by Neil Mcmahon
Monks noted that Freeboot had chosen as examples two diseases that were prevalent in prisons. Like his tattoos, it suggested a familiarity with that milieu.
“No,” Monks said, “it’s genetic, but so are thousands of other things that might or might not ever show up. Something triggers them, and there are probably thousands of triggers, too.”
“Say, the parents don’t have it, but the kid does. Is there any way to tell if one of the parents passed it on?”
Monks paused in his diapering and glanced at Freeboot, remembering what Marguerite had said about Freeboot’s diabetic-and ultimately blind-uncle.
“I don’t know what the state of the art is,” Monks said. “That’s not my field. But I’d definitely suggest talking to a specialist if you’re planning to have more kids.”
He realized that he was speaking as if this was a normal consultation with a concerned parent. Enough was enough.
“I need my wristwatch back,” Monks said. “Timing’s going to be critical from here.”
Freeboot shook a cigarette from a pack-an unfiltered Camel, an odd choice for a man who so obviously kept himself in superb physical condition-and then took out matches, but didn’t light up.
“What do you think you’re seeing here?” Freeboot said. “A bunch of batshit bush hippies, right?”
“I’ve already told you,” Monks said impatiently. “I see a little boy who’s badly in need of help. The rest, I don’t care about.”
“How many people you think are ever born who leave a real mark on history?”
“What the hell has that got to do with it?”
“You think you will?”
The question was so absurd, Monks was almost amused. “My tombstone’s going to read: ‘Occupant.’”
The nuance did not seem to register on Freeboot. He pointed at Monks with his first two fingers, the cigarette held between them.
“To be that kind of leader, you got to have virtu. It’s something you’re either born with or you’re not. Like diabetes.”
Monks blinked. He didn’t know much about Machiavelli, but he recognized the term virtu. It wasn’t “virtue” in its usual sense; rather, it was the power to govern effectively, requiring a combination of cunning and ruthlessness.
“What I’m saying is, if you got it, you get yourself through the hard shit,” Freeboot said. “If you don’t…”
Monks waited, expecting some platitudinous followup, like: the hard shit’s gonna get you.
But Freeboot merely shrugged. Then he pushed off the wall with his shoulder and padded out into the main room.
Monks wasn’t quite sure what that exchange had been about. But he knew he been told that he wasn’t as smart as he thought.
“Go find Taxman and get Monks’s watch,” he heard Freeboot say to Marguerite. “Then stay here and help him.”
“So you can get back to training?” she retorted, with a biting tone that was clear even though it came from the other end of the lodge.
Monks moved quietly to the blanket and peered out. Freeboot was advancing toward her with precise, noiseless footsteps, backing her into a corner. He did not touch her, but she wilted under his stare.
“I have had enough bullshit tonight,” Freeboot said. His voice was low with menace. “Don’t you fucking start in.”
She edged away sideways, her back still pressed against the wall, then turned and hurried out.
A few minutes later, Monks heard Marguerite’s quiet footsteps approach again. She handed him his watch, eyes averted.
“I’ll be in the next room, if you need anything,” she said.
“Find me something with sugar in it. Orange juice is okay, Gatorade’s better. Plain sugar mixed with water will do if you don’t have anything else.” If Mandrake’s blood sugar level started dropping dangerously, that could help bring it back up. “And you could stoke the fire. Try to keep it constant. I don’t want him going back and forth from hot to cold.”
She nodded, eyes still down, and left.
When Monks put the watch on his wrist, he saw that the compass had been pried off the strap.
Two hours after giving Mandrake the shot, Monks got a fresh lancet and strip and sat next to him again. The insulin should be peaking by now. Mandrake seemed slightly more alert, his eyes half open, although still dull and gummy with apathy.
“This might sting just a little, buddy,” Monks said. “It won’t be bad, I promise.”
This time the meter read 285. This was what he had hoped for-gradually bringing the blood sugar down, but not to a dangerously low point.
Things had been quiet in the next room for some time, with no more comings and goings. It had to be almost dawn.
Monks finally allowed himself to believe that Mandrake could survive an hour without attention, and admitted to the fatigue he had been holding off with growing difficulty. He was hungry, too. He decided, reluctantly, that it was time to give in.
He stored the insulin and syringes on a crude shelf, high up where Mandrake couldn’t reach them. Out of long habit, he had developed caution to the point of compulsiveness.
Then he uncovered the plate of food that Marguerite had left earlier. There was a chunk of well-done roast beef and some boiled potatoes, cold by now but still looking good. The mug was full of red wine. The utensils were plastic, picnic-style. He ignored them, picking up chunks of the food with his fingers and cramming them into his mouth. He eyed the wine longingly, but decided he had better not drink it. He rinsed his hands and mouth, realizing that he was going to have to negotiate for items like a toothbrush, soap, and toilet privileges. Reluctantly, he urinated into the slops bucket. It was another thing there wasn’t much choice about.
He programmed his wristwatch alarm to wake him up in fifty minutes, then took the pillows from Motherlode’s empty bed, formed them into a bolster next to Mandrake, and stretched out beside the little boy. He stayed half sitting up so he wouldn’t sleep too deeply, but finally let his eyes close.
The information he had absorbed so far played in his weary mind like flickering clips of tape on an old-time movie reel. His overwhelming sense was that he had landed in an Alice in Wonderland scenario of dreamlike madness-except that it was pervaded by very real violence, and the looming threat of a child’s death. It was presided over by a macho speed freak who dominated his followers, made allusions to Machiavelli, and hinted at the grandiose importance that he would enjoy in the eyes of history, yet expressed a simpleton’s distrust of medicine. His followers seemed to think they were on some TV show like Survivor, but they carried sophisticated weapons, and it looked like the men had deliberately mutilated their fingertips, presumably to avoid being identified.
On top of it all, Monks’s son was deeply implicated, and if Monks ever did get out of here and blow the whistle, Glenn would be in serious trouble.
He worked to push it all aside and courted the half-sleep he had learned to count on over many years in the ER.
Mandrake was lying on his belly, the side of his face pressed into the pillow and his arms down close to his body, in the seal-like posture typical of sleeping children. Monks kept the back of one hand pressed lightly against him, so he would feel any restlessness that might signal an adverse reaction to the insulin. So far, Mandrake had hardly stirred, except when Monks roused him to drink. He seemed to have drifted into a semiconscious state, perhaps caught in diabetic torpor-or withdrawn into some inner hiding place, to escape from this incomprehensible nightmare.
But as Monks drifted off, he felt a little hand touch his, then creep into it, like a tiny frightened creature seeking safety.
6
Monks awoke to the beeping of his wristwatch alarm. It read 3:00 P.M. He sat up, groggy and disoriented, uncertain of where he was. Then he remembered.
Mandrake’s bedroom was dim and quiet, and the little boy was lying curled up with his stuffed snake on the other bed.
Monks had continued to monitor his condition through the early-morning hours
, giving him water and broth, until Marguerite had come in, at about ten A.M. and offered again to take over. Mandrake’s blood-sugar level had kept improving in the meantime, and so Monks had agreed. Rest was imperative in order to function with the clear-mindedness that the situation demanded. He had lain down on the room’s other bed with a pillow over his head and slept deeply, a measure of his exhaustion.
Marguerite was not in the room now. He hoped that she had kept her promise to keep Mandrake drinking.
He became aware of a faint sound, a sibilant murmur that stopped and started. Then he realized that Mandrake was whispering to the toy snake. It was the first sign of anything like liveliness that Monks had seen in the boy. He hesitated, reluctant to interrupt. But the monitoring had to continue, and it was time for the next insulin shot.
“How you feeling, buddy?” Monks said, sitting beside him. Mandrake’s eyes were open, but he didn’t look up. “You getting hungry?”
To his surprise, Mandrake nodded solemnly.
“Good job,” Monks said. “I’ll get you something in just a minute. How about soup? That sound okay?”
Another nod.
Monks kept up a patter of talk as he went through the now familiar process of getting Mandrake to drink and checking his blood-sugar level. That had climbed a little, to 289, but that was okay-it was significantly lower than it had been to start with, but not dropping dangerously. As best as Monks could tell, the three-unit doses he had given were in the ball park. He decided to stay with them.
When he went to get a syringe, he realized with unpleasant surprise that there weren’t as many left as he had thought. It had seemed that there were about twenty, but now he counted only fourteen.
Out of habit he pinched up a bit of Mandrake’s flesh, in a different place this time. Insulin shots dissolved fatty tissue; if repeated, they could leave dimples. The absurdity of worrying about things cosmetic in this situation flashed across his mind.
“I’m sorry I have to sting you, Mandrake,” he said. “But it’s going to make you feel better, I promise.” Mandrake squirmed a little in protest this time. The show of resistance pleased Monks perversely. Mandrake still hadn’t cried at all for his mother. Monks had assumed at first that his lethargy was too deep, but maybe Marguerite had been filling that role. Or maybe Mandrake had already figured out, with the prescience that some children seemed to have, that he shouldn’t expect much in the way of nurturing from Motherlode.
“Okay,” Monks said, withdrawing the needle and swabbing the puncture with vodka. “Let’s see about that soup.”
He walked to the bedroom door, dragging the cable from his hobbled ankles, and looked into the main room. Someone was sitting in a chair beside the door. Monks recognized the bulky shape of Hammerhead. He had traded his shotgun for an assault rifle like Captain America ’s.
“Mandrake needs to eat,” Monks said.
“I’ll tell Marguerite.” Then Hammerhead added stiffly, “My orders are to get you anything you want, as long as it’s cool.”
Monks decided not to get into what “cool” constituted just now.
“I’d like to see my son,” he said.
“I’ll pass that on.”
“I could use some strong coffee. And I need to clean up. Soap, towel, toothbrush, all that.”
Hammerhead took his radio from his belt and punched a series of beeps. He spoke into it with the clipped, quasi-military style that Monks had heard Hammerhead use last night.
“Brother, this is Hammerhead calling Marguerite, requesting immediate assistance at the lodge. Repeat, Marguerite to the lodge. Over.”
A moment later, a woman’s voice answered: “Marguerite copies. Over.”
“The kid needs soup. And bring a toothbrush and that kind of shit. Over.” He hooked the radio back on his belt, then walked to Monks.
“Lay down on your belly with your hands spread out,” he said. Monks did. He felt a tugging at his ankles, then heard a click. “Okay, get up.” Monks stood and realized that he was free of the cable. But the shackles around his ankles stayed on.
“I’ll take you to the washhouse,” Hammerhead said, gesturing with the rifle toward the lodge’s door.
“Wait a minute. Can’t I put my boots on?”
Hammerhead shook his head decisively. “Nobody gave me orders for that.”
Monks hobbled outside in his socks like a convict on an old-time chain gang, Hammerhead and his rifle trailing just behind. It was the first time that he had been out of the lodge since arriving late last night-the first time he’d seen the camp in daylight. His impression of being in an earlier century was strengthened. The place consisted of a several-acre clearing with a dozen or so old log buildings and sheds, situated in a small canyon ringed with rocky crags. The vehicle that had brought him here was gone, and there were no others, nor any sign of electrical power. Steep slopes covered with fir and pine rose in all directions as far as he could see. The only man-made things in the entire vista besides the buildings were a few distant switchback logging roads that looked long disused. The single exit was a rutted dirt trail barely wide enough to drive on.
The afternoon was dark, a premature twilight, the sky heavy with blanketing clouds rolling in off the Pacific. The wind had risen and the air had a brisk, even wild, feel. Without doubt, a winter rain was going to roll in soon. Those tended to last for days, and in the mountains, they could readily turn to snow. The sun was invisible, but he guessed which way west lay from the wind, and his sense that the terrain in that direction was opening down toward the sea.
“Wait here,” Hammerhead said.
Monks watched him walk to meet Marguerite, who was coming toward them with a folded towel in her hands. In the lonely dusk, with her long hair blowing in the wind, she looked like a tragic figure from an early romantic novel, a fallen woman moving toward some doomed assignation.
When Hammerhead got to her, she handed him the towel. They spoke briefly. The import was unclear, but she turned her head aside and hurried on to the lodge.
Hammerhead came back and, in grim silence, marched Monks onward.
The washhouse looked like something at a national park campground, with separate men’s and women’s entrances marked by crudely carved wooden signs. Hammerhead gave Monks the towel and, to Monks’s relief, let him go in alone.
The floor was concrete, with a drain in its center. There was a big porcelain laundry basin and a showerhead, both cold water only, and Monks was surprised to see a flush toilet. Presumably, the plumbing was fed by gravity flow from a spring or stream. An old Stihl calendar featuring two bare-breasted women holding chainsaws was tacked to a wall. That was the only decorative touch. The basin and toilet were gummy with stains and scum, the floor caked with the mud of tromping boots.
The towel had a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, and a bar of Ivory soap wrapped up inside. Monks felt like a prisoner of war who had just gotten a care package from the Red Cross. The sleep had done him a world of good. There was even a certain pleasure in simply being alone for the first time since he had gotten here.
He stripped, turned on the shower, and stepped in, baring his teeth in fierce elation at its chilling spray.
When they got back to the lodge, Monks paused outside the door and stepped close to Hammerhead, peering into his square face.
“What are you looking at?” Hammerhead demanded.
“Your left eye. That tic.”
“I got a tick on my eye?” he said in alarm. One hand rose quickly to touch it, fingers searching.
“No. Tic. T-I-C. Like a twitch.” Monks fluttered his own left eyelid in demonstration.
“That’s bullshit. I don’t have any tic.”
“You probably don’t even notice it. Ever get headaches?”
“No.”
“Really? I don’t mean killers. Just sort of low-level tension.”
A pause. Then, suspiciously, “Maybe. Like, if I got a hangover.”
“It might feel like a hangover
,” Monks agreed. “How about voices? You know, buzzing around in your brain, trying to get you to do things?”
“What the fuck you talking about, man?” Hammerhead stepped back, the rifle shifting nervously in his grip.
“Never mind,” Monks said. “It’s probably nothing.”
Hammerhead swallowed hard. Then he swung the gun’s barrel viciously toward the lodge’s door.
“Get on inside.”
Smiling very faintly, Monks got on inside.
7
A few minutes later, Monks walked again across the dusky, windy camp to talk with his son for the first time in almost five years. Hammerhead had come into the lodge to inform him dourly that Freeboot had given his okay. Monks’s status seemed to be rising. He had not been cabled up again, and he was being granted visiting privileges.
The cabin that Hammerhead took him to was one of half a dozen that were scattered among the other buildings. Its small windows were caked with grime, and it shared the sense of neglect, almost squalor, that Monks had noticed around the camp in general. Most military operations were sticklers for neatness. But, it was undoubtedly a lot more fun to hustle around with radios and guns than to do anything as mundane as cleaning.
As they walked, Hammerhead glanced at him several times nervously, almost furtively, as if he wanted to ask a question, but couldn’t bring it to his lips. Monks offered no encouragement.
As he raised his fist to knock on the door, he realized that someone inside was playing a guitar. The past rose up to twist his gut. Glenn had fooled around with guitars throughout his adolescence. As with his studies, he had showed plenty of ability but little discipline.
There was no response to the knock. Monks opened the door and leaned in.
Glenn was sitting cross-legged on a large pillow on the floor, bent over a steel-stringed acoustic guitar. His left hand slid easily up and down the neck, coaxing out the sweet dark strains of Skip James’s great Delta blues. “Hard Time Killing Floor,” Glenn’s quavering voice rose to join the music.
