Stone Junction
POWDER HORN, BUCKSKIN THONG
The first two words – MOUNTAIN MAN – convinced him; the contents delightfully confirmed it. Perfect. Especially the possibles sack, which if he remembered correctly from his boyhood reading was a large pouch for the miscellany of the trapper’s work as well as personal treasures, totems, and medicines. Johnny Seven Moons had told him the mountain men were about as close as whites ever came to being Indians.
Daniel, for a long moment, remembered walking naked in the spring rain between Seven Moons and his mother, each holding a hand, how safe he’d felt, how complete, as the warm rain streamed down his body. Seven Moons and his mother were both dead now, but he knew the memory would remain when there was no one left to remember, curving through space like light from a dead star, curving back to its origin in the Infinite Dazzle.
Daniel dressed slowly, savoring the assumption of another self. As he slipped on the buckskins, he imagined the odors of pinesap and smoke and grease dripping from buffalo steaks. The moccasins and foxhead cap fit like they’d been custom made, and the pouched belt decorated with dyed porcupine quills was a work of art. The rough-tanned possibles sack, however, looked worrisomely small.
He picked up the powder horn and returned to the bedroom. He lifted the Diamond from the bowling-bag. To his great satisfaction, the Diamond slipped right in the possibles sack. He cinched the thong around the elkhorn catch, knotting it securely. He put his few toilet items in the belt pouches, then carefully stuffed the powder horn with some of the money from the attaché case – around eight thousand dollars.
He hid his old clothes in various costume boxes, stashed the day pack and its four thousand dollars in the SWISS MILKMAID box. He slipped the case – with about five thousand left in it – onto a shelf with other luggage and hand grips. He returned all the costumes he’d strewn around to their proper boxes.
He smoothed out the bed and hung the damp towel behind the dresser after using it to wipe off prints.
He stood a few minutes, pondering what he might have missed. Granted, the mountain-man garb would attract attention, but, as Jean Bluer had taught him, the outlandishly improbable is often the best disguise. Besides, seriousness needn’t necessarily compromise style.
Daniel loved the hang of his buckskins, the way the moccasins connected him to the floor, the slung weight of the Diamond under his left arm, the idea of a fox curled on top of his skull. Without the case and bowling bag, he felt lighter. Lighthearted, too, but not giddy.
He vanished and exited through a wall, heading north. A half mile later he reappeared, turning west toward town. He ignored the curious stares, waved back when someone yelled from a passing car. He tried to recall what he’d read on the mountain men, their stories, their names. He wanted a name that fit his journey. He chose Hugh Glass. He remembered the story of Hugh Glass, who had crawled two hundred and fifty miles to the nearest fort after a grizzly had mauled him. Strength. Determination. Tenacity. He would be Hugh Glass.
A dusty old pickup waited in the gas bay of a Shell Station on the corner while a stooped gray-haired man watched it fill. On impulse, Daniel asked if he happened to be heading east. He was. But his wife and granddaughter were with him, just freshening up in the bathroom, and they were taking Highway 50, which he called the ‘loneliest road in the world,’ and their turnoff was only thirty miles out, and that would leave Daniel in the middle of goddamn nowhere in the dark. But hell, if it didn’t make him no mind, hop on in the back.
Daniel felt lighter and lighter.
THE FIRST NOTEBOOK OF JENNIFER RAINE
APRIL/LEAVING RENO
Life is still great.
My name is Susanna Rapp. Says so right here on my driver’s license, birth certificate, and passport. Rapp is an old Germanic word meaning ‘young raven’ or ‘brilliant counselor,’ depending on the root. I do like to talk, and Rapp sounds tough. ‘Susanna’ because I always liked that song, ‘Oh Susanna, don’t you cry for me…’ Hey sweetheart, I’ll cry if I feel like it. Even though I’m not the sort of woman men serenade.
When Longshot got up this morning, I had to tell him that as much as I liked him – which is a lot – I’d have to be moving on. I told him about meeting the DJ at Jim Bridger’s grave. Longshot understood. And because he did understand, because he honestly cared to, I told him the short version of my life.
When I had finished, he said, ‘I don’t think you’re crazy. You’re kinda intense and slippery and taken with some fancies. I’ve gotten out there myself, more than once to tell the truth, and I always got back.’
‘How?’ Imagine my eagerness.
‘Well, I have a kind of unusual method. Works good for me, but it’s on the order of fightin’ fire with fire. I get an ounce of blow and a fast car and drive straight to Kansas City, then turn around without stoppin’ and drive right back. Reams out the sludge.’
I tell you, that man is charming. And since I’d hoped he’d beg me to stay, preferably forever, I was a little depressed. But let me tell you, a little depression is no problem for a woman with nearly two hundred thousand dollars in her purse.
First, with Longshot’s help (he seems to know everybody), I spent five grand on a new identity. Clicked my picture and rolled my thumb, and an hour later I was Susanna Rapp.
I bought a brand-new cardinal Porsche. Seventy thousand. I was cheering up.
I felt good enough about myself then to buy clothes. Ten thousand dollars – but that includes luggage and shoes.
I bought Longshot a big silver belt buckle with two glazed plastic eyeballs glued to it. Engraved around the edges is the motto: ‘The eyes of Texas are upon you.’
Longshot said, ‘The best thing about being crazy is you can do crazy things.’
From Longshot I bought an ounce of cocaine and an ounce of weed and twenty Quaaludes – all for a grand. He claimed that since the drugs were for therapeutic purposes, not recreational, he was honor bound to sell at cost. When I asked point-blank if he was a drug dealer, he said with that easy grin, ‘Not really. I stock up for hard times when there’s quality available. Long shots wouldn’t be long shots if they always came in.’
His farewell kiss had true affection. He said his arms would always be open. As we said in junior high, ‘Is that cool, or what?’ He was wearing his ‘Eyes of Texas’ belt buckle when he waved good-bye.
I decided I couldn’t spend a thousand dollars on drugs without spending at least that much on Mia. She’d been sleeping ever since her nightmare in the barn. I tried to wake her up for a little mother- daughter shopping spree. When I couldn’t wake her, I almost panicked. But I could hear her heartbeat, slow but strong.
I tried to imagine what she was dreaming, what she was doing, but I couldn’t get inside her. I think she’s in a trance, maybe trying to imagine something herself. We have to imagine each other to reach each other, so maybe that’s why I feel blocked out. That’s okay. I have to trust her to know what’s best for herself.
But for that moment I thought she was dead, so scared my first instinct was to rush her to the hospital. That’s what I’ve got to be careful about – acting as if she were real. That’s when I get in trouble. Terror makes me forget. Pain makes me forget.
I bought Mia an amazingly soft, thick, pale-blue silk comforter big enough for a double bed. I wrapped it around her in the backseat, fluffed the two matching plush pillows to cushion her head.
I’m sitting in my Porsche at Uncle Bill’s Bugle Burger Drive-In, where I’ve just finished half a Bugle Burger and both a large and a medium Pepsi. As Longshot warned, cocaine discourages gluttony for anything but cocaine. Sure makes you thirsty, though. Better buy a case of mineral water before I hit the road.
My new Easter outfit, a back-zippered sheath with a slit skirt, is made of raw silk, the color of buffed cream, the lines clean and supple. My Easter bonnet is a wide-brimmed straw hat, airy and light, with a rainbow of silks braided around the crown, the unraveled ends trailing down my shoulders like a w
aterfall of color. I’m wearing these crazy platform shoes with a four-leaf clover cast into each of the three-inch clear-plastic heels. Keep luck rolling. I also bought a sleek black suit with a black hat and veil for the meeting with the DJ on Jim Bridger’s grave.
Now for a few toots and the long highway to Wyoming. I’ll have plenty of drugs left for the DJ. I’m already a little tired of them. That’s how I’ve always been – I adore them for a while, but then I get tired of the same point of view all the time.
On my road map, I–80 looks like the straightest shot to eastern Wyoming. But I’m intrigued by Highway 50, which is so barren on the map there’s plenty of room to note: ‘Highway 50, the Loneliest Highway in the World.’ That sounded like a tourist attraction for explorers of the psyche, something of a lonesome highway itself. From 50 I can cut north to Wyoming. A difference of hours. If the DJ is serious, he’ll wait. If he isn’t there, I’ll be so heartbroken crazy I’ll give Longshot’s cure a shot and fight fire with fire, wired to Kansas City and burning the return. I shall return. But now I’ve got to go.
Four: FIRE
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
—Shakespeare, Macbeth IV.i
The mind is a full moon rising in a warm spring rain.
Daniel felt lighter and lighter and lighter, despite the rain soaking his buckskins, despite the Diamond in his sack that seemed to be gaining an ounce every fifteen minutes, lighter and lighter until he thought he might actually rise with the moon. He stood where his ride from the Reno Shell Station had left him. The old guy had apologized for not being able to invite him for the night, but space was cramped what with the granddaughter and all, and Ma wasn’t much on strangers.
Daniel had been sorry, too. The granddaughter was no toddler but a drop-you-to-your-knees smoldering redhead about nineteen years old. Daniel had gathered from the old guy’s brief conversation while waiting for the women to return from the restroom that she had been sent to her grandparents’ desolate ranch because she’d gone boy-crazy in Santa Rosa. Twice in the course of the ride he’d pressed his hand against the cab’s rain-streaked rear window in an unconscious attempt to touch her hair. He’d been sorely tempted to vanish, go sit on the dashboard, and just watch her. He’d resisted, cursing his strength.
Now, as he watched the moon rise, he tried to imagine what she was feeling miles away, and he received a sensation of alien pleasure, the friction between pressed thighs as the old truck seat vibrated down the dirt road. The sensation made him feel lighter yet.
Blinking against the rain, he watched the blurred moon rise with a majestic inevitability so erotic he wanted to vanish. He sensed a powerful and mutual receptivity slowly opening in the warm, moonlit rain, a rain so warm for a Nevada April the old guy had said he damn near couldn’t believe it. Daniel believed it. Daniel believed if he vanished he could rise with the moon, float up through the top of his skull and join the moon’s constancy, its fastness, its light. He was gathering himself to vanish when a low sexual growl snapped his focus.
The cardinal Porsche shot past in a blink, but one blink was sufficient for a glimpse of the striking woman at the wheel. Stop, he thought, as the rain-smeared glow of taillights faded.
When the car was almost out of sight, he caught the sudden brightness of brake lights. Daniel ran toward the car, hoping his glimpse of her hadn’t been some rain-blurred moonlight mirage.
The mind is a mirage with real water.
When he reached the passenger door and bent to look inside, her loveliness took his breath away. The door was locked.
She leaned across the seat – to unlock it, he hoped – but only rolled the window down a crack.
She examined him a moment then said, ‘Are you Jim Bridger?’
She might as well have said, You’re in love with me now.
‘No ma’am, I’m not,’ Daniel said with the drawl of an old beaver- trapper, ‘but I knew the Bridger boy when he was greener’n a mountain meadow. Fact is, he an’ that worthless John Fitzpatrick left me in the mountains to die. I’d gotten chawed on somethin’ pitiful by a she-grizzly. The Mountain Code is to stay till you’re sure, but the Bridger boy and that Fitzpatrick fool was in a tizzy about some marauding Indians nearby, so they left me for dead. That wasn’t so bad, but they took my rifle and my possibles with ’em. Had to live on what the wolves left on buffler carcasses, and had to fight the damn buzzards for that. Had a broken leg and back tore raw, so I had to go it on my hands and knees. Made pads out of dried buffler hide. Two hundred fifty miles to Fort Kiowa and the only thing that kept me going was revenge. You shoulda seen that Bridger boy’s face when he spied me crawling through the gates, like I was nightmare turned real, come to collect.’
The woman bent closer to the crack in the window. ‘Did you kill him?’
Daniel, bending close to hear the question, caught the scent of cinnamon on her breath. ‘No, ma’am, I didn’t. Revenge is a powerful lure till it’s time to pull the trigger. Then it’s thin justice, weak murder. Don’t get me wrong, now. I didn’t kill ’em, but I didn’t forgive ’em either. Well actually, I forgave the Bridger boy some. He was a tenderfoot, hadn’t grasped the fine points of the Code. He went on to be a genuine mountain man. Ol’ Gabe – that’s what he come to be called. Fitzpatrick, though, he stayed worthless, and unforgiven.’
The woman said, ‘When was this?’
Daniel squinted up at the moon. ‘Musta been eighteen forty-five, forty-six – sometime close.’
‘That was a hundred and forty years ago.’
Daniel smiled at her. ‘Only if you keep track real close.’
‘But you couldn’t have been alive then.’
Daniel squatted so they were at eye level. He said, with careless conviction, ‘Ma’am, I can be whoever I want to be as long as I know who I am.’
‘Get in,’ Jenny said, unlocking the door.
Daniel obliged.
Jenny watched him as he slid in and settled, then asked, ‘Do you know the DJ? Guy on the radio?’
‘Ain’t much for this modern stuff, but I did hear a guy named David Janus on a program called “Moment of Truth,” all about the mind, and this David Janus sounds like he lost his oars in some swift water, if you follow my drift.’
‘What did he say about the mind?’
Daniel, taken aback, was slow to reply. ‘Lots of things, but I guess the nut of it would be that the mind is everything you can think about it.’
Jenny nodded. ‘The DJ. When did you hear him?’
‘Let’s see. Two nights back, comin’ into Reno.’
‘I knew he was around,’ Jenny smiled. ‘I’m supposed to meet him at Jim Bridger’s grave in eastern Wyoming.’
‘You might find a Fort Bridger there around the Green River, but they didn’t bury ol’ Gabe where he belonged. Shipped his body home to Saint Louie. I don’t know, but I think it’d be hard to rest easy on city ground. All that bustle and traffic and chatter.’ This piece of information from his youthful reading had particularly moved him.
Jenny looked at him appraisingly. ‘Who are you?’ she said.
‘Name’s Hugh Glass, ma’am.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ Jenny said. ‘Take off your foxy cap.’
Daniel removed it, turning to face her.
They looked at each other, both afraid they were going to start trembling.
Jenny said, ‘You’re a kid like me, barely twenty.’
‘My name’s Daniel Pearse.’ He felt light-headed speaking his own name.
‘I’m Jennifer Raine,’ Jenny said. ‘Susanna Rapp if anyone should inquire.’
‘Am I to take it we share outlaw status in the culture at large?’
Jenny cocked her head, smiling, the rainbow tassel on her hat sliding across her left shoulder. ‘And am I to take this radical change in diction and voice as an indication of candor?’
‘Please do,’ Daniel said.
Jenny said, ‘I’m not sur
e what I am. I escaped from a mental hospital in California and won about two hundred thousand dollars last night on three rolls of the dice and here I am, no longer sure where to go. But it’s odd – just before I saw you staring at the moon, I was thinking about what I am. Not who – I’ll be working on that one for a while – but what. What I am. For now I’m an apprentice poet and I’m a Lover of Fortune. Not a Soldier of Fortune. A lover. And I suppose that’d make me a borderline outlaw.’
‘You forgot something else you are,’ Daniel said.
Cautiously, Jenny said, ‘What?’
‘A mother. Unless you’ve kidnapped that child bundled in back.’
Jenny stared at him, stunned by terror and relief.
Afraid he’d offended her, Daniel said quickly, ‘If you’re offering me a ride – and I want you to – let’s agree to respect necessary secrets.’
Jenny reached over and lifted his left hand into hers, pressing it softly between her palms. ‘She’s my daughter,’ Jenny said huskily, ‘but Daniel – she’s imaginary. She’s my imaginary daughter. How can you see her?’
‘I don’t know,’ Daniel said. He thought he would faint. She squeezed his hand harder. ‘I saw her swaddled in that lovely blanket when I got in the car and I still see her now. Certainly I have a strong imagination, but I’ve never experienced anything like this before.’ Then he remembered that he could see a spiral flame inside the Diamond when he was invisible, and added, ‘Well, there is one similar.’
‘You can imagine my imaginary daughter? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Yes. But probably only because you let me.’
Jenny released his hand and reached for her door handle. As she opened the door, she glanced back at Daniel and said, ‘C’mere, sailor.’
He followed her about twenty yards away from the car into the scrub-sage desert. She told him to stop. He did. She walked another ten yards then turned around to face him. She kicked off her four-leaf clover shoes. Took off her hat and shook her dark blond hair, the color of sugar just before it burns. She said, ‘Tell me what you see,’ and turned around, deftly unzipping her dress down the back, gracefully shedding it with a wiggle of her hips.