Hystopia: A Novel (26 page)

“The name’s Merle,” he said, bowing slightly. “The gang members, the wayward failed enfolds, whatever you call them down there, catch the scent of the smoke and know I’m working metal. That lures them in here and I do some work on their choppers and gain some trust. I was a biker myself, before the Corps got ahold of me, so to speak. I enjoy orderly flames after seeing so much fire that wasn’t controlled, so to speak.”

He lifted up his shirt to show a scar that flared out from his belly. (A burn scar, Singleton thought. If I were looking for conspiracy I’d say we’re linked.)

“This doesn’t look like much, but it produces brilliant heat,” he said. He pumped the bellows and stuck a poker in and shifted the coals.

Singleton would put in the report that the fire hurt their eyes because the zip pills made light too light. We were standing there blinking, trying to see in the brightness.

“I’d do some work for you. It’s wrong to betray a hot fire by not using it. I mean that’s the way I look at it. Out of respect for fire you’ve got to use it whenever it’s hot,” he said, leaning down and blowing on the coals.

“We’re not here to watch you work,” Singleton said. “And I’m sure the fire wouldn’t mind if you let it alone for a while.”

“The fire minds what it wants to mind. That’s why it’s a fire.”

“Well, then it won’t mind if we don’t mind it for a few minutes while you explain what the hell is going on here,” Singleton said. The man stood back and held himself straight for a moment as if pondering not only fire itself but all of the rest of the elemental aspects of the world.

“It might mind, but you wouldn’t know it,” he said.

“Well, then you can say we didn’t know. You can blame it on us.”

“I guess you might be right. You knew the password for the week, and you’re both blinking like you’re on zip pills. Klein sent a courier a few months ago who said someone might be coming, but the date and time were to be determined later. Said there was a possibility of two agents—trainees—something like that. I don’t pay a hell of a lot of attention to what’s going on down there. Too busy.”

“Did Klein give you a message?”

“I believe it was someone named Klein. Never caught his first name.”

“Klein in Status.”

“You know I can’t confirm that. Have to limit the information flow. Just leave it at that. I knew you two were coming.”

“But you said it was Klein?”

“Did I say that?”

“Yes.”

“You’re hearing the zip pills. I said no such thing.” The man ran his palm across his forehead, leaving a smear of char, or ash. “Before I take you in there to see what you saw when you looked through the window, I’d like to say a few things. I’m afraid you might not be so happy when I throw the light switch. It might present itself to be a mite bit, how should I put it? Visceral. Mean to say, it might not cast the best light on me as upholding the standard of the Corps, the Credo and all that, but let me say that you’ve got to push some of these folks as close as you can to the edge but not over before they’ll give up any information, and I’ve got a logbook of data that will likely prove useful to you. For example, if you tell me who you’re looking for, if he isn’t hanging up out there, I might be able to provide you with information, because anything that’s going on in these parts, from here to north of the Hudson Bay, is in the logbook,” he said. “If it isn’t in the book, it hasn’t happened yet, or I just haven’t had a chance to catch and interrogate the targets, although, if I do say so myself, eventually most of the failed enfolds, the waywards, will find their way here, because there’s something about the stench of a forge that lures them in. They long for the days when hot metal was worked—by their fathers down in the mills in Gary, or Flint, or Akron.”

He went to the bench and pulled out a leather-bound journal. “Now tell me who you’re looking for and I’ll see if I can find a name that rings a bell and then we can go up front and I’ll show you around.”

In his report he’d have to play up the effects of the zip pill. The intense light and shadows and the stink not only of metal and fire but of flesh, of burning flesh. He’d leave out that he had been aware of a moral perplexity that he was trying to decide, standing there, whether the Credo allowed him to use whatever information the man named Merle might give them. In theory they should have arrested the man and taken him back to Corps headquarters. Terminated the mission and taken him back to Klein.
Singleton looked at Wendy. She gave a curt nod and pointed to the book on the bench.

In the report he’d say they went around to the forge first, knocked the code knock, gave the passphrase, and were given information. Or maybe he’d explain that they’d had to withhold judgment lest it compromise their ability to use the information he provided.

“We’re looking for a man named Rake,” Wendy said. “That’s about all we’re authorized to tell you. He’s up in these parts.”

“Rings a bell.” Merle opened the book, wetted his index finger, and flipped pages. Fountain pen ink light and faded in the early pages grew darker as he fingered his way through the months. He snorted and leaned both elbows on the workbench. Everything about him was ponderous and strange.

“I’ve had about fifty men in here and most of them were willing to give me information as long as I worked carefully and didn’t allow them to cross too quickly, as long as I kept some semblance of hope in the air along with the edge of oblivion, if you know what I mean. The French have a better word for the fine work I do, he said. They might use this word
termine
, which means not only the end but to get through. One of the Canuck guys told me that just before he himself terminated.”

“Just find some information on Rake,” Singleton said.

“Like I said, the name Rake rings a bell and I’m sure there’s something of use in here. It was just a week or two ago.” He flipped to the last few pages. “Ah, well now, here it is. Here’s the bell ringer. Had a man named Udall here and gave him the treatment and he knew about some action, a man named Rake and his partner Hank running a camp somewhere in the Upper Peninsula, a few miles east of a place called Grand Marais.” He ran his finger along the page. “Said you find the Harbor of Refuge and locate a place called Lonesome Point and then take Sandy Lane all the way to the end. That was all he said before he reached termination.” He turned to the forge and pumped the bellows. “All’s well that ends with information. You put an end to something the way you have to dip the metal in the sand and harden it. All bad things come to a hardened state.”

“Did he say anything else?” Singleton said.

“That’s it. Location and then he gave a grunt and died the death of a man who grunts and dies.”

The man walked back to the bench and closed the book and put it back. Then he pumped the bellows again, tweezed a bar of metal, thrust it in a shower of sparks. When it was red hot he held it up to his lips and spoke into it the way you’d speak into a microphone. “I’m talking into the heat. I’m telling you that you’d better be sure to let those suits down in Flint know that these lips gave you the tip that helped you out—that is, if you live to tell them about it.”

He jabbed the air with the hot bar, waving it wildly.

Singleton took the gun from his waistband and aimed it at the man’s head. “Put that down and show us to the front room,” he said.

“You put that gun down and I’ll put this down.”

“Just lead the way,” Singleton said. “I’m not going to put this down.”

“It’s not right to heat up a bar and not work it,” the man said. “You betray the metal by not working it.”

“Just show us to the front,” Singleton said.

“You folks don’t need to see any more of what you’ve already seen up there,” he said. “You got what you need and now you should be on your way. It won’t do you any good seeing it in full light.”

“Take us to the front,” Singleton said.

“Well, all right.” Merle put the metal bar onto the bench and then led them through the kitchen to the front room. He threw the light switch and moved in among the bodies, nudging them with his palm as he passed. Two of the bodies were leathery, dark blue, clearly dead. Two were seemingly still alive, swaying with a gyroscopic stability. The status of the other two was uncertain. (The breeze lifted the curtains—pale blue—twisting into the room.) Singleton would never be able to put this in his report. Great care had been taken in the securing of wrists.

“You see, all torture seen by the nonparticipant is about creating a spot where death can appear but not appear completely. You want to get ’em as close as possible but not right over the edge. Too far, and you get the natural painkillers going. Not far enough, you get the spirit and will in the way, and then you’re in trouble.”

“Too far, not far enough?” Singleton said. “That’s insane.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter to me what you think. That one there gave me the location on Rake.” He gave a body a tap with his boot and watched it swing. “I pushed him as far as I could and then pushed him a little further, but not too far. You want them moribund. That’s the word. You want to keep them in a fresh moribund state. You push ’em too far, they just want to die right there. You’ve got to hold out some hope. You’ve got to mix it up. I’m a worker of metal, you see, so I understand just how far you can push it and how hot things have to be to bend.”

“Cut them down,” Singleton said. “Get a ladder in here and start cutting them down.”

“No need for the gun. I’ve got them rigged so I can just ease them down. I’ll do it as soon as you leave. And feel free to call in a report to headquarters, if it hasn’t burned to the ground. Most likely, it’s gone with the rest of Flint. Those folks know damn well what I’ve been doing up here.”

“No, now. Take them down,” Singleton said.

Wendy kept her eyes averted, cupping her hands and looked out the window into the darkness as Merle got all the bodies down—each one quietly, the ropes slipping through well-oiled grooves—and they lay crumpled, all in unnaturally easeful positions. Singleton now had his gun against the old man’s head, pressing it tight to his temple, as he told to him stand still while Wendy tied him up.

“I’m not going to tie him up,” she said, softly. “I want to get the fuck out of here and get on with the mission.”

The zip pills were wearing thin and everything had a stark, newfound clarity; the grappling hooks in the ceiling and the pulleys—and the old man, his face tight-scrunched, eyeing the gun fearlessly, staring right into it, only a few feet from Singleton, who held it out straight, his arm shaking slightly, his lips set firm, his legs apart, too, in a manner that seemed to indicate that he was resisting all temptation, and he was.

“I should shoot you right here. Save you a trial. A court-martial.”

The old man guffawed and then, in a swift swing of his head, spat to the side. “You two are the ones who are going to be up on charges. I know that for a fact. Nobody ordered you up here. If you were supposed to come to me, I would’ve been informed.”

“He’s right,” Wendy said. “This is a problem for headquarters, not us.”

“Listen to her, son. You walk out that front door and go ahead with your mission and leave me to be the man with the burden of having to push it to the limit to get what you needed in the first place. You walk out that door and don’t turn back around and I’ll go back to working with my hands. You work with your minds—whatever they call it, that intuitive nonsense—and I go forward in the old traditions. The wonders of the blocks and tackle, the usefulness of know-how.”

“Let’s go,” Wendy said.

“Listen to the lady,” the man named Merle said.

Singleton put the gun back in his waistband and spread his arms as if to say, OK, fuck it. It’s all yours.

“Nothing personal,” the man said. He had the door open and motioned them into the night air. They ran to the car through air sweet with pine and dew-wet grass. If Singleton wrote the report he’d say they left the house at gunpoint, the man unhinged by the dictates of his own mission. He could then discourse on the immorality of certain operations, the way things were actually done in the field in contrast to the vision that Kennedy had set forth.

*   *   *

A few miles down the road he stopped and Wendy stumbled out of the car, staying to the edge of the headlight beam, bowing down and vomiting into the gravel. When she got back in the car she said it wasn’t so much the bodies, or the stench, or the old man, or even the fact that they were in deep shit—officially AWOL, as the old man had indicated—that made her sick but something else, something she couldn’t pin down exactly, although it might’ve been the zip pills wearing thin. (Should we have another? Pop one more? It’s a great high.)

“No,” he said.

“No, what? No, we’re not AWOL.”

“No to more zip pills. No more drugs. We’re going to find a spot to park and hunker down for the night, get some rest, hit the road tomorrow fresh.”

Leaves were shimmering on both sides of the road, fresh and living leaves, frosted with moonlight.

He followed the road as it cut toward the shore.

“If I have to write a report, and I mean honestly do it, maybe under closely monitored treatment with further Tripizoid because who knows what the Corps can do to an AWOL agent, I want to be able to say we ran away from the safe house before we could look around, forgot the passphrase, something like that, and then we parked to rest, following procedure.” He stopped himself. What she didn’t know couldn’t be used against him in an interrogation.

“What? What were you going to say?” she said.

“Nothing. It’s beautiful here. This might be the place.”

They’d entered a small state park and were following a dirt road through a grove of quaking aspens.

“Whatever happens when we find Rake, the Corps is going to write up a report, either in response to our dead bodies or because we nailed the target, and if they interview me I’m going to claim that I had a vision right here, in this location, and that the vision told me where Rake was. I’m going to skip the safe house altogether. I’ll say you fucked me into unfolding Rake’s location, something like that.”