Valhalla Read online

  Yet somehow he had always felt like a stranger in his own body, an alien wandering through his life. Nothing had been quite what it seemed to be. His grandfather, a motel owner and civic booster, had been an extrovert’s extrovert, a glad-handing Kiwanian who ignored his own son and his son’s family almost entirely, probably because the son—Stone’s father—was a reclusive, reticent tinkerer, an engineer who came home from the laboratory at work only to retreat immediately to his basement workshop, where he fashioned arcane microcomputer components, which eventually led to his establishing his own company and building it up to a point where he finally sold it for enough money, he said, to see him “the rest of the goddamn way.” He and Stone’s mother had always slept in twin beds and the only times Stone ever saw them kiss was when his father would leave on a business trip, a listless peck as if to keep his spouse mindful of the tepidity of their relationship. His mother as a result was mostly confused, impulsively loving and hateful by turns, neurotic and valetudinarian the older she got. She was polite with Stone, somehow confused by him, reserving her strongest feelings for his siblings: fury and hatred for his older sister, a strong-willed girl who ultimately became a Washington lawyer; and an overwrought, tearful, smothering love for his sickly younger brother, Roger, who died of kidney failure at eighteen.

  So Stone had tried to get by as best he could, mostly just going through the motions of his life, a good student, a good athlete, but deadly cool about it all, a youth who neither shouted nor bellylaughed, ever. The Vietnam years he spent at Boulder studying business administration and protesting the war along with everyone else, but mildly, never going so far as to pull down a flag or burn his draft card. A groin injury, sustained in a wrestling match during his senior year, kept him out of the armed services for good, and ultimately required corrective surgery. Free, he naturally left home for faraway places, finally choosing the impersonal sunshine and anomie of Southern California, where he met and married Jennifer, mostly because she was beautiful and would not go to bed with him except as his wife. And he went to work in a public relations agency, keeping his distance though, still the observer, only now watching the carnivores at work, the real go-getters. And at home he muddled through four years of marriage before he finally realized that Jennifer, a Mormon, had based their whole relationship on the expectation that he would ultimately convert to her faith and return with her to Utah to be fruitful and multiply. Instead he walked out. Then the job had gone sour and he had moved on to other ones, and finally back to Denver for a few years, then to St. Louis.

  And that had been his life, about as empty and boring a thirty-four years as one could have, no more really than a sleepwalk—until this last year, of course, until the times had slapped him rudely awake. Now an exciting life was all but unavoidable, even for a spectator, a voyeur, like himself. It seemed there was no alternative now except to live or die. The middle ground had disappeared.

  He thought of his last conversation with Jennifer, on the phone from St. Louis to Ogden. She had married again, a Mormon this time, and was expecting her second child. Recently returned from Los Angeles, she told him of the conditions there, how all of Southern California now was virtually a province of Mexico. One heard Spanish more than English and the Mexican flag flew almost everywhere, even over public buildings. The earlier Chicano-black race wars had subsided, with the Chicanos the clear victors. And the whites, who had sat on the sidelines till it was too late, made one last attempt at reasserting their hegemony, with their police, their National Guard, their weaponry. But they too finally had broken before the awesome numbers of the Mexicans, the hungry and penniless hordes with absolutely nothing to lose and very little to gain either. Over a million whites had moved north and east, she said. There had been starvation. Recalling it all, she had cried on the phone. And she had said she still loved him, still prayed for him every night.

  A glutton for punishment, he had called his parents that same night, and heard much the same story. The Mexes, as his father called them, were everywhere, them and their fucking flags. He and Stone’s mother had to sleep in shifts, to keep the bastards from climbing right through their windows at any hour. And the niggers were no better, only fewer. Thank God he still had a case of twelve-gauge shotgun shells left. The two of them were down to eating soybeans now, had bought about five bushels of them, tasty as sawdust any way you prepared them. By winter the two of them would be dead, his father said, that was for certain. But meanwhile he was staying right where he was. The house was paid for. A Mex had offered him two gold coins for it and he had run the man off with the shotgun. In ’seventy-nine, a realtor had told him he could get one hundred and thirty thousand dollars for the place, and that’s just what he should have done, he said, sold it and bought gold, moved to Canada or New Zealand, anyplace where the Mexes and niggers were not.

  When his mother’s turn on the phone came, all she could do was cry. Stone told her that he loved her, and then he said goodbye and good luck. And that was that.

  Most of the time he tried not to think about his parents, for there was really nothing he could do, even if he had been able to get to Colorado. He wished that he loved them more. He wished that they loved each other more. And indeed he believed that it was not too late for them, that they just might find in adversity a closeness that had eluded them through all the years of prosperity. He hoped so anyway. It was about all he could do.

  Suddenly, in the other room, he heard someone moving about, putting wood on the fire. Then Eddie came into the kitchen, blinking and coughing.

  “So here you are,” he said to Stone. “What’s the matter—couldn’t sleep?”

  Stone did not answer. Eddie sat down at the table. He got out a pack of cigarettes and shook loose a pair, giving one to Stone. Disconsolately he regarded the thinning pack.

  “Jesus, four more left. When they’re gone, I die.”

  Stone lit both cigarettes and dragged hungrily on his, grateful for the little man’s generosity. He said nothing, though. He was not about to forget the acrimony of a few hours before. But Eddie was.

  “Hey, I’m sorry about all that earlier. You were right to lean on us.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Yeah, but you got to understand—Jag just ain’t himself since the plane crash. He’s scared, you know? And who wouldn’t be? So he strikes out at everybody. He wants us to hurt like he does.”

  “But normally he was a pretty sweet guy, huh?”

  Eddie laughed. “No way. He’s always liked to throw his weight around—but with a sense of humor, you know? Like, girls used to give him motel keys and he’d give the keys away to other girls, tell them he was gonna meet them there.”

  “Funny.”

  “Well, maybe not too. I just mean he meant well. Like calling you Boy Scout. He’s always got a name for everyone. Me, I got a dozen of them, everything from Eddie Asskisser to Gophernose. It don’t bother me.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “I just mean, don’t let him get to you.”

  “I don’t intend to. I’m leaving in the morning, remember?”

  Frowning, Eddie thought about that. He took a drag on his cigarette and carefully tapped it out, putting the butt back in the pack. “About all that,” he said. “I mean what Eve told us—I understand, believe me. To just blow a man away—I don’t think I could do it either, not unless I was there, you know? I mean, threatened, like I was.”

  Stone said nothing. He wondered if the little man was being honest or if he was simply frightened at the prospect of carrying on alone with Jagger and Eve.

  “Yeah, a guy just wouldn’t know until the moment of truth,” he went on. “I mean, whether he’d do it or not.”

  “Eve seems to know.”

  Eddie laughed again. “Well, Eve, she’s tough. Smalltown Texas tough. With a couple years in Vegas on top of it, selling the old flesh. So, yeah, I guess maybe she could do it, probably without batting an eye.”

  Stone was trying ha
rd not to show his sudden anger. “What do you mean, selling the flesh?”

  Eddie shrugged, as if he regretted that he could not tell a lie. “Selling as in a couple hundred bucks a night.”

  “You’re quite a friend, aren’t you.”

  “Well, ask her. She’ll tell you. When Jag found her, she was being kept by this greasy guinea torpedo. The guy had bet Jag on a match and lost big. Jag took Eve as payment—how about that, huh? Just like slavery. Only Eve could’ve walked, of course, except she dug Jag and decided to stay.”

  “One big happy family.”

  Eddie considered that. “Well, we used to be, I guess. And I think we will be again—when Jag gets his sight back.”

  “Good old Jag.” Stone put out his cigarette and got up. “We better sleep while we can.”

  He went back into the other room and got down on the floor again, angling the upper part of his body onto the lumpy backpack. As he squirmed for a comfortable position, he looked over at Eve on the couch. Her mouth was slightly open and he could see her teeth, he could see her tongue. She had one arm crooked under her head, using it as a pillow, while the other hung to the floor, where her hand rested, limp and elegant. He wondered if he hated her as much as he wanted her.

  Disgusted with himself, he rolled over, facing the wall. Before closing his eyes, he checked his watch, an electric Bulova, and found that it had stopped at two o’clock, probably for good, its battery dead. And oddly, instead of disappointment he felt only a grim amusement. It struck him that the watch was a thoroughly fitting timepiece for a modern American, in his modern American world. He closed his eyes and waited for sleep.

  At first light, he woke and went outside, using the back door. He intended only to stretch his legs and to urinate, but a sudden pressure in his bowels led him on toward the decrepit outhouse. The morning was a carbon of the day before, both misty and sunny, with the tall grass so wet his pants were soaked by the time he reached the tiny structure. Dank and dirty inside, it smelled more of mold than of excrement. Nevertheless it served his needs, and when he emerged from it he was feeling unexpectedly good, almost as if he had spent the long night not alone on a hard floor but in bed with a woman. And then just as quickly the feeling was gone, as he saw beyond the house, legless in the ground fog, an armed young black man leaning against the broken-down rail fence.

  Crouching, Stone moved to his right, until the house blocked the man’s view of him. Then he sprinted for the back door, throwing it open and charging through the kitchen and into the living room, where he found the others huddled timidly under the guns of two white men who were standing just inside the front door. The older one, a redneck farmer type, grinned amiably at him.

  “Come on in, boy,” he said. “No need to be bashful.”

  Three

  Once the strangers realized that Stone and the others posed no threat to them, they lowered their weapons and called outside for the black man to come on in. The older one, the leader, even went so far as to shake hands all around.

  “Name’s Smiley Baggs, and this here’s Oral O’Brien,” he said, introducing the other white man, a lean long-haired youth wearing a buckskin jacket and cowboy boots and hat. Cold-eyed and expressionless, he barely nodded.

  When the old man came to Jagger, he kidded him for not responding to his outstretched hand. “What’s the matter, boy—you don’t like hillbillies?”

  “He can’t see,” Eve explained. “He was blinded a couple of days ago. Our plane went down.”

  Baggs looked genuinely chagrined. He patted Jagger on the shoulder and apologized, saying how sorry he was and that he hadn’t meant any harm but was just a dumb Okie with his foot in his mouth most of the time.

  The third man had come in from outside and Stone saw that he was Mexican or Puerto Rican, not black. Like the other youth, his attitude was one of glum hostility. He did not even nod as Baggs introduced him.

  “And this here’s Spider. Don’t ask me his last name, ’cause I cain’t pernounce it.”

  “Dominguez,” the youth hissed. “Dome-een-gez.”

  “That’s it, all right,” Baggs laughed.

  Eddie then did the honors for the four of them, describing Stone as “our rescuer, our shepherd. He just came along two days ago, and he’s been looking after us ever since.”

  With each introduction, Baggs smiled and said, “Pleased to meetcha.” His partners said nothing. Finally he took off his hat and sagged onto the davenport, grunting and sighing.

  “Yessir, this is purty damn all right up here. It’s jist a bit more like home, that’s what it is. We was camped out down below on the crick last night and we seen smoke up here, jist comin’ outen the trees. So we decided to have a gander this mornin’. And goldang if we don’t find sumpin I didn’t even know existed. Been livin’ in these parts all my life, and I didn’t know there was a house up here. Don’t that beat all?”

  As the old man rambled on, Jagger kept asking what was going on and Eddie tried to fill him in, describing the three men and trying to reassure him. But Baggs was oblivious of them, busy now explaining what mission the three of them were on. “Some consarned pilgrim” had stolen a five-hundred-pound calf and six laying hens from the lodge, he said, and of course that wasn’t something to be sneezed at, not these days, when a full belly was harder to come by then a milkshake in Hades.

  “And of course we’re scavengin’ too,” he went on. “With all them mouths we got to feed at the lodge—well, it’s jist purty much a full time job for damn near ever’body. Way it is for you too, I bet.”

  Stone nodded. “Yeah, that’s the name of the game, all right.”

  “You bet it is.” Baggs was still smiling, but he was also looking through the kitchen door at the Mason jars on the sink, some of which still held food. “And by the looks of things, I’d say you folks been playin’ the game a mite better’n we have.”

  “Yeah, we did find some canned goods here,” Stone said. “You’re welcome to share what’s left.”

  He meant only the small amount in the kitchen, but the old man was too fast for him.

  “Well, we shore do appreciate that. Mighty neighborly of you.” He looked over at the young cowboy. “Oral, why don’t you hep ’em out a bit—check around and see they didn’t miss nothin’. Maybe there’s a cellar.”

  Jagger suddenly started calling for Eddie. “They stealing our food?” he cried. “Huh? Tell me! Tell me!”

  “No one’s stealing anything,” Stone broke in. “We’re sharing it, that’s all.”

  “The hell we are! And who are you to say anyway, Boy Scout?”

  Eddie and Eve both attempted to quiet Jagger, without much success. Stone tried to speak over the ruckus, asking Baggs about the “lodge,” what it was and where it was. Beaming, Baggs explained that it was “jist a little old fishin’ lodge” he had on a lake about three miles away, and over the last couple of months it had been accumulating “old-timey guests and neighbors and pilgrims” at a clip that simply had to stop.

  “Like Spider here,” he said. “He come with this family of Negras whose car jist played out. And Oral, him and his brother Harlan is both with me now. Their daddy was an old friend of mine, with a little old farm outside Spalding. Well, the boys come home one night and find the house and buildins all burned down and their daddy shotgunned and dumped down the privy. So they come with me too.”

  “This Spalding,” Stone asked, “is that near your lodge?”

  “Jist across the lake.”

  “How big?”

  “Couple thousand, it used to be.”

  “They got a doctor there?”

  “Used to. Before the trouble.”

  “What trouble?”

  Baggs shrugged. “Same gang as burned out Oral’s place, I guess. Must’ve been a mess of them. People cleared out and didn’t come back for a coon’s age. They jist now stragglin’ back.”

  “But you don’t know if there’s a doctor?”

  “Cain’t say as I d
o. But there ain’t jist Spalding. There’s also Blackburn about twelve mile up the road. They got three, four doctors there, last I knew. Why? Guess you want one for him, huh?” Baggs nodded toward Jagger, who was silent now.

  “Yeah. They do anyway,” Stone said, meaning Eve and Eddie. “Then I can go my way. So I was wondering—you going back there? Could you show us the way?”

  For a few moments Baggs tried to look dubious, as though he had to give the matter serious thought. Then he gave it up and grinned. “Why the hell not? I could use a change of company. Old Oral and Spider here ain’t all that swift, are you, boys?”

  Neither of them answered.

  After sharing a breakfast of canned applesauce, corn, and tomato juice, they all got ready to leave. Baggs had Oral and Spider bring the rest of the precious Mason jars up out of the cellar and supervised their packing in Eddie’s suitcase, among the few items of clothing that the blacks had not carried off. He also packed the butter churn and most of the kitchenware. Then Oral went out into the woods and returned with two horses, one a sturdy pack-horse already burdened with Baggs’ camping equipment. But the animal stoically accepted the new items as well, everything except Stone’s backpack and gun, which Stone preferred to carry himself.