Mile Zero (37 page)

St. Cloud had reeled a treasure up from Lila’s submerged past, but the full weight of the bounty’s apparent truth was slow in coming. Callow cajoler riding the tide of surprise to its final beach, his cunning had to be forever on the move, winning Lila over patiently one moment to the next. Lila had begun for him as untried female perfection, an exquisite statue he was intimidated by for fear its
integrity would disintegrate if he tried to break down its parts. As the cracks in the statue revealed themselves, opened to expose veins of complication, the thunder of his ignorance deafened him. How wrong he had been from the outset, his crooked crawl of drunken pursuit of Lila, and the net of idealism he cast over her, paled against the brutal truth of her young life. Everyone warned him, even Evelyn, who tolerated his masquerades of romantic pain as she would a brother’s, rather than a former husband’s. Evelyn warned he was infatuated with an idea of his own poetic conjuring, had dealt into a rigged game where the joker was the dealer. Lila was far from the cool unruffled surface St. Cloud first imagined. He was no more than a worm floating at the bottom of a female sea, a blinded male whose pursuit of female perfection was driven by fleshy greed and unwieldy desire to bottle outright the sex of youth.

There were places Lila led St. Cloud he was not prepared to go. Months before, when she drifted alone during late nights from bar to bar along Duval Street, he was willing to accept whatever destination caught her fancy. Watching one night from a hidden vantage point in the jostling bar crowd, as she danced her way through a long line of suitors with the queer smile on her face fixed far away as if keeping step with an invisible partner, he made the discovery there was one constant to her desire to dance beyond the periphery of emotional attachment. The constant was Brogan. The mescal worm could have been messing with St. Cloud’s brain, or rum was floating away what was left of his common sense, but it took him some time to figure Brogan’s being in one or another of the dance hall bars Lila passed through was beyond coincidence. Lila was meeting Brogan clandestinely in the most public of places, a unique coupling of purposes. But what was the purpose of each? Brogan was not without his own style of attraction, despite his jaded past the desperate twinkle of a treasure searcher sparkled in his eye. St. Cloud figured Brogan too old for Lila; though Brogan was his own age, St. Cloud deduced he was the younger of the two, for he had killed off any hope of catching up to his youthful ideals, his abandonment of conscience entitled him to suck from a personally styled fountain of youth.

No tricks were required for Lila to meet Brogan in any number of back-door situations far from the prying eyes of a bar crowd. Lila could easily have gone to Brogan’s house. What eased its way into the swamp of St. Cloud’s inebriation was a notion simple in the extreme. Lila did not want to be seen going to Brogan’s house. She never once
brought his name up, never greeted him on the street. Lila spoke with Brogan only when she danced with him. Brogan was the only one she spoke with while dancing, that was the oddity. St. Cloud noticed, for he alone was trailing Lila on her late night sojourns, watching randy sideshow suitors hoot their lust, grovel for her attention, then run for another shot of bottled courage. What rose clearly from this confusion was Lila did not want to be associated with Brogan in any way other than what appeared socially casual. The reason for this was for St. Cloud to fathom.

The confessional bits and pieces of Lila’s childhood and marriage to Roger came together and ended in the parking lot of the Ace in the Hole, where her new life began, and what brought her to Key West started. She never mentioned where she had gone with MK, for how long. Her history with MK eluded St. Cloud, until he made the connection with Brogan. St. Cloud had walked the wobbly plank of trust to get this far with Lila; he knew if he asked her a question, any question, about her past, the trust would be broken. She had to come to him on her own, her telling emerged from a new need. He had asked Evelyn what she knew of Lila, she knew less than he did. He admired Evelyn’s targeting of people, in their early college days together at Berkeley she could, after five minutes in a room full of antiwar organizers, pick from the intent, moppy-haired radicals the five most likely to be FBI plants. Evelyn told him Lila’s gorgeous flesh masked a hand grenade ready to explode. Perhaps the explosion had already begun with his infatuation, had destroyed his sense of reason. With reason or not, St. Cloud believed the duel for Lila was between himself and MK.

While watching Brogan and Lila dancing St. Cloud recalled the forewarning thrown out by Bubba-Bob in a distant and all but otherwise forgotten drunken night at the Wreck Room. “Be careful with MK, or you’ll end up like Karl Dean at the bottom of the sea with sharks sucking your brains out.” St. Cloud did not understand Bubba’s meaning at the time. Bubba-Bob owed him a favor, maybe the warning was the favor. Karl Dean had been MK’s boy, one of the best cigarette-boat runners MK had, he could maneuver a load of marijuana at cut-throat speeds through moonless nights across backwater flats better than any boat jockey from Key Largo to Key West. MK started Karl off when he was sixteen. Karl had already dropped out of high school for fast money off-loading marijuana bales from shrimp boats when MK took notice and totaled up the future for
him, which came out to a zero sum. As a local boy fond of shortcuts Karl had one of two choices, move up in the trade or pump gas for the rest of his life while waiting for his mama to die so he could sell her house to a rich northerner. Karl was impatient, he did not want to wait for his mama to die; besides, his mama had just remarried. Karl was a flashy kid who fought with the other off-loaders on the shrimp boats, that’s when MK noticed his quick hands. MK’s instincts told him Karl could run a boat into tight spots where a man with a brain wouldn’t. What appealed to MK was the fact Karl’s brain was far slower than his body’s reflexes; by the time Karl’s brain told him not to do something his body had already reacted, like racing a loaded cigarette boat across a low-tide cut of coral even a fast-moving tarpon on the run from a fishing boat would not risk cutting his belly on. Working for MK Karl made enough money to buy him and his mama big houses on Big Pine Key where a man had room to stretch his stuff along the zigzag of dynamited canals far from the back alleys and claustrophobic lanes of Key West. Karl was happy until cocaine replaced marijuana as the high profit item sealed in the thirty-foot hull of his cigarette boat on late night runs. Things were getting riskier and more profitable, not as they used to be in the laid-back days of marijuana; the boys on the off-loading mother ships were no longer good ol’ shrimpers, but fast Spanish-talking guys with excitable eyes and bulging guns tucked beneath their belts. Karl wanted his piece of the bigger pie. Since his brain was not smart enough to tell him to work for someone who would pay him more money, he started grumbling that MK let his people do with less than their just rewards. Karl’s talk got so bad people walked a wide path around him. People were not afraid of Karl, they were afraid of what MK was going to do to him, they did not want to be around when he did it. It got so that Karl, who was a top gun on the off-shore power boat race circuit, was having trouble finding sponsors to put him up for a race. Karl needed sponsors, he couldn’t sponsor himself. Where was he going to tell the IRS he got the money to race the whole season through in boats whose maintenance costs were more than the average man made in a year? He couldn’t say he got it from selling his mama’s house in Key West for a half million, he already did that to smoke-screen the houses he built on Big Pine Key. People knew Karl was in trouble when he couldn’t get a sponsor for the offshore championship in Key West last fall. When Karl did get a sponsor at the last moment people thought, well, maybe MK wasn’t so tough after all, maybe he had
been gone from the island too long, running everything from Central America, maybe the Colombians with excitable eyes from Miami were moving on MK’s paradise franchise. In the past no one broke from MK. Karl Dean broke. Maybe MK wasn’t strong enough to teach Karl Dean a lesson. It had become a test. Karl Dean’s cocky ways, and the fact he got a sponsor to race in the championships at the last moment, might mean MK was no longer part of the local accommodation. These were thoughts people had when Karl Dean pulled ahead last fall in the championship race. These were thoughts people no longer had when they watched the reruns of Karl Dean and his boat exploding into a rain of fiberglass and flesh. Karl’s copilot, who ended up with him as shark bait, had a family in Sombrero Key, word was the family received international money orders from a Panama bank every month. MK took care of his own. People understood the lesson taught last fall. MK could make people grand with money, or quickly dead from revenge. When the Coast Guard inquired into the explosion of Karl Dean’s boat they concluded the force of the blast was far greater than any which could have been generated by fifty gallons of jet-fuel held in the three on-board tanks, a blast of such magnitude had to have come from another source. The Coast Guard never ruled out the probability of plastic explosives, but there was not enough debris left floating on the water to make a definitive conclusion. People who knew MK had already drawn a conclusion.

Brogan was Lila’s connection to MK, brother to brother. MK was not the only high roller in Key West, there were many others, high up and low down, on both sides of the law, who wanted MK put out of business, or the business put to MK. That was the reason Lila never went to Brogan’s house. How innocent for Lila to be seen dancing one dance with Brogan, never more, then sending him packing like any other struggling suitor. If the wrong person knew Lila’s connection to MK she could be used against him, her life bartered for vengeance in a sinister game not of her making. St. Cloud understood the ghost he was dueling was MK, but someone else may have made the connection too, Zobop. The high whistle St. Cloud heard outside his bedroom window could be a death tune, the scribbles of poetry nailed to his door could be a beast toying with its prey. Bubba-Bob’s warning could be ringing true, to get involved with MK meant mayhem, if so St. Cloud could count his remaining days on one hand. Perhaps Bubba-Bob blundered onto the connection that Lila was MK’s young peach, kept precious and hidden away in the
backwater confines of Key West. Bubba-Bob was too clever a fisherman to declare publicly he had made such a discovery, he did not want to end up on the wrong end of the food chain, but he would tip off a friend he owed a favor about troubled waters ahead.

St. Cloud ceased being a bull rocking in a woman’s sea, seeking the gyroscope’s center of gravity to right the way; the grand confusion clawing into his normal emptiness left his less-than-steady hands shaking with anticipated dread. I myself am not myself, as the man said. A sideways slither is often the quickest way home. There was another bull now, standing between himself and MK, a bull of contention that existed long before Lila came between them. Justo was the one to define the bull for St. Cloud, often repeating his Abuelo’s tale of
al alimón
, the blood dare, a duet of death fought by two matadors in distant Spanish times. Few witnessed
al alimón
, but it was sworn to have happened, the gypsy poets still sang its sad glory, to fight
al alimón
was less than bravery and more of blood belief, for the bull was fought by two matadors at once, armed with one sword and no cape, no lance-bearing horsemen to prick and harass the adversary. The matadors took turns meeting each charge of the bull by using the other man’s body as a distracting swirl of cape; the alternating unarmed man was at great peril, using his body as a feigned thrust or protective shield. The man with the sword played his risk to the finest; if he did not judge correctly where he himself would have placed the human cape, he would drive the sword through flesh of the other man. No words passed between the two matadors, a false move by either meant death, their blood instinct facing the attacker must flow in unison, harmonious purpose preceded all thought. These two were beyond brothers, dueling in hopes of achieving blind faith; to escape being trampled their faith became at the moment of truth pure revelation. The enemy was not the bull, it was whatever might stand between these two, preventing them from becoming one mind, heart and hand with common purpose. If something stood between them their defeated blood would commingle in the dry sand of the arena.

Things were no longer so confused for St. Cloud, the burning hoop of completion smoldered before him, he understood the nature of the bull. The full-blown mystery opera of MK was revealed and St. Cloud was part of it, the odd circle after a generation passed had closed. The bull between St. Cloud and MK was Vietnam, the war of their youth bonded them to a brotherhood of outsiders, unless they
could fight the bull
al alimón
they were condemned to die in the arms of each other’s memories, their defeated blood commingling in the dry sand of a distant past, forgotten by a world long since moved on to fresh pain.

St. Cloud felt the rope of self-betrayal binding him to MK tighten with painful urgency; because of Lila he had to devise a way to cut through knots hardened by a generation of hopelessness. Lila could be the way out, St. Cloud had no misgivings about the origination of his fanatical desire for her. If he could convince Lila his offering of trust was the beginning of love, then he had started undoing the ties that bind. If MK was keeping Lila in Key West for the same reason, holding out a last hope, planning to return, then he would kill anyone who attempted escape on his magic carpet.

St. Cloud was determined not to let Lila down as he had Evelyn. He had started so young with Evelyn, but a man cannot marry his conscience. There was a purity of purpose in Evelyn from those early college days of protest which she still carried forward. Evelyn was ever graceful, slipping from beneath the weight of youthful illusions as easily as a snake sheds the skins of its seasons. He remembered when they met in 1966 during an antiwar march, pushing through the college town streets crowded with sign carriers, “HELL NO WE WON’T GO” screamers, and sound trucks blasting political accusations. St. Cloud sensed a sensuous purpose about Evelyn being jostled in the crowd, the crush of strident protesters accentuated her girlish body. He felt she was out of step with the indignant rhythm propelling marchers around them; his own outrage at bombs raining from B-52s on remote villages eight thousand miles distant was surmounted by an embarrassing desire for this thin girl at his side. He thought she could see his naked intent, that he was exposed for what he was; he tried to disguise his lust, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as if to protect her from the shoving crowd. What he sought was the sexual source of her commitment. He held her like a cripple clinging to a crutch. Slung around his neck was a pair of binoculars which gave him an idea. He suggested they get away from the crowd’s determined militant air, things were getting messy, bottles were flying, glass was breaking, there was trouble ahead, a sure trap, he had been down these streets before, he knew. He also knew a way to the rooftop of the college bookstore, where they could survey the sweep of the entire protest with the binoculars, and his yearning for Evelyn could be spent, far above the heady atmosphere of idealistic histrionics.
They drifted to the back of the chanting crowd, along streets left deserted in the wake of the passing protest, then cut across alleys, ascending a rickety fire-escape ladder up a three-story brick wall and onto the bookstore rooftop. The scene below was not what St. Cloud expected. The familiar grid of city streets was laid out beneath them, the usual police barricades placed at busy intersections to force the march along an orderly course, but beyond the front line of the march, in the only direction the crowd could move between barricaded side streets, were helmeted police waiting with riot clubs. Through his binoculars St. Cloud focused on rooftops above the street where the march was about to come to a surprising end; the rooftops were lined with sandbags, manned by young uniformed National Guardsmen with mounted machine guns aimed down at the street. “Rats in a maze!” St. Cloud shouted into the din of loudspeakers and sirens swelling up from below. He turned away in disgust, a disgust aimed at himself. What a stupid way to try to end a war. Where the crowd was he did not want to be. He was going to stay one step ahead of the game, keep one foot out of the maze, ready to run from what he saw as an exercise in mass impotence. His flight from the madness of war would be his life, he would kill his life off in silent protest, turn his back on his future potential. As he peered through the binoculars on that long-ago day of his first date with Evelyn he could still hear her saying, “You’re wrong. They aren’t rats, you are the rat for running from it. You’ll see, this will end it, but not for you.” Evelyn’s words still rang in his memory, with them he recalled the sound of the helicopters clattering above them on the bookstore rooftop, clouds of tear gas from the choppers’ steel bellies floating into streets below, and he could no longer see, gravel pricking into his knees as he fell, his eyes throbbing as if pierced by a rain of cactus needles, a fire raging in his chest, a fire the eruption of vomit spewing from his mouth could never put out.