Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy (82 page)

BC: A white tee-shirt and pajama bottoms with snowflakes on them. I know, it’s awful.

HW: Misconceptions about people who graduated from UNC?

BC: That if by some rip in the space-time continuum, Al-Qaeda managed to get a Division I college basketball team together, and if that team somehow made it to the NCAA tournament, and then survived March Madness, and, now here’s a real stretch, were facing Duke in the championship game on Monday night, that UNC fans would put aside their petty rivalry and root for Duke over the terrorists.

GINSU TONY: THE SHORT STORY THAT BECAME DESERT PLACES

I'm often asked where the idea for DESERT PLACES came from, and the primary source is the following short story I wrote in the spring of 1999, as a student in the creative writing program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The amazing writer, Marianne
Gingher
, was the professor of this intro to fiction-writing class, and I turned in a story called "
Ginsu
Tony" for my final project. Please don't email me to say how awful it is...I know. But for those of you who've read DESERT PLACES, you may enjoy this glimpse into its earliest incarnation.

"GINSU TONY"

BY

BLAKE CROUCH

Spring 1999

Engl. 23W

Professor: Marianne
Gingher

University
of
North Carolina
at
Chapel Hill

July 14

Traveled 517 miles today from Kansas City to western Nebraska. Cool and clear this morning, so I put the top down on the Jeep and drove several hundred miles with corn fields extending to the horizon and a summer wind in my hair.

Hit storms at one o'clock and drove through blinding rain for an hour. When I came into sunlight again, the land had changed. The corn fields were gone, and there was nothing but prairie as far as the eye could see. It amazes me no matter how many times I encounter this vast open space of land and sky. It's the West. It's the feeling of something that's too big for man to tame, even in this age of exploitation.

I stopped for the night in Scottsbluff. It's a small town surrounded by parched, yellow grassland and red cliffs. The sun has just dipped below the horizon as I sit on the bed in my motel room and scribble down these words. It's eight o'clock, and I'm tired and hungry, but more than anything I just need a drink. Hope there's a bar in this town.

July 15

Wyoming. It's July, and yet I saw mountains today that glistened with snow under a summer sky. Wish I'd had the time to leave the highway and drive up into the hills of this wild country, to touch snow while sweating in summer heat or to see the high, desert plain from a rocky peak.

Started late this morning. Last night is still a pleasant, throbbing dream. Got drunk and high and met a girl at the bar in Scottsbluff. She stayed the night with me, and I can only say that she was blond and had enormous tits. Good God! But I've a feeling that the obscurity of her face is a blessing. All I've got to remember her by is a half-smoked bag of weed.

I headed north today towards the Wyoming/Montana border, and the sky was cloudless and winter blue. For much of the day, the highway ran parallel to a distant chain of brown hills, separated from the highway by twenty miles of sand and sagebrush. There was rarely a sign of civilization in sight, just lonely, beautiful wasteland--my kind of country.

It's nine-thirty now, and I'm writing by the light of headlights. There's still a shadow of crimson on the western horizon, but it's useless for writing. That dying sort of light only shows the silhouette of things on the horizon, and there's nothing on the horizon here. I'm twenty miles into Montana, a quarter mile off the highway, in the midst of an immense prairie.
Deerlodge
is still many hours away, and I'm far too exhausted to make the journey tonight.

It's cold and clear. I'm gonna smoke a joint and go to bed. I'll throw my sleeping bag onto the grass and sleep under the stars tonight. So quiet here. No wind. Only the sound of my pen moving across paper.

July 16

A horrible, fucking day by anyone's standard, and I don't feel like writing about it. But I'm in a cheap motel room in
Deerlodge
, Montana, and I've got a fifth of Jack waiting for when I finish, so I'm going to get it down. Above all else, I am a writer, and I need to pour this onto paper while it's fresh. Nothing's worse than telling a story when it's rotten and stale.

It gets cold out on the plains at night, even in the summertime, and I woke up shivering this morning. My sleeping bag was soaked with steely dew, and the wind which had begun during the night hours, was blowing through the weeds, making them rustle at my feet. It was six-thirty, and though the sun was still below the eastern horizon, the first timid rays of light were stretching across the prairie. I threw the wet sleeping bag into the back of the rusty CJ-7 and set out on the road again.

I headed west for nine hours, watching the land change from prairie to foothills to mountains. I kept thinking about the girl in Scottsbluff--it was something to take my mind from my destination. It made the hours pass quickly, and I obsessed on our intoxicated encounter, remembering with growing pride what I had conquered.
 

I arrived at Montana State Prison at four in the afternoon. It was sunny and warm, and there were snow-capped mountains in every direction. They rose above the hunter green pines that covered the land. There was already a crowd gathering around the twenty-foot prison fence. News trucks were everywhere, and a small, religious group chanted, "Murder is murder." Many people were holding angry signs, and I saw one with yellow, lightening-shaped letters that read, "
HAVE A SEAT TONY
." A young girl stood at her father's side across from the religious group. Her sign read, "
38 WRONGS DO MAKE A RIGHT
."

I parked away from the crowd and put on sunglasses and a hat. My hair is long, and I have a beard, but my small, hazel eyes are unmistakably the same as my brother's, and as his face is known throughout the country, so is mine. I'm a celebrity of sorts, a symbol of my brother's crimes, and I dreaded to be seen on the day of his execution, when his face was on every front page and news channel in the country.

At the prison gates, a guard was waiting for me, and he escorted me into the interior of the prison. I was checked by security and given the option to see Orson in an open, guard-monitored room, or in a conference room, separated by thick glass. I chose the latter. They said I was the only person who had come to visit him, and that did not surprise me. Because it was late, we had only half an hour. There were preparations to be made for his execution.

The guard led me into the small conference room. There was a chair waiting for me, and I sat down and looked through the glass at the other half of the room which was presently empty. After five minutes, the door on the other side of the glass opened. Orson walked in, hands and feet bound in chains, with two black guards on either side. I was afraid to look at his face, but when our eyes locked, forty years of memories rushed over me, and I saw him only as my twin, not the monster.

He looked thinner than he had on TV. His face was drawn, and his small eyes seemed to have pushed further back into his head. We no longer looked like twins, and that was a comforting thought. His head was shaved, and I saw the long, straight scar that ran down from the top of his head. He had gotten that when we were five. I had pushed him down in Daddy's rowboat when we were out on Lake Michigan, and he had split his head open on the sharp, metal side of the boat.

He picked up the phone on his side, and I picked up mine. He smiled and chuckled to himself, then turned suddenly and said to one of the guards:
 
"You staying?" His tone was prissy and demeaning, and though I couldn't hear what the guard said, Orson didn't like his response. "Fucking prick. What do you think, I'm gonna look at him to death?" The guard shook his head, and his chiseled face showed no emotion. He said something to Orson, and my brother turned back to me. "I'm sorry we can't have any privacy from these assholes."

"It's fine," I said.

"Oh, that's right, you're scared of me."

My stomach tightened.

"It's been awhile," he said.

"Fifteen years."

"Why haven't you come before? I've written you letters practically begging to see you. You wouldn't come to my trial. What do you think that says to a jury when a defendant's family doesn't even believe him?"

"It was obvious you were guilty," I said. "Everyone knew it. Besides you just disappeared from college. It seemed pretty clear you wanted nothing to do with us. What'd you expect?"

"A little loyalty."

"Well you blew it, not me."

"Why'd you want to talk to me behind a piece of fucking glass?" He said suddenly, his voice more hostile. "Think I'd hurt you?"

My hands began to shake, and sweat was running down my sides beneath my shirt. I tried to speak but my mouth had turned to cotton.

"Speak up. I can't hear when you whisper through the phone."

"No," I said.

"Well I wanted to tell you something, but I can't here. They're recording us."

"Tell me anyway."

"Are you fucking stupid? What'd I just say?"

"That they're recording…"

"Speak up!"
       

"That they're recording us."

"That's right. Say it again."

"Say what?"

"That they're recording us."

"Why?"

"Just say it!" He yelled.

"They're recording us."

"Again."

"What are you doing?"

"Say 'they're recording us,' William!"

"They're recording us," I said, and Orson groaned as a flicker of muffled pleasure spread across his face. He was distracted for a moment, and then he looked at me and smiled.

"Sorry. Small vices die hard, you know. You gonna watch me die tonight?"

"Yeah."

"The old fucks coming?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. You'd have to ask them."

"Unfortunately, solitary confinement doesn't lend itself to interaction. What I was asking was your opinion about why they aren't coming."

"I don't know."

"Well what do you
think
? That’s what an
opinion
is."

"They feel like everyone else. You're fucked-up. They'll be glad when you're gone."

"Will you be glad, William?"

"Yes."

Orson clapped his hands mockingly and smiled.

"I appreciate your honesty, brother. Does it scare you to know that you're part of me, and I'm part of you? Don't tell me you haven't felt it. That void, the rage. You're just too much of a fucking coward to embrace it. You think when I'm gone that black place inside of you will die. You hope, you pray that when I'm dead you won't have to think about it at night, lying in the dark, wondering what it might be like to give into that horrible desire. What's your fantasy, William. I like to cut throats. Tell me yours. The longer you put it off the stronger it will become. It won't die with me."

I took a deep, quivering breath and looked at my watch. "I bet people think you're me, don't they?" He said suddenly. "That's why you've got that long hair and nasty beard." He began to laugh hysterically. "Tough to get a date?" He continued to laugh and tears escaped the corners of his eyes. "Maybe after I'm dead, you won't have to look like Grizzly fucking Adams." He stopped laughing suddenly and dried his eyes. A controlled rage came upon him. "You ashamed of me?"