Steel Beach (41 page)

“Brenda wanted me to, but I said I don’t want to get that mixed up in your karma. I’ve got a bad feeling about you, Hildy. I don’t know just what it is, but you’ve had an absolutely incredible run of good luck, for a reporter. I mean the David Earth story, and Silvio.”

“Not such good luck for David and Silvio.”

“Who cares? What I’m saying, I have this feeling you’ll have to pay for all that. You’re in for a run of bad luck.”

“You’re superstitious.”

“And bisexual. See, you learned three new things about me today.”

I sighed, and debated taking one more drink. I knew I’d fall off the roof if I did.

“I want to thank you, Cricket, for coming all the way out here to tell me I’m jinxed. A gal really needs to hear that from time to time.”

She grinned at me. “I hope it ruined your day.”

I waved my hand at the desolation around us.

“How could anyone ruin all this?”

“I’ll admit, making all this any worse is probably beyond even my formidable powers. And I’ll go now, back to the glitter and glamour and madcap whirl of my life, leaving you to languish with the lizards, and will add only these words, to wit, Brenda is right, you
do
have friends, and I’m one, though I can’t imagine why, and if you need anything, whistle, and maybe I’ll come, if I don’t have anything else to do.”

And she leaned over and kissed me.

They say that if you stay in one place long enough, everybody you ever met will eventually go by that spot. I knew it had to be true when I saw Walter struggling up the trail toward my cabin. I couldn’t imagine what could have brought him out to West Texas other than a concatenation of mathematical unlikelihoods of Dickensian proportions. That, or Cricket and Brenda were right: I
did
have friends.

I needn’t have worried about that last possibility.

“Hildy, you’re a worthless slacker!” he shouted at me from three meters away. And what a sight he was. I don’t think he’d ever visited a historically-controlled disneyland in his life. One can only imagine, with awe, the titanic struggles it must have taken to convince him that he
could not
wear his office attire into Texas, that his choices were nudity, or period dress. Well, nudity was right out, and I resolved to give thanks to the Great Spirit for not having had to witness that. The sight of Walter in his skin would have put the buzzards off their feed. So out of the rather limited possibilities in his size in the disney tourist costume shop, he had selected a cute little number in your basic Riverboat Gambler style: black pants, coat, hat, and boots, white shirt and string tie, scarlet-and-maroon paisley vest with gold edging and brass watch fob. As I watched, the last button on the vest gave up the fight, popping off and ricocheting off a rock with a sound familiar to watchers of old western movies, and the buttons on his shirt were left to struggle on alone. Lozenges of pale, hairy flesh were visible in the gaps between buttons. His belt buckle was buried beneath a substantial overhang. His face was running with sweat. All in all, better than I would have expected, for Walter.

“Kind of far from the Mississippi, aren’t you, tinhorn?” I asked him.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Never mind. You’re just the man I wanted to see. Give me a hand unloading these planks, will you? It’d take me all day, alone.”

He gaped at me as I went to the buckboard which had been sitting there for an hour, filled with fresh, best-quality boards from Pennsylvania, boards I intended to use for the cabin floor, when I got around to it. I clambered up onto the wagon and lifted one end of a plank.

“Well, come on, pick up the other end.”

He thought it over, then trudged my way, looking suspiciously at the placid team of mules, giving them a wide berth. He hefted his end, grunting, and we tossed it over the side.

After we’d tossed enough of them to establish a rhythm, he spoke.

“I’m a patient man, Hildy.”

“Hah.”

“Well, I am. What more do you want? I’ve waited longer than most men in my position would have. You were tired, sure, and you needed a rest…  though how anybody could think of this as a rest is beyond me.”

“You waited for what?”

“For you to come back, of course. That’s why I’m here. Vacation’s over, my friend. Time to come back to the real world.”

I set my end of the board down on the pile, wiped my brow with the back of my arm, and just stared at him. He stared back, then looked away, and gestured to the lumber. We picked up another board.

“You could have let me know you were taking a sabbatical,” he said. “I’m not complaining, but it would have made things easier. Your checks have kept on going to your bank, of course. I’m not saying you’re not entitled, you’d saved up…  was it six, seven months vacation time?”

“More like seventeen. I’ve
never
had a vacation, Walter.”

“Something always came up. You know how it is. And I know you’re entitled to more, but I don’t think you’d leave me out on a limb by taking it all at once. I know you, Hildy. You wouldn’t do that to me.”

“Try me.”

“See, what’s happened, this big story has come up. You’re the only one I’d trust to cover it. What it is—”

I dropped my end of the last board, startling him and making him lose his grip. He danced out of the way as the heavy timber clattered to the floor of the wagon.

“Walter, I really don’t want to hear about it.”

“Hildy, be reasonable, there’s no one else who-“

“This conversation got off on the wrong foot, Walter. Some way, you always manage to do that with me. I guess that’s why I didn’t come right up to you and say it, and that was a mistake, I see it now, so I’m going to—”

He held up his hand, and once more I fell for it.

“The reason I came,” he said, looking down at the ground, then glancing up at me like a guilty child, “…  well, I wanted to bring you this.” He held out my fedora, more battered than ever from being stuffed into his back pocket. I hesitated, then took it from him. He had a sort of half smile on his face, and if there had been one gram of gloating in it I’d have hurled the damn thing right in his face. But there wasn’t. What I saw was some hope, some worry, and, this being Walter, a certain gruff-but-almost-lovable diffidence. It must have been hard for him, doing this.

What can you do? Throwing it back was out. I can’t say I ever really
liked
Walter, but I didn’t hate him, and I did respect him as a newsman. I found my hands working unconsciously, putting some shape back into the hat, making the crease in the top, my thumbs feeling the sensuous material. It was a moment of high symbolism, a moment I hadn’t wanted.

“It’s still got blood on it,” I said.

“Couldn’t get it all out. You could get a new one, if this has bad memories.”

“It doesn’t matter one way or the other.” I shrugged. “Thanks for going to the trouble, Walter.” I tossed the hat on a pile of wood shavings, bent nails, odd lengths of sawed lumber. I crossed my arms.

“I quit,” I said.

He looked at me a long time, then nodded, and took a sopping handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped his brow.

“If you don’t mind, I won’t help you with the rest of this,” he said. “I’ve got to get back to the office.”

“Sure. Listen, you could take the wagon back into town. The mule skinner said he’d be back for it before dark, but I’m worried the mules might be getting thirsty, so it would—”

“What’s a mule?” he said.

I eventually got him seated on the bare wooden board, reins in hand, a doubtful expression on his choleric face, and watched him get them going down the primitive trail to town. He must have thought he was “driving” the mules; just let him try to turn them from the path to town, I thought. The only reason I’d let him do it in the first place was that the mules knew the way.

That was the end of my visitors. I kept waiting for Fox or Callie to show up, but they didn’t. I was glad to have missed Callie, but it hurt a little that Fox stayed away. It’s possible to want two things at once. I really
did
want to be left alone…  but the bastard could have
tried
.

My life settled into a routine. I got up with the sun and worked on my cabin until the heat grew intolerable. Then I’d mosey down into New Austin come siesta time for a few belts of a home brew the barkeep called Sneaky Pete and a few hands of five card stud with Ned Pepper and the other regulars. I had to put on a shirt in the saloon: pure sex discrimination, of the kind that must have made women’s lives hell in the 1800s. When working, I wore only dungarees, boots, and a sombrero to keep the worst heat off my head. I was brown as a nut from the waist up. How women wore the clothes the bargirls had on in a West Texas summer is one of the great mysteries of life. But, come to think of it, the men dressed just as heavily. A strange culture, Earth.

As the evening approached I’d return to the cabin and labor until sundown. In the evening’s light I would prepare my supper. Sometimes one of my friends would join me. I developed a certain reputation for buttermilk biscuits, and for my perpetual pot of beans, into which I’d toss some of the unlikeliest ingredients imaginable. Maybe I would find a new career, if I could interest my fellow Lunarians in the subtleties of Texas chili.

I always stayed awake for about an hour after the last light of day had faded. I have no way of comparing, of course, but it seemed to me the nightly display of starry sky was probably pretty close to the real thing, what I’d see if I were transported to the real Texas, the real Earth, now that all man’s pollution was gone. It was glorious. Nothing like a Lunar night, not nearly as many stars, but better in its own way. For one thing, you never see the Lunar night sky without at least one thickness of glass between you and the heavens. You never feel the cooling night breezes. For another, the Lunar sky is too
hard
. The stars glare unmercifully, unblinking, looking down without forgiveness on Man and all his endeavors. In Texas the stars at night do indeed burn big and bright, but they wink at you. They are in on the joke. I loved them for that. Stretched out on my bedroll, listening to the coyotes howling at the moon—and I loved
them
for that, too, I wanted to howl with them…  I achieved the closest approximation of peace I had ever found, or am likely to find.

I spent something like two months like that. There was no hurry on the cabin. I intended to do it right. Twice I tore down large portions of it when I learned a new method of doing something and was no longer satisfied with my earlier, shoddier work. I think I was afraid of having to think of something else to do when I finished it.

And with good reason. The day came, as it always must, when I could find nothing else to do. There was not a screw to tighten on a single hinge, not a surface to sand smoother, no roof shingle out of place.

Well, I reasoned, there was always furniture to make. That ought to be a lot harder than walls, a floor, and a roof. All I had inside was some cheap burlap curtains and a rude bedstead. I spread my bedroll out on the straw mattress and spent a restless night “indoors” for the first time in many weeks.

The next day I prowled the grounds, forming vague plans for a vegetable garden, a well, and—no kidding—a white picket fence. The fence would be easy. The garden would be a lot harder, an almost impossible project worthy of my mood at the time. As for a well, I’d have to have one for the garden, but somehow the fiction of worthwhile labor broke down when I thought about a well. The reason was that, in Texas, there is no more water under the surface than there is anywhere else on Luna. If you want water and aren’t conveniently near the Rio Grande, what you do is dig or drill to a level determined by lottery for each parcel of land, and when you’ve done that, the disneyland board of directors will have a pipe run out to the bottom of your well and you can pretend you’ve struck water. At my cabin that depth was fifteen meters. The labor of digging that deep didn’t daunt me. I knew I was up to it. Hell, even with a female hormonal system impeding me I’d developed shoulders and biceps that would have made Bobbie go into aesthetic shock. Trading my plane and saw for a pick and shovel would be no problem. That was the part I looked forward to.

What didn’t thrill me was the pretending. I’d gotten good at it, looking at the stars at night and marveling at the size of the universe. I’d not gone loony; I
knew
they were just little lights I could have held in my hand. But at night, weary, I could forget it. I could forget a lot of things. I didn’t know if I could forget digging fifteen meters for a dry hole, then seeing the pipe laid and the cool, sweet, life-giving water fill up that dry hole.

I hate to get too metaphorical. Walter always howled when I did. Readers tire of metaphors easily, he’s always said. Why the well, and not the stars? Why come this far and balk, why lose one’s imagination right at the end? I don’t know, but it probably had to do with the dry hole concept. I just kept thinking my entire life was a big dry hole. All I’d ever accomplished that I was in any way proud of was the cabin…  and I
hated
the cabin.

That night I couldn’t get to sleep. I fought it a long time, then I got up and stumbled through the night with no lantern until I found my hatchet. I chopped the bedstead to kindling and piled it against the wall, and I soaked that kindling in kerosene. I set it alight and walked out the front door, leaving it open to make a draft, and went slowly up the low hill behind my property. There I squatted on my haunches and watched, feeling very little emotion, as the cabin burned to the ground.

I wonder if there’s a lonelier place anywhere than an arena designed to seat thirty or forty thousand people, empty.

The King City slash-boxing venue did have an official name, the Somebody-or-other Memorial Gladiatorium, but it was another case of honoring someone well-known at the time that sports history has forgotten. The arena is called, in all the sports pages, in the minds of bloodthirsty fans everywhere, even on the twenty-meter sign on the outside, simply the Bucket of Blood.