by Don DeLillo
Moll Robbins would be joining him for the screening. He wanted a disinterested intelligence on the scene. More than that. He wanted company. Human warmth. An interpreter of the meaning of his fear.
It was all so real. It had such weight. Objects were what they seemed to be. History was true.
Odell said he’d talked to Richie on the phone. Richie was barricaded in the warehouse. He was feeding the dogs infrequently, to give them a meaner edge. He’d had this feeling for months, Odell said. Someone was out to get him. Some dark force. There was a sniper somewhere, waiting for the right moment. He was sitting on a bed in some rooming house, cleaning his rifle scope. He had a bullet with Richie’s name on it. Dallas, Richie would say. What am I doing in Dallas?
“All he talks about is John F. Kidney, Bobby Kidney, Martin Luther Kang, Jaws Wallace.”
“What?” Lightborne said.
“I keep telling him what Rose Kidney told Tiddy Kidney.”
Long pause.
“What did she tell him?”
“That was Harry Truman.”
“If you can’t stand the heat,” Lightborne said.
“That was Harry S Truman, wasn’t it, said that.”
Odell went on.
Richie was obsessed not only by his impending assassination but by the conflicting reports that would ensue. He’d been shot by one white male, or two white males, or one white male with a mulatto child. The rifle used had no prints, had several sets of prints, now being checked, or had several sets of prints but they’d been accidentally wiped off by the police.
Richie was especially obsessed by fingerprints being wiped off by the police, Odell said.
Lightborne went behind the partition into the living area. He turned on both taps in the wash basin, hoping this would lead Odell to think he was shaving. Then he sat at the foot of his cot and stared into the black window shade three feet away.
History is true.
Selvy got a ride from a man in a pickup, south from Marathon. The man was about seventy-five years old. There was a deer rifle on a rack at the back of the cab. Four hours till nightfall. The desert.
He saw it as a memory. Deep gullies at right angles to the road. Flash-flood warnings. Yucca stalk and ocotillo sticking out of the sand. Things don’t usually resume existence precisely as you’ve recalled them. Spires, buttes, pinnacles, the eroded remnants, to left and right, in scaly rust and copper and sandy brown. Well ahead he saw the waveform, the scant silhouette, of the Chisos Mountains, palest slate, lying so completely in a plane it could not possibly be more than arbitrary light, a mood or fabrication.
Finally a car approached and passed. Then nothing again. A buzzard on a fencepost. Single windmill in the distance. Everything here was in the distance. Distance was the salient fact. Even after you reached something, you were immersed in distance. It didn’t end until the mountains and he wasn’t going that far.
They stopped for gas at the old frontier store, an adobe structure with a lone pump and the remains of a small covered wagon out front. Selvy went inside. There was a broad counter covered with rocks for sale. Along one wall was the owner’s barbed wire collection. There were display cases full of sundries. In one case, Selvy spotted an item labeled Filipino guerrilla bolo.
The owner got it out for him. A long heavy single-edged knife with a broad blade. Flecks of rust. Small nicks in the cutting edge. Fifteen dollars.
“I always thought bolos were curved blades.”
“Machete family,” the owner said. “Vegetation, cane.”
“From bolo punch, I guess I got the idea. An uppercut that comes way around. Got any honing oil?”
“I might find some.”
“With all those rocks over there, think you can find one that’s perfectly rectangular, about half an inch thick?”
“If you want a whetstone, I’ve got some Washita, if I know where to find it.”
Selvy also bought a canteen and filled it with water. Then he paid the man and went outside. A teenage girl was cleaning the windshield. When she was finished, they moved back onto the road.
“Planning on making it before dark.”
“There’s time,” Selvy said.
“I’ve my doubts.”
“We’re right about there. I’d say less than five minutes and we’ll be there.”
“You don’t want to forget the walk.”
“I’m tuned,” Selvy said. “The walk is good as made.”
A coyote loped across the road and disappeared in some brush alongside a gulley.
“What’s that you got there?”
“Filipino guerrilla bolo.”
“Where’s your jungle?”
“I bought it for the name.”
“You didn’t get your money’s worth unless a jungle came with it.”
“I like the name,” he told the old man. “It’s romantic.”
Along a slight elevation in the highway, he spotted the primitive road that led to the Mines. The man stopped the pickup and Selvy hopped out and started walking east. The trail was dusty except for isolated parts, hardened mud, where he saw signs of old tire tracks, mostly heavy tread.
The canteen was looped to his belt, left side. Bolo on the other side, at a forty-five-degree angle to his leg, cutting edge up.
He began to run. The canteen bounced against his thigh. He ran for twenty minutes. It felt good. It felt better with each passing minute. Prickly pear and mesquite. A memory unwinding. He walked for an hour, then ran for fifteen minutes. A dust devil swirled to his right. The weather was changing down there, far beyond the transient whirlwind. Something was building over the mountains.
Ninety minutes later he saw the barracks, two of them, surrounded by debris of various kinds, kitchen and plumbing equipment, a gutted jeep, a useless windmill, anonymous junk. This grouping of common objects he found briefly touching. Signs of occupancy and abandonment. Faceted in sad light. A human presence. In the rose and gold of sunset.
The wood-burning stove still sat in the long barracks. He found canned food in a locker. In the smaller building a dozen cots were ranged along a wall. He dragged one of them back into the long barracks and set it near the stove.
After eating he went outside, wrapped in a blanket. It was still clear in this area, broad scale of stars. No more than thirty degrees now, dropping. Dry cold. A pure state. An elating state of cold. Not weather. It wasn’t weather so much as memory. A category of being.
The temperature kept dropping but this didn’t signify change. It signified intensity. It signified a concentration of the faculty of recall. A steadiness of image. No stray light.
It was snowing in the mountains.
All behind him now. Cities, buildings, people, systems. All the relationships and links. The plan, the execution, the sequel. He could forget that now. He’d traveled the event. He’d come all the way down the straight white line.
He realized he didn’t need the blanket he was wrapped in. The cold wasn’t getting to him that way. In a way that called for insulation. It was perfect cold. The temperature at which things happen on an absolute scale.
All that incoherence. Selection, election, option, alternative. All behind him now. Codes and formats. Courses of action. Values, bias, predilection.
Choice is a subtle form of disease.
When he woke up it was still dark. Gray ash in the stove. He walked to the window, naked, and looked east into the vast arc of predawn sky. He crouched by the window. He crossed his arms over his knees and lowered his head. Motionless, he waited for light to burn down on the sand and rimrock and dead trees.
4
A set of tracks ran east and west along the front of the warehouse in downtown Dallas. It was a five-story building with corrugated metal doors and flaking paint. There was a loading platform out front. A small sign: PREVIEW DISTRIBUTIONS. All the windows were boarded up.
Inside Richie Armbrister sat at a long table, tapping the keys of a pocket calculator. At his elbow a desk lamp bu
rned. Nearby three dogs lay sleeping. In the gloom beyond was the figure of Daryl Shimmer, Richie’s bodyguard, extended across an old sofa. Two more dogs near the sofa, sleeping. Beyond that, in total darkness, fork lifts and pallets and shipping cylinders, enormous ones, numbering in the hundreds.
Daryl was becoming increasingly morose and withdrawn. Physically distant. Richie noticed how he’d gradually been moving farther away. The sofa was a backward step, from Daryl’s point of view. He’d spent the whole evening sitting in a fork-lift vehicle in the dark, about thirty yards away. He’d had to revert to the sofa if he wanted to sleep.
Everyone else was gone. They left singly, in pairs, in small groups, over a period of twenty-four hours, reverently, slipping out the north door. The warehouse was quiet for the first time since Richie had bought it.
There had been phone calls from a man who identified himself as Sherman Kramer. Daryl recognized the name. Kidder. A small-time operator. But with connections. Large connections.
A certain man was spending a lot of time in the parking lot across the street. Richie had watched him through a gap between two boards that were nailed across one of the windows. He spent most of his time near the Ross Avenue end of the lot, which was the far end in relation to the warehouse. He leaned against a car. Or walked back and forth. Richie thought it might be the man he’d found in his sauna aboard the DC-9. Hard to tell from this distance, looking through a dirt-smeared window.
Lightborne’s phone was disconnected. No forwarding number. Richie had wanted to speak with Odell. He trusted Odell. Odell was family. Real family. The only number he had for Odell in New York was Lightborne’s number. Disconnected.
He tried to concentrate on the figures before him. Avenues of commerce. That’s all he cared about. The higher issues. Demography. Patterns of distribution. Legal maneuvers and technicalities. Bookkeeping finesse. He’d never even asked Lightborne what the footage was supposed to show.
He had visions of a mishandled investigation. They would fail to trace the rifle to its owner. They’d lose his autopsy report. Witnesses would move out of state, never to be heard from again. His funeral. A closed-coffin affair.
The phone rang. He watched Daryl start to rise. It rang again. Daryl came toward the table where Richie was sitting. He picked up the phone in a series of masterfully sullen movements, his face showing a blend of resentment and lingering obligation. Richie had doubled his salary on the way in from the airport and promised him a dune buggy with chromed exhausts for his birthday. This was in return for Daryl’s sworn allegiance, no matter what.
“It’s Kidder again.”
“What’s he want?” Richie said. “I don’t want to talk to him.”
“Same thing. A meeting.”
“I don’t have any can with any film. That’s all I’m saying. That’s the meeting. We just had it.”
“He doesn’t know anything about cans with films,” Daryl said. “He just wants to arrange talks. Someone’s coming.”
“Not here. They’re not coming here. Tell him the dogs.”
“He says outside is okay. He has someone he’s bringing. Tomorrow, after eight sometime. Outside, inside, makes no difference.”
“What should we do?”
“Ask him who he’s bringing.”
“Ask him,” Richie said.
“He says no names available right now. A respected man in the field.”
“Ask him what field.”
“Too late,” Daryl said. “He hung up.”
Richie took a bite of one of the Danish butter cookies he’d carried back from New York. He pushed the container toward Daryl, who waved him off and headed slowly toward the sofa, his lean frame slumping. One of the dogs stirred, briefly, as Daryl dropped onto the sofa. The dogs were good dogs, Richie believed. Scout dogs. German shepherds. Trained in simulated combat conditions.
That was for break-ins. Close-quarter action. What about long range? There were bullets these days that went through concrete. On the other side of the parking lot and across Ross Avenue was the General Center Building. Excellent place for a sniper. Perfect place. He could stand on the roof and blast away, firing not only through Richie’s boarded windows but through the brick walls as well. He’d leave the rifle on the roof and disappear, confident that the police would smear his fingerprints.
It was a hell of a party. Loud. The Senator liked noise at his parties. Young crowd mostly. He liked having young people around.
He moved sideways through the living room, from group to group, smiling, barking out greetings, clutching the upper arms of men, gripping women at the waist. Maneuvering around the cocktail table he came across a woman who reminded him of a Vestier nude he’d seen in a private collection in Paris—big-hipped, self-satisfied, status-oriented. An executive secretary.
Standing with her was a younger woman, much less monumental. Elbowing his way into the conversation, Percival wasn’t surprised to see her suddenly actuate—the eyes, the smile, the tense and hopeful and solemn delight. Being recognized would never cease to be one of the spiritual rewards of public service.
“You are,” he said.
Mouth moving.
“Museum. Fascinating, I would think.”
Noise music laughter.
Of course he’d expected to be recognized. It was his house and his party. Still, it was always interesting, watching people release this second self of theirs. Women especially. Becoming shiny little space pods with high-energy receptors. Percival believed celebrity was a phenomenon related to religious mysticism. That ad for the Rosicrucians. WHAT SECRET POWER DOES THIS MAN POSSESS? Celebrity brings out the cosmic potential in people. And that couldn’t be anything but good. What was the word? Salutary. That couldn’t be anything but salutary.
As the older woman, the Vestier, looked on, Percival led this mellow child to the short staircase at the other end of the living room. There they sat, intimate chums, with their drinks, on the next to last step.
“Now then. P’raps we can talk.”
“This is the really nicest house.”
“You were saying. Museum. You mentioned.”
“Where I work.”
“You’re associated with? Museums. I am passionate. Treasures, treasures.”
“The Medical Museum of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.”
“Jesus Christmas.”
“Who did your décor?” she said.
“I did.”
“It’s so lovingly done.”
She was half smashed, he realized. Roughly his own situation. A Pakistani put his left hand on the fourth step, as a brace, then leaned up toward Percival, diagonally, to shake hands. Percival thought it might be Peter Sellers.
“I really like your programs,” the young woman said.
“I’m trying to think. Are you a Renoir? I see you as a little firmer. A Titian Venus. Not quite melted.”
“I am just so charmed by this whole situation.”
“Let me ask,” he said. “An important question. But private. Calls for outright privacy. Repeat after me. This question.”
“This question.”
“Calls for.”
“Who did the wallpaper?”
“Some Irishman with a crooked face did it. I selected the patterns.”
“It really. It shows so much obvious love and care.”
“Important, important question. Now wait. We need to ensconce ourselves. Because it’s that kind of question.”
“Ho ho.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Now follow me. How’s your drink?”
“My dreenk she all right, señor.”
He led her into the bedroom. She let her body sag to indicate awe. The canopy bed, the armoire, the miniature lowboy, the grain cutter’s bench, the cloverleaf lamp table, the mighty oak rocker.
“Sit, sit, sit.”
He found himself thinking of Lightborne. It may have been the sight of the phone. He’d been trying to call Lightborne, who had promised him a screenin
g. They’d talked twice on the phone and Percival had disguised his voice, in a different way, each time. He was trying to figure out how to handle the screening. Lightborne had assured him it would be private. Still, there’d have to be a projectionist in the immediate vicinity, and Lightborne would probably want to be present as well. How to view the footage without being recognized. Preceding that, however, was the problem of contacting Lightborne. Percival had been calling for two days. A disconnect recording every time. No forwarding number.
He sat at the end of the bed, watching her rock.
“You had a question, Senator.”
“Call me Lloyd.”
“I am so charmed by this.”
“You have an extraordinarily expressive mouth.”
“I know.”
“English-expressive.”
“I would like to ask, confidentially. Are you thinking of the presidency? Of running? Because I have heard talk. Young people find your programs extremely appealing.”
“No, no, no. That’s a dead end, the presidency.”
“I think you’d find young people very supportive.”
He watched her drink.
“I’m having trouble with the Titian concept,” he said. “Your mouth is so English. Do you know Sussex at all?”
“Tallish man? Wears striped shirts with white collars?”
“Call me Lloyd,” he said.
He got up and closed the door. He stood behind her chair, gripping the uprights, and rocked her slowly back and forth.
“Except the Sunbelt would be a problem,” she said. “You wouldn’t find a power base down there.”
The phone rang. He moved quickly to the side of the bed, realizing belatedly that it couldn’t be Lightborne, that Lightborne didn’t know who he was, much less how to reach him. It was his wife, back home. A picture came immediately to mind. She is sitting up in bed. Her face gleams with some kind of restorative ointment. All over the room are volumes of the Warren Report along with her notebooks full of “correlative data.” She is wearing a pale-blue bed jacket of puffy quilted material.
