Stone Junction

  Eli began, ‘Cowboys are known fools for drinking up their wages, and I was doing my part till something happened that stopped me cold. Ain’t a pretty story, but by God it not only saved me money on liquor, but all the expensive craziness that goes with it: dancing girls, bar repairs, bail, court costs, and them goddamn hospital bills.

  ‘Happened in Colorado high country up outa Durango, musta been ’round fifty-five, fifty-six, somewhere in there. I was working for the Randall boys then, and me and one of their cousins was moving some horses up to summer pasture. We got ’em up to the line shack ’bout nightfall and put ’em in this little ol’ barn the Randalls’ great-great-granddaddy had built. Then me and Jamie – that was this cousin’s name, just a kid really, nineteen or twenty – we went over to the line shack and grubbed up and shot the shit for a while before we hit the rack, pretty tuckered from being in the saddle since dawn.

  ‘Jamie was a strange kid, a bit on the jumpy side and not real overwhelming in the smarts department. Stark fact of it is, Jamie may have been an in-breed somewhere in the Randall line. Folks ’round Durango used to claim the only virgin Randall women were the ones who could run faster than their brothers.

  ‘For all Jamie’s dumbness, he was good with horses. It was like he’d drawn what little brains he had all together and brought it down real hard on one thing, and that thing was horses. That kid loved horses. And he was good with ’em.

  ‘So we’re sacked out and sawing logs when these high, shrill whinnies out in the barn snap us awake. We both jump pronto in our boots and grab our shooting guns.

  ‘“Wolf?”’ I whisper to him as we head for the door.

  ‘“I don’t know,” Jamie says, and his voice is real thin and tight.

  ‘We’re just gettin’ to the barn when these two young buckskin mares come bolting into the corral and I could see right away in the moonlight that their legs was chewed all to hell. I knew then what had happened; feller I used to ride trail with in the Junipers had seen it hisself when he was a young poke. The barn rats had gotten into some fermented silage and gone full-berserk frenzied, rampaging through the stalls eating the horses’ legs from right above the hoof clean up to the knee – left it that flat, stringy, bluish-white color like you get when you skin out a deer. The horses looked like they all had white stockings, not much blood at all. Sweet fucking Jesus, it was ghostly!

  ‘But what really froze my blood was them rats squealing, so high-pitched it could shatter your skull like cheap glass or at least leave you deaf from all the needle holes in your eardrums. The squeals from the trampled rats sounded different than the shrieks of those that only wanted to eat on some warm flesh.

  ‘I mean to say my jaw’s down around my knees,’ cause even though I’d heard of it, seeing it is something entirely different. Actually, being stunned stupid is about the best thing to do in that situation unless you feel like discharging a firearm against a herd of crazed rats in a dark barn full of insane horses. None for me, thanks; no sir. Let nature take its twisty course. I wanted to make sure Jamie saw the wisdom in letting it be. I didn’t like what I saw. Jamie’s eyeballs had rolled damn near ’round backwards in the sockets, same sickly white as them horses’ legs, and stone blank, just like those Cuban what-cha-call’ems – them zoombies. Gone, know what I mean?

  ‘And all of sudden Jamie screams, “The horsies! The horsies!” Like a little kid. He runs for the barn.

  ‘“Don’t, Jamie!” I yell. “Don’t shoot, it’ll spook ’em worse.” Damn if he doesn’t toss his gun away. But just before he goes in he stops and yanks out an old rusty icepick some hunter left stuck in a corral post.

  ‘Now you notice I ain’t running to stop him nor help him. It’s right there in Article Twenty-two of the Code of the West: “If some fucking in-breed wants to run into a bedlam of barn rats on a drunken feeding spree, that’s his business.”

  ‘I stood there in my boots and long johns and waited for the horses to get out in the corral where they had room to move. The noise died down enough for me to hear Jamie panting inside the barn, “You fuckers, you fuckers,” and the thud of the icepick in the plank floor. I struck some fire to a hurricane lamp and went inside.

  ‘Jamie was down on his hands and knees. The back of his right hand, the one without the icepick, was about chewed down to bone. An ugly sight, but it wasn’t much compared to what Jamie was doing. He’d got a rat trapped in the corner of a stall and just kept stabbing it and stabbing it, fifty, sixty times, that icepick a blur in the lamplight.

  ‘“Jamie!” I yell, and he wheels to look at me, muscles in his cheeks jerking, white spit frothing from his mouth, his eyes turned back ’round normal but looking a thousand glazed miles away. And he roars like a goddamn mountain lion, “Noooo! Noooo!” and goes scuttling after the rats, which are writhing in little squealing clumps eating their dead.

  ‘He gets one his first stab and keeps stabbing it until another leaps at his face and he wheels and chases it into a stall where I can hear his sobs and the thud of that icepick like someone beating on a heavy door. All of a sudden he lets out a scream so powerful everything freezes to silence, the whole barn absolutely still. And he whoops, “I got him, Eli! I finally got him.” And he starts laughing.

  ‘I go in with the lantern and there’s Jamie, grinning, his eyes locked on something far away. He’s sprawled out against the back of the stall, and his right hand is icepicked to the wall straight through the palm. He says, “Look, Eli, I finally got him.”’

  Eli left Daniel thinking about this at the Junction of 93 and I-40, Eli’s right rear turn signal erratically blinking as he headed east for his home on the range.

  Standing with his thumb out for another ride, Daniel decided it was a cautionary tale, wisely taken to heart. Maybe Volta was right. Maybe he should just let it go. The old men seemed to think so, anyway, and he would be foolish not to consider their counsel when he was at a loss about what to try next. Maybe if he physically let it go, he could open it through memory and imagination. He looked at his upraised thumb, then opened his hand as if setting an invisible bird free. He imagined how it would feel to drive an icepick through his palm, imagined it so clearly he almost cried out with the pain.

  Shamus was sitting at the tiny desk in a cheap Sacramento motel. His silver-scarred hand was pressed to his ear, dictating possibilities his free hand jotted down on a yellow legal pad.

  ‘A.T. Al times three. Three Al’s? Try that. Alalal. Allah? Swiss accent. Male, mid-thirties. Three owls, maybe? That budge anything loose in that compacted bowel you call a brain? Think, shithead! Help me out. Three owls. Awls? Laws? Three Laws? No, no, wrong direction. Al Triple X? Al to the Third Power – what’s that, Al Nine? Third power. Al Thrice? Al Thrice! That’s it! You get it, bumble-fuck?’

  ‘No,’ Shamus said dully. He was very drunk.

  ‘Al for Alchemy. Thrice-Great. Trismegistos. “For this reason I am called Hermes Trismegistos, for I possess the three parts of wisdom of the whole world.” C’mon, Shamus – you tell me.’

  ‘Volta. That rotten, snitching prick,’ Shamus said, rage stirring him from stupor. ‘And it’s just like that arrogant bastard to use Hermes Trismegistos and alchemy all scrambled into a cute code. That’s his style, and he’s so fucking confident, he gave it to us. And we knew it all along.’ Shamus wrote Volta’s name so savagely the lead snapped when he crossed the t. ‘Volta the All Wise. Perfect sense. A Swiss accent would be a snap for Volta. And then he rubs our faces in it. Guess he forgot we studied with Jacob Hind. We’re damn near the alchemical scholar he was. How could he think he could sneak that kind of cuteness by us?’

  Shamus’s scarred hand said in his ear, ‘Maybe he knew he couldn’t, you idiot; ever think of that?’

  Shamus was baffled. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘He wants you to think it was him, to deflect you from Daniel. Figure it out, dildo – somebody had to tell Volta what was going on.’

  ‘It was them together, j
ust like we thought. But where are they?’

  The scarred hand moved from his ear to face him. ‘Listen: one will lead you to the other. Find one, you find them both.’

  * * *

  Daniel’s next ride was an hour coming. When he saw the Chevy pickup with a camper begin to brake, his first impulse was to run. It was his truck, somehow reborn from a cube of metal. With a rush of relief he noticed the Michigan plates and the reflecto-decal lettering arched above the camper door:

  ERNIE & IRMA

  Geritol Gypsies

  Irma scooted over to make room for him in the cab. She was a tiny, delicate, white-haired woman, mid-sixties, in brown slacks, fresh yellow blouse, and a brown knit cardigan. She held a small poodle on her lap. The dog eyed Daniel tremulously. The poodle seemed somehow incomplete to Daniel but he wasn’t sure why.

  Ernie reached around the poodle to shake hands. Daniel could never have disguised himself as Irma, but Ernie would have been easy. Like Daniel, he was six feet and blue-eyed, but with forty years and as many pounds added. Daniel would have had to exhaust hundreds of wardrobes to match Ernie’s polyester shirt, which had a line of Conestoga wagons running up his right arm, a cattle drive up the trail of his left, and a blazing pastel sunset across the back. Daniel found the shirt so improbable he blinked to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.

  After Ernie introduced himself and pulled back on the road, Irma patted the panting little poodle and said, ‘This is Chester.’

  Daniel smiled at the dog. ‘Howdy, Chester.’

  Chester shivered, then wagged his haunches.

  Daniel noticed that Chester either had lost his tail or it had been docked extremely close.

  Irma explained: ‘A great big Doberman Pinscher bit off Chester’s tail.’ She bent down and cooed, ‘We don’t like big dogs, do we Chester?’ Chester buried his head between her knees. Irma looked at Daniel proudly. ‘Chester understands everything I say.’

  ‘Where ya headed, Herman?’ Ernie said a little too quickly, as if embarrassed.

  Daniel, forgetting for a moment that he’d introduced himself with the name on his bowling shirt, wasn’t sure who Ernie was addressing. He blustered, ‘Oh, you know, just on down the line for now.’ Frisco eventually, but the pro tour still is a while off, so I’m sort of making do with what action I can find. Heard they’ll gamble on anything in Nevada.’

  ‘That’s why they call it Lost Wages,’ Ernie grinned.

  ‘So I’ve heard,’ Daniel said politely, having wearied of this on the poker circuit. He had decided to avoid Las Vegas. Too many people knew him and he didn’t feel like working up a more elaborate disguise.

  ‘So you’re on the loose,’ Ernie said.

  ‘Yeah, basically. And I’m not sure if I’ve got no place to go, or too many.’

  Thoughtfully, Ernie said, ‘Know what ya mean. I was like that when I was young and roaming, right before W. W. Two started. It was like I couldn’t even imagine my life, know what I mean?’

  With a faint smile Daniel said, ‘With me, it’s more like I can’t stop imagining it.’

  ‘About the same thing, huh?’ Ernie said. ‘Just another way of looking at it.’

  Irma said to no one in particular, ‘Oh, it wasn’t that bad.’ She turned to Daniel with a distracted smile. ‘Do you enjoy your work?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Daniel said. When they glanced at him nervously, Daniel smiled and explained as well as he could. ‘I guess it seems strange not to know if I enjoy my work, but I’m honestly uncertain. I don’t think of bowling in terms of enjoyment. I’m too busy concentrating on trying to do it right, do it well – do it at all, for that matter.’

  Irma smiled blankly, idly stroking Chester’s thin back.

  Ernie volunteered, ‘I worked for GM, thirty-five years at the Chevy plant in Detroit – what we call “Motown.” Irma and me been married thirty-four years. I retired three years ago, kids gone, house paid for, so me and Irma just take off whenever the notion moves us. Going out and seeing things keeps ya young. Last fall we went and looked over New England. Real pretty in the fall, all them red and golden leaves. Now this country here strikes me as a little grim, but the light’s nice, the sunsets and all.’

  Irma, with the same distracted smile, said to herself, ‘It always is.’

  Daniel said, ‘What’d you do at GM, Ernie?’

  ‘I was just on the line. Mounted the spare, put in the jack and lug wrench, then shut the trunk.’

  ‘Did you enjoy it?’ Daniel said.

  Ernie shrugged his heavy shoulders. ‘Like ya said, it’s a job.’

  Irma said to the poodle, ‘He enjoyed it, didn’t he, Chester?’

  Chester yapped sharply once.

  Irma nodded with satisfaction.

  ‘You know,’ Ernie addressed Daniel, ‘I didn’t mind the routine. Gives life shape. And even if you’re doing one thing all the time, it’s never really the same. Like closing those car trunks – each one sounded different. Millions, and every one different. You know what I mean?’

  ‘I think so,’ Daniel said.

  Irma asked Chester, ‘Does Daddy know what he means?’

  Chester yapped twice. ‘Twice means “no,”’ Irma translated, a smug glint in her eyes.

  Ernie muttered, ‘Damn dog hates me. I was the one who thought he needed some exercise. Let him off the leash to go sniff around the park and the Doberman bit off all his tail and half his ass in one chomp ’fore I could nail him with a rock and run him off. Tried to tell Chester he was up against a rule of life: Big dogs eat. Being on the leash wouldn’t have made no difference.’

  Daniel bent and said to the quivering poodle, ‘We don’t like big dogs, do we, Chester?’

  Chester hid his head. ‘He’s so amazing,’ Irma trilled. ‘He understands everything he hears.’

  Ernie, Irma, and Chester said good-bye on the west side of Las Vegas during the sunset’s fiery crescendo of gold and crimsons, the colors so pure and clear that the blinding sundown on Ernie’s shirt paled to the edge of vanishing, so stunning that Ernie turned off the engine and they sat and watched in silence, Chester stretching his front paws against the dashboard to get a better view. Daniel was taken with how easily the air let the colors go, how inexorably Earth turned on the axis of darkness and light. He suddenly felt a panic to get out of the truck’s cab, vanish, vanish or else start weeping. But he couldn’t vanish with them there. He said, fighting the tightness in his throat, ‘Well, on that lovely, fiery note, I’ll take my leave. Thank you for the ride and your splendid company.’

  Amid their farewells, he slid out. Just before closing the door, Daniel said, ‘Drop it in a river.’ Even Chester seemed puzzled by the remark.

  Daniel stepped back to let the truck pull away, but it didn’t budge. Muffled inside the cab, Chester barked frantically. Irma rolled down the window, calling excitedly, ‘You forgot your balling ball! Chester saw it! Understands everything, just like I told you.’

  Daniel lifted the bowling bag through the open window. ‘Wish I had Chester’s mind,’ he said. ‘Pretty dumb to forget your means of livelihood. Thanks again. Take care.’

  He watched the taillights disappear back toward Las Vegas. He knelt to unzip the bowling bag, shielding the Diamond’s light from traffic, though the road was empty. He looked into the Diamond. ‘You don’t want me to let you go, do you? I’m the one, aren’t I? If so, help me. Help me. Please, please help me.’ He vanished with the Diamond.

  Around midnight, without warning, Daniel’s concentration buckled and collapsed. He tried to tighten his focus but there was no power left. Overwhelmed, it took him a terrifying moment to gather himself and imagine him and the Diamond returned. The entry back was ragged. Daniel had no idea where in the world he was. On his knees, he stared at the Diamond, wondering where the spiral flame had gone. He heard a faint roar to his right. He turned, blinded by a ball of light hurtling toward him. He dove to the side, wrapping his body protectively around the bowling bag just as
the driver of the black Trans-Am stood on the brakes and skidded into a one-eighty, stopping a hundred and fifty yards down the road. As the car headed back, Daniel zipped the bowling bag shut. The driver pulled onto the opposite shoulder and swung across the divider and stopped beside Daniel. For a moment the long blond hair made Daniel think it was a woman. He was sharply disappointed when a stocky man in his mid-thirties wearing cowboy boots, Levis, and an army fatigue jacket stepped around the car and said, ‘What in the name of fuck was that all about?’

  ‘What?’ Daniel said with puzzled innocence, getting to his feet.

  ‘Didn’t you see it, man? There was this huge fucking flash of light and bam! There you were, this weird glow all around you. No fucking way you could miss it.’

  Daniel said, ‘I was squatting down when I heard you coming and stood up real sudden – might have been the headlights reflecting off the case here, lots of bright metal, might have caught the light perfect.’

  Slowly shaking his head, the blond man stared at Daniel and his belongings. He shrugged. ‘Maybe I was having a ’palm flashback. Looked like the true item to me, though. Fuck, who cares, huh? Why sweat the little shit when Death knows your address, that’s my motto.’

  ‘It’s a good one,’ Daniel said.

  ‘So, what is it, you hitching here or what? I’m going west till dawn, then I turn around and head back.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Daniel said. He picked up the attaché case and bowling bag.

  The blond man said, ‘What are you got up as there, anyway? You the Wandering Bowler or what?’

  ‘I’m a professional bowler and a religious zealot,’ Daniel explained.

  ‘Yeah, just about anything beats the fuck out of working.’ He opened the door for Daniel.

  ‘How about you?’ Daniel said, slipping inside. ‘You’re out late for a nine-to-five man.’