by Poppy Brite
“I’ll try to get them moving,” he promised.
Eddy sat on the back steps for several minutes, staring into the jungle of the yard, letting the tears course freely down her face. She believed Zach really was in love; that was the hell of it. She could see it in his face and Trevor’s, in the way their bodies touched. And she didn’t think Zach would lie to her about such a thing. It was easy enough to understand. She hadn’t been what Zach wanted. Trevor was.
But she still didn’t want to see him go to prison. She still had to help him.
Eventually her tears dried up, and she sat with her chin propped on her fist, watching a bee circle Kinsey’s overgrown, zucchini-laden garden, savoring the country quiet. She loved the French Quarter, but sometimes it was difficult to think there, what with all the street musicians and exploding bottles and screaming queens and blaring traffic. And if there was anything Eddy needed just now, it was time to think.
Left to their own devices, the ragged crew in the house would sit around talking until Agent Cover showed up with his minions. But by the time she stood up and went back inside, Eddy had a plan.
“So where would we go?” Zach asked Dougal.
Dougal favored him with a crooked white grin. “I fly you home wit’ me, mon. You always say you wan’ go get lost in Jamaica someday.”
“Jamaica?” Zach turned to Trevor. “That’s where I dreamed about. Like you told me to. I was walking down a clean white beach with bright green palm trees and a guy said ‘Ganja, smart ganja’ so I stopped—”
“That’s Jamaica,” Dougal assured him. “Always got de smart ganja. I got some now if you wan’ it.” Zach and Terry nodded. Dougal rolled another bomber and passed it around. Soon the room was filled with sweet herbal smoke.
“Goddammit, are you all just going to sit around and get STONED?”
Eddy stood in the doorway, arms akimbo, face tear-stained and royally pissed and lovely. He had missed her since he left, Zach realized, and he would miss her wherever he was going. She was so tough.
“The Secret Service is ALL OVER TOWN! The agent in charge of your case showed up at Terry’s record store!” She crossed the room to Zach, grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him. “Don’t you think you better GET GOING?!”
Trevor knocked her hand away. “He has a concussion! Leave him alone!”
“Well, if you don’t move your asses, he’ll have plenty of time to recover in a jail cell! Is that what you want?”
“You guys shut up. Please.” Zach scowled and rubbed his temples, trying to clear his head. “She’s right, Trev. If they’re already here, we have to go.”
Zach stared miserably up at Eddy. “I’m sorry about all this, Ed. I wish I could do something to make it up to you.”
“Give me your car.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me. Give me your car. I’ve always liked it, and you won’t be needing it anymore. Dougal can take you back to Louisiana to catch your plane. Do you think you could get into Louisiana DMV again and register the car to me?”
“Well … sure. What are you gonna do?”
“Drive through downtown and try to lure them after me. I’ll go east on 42 while you guys sneak out of town the other way. They won’t be looking for Dougal’s car.”
All five men stared at her with wide awed eyes. Finally Terry said timidly, “Won’t they chase you down and arrest you?”
“I’ll lead them as far as I can. Maybe they’ll arrest me, but maybe they won’t have a damn thing to charge me with if they can’t prove Zach was ever here. I’ll say the Mustang was mine all along, and the computer will back me up. Right?”
“Right,” Zach said.
“After that, who knows? I may drive to California. I may meet William S. Burroughs in Kansas. I may wind up stranded in Idaho. I don’t really care. I just want some time alone.”
She pulled her key ring out of her pocket and tossed it to Dougal. “You know where my apartment is. You and the rest of the French Market gang can have everything in it. Zach, do you want anything out of your car?”
“Umm … no, I’ve got my bag.”
“Then could some of you guys come help me unload it? I don’t want to get busted with a hot computer and a bunch of boys’ clothes.”
“I’ll take everything to Potter’s Store,” Kinsey offered.
“Keep the computer,” Zach told him. “It’s got all kinds of good stuff on the hard drive. You’ll never have to pay a bill again.”
“Thanks, but I’ll pass.”
“I’ll take it,” said Terry.
The others carried five loads in from the Mustang while Zach dialed up the Louisiana DMV computer and made the necessary changes, plus a couple of embellishments. Eddy selected several items from the piles of Zach’s stuff: a bulky army jacket, a pair of sunglasses, the broad-brimmed black hat Dougal had sold Zach in the French Market less than a week ago. When she put these things on, it was obvious that from a distance she could easily pass for Zach.
Eddy walked over to the sofa. “Excuse me,” she said to Trevor, and leaned down and kissed Zach square on the lips. Then she turned and went to the front door and smiled back at them. It was a rather rueful smile, but not a bitter one.
“It’s been nice knowing all of you,” she said. “Really it has. Good luck to you. I think you’ll all need it. Give me about ten minutes’ head start.”
The door closed noiselessly behind her. A few moments later they heard the smooth purr of the Mustang pulling out of the driveway.
Everyone gazed uncertainly at each other. Then Trevor asked Zach, “Did you really dream about Jamaica?”
Zach started to nod, winced, and said, “Yes.”
“Then let’s go.”
They looked up to see Kinsey, Terry, and even Dougal grinning like proud parents at a wedding.
“Maybe we got time for jus’ one more little smoke,” said Dougal. “I t’ink we got somet’ing to celebrate.”
* * *
Eddy drove along Kinsey’s road, stopped the car for a long moment at the intersection, then turned right at Farmers Hardware onto Firehouse Street. She didn’t know where the agents were or what their cars would look like, but she figured she could make them see her.
She tugged the black hat down over her face, pushed the sunglasses up on her nose, and gathered every particle of her nerve. She was going to have to do some fancy driving. But the car could take it; Zach had once driven her down Highway 10 at a hundred twenty miles per hour. And she could take it too.
She was sick of hot, humid weather that sapped the strength but teased the libido. For that matter, she was sick of the libido. She was sick of beautiful boys, geeks, and the assorted mutants that fell somewhere in between. She was going to have adventures she damn well felt like having, ones that didn’t depend on some man. One way or another, this would be the first.
She saw the Whirling Disc up ahead on her left. Halfway through downtown now. They’d had plenty of time to notice the car, plenty of time to read the license plate if Stefan had been able to give them that.
Eddy revved the engine, stomped the gas, and went blasting through Missing Mile. The needle jittered up to sixty, seventy-five, eighty. She glanced in her rearview mirror, saw three white Chevy vans pulling away from the curb behind her, and let out a howl of pure triumph.
They hit the open road going ninety. Eddy kept pushing the Mustang, watched the vans fall behind. She tried to keep the needle steady at a hundred. She didn’t want to lose them too fast, not until Dougal’s creaky old station wagon had had plenty of time to slip out the other way.
Eddy turned on the tape player, cranked up the volume. “YORE CHEATIN’ HAWRRRRRT,” whined Hank Williams. She hit the EJECT button, risked a glance at the other tapes on the dashboard, tossed Hank in the back seat, and slapped on Patsy Cline.
Crazy. Crazy for lovin’ you …
Not anymore, kiddo.
Maybe they would catch her. But they couldn’t keep her; her money and her car were
no longer traceable to Zach. She trusted him on that one. And after that, she would go where she wanted.
Eddy saw a wide, bright highway heading west, with the marvelous clean flatlands beginning to unfurl before her wheels. Prairie, mesa, desert stark and dry as a bone, stretching all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
It was hers to have, and she wanted it.
Thursday night and Friday morning were a long confusing blur. Zach remembered getting dressed, Kinsey and Terry hugging him, then climbing into the back seat of Dougal’s station wagon and promptly falling asleep in Trevor’s lap.
Somewhere near Atlanta, he thought, Dougal stopped the car in a pretty little suburb and ushered them into a houseful of Jamaicans. A Hefty garbage bag full of fragrant marijuana sat in the middle of the living-room floor and massive joints were constantly being rolled. They were given bowls of spicy goat stew and glasses of fresh ginger beer. From the boom box in the corner, Bob Marley sang that every little thing was gonna be all right. Zach was beginning to believe him.
They all grabbed a couple of hours’ sleep. Then Dougal drove straight through to South Louisiana. “Lay low, Zachary,” he thought he remembered hearing Dougal whisper once. “We pretty close to New Orleans now. But we be at Colin’s soon.” Then nothing but green swamp light for miles and miles, and Trevor holding him all the way.
They arrived at Colin’s place at dusk. It was a small shack deep in the swamp, surrounded by still water, bright green vines and other vegetation, great moss-encrusted stands of cypress and oak. Out back in a large cleared area was the runway. It was built atop the mud, Zach thought, on the same basic principle as a cracker balanced on toothpicks sunk into a dish of thick pudding. On the runway sat Colin’s plane, so small and spindly it looked like a toy. They would be taking off in the morning. They stared at the ramshackle contraption, then at each other. “Adventure,” Zach murmured, and Trevor nodded.
Colin was a wiry, jet-black Rastafarian with dreadlocks hanging halfway to his waist. The inside of his shack was a single large room with sleeping bags on the floor. Trevor and Zach crawled into a single bag and fell asleep. Dougal and Colin sat up most of the night, talking and smoking.
They climbed the steps into the cargo hold at dawn. Zach’s stomach dropped as he felt the wheels leave the ground. But once they were in the air the motion was soothing, lulling him back to sleep with the weight of America lifting off his back.
He woke up once on the flight to the sound of someone gagging, realized it was himself. Trevor was awkwardly holding his head up while Dougal offered him a neat little plastic-lined bag to puke in. “Colin keep these in de plane,” Dougal explained. “It’s jus’ de Bermuda Triangle make some people sick a little. Soon pass.”
Zach felt horrible. His food-deprived body must have sucked up the goat stew already; he only had the dry heaves. Soon the nausea subsided a little. Dougal handed him a smoldering joint and he dragged on it gratefully. “We’re over the Bermuda Triangle?”
“Jus’ a little on de edge.”
Zach handed the joint back to Dougal, who crawled up to the cockpit to pass it to Colin. He closed his eyes and leaned back against Trevor. “What do you think, Trev?” he whispered. “Am I a fun date or what?”
He was pretty sure he knew the answer. But he fell back asleep before he could hear it.
Sometime later Trevor shook him awake and gripped his hand. The plane was full of light. Dougal motioned them toward the cockpit. Peering over the pilot’s mass of dreadlocks, Zach could see a calm clear expanse of water the color of turquoise, a stretch of beach like a wide white ribbon unfurling out of sight, a lush green country in the distance.
The place he had seen in his dreams. A place for him and his lover to get lost together.
“Welcome home,” said the Rasta man.
ONE MONTH LATER
The asphalt of Firehouse Street had begun to soften in the July heat by the time Kinsey let himself into the Sacred Yew. The summer had gotten hotter and wetter until all the days seemed to run together in a long soggy blur. It would continue like this straight on through September. Kinsey could not bring himself to concoct any dinner specials; one did not want to cook in this weather, did not even want to eat.
The Secret Service agents had come back at the end of June to ask more questions. It seemed they had been mistaken about the car Zach drove, and were now looking for a tan Malibu registered in his name. Of course, no one in Missing Mile knew anything. None of the kids had ever seen that pallid raven-haired boy whose picture the agent kept flashing around. No one remembered the night Gumbo had had a guest singer, especially not the ones who had been in the crowd at that show, galvanized by a wild voice now tragic, now raucous, now joyous.
Kinsey grabbed a Natty Boho from the cooler and stood at the bar sorting through the day’s mail. Electric bill, surprisingly low … gas bill … collection agency notice … and two postcards. One was postmarked Flagstaff, Arizona, and read KINSEY, YOU FORGOT TO PAY THE PHONE BILL, LOVE, STEVE. Below that was scrawled Krazy Kat lived here and an amorphous swirl that might have been a G.
The other card was creased, smudged, ragged at the edges. But Kinsey thought it still bore a faint breath of sun and salt. The picture side was a closeup photograph of some ackee, the peculiar Jamaican fruit that was deadly poison before it burst open, but could be scrambled like eggs afterward. Creamy yellow curds of flesh bulged from dusky pink three-lobed skins. Embedded in each fruit were three glistening black seeds as large and round as eyeballs. Kinsey had read about ackee in his cookbooks, but never actually tasted any. He imagined it would be rather like brains.
The other side of the card was bordered with tiny faces and hands: graceful, gnarled; screaming, grinning, serene; all sorts of hands and faces exquisitely drawn in ink of black ballpoint. The postmark was too smudged to read, but the message said K: I drew for 3 hours today. It hurts like hell—but who cares? And Dario is growing dreads. Play some Bird for me. Your Friend, T.
Kinsey put on his favorite Charlie Parker tape, propped open the doors, and let Bird go soaring out over Missing Mile for the rest of the afternoon.
Trevor opened his eyes late one night and found himself staring at a vivid green lizard on the wall inches from his face. The shack was so bright that its scales seemed to shimmer.
Trevor blinked, and the creature was gone in an iridescent skirl.
He turned his head and looked at Zach, asleep on the narrow mattress beside him, naked atop sweat-dampened sheets in the steamy tropical night. The moonlight turned Zach’s skin pale blue, his knotty hair and the shadows of his face a deeper indigo. The nights here were as blue as the days; the sky deepened in color but never truly darkened.
They were living in the countryside near Negril, which was something of a hippie mecca on the western coast of the island, deep in the heart of ganja country. They had no electricity, no plumbing, and they didn’t care. When they missed these comforts, they hitchhiked into Negril and spent a night or two in a luxurious hotel room for about twenty dollars American.
Sometimes they visited Colin’s friend’s farm way up in the hills and spent a couple of days getting ridiculously stoned. Zach would amaze everyone by eating fresh scotch bonnet peppers right off the bush. The Jamaicans thought he was showing off, but Trevor knew Zach loved the pretty little globes of fire. Trevor himself had already put away gallons of Blue Mountain coffee. But not as much as he used to drink. He didn’t have to keep himself awake anymore.
More often they lounged on the small cove of white sand beach a few hundred yards from their shack. Zach lathered himself with the strongest sunscreen he could buy, then lay for hours in the brilliant blue water, his head cushioned in the soft sand. He stayed as pale as ever, but his cheeks took on a faint tinge of color, and some of the dark smudges around his eyes began to fade. He wanted to learn to sing reggae.
The sun had bleached Trevor’s hair pale blond. He had to tuck it up under a hat when they went into town; else Jamaican women w
ould descend on him stroking it, praising its beauty, wanting to braid it. The first time this happened, Trevor had endured the reaching, grasping fingers for about ten seconds, then flailed out from under them with an enraged snarl that sent the ladies scattering and left Zach sprawled on the ground, helpless with laughter.
His right hand ached all the time, but it was a healing ache, the feel of bones knitting back together and muscles remembering how to move. He drew every day for as long as he could stand it. Then Zach massaged the stiffness from his hand, gently tugging the knots out of his fingers, rubbing the cramps out of his palm. The muscle at the base of his thumb sometimes throbbed until Trevor wanted to drive his fist through the wall again. But he was through hitting things forever.
He sent a postcard to Steve Bissette asking him to donate payment for “Incident in Birdland” to the production of Taboo or other comics.
They talked intimately and obsessively, fucked as often as their bodies could stand it, sometimes combined the two. It was difficult to remember how short a time they had known each other. But at the same time, they were starting to realize how much they had yet to learn. They began to unlock each other like puzzles of astonishing intricacy, to open each other like marvelous gifts discovered under the Christmas tree.
Sometimes Trevor thought about the house. Sometimes he dreamed about it, but remembered only frozen images from these dreams: the shape suspended from the shower curtain rod, slowly turning; the terrible dawning recognition in Bobby’s eyes as he looked up from the bed of the sleeping son he had meant to kill after all, but could not.
Had Bobby meant to die already, or had the sight of his elder son grown, in Birdland, driven him to his death? Trevor would never know. He no longer worried much about it.
Sometimes sensations came back to him as well: the impact shuddering up his arm as the hammer crashed into the wall inches from Zach’s head; the thousand tiny pains of the mirror fragments sliding into his flesh. He never wanted to forget those.
