“Is he still alive?” Doc asked.
“Goldarned if I know,” Smith said. “Last I heard he was down in Mexico, as I recollect, a-tryin’ to figure a way to sink the boat.”
“What boat?”
“That big boat they used to haul the nucular reactors through the Panama Canal and up the Sea of Cortez to Rocky Point.”
“You mean Rocky Point, Mexico? Punta Reñasco?”
“That’s right, honey.”
“The Mexicans are building a nuclear power plant? The Mexicans? Good God, we are in trouble.”
“King,” sang Kathy, dealing the third cards face up. “Three. Ten. Jack. Another cowboy. First king bets.”
Susan bet the nickel — one white chip. Doc raised. The rest stayed.
“They was for that nuke plant at Phoenix, Arizona, honey. Palo Verde. America’s biggest. Was the only way Bechtel could get them from New Orleans to Phoenix was what I heard. Anyhow that’s the last time I seen him. About two three years ago, maybe.”
“The Mexicans brew fine beer,” Doc said. “Paint great murals. Started a good revolution once, which will soon be resumed, I expect. I won’t hear a word said against them.”
“Did he sink the boat?”
“Pair of jacks bets.”
“He got on board somehow, ten miles out of Rocky Point and tried to scuttle it: opened the seacocks, monkey-wrenched the pumps. But they was too close to port, crew managed to limp in and get the nukes unloaded before the ship went down. In thirty feet of water.”
“What happened to him?”
“He got away. He always gets away. Ain’t no jail on earth can keep that boy shut up. They’ll have to kill him. The government’s probly figured that out by now.”
“So now we have the world’s biggest nuke plant setting thirty miles upwind from Phoenix.” Disgust in her voice, Bonnie peeked again at her hole cards. “Sickening.”
“That’s right, Bonnie. But it’s only Phoenix.”
“One million human beings live in Phoenix.”
“What kind of human beings would live in a town like Phoenix?”
“Jacks still high,” sang Kathy. Your bet, Doc.”
“Raise it two beans.” The dime — a red chip. “Some of those million are children,” he said. “That’s the point.”
“You don’t like grownups?” Susan asked.
“Not much. Only my friends. As the years go by, one by one, I find it harder and harder to feel any respect, or even much sympathy, for the human race.”
“You some kind of misanthrope?”
“Some kind. More and more I prefer women to men, children to adults, the other animals to the naked ape.”
“People are no damn good,” agreed Seldom. “Take ‘em one at a time, they’re all right. Even families. But bunch ‘em up, herd ‘em together, get ‘em organized and well fed and branded and ear-notched and moving out, then they’re the meanest ugliest greediest stupidest dangerest breed of beast in the whole goldang solar system far as I know.”
Doc nodded. The women glanced at one another, raising eyebrows, calling bets, rolling eyes.
“You two belong in the Badlands,” Susan said. “Out there with those clay hills and petrified logs and nothing alive but a few horned toads and sidewinders. You’d be happy there.”
“I been a-thinkin’ the same thing,” Smith said. “How about it, Doc?”
“Me too.”
“Come to town about once a month, hold up the bank, clean out the liquor store, rob the supermarket, rape all the good-lookin’ wimmin if any and then gallop back to them calico hills, what do you think, Doc?”
“Sounds about right.”
“The good life,” Bonnie snorted. “The life of reason. What about the toy store, boys? And whose bet for chrissake?”
“Yours.”
“Then I raise. Two bits.” She tossed in another blue chip. “So he actually sank a ship. Was it in the papers?”
“Papers said it was an accident. Nothing about who done it nor why. Government don’t want people to get hold of no funny ideas.”
“Mexican? American? Which government?”
“Any government.”
“Three jacks win,” announced Kathy.
Doc pulled in the pot. Susan shuffled the deck. Seldom cut and stared out the window. If we’re going to do it we better do it soon, Bonnie thought. And felt at once the cold, deep, clammy, paralyzing fear. No, no, not again. But I promised.
“How’d that Round River Rendezvous turn out?” Susan asked, dealing the cards with slick finesse. “After we left?”
“What’s the game for chrissake?”
“Anaconda. Pass the Trash. Anybody hear?”
“We only stayed one more day ourselves.”
“One of my nurses stayed for the whole week,” Doc said. “According to her things got lively after we geriatrics left. According to her we missed the good part.”
“Like what?”
“There was a raid one night by the Aryan Nation,” Bonnie said. “Or Alien Nation, something like that. They rode through on those big motorized kiddie-cars from Japan — those — what are they called?”
“ORVs,” Kathy said. “Off Road Vermin.”
“Yeah. Right. Anyhow this Alien Nation bunch drove through the camp on their mechanical vermin shooting off guns and cracking bullwhips before Roselle and Foreman and Igor and the Goon Squad ran them off. Nobody hurt. Then the next day a busload of Up With People people from Provo drove in, uninvited, gave a free concert, received a sitting ovation and the usual beer and flowers bit, cried a lot and left quietly. Then came — what, Doc?”
“It’s your bet.”
“I check. Okay. Then one day there was a grand schism. Skism? The Sparklers and the Twinklers demanded that Earth First! drop the clenched fist as official symbol. Said it’s too aggressive. Said it suggests spiritual negativity, crystal imbalance, harmonic divergence.”
“Quite right,” said Doc. “Raise it two reds.”
“What happened?”
“There was a discussion by the whole mob. Some thought the fist should be holding a daisy. Some suggested a teacup. Some thought the fist should have the middle finger rigidly extended. Others said make it the little pinkie, more polite. Some guy from Australia said, Why not whack off the bloody fist, give us a bleeding bloody stump? Italian guy said, Cock and balls, cock and balls with wings, viva l’amore, viva la Napoli. Women wouldn’t go for that, they wanted something more feminine, more Gaia-like. Cock and balls with, ah, vulva? No. Like what? Like a bomb with burning fuse, Georgia Hayduchess said, or a female monkey wrench. More yelling and screaming. Big argument about plumbing, pipe fittings, pipe wrenches, male and female connections, suction valves, bolts, nuts, left-hand threads and right-hand screws. Then the Twinklers and Sparklers got mad. As mad as Twinklers and Sparklers can get without releasing negative feelings. Their official spokesperson made a nice little speech about how their proposal was meant to be taken seriously but since it wasn’t they felt the time had come for them to leave Earth First!, no bad vibrations of course, and return to their true spiritual group the Rainbow Gathering. Then they walked out. En masse. All thirty of them. What happened next, Doc?”
“Don’t remember. Raise her two bits.”
“I’ll stay. So they left. Then next day the naturists walked out. Said Earth First! was too strict and conservative, everybody but the nudists wearing pants or dresses, even some of the children. Made them feel self-conscious, they said, discriminated against. So they left, one dozen bareasses, all rosy red with indignation. Sunburned too — they forgot that North Rim is nearly eight thousand feet above sea level. That desert sun is hot. Some eco-femmes left because there was only one woman on the goon squad. After that, what? What’d she say? More speeches, parties, workshops, dances, sings, wolf-howl sing-alongs, full moon ceremonies, lost children, a few fights, usual fornication in the woods, two broken marriages, three weddings, one live birth, too much beer drinking and pot smoking, one midnight rai
d by the county sheriff and the Search and Rescue Team but they were too late, all the dope was gone by then, one last grand feast and final dance with music by the real Nitty Gritty Dirt Band — said they were, anyhow — and next day everybody went home. Or somewhere else. Or down into the canyon, never to return, who knows? So now what? What’re we doing here?”
“Roll ‘em back,” the dealer said. “Roll ‘em and bet ‘em.”
“I hate this game,” Bonnie said. “It’s too complicated. Worse than baseball. What’s wild?”
“Nothing’s wild,” Doc said, matching Seldom’s bet. “But remember, if you’ve got a wheel you can go either high or low. Or both ways. Your bet.”
Bonnie peeked at her hand one last time. A-A-A-2-2! The full boat. She laid them down in what she thought would make a good betting sequence: A-2-A-2-A. Make ‘em think I’m going low, bet the limit, scare out the Little Minnies. She rolled the first deuce and raised the bet. The others called. Nobody quit. This was not what you’d term a conservative game. Nor were the others conservative players, except Doc, of course, who always played as if he’d bet the family farm. As if poker was more than only a silly game. As if the game were another expression of life itself. He always played to win. Then threw away the winnings. My Doc. My crazy old man. My ball and chain. My hub.
“How long you think Earth will last?” said Kathy. “I mean Earth First! Sounds like they’re breaking up already.”
“Like the I.W.W.,” Doc said, “they’ll last until they become effective. Then the state moves in, railroads some of the leaders into prison, murders a few others for educational purposes, clubs and gasses and jails the followers and voilà! — peace and order are restored.”
“We got no leaders,” Susan cried. “We’re all leaders.”
“Lovely slogan. Therein lies your strength — if only it could be true. We’ll see. But we all need leaders. Not masters, not bosses, not popes, not generals, but leaders. Someone able to say the right thing at the right time, willing to place himself up front when the enemy appears …”
“Or herself,” Bonnie said.
“Exactly. Or herself. That Erika woman, a natural. Can’t help herself, just naturally has to hurl her body into the forefront of the battle. Why? Brains, beauty, physical energy, ideas, emotions, idealism? Those help but there’s something more in a case like that.”
“She’s not a case.”
“Forgive me. In a woman like that. In a person, a personage, a human being like that. What is that extra quality? I would call it spiritual vitality. Élan vital A great soul. There’s no such thing, they told us in medical school. Show me this spirit, Doctor Zeitkopf used to say, and I’ll show you a diseased pituitary gland. The brain secretes soul, he’d say, as the liver secretes bile. So we’d cut these bodies open, the living, the dead, humans, dogs, monkeys, rats, and what did we find? Glands. Nerves. Organs. Tissue. Gallstones. Tumors. Layers of yellow blubber. Bloated hearts, swollen spleens, necrotic muscle, intestinal polyps, brains swarming with dead-white tubercles. Ah hah! said Doctor Time-Head, you see? Iss nossing here but us chickens!”
The houseboat rocked in the midnight breeze. The children slumbered, dreamed, twitched their little limbs. The horses shuffled slowly, step by step, over the hard earth, ripping herbage from the ground. The great owl called. The stars burned like emeralds, like sapphires, like rubies and diamonds and opals across the black velvet sky, receding from us at near the speed of light, fleeing into space and time where neither space nor time can yet exist.
“Roll ‘em again.”
Bonnie revealed her third card, her second ace. Now they all knew she was going high. So what? She felt high, she felt supreme, she felt invincible. She called, she raised, she bet the home ranch, she showed her second deuce. For a moment it occurred to her that the full house, in this particular form of poker, was not a particularly powerful hand. Perish the thought.
“And what did you say to Doctor Time-Head, Doc?”
“Kathy my love, I said nothing. I was just another shy clumsy Midwestern intern, intimidated and overawed. But I suspected, even then, that Doctor Zeitkopf was overlooking something. Forgetting something. Something vital … like life. He knew everything about the parts but didn’t consider the whole. These dead and dying bodies were not whole. A whole animal is a healthy animal and Doctor Zeitkopf never saw a healthy animal. Even the dogs and rats and monkeys in the research lab, though healthy when brought in, were half dead from fear when the men in the white coats came around. Sick with terror. Imagine, imagine, the horror of their situation. The unspeakable horror of it. Conrad himself, what did he know of the heart of darkness? Anyway — let’s not get into that — anyway, a healthy young woman like Erika whatshername — what is her last name by the way, anybody know? — is a whole, a being complete, intact and compact, with a personality — no, wrong word, trivialized word — is a vital spirit, by God, in a way that no amount of analysis, psychoanalysis, chemical analysis, vivisectional analysis, tomographic analysis, computerized analysis could ever have predicted. A healthy active lively woman like your leader Erika is not a mere clever assembly of intricate parts, like say a computer, but something more like a … like a composition: a poem; a symphony; a dance. Some humans can be reduced to robots, to slavery, given the proper training, torture, genetic breeding. (Some cannot.) But no amount of robot could ever manufacture a human being. Or make a human out of a slave. Or make any other vital, happy, healthy, defiant animal. That is my belief, my conviction, I couldn’t prove it on paper or on a blackboard or on a printout but I can prove it by showing you somebody like Erika. Erika and her friends, those vital spirits we saw out there in the woods, on the edge of the yawning abyss. If anyone can stop the megamachine they can. And if they can’t … whose bet?”
They stared at him in wonder. Such words. Such talk. Such wild and wonderful imagination.
“You said a mouthful, Doc,” said Seldom. “Took the words right outa my mouth.”
“Then you’re going to be on the Neck with her,” Kathy said. “At the action, putting your body where your mouth is. Right?”
“Me?” Doc smiled in slight embarrassment. “No, as a matter of fact I can’t be there that day. Got to … going to the, ah, the pediatrics convention in St. Louis. You?”
“We don’t even know what day it will be. And yes,” said Kathy, “I am going to be there. Whatever day it is.”
“Me too,” said Susan. She and Kathy looked at the others. The others looked at each other. A pause for reflection.
“I’ll be there,” Bonnie said, half lying through her teeth. A small white lie seemed necessary at this point, if she meant to reassure her husband. And she did. But who’s he know in St. Louis? Never heard about this particular pediatrics convention before. Is that old man two-timing me? Impossible. No, it’s possible, this is poker.
With observation swinging toward Smith, he endeavored to evade peer pressure by getting back to the game, the real game, the game of chance, the dance of life, poker. “Pot right? Let’s roll ‘em.” He showed his fourth card: 4-3-2-6. All clubs. Possible straight flush. Possible wheel. “Read ‘em and weep, folks, this here’s no game for sodajerks.”
Doc rolled his: three whores and a sodajerk.
Bonnie showed her second deuce. Two pair up. Possible boat. Likely bluff. Certain high.
Kathy showed hers: the rough seven. 2-4-5-7. Not much to bet your shirt on. But again, a possible low.
Susan rolled her second nine: two pair, nines and tens. Everybody going high? “Three queens bet,” she said to Doc.
Doc bet the limit. Bonnie raised him. Kathy stayed. The dealer folded. Smith raised Bonnie. Doc raised Smith. Bonnie calculated.
“So what’s it to me?”
“Twenty beans. Eight bits. One dollar. And no more raises.”
“You’re called.” She bet her final dollar.
Kathy folded. “Too rich for me.”
Seldom stayed, called, picked up some chips.
/> “Declaration,” the dealer called. “Grab your chips. None if you’re going low, one for high, two for acey-deucy.”
The three remaining contenders held clenched fists above the table.
“Earth First!” cried Kathy.
“Declare!”
Three fists sprang open. Doc held one chip, Bonnie held one, Smith held zero. “We’ve been sandbagged,” Doc said to Bonnie.
Smith grinned with smug satisfaction.
“Okay,” the dealer said, “last chance: three queens still bet.”
Again Doc bet the limit. Again Bonnie raised him. Again Smith raised her and Doc raised Smith and Bonnie called and Smith called. Showdown time. Smith showed his broken wheel, winning half the pot. Bonnie turned up her third ace. Full house. Doc turned up his fourth queen. High hand.
“I don’t understand this game,” she said.
“Nobody does,” said Doc, watching carefully as Smith divided the pot. Dollar for you, dollar for me, dollar for you, dollar for me …
“Where’d you get that fourth lady?”
“God provides.”
“And where is Seldom going to be when GOLIATH begins his march across the Neck?”
Fifty for you, fifty for me, fifty for you …
“I’m talking to you, Seldom Smith.”
“Who, me?”
“Yeah, you. Where you gonna be, brother, on Saint Erika Day?”
Smith paused, thought, hesitated and said, “Well, Bonnie honey, reckon I’ll be on the river again probly. Got a fourteen-day trip a-comin’ up soon. Got to make a living. Got three wives, seven kids and about fifteen lazy fat no-good horses to support.”
“From what I hear those three wives support you more than you support them.”
He grinned. “True fact. But I help out some.”
“So you won’t be there.”
He hesitated. A shadow of pain crossed his honest, wind-burned, leathery, homely, “incorrigibly bucolic” face. Only his upper forehead, always shielded by a hat when out-of-doors, revealed by its native pallor his membership in the “white,” “flesh-colored,” Caucasian or northern European race of man. That brow now wrinkled in perplexity; Smith found it difficult to commit even the simplest, most well-meaning, most innocent of lies. “Yes, ma’am.”