American Elsewhere

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “Understand,” says the old woman, her voice wry and cold. “Understand, understand, understand. Understand that this is not a tragedy. This is not a thing to be mourned. You should be relieved. What happened here was no more than glimpsing something from the side of your eye, but you did not fully witness it, you did not fully see, comprehend, know. If you had, well… what you saw and what you spoke to and what you think you possessed was an illusion, a mistranslation, a deception. Perhaps she deceived you, or she deceived herself, I cannot say. But I will say that you are a very lucky girl, not because you met Lady Fish, but because you met her and still exist. In a fashion.”

  “I don’t understand,” says Megan, sobbing.

  “No,” says the old woman. “And for that you should be very thankful.” She turns and begins to walk farther into the forest.

  “Where are you going?” asks Megan after her.

  “To do the same thing many times over, I expect,” says the old woman. “To knock upon many doors, and receive no answer. Do not follow me, girl. Where I go, you cannot come back from.” And the old woman fades into the trees, and is gone.

  Megan sits on the muddy ground, clutching her knees. Then, still sniffling, she stands up and walks to Lady Fish’s home. She stares into it, trying to draw comfort from memories of her past meetings here. None comes.

  She sits and slides down into the opening in the earth. The slick, dripping walls enclose her legs and shoulders. She keeps going down until she can no longer see open sky, and there she curls up into a ball and begins rocking back and forth, remembering better days when there was a voice in the darkness that told her everything was all right, and all the daily wounds life dealt her were far away, and nothing hurt.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Fucked, fucked, and more fucked, thinks Bolan. He cracks open another bottle of Pepto, the third tonight, and pounds it. Triple-fucked, he thinks. Quintuple-fucked. Octuple-fucked. More, perhaps, but his math skills are lacking.

  Bolan sits on a column of boxes in the exact pose of Rodin’s Thinker, staring out at the large basement below the Roadhouse. Every square foot is filled with large boxes, and inside each of these boxes are four shrink-wrapped sets of encyclopedias. To the average eye these would appear unremarkable, but within the fourth set in each box, in a hollowed-out space starting at Uganda and ending at ultimatum, is somewhere around seventy thousand dollars’ worth of heroin. Where these encyclopedias go, Bolan isn’t sure. But people pay a lot of money to make sure they get there.

  He is trying to do three things right now. The first is to calculate exactly how much money is currently in his warehouse. This involves maneuvering around some astronomical numbers, but he is pretty sure he has about twenty million dollars’ worth of heroin here at this moment, ten million dollars’ worth of cocaine, and about twenty thousand dollars’ worth of encyclopedias (which no one gives a shit about, of course).

  The second thing he is trying to do is comprehend exactly where the encyclopedias and the heroin come from. The origin of the cocaine he knows, having arranged that deal himself with the funds generated from the heroin. But the heroin itself is a mystery. Before today he always believed (or perhaps chose to believe) that the man in the panama hat simply acted as a connection between Bolan and some foreign source. Yet after covertly sending out feelers into the networks of New Mexico, Bolan now knows that absolutely no heroin is being routed to the Roadhouse, especially not in any encyclopedias. It is only coming from the Roadhouse. Which means that these shipments he has Zimmerman pick up from many hidden caches in Wink are coming from somewhere local.

  Perhaps Wink itself.

  And that’s odd. Because last Bolan checked, there were no enormous poppy fields around Wink.

  The third thing Bolan is trying to do is keep himself from thinking about a nasty suspicion he has: that the heroin he is distributing across the Southwest, and also throughout Wink, serves a purpose beyond making a lot of fucking money. What that purpose would be escapes him.

  But though Bolan doesn’t remember a lot from his school days, one little factoid has come swimming up in his brain more and more: his history teacher once told them that Greek oracles had to ingest some very funny mushrooms to act as conduits for whichever god needed to speak. Bolan does not believe in a god or gods, but this bit of knowledge has somehow gotten stuck in his head: people might need a narcotic aid to navigate realms of the unknown.

  And to his regret, Bolan knows there are a lot of unknown realms in Wink.

  Is it possible that the only reason he is making millions of dollars off of heroin is that the man in the panama hat needs a select few citizens of Wink to be high?

  The idea is stupid, ridiculous, laughable. Why would he need them to be high? What purpose could that serve? Well, they would need to be, reasons Bolan, if they had to go someplace the man in the panama hat could not go himself, and do something he could not do. But if he wants that, why not distribute the heroin himself?

  Well, thinks Bolan, because he’s being watched too. He needs someone outside, someone distant.

  Yet even if all this is true—and every conclusion is one hell of a stretch—why provide a warehouse-load of illicit drugs? Why not give Bolan just enough to get the necessary people doped up? Why give Bolan millions of dollars’ worth of product?

  That one is a tough nut to crack. But Bolan thinks he knows.

  They don’t understand how people work. Not really. They couldn’t present just a tempting offer: they had to make it unbelievable, something he absolutely could not pass up. Subtleties of any kind are lost on them.

  And all of these mental arguments, which take several hours to sort out, lead to one question Bolan is absolutely terrified of:

  If the people in Wink are able to make a fount of endless heroin out of nothing… what else can they do?

  There is a tapping at the door, and Bolan jumps and nearly topples off the boxes. “Christ!” he says. “What?”

  Dord is standing at the threshold. He is pale and twitching: one hand keeps tugging at his belt loops.

  “Yeah?” Bolan asks.

  “Got a call from Zimmerman,” says Dord. “He found Dee.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He was unconscious. Someone beat his face in.”

  “At the lab?”

  Dord nods. Then he begins bobbing his head as if he’s forgotten the conversation entirely and is listening to a song. He’s obviously coked to the gills.

  “Who the hell goes up to the lab except us?” asks Bolan. “Us and…” He gestures toward nothing with a nod. The man in the panama hat is such a presence in every conversation that he hardly needs to be acknowledged.

  “Don’t know,” says Dord. “Zimmerman says Dee’s up but he’s not talking so good. Concussion, probably.”

  “Christ.”

  Bolan considers the conversation to be closed, but Dord keeps standing there.

  “What?” asks Bolan.

  “One more thing, boss,” says Dord. “It’s, uh—talking.”

  “What?”

  “It’s talking. Typing.”

  “What is?”

  “That thing in your office. The light’s on.”

  “What! You should have fucking said that first!” Bolan hops down off the column of boxes and sidles past Dord and makes his way upstairs.

  He unlocks and enters the soundproof passageway. The stock ticker has printed out a long line of tape. It is the same word, over and over again, evidently repeated when Bolan did not answer:

  MEETING MEETING MEETING MEETING MEETING

  “What’s this?” says Bolan. “A meeting?”

  A pause. Then:

  YES

  “A meeting between who?”

  Another pause. Then the stock ticker types away:

  BETWEEN YOU AND ME

  Bolan pales. “You want us to meet? Then… well, come right up, I guess.”

  NOT HERE TONIGHT AT GULCH BY HIGHWAY CROSSROADS

  He almo
st chokes. “What? You want me to come to Wink?”

  The machine is still. Bolan imagines it to be a hunched predator contemplating its next move.

  Then:

  YES MIDNIGHT

  “But… I can’t… I can’t go there!”

  The stock ticker is silent. It must not find that response to be worth an answer.

  Then:

  YOU WILL HAVE TO LOOK DOWN

  Bolan stares at the tape. This has absolutely no meaning to him. “I don’t understand,” he says.

  It barrels on without him:

  YOU KNOW WHERE TO TAKE THE NEXT TOTEM

  “Yes,” says Bolan. “They’re already on it. There might be a bit of a delay—my boy got his face caved in just today. But they’ll be at the canyon soon.”

  The machine pauses for a long, long time. Longer than the machine has ever paused before. Bolan almost wonders if they’ve gotten pissed at him and given up.

  But then it types:

  I MAY NOT BE THERE

  “What? At the canyon?” Bolan realizes this is wrong. “Wait, you mean at the meeting? Then where will you be?”

  Another extremely long pause.

  The machine types:

  DEAD

  Bolan is utterly flabbergasted to read such a response. “What the fuck? Are you serious?”

  It types:

  AM ABOUT TO ATTEMPT SOMETHING DRASTIC

  “Wait, like… more than what we’ve already done?”

  It responds:

  YES

  “Well… then don’t fucking do it!”

  The machine types:

  IF I AM NOT THERE TONIGHT YOU WILL STILL BE MET

  “By who?” asks Bolan.

  The ticker is silent.

  “By who?” he asks again. “What’s going on? What are you about to do?”

  But no matter how long he waits, he receives no answer.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Evening is falling by the time Mona returns to Wink. She feels as if she is seeing it for the first time. She looks at the quaint adobe homes and the little cottages with sky-blue siding, the old men at the drugstore and the children playing tag at the greenbelt. The streetlamps are pristine, the grass moist, the trees thick and tall. A place of quiet days and quieter evenings.

  And yet.

  A man stands on the sidewalk, perfectly still, with his hands at his sides. He wears a charmingly cheap suit that is a few sizes too large for him. He stares at the sky with his head cocked as if he is listening to something only he can hear, and when she passes him in the huge truck he looks at her and smiles wistfully. She keeps watching him in the rearview mirror: he returns to staring at the powder-blue sky, a wide smile on his face.

  Is he one of them? Are any of the people she sees?

  A young woman stands in a gravel alley between two homes. A frail thing with skinny wrists. She holds an empty tin can in her hands and she turns it over again and again, feeling its metal sides, and as she does she twirls about in a slow shuffle, as if dancing with it.

  What does she feel when she touches this mundane little trinket? Mona wonders. What do they see when they look at the world?

  An old man stands in the window of the hardware store, staring out with eyes rimmed blue-black. His hands are spattered with what looks like ink, maybe black paint. He holds a bowl and a fork, and he dips the fork down into the bowl and brings up a steaming pile of mashed potatoes. He opens his mouth hugely, far wider than he should, and paints his tongue with the forkful, unblinking, not swallowing. As his hands rise the black ink runs down his forearms in rivulets to stain his shirtsleeves.

  He is one. There is no doubt.

  How many are there? They seem to be everywhere, when you look: stragglers occupying drab little between-places in the town, ditches and empty parking lots and alleys behind shops. The interstitial parts of a city no one ever thinks about. These places, perhaps, are where these dazed wanderers go to collect their thoughts, to be themselves.

  To be themselves, thinks Mona. Whatever they are, behind their eyes.

  And when they are done, will they return home, cheery smiles on their faces, ready to put food on the table? To cut the grass or play a game of cards or share a pipe? To gossip and scratch off yet another day in their peaceful, small-town lives? Is that it?

  What do they do? What do such people do? Why are they here?

  She circles the block twice, easing through the alleys, counting all the cars and memorizing the license plates. She sees no one watching, no shift of a curtain or movement in any of the cars, and she certainly sees no one tailing her—road traffic here is so sparse it’d be almost impossible to stay hidden.

  When she’s as satisfied as she can get, she parks down the street from Mrs. Benjamin’s house and watches it.

  Once she had lunch there, only a few days ago. Yet now she wonders what lives in that house, or pretends to live there, and what it does when no one’s watching.

  She takes out the Glock and wipes sweat from her brow. She does not want to do this. Yet she must know.

  She gets out of the truck and walks to the front door, barely bothering to hide the gun in her hand. She goes to the window and peers in. The house is dark, but she is not sure that means anything.

  She goes to the door, and is not surprised to find it is unlocked. After all—why would such a thing ever need to lock the doors?

  She walks in. The dark color of the floor and walls makes the house even darker. It is still every inch an old woman’s house, stuffed with ticking clocks and piles of mail and forgettable trinkets. She hears nothing. It seems the owner is not at home.

  Mona stalks through the house, gun drawn, eyes hunting for any movement. She turns left and follows a short hallway to the bedroom. And there she sees him.

  He is lying on the bed with his fingers threaded together on his chest, peaceful as the dead. Yet she can see he is not dead, not quite: his chest rises and falls, slowly.

  He looks the same, like your average old man. Perhaps a little caustic. Someone who has spent too much of his life indoors.

  She sits down in the overstuffed chair beside Parson. She looks into his face and wonders what is behind it. It is not, she thinks, an eccentric old man who’s spent his waning years running a motel. Any more than the owner of this house is a doddering old bureaucrat.

  She raises the gun a little, but does not point it at him. The clocks seem to tick louder and louder. She wonders what it would be like to break their ponderous ticking and spill his skull across these yellowed sheets.

  Would it be such a bad thing? Would it be wrong? Would it even do anything?

  There is a voice from the door: “No. No, it would do nothing.”

  Mona very nearly pulls the trigger. She looks up and sees Mrs. Benjamin is standing at the door, and though she watches Mona coolly, indifferently, her dress is muddy, torn, and tattered. Streaks of blood show through the rents in the blotchy purple fabric.

  “You stay right there,” says Mona.

  “I am,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “I would wish no violence on him.”

  They stare at each other for a moment. In the hall the clocks tick and tock endlessly.

  “Why wouldn’t it?” asks Mona.

  Mrs. Benjamin cocks an eyebrow, uncomprehending.

  “Why wouldn’t it hurt him?” she explains.

  Mrs. Benjamin is silent.

  “You aren’t permitted to say,” says Mona.

  “No,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “We are not.”

  “We,” says Mona. “How many?”

  Mrs. Benjamin still does not answer. The clocks tick on and on.

  “Tell me,” says Mona. “Tell me or I’ll pull this trigger and blow his fucking brains out.”

  “Did I not just say it would do nothing?”

  “Are you telling me the bullet in the chamber of this gun wouldn’t punch through to his brain and turn it to soup? I’ve seen it before. Oh Lord, I’ve seen it before. It makes a mess, Mrs. Benjamin
. You’d be doing laundry for days.”

  Mrs. Benjamin purses her lips.

  “Yeah,” says Mona. “I don’t quite know what you all are, but I know you aren’t bulletproof. How many?”

  “If you know so much, why don’t you guess?”

  Mona can feel sweat running down her arms. She glances at Parson, then back at Mrs. Benjamin. “Can’t be the whole town. Not everyone. Most of them are people, real people. But you all are… from somewhere else.”

  Mrs. Benjamin raises her head and thins her eyes, an inscrutable gesture that neither affirms nor denies it.

  “I’ve been up on the mesa,” says Mona.

  “Have you,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “He sent you there, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah. He wanted me to know. And now I do. I saw the records there. I know your mirror trick now.”

  She expected that to get some reaction from her, but Mrs. Benjamin does nothing. Then Mona realizes—how could she have expected such a thing to react in any normal way?

  “It makes things soft, doesn’t it?” asks Mona. “Bruised. It makes the boundaries of things… permeable. And when that happens, things can come through. Things like you, and him.”

  Mrs. Benjamin is stone-faced, dead-eyed, totally dormant. Mona gets the feeling that certain muscles are going slack in her face that no normal person could relax. The hairs rise up on Mona’s arms as she begins to understand that Mrs. Benjamin’s physical form is but a puppet in a very real way, and she’s no longer bothering to maintain her appearance.

  “What are you?” asks Mona softly. “Don’t tell me you can’t say.”

  “I cannot,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

  “Don’t tell me you’re not fucking permitted.”

  “The issue is not so much that,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

  “Then what is it?”

  “Such things cannot be explained.”

  “Why not?”

  “How does one tell a fish it swims in an ocean? How would one tell it of currents, of skies, of mountains? How could you make it understand?”