Banquo's Ghosts (11 page)

A breeze blew in at the open bay and suddenly the heavens opened up, dark splattering rain soaking the edge of the concrete apron. He shoved his bucket back half a foot. It caught on something and toppled him onto the wet concrete. More insulted than injured he managed to right his seat. Waves of mosquitoes sought shelter from the rain.

Finally he spoke a couple of sober, judicious words to the slowly lifting darkness, the sum total of everything he’d learned so far about fieldwork:

“This . . .
sucks
.”

Late morning found him nodding on the bucket and twitching only when a very large mosquito sank its needle into his neck. He’d fed the hordes. The rain kept on. Thirst woke him, then its old comrade hunger. At the last Greyhound rest stop he’d bought two things. A pack of Marlboros and a package of peanut butter cheese crackers. A pack of matches came with the cigarettes, now very damp. He dared not open the salty crackers—they were just too dry for him to choke down at this moment. He looked at the rain sluicing down an open gutter.

“Here’s the rule.” Wallets stood in the open office door looking for all the world fresh as a daisy. “Water you find in puddles or even
flowing down a stream can make you sick. You have to boil it. Rain from the roof is good.”

Johnson hastily stuck his bucket under the open gutter. He was frozen through and through. He began to stamp his feet and slap his sides. The man kept talking:

“In other places survival may depend on seizing an opportunity, keeping out of trouble or just dumb luck. But here, survival depends on three things: Food. Fire. Shelter. I’ve given you one. You’re responsible for the rest.” And so began the hardest and possibly the most rewarding two weeks of Johnson’s life.

That first day, fire was going to be a problem. Johnson found some dirty plastic, which he made into a poncho, and a dirty baseball cap in the broken toilet. Soon a pile of soaked twigs and kindling and some larger deadfall was stacked against one wall to drip dry, along with his pack of Marlboros and the pack of matches that he left in the hopeful light of a window to salvage them. The weather cleared about 10 AM with a brisk breeze coming out of the north. After the deluge, ten or twenty bullfrogs began hopping between puddles and rusty machinery. One look at his companion’s cocked eyebrow and Johnson knew what he had to do.

“
Bien Sûr, Mon Général
,” Johnson said. “
Grenouille à la Provençal tout de suit
!”

Wallets cocked an eyebrow at the French for Frog Legs Provence style, and Johnson heard him mutter, “
Ça va
.”

Right after “this
sucks”
. . . the second thing fieldwork taught him: food seemed to be everywhere, if you could find it. The third thing: every night was take-out, but not delivered. Though half-drowned frogs came close.

Seventeen frogs in the bucket later, Johnson’s wingtips were soaked, his suit trousers ripped, and he was sweating again. At least they’d eat. “Sorry we don’t have a Cajun cornmeal coating,” Wallets remarked, “but there
is
a war on,
garçon
.”

In a fit of divine inspiration, the two men dragged a padded damp backseat couch from a dead Chevy into the garage bay. In the process Johnson found an abandoned case of baked beans in quart tins, and a
rusty jackknife with a broken can opener. It took him twenty minutes to open the first can, with the hole punch and another slip of rusty metal to jerk around the rim. But he got better as he went along. Empty cans made good pots and pans.

Johnson couldn’t feel his hands or feet. The whole first day it didn’t get warmer than sixty-two degrees. “I’m going to try for a fire.”

Which he did in one of the work pits, laying a huge metal oil pan from a bulldozer crosswise. Having read the story
To Build a Fire
by the immortal Jack in public school, the first thing he remembered was to make sure nothing wet would fall on his effort. Nope. No holes in the ceiling. Then he went about finding accelerants in the dark recesses of the garage, old oil for the twigs and dirty rags to get the thing going. Once started burning, with the damp Chevy couch in front of the beautiful flames, the fire caressed him better than any woman.

The fire burned brightly, the frog legs cooked to a turn in a crust of crushed cheese peanut butter crackers, the old beans bubbled in their own tins—and nothing had ever tasted that good to Johnson
ever
. They sat on the couch while his wingtips and trousers hung nearby on an old hand truck to dry. The soggy scribbler feeling better about himself than he had in twenty-five years. When the bottle of Jack Daniel’s mysteriously appeared out of Wallets’ marvelous locker in his “bedroom,” the first pull sang to him like the heavenly host, warming his limbs right down to his skivvies. He hoisted the magic bottle in a toast.

“I vote you a capital fellow,” he told his host.

“So you don’t think this is all bullshit?”

The question jarred Johnson. He’d stopped pondering such matters long ago. Every hour out here felt like days. He pursed his lips, bottom lip curling over the top in a vaguely primate way, as it often did when he lacked a ready answer.

“Well, I hope you’re not planning on sending me camping in the woods to stick a knife into the heart of Johnny Mohammed.”

Wallets smiled and shook his head no. “The reason we put you through this is something you’ll hear a lot from us: we don’t know.”

“Exactly what don’t you know?” Johnson repeated, amused.

“What may happen to you. What skills you’re going to need.
Doubt is the only certainty
, Peter. So learn what you can here and now. You might find it useful later.”

Fair enough, Johnson thought. He nodded to himself, wondering if he would truly remember the lesson if the time ever came. He glanced at Wallets, ready to acknowledge his own doubt, when he realized the man wasn’t staring into the fire anymore but to the gaping garage bay. A figure stood out in the darkness silently watching them. The figure took a step closer, staring at Johnson in his u-trou. Slowly, the figure took a pack of cigarettes from a chest pocket in a checked shirt, undid the cellophane wrapper, and lit one from the pack, inhaling deeply. Johnson glanced to the shelf under the window where he’d put his Marlboros hours ago. They were gone. Now he stared across the concrete apron and watched the stranger smoke his cigarettes.

“Mind if I bum a smoke?” the stranger asked. Less a question than a challenge.

“Keep the pack.”

His companion chuckled. “Peter, allow me to introduce a colleague. Marjorie Morningstar—not her real name—Peter Johnson.”

The figure strode into the light: a woman about forty-five, short hair, clean complexion, but clearly strong, wearing a lumberjack outfit, slouch hat. She placed a .22 caliber pump-action Remington with a scope carefully against the wall. Then slung a large bedraggled thing onto the concrete.

“But you can call me Large Marge.”

The thing on the concrete was a wild turkey, sans head. She’d shot the thing with a spitball and blown its head off. Annie Oakley. At the time Johnson didn’t know enough to appreciate what skill that took, but Wallets sure did, murmuring “Hmmmmm” with great admiration.

“If you want breakfast, pluck it.” She eyed Johnson in his skivvies somewhat dubiously. “Hard day at the office there, Sport?”

Johnson lost all words. He handed her the whiskey with a shrug of shared admiration. “The commute is hell,” he finally replied. “But when I get home . . .” Johnson looked around him, at the fire, the garage, the coil-sprung car seat, “I’m in the country.”

Large Marge showed him many things. How to catch fish in a stream and how to trap a rabbit. How to heal his raw ankle with some leaves in the forest. How to wash and shave, and even how to make a hood of burlap to keep the mosquitoes at bay so he could sleep. As the days passed, Wallets seemed to fade into the background, watching from afar yet occasionally offering a suggestion: “How about trout tonight?” Or a test: “There’s a firearm stashed in an abandoned shed two hundred yards off the base perimeter. See if you can get it without being spotted.”

From that task, he returned at dusk to find both Large Marge and Wallets missing from their base camp and the reason perfectly obvious. A boom box was blasting ZZ Top into the trees surrounding Dobbs Diesel. Inside the garage bay two large Bikers and their pretty Bitchslut—who looked and acted about fourteen years old—had moved in for the evening, finding the accommodations Johnson struggled to build much to their liking. Large Marge and Wallets found him in the dark some hours later quietly sitting in the woods near the camp. The Bikers had partied and sexed up their bitch all night and now lay snoring on the hammock and couch.

“Could be The Outlaws,” Marge whispered. “Bikers who run crystal meth from Florida to Maine. Model citizens.”

Wallets gave Johnson a handful of fallen leaves, saying, “This should do it.”

Johnson wrapped his shoes in rags to keep them quiet and managed to put a fistful of crushed dried leaves in one of the Harleys’ gas tanks. Never mind the other—it needed a key. Damage done, he retired to the trees. If Wallets was impressed, he never showed it.

“They’ll get down the hill all right and konk out somewhere around the gate to the Base,” he explained. “Then the Sheriff will come for a look-see, as these two studs seem to be boning their own sister. They won’t be back. Did you find the gun in the shed?”

It had been concealed under some broken clay pots and spilled potting soil, sealed in a plastic ziplock bag. Johnson showed it to them. “Good. Let’s do some plinking.”

The first thing he learned was that anybody could shoot a gun. The second thing was not everybody could hit something. The gun itself, a
.32 caliber snub-nose revolver looked like something Dick Tracy might carry—small, short, silver, ugly. It fit well in the palm of Johnson’s hand. Marge showed him how to load it: pull the hammer back halfway, flip the portal, drop in the cartridges, keep the first chamber empty. Five shots in a six-shot gun.

“That way if it drops, it won’t go off.”

No safety. You pulled the hammer back all the way, heard the click, squeezed the trigger—
bang
. Simple.

Wallets had taken the poster of Miss Liquid Wrench outside and nailed her to the side of a rotting truck. Now at about ten yards Johnson tried to hit the poor girl.
Bang
again. Nope. Not even a bullet hole in the driver’s side door. Where the hell were the bullets going?

“Try a little closer,” Wallets suggested. Five yards.
Bang, bang
. Nope. “Closer.” Seven feet. Johnson pointed at her head. The last bullet,
bang
—a hole appeared in her forehead.

“Now you know,” Wallets remarked dryly, “with a gun like that, that’s how close you have to be. Maybe closer. With a hollow-point bullet it’ll come out the back in a chunk the size of your fist. When we’re through, you’ll be able to take the thing apart in the dark and load it with your eyes closed.”

Johnson stared at the coy poster of Miss Liquid Wrench still smiling. She didn’t seem to mind too much.

“Stand aside!” This from Large Marge, seventy-five yards back in the trees. Wallets and Johnson moved out of the line of fire. Three quick bangs from her .22 caliber pump rifle. Two holes appeared in each of Miss Liquid Wrench’s breasts and one in her navel.

“Show off,” Wallets exclaimed.

T
he fieldwork came to an end as suddenly as it started. Johnson woke up alone one morning; first thing he noticed: Wallets’ hammock and other gear were stowed back in the locker. Realizing shrewdly that Large Marge and Wallets had departed for good, he took it on himself to walk his way back to town. A passing glance at his reflection in the Dobbs Machine & Diesel glass window showed his suit jacket split at the shoulders, his white shirt a lovely shade of gray. Pants open at both knees, rags about his feet. A few days of scruff and uncombed hair. The wild man of Borneo. Then as if to add pedantry to abandonment, he found a note scribbled on a scrap of paper in the office.

Another test.

Shortly before leaving for the Middle East, Johnson headed again to Rockefeller Center. Instead of the usual routine, Banquo and Wallets
brought him to a room in a different part of the Banquo & Duncan suite, adjoining the conference area by another set of double doors.

“We sometimes use this as a stage set,” Wallets explained to him. “It helps us get a feel for how things can turn out.” Johnson followed the two men through the doors and stopped dead cold.

A little bearded middle-aged fellow sat at a desk, behind him a bookshelf with what appeared to be mathematics and physics journals, a blackboard along one wall with formulas chalked in long incomprehensible rows. He was paunchy and wore glasses. Johnson recalled him at once as the “taxi driver” the night Banquo & Duncan made their move on him. The little fellow glanced incuriously at the three intruders, then went back to his work, some notes and figures on a legal pad. Banquo and Wallets each took chairs, the double doors closed. An armed guard locked the door from inside and went back to his post, leaving Johnson standing in the center of the Persian rug looking lost.