The Cobweb

by Neal Stephenson

  Clyde was startled by some of the people standing in the front room of Lukas Meats on this Saturday morning. The men wore the same Kmart Blue Light Special clothing that all the other grad students wore, but the women were swaddled in yards and yards of dark fabric, some with only the ovals of their faces showing, some peering out through horizontal gun slits. For the most part families had come in their entirety, the men doing the driving, disbursement of money, and control of larger children while the women carried infants and told the butchers what they wanted. Meat was flying out of the place by the boxload. No one bought less than ten pounds, and the average order was probably more like twenty. Two butchers were at work handing over the meat, and one clerk was ringing up the sales.

  One of the men would have been conspicuous even on the streets of his own home village, wherever that might have been. Something had happened to him, something hard for Clyde to put his finger on, but clearly awful. His complexion hadn’t been good to begin with—lots of acne scars—but his face bore a disfiguring pattern of heavy scar tissue. His lips and nose looked okay, but the sides of his cheeks had been burned and healed haphazardly. He had a truncated ear on one side, and the hairline on that side of his head was badly deranged, his curly black hair fading in and out crazily over substrata of lumpy, marbled red skin. The damage continued beneath the collar of his shirt and at least as far as his left hand, which was missing three fingers. The index finger was still there, and the thumb was present in a stunted, mangled, and crudely patched form. The man was gaunt and surprisingly tall, probably almost as tall as Clyde, who was six feet three. He was with a considerably younger woman whose plump, attractive face was encircled by a large silk scarf that dangled down her back, covering her hair.

  They were buying a huge box of meat. When it was ready, the woman turned away from the counter, and Clyde saw that she was enormously pregnant. The man grabbed one end of the box with his good hand and slid it off the counter, holding up one knee to support the end while he groped for a fingerhold with his damaged hand. When he raised his knee in this fashion, the leg of his trousers rode up on his calf and exposed a few inches of flesh-colored plastic. But it must have been a below-the-knee amputation, because once he got his finger hooked into the box, he walked over to the cashier with only a slight limp.

  Maggie pawed at her pacifier, which flew out of her mouth and skidded across the floor. Clyde was chagrined that he had not made use of the baby technology available to him by the infinite bounty of the extended Dhont family; they owned many clip-on pacifier shock cords intended to prevent this sort of incident, but in his haste to get Maggie out of the house lest she detonate prematurely and wake Desiree up, he had forgotten to install one.

  The pregnant woman bent over carefully and picked up the pacifier. She turned to the cashier, a blue-eyed Lukas female in her fifties. “Is there a WC?” she said.

  “Pardon me, honey?” said the cashier, leaning forward and cupping one hand to her ear.

  “Rest room,” said the husband, more for his wife’s benefit than the cashier’s.

  “Back there through the door,” said the cashier.

  The pregnant woman circumnavigated the counter, seeming to glide along on a cushion of air in her tentlike garment. A Bunn coffee machine was sitting on the counter with a stack of Styrofoam cups next to it and a bowl for contributions. One of the glass carafes was full of hot water. The woman plucked it off the machine as she went by and carried it into the bathroom with the pacifier.

  Clyde heard the sound of water running. Maggie was beginning to fuss; he turned around, said something meant to be reassuring, but couldn’t make eye contact without breaking his own neck. Presently the woman emerged from the bathroom and replaced the carafe. She turned toward Clyde, smiling warmly. Clyde was slightly taken aback until he realized that she was smiling not at him but at Maggie. “May I?” she said, holding up the steaming pacifier.

  “Please. Thank you,” Clyde said. The woman did something behind his head, and Maggie became quiet and calm as she built up to full suction. The woman remained for a few moments as her husband finished paying for the meat, making eyes at the baby and talking to her in a low voice, speaking an unfathomable language. Then her husband was by the door, holding the box, repeating a word to her a few times, patient but firm.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Clyde said as she was on her way out. Her husband had shouldered the door open and was holding it there with his back while she made her way out. Clyde made eye contact with him; he was looking back at Clyde calmly, in an appraising and almost absentminded way. Clyde nodded to him. “Have a good day, sir. Vote Banks.”

  Maggie fell asleep. As Clyde approached the counter, he shushed Todd Gruner, the butcher, who, surprised and excited to see a fellow representative of Christendom, was about to greet him too loudly.”How you doing, Todd?” he whispered.

  “Nice to see you, Clyde. What’s in there, a coon?”

  “Bats,” Clyde improvised. “Been catching them round the porchlight with a potato sack.” He took the lid off.

  “Huh. Neck nuggets. Looks like old Ebenezer’s work,” Todd said. “Need us to make you some sausage?”

  “Yup.”

  “We got a new spice mix that’s real good. It’s extra spicy.”

  “Don’t want extra spicy.”

  “Regular, then. Where’d you get a buck this time of year, Clyde? Poach it?”

  “Had it flown in from Australia. It’s deer season in the Southern Hemisphere.”

  “Well, I should have it ready for you, oh, Monday afternoon.”

  “See you then,” Clyde said. “Vote Banks.”

  It had occurred to Clyde that he might score some additional relationship karma by driving into Wapsipinicon and going to the European bakery there on Lincoln Way and buying some cinnamon rolls. It was not out of the question that he might even get back with said booty before Desiree woke up, which would earn him a double karma bonus.

  Shortly after he turned south on River Street, he noted three Nishnabotna Police Department vehicles blocking the right lane a couple of blocks ahead, and Lee Harms standing there in his cop uniform waving traffic around the obstruction.

  Clyde gunned the truck forward crisply, ignoring the gesticulations of Lee Harms, who had not yet recognized him, and stopped it behind a police unit.

  He saw right away that another officer, Mark Ditzel, had a suspect facedown on the pavement and handcuffed. Ditzel had his nightstick out; it had blood on it. A bulky woman in a tentlike dress was standing with her hands on the fender of the Toyota, shouting at the police officers in a language that Clyde did not recognize. A police dog from the local K-9 unit was busying herself with something that was not in the Toyota, but on the pavement next to it, up on the curb.

  Clyde got out. He set Maggie on the hood of Ditzel’s unit, right in front of the driver’s seat, and stepped forward into the middle of the fray. He recognized the woman now: she was the one who had cleaned off Maggie’s pacifier. He had not recognized her at first because the scarf had been pulled down off her head during the action, and her face was distorted with tears of rage.

  Ditzel had his knee in the middle of the husband’s back and his face about two inches away from that of the prisoner. He was holding his bloody nightstick up as if about to deliver an additional blow. Ditzel’s face was flushed, and speckled here and there with droplets of blood not his own. Clyde flinched as a whiff of pepper spray drifted into his nostrils.

  Ditzel was fulminating into the prisoner’s face, spit flying from his lips. “You do not interfere with an officer! You do not touch or strike an officer! If you do so, I am justified in taking you down hard! You understand that, or you want some more of this?” Ditzel’s eyes were red, and clear fluids were streaming from his tear ducts and nostrils; some of the pepper spray had got into his face as well, and this had done nothing to brighten his mood.

  The man said something Clyde could not quite make out. Ditzel’s eyes got even
wider, this time in astonishment. “Very well, sir, I’ll just have to take some additional measures.” He grunted the last word, tensing his diaphragm as he swung the nightstick downward in the general direction of the prisoner’s kidney. But it never struck home because Clyde Banks, anticipating the move, grabbed the end of the stick before it really got going. Remembering a maneuver he had practiced during his stint at the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, he twisted the stick round against the grain of Ditzel’s fingers and pried it out of his hand. Then Clyde flung the stick over the Toyota. It clattered on the sidewalk and slid to a halt against the boarded-up facade of Walgreen’s.

  Ditzel was utterly terrified just for a moment, thinking he had been disarmed by an accomplice, and then he recognized Deputy Sheriff Clyde Banks and was too startled to be angry just yet. “Clyde,” he said in an amazingly calm tone of voice, “what the fuck are you doing here?” Then, beginning to get pissed off: “What the hell did you do with my stick, man?”

  “Giving you a chance to cool off and think about it,” Clyde said.

  Just then the woman took her hands off the fender of the car. She flung herself toward the K-9 officer and his dog, who were also on that side of the car. The dog chose to interpret this as a hostile gesture and drove her back with violent barking and lunging.

  Both Clyde and Ditzel went after her. Ditzel went all the way around the front of the Toyota. Clyde vaulted over the hood in such a way that he came to earth directly between Ditzel and the woman. Clyde moved quickly toward her, maintaining a moving pick between her and Ditzel, and put one hand on her shoulder. She shrugged him off and windmilled that arm, trying to push him away, then turned around and recognized him.

  “Look what the dog is being allowed to do!” she cried, pointing at the ground.

  The box of meat had been removed from the Toyota and set on the grass of the parking strip, which was now littered all around with sheets of bloodied butcher paper. Some of the meat still lay in the center of its wrappings, and some had been dumped out onto the ground. A few cuts still remained undisturbed in the box.

  Clyde caught the woman’s hand in his, tucked it under his arm, and trapped it between his arm and his body. In this fashion he led her forcibly to the flank of the Toyota. He took her hand and pressed it against the top of the car, held it there with one hand while he reached around behind her with the other, got her other hand, and put it next to the first. Now he was behind her, wrapped around her like a cape, though he was so big and she so tiny that there was an air gap of several inches between them. Into her ear he said quietly, “I can take care of this if you calm down and do not move. If you take your hands off the car again, I have no idea what is going to happen.”

  “Well enough,” she said.

  Clyde released her hands and backed off a few inches. When she did not move, he relaxed and turned his attention to the dog.

  The K-9 officer pulled another cut of meat from the box, unwrapped it, and laid it out on the ground. The dog prodded it with its nose and licked it. The officer had donned clear plastic gloves, which were now smeared with blood, and as Clyde watched, he pulled at the meat, tearing it apart and letting the dog sniff at it some more. “Good girl,” he said, and tossed the dog one of the torn-off pieces.

  While the dog was enjoying this well-earned morsel, Clyde stepped forward, picked up the box, and set it on top of the Toyota. It still contained one enormous piece of wrapped meat about the size of a large turkey. “Hey, what’s up, Clyde?” said Officer Morris, the K-9 specialist.

  “Why?” Clyde asked after a long pause, turning to nod at the box of meat.

  “Well, you know, Clyde,” Morris said. “You know why we got Bertha.”

  “Drugs. But this looks like meat to me.”

  “Oh, no, Clyde,” Morris said. He started laughing, a somewhat forced laugh, and actually slapped his knee. He straightened up from his squat and gave a command to Bertha, who sat down and stayed. “Clyde, I’ve known you for years and I figured you for a smarter officer than that. You know we got a lot of marijuana coming in here to Forks, and you know that’s why we spent all that money on Bertha.”

  “I’m with you so far,” Clyde said.

  “Well, what you got to remember is that not all criminals are stupid. Some of ’em are pretty damn smart. They know about Bertha. So they hide the goods now, Clyde. They hide the stuff in cans of coffee or anything they think will throw off the scent. Now, if you wanted to throw a dog off the scent, what could be better than hiding a big ol’ head of sinsemilla inside an even bigger hunk of raw meat? Pretty clever, huh?”

  “What makes you think he’s got dope to begin with?”

  “It’s gotta be coming in from somewhere,” Morris countered.

  “Hell, Jim, it’s coming in from ten miles away. Most of the dope in the United States is grown in the corn belt. You know that. Now, why would anyone go to the trouble of importing the stuff all the way from—wherever the hell these people are from—when there’s acres of the stuff growing right here in Forks County?”

  Morris broke eye contact. Clyde could see he was defeated. But the conversation was interrupted by more commotion from the opposite side of the Toyota. Clyde ran around to find Ditzel kicking the handcuffed suspect in the ribs. “Fucking sand nigger! That’s all you are! You got that? So don’t be giving me any more of your lip, because we don’t take lip from sand niggers in this town.”

  “Officer Ditzel, if you strike that man again, I’ll put your ass in a sling,” Clyde said.

  He could not believe he’d said it. Neither could Ditzel. For Clyde to imply that he would rat on a fellow police officer was like announcing that he was going to have a sex-change operation. It left everyone within earshot stunned and forced them to reevaluate everything they had ever known about Clyde Banks.

  “Ba ba ba ba ba,” said Maggie from the hood of Ditzel’s unit.

  Ditzel looked at Maggie, his astonishment growing even deeper, and then a sneer developed on his face. “Well, what the fuck are you doing here anyway? I don’t remember calling for backup from a deputy—or his partner,” he said, pointing at Maggie.

  “Rendering assistance,” Clyde said, “and advice.”

  “Advice? Well, thanks very much. This was going fine before you got here.”

  “Doesn’t look fine,” Clyde said, nodding at the suspect.

  “I stopped him ’cause he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Maybe they don’t have a seat-belt law where he comes from, but we do here. Then he started acting suspicious. So I asked him to get out of the car, him and his woman, and called for K-9 to check out the car, and that’s when he got surly. Then, when the K-9 showed up, he started actively resisting, so I took him down. So this is a clean bust all the way, and I’m not in need of your advice, Deputy.”

  “See this?” Clyde said. He began tapping his nail against a sticker on the Toyota’s window.

  Ditzel leaned out to see and opened his mouth as if this would improve the acuity of his vision. “So? Parking sticker.”

  “You wouldn’t know this, ’cause you’re Nishnabotna, but I learned how to read the codes on these things working in Wapsie sometimes,” Clyde said. “This one’s for the law-school parking lot.”

  “I’ll be darn,” Ditzel said.

  A profound silence fell over the scene. Clyde could hear wind rustling in the leaves of the oak trees.

  Eastern Iowa University did not even have a law school. The law school was in Iowa City. But Clyde Banks, who had known Ditzel since they had gone to kindergarten together, knew that Ditzel could be relied upon not to know this.

  “C’mere,” Clyde said, and jerked his head back toward his truck. He turned his back on Ditzel, plucked Maggie off the unit as he went by, and went around back of his truck. He set Maggie down on the bed of the truck and replaced her pacifier. Ditzel met him there a moment later.

  “You know how these lawyers can make a stink,” he said.

  “But he’s just a camel jockey,�
�� Ditzel protested, his voice now much higher.

  “Even better, given the state of our judicial system. Just think of it. An oppressed minority with a pregnant wife versus a redneck cop.”

  Ditzel opened his mouth to protest, but Clyde stopped him with an outstretched hand. “Not my words,” he said. “To me you are Officer Ditzel, an experienced and decorated law-enforcement veteran. But when they haul your ass into court, all that’s going to be forgotten and you are going to be presented as a redneck cop. Believe me. I’ve been over there in Wapsie, and I know how these people think.”

  By now Morris had come round with his dog. Clyde looked over at the woman, who was eyeing the box of meat, an arm’s-length away. She glanced his way. He slid his glasses down on his nose and gave her a warning look, then pushed them back up and turned his attention to the officers.

  “So what are you advising?” Ditzel said.

  “Well, now, think about it. He didn’t buckle up. You nailed him for that. He gave you some guff and you spanked him. You’ve had a good day, my friend!” Clyde reached out and slapped Ditzel hard on the shoulder. “You got all the satisfaction you’re ever going to get. Now, you could take it the next step and spend the rest of the day in front of a typewriter and then get hauled into court and be accused of being a redneck cop and everything else that would follow. Or you could cash in your chips right now while you’re ahead. Let them go.”

  “It’d kill me if there was some weed in the bottom of that box,” Morris said ruefully.

  “Yeah!” said Ditzel, who had almost given up until Morris had mentioned the drugs. “We gotta get to the bottom of that.”

  “There ain’t nothing but meat in there,” Clyde said, and told them briefly of what he had seen at Lukas Meats.

  “So that’s a Jew?” Ditzel said, astonished and scandalized.