Valhalla Read online

  “You two were just going to stay there together?” the girl asked.

  “For now, yeah.”

  “Didn’t he have a family?”

  “He was divorced. Three times.”

  “And you?”

  “Once.”

  “So you were just good friends.”

  “I guess. I didn’t know many people in St. Louis. I came here a year ago from Colorado—just in time for the crash. How’s that for a smart career move?”

  She smiled. “What career was it?”

  “Public relations. Sales promotion.”

  He did not bother to add that his coming to Missouri had been a move of desperation, that after seven years of having progressively better positions in P.R. agencies in Los Angeles and Denver, eighteen months before he had found himself in the unemployment line along with twenty million other Americans, and finally had settled for the rinky-dink job with Miller in St. Louis only when it became obvious that the unemployment compensation checks could no longer be counted on, that the federal government was no more solvent than its citizens.

  “It was a year to remember,” he said finally.

  “Aren’t they all.”

  When they reached the plane, Stone had to help Eve climb up into the cockpit. Seeing the dead pilot, her eyes filled with tears again and she turned away. Stone helped her on into the cabin then, where the floor was so steeply pitched they almost had to climb from one seat row to the next. As they sifted through the clutter, Eve told him a little more about herself and the others. They had spent most of the summer with Jagger’s mother at her place on Lake Geneva in Wisconsin, she said, waiting like everyone else for some sort of government to take hold and get things running again. They played a lot of tennis, and they swam a lot and went sailboating and sat on the dock drinking vodka tonics and soaking up the sun. And finally they saw the fires begin, right across the lake, first the Playboy hotel and then some private residences, beautiful lakefront homes like Mrs. Jagger’s lighting up the night sky for what reason Eve could not even imagine.

  “I mean, I could understand them wanting all that, to take it from the rich finally. But why burn the places, huh? Why burn it all? What do they get out of it?”

  Stone shrugged. He knew the answer, but then he imagined that she did too. “The booze probably ran out,” he said, settling for the flip, the cruel. But that was the custom now, even for liberals like himself, the do-gooders of yesteryear. Somewhere along the line they had lost the knack for eating shit and turning the other cheek.

  Anyway, that had been the clincher, she said. They realized they had to get out, even from that posh country retreat. And during one of the increasingly brief periods when the phone service was working, Jagger had gotten in touch with Arvin Jensen, the man in the cockpit. He was from Milwaukee, she explained, a private charter pilot Jagger had used in the past, when he was still playing the pro circuit. Jagger offered him a coin collection of his mother’s and said their destination would be his father’s ranch in eastern Oklahoma, a four-thousand-acre spread with a landing strip and just about everything else they would need to see them through this “rain delay,” as Jagger called it. Unfortunately the ranch was also the last place on earth his mother would have fled to, out of fear that she might have to look upon his father once again. After twenty years of divorce and two intervening marriages, she still hated the man.

  “Jag told her okay, it was up to her. If she wanted to stay behind and get burned out and raped and killed, it was her business, not his. So he had us pack up. And we left.”

  “Just like that?”

  “He’s not a sentimentalist.”

  “I’d say not.”

  “In fact he’s pretty much a gold-plated bastard. But at least you know where he stands. Usually on your face.”

  Stone laughed, but the girl was not even smiling. He asked her about the plane, if she knew what had caused it to go down, and she told him that they had run out of fuel.

  “We only had half a tank when we started. Jensen put down in Peoria and Springfield, but they were out too. So he thought he’d try some airport west of St. Louis. But when we got over it, he saw it was burning: buildings, planes, everything. We couldn’t even land. So he just kept on flying, hoping to find some other place. And I guess his gauge was off. When the engines started sputtering, he called back and told us to buckle up, we were going down.”

  Stone looked at the tangle of seats, the torn and battered fuselage. “You were lucky, you and Eddie.”

  “We took the seats Arv told us to. Those facing the back.” She nodded toward three seats anchored against the bulkhead that divided the cabin and the cockpit. “But Jag said no way. He was going to see what happened to him.”

  Her smile, canted and pained, reflected on that brutal irony.

  Stone said nothing. Suddenly he did not want to think about Jagger or about the pilot sitting up front with a tree stuck in his chest, for that would only lead him to think again of Miller and the old man by the stream and all the others, all the anonymous ones, the bodies. And he was tired of them. He was tired of death.

  In the compartment above the built-in bar he found two sixteen-ounce cans of cashew nuts and one of almonds, plus a small bottle of stuffed green olives—a find that set his salivary glands running like a freshet. Eve wanted to open the cans on the spot, “for just a little taste,” but Stone said they had better wait and open them in front of the others, share and share alike.

  “That’s a nicety Jag would only laugh at,” she said. “Eddie too.”

  Stone held one of the cans out to her, but she shook her head.

  “No, you’re right. We’ll do it later.”

  They also gathered up three blankets and packed another suitcase with a variety of clothing they might need. In the plane’s tiny lavatory Stone came up with a half-dozen bars of motel soap, a box of Kleenex, and two rolls of toilet tissue.

  “You don’t miss a thing,” Eve said.

  “I used to sell it.”

  “What?”

  “Toilet paper. My first job. I was a salesman for a paper supply company.”

  She laughed, beautifully, showing her fine even teeth. And Stone felt a new hunger as sharp as that prompted by the cans of nuts.

  “Don’t tell that to Jag—you’d never hear the end of it,” she said. “And what was it you PR’d for on your last job?”

  “Various things. Dog food was our biggie.”

  The smile came again. “You’re putting me on.”

  “Afraid not. I go for the funny jobs. I like to give people pleasure.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Look, I know the feeling. I’m a Texas Polack, as Jag is forever reminding me.”

  “You don’t look it.”

  “Maybe because I’m half Irish. My mother’s side.” She finished packing the suitcase and got up. “What next?”

  As she stood there, facing him, it struck Stone how ridiculous their conversation had been, how absurdly normal in the context of the crash site. He looked through the open door of the plane at Jensen’s body.

  “There’s still him.”

  “What can we do?”

  “We can’t just leave him.”

  “You have a shovel?”

  “A camp shovel, yeah. But it’s too small. It would take too long. In fact, just getting him out of here would take too long.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know—cremate him?”

  “It’s up to you.”

  Stone found a shallow pool of gasoline in the ripped-open wing-tank of the plane. Using paper cups, he scooped out enough of it to pour over the dead pilot and onto the sheets and sticks he piled around the body. Then he lit the far end of one of the sheets and the fire skipped up into the cabin and blossomed, like a great orange flower. Shouldering his pack, Stone picked up his gun and the packed suitcase while Eve followed him with the blankets. Neither of them looked back, neither s
aid a word, as they walked on, away from the blazing plane and the blackening body inside it.

  At the ruin, Stone almost had to use force to keep Jagger and Eddie from gobbling up all the nuts and olives. He tried to explain to them how scarce food was, at least in this far suburban reach of St. Louis. The Mau Mau had picked it clean, he told them. Any house or farm that hadn’t been sacked or burned was usually filled with sharp-shooting farmers who hadn’t planted anything but their own gardens for over a year—surely they were aware of that, weren’t they? Neither answered.

  Jagger seemed more alert now, not so lost in shock and confusion. “Ask him where that leaves us,” he said to Eddie.

  “Mostly with the dogs,” Stone answered. “The wild dogs. City pets running in packs now, eating anything they can find, including each other.”

  Eve turned her face away. “Enough, all right? I don’t want to hear about it.”

  Jagger perked at that. “What’s this, Eddie? Our own little cannibal getting squeamish?”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “And why not? Cannibals eat men, don’t they? All kinds of men—white, black, tall, short—”

  “Shut up.”

  “But why? Ask her why, Eddie. Did I leave someone out?”

  Stone cut in. “Look, Jagger, I got some idea what you’re going through. But don’t take it out on her, okay? In fact, it might be a good idea not to take it out on anybody.”

  Jagger cocked his head theatrically, as if he were trying to catch a distant birdsong. “What is that I hear, Eddie—the voice of the Lord? Charlton Heston? Tell me, pray.”

  Eddie giggled. “That’s more like it, Jag. More like yourself. Tomorrow you gonna see. I promise. Tomorrow you gonna see just like a hawk again.”

  Jagger smiled in his direction. “Fuck off, Eddie. Will you do that for me?”

  Stone got up and left the small, concrete-walled room. In the failing light he gathered up some branches and twigs and took them back to the ruin. Eve was standing outside, hugging herself in the sharp evening air.

  “Thanks for helping us,” she said. “I’m really grateful. We need your help. But if you want to go on—tomorrow, I mean—it’s okay. We’ll get by. I mean, I know how Jag is.”

  “Forget it.” He began to break the branches into firewood.

  “No, I mean it. You don’t have to stick with us.”

  “You don’t want me?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Stone smiled wearily. “It’s okay. I’ll probably cut out tomorrow.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Carrying the wood into the room, he built a fire just inside the doorway, on the dirt floor. Jagger and Eddie were already sitting back against the cold walls, huddling under blankets. And now as the fire licked up into life, Eve slipped in next to Jagger and drew his blanket over her as well. Stone, dressed more warmly than the others, neglected the third blanket for the time being. Later, as the night turned colder, he knew he would be glad he had waited to use it.

  “Jesus, we are lucky,” Jagger was saying. “We no sooner crash than along comes this Boy Scout to the rescue. He finds us peanuts, he cremates our dead, and now he even lights up the night and warms the old cockles of our hearts. We are indeed fortunate.”

  “Well, we are,” Eve told him. “You should thank him instead of sounding off.”

  “Oh, I do, I do. I’m so thankful to be sitting here on this killing, fucking ground with four peanuts in my gut and a fire burning I can’t even see. I am truly thankful.”

  “You’re not alone, you know,” Stone told him. “I don’t imagine Eve or your buddy here digs all this any more than you do.”

  In the firelight, Jagger grinned. “Hey, you hear that, Eddie? Eve, he calls her. Already his great good friend Eve. Tell me, what’s he look like, this new great good friend of Eve?”

  Eddie looked over at Stone and shrugged, explaining that he had no choice except to serve his master. “Oh, he’s about your height, I’d say, Jag. Five-ten or -eleven. But heavier. Maybe one seventy-five, one-eighty.”

  “His face, dummy. His hair. What’s he look like?”

  Eddie looked at Stone again, appealing for his compassion. “Just normal, I’d say. Just your average guy. Hair’s about like yours, only darker, straighter.”

  Eve, snuggled up against Jagger, was watching Stone. “He looks strong,” she said. “And decent. And honest.”

  That made Jagger laugh, so hard tears formed in his sightless eyes. He hugged Eve to him. “Strong and decent and honest! Too much, just too much. Tell me, Boy Scout—Eve fill you in about us, the three of us? If not, maybe I better, since I can do it so much simpler and faster. Because what we’re about is money, my friend—my money, my old man’s money, my old lady’s money. Now I realize the stuff ain’t exactly itself anymore, but when it was, that’s what we were about, in fact that’s all we were about. Because there was beaucoup of it, you see—enough to take off that vital little economic edge in the big tournaments, and enough to keep Eddie picking up after me all these years, and most definitely enough to buy the love and devotion of a whole chorus line of decent, honest tramps like your sweet Evelyn here, who’s unfortunately probably the last in line, thanks to the exciting new times we’re living in.”

  “Fascinating,” Stone said.

  “Oh, it is. It really is. Why, at home in Santa Barbara our tennis courts have silk nets and the whirlpools come with semen traps. Eve has a bidet of solid gold.”

  She told him to shut up, and again he hugged her.

  “Why not?” he said. “Why the hell not?”

  Eddie was nodding solemnly at Stone. “It’s true what he says. If it wasn’t for his money, Jag could’ve been on top, one of the top two or three in the world. He could beat anybody when he was up, and I mean anybody. But how you gonna stay up through a whole tournament when you already got it all, huh? When you got everything? You can’t, that’s what. You just can’t. No way. And that was his one weakness—he had it all. He always did.”

  Jagger sighed. “Good old Eddie. Always been queer for me.”

  Eddie, bristling, slammed a rock against the wall. “I told you not to say that anymore!”

  Jagger raised a hand in surrender. “Hey, I’m sorry, little buddy. Peace, okay? Go to sleep. Rest your eyes. I’m gonna need them.”

  Eddie sat there, abruptly speechless, all his anger suddenly love again, an anguish of love. “No, you ain’t,” he said finally. “You gonna see again, Jag. Just like I said. I promise.”

  “Sure. Sure, Eddie.” And suddenly Jagger was crying again, shaking and blubbering in Eve’s arms.

  Stone looked at her and she lowered her eyes, as if she were ashamed of something.

  As the fire brightened against the darkening night Stone wondered if the others sensed as strongly as he did what an ironic and pathetic tableau they presented, sitting there on the dirt floor of a small cavelike room staring at a fire burning in the entrance, protecting them against—what?—mastodons, sabertoothed tigers, other tribes? And it struck him how unbelievably cataclysmic the last eleven months had been, to the point now where he and this trio of strangers could gather like troglodytes in a cave and not even mention it, not discuss at all that terrible descent, the collapse of civilization as they had known it and as they had thought it would always be—and as it would have been too, Stone believed, except for the swine the people had elected to govern them through the Sixties and Seventies. From the thousand silly days of Kennedy on through the moral and fiscal debaucheries of Johnson and Nixon followed by the bland incompetence of Ford and the tiny man who owned to his mediocrity as “Jimmy,” and on to this last and final clown, all had bent like ragweed before the winds of special interest, the old and the poor no different from the black and female, farmers and laborers the same as big business, ecofreaks the same as strip miners. Instead of standing up to them and saying no you cannot have this or that all-important thing beca
use we are poor now, because we are almost broke—instead of that small courage, this company of twits, this coterie of Olympian pissants, all thought ahead to reelection and smiled and scraped and printed money, printed it until the paper was worth more than the legends on it, printed it until the world stood ass-deep in the stuff, printed it until the presses became like infernal machines incapable of pause, roaring on toward the final inevitable explosion.

  And all that time no one seemed to have even the dimmest notion of what a price everyone would ultimately have to pay for this profligacy. Oh, Stone had been vaguely aware of occasional lonely crackpot Jeremiahs on the economic front predicting untold calamities ahead, which probably was the reason gold and Swiss francs and old comic books had risen in value so dramatically, surpassing even the heady rate of the general inflation. But on television and in the newspapers and the magazines he read, he could not remember hearing or seeing one word about what an economic collapse might actually be like in the modern world, no prescient voice pointing out that if a crash were to occur, it would be different from past collapses not just in degree but in kind, as a nuclear explosion was different from the noises of gunpowder.