by Jim Dodge
WILD B.: Well, what about organic brain damage. Anything show up?
VOLTA: They’ve run every test they have. No evidence of impairment.
WILD B.: So why was he in a coma for nine weeks?
VOLTA: It’s what the Corpus Hermeticum calls ‘hiding on the threshold.’
WILD B.: Still pounding them dusty tomes, huh?
VOLTA: Still curious.
WILD B.: And curiouser and curiouser, I bet. Personally, I’m partial to Westerns.
VOLTA: If you keep tweaking me, I’ll let it be known that when we first met, you were still a Jesuit priest – and a rather sensational young Latin scholar.
WILD B.: Just more proof them books get you in trouble.
VOLTA: That’s like blaming your legs for taking you to the whorehouse.
WILD B.: (laughing) ‘Silence is golden.’
VOLTA: Indeed. And decision is of the essence. That’s why I need yours on Daniel. And I do understand that you have some personal work planned, that you’re tired of teaching, that you’re old and cranky and have lost your edge, but Daniel may be the student you’ve been looking for.
WILD B.: Didn’t know I was looking. But all right, you’ve met him. How do you feel?
VOLTA: He’s got a ferocious mind, and, for one so young, not completely at the expense of subtlety. He strikes to the meat, but he’s impulsive, of course – youth again – yet remarkably self-possessed. He’s held himself together through some hideous blows, and I think––
WILD B.: (cutting him off) Feel. How do you feel about him?
VOLTA: (after a long pause) Powerfully attracted; powerfully repelled.
WILD B.: Ah, so that’s what got your attention.
VOLTA: On further consideration, you may be the worst choice imaginable.
WILD B.: Are you appealing to my pride or perversity now?
VOLTA: I wasn’t aware you made the distinction.
WILD B.: (laughing) Sold. I’ll take him. But no more than eighteen months, and I get to go off to the desert in peace. Plus you owe me a serious favor.
VOLTA: What’s that now? About three hundred and seven?
WILD B.: At least.
VOLTA: The Wyatt Ranch? Two weeks?
WILD B.: I’ll be there.
Daniel was arrested an hour after he officially regained consciousness. Alexander Kreef, an attorney specializing in juvenile law, arrived a few minutes later with a handful of writs and injunctions. He was accompanied by Daniel’s physician, furious his patient had been disturbed without his approval.
The dour lieutenant attempting to question Daniel was not impressed. ‘Excuse me all to shit,’ he bowed to Dr Tobin, then turned to Alexander Kreef and said with nasty delight, ‘The kid ain’t retained attorney yet – just come to.’
Alexander Kreef smiled pleasantly. ‘I was hired by Mr and Mrs Wyatt, his aunt and uncle, and am entered as attorney of record.’ He handed an eight-pound pile of papers to the lieutenant, who looked at them and dropped them on the floor.
Alexander Kreef kept smiling: ‘You ask my client one more question and I’ll bust your ass so hard you’ll shit through your ears. No, on second thought, ask away; we get more dismissals on procedural errors than airtight alibis.’
‘Fuck you.’ The lieutenant glared at Alexander Kreef, then Daniel, but put his microcassette recorder away.
‘Uh-uh,’ Alexander chided, motioning for the recorder. ‘Inadmissible without due counsel.’
‘Wow. Gee, no, really? Not that it matters, Counselor – seems he don’t remember shit. I mean it’s pretty fucking hard to remember something as quiet as an explosion that blew your momma into memories and bone chips.’
‘You cold prick,’ Alexander hissed, but it was lost in Dr Tobin’s outraged howl: ‘Good God, Lieutenant! This young man has suffered profound cerebral trauma, been in a coma for nine weeks, and you expect him to answer questions? Did it ever enter your feeble mind that the boy might have some form of amnesia common to severe head injuries – total, partial, or conditional?’
‘I’m not a physician,’ Alexander said, ‘but total seems likely in this case.’
‘Yeah, I bet. Probably won’t even remember if he was the alleged Mrs Wyatt’s son, or who his alleged father might be.’ Course with that paper factory they were running, probably hard to keep all the identities straight. Yeah, fucking hard to remember anything.’ The lieutenant looked at Daniel. ‘Ain’t that right, kid?’
‘I don’t remember you,’ Daniel said, then shut his eyes.
Daniel’s hearing was held on December 7. The serious charges were dropped in exchange for his mitigated nolo contendere to the lesser counts. He was placed in the guardianship of his aunt and uncle until he was seventeen, at which time, assuming no further arrests, his record would be sealed. Some red tape remained, but Alexander Kreef turned it into Christmas ribbon, and on December 21 Daniel was released. He left that afternoon with Matilda and Owen Wyatt for a cattle ranch in the coastal hills, roughly fifty miles north of the Four Deuces.
The Wyatts were in their mid-fifties, a happy, vigorous couple who took great pleasure in their life on the ranch. The Wyatts owned 1400 acres, but had always run fewer cattle than the carrying capacity allowed. While a struggle at first, their operation was now considered a model of ecological intelligence.
Riding north with the Wyatts Daniel felt tentative and vaguely numb, though they were easy company. He learned that they’d known Volta for fifteen years, from the time he’d helped end a serious rustling problem that had plagued them.
‘So you’re repaying a favor?’ Daniel inquired, curious why they’d gotten involved.
‘Hell no,’ Owen told him, ‘we’re members of the Alliance.’
Daniel found that difficult to believe. ‘So the cattle are a front?’
‘Daniel,’ Tilly explained, ‘you don’t have to be illegal to be an outlaw.’
‘But you stood up in court and said I was a relative – perjury is illegal.’
‘The cops couldn’t prove otherwise,’ Tilly said, ‘so how do you know you’re not kin? We got big families on both sides, and both share the same motto: One Hand Washes the Other. Besides, we got tired of being so straight.’
As they pulled into the ranch just after dark, Owen pointed to his left. ‘You’ll be staying in that cabin down there past the feed barn. You see it there, got the light on?’
‘I see two lights,’ Daniel said.
‘The little cabin’s Wild Bill’s, your teacher – he pulled in a few days ago. Tilly and I’ll get the house warm and some chow on the table while you go down and say hello.’
‘If you want to,’ Tilly added.
‘You see who runs this outfit,’ Owen groused, but it was plain he wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Nobody answered Daniel’s knock. He knocked louder, and when there was still no answer he opened the door and called, ‘Hello?’
When a voice squawked ‘What?’ he went in. Wild Bill Weber was sitting cross-legged and naked on the floor, slowly and methodically hitting himself between the eyes with a large rubber mallet. ‘Pleased to meet you, Daniel,’ Wild Bill said, continuing the rhythmic mallet blows. ‘I’m Bill Weber. We’ll be working together.’
‘You’re my teacher?’ Daniel said, not so much incredulous as nervously perplexed.
Wild Bill threw the mallet at Daniel’s head.
Ducking, Daniel heard the mallet whiz by his ear and hit the wall with a dull thock, the wooden handle clattering as it rebounded across the floor. He started to pick it up and hurl it back, but instead turned on Wild Bill and demanded, ‘Why did you do that? What are you doing?’
Wild Bill was watching carefully. After a moment he said, ‘Daniel, let’s get it clear right from the jump: I’m the teacher. I work on the questions; you work on the answers. So you tell me why I chucked my brain-tuner at you.’
‘I don’t know,’ Daniel said. ‘No idea.’
‘Good,’ Wild Bill nodded. ‘That’s t
he right answer. But from now on there are no right or wrong answers.’
‘I’m not following this at all,’ Daniel admitted.
‘You probably won’t for about a year, so just relax and do what I tell you and maybe we can both get through without much damage.’
The year passed quickly for Daniel, the time greased by routine. He woke at 4.00; did his dawn meditation; joined Tilly, Owen, and Wild Bill in the main house for breakfast at 5.00; worked until 4.00 in the afternoon; did his evening meditation; ate dinner at 6.00; did the dishes if it was his turn; had free time from then till 9.45; received formal instruction from Wild Bill between 9.45 and 9.50; and then did his dream meditation and went to bed at 10.30. The diversity of the routine saved Daniel from boredom.
The day’s work was anything from branding cattle to scrubbing the kitchen floor. Daniel fixed fence, fed stock, and cut wood. They planted and cut hay and did special projects, like building a smokehouse. He usually worked with Owen or Tilly, for Wild Bill flatly refused any direct contact with the cattle, dismissing them as ‘twisted critters and dumb insults to wild spirit.’ Tilly and Owen argued otherwise – persuasively, Daniel thought – and the subject caused some strain. But one winter night some lightning-spooked steers broke down the corral. Wild Bill saddled up and rode out with the rest of them in the storm to herd the cattle home, bringing the last strays in well after breakfast.
Owen grinned hugely as Wild Bill rode in, enjoying the sight of Bill working cattle as much as the return of the steers. ‘Well, well,’ Owen had greeted him, ‘git along li’l dogies.’
Wild Bill reined up sharply, barking, ‘Don’t be getting no goddamn notions now. I might be a fanatic, but I’m no purist. As long as I’m living here, I’ll lend a hand when you’re truly pressed. Don’t mean I’m joining the fucking Grange.’
Daniel’s three daily meditations, like the ranch work, shared only a structural formality. Wild Bill’s instructions had been brief: ‘Morning meditation is to fill your mind; evening meditation is to see what it’s filled with, and dream meditation is to empty it. You’ll figure out right away that filling it, seeing it, and emptying it are the same, but keep in mind that they couldn’t be the same unless they were different. So it’s not so much concentrating on the purpose, as concentrating through it. This first week we’ll sit together and I’ll show you the postures and breathing and such, but after that you’ll do them alone in your cabin. I’ll check on you whenever I want. The first time I find you not doing your meditations, I’m through as your teacher. So if you ever want to quit and don’t have the guts to tell me so, all you have to do is let me catch you fucking off when you should be sitting.’
After showing Daniel the postures and appropriate breathing for each meditation, he’d explained, ‘Now the most important thing is to get your mind dialed in on Top Dead Center, focus down for depth, and put the needle right through the zero. I’ll show you what works for me.’
Wild Bill went to the closet, explaining over his shoulder, ‘I’m going to my audiovisual department. Can’t hardly call yourself a teacher these days without some audiovisuals.’ And had stunned Daniel by reaching in the closet and pulling out a human skeleton.
Daniel, though he flinched, didn’t say a word.
‘Okay,’ Wild Bill said, holding the skeleton by the spine, ‘before every meditation you do this little exercise called “Counting the Bones.” Probably the oldest psychic woo-woo practice in the world – goes all the way back to the Paleolithic shamans as far as I can follow. What you do is simple: You imagine your skeleton, and then, starting with the toes, count your bones. And I don’t mean that “one, two,” shit – just see each bone clear in your mind and move on. You go up the body from the toes, both legs at once, join at the pelvis, shoot up the spine, swoop across the ribs, run out the arms, sail back to the shoulders, up the neck to the skull, and then right to the center of your brain.’
‘The brain isn’t a bone,’ Daniel said.
‘Neither is your dick,’ Wild Bill explained.
If Daniel found such explanations baffling, he was even more bewildered by the five-minute daily segment that constituted his formal study. Wild Bill asked one question and Daniel had five minutes to answer. Wild Bill never indicated if an answer was right, wrong, faulty, inspired, weak, provocative, or ill-considered. And the questions were such that the answers couldn’t be checked.
‘Where did you set your fork when you finished your waffles this morning?’
‘That bird we saw in the orchard – what color was its throat?’
‘What did Tilly say about the cornbread recipe Owen claims he learned from his Grandma?’
‘When the wind shifted along Fern Creek this afternoon, which direction did it blow?’
During his dream meditation, supposedly emptying his mind, Daniel thought about the questions and his doubtful answers. Slowly he became aware of himself in the world, seeing what he saw, doing what he did: laying the posthole digger next to the picket maul; the shapes of clouds; the curved black plume of a cock valley quail on the fencepost; the phase of the moon.
But no matter how much he concentrated in the physical moment or focused through meditation, he kept hearing his mother scream, ‘Daniel! Run!’ And as his numbness gave way to grief, and grief to the buried rage of depression, the only question he really wanted answered was what had happened in that alley.
He told Wild Bill, ‘Volta said he would investigate my mother’s death and let me know what he learned – he gave me his word. And in ten months I’ve heard from him once, to say there was no progress. I guess I better do it myself, which means I’ve got to quit here and go back to Berkeley. It’s nothing personal. I mean, it’s nothing between you and me; it’s with Volta.’
‘Then take it up with him.’ Wild Bill shrugged. ‘But I’ll tell you this: If Volta gave you his word, I can stone guarantee two things – he’s working on it, and he’ll let you know. Volta may be the most honorable man I ever met. To a fault, perhaps. And besides, AMO has an extraordinary intelligence network. You won’t do any better on your own. And you do understand that if you just take off, Tilly and Owen might catch some shit. My suggestion is to talk to Volta. Give him a call in the morning. And sleep in if you want, since I guess we’re done with school.’
‘Let me talk to Volta first,’ Daniel said. ‘I would have before, but I don’t have a number for him.’
‘I got about twenty,’ Wild Bill said.
But Daniel didn’t need them. Volta arrived the next morning with a letter from Shamus. They went to Daniel’s cabin.
‘Before you read it,’ Volta said, ‘let me supply some context. Shamus is hiding. When the bomb exploded, it aborted the plutonium heist; therefore, there was no overt connection. But there were suspicions––’
‘I know,’ Daniel interrupted. ‘They asked me about him specifically. I couldn’t remember.’
‘It’s these damn computers. They probably pulled anybody who’d made a try, came up with him fleeing the Four Deuces with a woman and child – an idiot could see the connection. We’ve got to recruit more people with computer knowledge so we can either eliminate the information they want to retrieve or replace it with what we’d like them to have.’
Daniel said pointedly, ‘But nobody knows where Shamus is, right? Not the cops, not you?’
‘That’s correct.’ Volta smiled. ‘Forgive the digression on the skills the Alliance lacks. But while we didn’t know where he is, we did let it be known that we’d like to talk to him about the other people involved in the plutonium job.’
‘How did you do that? Let him know?’
‘We went looking for the others hard enough that the pressure was felt. Thus, the letter. It was sent from Topeka, Kansas, for what that’s worth.’ Daniel read the letter carefully.
Volta––
There were three people involved besides myself, Annalee, and Daniel (who was included at Annalee’s discretion, against my advice). Of the other
three, two did not know about the diversionary bomb nor who would deliver it. The third, who constructed the bomb, did not know what it was for, when it would be used, or who would deliver it. It was evidently a faulty bomb, though the maker insists that given the nature of the device, accidental detonation was virtually impossible.
Leave it alone. I accept the blame. You have my word I will never make another attempt. Let me be.
S.M.
Daniel read it again. It looked like Shamus’s handwriting, but he wasn’t sure.
Volta said, ‘I want your permission to put out word that your mom yelled for you to run before the bomb exploded. Perhaps we can draw Shamus out – we need more information about those involved.’
‘Of course,’ Daniel agreed, then added with clear annoyance, ‘I figured you would have already done that. I mean, Shamus deserves to know. He’s blaming himself.’
‘He should,’ Volta said.
‘What do you mean? Do you think he messed with the bomb?’
‘No. I have no evidence he tampered with the bomb; none at all. I only meant that he was the agent for the occasion. He enlisted her help in a patently dangerous undertaking.’
‘She wanted to help him.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
Daniel paused before answering. ‘It’s complicated. I wanted to help my mom, once she was involved. And I wanted to help Shamus because I thought he felt I was jealous that Mom liked him. I wasn’t. I just wanted her to be happy. And he made her happy, I guess. And also because I believed in what Shamus was doing, and because of the excitement, too, I suppose. Like I said, it’s complicated.’
‘It’s all complicated, Daniel. That’s why it’s taking time to sort it out.’
‘So why didn’t you tell him that it wasn’t an accident?’
Volta said, ‘First of all, because we don’t know it wasn’t an accident. Secondly, because Shamus might already know it wasn’t.’
‘How?’
‘Maybe Shamus didn’t intend to leave any implicating witnesses.’ Volta cocked his head slightly. ‘You do understand that possibility?’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Daniel said flatly.
