A Dark Matter (11 page)

It took Howard Bly a moment to realize that the ruined old man was Carl Truax, the Eel’s father. If his clothes were not yet in rags, they were shapeless and filthy with grime, and his whiskery cheeks folded in toward his wet mouth and flickering tongue. He was trying to shout, but his voice rose only to a squashy, wobbling stage whisper.

“Lee, damn you, what you doin’ way the hell over
here?
You’re supposed to be in school!”

In a voice as small and hard as a walnut, the Eel said, “It’s Saturday, you moron.”

Howard Bly could nearly have fainted—such humiliation, such courage!

“I’ll drag you home and slap you silly. I’m your father, father a the famous goddam
Eel
, and I’m goin’ show the
Eel
who’s boss. Leave you black an blue, make you bleed from the ear holes, thass right, you hitch your sorry ass over here and lemme—”

“You’re too drunk to do anything to anybody, Mister, and you’re certainly not going to injure the
Eel
, now or ever again,” Mallon broke in. “Now shut up and either go home or back inside. The choice is up to you.”

The old man skittered toward him, muttering, “Choice is up ta me, fuckin right, you fuckin asshole.” He aimed a wide, looping punch at Mallon’s head, and Mallon easily ducked away. His ruined clothes fluttering about his skinny body, Eel’s father shambled around in a circle, lowered his head, and tried a sloppy one-two combination that came nowhere near his moving target. Keith Hayward was still braying
haw haw haw
.

Mallon dodged another weightless blow and gave the Eel a look of pure handsome perplexity. “I don’t want to hit the guy.”

“Knock him out, I don’t give a shit,” the Eel said.

“Fuck this,” Dilly-O said. He rushed into the fray, came up on the old man from behind, and caught him under the arms. Then he spun him across the sidewalk, shoved him through the yawning door, and propelled him back into the bar.

“First time anyone was ever thrown
into
that place,” said Brett Milstrap.

“You know it? You been to the House of Ko-Reck-Shun?” asked Mallon, keeping an eye on the doorway. Lazy, drunken laughter sounded from the interior.

“Well, once, yeah,” Milstrap said. “I was really drunk, and these guys took me there, and I think somebody maybe tied me up … ?” He closed his mouth and made blackboard-erasing motions with his right hand. “Whoa.”

“Should have gone to Scuzzy’s instead,” said the Eel, demonstrating if not full recovery from the embarrassment at least the desire to tough it out.

“Are you kidding? We
came
from Scuzzy’s.”

“How do you feel, really?” Mallon asked. “If you like, we could take your father home, make sure nothing happens to him.”

“He’ll get home fine by himself. He just won’t remember any of this.”

“You have to be a little shook up,” Mallon said. “Come on.”

“No,
you
come on,” the Eel said. “I want to see our meadow.”

“Then take a look at it.” He swept one arm toward the concrete barriers and the end of the street, making a comedy of presenting all of them with the shimmering swath of grass on which Howard had imagined him reciting ancient Greek.

By turning to look in the direction Mallon was pointing, this enlarged version of the little band was declaring itself, it occurred to Howard, ready for whatever expansions of consciousness might be in the offing. It was brave—brave all the way round. It was amazing, how Mallon managed to stack all these layers in his comedy, his gesture of giving them the meadow. In the Crafts Room, tears spilled from Howard’s eyes as he, too, regarded the dazzling meadow where their lives had submitted to such gorgeous ruin. He saw it whole, and he saw it pure, for in his imagination the meadow had been untouched by everything that had touched
them
.

The meadow before them, that sun-struck meadow in the last moments when it was no more than an irregular field owned by the UW Department of Agriculture …

The agronomy meadow, in effect an enormous and complex grassland, was bounded on two sides by state highways, on its distant far end by a dense wood owned by the forestry department. Near the highway that swooped by far off to their right, a long row of metal devices like sun reflectors had been slanted over little squares of variegated grasses. Immediately behind the shining reflectors stood a line of red wooden boxes with their lids propped open. The shimmering grassy space of the meadow, perhaps twenty square acres altogether, spread out over the ground like an enormous blanket, rising up here and there into little folds and peaks and corrugations, elsewhere disappearing into deeper folds or swales that might have been made by man but long ago had been absorbed into the meadow’s fabric.

“I see why you picked it,” Meredith said.

“Oh? Why did I do that?”

“You tell him, Hootie,” Meredith said, and placed a cool white hand on the back of his sweaty neck. “You and Eel, you’re good at seeing things.”

Hootie cast a sideways glance at the Eel, who was fidgeting with impatience. “Because we could hide in one of those valley things.” He thought about standing in one of the little valleys. “Then you’d have to look up at the hillside, except it’s too low to be a real hillside. You want us to be looking up. Spencer, did you really go to West Point?”

Mallon laughed in surprise. “I did, yes, Hootie, I did. I’m proud to be able to say that.”

“But didn’t you say that you went to the University of California at Santa Cruz?” asked the Eel, now looking indignant instead of impatient. “Where you met the guy who wrote
Love’s Body?”

“Is there some reason we are dicking around like this?” Hayward asked.

“You doubt him?” asked Meredith, so pale that she seemed almost bloodless.

“All these questions,” Mallon said. “Let’s save that spirit for when we can really use it. Don’t waste energy in the doubt game.”

“Why does doubt have to be a game?”

“Eel, don’t you see …” Meredith was unable to speak above a whisper.

Mallon silenced her with a glance. “Doubt undermines good energy. Above all, Eel, you don’t
want
to doubt me. Right now—a moment from now—we are going to walk into this stupendous meadow together, and we must be united, one force, because none of this is going to work unless every element in our chain, down to the
molecular
level, is directed unswervingly at our common goal. We have to be like a
laser
beam, guys—to smash through the consensus perceptual level, that’s what it takes. Do you think you’re here by accident?”

When he looked around at his circle of followers, fixing each one with his stare, Spencer Mallon appeared, if only to Howard Bly, to be a couple of feet taller than anyone else.

“Keith, are you here by some kind of random selection? Brett, are you?”

Hayward shook his head. “Uh uh, no way.”

Milstrap said, “Whatever you say, boss.” Balanced on one leg, his hand on his hip, Milstrap was completely restored to his unpleasant self. Hootie wondered what had gone wrong with him, and how it had been set right so quickly.

“You two, Meredith, and the kids here, you bring us into balance—get it, Eel?”

The Eel swallowed.

“Know what I studied at West Point? Among other things,
chemistry
. This may amaze you, Eel, but at heart I am a scientist. At Santa Cruz, besides philosophy I studied psychology. Also a
science
. Data, data, data—you spend thousands upon thousands of hours doing research with lab animals, and then you interpret your data. The second I heard about the four of you, I knew you’d be perfect for this experiment of ours.

“And now, Eel, if you and your friends are ready, if all of us are ready, we will walk into our meadow and find our perfect valley. I’ll tell you what, prove I’m right—you show
me
where it is.”

With considerably more mockery than the first time, he swept his arm toward the meadow, inviting Eel to demonstrate the perfection of his research methods. This was going to be as much an experiment as those involving the sun reflectors and wooden boxes that marched down the right side of the meadow.

“Hell, I’ll do it,” said Dilly. He strode up to the nearly waist-high concrete barrier that marked the end of Glasshouse Road, swung his shopping bag over the barrier, then slipped over it one leg at a time. Following closely behind him, Boats vaulted over, bag and all.

“Come on, Eel,” said Dill. “Let’s show him where it is.”

Clumsily, the Eel swung over the concrete wall. Even more clumsily, Hootie came after, and while he was brushing concrete dust off his shirt, Mallon leaped atop the barrier, then jumped down, all in one graceful gesture. He extended a hand to Meredith, who settled her blue-jeaned rump on the top of the barrier and swung her legs over in tandem.

Keith Hayward tried to imitate Mallon’s effortless agility. He nearly fell off the barrier, but caught himself in time to jump down. Brett Milstrap went over in the style of Dilly-O, one leg at a time, but less nimbly. He muttered, “Scraped the family jewels.” When Boats and Keith Hayward started to laugh, Hayward cut himself off in mid-bray and glared at the younger boy.

“Let’s show him what we’re here for,” Dill said, ready to start.

He gestured to his friends and led them toward the heart of the meadow. Grasses and wildflowers tangled at their feet. Various shades of green stretched out before them, folding into low berms covered with sprawling, untidy ranks of Queen Anne’s Lace and tiger lilies. The meadow seemed larger once they had entered it. Somewhere in the distance, bees hummed in the motionless air.

Howard glanced at Mallon, following along behind them next to Meredith Bright. His earlier anxiety seemed to have disappeared. He was smiling to himself, and he looked both pleased to be in the meadow with them and genuinely curious to see if, unaided, his youngest followers could locate the site he had chosen. Keith Hayward and Brett Milstrap lounged along eight or nine yards behind, muttering. Hayward caught Hootie’s eye and gave him a glance so smoky, threatening, and resentful that the boy at once whirled around, as if jabbed with a pointed stick.

If he turned around again, Hayward would be staring at him still, and that would be too disturbing—like looking down into a dark body of water and seeing something large and ill defined shifting around in there. He and Dill were right at the front of the little column proceeding through the meadow, which was fine with him. Boats and the Eel came along a couple of feet behind. After a wider gap, Mallon and Meredith Bright walked along ahead of Hayward and Milstrap, who lagged and dallied like disaffected schoolchildren.

Dilly hesitated, and Howard pointed to a clump of tiger lilies that covered the beginning of a fold in the landscape. As the fold continued across the meadow, the vegetation surrounding it grew thicker and more varied—black-eyed Susans, brambles, lupines, and wild roses like tough miniature baseballs.

“Damn it, Hootie, Meredith was right,” Dilly-O told him. “You are really good at seeing things.”

“That’s sort of brumous to me,” Howard replied, “but if you’re looking for someplace where you can be out of sight, this one’s better than the one you were thinking about. Right, Eel?”

“Bingo,” said the Eel.

“I wasn’t thinking about some other place, I was just
thinking,”
said Dill. “You know what I mean, don’t you, Spencer?”

“Go in there and tell me if it’s right,” Spencer said, finessing the question. “Did you say ‘brumous’?”

“Um, hazy,” said Howard Bly, beginning to blush.

Weeds and wildflowers disguised the entire length and height of the swale. From the Glasshouse Road end of the meadow, it appeared to be merely an overgrown ripple in the land. Narrow and shallow where the group entered, it gradually deepened and widened out as they proceeded. When they had come to a point slightly past midway, the grassy wall to their left rose nearly to the top of Howard’s head, and the thick combination of grasses and weeds growing all along the soft ridge concealed them all. To their right, the opposite ridge had sunken into a low, concave rill of land where the grasses had burned brown. The cars speeding along the distant highway were moving dots of color.

The Eel and Dill looked up at Mallon. He was glowing like a torch.

“Once we get in there,” he said, “we might just change the world.”