Wooten, meanwhile, found himself abandoned in a strange and terrifying place. Accustomed to the open fields of southern Illinois, he found the dense and mysterious Ozark woods unfathomable. His aunt had told him not to leave the property until she came back and so—taught duty by his father’s flame birch wand—that’s what he did. Even as the food began to run out. Cans wouldn’t open; raw flour stuck to his tongue. He tried eating the berries and the long grass around the yard but they only made him sick. He grew so delirious that when an old man named Dacey took it upon himself to check on the place ten days after Mary was stricken, Wooten thought him some terrifying forest beast and hid under the house until he left.
The hunger grew so bad that he could hardly stand, his guts twisting into a tight ball of heat, the strength leaking from his legs. He would catch bugs and eat them alive, feeling them die beneath his small molars and then seeing bits of them emerge in his yellow acid shit. He ate paper from a catalog he found, some of the pages showing pictures of food that he pretended to taste. One day he bit the tip of his finger and drank the blood but that night he dreamt the devil came to get him and so he never did that again.
And then the hunger vanished. There was no longer any need for food. He began to float through the trees surrounding the house, flying all the way up into the clouds, looking for the angels who made the lightning that killed his father. More bad men came out of the woods but he was living beneath the house. It was easy to be quiet now that he was no longer hungry. He could lie still for hours. Flying.
Finally, blood returned to the speaking part of his aunt’s brain. It took the deputies an hour to find the terrified boy. It was hard to get hold of him but once they did he was as light as a sack of dry leaves. They took him to the same hospital as his aunt, keeping him away from her for almost a week while they put food into his arm. Nobody wanted her to have another stroke at the sight of him. He caught glimpses of himself in a mirror above a sink, this charred doll they had stuck Earl Wooten’s big eyes onto. Finally he was well enough to move in with his aunt. They kept him there for three more weeks, feeding him sweet potatoes and pork and corn bread. Sometimes he’d catch her looking at him, tears rolling from the outside corners of her eyes. She made him promise never to tell what happened and Wooten thought this was because he’d been bad. That fall, word came that his mother was out of bed. He went home, never telling anyone about the foolish boy who didn’t have enough sense to walk down the road and get something to eat. His aunt died two years later, taking their secret to her grave.
Wooten had never been hungry again. There was no resolve involved, no conscious decision. Avoiding hunger simply became an instinct, like blinking or taking that next breath. In the early days of working he always remembered to take along some biscuits or bread, especially on the most remote and difficult jobs. Once he began to make money it was easy to ensure that the larder was always bursting and a replenishing break was just a few hours away. Men who worked for him were always sure to be spoiled by boxes of doughnuts and small mountains of sandwiches. Memories of those bad two months were gradually buried beneath a million calories.
Or so he thought. They returned with a vengeance when he woke up on the second night of his diet in a cold sweat, the pangs in his stomach like a stiletto’s stabs. He sneaked down to the larder and ate the first thing he could get his hands on—a can of garbanzo beans. Just spooned them right down into his churning gut. He’d wanted to explain to Ardelia why he could not do this thing but he knew she would never understand. He had a wife and children and a city to build. To risk a heart attack for something long past would be seen as the worst sort of foolishness.
So he started to cheat. Biscuitville. Arby’s. 7-Eleven. Mary’s Bar BQ down in Powdertown. The dimpled metal lunch trucks. Trying to eat just enough to keep the hunger away. But it was hard. He actually began to gain weight on his diet. He was beginning to think that he would have to tell Ardelia that he could not do this. But then he had that first joking conversation with the frail cafeteria woman whose eyes said she knew all about hunger. She could cook something for him that would taste as good as it got without his putting on too much fat.
All he had to do was come by her place.
He cranked off the shower, letting the water run off him for a moment before stepping into the cramped bathroom. He wiped the mirror and stared hard at himself for a moment. She was right. He did look tired. When he came out she was in her uniform, everything except the paper hat. He wouldn’t let her wear that around him. The smell of cooking filled the stale air. He went over to the boy. Inside the cage there were soldiers from the bucket Wooten had brought him. Pale bite marks covered their necks. The barrels of some of the guns had been chewed off.
“Hey, you aren’t supposed to be eating these.”
The boy started banging the heads of the G.I. Joes together harder. Wooten stared at his lint-laced hair for a moment, then started to collect the little soldiers. Without looking, the boy began to moan, the first revving of something far worse.
“No, it’s all right,” Wooten said quickly.
He dropped the toys. He didn’t need to hear that screaming. Not today. Besides, a little plastic in the guts wouldn’t harm this boy. Not any worse than he already was. He thought about his own son for a moment, sitting at home on his bed. Hating him. He wondered what Joel would think if he saw him here now. This was definitely the last time. For sure. Just one more meal and that was it.
He stood and walked into the galley kitchen. She was almost done. He put his hands around her skinny waist.
“Smells good.”
“You don’t want to be eating that airplane stuff.”
He could feel his stomach rumbling. He’d tell her after he ate.
16
Truax stood perfectly still amid the Dumpsters, his gaze locked on the squat brown building. He had a good view across the parking lot. And the Dumpsters provided perfect cover. If anybody came with their trash, all he had to do was step back into the shadows. Others might not have been able to stand the stench of the rotting vegetables and curdled milk, the odors rising up from the stagnant multicolored puddles. But Truax had long since become accustomed to evil smells. First of a dying country and then his own putrid flesh. He could handle this.
He’d almost lost Wooten back on Newton Pike. He hadn’t expected him to park where he did, right on the side of the road. Truax had to think fast, speeding past the Ranchero and then pulling into a side street. Luckily, there was an unloading Mayflower he could use to shelter his Cutlass from Wooten’s view. For a moment he feared that Wooten had spotted him and was pulling some sort of diversionary tactic. When the builder got out of the car and headed down the tree-shrouded bike path, Truax set off warily after him. He plunged into the woods a hundred feet before the path’s entrance, crouching behind the first big tree for a quick look. He relaxed when he saw Wooten walking obliviously on. If he intended to spring a trap he’d have done it by now. Truax set out through the gentle woods. It wasn’t hard to track Wooten. The pine trees were widely spaced, the thickets sparse. Truax stayed on the ridge that ran parallel to the sunken path, Wooten’s large head bobbing at ground level just ahead of him. Things went perfectly until he stumbled in a leaf-filled rut, causing Wooten to turn. Truax froze, not daring to breathe. But Wooten walked on after a short pause. The man had no idea he was being followed. A hundred yards later Truax saw a tot lot looming in his path. If challenged, his plan was to claim he was looking for a lost dog. But his luck held—there was no one around.
After a quarter mile of bends and switchbacks Wooten entered the vast Renaissance Heights complex. Truax was momentarily confused as to why Wooten would walk so far to a place easily reachable by car. But the question brought its own answer. Because he didn’t want to be seen here. Truax’s heart started to pound; his senses sharpened. His work was about to pay some dividends. Wooten walked quickly across the parking lot, disappearing into a dark stairwell. On the second floor
he rang a buzzer. A black woman in a once-bright robe answered the door. Truax raised his nocs for a closer look. From a distance, she seemed both young and old. After waiting in the trees beyond the project’s border for a few minutes, he headed toward the Dumpsters that were situated just inside the spot where the path joined the parking lot. Once established there he again used the nocs, though the sun on the window prevented him from seeing into the apartment. He could read the number on the door, however. 27.
This was Truax’s third day on his job. His third day of rising before dawn and staying with Wooten until late at night. His mission was simple—to shadow the builder everywhere he went. He’d started late Monday night and would continue indefinitely, sticking with the builder and recording every action he took. Rising before he rose. Following him wherever he went. Not sleeping until he slept.
Until Swope could be sure.
Even now, as he stood among stinking Dumpsters, Truax could hardly believe his good fortune. When Swope had called him Monday evening he’d thought his working life was over. Menial jobs and government handouts littered an already dark horizon. Irma’s behavior at the party and the Sunday morning confrontation with the Wootens had wrecked his chances at EarthWorks. Wooten had no doubt gone to Swope after leaving his house, concocting some cock-and-bull story that made it seem like Truax was a raging bigot, when all he was really doing was protecting his family’s honor. So when Swope’s call came he’d put on a coat and tie and gone to face the music. But then, the miracle happened. Swope offered him a job. And this was no cluster fuck in sales, either. Personal security element for the head man himself. Free to use all the know-how and initiative he’d picked up over the last two decades. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Like any true leader, Austin Swope had the ability to cut through the bullshit. What he’d said about always getting penalized—the man was surely some kind of genius. After two years of dealing with civilians who simply did not understand, Truax had finally got through to one who did.
Swearing him to secrecy, Swope had laid it out for him, explaining how he had come to suspect that Wooten was systematically looting thousands of dollars of equipment from poorly guarded sites around the city, selling them to out-of-town cronies and using the proceeds to pad a Bahamian account. There was no use calling Chones—the sheriff and others in the Cannon County establishment were almost certainly in the builder’s pocket. Everybody knew how corrupt Maryland could be. Swope needed to work this one on his own. The problem was who to use. Newton Plaza was even more riddled with Wooten supporters than Cannon County, not least of whom were the jokers in security, who’d clearly been turning a blind eye to whoever was pilfering the company’s copper piping or thermal windows. And those rare employees in the rank and file who Swope could trust—Chad Sherman over in PR, for instance—lacked the skills for what had to be done. What Swope needed was somebody who was both out of the loop and yet absolutely loyal to his office. Somebody with the right sort of field experience for the job. Somebody he could be sure was no friend of Earl Wooten’s.
He needed John Truax.
The plan was simple. Truax would follow Wooten, gathering evidence of his activities. Everything he did would be logged, no matter how trivial. Of special interest were any out-of-town trips. Truax started work the moment after he saved Teddy’s ass from those muggers. After fishing his pair of 10 × 42 nocs from the basement and buying a stack of notepads from 7-Eleven, he headed over to Mystic Hills, parking around the corner from Wooten’s house. Dawn came eventually. The few people who passed didn’t notice him. There were always workmen around in the morning, waiting for the boss to show. Wooten left his house just after seven, driving out to a site in Juniper Bend. After that he went to another site, then to his office in Newton Plaza. And so it went. Nothing much happened that first day. Truax was glad—it allowed him to learn the man’s pace. He was pleased to discover that Wooten was a slow driver. That made things easier.
That night, Truax lucked out yet again, finding an observation post in a roomy tree house just beyond Wooten’s back lawn. He’d brought along his poncho and some Off! in the belief that he would have to make his own shelter in the thick woods. But then he stumbled onto the gleaming plywood structure, built in the sturdy crotch of a big elm. It was the perfect lookout. Not only did it provide a panoramic view of the house, but the infinity of dewy webs and absence of toys made him suspect that the kids no longer had any interest in it. And even if someone did approach, Truax could pull back by the time they’d made it halfway across the lawn. It was sturdily built, resting a good eight feet off the ground. Treated plywood walls, two-by-four beams, particleboard floor. Tarred roof that hadn’t let in a drop of rain since the day it was raised. Shuttered windows in every wall. Truax knew families back in My Song who would have killed for a place like this. He stayed until well after the Wootens turned in on Tuesday and returned before dawn the next morning, sitting perfectly still in its shelter as the night sounds turned slowly into morning sounds. It reminded him of some of the good dawns he’d passed in country.
This is better, he found himself thinking. This is work.
The second day proved as uneventful as the first. Wooten toured sites, made a quick trip to Arby’s and then spent the rest of the day at Newton Plaza. He was home by six. By then, Truax had the knack of shadowing his man, having established a comfortable buffer between them. Not that there weren’t some minor foul-ups. They’d bumped into each other at a Gulf station late Tuesday and Truax lost track of him for a half hour late Wednesday morning. But these were simply part of the process. By dawn Thursday, trailing him had become second nature.
The only truly difficult moment had nothing to do with Wooten. It came when he returned home late Tuesday night. Swope had sworn him to secrecy and he’d been able to stonewall Irma on Monday, saying that he’d merely been reprimanded about the party. It was a good lie—there was no way Irma was going to press him on the subject. But Tuesday was different. He arrived just before midnight to discover her on the warpath.
She’d heard about him getting fired at her bridge circle. Knowing that keeping his assignment a secret would be more dangerous than simply telling her, Truax led his wife to the bedroom and locked the door. Irma perched on the edge of the bed, staring up at him with an expression that balanced anger and fear.
“Well?” she asked, her sharp stenciled eyebrows rising on her forehead. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I’m working for Austin Swope.”
She stared at him for a long while.
“Swope?” There was still doubt in her voice. “Doing what?”
“Security.”
She began to smile sarcastically, though she quickly remembered that her husband never lied. She nodded, a single terse dip of her strong chin. She wanted more.
“Mr. Swope suspects that Earl Wooten has been stealing from Earth-Works. Evidently he has half the county working with him. My job is to help make the case against him.”
She pointed at him.
“I knew,” she said.
“You mustn’t tell anyone, Irma. I mean it. If you talk about this even to Sally then I will lose the job.”
She stood and walked over to him.
“For Mr. Swope? You are really working now for Mr. Swope?”
He nodded. She stared at him for a moment, her eyes filling with tears.
“Don’t worry, John,” she said, pulling open the buttons on his shirt. “I will tell no one.”
A fat white woman wearing baggy jeans and a tentlike blouse emerged from the stairwell next to Wooten’s, carrying soggy A & P bags in each hand. A cigarette dangled from the side of her mouth. Truax stepped as far back into the shadows as he could. The woman arrived, flinging the bags up into the middle Dumpster. The splotchy skin of her double chins waddled with the motion. Something fell out of the second bag as she threw it—a Hamm’s bottle. It rolled to Truax’s feet. He remained perfectly still. The woman stared after the bottle for a
moment, as if she might come in after it. But then she turned and headed back to her building, the stretched fabric of her jeans making hushing sounds with every step she took.
Wooten remained in the apartment. Truax stood his ground. Heat pulsed from the sun-drenched Dumpsters; the stink became even greater. Sleep began to stalk him. It had been days since he’d rested properly. He hadn’t slept at all Saturday night, with Susan and Irma both wailing until nearly dawn. He’d only managed a few fitful hours on Sunday, images of naked Joel Wooten and his falling wife waking him every time he drifted off. Excitement over his resurrection had kept him up Monday. And after that he was working. Sleep was no longer a priority.
Not that Truax cared. Compared with My Song this was nothing. In his ten months there he never had a single night’s sleep. Not one. The week with Irma in Manila included—every time he was about to sink into that undulant Holiday Inn mattress he’d wake to find her straddling him, calling for him so loudly that the GI’s in nearby rooms were soon mocking them, raising an echoing chorus of “Fuck me, John’s” that drew the attention of first the assistant manager and finally two bemused MP’s. So great was his ability to function without sleep that Truax soon became a legend in his platoon, then in the company and, finally, the whole battalion. The boots fresh out of Bien Hoa couldn’t believe he did no drugs, not even the mild bennies the medics would pass out like Good ’N Plenty. Some of the bloods started calling him Dracula. But there was no malice in it. Just awe. And relief, because knowing Truax was on the wire meant they could sleep safely. Not that he never slept. He’d usually catch a few hours just after dawn, when it was clear that no attack was coming. Or in the afternoon, when Charley slept as well. But never at night. Even if some new lieutenant ordered him off the nocturnal security element, he would still be out there with his men, his eyes focused beyond the six-level concertina.
The New City Page 23
