Odd Interlude (18 page)

“They will suspect your entire family of being contaminated with alien DNA.”

If I ever wondered what it might feel like to have a live eel squirming around in my stomach—which actually isn’t anything I have wondered, but supposing I did—well, right when I hear the words
contaminated with alien DNA
, I know the feeling
vividly
.

“Ed, be straight with me. Might we be contaminated?”

“I think that possibility is slight, Jolie Ann Harmony.”

From behind the dead control console, gazing out into the sphere room, I watch the witchy shadows leap and spin through the terrible red light beyond the veined rock-crystal windows of the artifact—if it actually is rock crystal, and if they are windows.

“How slight?” I ask Ed.

“I lack the knowledge of alien biology that would
allow me to make such a calculation with confidence. But I do not believe that Dr. Norris Hiskott became contaminated simply by close contact with the ETs. Evidence exists to suggest that Dr. Hiskott determined that the aliens removed from the sunken vessel were not dead but in a state of suspended animation, that he isolated what he believed to be alien stem cells of some particular function, and that he secretly injected himself with these stem cells because he was convinced that he would thereby greatly increase his intelligence and longevity.”

“Good grief. Was he a nut or something?”

“Everyone considered for a position in Project Polaris had to go through exhaustive psychological testing before reporting to work. Dr. Hiskott was diagnosed as afflicted with narcissism, which is intense self-love, and megalomania, which is delusions of grandeur and an obsession with doing grand things. He was also found to suffer from occasional periods of depersonalization, which is a state of feeling unreal, accompanied by derealization, which is a state of feeling that the world is not real, though these never lasted longer than two or three hours.”

“So he
was
a total nut, but they hired him anyway?”

From his cozy nest of Cray supercomputers in a distant building, Ed reassures me: “None of his conditions is a psychosis. They are all neuroses or mild personality disorders that do not necessarily interfere with a scientist’s work. In Dr. Hiskott’s case, his
peers nationwide were in almost unanimous agreement that he was one of the most brilliant men in his field. Furthermore, his brother-in-law is a United States senator.”

“Okay, well,” I say, “no one in my family
injected
himself with alien blood or anything, so how long will the FBI quarantine us?”

“Forever.”

“Don’t you think that’s a teeny-weeny littlest-bit extreme?”

“Yes, I do. However, what I think will not matter to them. They will isolate all of you until you die. Then they will dissect all of you. Finally, they will burn every scrap of your bodily tissue in an ultra-high-temperature furnace.”

Let me tell you, I am finding it difficult to stay upbeat. I’m sort of flirting with a funk.

I say, “Then except for Harry, we’re still alone. There’s no one else to help us.”

After a silence, Ed says, “There is someone else.”

Eighteen

Having committed my second act of terror, one with the truck and one with the propane tank, in the first half hour of the still-pink dawn, I reach the feathery shade of the first trees that shelter the ten cottages. There I encounter a potbellied man
with a Friar Tuck fringe of red hair. Although the morning is slightly cool for his ensemble, he looks primed for leisure in a banana-yellow polo shirt, khaki Bermuda shorts, white socks, and sandals.

“What’s happening over there?” he asks excitedly as we approach each other.

I babble at him breathlessly: “Eighteen-wheeler went over the edge, crashed down through the meadow, like bombs going off, driver’s probably dead, there’s fire. Man, it’s all crazy.”

He’s so thrilled at the prospect of spectacle that he amps up from a fast walk to a run.

In addition to the cottages that Annamaria and I have taken, five others are occupied. If the events at the diner have awakened others besides the guy in the Bermudas, they are not yet out and about.

My original hope was to find a vehicle of a vintage that would be easier to hot-wire than are most new cars and SUVs. I urgently need to add to my criminal record by committing auto theft. Happily, when he was distracted by the exploding propane tank, Bermuda Guy was in the process of loading his luggage into the back of a Jeep Grand Cherokee. The driver’s door stands open. His key is in the ignition.

I almost thank God for this gift, but on second thought that seems inappropriate.

I slam the tailgate, get behind the wheel, pull shut the door, and start the engine.

The interior of the SUV reeks of an aftershave so
flowery that you might think nobody would use it except bearded ladies after they retire from carnival sideshows and are then able to shave without jeopardizing their livelihoods. The fumes burn in my sinuses, and instantly my nose begins to drip.

The Cherokee is parked between two cottages. I drive behind those buildings, turn right, and follow the mown grass along the edge of the woods that backdrop the motor court. Soon the lawn gives way to wild grass, and on the left the trees thin out, and I am able to pilot the SUV through the woods, driving at a sedate pace, weaving between the fissured trunks, needled boughs brushing across the roof, traveling into the less-civilized portion of Harmony Corner, where there might actually be some harmony.

My biggest concern is that I’ll blow a tire before I’ve been able to use this vehicle in the way that I absolutely must use it, but by the time I get to the farther end of the woods, the rubber is all intact. I park in the cover of the trees, on the brink of a meadow.

Bermuda Guy will soon discover his SUV has been stolen, but he’ll think it was driven out of Harmony Corner to the Coast Highway. He’ll never consider that it might have been taken deep into the woods behind the motor court. I hope he’ll call the county sheriff’s office in an even greater state of excitement than that in which he went sprinting off to see the wreckage of the eighteen-wheeler.

I want him to call the cops, just as I want someone to call the county’s wildfire-control agency. The more sirens, the more fire, the more chaos, the more distractions of all kinds, the better for me. The only other thing I could ask of Bermuda Guy is that in the future he not wear socks with sandals.

Getting out of the Grand Cherokee, I’m nervous about serpents because, as I noted earlier, I have a mild case of ophidiophobia. It’s not such a severe condition that, at the sight of a snake, I’ll commit hara-kiri rather than submit to the fang, but I will probably soil my pants. I’m also wary of skunks, and especially of raccoons, which are the gangsta bad boys of the woods. Having grown up in the Mojave, where there are no forests, I find landscapes of trees and ferns and rhododendrons to be gothic in the extreme.

I need to get to an observation point from which I can see north across the entire expanse of Harmony Corner, to accurately judge the effect of my criminal activities to date. As I leave the woodland, sudden movement to my right surprises a strangled cry from me, but the imagined enemy assault is in fact only four white-tailed deer in flight from the fire that I started. As they dash past, no more than ten feet from me, I call after them, “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

From behind, a hand grips my shoulder.

Turning, I encounter Donny, husband of Denise, the mechanic who was forced by Hiskott to slash his own face. His eyes are a hot blue, as hot as gas
flames, tears of outrage melting from them, and his misaligned lips are drawn back in a smile that is a snarl and a sneer of contempt all at once. He says, “Harry Potter, Lex Luthor, Fidel Castro—whoever you are, you’re goin’ to die here.”

Nineteen

In the highest meadow in the southeast quadrant of Harmony Corner, face-to-face with Donny, the mechanic who nightly feeds two possums named Wally and Wanda, my choice is kill or die. I have a pistol, he has a revolver, and the range is point-blank.

The thought of the hungry possums waiting for diner scraps that never come and then eventually waddling off in despair, the thought of Denise, Donny’s fry-cook wife, being widowed by me, a fellow fry cook, and other considerations cause me to hesitate a fateful couple of seconds, which ought to be the death of me. Because his face seems to be wrenched by rage, because of what he says—“Harry Potter, Lex Luthor, Fidel Castro, whoever you are, you’re goin’ to die here”—I feel sure that he is possessed by Hiskott, and I almost blow a big hole in him. But his face is easy to misread because of his terrible scar, and into my hesitation, he says with some desperation, “
Run
. Get out of the Corner,
where he can’t get at you. This isn’t your battle. For God’s sake,
run
!”

Although he’s no one other than Donny, at any moment he might fall under the control of Hiskott and open fire without warning. I choose not to waste time engaging in a philosophical discussion of the merits of being thy brother’s and thy sister’s keeper.

With one sleeve I wipe at my nose, which has been set adrip by the flowery fumes of Bermuda Guy’s aftershave that lent the interior of his SUV the atmosphere of a mad perfumer’s laboratory.

Matching Donny’s urgency, I insist, “It
is
my battle. Jolie dies today if I don’t fight. I’m the only one who can get close to him without his knowledge.”

The thought of Jolie dying in the same brutal fashion that Maxy was murdered so distresses him that his once-torn face seems about to come apart along its inadequately stitched seam.

“But he’s commanded us to search for you. And he cycles through us, readin’ memories. I can’t hide I’ve seen you—and where.”

Belatedly, he realizes how dangerous it is for me if he retains his revolver. Holding the weapon by the barrel, he thrusts it toward me, and I take it with relief.

“Listen, Donny, sir, you’re the one who has to get out of the Corner, beyond his reach. If he discovers where I am, through you, then he’ll send the rest of the family to surround me.”

Anguished, he rebels at my suggestion. “No, no,
no. No, he’ll torture ’em when he finds out I’m gone beyond his reach. He don’t have mercy. He don’t know what mercy is. He’ll make ’em torture and kill each other.”

“He won’t have time. First he’ll be searching for me. Then I’ll be in that house with him.”

“Just ’cause he can’t control you, don’t mean you’ll get the bastard. You won’t get him.”

“I’ve got more advantages than you know.”

“What advantages?”

I inhale sharply to stanch the nasal drip, and the inhalation becomes a reverberant snort. “No time to tell you.
Please
, sir, get the hell out of Harmony Corner. County road is right over there past the rail fence. You can be out in two minutes. Less. Go till you know it’s safe.
Go!
”

Five years of oppression and his own failed rebellion have nearly robbed him of all but perhaps the dimmest flicker of hope. Despondent, he has no energy for either resistance or flight.

I raise the revolver that he has surrendered to me, and I give him a chance to look down the barrel, to consider the potential of the bullet.

“Sir, I need that SUV, and I need more time that Hiskott doesn’t know where I am. Either you run out of his range fast as you can or I shoot you dead right now. I mean
now
.”

For a moment I think I’ll have to make a widow of Denise, but then Donny turns and bolts through the tall grass, as if a demon might be at his heels.

As I watch him to be sure that, under the influence of the alien other, he doesn’t turn back toward me, I can too easily imagine how his feathery hope is being crushed beneath a weight of unearned shame. His failure to defeat something more powerful than himself, and the scar that reminds him of his failure, is no reason for shame; guilt is deserved only when the effort to resist evil is never made.

Yet the human heart is disheartened by the most unreasonable self-judgments, because even when we take on giants, we too often confuse failure with fault, which I know too well. The only way back from such a bleak despondency is to shape humiliation into humility, to strive always to triumph over the darkness while never forgetting that the honor and the beauty are more in the striving than in the winning. When triumph at last comes, our efforts alone could not have won the day without that grace which surpasses all understanding and which will, if we allow it, imbue our lives with meaning.

In the learning of that simple truth, I have come from Pico Mundo, from the worst day of my life, from the loss that was worse than losing my own life, through much trouble and tumult in various places, to this picturesque spot along the coast. In the course of that dark passage, the shame and guilt of my failure have been much diminished, and hope is brighter in my heart than once it was.

Watching Donny clamber across the split-rail fence and hurry south along the county road, as he
races out of Hiskott’s reach, I would like nothing more than to learn one day that he has taken the same journey of the heart that I have taken.