Chapter Five
Lance heard the approach of the van even before the sound
came of its tires popping over the gravel drive outside the motel, a hazy
memory of those dark days waiting in the jungle for the arrival of choppers, lives
hanging on the whisper of their approach and whether they would arrive on time,
though now, no bleeding bodies lay around him, no moaning and groaning of
wounded often dying men, just the silence between him and Sarah as they sat,
waiting, with the sharp, hurried stomp of Dan’s boots on the walkway just
outside. Each footfall filled with a growing panic only the pace could attest
to, the scent of the van’s exhaust telling Lance even more, a sense of flight,
as if at any moment, something, someone other than Dan would burst into the
room.
“Cong!” a distant voice echoed in his head, along with the
remembered rat tat tat of machinegun fire, theirs, and the response of the
grunts dug into soil as unsubstantial as blood.
“Is that him?” Sarah asked, her voice shrill with impatience
Lance did not share. She rarely responded to waiting well, always needing whatever
she wanted immediately, delayed gratification as foreign to her as a landing on
the moon.
Lance did not need to look over at her in the chair beside
the dresser or her annoyed expression reflected in its mirror. He knew the look
all too well from Hollywood but had hoped a return to the clean air of the mountains
might modify it, if not erase it.
Hours had passed since Dan’s departure. He had promised to
return quickly, and the delay told Lance something else, something dark and
terrible, some play gone awry, verified by his hurried and yet oddly,
staggering step.
Something had gone wrong, perhaps terribly, Lance thought,
having waited before elsewhere, when expected relief did not come or came to
late, and he had to do his best to heal wounds that needed better care than his
hands could give.
He felt as helpless waiting as Sarah felt annoyed, always
knowing that things had moved beyond him, and that the fate of those he was
empowered to save rested in fate or someone other than himself, he could do
nothing more to save them.
And that feeling hit him now, even though this was a place
far away from those jungles, no constant roar of jets or shutter of explosions,
only a more painful commodity, silence, something he craved then and dreaded
now.
The dark here came early, and yet, he made no move to switch
on a lamp, fearful of what it might expose, the way a grunts flashlight might
suddenly expose the face of an enemy not previously evident.
Better not to know, to endure, to suffer whatever fate had
instore, than to look it in the eye and know before the blow struck that death
awaited him.
"His business probably took longer than expected,"
Lance said, trying to sound confident, to keep the growing fear he felt from
coming out in his voice.
Holding onto the nightstand, he rose from the bed, the cheap
mattress groaning as he did. Or were those his bones, still stiff, aching, even
though his feet felt solid floor beneath rather than the uneven, queasy, bog of
jungle – he still fearful the next step would set off something that might end
his life.
. What time was it? Ten? Eleven? The motel supplied no clock,
and he couldn't tell from the sky.
Finally, his hand shaking in much the same way it had back
then, he reached over and flicked on the lamp, the dim light blinding him after
so long in the growing darkness.
“He probably stopped somewhere to get laid the way he always
did back in LA,” Sarah said sourly. “Plenty of cowgirls down in Denver for him
to seduce.”
Yet, it was no perfume or booze Lance smelled from the odor
advancing rapidly with each step towards the door.
Did he hear jealousy in her voice? Lance had suspected all
along that she wanted Dan for the same reason all those hippie chicks back in
Hollywood did, a slightly older man, and in his own way, erotic, a one-time
Wall Street broker now a Boulevard hipster, screwing each of the farm girls making
their way to the west coast from middle America, vulnerable to his charms until
they came to realize he could bring them no closer to their dream of stardom.
The sound of his books approached, rapid, staggering, with
their own sense of panic that only Lance would recognize. Men who had faced
death recognized its approach, and this scared Lance more.
How did his trip to the city bring him to the edge of death –
somewhere in the sound of his footsteps and his heavy bronchial cough was the
answer, all Lance had to do was wait.
Again came the imagined sounds from long ago, the slow groan
faint at first, then louder, not the angel of death but of salvation, only when
the door burst open and Dan’s lean shape filled the frame, it seemed as if
death had arrived, so pale was Dan’s face, the long smoldering brown cigarette dangling
from his quivering lower lip, a pale that emphasized the yellow nicotine stain on
his moustache.
“We got to get out of here,” Dan said, and coughed as he
staggered into the room.
Dan kept glancing over at the window even though the shade
was drawn, as if expecting something to appear.
A ghost perhaps, Lance thought, but imagined worse, the same look he’d seen
countless times on the faces of grunts, just before or just after a firefight,
his dark brown eyes reflecting terrors only men in combat had seen.
But Dan was no soldier, and the closest he’d ever gotten to
a battlefield was the draft board physical he failed due to his failing lungs.
"What hell happened?" Lance asked, legs against
the bed, keeping him from falling, his hand on the night stand for added
balance.
“Not yet,” Dan said, taking another staggering step into the
room, slamming the door behind him, against which he leaned. “I need a joint.”
Still staring at Dan’s stricken face, Lance reached down and
pulled open the night stand drawer, feeling for the Marlboro box in which he
kept a pre-rolled joint, pulled one out, lighted it and handed it to Dan, who took
a deep drag, then spoke as he exhaled, coughing out the words. "They tried to kill me."
The words leaped out of the past, words uttered over and
over in so many different ways, but all with the same horrible dread, men who
witnessed their own morality and somehow, unbelievably survived, yet not
completely, as if the experience had deadened an important part of them, killed
a sense of innocence they had kept in tact until that moment, and would never
see again – a wound sometimes otherwise invisible, yet beyond Lance’s ability
to repair or any surgeon to undo once done.
“Who tried to kill you?” Lance managed to ask, falling back to
a seated position on the bed. He could no longer trust his legs to keep him
vertical.
Dan, who had abandoned the cigarette, sucked hard on the
joint, coughing out the smoke almost immediately as he leaned back against the
door, looking over his shoulder at it, clearly expecting something to bash it
open.
"The drug company's boys," Dan muttered between coughs.
“But why?” Sarah asked, her impatience and boredom evaporating
for a more panicked look. “I thought you had a deal with them.”
“Bobo screwed them,” Dan said, huffing, unable to catch his
breath, yet still sucking on the joint. “They think I'm in on the rip off and
sent two boys after me from the city.''
“And you led them
here?” Lance said glancing again towards the window, expecting their faces to
appear on the other side.
Yet he was other shaped, rising out of the mists, not from
the snowy landscape of the Colorado mountains, but again, the deeper, greener
more disguised heated hell ten thousand miles further west. The acrid scent of
gun powder filled his nostrils as if back there, along with the mildew-like odor
of the sponge under each step he took, the sound of the buzzing, the moaning of
the wounded, the all so subtle movement on leaves and branches, the warmth of
the water up to his knees, the sudden explosion out of nowhere, killing and
then vanishing, leaving the trail of blood and guts in its wake.
“No,” Dan said. “They didn’t get this far.”
"Are you sure?" Lance asked, doubtfully.
"Damn straight.
They're dead."
"Dead? You
killed them?"
The even greater horror erupted in Lance, the guilt and
shame, the terror he’d felt since growing up back in a town in New Jersey where
death came nearly as quickly as war, and how it appalled him that human kind
found it so easy to kill, a horror he carried all the way through school to the
day of graduation when the letter came informing him of his draft status, his friends
urging him to flee to Canada, while his family encouraged him to go to war – a horror
he carried around inside himself, knowing himself capable of such deeds, even
at the same time refusing to give into the easy solution by running away. He
enlisted, not as a warrior, but a healer, a medic, bound and determined to undo
in some small way the rampages war brought on human kind.
“No, I did not kill them,” Dan barked, coughed, fell silent
for a moment, then said. They killed themselves. They slid off a cliff into
someone's back yard.”
“Then what are you afraid of?” Sarah asked, her eyebrows
folding down towards the bridge of her nose emphasizing her puzzled expression.
“There's bound to be more once the big bosses hear about it,”
Dan said. “And we’d better split before they send more goons to catch us.”
“You’re saying we should leave?” she said.
“The sooner the better,” Dan replied.
“Go where,” Lance asked, not daring to look in Sarah’s
direction, afraid of that glint in her blue eyes.
"The farther away from here the better," Dan said.
"One of the
canyons wouldn't do?" asked Lance.
"Not unless you
want to get trapped there."
"But why?"
Lance protested. "Me and Sarah aren't involved in this."
"Your van
is," Dan said. "And they saw it. They won't ask for details and
enough people around here can point you out if push comes to shove.''
"Where do you
suggest we go?" Sarah asked.
"I'm not
suggesting anything. I'm headed back to L.A. to find Bobo and wring a million
bucks out of him. But I have a feeling it's not just the money. These people have
another agenda, something I could feel when I was in the room with them.”
“What else could it be?” Lance asked.
“I don’t know,” Dan said. “It's a feeling I got when I met
with those dudes up in the restaurant. They were scared and nervous. They
shouldn't have been. Something big was up their ass, something beyond me, Bobo,
the money or the drugs. I felt like they wanted me and Bobo and everything else
to go away. I think they're trying to erase everything about this
operation."
“Sarah and I are not part of any operation,” Lance said. “We
came back to this part of the country with hopes of settling here.”
“A grave is a pretty permanent way to settle down,'' Dan
said
"Well, I'm not going back to LA," Lance said, catching
sight of Sarah in the dresser mirror, her gaze fixed on Dan, anger stirring
deep in her bright blue eyes.
“You don’t have to go back. But you can’t stay here,” Dan
said, “You can go anywhere you like, as long as you cover your tracks. You’ll
need to dump the van. It’s a dead giveaway.”
“We’ll need the van no matter where we go,” Lance said
“There won’t be time to sell it. Leave it,” Dan said. “You
have enough cash left to get another junker.”
“We can't afford that,'' Sarah said. “The money that’s left,
we’ll need.”
“But I thought you people had plenty of money?'' Dan said, his
bristly eyebrows vanishing under the brim of his floppy hat, his dark brown
eyes, puzzled.
“Had,'' Lance said. “It's starting to run out and we've got
to start economizing. We have to sell the van.''
“All right, I can dig that. But you're not going to sell it
here. We have no time to find anyone to discuss a discreet deal. We should get
on the road immediately, then make long term plans later.''
“You have a suggestion?'' Lance asked, again avoiding Sarah’s
stare. “I mean besides L.A.''
“I know someone who might help us in Albuquerque,' Dan said,
blowing out a heavy cloud of blue smoke. It hovered around his head, giving him
the air of a wizard or magician. He seemed calmer at the mere thought of escape.
“Albuquerque?'' Sarah mumbled. “That sounds as bad as
here.''
“Depends what you
mean by bad?'' Dan said. “It's relatively isolated but there's a commune there
that the authorities largely leave alone. It's a logical place for us to go and
someone there might be interested in buying the van. They're that kind of
people.''
It made sense to Lance on a number of levels, giving them
breathing room, and time before they had to decide on a more permanent
destination. He had been thinking in terms of going north, up into Wyoming or
the Dakotas, where he heard there was some country nearly as untamed as the
mountains here. But south was as good a direction, despite the promise of heat.
Nothing could be as bad as L.A., and the terrible grey haze that hung over its
summer like a giant hand, suffocating all living things within its grasp.
“I want to go to L.A. not Albuquerque,'' Sarah said, obstinately.
" We're not
going to L.A.," Lance said.
"Maybe you're
not, but I am, even if I have to take a bus," Sarah said.
“Albuquerque is on
the way,'' Dan said. "Right now we don't have time to fight. Once we get
to the commune, you two can fight all you want. Meanwhile, Albuquerque will
still give you both what you want. There are buses and planes from that place
if Sarah wants to split. But if we don't put some distance between us and
Denver, none of us will wind up anywhere that we want to go.''
“Albuquerque is
south. L.A. is west,'' Sarah said. “I might not be a genius, but I'm not that
stupid.''
"There's more
than one road to L.A. from here. Route 70's not finished,” Dan said. “We could
follow it well enough, but over some rough county that the van might not handle.
And it goes north after it leaves here, where there's still lots of snow. Route
40's closer to being finished-- and straighter, and warmer, and though there's
still mountains to cross, they're lower down south than they are here.''
Sarah studied her
fingernails for a moment, sharp spikes painted glistening red to match her lipstick
as if dipped in blood. Finally, she sighed.
“All right, I'll go as far as Albuquerque,' she said. “But
then I'm turning west -- even if I have to hitch hike to L.A.''
Comments
Post a Comment