by John Enright
So now Dominick’s new imposed pretense was to be a famous author? He put the slave ship book on the counter and led Starks out the door.
“Let’s walk,” Starks said. “I know you don’t like sushi, so let’s go to The Harp.”
“A new assistant?” Dominick asked as they set out. “Since when did you rate an assistant?”
“Isn’t she dreadful?” Sparks asked. “I’ve been asking for help for years, even wrote a grant for one, but it was never forthcoming. Then Constance just shows up, hired by someone, not me. I’d never met her before, never interviewed her. I don’t trust her. I’m not even sure she is a she.”
“You don’t think . . . ?”
“No, not your paranoia, something much less serious and more mundane. Someone to spy on me.”
“So, you can’t just step out to lunch? You have to step out with a famous author?”
“Oh, not currently famous perhaps, but once at least infamous.”
“Are you talking about me?”
“I am talking about the author of Coca Exotica.”
It took several steps for Dominick to do the mental math. It had been almost thirty years since his only book’s publication, issued by a small university press in England. It had gone almost immediately out of print. He had almost succeeded in forgetting it. How would Starks even know of it?
“You’re not an Internet sort of guy, are you Dominick? There are some pretty amazing search engines out there.”
“Search engines that search the past? Digital backhoes for digging up graves? Is nothing sacred anymore?”
“Somehow the past is sacred? How does that work? You were a pretty thorough historian. You got the history of cocaine down pretty well.”
“You’ve seen the book? How is that possible?”
“Well, when I learned your name from the FBI lady, I did a search for you and came up with your book. I found a used copy for sale on the Internet and ordered it. It cost me almost a hundred bucks, by the way. There were only two copies for sale out there. I got it a couple of days ago. A good read.”
“Is it? I don’t remember writing it, just the research.”
“Oxford degree. I was impressed.”
“Different chap altogether.”
“Nothing after that though.”
They had reached the back alley door to The Harp. Dominick stopped. “I think I’ll smoke a cigar out here before going in,” he said. This was not the anonymity he had been savoring.
“I’ll bring you a pint then. Guinness?”
“If you must.”
There were still Christmas lights up around the door to the pub and its small brick courtyard. How those things always lingered, avoiding dismantlement, the small inanimate objects too unimportant to disappear. What was found in graves was what refused to rot, everything once alive having vanished, dust to dust, muck to muck. Only meaningless objects survived. A copy of Coca Exotica: The Illustrated Story of Cocaine unearthed from beneath almost thirty years of temporal compost. “Nothing after that though?” No, that’s right. Nothing after that. Screw you, John Starks. The book’s publication and hysterical reviews were a career ender. The suddenly unemployable young historian, suspected dope fiend, addict apologist, misplaced American, slanderer of both Freud and Coca Cola. How quickly members of a tribe could coalesce against the outcast. It was reason enough for his wife to decide to leave him.
“Nothing after that?” No, nothing after that but this, where he was, smoking a cigar in the cold outside the back alley door of a midday pub. Starks brought him a pint of Guinness and a shot of Irish whiskey then went back inside. Starks was clever enough not to hang around. But the cigar and the drinks and the cold calmed Dominick down. He could stuff all that eclipsed history back into its folder and send it back to the non-digital and not even analog memory archives. He found the end of the extension cord for the Christmas lights and plugged it in. Most of the bulbs still worked. He took his empty glasses back to the bar and ordered refills, then joined Starks in their far corner booth.
Halfway through their lunch Emma arrived. Starks had forewarned Dominick that he had called her. She wanted to say goodbye as well. Emma was looking her best. Her hair was down and she was wearing makeup and jewelry, a long denim skirt with tall boots and a stylish leather jacket. She gave them both a kiss when she came to their booth. Emma had Bay Savers news. Theo had called her several times in the past week, trying to get back together. She had even had drinks with him one evening. Theo wanted to be sure that Emma’s version of events was the same as his if and when she next spoke to the feds.
“Version of what events?” Dominick asked.
“About the new Lord Witherspoon. You are better looking than he is, by the way, Nickel. He looked like some pimp in that newspaper photo. Theo told me that he had just guessed the wrong friend of Atticus’s was the wanted man, that’s all, but that it didn’t matter because the feds had the right suspect now and he was still one of Atticus’s additions to the group.”
“He’s admitting the suspected bomber is connected to Bay Savers?’ Dominick asked.
“No, he is admitting that their suspected bomber is connected to Atticus, not the group, some sort of sleeper cell within Bay Savers, not the group itself. He said the group was cooperating fully with the feds.”
“Sounds like this Theo guy is throwing this Atticus guy overboard,” Starks said, finishing his lunch and pushing his plate aside. “You two lead such interesting lives.”
“Don’t we, though?” Emma said. “Theo said it wouldn’t hurt if I told the feds I had suspicions about Atticus all along, how gung ho he was.”
“Theo wasn’t gung ho?” Dominick asked. “Didn’t you tell me he pretty much made himself the leader?”
“Yeah, but all along he wasn’t so much opposed to the LNG plant per se, just the LNG plant at Darby Point. It was a real local issue with him, which is why he got the tribe’s support.”
“Wait, is this Theo Neisner you are talking about?” Starks asked.
“I don’t know. Is that right, Emma?”
“Yes, Neisner, Theo Neisner. Why?”
“There aren’t that many Theos around. New comer, big bucks. I only know the name because several years ago he made some enemies hereabouts by buying up a lot of land across the bay, around Dogshead Bay, including some historic properties the State Historic Land Trust wanted.”
“Including a lighthouse?” Dominick asked.
“Yes, the one on Teapot Island, which was already on the National Register of Historic Places.”
“Dogshead Bay,” Emma said. “I know that name. That’s right. It was the Hercules Corp’s alternative location for their LNG terminal. They rejected it because the land-based costs for infrastructure development like roads and stuff were too high.”
They all three sat in silence for a minute.
“Oh,” Emma said.
“Your Bay Savers must succeed in stopping the plant at Darby Point,” Starks said.
“So that the plant will be moved to Dogshead Bay, where there is no local opposition,” Emma said.
“Even if that means tossing Atticus to the feds to save Bay Savers,” Dominick completed the paragraph. “That sort of sucks, doesn’t it?”
Chapter 21
Dear Editor:
I am writing this letter to set the record straight. Federal authorities are once again engaged in a campaign of misinformation. The FBI would have the public believe that the recent actions on behalf of energy sanity and freedom in Old Grofton are somehow the responsibility of the local group Bay Savers. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Those warning shots across the bows of the Hercules Corp at Darby Point were fired by us, the International Gaia Brigade, on behalf of all Earth’s living creatures and future generations in their fight for freedom from fossil fuels.
The IGB is dedicated to confronting and stopping the proliferation of liquid natural gas and all other new fossil fuel facilities worldwide,
not just here in your precious estuary. Bay Savers is only a small nonviolent collection of not-in-my-backyard patriots incapable of effective action against new-world-order monster conglomerates such as Hercules Corp.
But the FBI and their fellow federal gestapos choose to ignore the global movement for energy sanity and instead cast aspersion and blame on local innocents. Bullies always pick the easiest targets.
Inform yourself about the evils of fossil fuels and the ecological catastrophe of natural gas fracturing extraction. Go to our website at gaiabrigade.uk or antilng.org to learn the truth about liquid natural gas. Hercules promises LNG to be the future. The only promise they can make is that the future will be worse than the past and much, much shorter.
Lord Witherspoon
IGB
Dominick thought the letter could have been better, but things written by committee are never perfect. He objected to “precious estuary,” for instance; but John Starks liked it, so it stayed in. The IGB was Emma’s invention. By the final draft they were all three tired of it. The idea got started over the third round of drinks at The Harp. If the feds were going to throw out a straw-man suspect to make it look like they were on the job, then they would set fire to it. They would commandeer the simulacrum. No crime there. But how? A new Lord Witherspoon would have to be born, one with the face and fingerprints and history of the fed creation but beyond the control of his inventors.
Starks especially was excited by the prospect. He wanted to get back at the feds for having sucked him into their schemes, and, he said, he was bored. He called Constance at the museum to tell her he wouldn’t be back that afternoon, that he would be making some long overdue visits to potential donors. “Donate something,” he said when he hung up, and Emma ordered another round of drinks. They repaired to Starks’s house. Emma rode with Dominick as he followed Starks’s Jag out of town. First, they all got stoned on Starks’s hashish and fixed themselves fresh drinks. Then Starks got out a pad and pen, and they brainstormed a campaign. The opening act would be a letter to the New Jerusalem News. Starks went online to make sure there was no organization named the International Gaia Brigade. There wasn’t, but there was an antilng.org website with all the negative facts about natural gas and its extraction.
“I had no idea,” Emma said. “There’s very little natural about it. They pump millions of gallons of water and chemicals and diesel fuel back into the earth to force the gas out? It causes earthquakes? It’s like a mega earth enema.”
Starks made a phone call and had a large pizza delivered just as night was falling. That was appropriate food, as they were acting like college kids conspiring on a prank. Starks recalled dressing a statue of Jesus in a ball gown and feather hat once in the chapel of the Catholic college he had gone to. “You know, he had his hand raised like a blessing, and we stuck a cigarette between his fingers, gave him some lipstick.” Emma confessed to an early career as a midnight urban graffitist. “I’d spray paint other girls’ names to get them in trouble.”
Starks typed out and printed the final version of the letter to the editor. He put on some cotton archivist’s gloves before pulling the page out of the printer and made Emma wear gloves as well when she addressed, stamped, and stuffed the envelope. “It should be mailed from somewhere else,” Starks said. Dominick volunteered to mail it from somewhere on his trip south, if Starks would give him a pair of those gloves. Pretty soon they were all wearing archival gloves and things got just silly. They smoked some more hashish.
At some point Starks walked off down the hallway, saying, “You know where your bedroom is, Dominick.” There was some cable show Emma wanted to watch, so she curled up on the couch in Starks’s study in front of his flat-screen TV to watch it. Dominick went out to his car to get his overnight bag. It was very cold, too cold to stop and light a cigar. A half moon. The coyote was silhouetted against the white snow field. It had seen Dominick first and was frozen there watching him, its head turned toward him in predator vision. Dominick froze in response. It was only ten yards away. Flight or fight, Dominick thought, and the memory file he thought he had closed hours earlier fluttered open, of Linda leaving him, mute, putting her bags in the trunk of a taxi and taking off. As he stepped toward the trunk of his car, the coyote retreated an equal distance, its intensity never wavering. What if it attacked? What if he had tried to stop her? Volitional acts.
The coyote turned and took a step toward Dominick. This was one of those “bad” coyotes, and this was its test. Dominick rushed at the critter—“Scatter, bitch”—and it left, trotting halfway across the snowy moon-streaked field before stopping and looking back. They stood for a while staring at each other, as if trying to implant a long-term memory. In its shaggy, Rasta-matted winter coat and defiant upright stance, the coyote was an encapsulation of the wild. It had no fear. Death was its business. Dominick gave it the finger, got his bag from the car, and went back up the stairs to the house. Once there had been wolves here.
Emma was stretched out asleep on the study couch in front of the TV, softly snoring. Dominick fetched an afghan from the living room sofa and covered her. Wolves roamed in packs, they were not lone hunters like his coyote. He turned down the sound on the TV set. A pack could bring down bigger game. Again Emma looked years younger asleep, her face in just the flickering light of the TV screen, turquoise earrings. Hunting in silence in the dead of night. For the first time in years Dominick wondered what had ever happened to Linda? Where was she tonight? For sanity’s sake had she erased all memories of him?
It was a good laugh—rolling, inviting, infectious. Dominick could hear it coming all the way from the kitchen. He was still in bed. The morning was bright out the window. Starks had Emma in stitches over something. Dominick liked this house. He felt comfortable here. He would be sorry to leave it, coyotes and all. When he got to the kitchen, Emma was still chuckling, but they would not tell him over what, which probably meant it had something to do with him. They were both wearing the archival gloves again. That was part of the joke. Starks made breakfast—an omelet and leftover pizza, with lots of coffee. Starks would take Emma to town on his way to work. She had to be someplace. Dominick could take his time. Starks made it clear that Dominick was welcome to stay. Their little game with the feds was just beginning. Didn’t he want to stay and play?
“You know, this morning, out of curiosity I did a search for their famous terrorist—Jake Forrest—and his supposed aliases—Sir Reginald Faber, Bishop Fenwick, Reggie Fenwick, and Lord Witherspoon—and came up empty on every one. Their famous international terrorist is totally unknown, a blank canvas to paint on.”
“Well, I will leave the fun and finger painting to you guys,” Dominick said. “I need some warmer weather.”
Starks left the kitchen to get ready for work after putting their dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Dominick poured himself another cup of coffee.
“You will be coming back, won’t you, Nickel?” Emma asked. “I’ve grown accustomed to your company. You covered me up last night, didn’t you? That was sweet. You know, I got up later to come and join you in bed. I really wanted to be with you, but you were spread out like a hibernating walrus or something across the bed, making walruslike sounds, so I went back to the couch.”
“You snore, too, you know,” Dominick said.
“I do? Nobody ever told me that.”
“It’s a pleasant enough sound, something between a cat and a flower.”
“You do like me then?”
“You do grow on one.”
“I wish you would come back. Starks, for all his weirdness, can be fun, can’t he?”
“I can’t say if I’ll be back or not. I never know where I might end up. I’ve had a bellyful of this place.” There was silence for a while as they both moved their coffee mugs around. “You are pretty when you sleep, by the way. I guess that’s what I meant about a flower snoring.”
“You’re prettier when you’re awake.”
“That would never work out
.”
Emma got up and came around the table. She pushed Dominick in his chair back so that she could sit in his lap and put her arms around his neck. “Nickel, what if I told you I wanted to come with you?”
“That would not work out either,” Dominick said. He was talking into her bosom. “I need some downtime from people.”
“Then I’m going to have to make you promise to come back.” Emma pulled Dominick’s head back and leaned down to kiss his mouth. They lingered in the kiss. Emma shifted her weight. Hands moved on backs and hair. Tongues touched. “Come back or I’ll put a curse on you and that thick dick of yours,” she said.
“’Tis you, ’tis you must go and I must bide.” Starks's fake Irish tenor from the kitchen doorway was quite professional. “But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow, or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow, for I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow. Oh Dommy boy, oh Dommy boy . . .”
“Oh, shut up, Starks.” Emma was laughing. “Better put your gloves on.”
“Is it examination time again?” Starks asked. “Is his equipment really that thick?”
Dominick hit the road an hour or so after Starks and Emma left, after a shower and a good-bye toke on the hash pipe. They both had left wearing their archival gloves, holding their hands up like surgeons entering an operating room. “The world awaits its examination,” Starks said as he exited. It was nice and quiet after they left, and the morning sun flooded Starks’s rooms with their walls of windows. It was hard to leave, but he did.
