American Spirit: A Novel (25 page)

Hey Chief. Drive down main, make left at Imax theater. pass fat Navajo broads selling ponchos. @Chevron on left.

Matthew does this, and there, set away on the side of the Chevron, away from the traffic filling up their tanks, out of the loop of anyone getting anything done, is the monstrosity that Tim has been living in out here. What is this thing, forty or fifty or even sixty feet long? It’s got a satellite dish on top, it has a huge eagle airbrushed on the side of it, it has a slight
metal flake in the blue and red paint, making it pop against the white. Everything about it says the driver has cashed out the 401(k) and arrived in terrible style at the beginning of the golden years. How much does something like this cost? Fifty thousand? One hundred thousand? Three hundred thousand? There are stabilizers on the side that can apparently be deployed for when one is really anchoring in and doesn’t want the thing to feel mobile in the slightest. Everything about the rig is an advertisement for insisting on high suburban comfort no matter where one is roughing it. It’s like a cross between a multiplatinum country singing star’s tour bus and one of those mobile marketing monsters parked in front of a shopping mall, doling out samples of diet cola, gimmicky fuel additive, or low-carb meal plans that promise to make and keep you thin. The make and model of the rig is painted in elaborate, airbrushed, prismatic, custom-color big letters above the back window. It is a Sierra Mountain Air by Forest River. Sierra Mountain Air, one must imagine, is probably pumped into one of the high-tech space-age HVAC units that sit atop the beast fore and aft, then heated or cooled as the pilot and his crew see fit, to make for a pleasant temperature that is kept consistent from front to back aboard the rig. The side door of the Sierra Mountain Air opens, slides left, and disappears in slow electric glide.

Matthew stays in his rental with the windows still rolled up from the long haul, and a silent-movie version of Tim comes down the stairs that seem to extend with each step he takes toward earthly tarmac; his lips move and it isn’t hard
to imagine what he’s saying. His smile beams, his face and height still
Wall Street
handsome, but maybe
Wall Street
Part Thirty, the sequel to the sequel to all the sequels. Tim’s looks won’t go, probably ever, but he’s showing the hard mileage he’s undergone in exile; the last year has put ten in his eyes and face, even with the whole lower half being slowly grown over by a beard—a beard that doesn’t suit him, by the way. He looks less like a bearded mountaineer and more like every piece of news footage one has seen of a former ruler being captured in his spider-hole hideaway by U.S. troops, or the domestic terrorist dragged by U.S. Feds from a lonely pervert cabin filled with guns and letters.

Standing in the doorway behind Tim is a man, maybe late forties, maybe late thirties, hard to tell with the costume, really. He’s making no effort to explain himself with a smile or gesture, a tall black man with the gorgeous and stoic eyes of a killer or poet. He has strange and beautiful peaceful lips that don’t rush to speak, and he’s wearing what appears to be the skin of a bison—horns sprout from his head, the dried and wilted crown and snout sit above his eyes, curly rough fur drapes him entirely, down the back of his neck, across quarterback shoulders, down a broad back and hardened lean and chiseled arms. There are eagle feathers adorning the dead animal robe, and beadwork hangs from hanks of the bison fur as if the animal went through a spiritual phase just before being shot, then tanned, and turned into gigantic ornamental clothing.

Matthew pulls the Taurus right up behind the Sierra
Mountain Air situation and gets out to start the hello, to start figuring this out, or getting lost in it. Maybe this is exactly what Tim needed and maybe it’s where Matthew should have been instead of sitting in parking lots and community center classes. Maybe spending time out here has made a man of Tim the way Manhattan never could have.

“Greetings, pussy boy!”

“Dude. Look at this, look at the man and his rig living on the land,” Matthew rallies. They embrace with a hug of punches to the back. The giant black man/bison continues standing in the doorway silently watching over this.

“What the fuck are you driving, Chief?” says Tim, and this is the first evidence of the man in the doorway of the rig bristling. Tim notices this peripherally, and seamlessly makes a revision like a henpecked husband, “Sport.”

“I don’t know. It’s a rental. I was in Los Angeles seeing a friend.”

“Pull that fucking thing forward about five more inches and I’ll drop the hook so we can tow it and you can ride in the rig.”

Matthew gets back in, inches the car just a bit forward while Tim stares at the front bumper of it, then puts his hand up to signal a halt, then waves his fingers forward in a tiny come-hither series of three fast flicks to lurch the Taurus another inch or two, and then palms the halt sign again. The giant, black totem pole bison man walks down the steps of the rig and glides slowly into the little market attached to the gas station; two little kids in the back of an environmentally
sound, small SUV giggle and wave excitedly at him completely unnoticed except by their parents, both of whom put a kind but panicked instant stop to the pointing and waving at the black man wearing an animal. Matthew and Tim head into the rig, and Tim takes the driver’s seat; he starts toggling a switch while staring at the small video screen on the dash until the hook is deployed down and retracted a bit up under the frame of the Taurus. Matthew gets the balls to ask, “So, you saw that guy, too, right? Kind of dressed like a moose or whatever?”

“That’s Crazy Daryl Acid. But we have to call him Modoch now. He’s super into a Navajo thing about animals being our ghosts and all this shit. Him and Tic Tac fucking own the park. Vets, kind of fucked up from the first Gulf War; they basically live in Yellowstone all year long and I need them to get around the heat after getting banned by the asshole rangers who are basically communists. They’re cool. I’m learning a ton of shit from these guys. Without Tic Tac and Modoch, I’d be sleeping in the IMAX lot over there and getting a parking ticket every fucking morning. They’re like a free season pass to Yellowstone, you should see the respect I get from the rangers when these guys are on board.”

“Tic Tac?”

“He’s in the store. He’s getting a bunch of shit we need. Traffic flares, cigarettes, beer, this kerosene fuel. It’s for the camp stove, but we always get an extra gallon and use it for these meditation ceremony things Modoch’s been doing to clear our heads. He’ll probably get a couple hilarious, shitty
tee shirts, too. He pays for the beer to make it look good and the rest comes out with him under his jacket. That’s kind of the other thing—with my cash flow situation where it is right now, I need these guys to help me make ends meet. And they get to sleep on board instead of in a fucking beaver dam made of
punji
sticks, so everybody wins.” And then Tim pauses, catching sight of Modoch and Tic Tac coming out of the store, before he adds, “Look at this. How fucking adorable is that? They, like, take care of each other.”

Coming out of the minimarket: Tic Tac, mid-forties—a short man and all the harder for it, red, sinewy, lean, and generally looking like a piece of gas station beef jerky dressed as an eighties punk rocker still hanging on to a wisp of hair; a hairstyle that might be described as short if a victim were kind in relaying details to the police sketch artist. Steeled, empty, and determined eyes; tattooed forearms attached to a torso that will plow past fifty and refuse to believe it. Staring at Tic Tac, the head races with the word
black:
Black Flag, black boots, black friend, black eyes. Tic Tac’s old denim jacket is so stuffed underneath he can barely walk in it, and Modoch is drinking a huge red Gatorade and whispering discreetly from the side of his mouth, saying something to Tic Tac that steadies his posture. Tim sits in the driver’s seat, paternally shaking his head and smiling. “I don’t even think the cashier gives a shit; seriously, everyone just looks the other way for these two. It’s like Lehman Brothers in the nineties.”

“So, I’ve been making these coffee mugs. I wish I would’ve brought some; with all of the crafts and souvenirs and stuff
here, I could sell a ton of them, I bet. Especially if these guys keep cops off your back like you were saying.”

“Dude, if you’re making cash, speak up. Because I can get you twenty percent and that’s after I take ten for the trouble. Everybody thinks we’re in a recession, but there’s mid-cap shit. Shit you can skim weekly right now, especially in bailout financials and tech; Citigroup, Micron, Netfl… a bunch of other shit I’m not gonna sit here and list off for free.”

“I’m not making that kind of cash. I’m selling a few, but I’m not the guy giving you twenty or thirty to put in the market.”

“This whole world cries victim—no offense—and puts their money in mutuals and ETFs like a bunch of little pussies—no offense—hoping for the best without taking a fucking risk. It’s becoming the American way, to bear no risk then sit back and demand to be able to live like a fucking billionaire. Assholes—not you—fucking normal people. And what the fuck do I know about normal people?”

“You’re, maybe, not exactly a portrait of risks panning out at the moment.”

“What you’re forgetting is that I only did as much damage as an
average
failure but I was completely strung out on the kind of A-list shit South American presidents are hitting. I was doing blow that left tribal chiefs psychotic and suicidal and chewing fucking coca leaves until their gums bled in huts made of dung up in the Andes. But people don’t factor that in, do they? They don’t take a minute to use reason and think: Well, let’s see, yeah, the guy fucked up, but there are
guys who fuck up that much
sober,
and this guy was out of his head on Christ knows what and he was still as good as a sober fuckup.”

“Fair point, I guess. Anyway, I don’t have that cash at the moment, but if I did…”

“Selling coffee cups… you’re lucky I’m on a spiritual path out here with these guys, because the old me would’ve fully fucked up your mode for wasting time with namby-pamby pussy-whipped ideas like making money selling coffee cups. But now I live and let live, Chief. I seek to understand, not be understood, which is something Modoch taught me.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, real quick, that’s kind of the other thing: ever since Crazy Daryl Acid became Modoch, shit’s gotten a little sensitive, and saying Chief is apparently not cool with him, so you gotta help me lay off it.”

“You went with Sport earlier. Why don’t you just go with that?”

“I’m trying that, Sport’s good, and I’m going with Genius when I want to give someone a little shit, because the only problem with Sport is that sometimes it seems paternal and positive when I’m not trying to communicate that. Sport’s not as malleable as Chief.”

Tim looks at the little side-view video screen, sees a tiny, bluish black-and-white duo at the door of the rig, and reaches to the dash to toggle a small electric switch so that the door of the Sierra Mountain Air slides open. Modoch and Tic Tac climb aboard.

“Hey, guys, did you get everything you need?” Matthew asks.

Tic Tac talks like a broken metronome, all fast and bad meter jumping the beat, stepping over the last of Matthew’s question with the answer coming in too hot and soon. “It’s fucking for everybody, it’s for all members on board.” And upon saying this, Tic Tac is instantly hunched and stooped with his head forward, hands flicking up under his coat like a tiny hyper and gravid crustacean tending to a bulge of roe just beneath its shell, gobs and grabs of bright wrappers and bottles and cans, all coming out, all dumping onto the rig’s couch. A family-size bag of Spicy Hot Corn Nuts; a large can of lighter fluid; an aerosol can of hair spray; a large can of lighter fluid; panty hose; another large can of lighter fluid; a bag of assorted bite-size candy bars with Halloween not even on the horizon; a pair of bright orange work gloves; three large commuter mugs that don’t even have art or a saying on them—corporate mugs, brushed stainless steel with a Nissan logo on them; a big box of kitchen matches. Tim is staring at the bag of Corn Nuts; he turns his head quickly to try to hide his lingering automatic flash of a scowl. Tic Tac rolls his eyes and reaches into his waistband and takes a red pine tree air freshener out from between his absolutely tiny, taut, muscular, amphetamine-etched lower stomach and waist. He whips the plastic wrapper from the air freshener as fast as a medic tearing open gauze or a syringe, takes two speedy strides forward, and snaps the thing up over the giant
rearview mirror hanging from the rig’s overhead console of controls.

“You ain’t gonna smell a thing, princess, so don’t get your period just because I got some Corn Nuts.”

“Your life is not my life, live and let live. How I feel about your snack food is none of my business,” and when Tim says this in the forced, languid pace of a man reciting mantras to keep from snapping, Modoch silently fixes a gaze of approval on him. Evidently Modoch doesn’t speak, or maybe he speaks only when spoken to, and so Matthew tries, still new to the crew, and happy to see someone after the lonely car-bound hours that followed his exchange with the maternal Reno hooker at Walgreens.

“Hey, besides, I’ll bet those Corn Nuts are gonna start looking pretty good after a long day and a good campfire, right Mur… dock?” Modoch stares. Matthew’s eye contact shifts politely back and forth, first to Modoch’s eyes, then up to the eyes of the bison head atop Modoch’s long, furry robe, and back again. The silence lasts for what feels like minutes on end and is interrupted by Tim pressing a series of buttons that fire up the gigantic, strong, almost silent engine of the rig.

Tim speaks up and goes down a mental checklist like a pilot, “Doors good, generators off, hook’s locked, all clear back and sides… and we’re looking good for a long, wide left out of here. We’ll come in behind that silver SUV, third in line, west entrance.”

Tic Tac jabs a fast street-fight left at Matthew that flattens out into a handshake reciprocated. “Welcome, motherfucker! Nice to have new blood, so welcome!” and he starts laughing a speedy fast laugh that turns into a little dry coughing fit. Then he jabs the hand back up under his coat and yanks out a gift for Matthew, a pink tee shirt, a ladies’ tee shirt. He fast-jabs it at Matthew like another sporting punch to the gut and Matthew takes it, smiling. Tic Tac wouldn’t guess it, or Tim or Tatiana, or anyone else on the planet, but Matthew still gets a lump in his throat when someone gives him clothing. Someone gives you some stupid tee shirt or a slightly ill-fitting jacket that’ll almost do the job for the season coming up, that’s love. How many cardboard boxes came to those houses where he lived when nobody with his last name was left down here in this earthly fix; how many people doled out what worked best for each kid—that’s love. No matter what you might fucking think, no matter how much it might look like the short shrift, it is love and it is gigantic because it is the only kind you have.