Life During Wartime (28 page)

‘I love to watch the first time,’ said Coffee. ‘God, I love it!’

Mingolla felt disdain for Coffee, and his disdain manifested in a rich, nutsy laugh.

‘Feel like you lookin’ down from the mountaintop, don’tcha? Don’t you trust that feelin’, David. Don’t figger on runnin’ off or takin’ me out.’ Coffee grabbed Mingolla’s shirt, pulled him face to face. ‘I been up in Emerald for two years now, and I can tell when a fly takes a shit. Far as you concerned, I’m lord of the fuckin’ jungle!’ He released Mingolla with a shove. ‘Awright, let’s go.’

‘Where we going?’ Mingolla asked.

‘Questions?’ Coffee went face to face with him again, and madness seemed to be flying out of his enlarged pupils, a vibration beating around Mingolla’s head. ‘Y’don’t ask questions, y’do what ya told.’ Coffee relaxed, grinned. ‘But since you new, I’ll tell ya. We goin’ to the light of judgment, gonna decide whether or not y’run with the pack.’ He shouldered his rifle. ‘Hope that eases your mind.’

The man holding Mingolla’s rope gave it a jerk, and he fetched up against Garrido’s hammock; he recoiled from it, and the man said, ‘Ain’tcha never seen a dead beaner?’

A chemical fury was building in Mingolla, a furious perception of new involvements of honor and character. He wrenched the rope loose from the man’s grip, and when the man jabbed at him with his rifle, he brushed the rifle aside and, moving with uncommon swiftness, kicked the man’s legs out from under him. ‘I’ll kill your ass!’ he said. ‘Touch me again, I’ll kill your ass quick!’

‘My, my,’ said Coffee from behind him. ‘’Pears we gotta tiger by the tail.’ His tone was mirthful, sardonic, but when Mingolla turned, he saw in the configuration of Coffee’s grin a kind of harsh appraisal, and realized he had made a mistake.

*

Every half-hour as they walked, the men beside Mingolla would pop ampules under his nose, and the inside of his head came to feel heavy with violent urges, as if his thoughts had congealed into a lump of mental plastique. He tried to influence the men, using all his power, but without success. Even had influence been an ordinary problem, his concentration was not what it should have been. The roughness of the terrain commanded a measure of his attention, and the generic mystic-warrior personality supplied by the drug tended to decry the concept of influence as lacking in honor. Rather than continuing his efforts, he concocted intricate escape plans with bloody resolutions. The sharpness of his senses was confusing – he spent a good deal of time identifying odors and sounds – and the initial burn of the drug was of such intensity, he became convinced that many of his perceptions were hallucinations. He had trouble believing, for instance, that the drumbeat issuing from his chest was his heartbeat; nor could he accept that the high-pitched whistlings in his ears were the cries of the bats that flashed like Halloween cutouts through the moonbeams. And so when he first sensed Debora’s presence, he disregarded it. But the impression remained strong, and once, straining toward the darkness from which the impression seemed to derive, he was positive that he had brushed the borders of her mind, feeling the telltale arousal of electrical contact, and feeling also a mental coloration that – though he’d had no previous experience of it, at least on a conscious level – he recognized as hers. After that one contact she either blocked or moved beyond range. What was she doing? he asked himself. Tracking him? If so, did she know his assignment? Then why hadn’t she ambushed him? Maybe, he thought, she had never been there at all.

They came to a large circular clearing overgrown with ferns, ringed by giant figs and mahogany trees: the canopy here was less dense, and the clearing had the look of an aquarium bowl filled with pale milky fluid at the bottom of which strange feathered creatures were stirring in a feeble current. Man-shaped objects were affixed to the tree trunks, but the dimness masked their exact nature. Mingolla was thrown onto the ground and left in the care of a single guard, while the rest – fifteen in all – sat down in the
middle of the clearing. The guard forced two more ampules on Mingolla, and he lay on his back in a silent fury, working at the ropes. The subdued voices of the men, the insects, and the soft wind fused into a hushed clutter of sound, and it increased his fury to think that he should be subject to any judgment conceived in this muddled place.

‘Ain’t gon’ do ya no good to slip them ropes,’ said the guard. ‘We just run ya down.’ He was a balding man with a full reddish brown beard and a triangular piece of mirror hung around his neck. ‘Naw, ol’ Sarge ain’t gon’ let ya ’scape. He been waitin’ onna sign for a long time, and ’pears to me you it.’

Mingolla redoubled his efforts. ‘Maybe I ain’t the sign he’s been expecting.’

The guard laughed derisively. ‘Sarge don’t ’spect nothin’. He just reads ’em when they come. Ain’t nobody better’n Sarge at readin’ sign.’

‘I am,’ said Mingolla, hoping to play on the guard’s delusions. ‘That’s why I’ve come … to instruct, to give direction.’

The guard laughed again, but shakily; he lifted his piece of mirror and reflected moonlight into his face.

Mingolla had just begun to make headway with the ropes when Coffee walked over, dismissed the guard, and squatted beside him. He sucked on his teeth, making a whiny glutinous sound, and said, ‘Ever think much ’bout the Garden of Eden, David?’

Coffee’s wistful tone – as if he were regretting original sin – took the edge off Mingolla’s anger and left him at a loss for words.

Read this article once’t,’ Coffee went on. ‘Said the Garden was somewheres in the Anartic. Said they found all these froze-up berries and roots from thousands of years ago. They figgered once’t the Serpent did his business with Eve, the life force drained outta the place, and everything turned to ice. Reckon that’s so?’

‘I don’t know.’ Mingolla tried to influence Coffee and failed. It seemed the drugs added a spin to the electrical activity of the brain, one with which he couldn’t synchronize even when under the influence himself.

‘Yeah, me neither. Can’t believe nothin’ y’read in the papers. Like all the horseshit they print ’bout politics.’ Coffee popped an
ampule, sucked in the mist. He glanced toward the clearing. Only three men remained sitting there.

‘Where the rest of your men?’ Mingolla asked, leery.

‘Scoutin’ ’round.’ Coffee cracked his knuckles. ‘Yeah, the stuff they print ’bout politics … Man! Pure horseshit! Gotta dig out the truth for yo’self. Half of them First Ladies was guys wearin’ dresses. Y’can see that just by lookin’. Ugly! I mean if you was president, wouldn’t you have yo’self somethin’ better for a wife than one of them ol’ bags? Yessir, them presidents was all queers … members of a secret queer organization.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ said Mingolla, making another fruitless effort at mental contact.

‘Wouldn’t ’spect ya’ to know. Come to me as a revelation. That’s the only sorta knowledge y’can trust.’ Coffee’s profound sigh seemed the result of understanding the wide world and its great trouble. ‘Ever have a revelation, David?’

‘Depends what you mean by “revelation.” ’

‘If y’have to figger what it means, y’ain’t never had one.’ Coffee scratched his beard. ‘Y’believe in anything … like a higher power?’

‘No,’ said Mingolla. ‘I don’t.’

‘Oh, yes y’do, David. You a man with a plan, a man what’s too busy schemin’ to stop and figger things out. That’s when the revelations come, when you stop.’ Coffee gazed out at the clearing again, his Lincolnesque profile set off by the pale light. ‘That’s what y’believe in, David. In not stoppin’, in not believin’.’

The three men in the clearing were as still and silent as prophets at their meditations, shadows in a milky globe, and the mystical quality of the scene convinced Mingolla for a moment that Coffee’s assessment had been accurate, that inspiration was to be had at the center of the light.

‘Last man with a plan to come ’round Emerald was me,’ Coffee said. ‘Way it looks from here, I can’t judge ya ’cause you a judgment on me. I ain’t been too clear in my mind lately, been slackin’ in my work. ’Pears you sent to test me, and I welcome the test.’

‘What kinda test?’

‘Fang and claw, David, Fang and claw.’ Coffee took a handful
of ampules from his pocket and heaped them on the ground. ‘There’s your ammo, man. Roll on over, now, and I’ll cut ya loose.’

‘Wanna tell me what’s going on?’

Coffee turned Mingolla over, sawed at the ropes with a knife. ‘I’m comin’ for ya in the mornin’, when the light’s strong. Gonna take ya out, David.’

Mingolla’s stomach knotted. ‘What if I kill you?’

‘You a test, David, not a challenge.’

Mingolla sat up, rubbing his wrists, looking at Coffee. The moonlight brightened, and he felt it was illuminating more than their faces and clothes, enforcing honesty like a shared attitude. He thought he could see Coffee’s truth, see him leaning against a gas station wall at some hick crossroads, top dog in a kennel of curs, sucking down brews and plotting meanness, and it seemed to him that though Coffee was misguided, insane, he had at least come to an honorable form of meanness. He wondered what Coffee could see of him. ‘What ’bout weapons?’ he asked.

‘Like I said.’ Coffee held up his hands. ‘Fang and claw.’ He gestured at the men in the clearing. ‘The boys’ll make sure nobody gets illegal, and the rest is spread out in case anybody runs.’ With a show of weariness, he got to his feet, and from Mingolla’s perspective his head appeared to merge with the canopy, making him look as tall and mysterious as the trees. ‘See ya in the mornin’,’ he said.

‘This is bullshit, this crap ’bout a test!’ said Mingolla, his fear breaking through like a moon escaping cloud cover. ‘You just need to kill somebody, to prove something to your men.’

Coffee kicked a fern, moved off. ‘Why’s a car engine work, man? ’Cause ya turn the key in the ignition? ’Cause sparks fly from the generator? ’Cause you ’membered to gas up? ‘Cause some law of physics says so? Naw, it’s ’cause of all that and a million things more we don’t know nothin’ about.’ He strolled farther off, becoming a shadow among shadows. ‘Ain’t no such thing as cause and effect, ain’t but one law means shit in this world.’ His voice came from utter darkness and seemed the sum of all the dark voices issuing from beyond the clearing. ‘Everything’s true, David,’ he said. ‘Everything’s real.’

*

Coffee had left sixteen ampules, and feeling irritable and nauseated, symptoms he could trace to the packet of frost back at his camp, Mingolla popped a couple right away. A rain squall swept in, and after it had passed, to Mingolla’s ears the plips and plops of dripping water blended into a gabbling speech; he imagined demons peeping from beneath the leaves, gossiping about him, but he wasn’t afraid. The ampules were doing wonders, withdrawing the baffles that had been damping the core of his anger. Confidence was a voltage surging through him, keying new increments of strength, and he smiled, thinking of the fight to come: even the smile was an expression of furious strength, of bulked muscle fibers and trembling nerves.

Dawn came gray and damp, and birds set up a clamor, began taking their first flights, swooping over the heads of the three men in the clearing. The underbrush looked to be assuming topiary shapes. Violet auras faded in around ferns, pools of shadow quivered. Mingolla saw that the manlike objects affixed to the tree trunks were combat suits: ten slack, helmeted figures, each featuring some fatal rip or crack. Though he concluded that the suits might be equivalent to notches on Coffee’s belt, he was undismayed. The drugs had added a magical coloration to his thoughts, and he pictured himself moving with splendid athleticism, killing Coffee, becoming king of that dead man’s illusion and ruling over the Lost Patrol, robed in ferns and a leafy crown. But the battle itself, not its outcome, that was the important thing. To reach that peak moment when perfection drew blood, when you muscled aside confusion and – as large as a constellation with the act, as full of stars and blackness and primitive meaning – you were able to look down on the world and know you had outperformed the ordinary. This was the path he had been meant to take, the path of courage and character. A mystic star shone through a rent in the canopy, marooned in a lavender streak above the pink of sunrise. Mingolla stared at it until he understood its sparkling message.

The light brightened, and butterflies flew up from the brush, fluttered low above the ferns. There were, Mingolla thought, an awful lot of them. Thousand upon thousands, an estimate he kept
elevating until he reached the figure of millions. And he thought, too, that it was unusual for so many varieties to be gathered in one place. They were everywhere in the brush, perching on leaves and twigs, as if a sudden spring had brought forth flowers in a single night: some of the bushes were completely hidden, and the trunks were thick with them. Now and again they would rise from one of the bushes in a body and go winging in formation about the clearing. Mingolla had never seen anything like it, though he’d heard how butterflies would congregate in such numbers during the mating season, and he guessed that this was something similar.

Beams of sun angled into the clearing from the east, so complexly figured with droplets of moisture that they appeared to embody flaws and fracture planes, like artifacts of golden crystal snapped off in midair. The three men stood and took positions at the rim of the clearing. Apprehension spidered Mingolla’s backbone, and he popped two ampules to clear his head. Then, tired of waiting, he walked to the center of the clearing, his nerves keyed by every shift of shadow, every twitching leaf. Clouds slid across the sun, muting the sky to a platinum gray; a palpable vibration underscored the stillness.