Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51

by Humans (v1. 1)

  “We all know them,” she said, with contempt. “They live in Rio, with their ocean views, they come to Brasilia surrounded by lawyers to testify that the factories are cleaner than last year. Always cleaner, cleaner. We show the true statistics, their lawyers make the statistics lie.”

  “But they aren’t the real owners,” the pilot said. “Don’t you know that? Those people are the board. They only run the company. The real owners are the stockholders.”

  “More of the same,” Maria Elena said.

  “Not exactly.” The pilot seemed to find all this amusing in some way. “The stockholders never come to Brasilia to testify, they never have to lie even once to anybody. Never even come to Brazil. Do you think they ever breathe this air? Maybe once, at Carnival.”

  Frowning, Maria Elena said, “The company is Brazilian. Isn’t it?”

  “The subsidiary is Brazilian. That’s the company you know about. But the main company is far from here. The stockholders don’t live in Brazil.”

  “Where do they live?” I’ll go there, Maria Elena thought. With photos, with statistics. How dare they not be part of what they’ve done? How dare they not even have to lie?

  “Where do they live?” The pilot looked down at the copper- colored river they would follow for the next quarter hour. “Some in Britain,” he said. “Some in Germany, Italy, Guatemala, Switzerland, Kuwait, Japan. But most in the United States.”

  “The United States.”

  “The multinational corporation is responsible to no country,” the pilot told her, “but it was an American idea.”

  “They couldn’t do this in America. That’s why they come here.”

  “Well, of course,” the pilot said, and laughed.

  They flew for a while in silence, Maria Elena full of her own thoughts. The lives destroyed—her own life destroyed—and she could never even see the people who did it. The people who benefit. This was the place where they did the bad things, but they themselves were far away, unreachable. Her occasional dreams of righting wrongs, saving those who had not as yet been polluted, were even more idle than she’d thought. There was nothing to be accomplished here, in Brazil, if the decisions were being made seven thousand miles to the north, by people who never came here, perhaps didn’t entirely understand the results of their decisions, had never been faced with the end reality of what they did.

  But how could she reach them, so far away? That was even more of a fantasy than the one she cherished about invading a penthouse apartment in Rio, with its grand view of Sugarloaf out the picture windows, breaking into the party of tuxedoed men and ball-gowned women, weeping, shouting, showing them the pictures, making them understand.

  She wouldn’t even have that fantasy any more, to soothe her into sleep at night, if the tuxedoed men and ball-gowned women were merely dolls, toys, remote-controlled from beyond the horizon. Without the fantasy, without the comforting false belief that remedy was possible, how would she ever sleep again? What fantasy could take its place? “The United Nations is in America,” she said at last.

  “What was that?”

  She repeated what she’d said, and the pilot nodded, agreeing with her, saying, “In New York, that’s right. What about it?”

  “I’ll never get to New York,” she said. Not now. Maria Elena might have someday, but that was all over now.

  “Why not? Anyone can go to New York.”

  “In this plane?”

  “Not in this plane,” he acknowledged. “But there are planes.”

  “They cost too much money,” Maria Elena said. “I would never have that much money.” Never again.

  “You could win the lottery,” he suggested.

  She laughed, her throat aching. “That’s true, I could. But they have quotas in America. Immigration quotas.”

  “Not for visitors. Short-term visas.”

  “What could a person do with a short-term visa?”

  “Well, then you hide,” he said. “You become an illegal resident.”

  “What could a person do, of value, who was hiding from the law?”

  ‘Then you apply for a long-term visa,” he advised her. “And save your money while you wait to get on the quota. Or is that too long a time for you?”

  “No,” she said slowly, wondering if it was wise to reveal so much to this stranger. But he felt safe, somehow. She said, “I believe my name is on some lists.”

  “Lists?”

  “As an activist,” she explained. “A few years ago, when my husband—back then, I joined some political groups. Activist groups.”

  “Breaking windows,” he suggested, this time openly laughing at her. “Handing out leaflets. Picketing opera openings.”

  “It seemed important,” she said miserably. “But now my name is on the lists.”

  ‘There’s one way, of course,” he said, “that none of that matters.”

  “What way?”

  “If you were married to an American.”

  Behind her, John Auston dozed over his filled-in forms. His presence suddenly filled the plane like a life raft inflating. “That’s impossible,” Maria Elena said.

  Ananayel

  Well; interesting.

  My ongoing experiences with machinery, I mean. “Men would be Angels,” as Pope said, in a somewhat different context, and that would certainly appear to be true.

  Just look at all these ponderous machines, gawky and oafish, with which latter-day man has surrounded himself. What are they, after all, but efforts to perform, with great cumbersome expenditures of energy, what we do smoothly, effortlessly, and by nature? My first airplane was so much more unwieldy than my normal fashion of traveling through the air as to beggar comparison, and as for these automobiles, like the one with which I drove Li Kwan away from the policemen I’d set on him, what possible advantage can humans believe such monstrosities offer them over their own legs? To get them there faster? To get them where faster? And why? What do they want with time, these ephemera?

  All these tangled intricate prosthetics with which these humans try to be us. Telephones. Light bulbs, and lamps to put them into, and huge destructive hydroelectric dams to plug the lamps into. Refrigerators. Oh, the weary toil of it all. They3!! probably be glad to lay their burdens down, poor things.

  7

  There was a bus stop across the road from the entrance to the prison, but Frank Hillfen didn’t want to wait for the bus there. Everybody going past in cars, and the people on the bus, too, when it came, and the driver of the bus, they would all know what he was. No one ever gets on the bus at that stop except cons—ex-cons, okay—and visitors of cons, and one look would tell anybody in the world that Frank Flillfen was not somebody who visited people. Con, they would say, looking at the slump of his shoulder, the dry hardness of his jaw, the hands as large as a workingman’s but soft and pudgy as a baby’s. Habitual, they would say, driving by, windows rolled up to keep the cold air in. He’ll be back, they would say, and glance once in the rearview mirror, glad they weren’t Frank Flillfen, and drive on.

  Frank crossed the road toward the bus stop, to be that much farther away from the tall tan wall in the sunlight. Three P.M., summer, sunny, moderately warm. Walking weather.

  A madonna and child were the only people in the shade of the bus shelter. She was short, plump, pretty, black-haired and black-eyed, and she held the infant high in her arms, murmuring to it in some dialect descended a long way from the Latin; some variant of Spanish, probably She looked up to watch Frank cross toward her, his worldly goods in the black warm-up bag that said HEAD at both ends, handles gripped in his left: hand, leaving the right for... emergencies. The madonna watched Frank with the sullen hopeless look of someone who’s been badly treated before and never got revenge for it, and her eyes didn’t soften even when he veered to his left, away from her and her bus shelter. She kept watching his back as he walked away along the verge of the road, watching him mistrustfully as she absently bobbled the fretful baby.

  Frank w
alked south, the sun high above his left: temple. There was very little traffic; Nebraska had put the prison on land nobody wanted for anything else. For a long while the blank tan wall remained to his left, across the road, while to his right stretched stony brush-dotted land the same color as the prison wall. That land was fenced from the road with three strands of barbed wire, but didn’t seem to be used for anything.

  In the release office, the clerk had told him the bus ran every two hours or so. He had no idea how far apart the bus stops were. If the bus came by before he reached the next one, and if it wouldn’t stop at his wave, he’d have two more hours to wait. Or so. But that didn’t matter, he was in no hurry. Where was he going, anyway? If he followed his usual pattern, he was simply on his way back to that prison behind him, or another one exacdy like it; he was merely starting out now on the first leg of a long and tortuous journey that would take him through many places and many experiences to no place and nothing.

  If he followed his pattern. But not this time. This time, he’d keep ahead of the odds. Ahead of the odds. Take the bus across the state to Omaha; promote some cash there. If he got that far without fucking up, take a plane to New York. Then we’ll see.

  Frank walked for half an hour without finding any more bus stops. He began to regret his self-consciousness. What did he care what the people in passing cars might think? Escaped con, probably, with him walking away from the prison like this, along the empty road, miles from anywhere. At forty-two, his brown hair was thinning, forehead receding, presenting vulnerable pale skin to the hot sun. Gonna start to burn, he told himself, fatalistic about it, and then humorous: Gonna get burned. First thing.

  The warm-up bag got heavier. He switched it to his right hand, then back to the left. What do I need with all this shit? Buy new. But Frank always imagined people watching him, careless but vaguely interested people keeping an eye on him, and what would they think if he threw his warm-up bag away?

  From time to time he looked over his shoulder at the road undulating behind him, and at last he did see the bus way back there, barreling along the two-lane road, coming fast. Frank turned to face it, holding the warm-up bag prominendy in front of himself with his left hand—I’m a traveler, see?—while he waved the right hand back and forth above his head. He was visible, God knows, the tallest thing in the vicinity, the only thing moving, but the bus roared right on by, didn’t even slow, left him awash in a wake of blown dust and diesel fumes.

  Cocksucker. Frank watched the bus shrink, imagined the blowout, the driver losing control, the bus jouncing off the road, straight into a tree—one of the few trees around, but a perfect hit anyway—the driver flailing through the big windshield, sliced to shit by all that glass, screaming, mouth wide open, glass in his tongue...

  Frank kept walking. It was greener up ahead, more trees— shade from this sun, finally—and now the road began to climb. I have two hours to find the bus stop, Frank told himself. The fucking thing has to stop somewhere.

  A farmhouse with outbuildings, on his right. And a dog, who stood barking loudly on the driveway, too cowardly to come forward for his kick. No human beings came out to find out what the dog’s problem was. Frank kept walking, and the dog quit. Like to come back at night with a .22, plink him on the edges, shoot off a paw, an ear, chunk of the tail. Take a good long time at it. Why don’t you bark now you son of a bitch?

  Cars went by, from time to time, but Frank knew better than to try to hitch a ride. People looked at Frank, they figured first impressions were enough, they didn’t need to know any more. So he just kept walking. Sooner or later, there’d be a crossroads, a village, a V.A. hospital, an army base, some goddamn excuse for the bus to stop. There he would wait.

  The white Saab with the bumper stickers—i BRAKE FOR ANIMALS; NO NUKES is GOOD NUKES—passed Frank, going the same direction as him but a lot faster, and zipped a litde farther down the road when all at once its right front tire blew. (Frank didn’t think about his bus blowout fantasy, had long forgotten that.) The car was just a ways ahead of him, maybe the length of a football field—what’s that? a hundred yards?—and then the bang, like a large handgun going off, and the Saab veered left and right and jolted itself all over the road, its brake lights slapping on, then off, then on, off, on...

  He was a good driver. He was lucky, too, in that there wasn’t any traffic coming, but he was also a hell of a good driver, he kept control, he didn’t let the Saab get away from him and run for the trees. Fie didn’t lock onto the brakes but pumped them, used them, kept control, slowed the big vehicle down, and at last it wobbled off onto the shoulder and came to a stop. Frank kept walking, toward the car, watching the thin strung-out cloud of tan dust move away over the fields to the right, like the banners of a ghost army. He continued to walk, and as he did so he began to think maybe he could work a deal with this guy, help him replace the tire and in return get a lift to the next bus stop. Or all the way to the city, why not? Think big; why not?

  For a minute or two after the Saab came to a stop, as Frank went on walking toward it, nothing more happened. The driver’s door didn’t open, the driver didn’t get out. He’s in there shitting his pants, Frank thought. Reaction after it’s over. The way I feel when the lights come on and the cop says, “Don’t move.” The danger is over and the new chapter has begun.

  If it was a football field Frank had to cover, he was at about the Saab’s twenty-yard line when the driver’s door at last did open and the driver tottered uncertainly out, and the driver was a woman. Shit, thought Frank, disgusted. A woman isn’t gonna give me the time of day. I can’t negotiate with a woman.

  She didn’t see Frank at first, or wasn’t concerned about him. She closed the driver’s door and walked around the front of the Saab and stood looking down at the blown tire. She looked to be about thirty-five, tall and slender, with straight brown hair. She was dressed like the women in television commercials who carry briefcases and are business equals with the men but still spend a lot of time worried about personal hygiene. Smart and self-assured, in other words; but not now.

  Frank kept walking, beaming thoughts at the woman, even though it wouldn’t do any good. I’m non-violent, he thought at her, that’s my M.O., thaFs why I’m out on parole, that’s why I did less than two of a nickel. It’s all in my record, you could look in my record, never a touch of violence, I don’t even go in a house is there somebody there. Never carry heat, never a weapon on me, not a knife, nothing. A peaceful burglar, that’s me, wouldn’t hurt a woman. Wouldn’t hurt anybody.

  The woman looked up as Frank neared the car, and he saw it in her face, saw it in her eyes, right away. That recognition. Not a word yet, and already she knew everything about him. Wrong, but everything.

  A strip of the blown tire lay curled beside the road like a giant blackened onion ring. Frank looked at it, as a relief from looking at the woman’s frightened eyes, but then he was past it, and the white Saab was just beside him as he walked, and the woman was straight ahead, ten feet away, beyond the car. Frank took a deep breath, still walking, and looked at the woman again, and said, “You handled that real good. Like a pro.”

  The woman blinked, slowly. Whatever she’d expected, it hadn’t been a compliment, or a critique on her driving. ccThank you,” she said, her voice very low. “It was so fast, I didn’t know what I was doing. There wasn’t time to think.”

  “Well, you did it right,” Frank told her, and then he either had to stop or keep walking right on past her, so he stopped. He saw the litde apostrophes of fear bracketing her mouth, and he plunged into his story: “Look. I’m walking trying to find a bus stop. There’s a bus on the road, to the city. You want, I’ll put the spare on here for you, then you give me a lift to the bus stop. You don’t want, that’s okay, I’ll keep walking.”

  She said, “The state capital, you mean?”

  Funny part of the proposition to fasten on, but okay. “I guess so,” Frank said. “Omaha. Where I had my trial, anyway, so I guess
that’s the capital.”

  She frowned at him. “Trial?”

  Might as well get it all out, from the get-go. “You passed the prison back there,” he said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. “I just took parole.” Not that he intended to visit any parole officers, not this time around.

  “There’s a bus stop there,” she pointed out. “Right there at the prison.”

  “I didn’t like that one.”

  She smiled, like she understood the reasoning. “I’m going to Omaha,” she said. “If you really want to help...”

  A lift all the way. Frank couldn’t help it, he grinned like a kid, wide open, both sides of his mouth. “A miracle,” he said.

  Her answering smile was ironic: “The miracle is, I wasn’t killed.”

  “There’s a miracle in it somewhere,” Frank said, “I know that much. You got the key to open the trunk?”

  * * *

  Changing a tire was hard work, particularly for somebody with hands like Frank’s. They were delicate hands, they used small tools delicately, they caressed combination locks, they stroked alarm wires, they gathered in cash and jewelry. Soft pudgy fingers got bruised against lug wrenches, got scraped against tires. But Frank did the job and kept his reactions off his face.

  They talked while he worked. She said she was a lawyer, and he said, “You’re too smart to be a lawyer.”

  She thought that was funny. “The fellow who represented you wasn’t that good, eh?”

  “I’ll tell you about my lawyer,” Frank said, fighting with the lug nuts. “He’s a guy, his necktie is in his soup.”

  ‘What was the charge against you?”

  “Burglary.”

  “How solid was the case?”

  “Walked out the front door of this house in Michigan Heights, carrying a wall safe, straight into two beat cops with flashlights.”

  “Carrying a wall safe?”

  “That’s the way to do,” Frank explained. He threw the dead tire on its hub into the trunk, wheeled the spare along the verge beside the car. “A wall safe is a metal box stuck in a wall. You dig it out, takes no time at all, carry it home, work on it at your leisure.”