Hymn (4 page)

He shook his head in exasperation. ‘What I can't understand is why they all look so frigging happy about it.'

‘It sure seems kind of unusual,' Ric agreed.

‘Unusual? I'd call it frigging unreal. I mean, think about it. A busload of people get themselves driven out to the desert. Very nice, very scenic. Then they get burned to death with happy smiles on their faces and without making the slightest attempt to escape. That, my friend, is what I personally define as a problem I could do without. A question which may be susceptible to solution, but to which I don't care to know the answer.'

They were still waiting for the first helicopters to come into sight when Ric noticed something shifting at the top of the ridge, something tawny-brown, maybe a dog or a coyote. He nodded to Jim Griglak and said, ‘Did you see that?'

Jim Griglak shaded his eyes with his hand.

‘I can't see nothing.'

‘Top of the ridge—there, to the left.'

They glimpsed something of what looked like a shoulder, then an arm. ‘Goddamn it, there's somebody up there!' Jim Griglak exclaimed, and then yelled out, ‘Hey! Hey up there! You come on down here! Do you hear me? You come right down here!'

A dark head bobbed just above the horizon, then ducked away.

‘Goddamn it,' Jim cursed. ‘Goddamn it to hell!' He hitched up his gunbelt, and began to trundle around the burned-out bus and up the slope. Ric started after him, but without turning his head, Jim waved him away. ‘You stay there . . . guard the bus. I'll get this bastard.'

Ric watched him as he scaled the dusty, heat-dazzled rocks. His arms pumped, his trousers flapped, his saddlebags bounced with every stride, but he clambered up to the top of the ridge with awesome agility, and disappeared from view.

Ric turned his head. He could see the first helicopter now, its canopy reflecting a sharp star of sunlight as it came skimming low and fast over the desert hills.

Ric blinked, and grimaced, and looked around him in deep uncertainty. The helicopter was landing now, and lashing up smoke and dust and fragments of blackened fabric. The hair of the half-burned Hispanic girl flew up over her head like a fright-wig. She seemed to be laughing. A blizzard of ash suddenly burst from the busdriver's face, and was swept away in the downdraught.

As the helicopter's rotors were whip-whistling to a standstill, Jim reappeared on the crest of the ridge. At first he looked as if he were alone, but when he moved aside, Ric saw that he was prodding in front of him an Indian boy of about twelve. The boy came down the slope crabwise, clutching at the rocks. He had long greasy black hair, circular grannie Ray-Bans and a red bandana around his forehead. He was dressed in a grubby Elvis Presley T-shirt and yellow-and-purple bermudas.

‘Hey, Sergeant!' called Ric.

‘Yeah, look what I found,' Jim called back. He nudged the boy down the slope and around the wreck of the bus.

Two lean young highway patrolmen climbed out of the helicopter and came walking slowly across toward them, staring at the bus in disbelief.

‘Jesus,' said one of them, wiping the sweat from his face with his neckscarf. ‘What the hell happened here?'

‘I was hoping Geronimo here might be able to tell us,' Jim replied. ‘What's your name, son? Were you here when this bus went up?'

The boy said, ‘Sure, man, I was here.' He kept nodding, and turning his head around as if he were high.

‘Did you see what happened?'

‘No way, man. Didn't see nothing.'

‘The bus was burning and you were here and you didn't see nothing?'

‘That's what I said, man.'

Jim said harshly, ‘Will you stop calling me “man”, for Christ's sake.'

‘Sorry, man.'

‘What's your name, son?'

‘Tony.' Again that odd distracted head-nodding.

‘Tony who?'

‘Tony Express.'

‘Tony Express? Who the hell are you trying to kid?'

‘I'm not trying to kid nobody, man. That's what everybody calls me. I guess it's kind of a joke. My Indian name is Child-Who-Looked-At-The-Sun.'

‘Child-Who-Looked-At-The-Sun, hey?' asked Ric. ‘That's some kind of fancy name.'

Jim said, ‘Where do you live, Tony? And what the hell are you doing out here in any case?'

‘I live here, man,' Tony told him. ‘Well, just back over the ridge a'ways. My pa runs that Indian souvenir stand next to the 76 gas station.'

‘And you were here when the bus burned?' asked one of the helicopter patrolmen, vigorously chewing sugarfree gum.

Tony nodded. ‘Sure. I was right on top of the ridge.'

‘So how come you didn't see nothing?' asked the patrolman.

Tony took off his Ray-Bans. Underneath, his eyes were milky and swivelling, and blind as marbles. ‘I was born this way, man,' he explained. ‘Child-Who-Looked-At-The-Sun, get it?'

‘Oh, shit,' swore Jim Griglak. He stood with his fists on his hips and shook his head over and over as if he were never going to stop. ‘For Christ's sake. The luck of the frigging Griglaks.'

Ric said, ‘Tony, listen, even if you couldn't see anything, maybe you heard something? Voices, footsteps? Anything at all?'

‘Come on, Munoz, what's the frigging use?' Jim demanded.

‘Hey, come on,' Ric told him. ‘Blind people are supposed to have this really acute sense of hearing. Like they can hear dog-whistles and stuff.'

‘Man, I didn't hear no dog-whistles, man,' Tony replied. He replaced his Ray-Bans and stood scratching the dry skin on his elbows and staring at nothing at all.

‘What did I tell you?' Jim complained. ‘The luck of the frigging Griglaks.'

Two more helicopters were circling, and it was hard to hear what anybody was saying. But Tony suddenly said, ‘I heard the bus leaving the road, and coming this way. And I heard somebody talking, too.'

‘You heard somebody talking? What did they say?'

‘I was way back in the rocks, there. I couldn't hear too good.'

‘Was it a man or a woman?' asked Ric.

‘It was a guy. He sounded old, man, know what I mean? Kind of croaky. He was talking but I couldn't understand what he was saying.'

‘You didn't catch anything at all?' asked Ric, raising his voice above the flackering of helicopters.

Tony said, ‘Unh-hunh. Only one thing, maybe. He kept saying, “You knew us”. Real loud. “You knew us”.'

‘”You knew us”? Any idea what he meant?'

‘I don't know, man. Some old guy stands in the desert saying, “you knew us”, how am I supposed to know what he means?'

‘Was this before or after the bus burned?' asked the gum-chewing patrolman.

‘It was before, and it was during, too. Like, while it was burning, he kept saying it, “you knew us”.'

‘How come he didn't see you, this old guy?' Jim wanted to know.

‘I was in the rocks, man, way back there, over there. My pa wanted me to mind the store, see, but I didn't want to mind the store, so I came out to listen to my Walkman, man, and have a smoke. When I first heard the bus, I thought maybe I should come out. Sometimes the marks give you money to have your picture took.'

‘But you didn't come out?' Ric asked him.

Tony Express hesitated. Then he said, ‘No.'

‘Why?' Ric coaxed him. ‘Was it something you heard? Something somebody said?'

‘I don't know, man. I just had this weird feeling that something weird was going down.'

‘Jesus, the frigging articulate youth of today,' said Jim. Then, ‘Okay, Tony, that'll do it for now. Somebody'll want to talk to you later. You live right by the gas station, that it?'

‘Indian Jack's Genuine Pechanga Souvenirs.'

‘Sure, made in Taiwan.'

‘You need any help getting back?' asked Ric.

Tony Express shook his head. ‘I may be blind, man, but I'm not stupid.'

‘I bet you fall ass over tit down the first arroyo you come to,' Jim Griglak retaliated.

But they all knew that he wouldn't. They watched him climb without hesitation back up the ridge again, and disappear from sight. A weaving black silhouette, then nothing but ink-blue sky.

‘Look at him go,' said one of the patrolmen, impressed. ‘He's blind and look at him go.'

‘They're all the same,' Jim answered, aggressively. ‘The deaf and the dumb, the blind and the lame. They all think they're God's gift. If only they knew what a pain in the ass they really are.'

The highway patrolmen exchanged a quick, encyclopaedic glance. Everybody on the force knew that Jim Griglak was awkward and prejudiced and mean as a sackful of polecats. They also knew that it wasn't worth arguing with him, not unless you wanted months and months of aggression and sarcasm and practical jokes. He was a paradox, but maybe you had to be a paradox to be a really good policeman. Maybe a mild variety of fascism was one of the basic requirements for the job.

One of the patrolmen turned around to the burned-out bus and said, ‘So what do you think went down here, Jim? You have to admit that it's pretty weird.'

‘How the hell should I know what happened?' Jim snapped at him. ‘But something sure stinks around here, and it ain't just these human hamburgers.'

They shuffled their boots in the white uncompromising Anza Borrego dust, and waited for the far-off scribbling of sirens.

At almost the same moment that the first highway patrol helicopter landed next to the burned-out bus, Lloyd stepped out of the mortuary at San Diego police headquarters. He turned momentarily toward his BMW, parked alongside three blue-and-white patrol cars with To Serve And Protect emblazoned on their doors, but decided against it. He was too shaken to think about driving. He had to walk. Under a furnace-like blue sky, he crossed the street, and started threading his way northward along the Embarcadero, his shirt sticking to his back, his eyes stung with sweat and tears.

He had never seen a dead body before. Not even a peaceful, unmarked, cosmetically prepared dead body. Celia's had been horrendous, blackened and reeking of petrol, raw. Her tendons had been tightened by the heat of her immolation, and she had been crouched in her grey-green body-bag like some terrible huge incinerated embryo. But he had known as soon as the zipper began to slide down that it was her. He had recognized her, he had recognized her. He had nodded desperately, swallowed, turned away, blinked back tears, while his mouth had suddenly filled up with hot orange-juice, regurgitated from breakfast. Sergeant Houk had taken him by the elbow and steered him out into the corridor.

‘I just want you to know that we're all real sorry about this, Mr Denman.'

Lloyd had been unable to speak. Sorry? How could a word like ‘sorry' apply to such an horrific invasion of his whole existence, his happiness, his sanity, everything that he had invested in the future? He felt as if all he could do was to walk and walk and walk under the grilling midmorning sun, until he finally collapsed from exhaustion and grief, and lay on the ground, where he wouldn't have to focus on anything larger than a few grains of earth.

As usual on a summer's morning, the harbourside was crowded with sightseers. Lloyd walked through them as if he were a half-drowned man walking up a beach. He jarred his shoulder against a fat woman in a pink T-shirt emblazoned with a cartoon drawing of three macho surfers and the legend San Diego—No Wimps. ‘Well, pardon me,' she snarled at him.

He passed the dark wooden hull of the Star of India, one of the historic old sailing-ships moored along the Embarcadero. There was a strong aroma on the breeze of old timber, coconut Coppertone and cotton candy. He side-stepped a crowd of Japanese tourists who were clustered around the gangplank, endlessly taking each other's photographs. It was then that he heard somebody calling his name.

Lloyd! Lloyd! A voice as small as a hornet in a sealed glass jar. Tiny, desperate.

He looked around him; then up at the sides of the ship. Tourists filed around the upper decks, talking and pointing and staring around them in a way that suddenly struck Lloyd as particularly odd, as if they were expecting something momentous to appear. But what? A magnetic storm? A sea-serpent? A flying saucer from outer space?

There was a strange tightness in the air. He couldn't understand it. Maybe it was just him. He was reminded of the atmosphere in those 1950s science-fiction movies, Them and This Island Earth.

He was about to carry on walking along the Embarcadero when he glimpsed a girl high up on deck, close to the Star of India's bow. She was wearing a yellow-silk headscarf and dark upswept sunglasses, and a white raincoat with the collar turned up. Lloyd's attention wasn't only caught by the incongruity of the girl's clothing, on a hot June day. There was something else, too. Something disturbingly familiar about her. Something in the way she turned her head that reminded him of Celia.

He hesitated. Of course it couldn't be Celia. He had just seen Celia lying raw-burned-dead in the San Diego police mortuary. But at the same time he couldn't carry on walking without taking a closer look at her. Just to make absolutely sure.

Absolutely sure of what, Lloyd? That you're not hallucinating? That you're not going out of your mind? Or absolutely sure that things couldn't conceivably be different; that life couldn't possibly have different endings, different manifestations, different destinies?

He remembered his grandfather telling him, after his grandmother's funeral: ‘It isn't the dead that haunt the world, it's the people they leave behind.'

Apologetically shoving his way through the crowd, he made his way up the Star of India's gangplank. He paid for a tour and waited impatiently while a simulated salt in a Popeye's-pappy hat gave him a ticket and told him to have a good day. ‘And don't forget to look at the whaling exhibition. Harpoons and scrimshaw.'

Scrimshaw. Like the superstitious baseball player, Turkey Mike Donlin, Lloyd felt that he had seen the barrels. He hurried forward, through light and shade, through the criss-cross pattern of rigging.

The foredeck was deserted, except for a family of father, mother and daughter, all wearing mirror sunglasses. They turned away from the rail and stared at Lloyd as he approached them, and Lloyd saw himself cross to the other side of the deck six times over, in miniature, in their bright and meaningless lenses.

He returned to the shadows. A sandy-haired man passed him by, telling his wife, ‘It's no damned good, you know. It never was any damned good and it never will be any damned good.'

Ahead of him, around the side of the Star of India's wheelhouse, he thought he glimpsed the skirts of a white raincoat. He pushed his way more urgently along the crowded deck. The planking echoed under his white leather-soled Gucci loafers.

Lloyd, he heard her whisper. Lloyd. Or maybe it was nothing but the kerfuffle of wind in the rigging, or the slap of water on the hull of a passing motorboat, or a gull mewling as it turned its feathers to the morning sun.

He searched twice around the upper deck, but the girl in the yellow-silk headscarf had gone. He hesitated for a while, looking this way and that, biting his lip. Then he went slowly down the companionway to the lower deck, where it was gloomier and cooler. In illuminated glass cabinets, charts and knots and compasses were neatly displayed, along with antique carvings and scrimshaw. The lower deck was almost as crowded as the upper, and Lloyd had to edge his way through the tourists with a repetitious litany of ‘Pardon me, thank you; pardon me, thank you . . .' until he reached the souvenir counter.

There he stopped, and stretched himself up so that he could see better, and meticulously scanned everybody around him. The girl behind the counter watched him for a while. She was freckled and blonde and busty, with a striped nautical-style T-shirt and a peaked cap with a gilt Star of India badge.

‘May I help you, sir?' she asked him.

He turned around. ‘I was looking for a girl.'

‘Any special girl or will any girl do?'

Lloyd was too abstracted to understand. ‘She was wearing a white raincoat and a headscarf and dark glasses.'

The girl behind the counter widened her eyes. ‘She was wearing a raincoat?'

Lloyd kept on looking around. ‘A white raincoat and a yellow headscarf.'

The girl watched him for a little longer. ‘You sure you're okay?'

‘I'm fine, I'm okay.'

‘Well, if you don't mind my saying so, you look pretty upset.'

Lloyd frowned at her. He didn't quite know what to say. ‘Look,' he said, reaching into his back trouser pocket, and taking out his wallet, ‘Here's my card . . . if you ever see a girl looking like that . . . if she buys anything here . . . maybe you could let me know. Maybe note down her name from her credit card.'

The girl peered at Lloyd's restaurant card. ‘I can't see too well without my glasses.'

‘Denman's Original Fish Depot, up at La Jolla.'

‘Oh, sure, we drove past it once,' the girl nodded, with Betty Boopish enthusiasm. ‘And that's you? You're the Original Fish Depot?'

‘I'm Denman.'

‘Hi, I'm Lawreign. That's “law” like LA Law and “reign” like queen.'

‘Nice name,' said Lloyd, still looking around for any sign of the girl who had looked so much like Celia. ‘Unusual spelling.'

‘Oh, my daddy never went past third grade. Neither did I. I didn't want to make him feel that I was like superior or something.'

‘You're a big-hearted young lady.'

‘Well, thank you, noble sir. Compliment accepted.'

At that instant, however, Lloyd thought he saw that yellow headscarf, a flicker as bright and as fleeting as a gale-blown sunflower behind a yard fence. Immediately he pushed his way through the crowds around the souvenir counter, and made for the exit.

Damn it, there she is again! That scarf that raincoat, halfway down the ramp!

‘Hey-y-y!' called Lawreign.

He struggled past the huge hard unyielding belly of a black Marine, then found himself scrambling through a bespectacled and camera-thrusting crowd of chattering Japanese. He had almost made the top of the gangplank when a frail old woman in a straw hat and a flowery dress stepped out in front of him, her sun-measled hand reaching for the rail and obstructing his pursuit as effectively as a three-car roadblock. He was powerless to do anything but follow behind her as she made her slow and painful progress down the gangplank, and the girl who had looked so much like Celia disappeared into the throng of tourists on the Embarcadero below.

He thought he had lost her completely. But then he glimpsed that sunflower scarf flashing through the crowd. She had reached the kerb, and was just about to cross the road.

‘Celia!' he yelled at her. ‘Celia!' Even though it couldn't be Celia, even though all of this running after her was total madness. It was nothing but exhaustion, and hysteria, and devastating grief.

But just before she crossed the street, she turned, and stared at him, and even though she was wearing those black upswept sunglasses he was convinced with a shiver that stopped him right where he was, unable to remember how to run, unable to remember which foot to lift or how his ankles worked. He was convinced that she was Celia.

‘Celia,' he said, out loud. People bumped and jostled against him, laughing, as if they were all in on the joke and he wasn't. C-E-L-I-A he shouted, so loudly that he stunned himself. Faces turned, somebody said, ‘What, is he crazy or something?' Then he was quarterbacking across the sidewalk, colliding, bumping, and all the time that flicker of yellow danced in front of him, just out of reach.

He started to cross the street, but stepped right in front of a Federal Express van, which bucked to a halt, both sliding doors slamming shut. Its bespectacled black driver indignantly blared the horn at him.

‘What the hell are you trying to do, asshole, meet your goddamned Maker?'

Lloyd lifted both hands in apology. The van drove off, but by the time it had passed in front of him, there was no sign of that tantalizing glimpse of yellow. He searched quickly left and right, taking two steps hesitantly forward when he caught sight of a dancing lick of yellow amidst the crowds. But the dancing lick of yellow turned out to be a child's balloon, and the girl in the raincoat had gone.

He felt as if he could drop to his knees on the sidewalk, struck deaf and dumb by sheer illogicality. He was so sure that the girl in the raincoat had been Celia. But how could it, when Celia was dead and burned in the San Diego police mortuary?

He was still standing on the kerb when a dusty saddle-brown Buick drew up in front of him, and parked. Sergeant Houk climbed out, wearing a sweaty-looking drip-dry shirt and a narrow brown necktie.

‘Mr Denman? I was hoping I'd catch up with you. Don't forget that fancy automobile of yours. Our captain's been giving it the eye all morning. Reckons it's his kind of car.'

Lloyd unhooked his sunglasses. ‘I'm sorry. I was going right back to collect it. I just had to take a walk, that's all. Breath of fresh air.'

‘Sure, I understand,' said Sergeant Houk, sniffing. ‘What you had to do today—well, I wouldn't ever try to pretend that there's anything easy about it.'

Lloyd said, ‘You know something . . . Celia loved life so much. She enjoyed everything she did, from morning till night. She was so damned happy. I can't think of one single reason why she should have . . .'

Sergeant Houk sniffed again, and looked around him. ‘There's no grass here, no pollen. I'm seriously beginning to think that I must be allergic to tourists.'

Lloyd said, ‘I called the Miyako. She never even checked in. So far as I can make out, the lecture tour was all a lie.'

‘We know that,' Sergeant Houk nodded. ‘What we don't yet know is when she came back to San Diego from San Francisco, and how or why. She didn't use the return half of her airline ticket, we know that much.'

He squinted at Lloyd against the sunshine. You'll pardon me for asking, maybe it's a bad time, but she wouldn't have had any close men-friends? What I mean is, apart from you?'

Lloyd shook his head, and let out a funny blurting noise that was nearly a laugh. ‘No,' he mouthed. ‘She didn't have any close man-friends. That's if you mean by close what I think you mean by close.'

‘How about you? Did you have any extra-curricular friendships? Anything which might have upset her? You see, you'll forgive me for asking, but these self-immolations, they're almost invariably motivated either by wacky political grievances, like the U.S. invasion of Outer Weirdolia or saving the purple-spotted parakeet, or else they're about personal relationships.'

He paused, and cleared his throat, and then continued, ‘People who torch themselves . . . well, I've seen people on fire, and that ain't the way that I want to go. No, sir. But I was talking to our psychologist this morning and she was saying that they do it to kind of purify themselves. Almost like they're disinfecting themselves of all the infections they think the rest of us are crawling with.'

‘I'm not too sure I understand that,' Lloyd admitted, although he was only half listening.

‘Well, I wanted you to think about it, Mr Denman, because any kind of clue to your fiancée's state of mind could possibly be helpful.'