by Walter Kirn
My hope was that soon we'd be on the road to Omaha, but I knew it was a fantasy. My partner's emerging rivalry with Lance might keep him here for six months, a year. Even if guards escorted him from the ranch, he'd creep back through the National Forest at night, camp by the fence line nearest to the house, and monitor his quarry through binoculars, watching for indications of a fresh blockage in the old man's large intestines and scanning for any signs of cooling in Little Eff's ardor for AlpenCross. My partner's condition was as bad as Lara's, and hers had proven fatal. Unless it was in the talons of a hawk, he'd never leave the castle on his own.
I decided I'd have to take him away by force.
I found him at the table in our kitchen gobbling corn chips, swilling Dr Pepper, and reading a heavily underlined and starred copy of a book called From Sea to Shining Sea. A yellow notepad lay open at his elbow, but he closed it as soon as I came in. He also had his phone, which should have been locked inside the guardhouse. The phone was flipped open and its screen was lit, meaning he'd either just used it or was about to.
“The pack-trip guests start arriving at six a.m. I said we'd drive out to the airport and pick them up. They'll want help with their bags. We need to earn our keep here.”
“They let you have your phone.”
“I'm consulting with Lauer. He's been to see my mother. We're interested in what she thinks of this.” He patted the cover of From Sea to Shining Sea. “As the new Executive Divine, Lauer's in charge of the Doctrinal Review. He's convinced her that new revelations are at hand. The truth is not a stone tablet. It shifts. It moves.”
The blood surged through my head so rapidly and under such pressure that I heard the arteries squeak—an actual sound that struck me as a warning to lie down immediately or suffer a seizure. “What,” I asked, “is an ‘Executive Divine'?”
My partner folded his arms and scraped his chair back, perhaps to prepare himself for the assault he knew was inevitable if things went on this way. I'd already plotted the first two blows: a bony backhand clubbing of his right ear by my tensed right forearm followed by a tremendous head-on kick like the ones used by TV policeman to break down doors. I prayed for the strength to drag him to the van then, and the skill to resuscitate him afterward.
“The hierarchy,” he said, “has been reorganized.”
“That was sudden.”
“In fact, it's not,” he said. “Lauer's been planning it for a year or two. The goal is a more dynamic leadership, not so reactive, not so . . . calcified. The government of Great Britain would be the model here. There's a titular royal head, the king, the queen, but the locus of real-world, practical decision making—”
“These words of Lauer's, they sicken me,” I said. “Especially when I hear them out of you. They coat my whole mouth with a rotten-banana taste.”
He spread his knees, consolidating his defenses, and I responded by widening my own stance. Then a subtler strategy revealed itself. Soften, draw back. Perform a false retreat. Try not to wince at the gruesome terminology. Let him sing of the new dispensation unmolested. Then, when his breathing evened, smash his head in.
“So we'll still have a Seeress?”
“Of course we will. That's our tradition. We embrace tradition. We also embrace, as of now, the principle of ‘Guided Institutional Evolution.'”
“Is that from that?” I nodded at the book that he'd been scribbling in.
“It's Lauer's phrase. This is just a volume on history that Eff Sr. said I should read to get my facts straight. About the wars and leaders and all that. The right names and dates and so on.”
“You went to school,” I said.
“We only got one side of things in school.” He covered the book with one of his broad hands as though to remove it from the discussion. “Eff Sr. forgives you, by the way. He gave up on that Edward months ago. Truthfully, you did the man a favor there. I talked to him when we were shooting. He said the memoir was distracting him from more important problems, like his son. Little Eff is unsound. He's an unsound human being. He falls for things. He falls for anything. Then his father has to pick him up.”
“Little Eff's with the Prince of Flocks now, isn't he?”
“This Lance—are you two friends? Lance said you were.”
I shook my head as severely as people can shake them.
My partner scooped up corn chips from the bowl and crushed them past his lips, reducing them to a yellow mealy mash that I received several revolting glimpses of as he labored to make it swallowable by gulping up extra saliva from his throat. “He dresses funny,” he said at last. “He also can't shoot worth a darn. He's laughable. The first time he aimed, he snugged the rifle stock—Eff Sr. and I just shook our heads, appalled—against the wrong shoulder, but also the wrong cheek! And then, once we'd straightened him out, he bumped the trigger before he had his barrel pointing level and blew a mirror off Eff Sr.'s truck!”
My partner's joy dislocated his features, stretching them and pushing them apart as his skull tried to burst through his face in sheer exuberance. He dipped his head to meet the straw sticking up from his Dr Pepper can and merrily, gurglingly sucked, crossing his eyes to watch the rising liquid. Here was my opportunity to avenge myself for the pummeling of the other day and then, once I'd whipped him, drag him to the van. I couldn't bear to touch him now, forever. That body, so glutted with grease and arrogance. That mind deceived by From Sea to Shining Sea.
Dropping my plan to take him by surprise meant I could speak again in my real voice. The words I chose weren't usual for me, but I knew they were mine because of where they came from. They howled up into the tunnel of my throat from some fundamental abdominal black pit that had been sealed off from me before but had been opened now, I understood, because there was real evil to be named.
“Vile decayed betrayer and despoiler. Defiled loathsome hog.”
And then the pit closed over and I said this: “Lauer's worse, but he was born worse. Lauer was hatched in a brain aquarium. You're from Bluff, Elias. Remember Bluff? Elias and Mason. We used to be the same.”
My partner laughed and I saw his horrid tongue, coated with golden curds of corn-chip paste. “No two are alike. Especially not us two.”
“We're of the same body. Two different feet. Remember? I'm not going to forget that. Ever, Elias.”
“Remember, forget, I don't care what you do.”
Keeping an eye on me in case I lunged, he slipped his notepad inside the history book, tucked the bundle in one of his foul armpits, rose from his chair, gave another ugly laugh, and carried the bowl of corn-chip fragments over to the counter where the bag was. He shook out what was left inside the bag, which appeared to be less than he'd expected, judging by how vengefully he crumpled it. He crossed toward the stairs, picking chips out of the bowl and bowing his head to eat them from his hand because if he moved that arm the book might fall.
“Put the bowl in your other hand,” I said.
“You see?” he said, turning as he made the switch. “Still brothers. We can't help it. Still a pair. Be as angry as you'd like tonight—in the morning you'll wake up and you'll remember that Could Have Been and Should Be aren't What Is. And then we'll drink our coffee. And we'll enjoy it.”
I called him back when he was halfway up, this relentless young man who'd sold a whole religion to someone who needed his delusions solemnized, his twilight deliriums engraved and certified, and who longed to stamp his fine name on something more lasting than stock certificates and Asian factories.
“Have you ever used a gun before today?”
“Where would I have found a gun in Bluff? Maybe I aimed a stick once and said ‘bang.' No. Of course not. They scare me witless.”
“Did you manage to hit the target even once? People must have been laughing at you, too. You must have been as bad as Lance,” I said.
“I had an important advantage,” my partner said. “I am who I am. I knew better than to try.”
A Ford front-end loader, th
e inside of its bucket rubbed silvery smooth by the tons of soil and sand it had lifted and dumped over its lifetime, was parked in the driveway in front of the machinery shed. I carried my coffee to the guesthouse porch, alone because my partner was at the airport hefting expensive luggage onto carts, and watched the old ranch hand who operated the loader select a crescent wrench from a dented toolbox and loosen a pair of black hydraulic hoses at their juncture with the pump under the cab. I admired the way the old hand submerged himself in the simple task before him, and it struck me that what I'd been told last night was true: when the sun reemerges to cast it slanting light on the factual and sufficent All There Is and on the needful labors of the new day, the person who seeks to be happier than not must put aside his resentments and regrets and quietly bear witness to these astonishments. Look: the world is intact. It has no holes. The people have no holes. They work, they lift things. If there seem to be holes, the holes are in yourself.
I was here again, suddenly. This was where I stood, neither tilted back nor leaning forward, high on a wooded Terrestrian plateau that sloped up to meadowy foothills where bison grazed, inching along blade of grass by blade of grass, not backward, not forward, not up or down, just moving. And I, because I'd not slept well and wanted to sleep better, and because before going to bed I'd called a woman who'd chosen not to answer, as was her right—but mostly because the sun on my face was warm and my coffee was just the right temperature and sweetness—I resolved to live the way the bison did, bite by bite, while looking at the ground, always occupied, never out of place, indifferent to what was approaching from behind or getting into position up ahead.
The black Suburbans came and went all day, dropping the visitors and their heavy bags. I carried a few of these so I knew their weight, though I couldn't imagine what accounted for it. Summer clothing, even several days' worth, might add up to a pound or two, at most, yet some of the suitcases took two hands to lift. I didn't pry, though. I stayed quiet, invisible. Costumed according to various strange ideas about the situations that might arise this far west and this far from the city (I saw people dressed for saloon brawls, stagecoach rides, powwows, cattle drives, gunfights, poker games), the new arrivals spoke mostly to one another and mostly about matters I couldn't fathom. I heard talk about treasury coupons, the Harvard rowing team, a Chicago divorce lawyer nicknamed “the Incisor,” new medications for swollen prostate glands, a store called Bergdorf's, and “the flat tax.” I couldn't tell which of the guests were friends or strangers or relatives by marriage who hadn't met before but had communicated on the phone once. It was clear, though, that almost every one of them harbored some interest in almost every other one and assumed that the others were interested in them.
During one of the drop-offs and unloadings, my partner took me aside to let me know that the fellow whose duffel bag I'd just been handed was a high Terrestrian government minister in charge of “energy.” He also owned, with a partner, the president's son-in-law, a fleet of tanker ships and a professional football team, “the Flood.” The man, whom my partner called Secretary Barry, was here with his daughter, whom my partner pointed to as she was entering one of the large tepees that had been erected without my noticing on the main house's irrigated back lawn. My partner said the girl was “pleasant looking,” but I couldn't confirm this from a distance. Without a smile, he said her name was Chipper. Not to smile at such a stupid name could only be a sign, I felt, of serious intentions toward its bearer. When she pushed back the flap on the tepee and stepped out, my partner waved at her, and then said, “See that?” I had no idea what he meant since I hadn't noticed her wave back.
I went to the guesthouse to wash up before supper, which I'd heard would be served near the tepees, off of chuck wagons. The house had been cleaned, I saw, and on the sofa I spotted a computer and a briefcase and an upside-down white cowboy hat still wrapped in plastic and stuffed with tissue paper. A tall white-haired man with much younger-looking skin appeared on the stairs. His shirt was gingham, girlish, his feet were bare, and he hadn't cinched his belt yet. “May I help you?” he asked.
“They must have moved us out.”
“Perhaps you're residing in the village.” All the guests called the tepees “the village” for some reason. It must have been mentioned on the invitations.
I thanked the man, who didn't thank me back, which hurt because I'd been so cooperative. I felt him watching me as I went out, and I made sure to shut the door firmly to reassure him that I was permanently, safely gone.
In the village a guest who'd put on denim overalls over the type of shirt that needs a tie directed me to an old-fashioned-looking map nailed to a tree trunk with square-headed nails. “Camp Shoshone” it said in rough black letters that reminded me of a poster in the café which read “Wanted: Dead or Alive—Motivated, Personable Baristas.” Both the sign and the map were printed on stained brown paper edged in curly burn marks. One of the triangles representing the tepees was labeled “Lodge of the Two Elders.” I memorized its position and, moments later, was reunited with my books and clothes inside a surprisingly spacious canvas cone outfitted with cots and rugs and lanterns.
Dinner, for once, was not buffalo but chicken. Young men I recognized from the downtown sidewalks, including the bobsledder from the café whose family fortune was built on yellow markers and whom I'd suspected of having eyes for Betsy, were dressed as frontier cooks and armed with cleavers that, when swung down hard from shoulder level, split the roast chickens into equal halves that fell over onto their sides at the same time. The feat brought grins from the diners. Some clapped their hands. One man whooped. He'd been waiting all year to whoop like this, it seemed, and he did it again later on, when it was dark, and everyone was seated in a circle on pine-log benches, waiting for the speech.
I hadn't known a speech was scheduled. I'd been meditating on my cot, staring up through the tepee's little opening while my overfull belly burbled and leaked fumes. I'd kept up with my partner, right on through the pies, cramming down second double servings of everything to smother the hatred that flared up every time I heard that voice or saw that face. My morning serenity had simmered off, turned to steam by too much bulky luggage, too many middle-aged women in leather chaps, and too many loud conversations that grew subdued when I passed by too close or stared too long. Secretary Barry's rudeness finished things. He was the man in the guesthouse, it turned out. My partner met him in the chow line and called me over to be introduced. The man shook my hand but didn't meet my eyes—and not because he remembered me, I sensed, but because he deemed me unworthy of remembering.
When Elder Stark ducked his head inside the tepee and told me Eff Sr. was set to give a welcome speech, I rolled on my side and ignored him. He came and shook me. The speech was important. The speech could not be skipped. The names of the buffalo hunters would be drawn.
“I'm not going to watch the safari. I don't care,” I said. “And who decided to call it a safari? Isn't everything Indian this weekend?”
“It's a mixture,” my partner said. “The speech is starting.”
“How many pages in Luminaria did you and Lauer give him for his writings?”
“This month? Four.”
“Shoshone Indians don't have safaris. Apostles don't have Executives Divines. I don't approve of mixtures. I don't like them.”
“They don't need you to like them. Get up off that bed. You'll brood yourself sick.”
“I'm here because of you. Only because of you. I could have gone. I could have left you stranded in this place.”
“And I acknowledge that, and I am thankful.”
“Act it.”
“I do. I love you. Be with me. I've done what I've done and I'm doing for the ongoing good of the Apostolic All. Believe it.”
“What?”
“We're getting the better end of this.” He winked at me.
“If that's how you really think, that makes it worse.”
“It makes it what it is. The speech,
” he said.
I snarled at him to leave and said I'd be there, thinking the short walk over might vent some gas. I didn't care in front of whom.
With the collar turned up on his favorite sheepskin coat, the one with buttons of gnarled yellow bone, Eff Sr. stood up as straight as he was able, which was straighter than when we'd first met him, but not by much. My partner claimed he'd worked magic with the man, scouring and flushing his innards until they sparkled, and then pumping him full of Revealed Nutritional Science. But clots of tarry residue still circulated. Their particles clouded the corners of his eyes and darkened the backs of his spotted, freckled hands. The last time we'd stood near enough for me to scrutinize his nails, I'd observed the ridges, grooves, and furrows that meant the imbalance had spread to every cell, even the dry, brittle, dead ones farthest out.
He called for attention by swatting an aspen branch against one of the stones banked up to form the fire circle. He didn't seem to fear the column of sparks that every flicker of wind disturbed and scattered, sometimes landing black cinders on his gray head. And the smoke didn't trouble his lungs, that I could see. His breathing was quick and shallow, like a newborn's.
