened and he saw, with unutterable relief, that the newcomer was Owen Underhill. Kurtz's eyes flew to him.
"Owen! Me foine bucko! Another witness! Another, praise God, another messenger! Are you listening? Will you carry the word hence from this happy place?"
Expressionless as a poker-player in a high-stakes game, Underhill nodded.
"Good! Good!"
Kurtz returned his attention to Melrose.
"I quote from the Manual of Affairs, Cook's Third Melrose, Part 16, Section 4, Paragraph 3--'Use of inappropriate epithets, whether racial, ethnic, or gender-based, are counterproductive to morale and run counter to armed service protocol. When use is proven, the user will be punished immediately by court-martial or in the field by appropriate command personnel,' end quote. Appropriate command personnel, that's me, user of inappropriate epithets, that's you. Do you understand, Melrose? Do you get the drift-ola?"
Melrose, blubbering, tried to speak, but Kurtz cut him off. In the doorway Owen Underhill continued to stand completely still as the snow melted on his shoulders and ran down the transparent bulb of his mask like sweat. His eyes remained fixed on Kurtz.
"Now, Cook's Third Melrose, what I have quoted to you in the presence of these, these praise God witnesses, is called 'an order of conduct,' and it means no spicktalk, no mockietalk, no krauttalk or redskin talk. It also means as is most applicable in the current situation no space-niggertalk, do you understand that?"
Melrose tried to nod, then reeled, on the verge of passing out. Perlmutter grabbed him by the shoulder and got him straight again, praying that Melrose wouldn't conk before this was over. God only knew what Kurtz might do to Melrose if Melrose had the temerity to turn out the lights before Kurtz was done reading him the riot act.
"We are going to wipe these invading assholes out, my friend, and if they ever come back to Terra Firma, we are going to rip off their collective gray head and shit down their collective gray neck; if they persist we will use their own technology, which we are already well on our way to grasping, against them, returning to their place of origin in their own ships or ships like them built by General Electric and DuPont and praise God Microsoft and once there we will burn their cities or hives or goddam anthills, whatever they live in, we'll napalm their amber waves of grain and nuke their purple mountains' majesty, praise God, Allah akhbar, we will pour the fiery piss of America into their lakes and oceans . . . but we will do it in a way that is proper and appropriate and without regard to race or gender or ethnicity or religious preference. We're going to do it because they came to the wrong neighborhood and knocked on the wrong fucking door. This is not Germany in 1938 or Oxford Mississippi in 1963. Now, Mr. Melrose, do you think you can spread that message?"
Melrose's eyes rolled up to the wet whites and his knees unhinged. Perlmutter once more grabbed his shoulder in an effort to hold him up, but it was a lost cause this time; down Melrose went.
"Pearly," Kurtz whispered, and when those burning blue eyes fell on him, Perlmutter thought he had never been so frightened in his life. His bladder was a hot and heavy bag inside him, wanting only to squirt its contents into his coverall. He felt that if Kurtz saw a dark patch spreading on his adjutant's crotch, Kurtz might shoot him out of hand, in his present mood . . . but that didn't seem to help the situation. In fact, it made it worse.
"Yes, s . . . boss?"
"Will he spread the word? Will he be a good messenger? Do you reckon he took enough in to do that, or was he too concerned with his damned old foot?"
"I . . . I . . ." In the doorway, he saw Underhill nod at him almost imperceptibly, and Pearly took heart. "Yes, boss--I think he heard you five-by."
Kurtz seemed first surprised by Perlmutter's vehemence, then gratified. He turned to Underhill. "What about you, Owen? Do you think he'll spread the word?"
"Uh-huh," Underhill said. "If you get him to the infirmary before he bleeds to death on your rug."
Kurtz's mouth turned up at the corners and he barked, "See to that, Pearly, will you?"
"Right now," Perlmutter said, starting toward the door. Once past Kurtz, he gave Underhill a look of fervent gratitude which Underhill either missed or chose not to acknowledge.
"Double-time, Mr. Perlmutter. Owen, I want to talk to you mano a mano, as the Irish say." He stepped over Melrose's body without looking down at it and walked briskly into the kitchenette. "Coffee? Freddy made it, so I can't swear it's drinkable . . . no, I can't swear, but . . ."
"Coffee would be good," Owen Underhill said. "You pour and I'll try to stop this fellow's bleeding."
Kurtz stood by the Mr. Coffee on the counter and gave Underhill a look of darkly brilliant doubt. "Do you really think that's necessary?"
That was where Perlmutter went out. Never before in his life had stepping into a storm felt so much like an escape.
4
Henry stood at the fence (not touching the wire; he had seen what happened when you did that), waiting for Underhill--that was his name, all right--to come back out of what had to be the command post, but when the door opened, one of the other fellows he'd seen go in came hustling out. Once down the steps, the guy started running. The guy was tall, and possessed one of those earnest faces Henry associated with middle management. Now the face looked terrified, and the man almost fell before he got fully into stride. Henry was rooting for that.