Swift to Chase

by Laird Barron

  Smiling J said, “You had two chances, Jim. None of us gets a third.”

  2. Rally, Washington. Spring, 1977. (Planet X)

  Nineteen youth players for the Chugiak Wolverines Roller Derby and the Timberwolf Hockey teams (mostly incoming Onager High juniors and a handful of outgoing seniors who weren’t invited on the graduate trip to D.C.) flew from Anchorage to Spokane, Washington courtesy of Butch Tooms, whose father bankrolled both clubs. They hopped a bus to Rally, Outpost of the Atomic Frontier! Rally was a twenty-minute commute to the fence line of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation on the Columbia River. They’d refined the plutonium for Fat Man and Little Boy on the reservation. Fancy as that might be, the real attraction for this crowd of young tourists lay a few miles upriver in neighboring Tomahawk, home of Tomahawk Park; by its own admission, the most dangerous waterpark and motor entertainment arena in North America. Merchants sold ball caps and tee shirts that read, TOMAHAWK PARK SURVIVOR! in bloody letters. The shirts came in green, white, and black.

  The kids doubled up in rooms at the Rocket Inn. Mr. Hyjak, Mr. Three Trees, and Mrs. Buntline had drawn the short straws when it came time to sacrifice parents as chaperones. Upon arrival, the trio immediately repaired to the lounge and told the kids not to bother them unless a nuclear reactor went China Syndrome.

  Esteban Mace and Jimmy Flank sat on a retaining wall in front of the motel. A juniper hedge dug into their backs. Mosquitoes were biting hard, which made the Alaskans feel right at home. Most of the gang milled self-consciously in the middle of the courtyard, either heckling or studiously ignoring one another depending on the factions involved.

  Rich boy (moderately well-off, at any rate) Butch Tooms, tall and sleek and softly athletic in a charcoal turtleneck, leaned against the trunk of Mr. Hyjak’s rented sedan and flirted with Threnody Rudnick, Molly Vile, and Sarah Peters. Threnody favored a midriff tee (Chewbacca from the epic new flick, Star Wars), short-shorts, and roller-skates. She hadn’t made the derby team and her getup raised eyebrows among the other girls. Tooms obviously liked it, though. He had the come-hither lean and not-so subtle pelvic thrust combo going. His henchman, Smiling J, lurked nearby. Smiling J dressed like he’d stumbled away from a marathon shift in a NASA control room — thick glasses, rumpled white shirt and dark tie, corduroy slacks, and scuffed dress shoes. He seldom smiled, of course, and his servitude to Butch Tooms mystified those who’d grappled with the muscularity of his intellect on the debate team or chess club. “Weird dude” was the consensus.

  “Cheesy bastard.” Esteban spat between his sneakers. He played backup center on the hockey team. A lean, wiry boy who knew how to duck the worst shots. Papa Mace had taught him that much. You can slip your old man’s drunken haymakers, you can handle pimple-faced goons in pads all the livelong day.

  “Who?” Jimmy concentrated on rolling a bomber. Jimmy wrestled at 152 for Onager High. He showed up to skate for the Timberwolves Hockey Club whenever he pleased. The coaches hated the arrangement, but he paid his fee and it was hard to deny a left forward who led with his helmet.

  “BT. Clown prince and heir-apparent of the Tooms Estate.”

  “Butch paid for everything, man. My traveling expenses now amount to beer and ganja. I like that about him.” Jimmy lit the joint and dragged hard.

  “Daddy paid for everything.” It sounded harsher than Esteban intended. He had radiation sickness from mooning over Lucius Lochinvar and twiddling his thumbs wasn’t doing much to smooth the edges. You hate Butch because he’s smooth and blond and the girls love his sense of humor. He dropped out of school his junior year and he’ll always have more money than you and get farther. Maybe get farther with Lucius…

  “Relax. Lochinvar doesn’t give him the time of day.”

  “Did I say that out loud?”

  “No, man. Your face kinda scrunches when you got angst. Your angst is attached to your blue balls. You’re also staring death rays at our patron over there innocently chatting up the hoochies. He’s going to be a senator; you’re going to be a Marine. It rubs ya raw.”

  “I’m all right with joining the Corps.”

  “You ain’t all right. You need to chill. Chicks dig chill. Tooms is chill as a goddamned winter’s day.” Jimmy waved the joint under Esteban’s nose. “Take it. Have a hit off the northern lights, my brother.”

  “Twist my arm, will ya?” Esteban accepted the joint, inhaled and felt a small fire begin in his chest. Easier that way when it came to dealing with his friend. He and Jimmy hunted ptarmigan in Hatcher Pass and caribou in Copper River Valley with Keith Norse and Bruce Three-Trees. Bruce’s dad or Keith’s uncle usually drove them and stayed at camp and drank while the boys hiked into the hills. Keith was one of six black kids at Onager, including senior fullback heartthrob Clyde Zant. Bruce was Aleut. He and Sarah Peters (Athabascan; her extended family lived in Ruby on the mighty Yukon) endured an inordinate amount of crap for being the only natives at a school of eighteen hundred students.

  When they first met in junior high, Bruce and Keith razzed Esteban about being the whitest Mexican in Alaska. We’re Scotch Irish, he’d explained about a hundred times. Keith said “Scotch Irish” didn’t exist. Nobody, including Esteban, could figure out why his Mom and Dad had chosen his name, except that maybe it had something to do with Mom’s crush on Ricardo Montelban. Jimmy said, Yo, mystery solved. Who don’t wanna ball Montelban? Jimmy’s sister, Lynne, said, Like totally! Afterward, Esteban’s closest friends called him Ricardo as often as not.

  Raised voices snapped his attention around. Jackie Brock and Lucius Lochinvar were in the middle of a shoving match. Jackie Brock’s mascara streamed rivulets and rendered her a particularly ineffective Boadicea. Quick JB background: She dressed in all black and droned Fleetwood Mac non-fucking stop on her portable eight track player. As if that wasn’t enough, she declared herself a witch — actually she claimed to be a Wiccan. Witch stuck.

  “Uh, oh,” Jimmy said. “Catfight at nine o’ clock. Your girlfriend’s got her rings on. Here comes the dentist.”

  Jackie made the fatal mistake of socking Lucius in the eye. There wasn’t any mustard on it; Jackie preferred clawing and hair-pulling and she tucked her thumb under. Esteban leaped into action as Lucius grinned and got a fistful of Jackie’s brand new do and reared back to deliver the hammer of the gods with a Coke bottle. He caught Lucius from behind in a bear hug and spun her 180. Under the Blue Oyster Cult T-shirt, her body rippled with animal muscle, suppressed for the moment, thankfully. Lucius could’ve rearranged his nose or smashed in his teeth. She’d gotten to be hell on wheels for the derby team (so, so many punch-ups) and had developed a lethal right cross to go with her forearm shiver. Plus, the rings, those bone crunching rings.

  She allowed him to set her down. “My tits got magnets, or what?”

  He realized where his hands lingered and jumped back as if he’d touched a hotplate. “Oh, shit. Sorry.”

  Jimmy said, “Where’s your badge? Cause you were coppin’ a feel, son.”

  Meanwhile, Lucius’ older brother Pierce and his pal Jeff Vellum gently took custody of hysterical Jackie and led her away. Same old scene, a little less bloodletting than usual. So far, Lucius had thrashed everybody in the Brock household except for Mr. and Mrs. Brock.

  “You got some color there.” Lucius brushed her knuckle, softly-roughly, against Esteban’s cheek. “Virgin.”

  “Naw, that’s frostbite,” he said. “My cheeks are always kinda rosy.”

  “This is more like the hood of a fire truck.”

  “Jesus H Christian.” Cassidy Sloan strolled over and whacked Lucius on the arm. “You can’t kill Jackie yet. We had a deal. No sacrifices before the full moon.”

  “When’s the next one?” Lucius said.

  “After we get our day at the park.”

  “After the bonfire party,” Esteban said.

  “There’s a bonfire party? It’s been decided?”

  “The word has been given.”

  Luc
ius adjusted her left-hand rings. “Fine. I won’t murder her until the party.”

  “You’re a pal.” Sloan also skated for the Wolverines derby girls. Her handle was Slugger Sloan. She wore the team shirt and warmup jacket for every occasion. All the boys wanted her, especially the adventuresome jocks. She didn’t have much use for any of them.

  Later:

  Smiling J paid for drinks at the Fat Boy Lounge. A neon sign over the door blinked:

  Proud of the Cloud! Nuke em til they glow!

  Eighteen years old as of May, bartenders bounced right off his receding hairline and stern gauntness and poured the booze without a second glance.

  The cowboy in the rear booth accepted a scotch and soda. Rally was one of those towns where a man could get away with dressing like a shitkicker or a laboratory tech and be lost in the forest for the trees. Mr. Speck did not belong in Rally. He blended with the laborer set of the local scene in a scuffed Stetson hat, Levi jacket, and plaid shirt. On other occasions in other towns he wore a dyed-in-the-wool G-man black suit and shades. He’d gotten some rays since last Smiling J had seen him.

  “Where’s Mr. Hyjak?” Mr. Speck said.

  “Hanging with the parents. Got to make it look legit.”

  “Our friend will be ready tomorrow night?”

  “Without a doubt. Told me to tell you to be cool.”

  “It’s sad.” Mr. Speck didn’t appear sad. He sipped his scotch and nodded in bland satisfaction. Doodles covered his napkin and the reverse of his coaster. Equations and mathematical gibberish. Moon skulls baring sharp teeth. A cross-sectioned mastiff revealing circuitry and gears. Guns.

  “What is sad?” Smiling J glanced at the door, wary of a classmate or chaperone wandering in. He saw only a crowd of strangers. Eyes and hair gleamed strangely in the reddish, negative glare of panel lamps. A DJ in Kit Carson-era buckskins spun disco and up-tempo jazz.

  “None of your friends miss you. The adults in charge don’t even realize you’ve jumped the fence. You have a big brain. Could be Oppenheimer or Sagan and yet…”

  “Mr. Hyjak—”

  “Considers you a disposable asset. Pot, meet Kettle, let me tell you. It’s hard to believe Hyjak is the best the Central Intelligence Apparatus could offer—”

  “Agency. Butch realizes. He’s a true friend.”

  “Mr. Tooms does not count. He is evolving beyond human sensibility.”

  “His dad is Mr. Tooms. Butch is plain old Butch.”

  “Mr. Butch Tooms is less than that. He’ll be more, soon. He’ll be full.”

  “What’s so special about Butch? Or me? You could select anyone…”

  “Our relationship with the Tooms and J families is longstanding. There are rules. Protocols. Don’t kid yourself, though. Mr. Tooms is merely the first of a horde.”

  Smiling J pictured Butch Tooms in their shared motel room, lying on a double bed, arms folded, gaze fixed on the ceiling while Threnody Rudnick and Molly Vile took turns polishing his knob. The girls enjoyed poppers — the expensive, exotic varieties. Butch had a steady connection. Butch could have afforded a suite in a better hotel with real pro call girls, but preferred to chum with hoi polloi.

  “You’re not hoi polloi,” Mr. Speck said. “From our perspective you are an important performer in the flea circus. We’ve named you, groomed you, told our friends, made plans for your future.”

  “Huh? Am I talking to myself again?” The J men were infamous for externalizing interior monologues.

  “Did you enjoy Star Wars? The kids are absolutely crazy about it.”

  “Meh. Wasn’t bad.” The boy wouldn’t admit he’d sat through eleven showings of the film and memorized half the lines. Princess Leia in virginal white, at odds with her name, inflamed his imagination, so to speak. “The plot is sort of ridiculous—”

  “Drink your drink. Put some hair on your chest. You’re off to Caltech this autumn. Pussy doesn’t exactly form a queuefor the pocket protector set. Remember — alcohol is the best friend an ugly person will ever have.”

  Smiling J didn’t retort despite the heat in his cheeks. During a previous meeting he’d witnessed a display of the man’s capabilities. Terror and exultation were indeed bedfellows. Could he simultaneously love and dread Mr. Speck? His wiser angels said he only loved what Mr. Speck could do for him and feared what Mr. Speck might do to him.

  “J, consider this — the tasks I perform are not tasks, but choices in service of a cause. I live for the moment, and you should too. Car accident, heart attack, gunshot, alien abduction, extinction event; the end is always nigh.”

  Smiling J pushed his glasses up. He waited without speaking because he knew from experience there’d be more.

  “Allow me to give you an example. There is a doomsday theory among your physicists.” Mr. Speck touched his scribbled napkin. “Those who speak of it, speak quietly, because it is forbidden. Planet X…Oh, you are familiar with this theory?”

  “Uh, I’m not sure whether...”

  “I won’t take offense. This is your education.”

  “I’ve heard of it. I mean, Planet X isn’t a secret. You said it yourself, though. Nobody thinks there’s a killer planet out there. Fun to noodle around, like UFO theory and crop circles.”

  Smiling J’s Uncle Willard worked at a high security installation in Gakona. Since 1970, the military spent a pile of tax dollars building a mystery project in the hills. Uncle Willard refused to speak of his assignment. However, he gave his nephew a telescope and an astronomical catalogue with the covers and title pages snipped.

  “You’d be surprised,” Mr. Speck said. “Certain individuals behind the scenes are true believers regarding the existence of Planet X. The worst case scenario is a repeat of what happened in the Yucatan.”

  “The Yucatan, sir?”

  “Ah, I leap ahead of myself. Short version: Next summer a gravity anomaly map made in the 1960s will fall into the hands of a geophysicist employed by a foreign energy corporation. His research will reveal evidence of a massive crater in the Yucatan obscured by jungle and bodies of water. The Chicxulub Crater’s existence will in turn generate a theory that dinosaurs were wiped from the face of the Earth sixty-six million years ago by the deep impact of a celestial body.”

  “Makes sense,” Smiling J said, completely uncertain whether it truly did. “Are you saying Earth is going get smacked by a meteor?”

  Mr. Speck nodded and his face tipped into the light, then darkness. “In the relative near future, Planet X, with a mass thirteen times that of Earth, will heave in its long orbit beyond Pluto and disrupt the delicate stream of the Kuiper Belt. The gravity well is immense. Planet X drags a tidal wave of debris in its wake. Imagine this tidal wave of space debris directed toward your solar system.” He traced a line from the edge of the napkin toward its center and circled back. “Pack an umbrella because it will rain shit down like you’ve never seen.”

  “Humankind would go the way of the dino.”

  “Should this scenario come to pass, every living organism will be made extinct except for cockroaches and bacteria.”

  “Oh, man. What we’re doing tomorrow…Jeez, Mr. Speck. If this exercise can help avert Doomsday, then I’m in for sure.”

  Mr. Speck leaned back until his features sank into shadow. “Averting global annihilation is hardly the goal of our operation.” He sounded amused. “Planet X might destroy your species this summer or it might wait another twenty-seven million years and pulverize an Earth devoid of sapient creatures. Possibly it will disrupt certain fields and play havoc with human evolution. I have no idea. What I know is this: Tomorrow, you will facilitate a culling of brainless, oversexed youth. One thing has nothing to do with the other.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry. I thought the purpose—”

  “What we do, we do to satisfy intellectual curiosity and for the fun. It’s important to love what you do, kid.”

  Somewhere, Sometime II:

  Deep night gathered around the cabin. A candle s
hone through the window into a lonely gulf that descended past Alpha Centauri and into the outer dark.

  He said, “Baby, pumpkin pie, honeybunch, whatever is the matter?”

  She sat at the foot of the bed, facing away from him. “Someone else's dream isn't the most compelling item. But, good God, last night.”

  He clasped his hands behind his head and regarded the exposed beams in the ceiling of the cabin. “Tell me, sugar-booger.”

  “Ugh. C’mon.”

  “Sorry. Sugar plum. Go ahead, lay it on me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep! Ready and raring—”

  “I dreamed the world was grinding to a stop, dark side-light side and all was being revealed. My body fell to the dead grass, paralyzed, and my mind's eye zipped in and out of the heads of several persons. I was staring from the eyes of a woman in the passenger seat of a luxury car. The driver, a corn-fed fellow in a suit, looked at her and his eyes went black and his mouth was a hole reversing over his body to reveal something, but my astral self flitted into the ether. The man in the disintegrating suit came after me, saying there was no escape. Then I was inside a raven that swooped over a great brooding mansion where a cheerleader had been impaled upon the weather vane. The mansion sat on an island of dry, dead grass and a sea of darkness rushed in from the horizon. Another raven swooped past me and cawed, ‘Nevermore! Nevermore!’ as if, perhaps, I hadn't gotten the hint. The man in the suit, far below, pointed at me and I fell out of the sky like a stone.”

  He stroked her back through the flimsy nightgown. “Sexual repression.”

  “Seriously?”

  “That’s what it’s always about. Or death. Got to admit, the death vibe is strong.”

  “No, it frightened me. Frightened me in a way I can’t—”

  “Most of us find death a scary prospect. Death comes to everyone; no use worrying.” He was an English major with a minor in psychology. A pain in the ass.