Relentless (31 page)

“One thing more,”
Henry said.
“Mother, show him.”

“Are you sure we should?” his mother asked.

Henry nodded vigorously.

“Come see,” she said, and led me across the room to a pair of tall cabinets. From one of these, she withdrew a painting and held it for my consideration.

This work was not exquisite, as were those in the library. It lacked the clarity and the powerful, singular use of extreme light that exemplified the other pieces. The technique was far short of masterful, the
images were not complex, and objects were not of the proper proportions. Yet you could see the same mind at work, the same creative sensibility.

I turned to Henry to ask how he had done this, and I saw that with his right foot, he held a brush, which now he manipulated with considerable finesse.

His determination and indomitable spirit were admirable, but that made no less tragic the fact that he remained a first-rate talent reduced to methods of execution that could never properly express the visions in his mind.

“He knows it can’t approach the quality of what he did before,” his mother said. “He has to use my eyes, my description of what he achieves with each brushstroke before he lays down the next one. But what he hopes, what I hope, is eventually he’ll create more primitive expressions of his vision that will, in their own way, be wonderful. And if it never happens, it’s worth the struggle. Every image he paints—it’s spitting in the faces of those bastards. But no one must know. We don’t want them coming back. If Henry finds a way to do work of a certain caliber—it’ll be his legacy, shown after his death.”

Her dedication to her son was no less impressive than Henry’s dedication to exploring his talent under these worst imaginable conditions.

Putting away the painting and removing another from the same cabinet, Bella said, “His kidnappers and the people who worked on Henry when he was conscious—they were careful to keep their faces concealed. Only one went unmasked. Henry has struggled to produce that face, time and again, but I don’t think it’s of any value to you. It’s not just the fact that he now lacks sufficient technique for portraiture. Clearly, the drugs on which they kept him affected his perceptions.”

When she turned the painting toward me, I saw a countenance not well-rendered and not identical to what I had seen, but nonetheless I recognized the deformed individual in the Maserati.

Zazu, Who’s Who,
Here Dog, There Dog,
Doom, Zoom, Boom

   As long as I can remember, novelists and filmmakers and cult leaders have been depicting and predicting the end of the world by fire or ice, by asteroid or magnetic-pole shift, and they have always found a large audience for their visions.

In the hearts of modern men and women, there is an inescapable awareness that something is wrong with this slice of history they have inherited, that in spite of the towering cities and the mighty armies and the science-fiction technology made real, the moment is fragile, the foundation undermined.

During my walk from the Casases’ house to the motor court where we were staying, in spite of my blithe spirit and flaming optimism and high standing in the Society of Great Fools, a sense of impending catastrophe impressed itself upon me.

But if disaster came, it would be the collapse of civilization, not the end of the world. This blue transparent sky, the sea, the shore, the
land, the dark evergreens ever rising—all would endure, unaffected by human misery.

With its rich Victorian architecture and peaceful tree-lined streets, Smokeville served as a symbol of what the modern world had thrown away: the respect for tradition that can be rock under our feet; the certitude of our place in the universe and of our purpose, which allows peace of mind.

Fire, ice, asteroids, and pole shifts are bogeymen with which we distract ourselves from the real threat of our time. In an age when everyone invents his own truth, there is no community, only factions. Without community, there can be no consensus to resist the greedy, the envious, the power-mad narcissists who seize control and turn the institutions of civilization into a series of doom machines.

Have a nice day.

As I arrived at the motor court, I made an effort to spiff up my mood. Civilization wouldn’t collapse. At worst, my sense of impending catastrophe meant that Penny, Milo, Lassie, and I were going to die. There. With a little attitude adjustment, I saved millions of lives.

Penny had closed the draperies. As I approached, I detected her at a window, peeking out between panels of fabric.

When she let me in, she declared, “I feel like a mouse.”

“I was thinking some Chinese take-out.”

With great earnestness, she said, “We’re the mice, trying to get to the other side of the woods, like in my story, and Shearman Waxx is the owl, and I
know
the mice are the heroes, mice are
always
the heroes because they’re little and cute, and you can’t have cute little villains, but I gotta tell you, Cubby, I want to be the owl so bad, I want to swoop down on Waxx and snap him up in my beak and tear his guts out. Being mice
sucks
.”

“So you missed me, huh?”

“Splitting up sucks. When are you going to the Landulf house?”

“It’ll be dark in an hour, so now’s not good. I want to wait until morning.”

“We’re going with you. We’re not hiding here like mice.”

“Were you standing at the window the whole time?”

“Not the whole time. I was working with the laptop, but after a while I got claustrophobia, then a little vertigo on top of the claustrophobia, then nausea on top of the vertigo. It wasn’t as bad as that time we were stuck in the elevator with Hud Jacklight, but it was similar.”

We had left Penny’s laptop and Milo’s at the peninsula house, but we still had mine.

“What were you doing with the laptop?”

“I was online, seeing what other painters Russell Bertrand might have savaged.”

“This place is wired for Internet access?”

“Yeah. There’s a little card about it on the desk. Government program to bring Internet access to cheap motels for the benefit of the traveling poor. This place isn’t all that cheap.”

“When Milo’s head of the FBI, he can look into it.”

“That’s another thing,” Penny said. “Milo has been freaking me out a little. He’s being kind of … quirky.”

“Not Milo.”

The boy sat on the floor, his paraphernalia spread across half the cottage living room. A small strange tool, the purpose of which I could not guess, nestled like a pencil behind his right ear. Over his left ear hung several loops of ultrafine wire, apparently not because he was wiring himself into a version of Iron Man’s superhero suit but because he wanted to keep the wire where he could find it when he needed it.

As he worked on a series of small objects that resembled crystal salt-and-pepper shakers, he kept up what sounded like a conversation with someone: “Yeah … I guess so…. Well, that requires a capacitor….

Oh, I see…. I wonder what megahertz…. Hey, thanks…. This is cool….”

I might have thought he was talking to his canine companion, but the dog was not at his side. When I checked the bedroom, she wasn’t there, either.

Returning to the living room, I said, “Milo, where’s Lassie?”

“Probably in a drawer.”

“You put her in a drawer?”

“No. I’m just guessing.”

“What drawer, where?”

He pointed to a knotty-pine chest. The lower two drawers were deep, the top three more shallow.

When I opened the bottom drawer, I found Lassie lying on her back, her hind legs spread wide, her forepaws tucked against her chest. She grinned, tongue lolling, and her tail swished around the interior of the drawer.

“How did this happen?” I asked Penny.

“I have no idea.”

“You didn’t put her in here?”

“Why would I put a dog in a drawer?”

“Well, she seems to like it.”

“How on earth would I know she’d like it?”

“Relax. You didn’t put her in here. I believe you.”

I tried to coax Lassie out of the drawer, but she remained comfortably ensconced.

“There’s something wrong with this dog,” Penny decided.

“She’s just a little eccentric.”

“Maybe I can lure her out with those bacon biscuits she likes.”

“Good idea.”

Leaving the dog in the open drawer, I knelt on the floor beside Milo.

Evidently his mom had encouraged him to shower. He wore fresh clothes. Bold red letters on his white T-shirt spelled PERSIST.

His collection of custom T-shirts came from an ordinary mall shop. Periodically, he gave his mother a series of new words that he wanted to wear.

No, I can’t explain it to you. Milo can’t explain it to us, either. Our conversations about it have all been like this:

“Why do you have to wear words, Milo?”

“Names are important.”

“These aren’t names.”

“Every word is a name.”

“How do you figure?”

“Every word names an object, an action, a quality, a quantity, a condition….”

“So why are names important?”

“Nothing could be more important.”

“But why?”

“Because nothing is if it isn’t named.”

Kneeling at his side in the cottage living room, I said, “I’m going to get take-out. What would you like?”

Fixated on his work, Milo said, “I’m not hungry.”

When we stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s in Eureka, he had been so absorbed by the strange displays on his Game Boy that he ate only half his cheeseburger and none of his fries.

“You’ve got to eat, Milo. I’m not going to let you sit here doing … whatever it is you’re doing … if you don’t eat.”

“Pizza,” he said. “Vegetarian with black olives.”

“All right.” I patted his shoulder. “And I promise never to tell your grandmother you ate vegetarian.”

Grimacing, he said, “No. Grandma Clotilda—she’ll read about it in her coffee grounds or something. Better add pepperoni.”

On my walk to and from the Casas house, I had seen a pizza shop a block from the motor court. I called and placed an order.

Later, as I was about to leave, Milo said, “Dad, be really, really careful. Keep your eyes open. We’re running out of time.”

That declaration alarmed Penny. “What do you mean? Keep his eyes open for what?”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

“You better be,” Penny said. “Hear me clear, Cubby, you damn well better be.”

I hugged her. “I love you, too.”

   At Smokeville Pizzeria, no one tried to kill me.

Walking back to the cottage in the twilight, I learned why the town was named Smokeville. At certain conditions of temperature and humidity imbalance between the ocean and the shore, the sea gave up some of its substance, and the thirsty land drew the mist eastward so aggressively that it looked less like fog than like smoke harried by the heat of a fire behind it. Faux smoke seethed through the trees, the houses smoldered, and twilight dimmed behind the racing fumes.

Milo ate well, but not at the dinette table with us. He remained on the floor, engaged in his mysterious project. Lassie watched him from atop the television cabinet.