Gods Without Men (43 page)

“You’ve what?”

“I think at the bottom you are a very good girl. But you must wipe off this makeup and dress modestly. And I forbid you to talk to these soldiers. They’re immoral, particularly the black ones. They’re no better than monkeys.”

It was pretty much the freakiest speech anyone had made to her since the president of the math club had written her a poem for Valentine’s Day and tried to recite it in class. She didn’t wait to hear any more, just turned and ran back to the women’s dorm, where she knew the imam wouldn’t follow her. She hadn’t felt so angry since the soldiers came and took Baba. Who did this man think he was? How dare he tell her what to do? Beneath all his pious words was this strange, slimy tone.
I will look after you, I will help you with your education.…
She knew what he had on his mind, and it was disgusting.

After that, she made a point of spending as much time with Ty as she could. He brought her a disco record he’d found somewhere, a band called Rufus and Chaka Khan. They listened to it loud, sitting on the
roof of the clinic container, blasting the music out into the desert as the sun set over the mountains.

“I’ll be honest with you,” said Ty. “I know I can be kind of an asshole. But I find it hard being around Hajis.”

“What?”

“Sorry. I know that’s a bad word to you people. It’s not like I’m racist or anything. It’s just—well, when you’re out there you got to watch your back the whole time. You got to treat everyone as a threat. It kind of eats into you.”

“So you think we’re all terrorists?”

“Not you. Well, maybe that imam dude. He’d like to put the hurt on me.”

“You know he’s a hairdresser?”

“Get the fuck out of here. For real?”

“Ty, why don’t you like us? What have we done to you?”

“It’s not logical. I mean, we’re on a damn Marine base. Safest place in the world. I’m not going to have to go back there, just train other idiots to do it. But I can’t relax. I just want to switch off, you know? Just get a good night’s sleep.”

“Did something happen to you?”

“When?”

“In Iraq.”

“Yes. You could say that.”

“Something bad?”

“Pretty bad.”

“Are you over it?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

She thought of telling him about Baba. He’d probably have understood. Instead she played him the Ashtar Galactic Command record. He told her it was the worst music he’d ever heard, “worse than Arab music, even,” and though she probably should have been offended, she laughed. He told her they were going to do a big ambush that night, and asked if she wanted to watch. She did, so he took her to the bunkhouse and produced a helmet covered in frayed desert camouflage. Clipped to
the front was what looked like a pair of binoculars, a black metal device with twin eyepieces feeding into a single lens. Some of the other insurgents watched as he placed the heavy helmet on her head and adjusted some straps so it didn’t slip down over her eyes.

“You ain’t going to let her borrow that, are you, Ty?”

“Why not?”

“What if she loses it?”

“She ain’t gonna, are you, Laila? Kill the lights, Danny.”

Someone flicked a switch and the room went dark. Ty flipped the binoculars so they came down in front of her eyes, then pressed a button on the side. Suddenly she was in a glowing green world. She could see everything clearly: the guys lying on their cots, the jumble of kit bags and drying laundry, even the pornographic posters on the walls.

“There ya go. Night vision, baby!”

“That’s incredible! It’s like a computer game!”

“Thermal too.”

“Yeah,” chortled someone. “You can see Ty’s got his dick out.”

“Shut your mouth, Kyle.”

At midnight, following Ty’s instructions, she sneaked out of the women’s dormitory and climbed a low hill at the edge of town, which gave her a view over the road. BLUEFOR were due to do a round of punitive house-to-house searches, a favorite tactic of the flattopped major now that he’d more or less given up on Wadi al-Hamam’s hearts and minds. The sky was clear, dusted with stars. Laila flipped down the goggles and watched the insurgents taking up positions, green figures sprawling flat on the ground, assembling a rocket launcher behind a building. They’d buried an IED in the road, primed to explode when the rear truck ran over it, trapping the convoy in what Ty called “the kill zone.” He’d warned her to be very careful where she sat, explaining that if she didn’t go exactly where he said, she could get caught in crossfire. Though the insurgents weren’t firing live ammo and the bombs were just whizbangs, it was still dangerous. She had to stay far up on the ridge, away from the fighting. Luckily the goggles were fitted with a zoom, like a digital camera. She zipped up her hoodie against the chill
and played with it, expanding bits of the scene, raking the empty desert with her high-tech gaze.

The darkness was alive with motion. So this was how Iraq looked to them; this was how her house looked when they flew overhead in their helicopters. She lay on her back for a while, then stood up and turned a slow three-sixty rotation, ruling the world, dominating it. Out in the emptiness, away from the town, was a single glowing shape. She couldn’t tell what it was, even with the zoom doubling its size. Elsewhere she could see a conga of bright lights, the BLUEFOR convoy driving down the main road toward the village. She watched it come, getting steadily closer as the insurgents settled into their positions, ready to do whatever violent thing they had planned. Suddenly all of it felt very distant, just a boy’s game. Cowboys and Indians. Kick the can.

She turned back to the glow. What was it? An animal? She couldn’t tell how far away it was. How many “clicks”? This was how she looked to the soldiers, a little point of thermal light, a grid reference to be targeted with a bomb or a drone or a shot from a sniper rifle. Press a button, squeeze the trigger. Snuff her out like a candle. Suddenly the strange glow seemed more important than watching the ambush. Taking a last look at the approaching convoy, she scrambled down the hill and started walking toward it.

She walked for ten minutes. Behind her she heard a loud boom, then the sound of gunfire. Turning around, she saw flashes, intense bursts of energy. She turned away again and carried on walking. In front of her was the shape. It was definitely alive. It seemed too small to be a human being.

She put her hand up to her mouth when she saw what it was. He was just standing there, as if he’d dropped from space. A child. A little glowing boy.

He knew how they must look. The very picture of hick cops, him and the sheriff standing on the porch with their bellies stuck out and their mouths open, watching the show.

The convoy came down Main Street like there was a fire: a truck full of soldiers and an olive-drab Plymouth staff car, which coasted to a halt at the foot of the steps. The man who got out wore civilian clothes: a gray fedora, wingtip spectators and a fancy suit with wide peaked lapels. To Deputy Prince he looked more like a pimp or a fag movie actor than a guardian of the nation’s security. He certainly wasn’t a Fed, that was for sure. When he got up close to shake hands, the stink of cologne could have knocked an elephant on its ass.

“Office?” said the man. Too busy for pleasantries.

“You expecting Tojo or something?” Sheriff Grice gestured at the troops in the truck.

“Excuse me?”

“Seems like you come equipped to fight a war. Ain’t no Japanese Army out here.”

“There’s such a thing as the home front. I thought the news might have reached you.”

And with that, the man pushed right past them into the building. He ducked under the counter, walked through to Grice’s office and sat down in his chair. He did just about everything but put his feet up on the desk. The sheriff looked like he was about to split his skull.

“I’ll need your full cooperation,” said the man, swiveling from side to side on Grice’s chair.

“That a fact?”

“And your discretion.” He jerked a thumb at Prince. “Is this boy trustworthy?”

“Reckon so. Ike’s got a good record with the department. And he’s not much on talking.”

“You a native, son?”

“My father was, sir.”

That got him. That always got them. Wrong way round. Instead of some guy having an adventure, tasting a little dark meat, he now had to think about a white woman doing it with an Indian.

“Seems I got myself a regular Lone Ranger and Tonto combination,” he snorted, turning his flash of anger into a joke. “Well, let’s get down to it. We have to check out everything, no matter how slight. My office received a communication from a Miss Evelina Craw, said she suspects you have a German spy in the area. Says he’s transmitting messages.”

Grice grinned. “Sounds to me like you’ve had a wasted journey. Miss Eve-lina’s not the most reliable source. She’s talking about Methuselah. He’s a crazy old bird lives out at the Pinnacle Rocks. Or under them, I should say. Been out there twenty-some years. He’s no more a German than I am.”

“Under them?”

“Dug out a cave with his own two hands. He bought a silver claim off Miss Evelina’s daddy, back when he owned the Bar-T, but everyone knows there’s not a cent of silver or anything else out there. Oh, there was, up in the Saddlebacks, but that was all mined out years ago.”

“Get to the point, Sheriff.”

“The point? You should probably just turn round and go back to Los Angeles. Miss Evelina’s got too much time on her hands.”

Outside, the men in the truck were smoking cigarettes, upending canteens. The official, whoever he was, hadn’t thought to bring them in out of the sun.

“I see,” he said, examining a scuff on the toe of his wingtip. “Methuselah. You have his real name?”

“How about you tell me your name first?” Grice was openly angry now.

The man looked blankly at him. “You may as well call me Munro. The rank’s captain.”

“Captain Munro. What are you a captain of?”

“Being a pain in the ass, it seems. Don’t be obstructive, Sheriff Grice. Yesterday you took a call from your boss, saying to afford me every assistance. You remember that call, right? Every assistance. That’s you affording me, not the other way around. So, if you could just tell me the man’s name, we can wrap this thing up sooner rather than later, and I can let you go about your no doubt urgent official business.”

Grice’s face was a mask. “He’s called Deighton. I had someone check the claim papers when Miss Evelina first brought it to my attention. There weren’t nothing to it. She’s an old woman. Never married. She gets ideas.”

“Well, my information is this Mr. Deighton has radio equipment. He may or may not be a danger, but if he’s transmitting, then it’s a matter of concern.”

“What in hell would he be transmitting?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out. If you and your boy would care to show me the way, we can leave right now.”

As Ike Prince well knew, it was Grice’s afternoon for going over to the Barrington place and solacing himself with the widow. He had no interest in driving all the way out to the Pinnacles and rousting out Methuselah. But they got into Munro’s car, Ike riding shotgun beside the uniformed driver, the sheriff grumpily sitting in the back, as far away from Munro as he could get.

It was a long hot silent journey.

As they left the highway and started down the rutted track toward the Pinnacles, Prince looked out the window. Overhead a white contrail bisected the sky like a scar. Since the start of the war, the military seemed to be all over the desert. There were barbed-wire fences and trucks on the roads and signs saying
NO TRESPASSING BY ORDER
. Day and night you could hear the distant boom of ordnance from the bombing range on the far side of the Saddlebacks. Sometimes there came a sound like rolling thunder and you’d look up to see a silver shape moving too fast to be a conventional plane. The Air Force was testing
some kind of new super-aircraft. Secret technology. Mysterious lights at night.

No one ever asked Ike Prince what he thought of the war, or the mystery lights, or anything much at all. And if they didn’t ask, it wasn’t his place to say. About Methuselah, for example. About why the old man chose to live in a hole under the rocks. He knew more about Methuselah than Methuselah knew about himself.

When she got sick and realized she was going to die, his mother had said to him,
Remember who you are
. He was a little boy then, but he remembered, so when they came and took him off to the orphanage, he was stronger than some others. He might have been a half-breed orphan, but he had an inheritance: He knew his father’s true name.

Not that he boasted about it. Some things grow more powerful when kept in the dark.

Everyone in the high desert knew the story of Willie Prince. It was a dime-novel story, a radio-serial story: the last real manhunt of the Old Frontier. It was also an Indian story, and any Indian story always has two versions. The white version told how Willie Prince, a whiskey-crazed brave, kidnapped a child and was chased for almost a week over the desert, until he turned and made a stand on the Pinnacle Rocks and got shot down like a dog. Most people didn’t know there was any other. Maybe a few old ladies on the reservation told it over their quilting. And him. How Mockingbird Runner fell in love with a white man’s woman, how that white man was consumed with jealousy and came after him with a posse, how he ran in the old way, outpacing them as easily as a mule deer outpaces a tortoise, until he came to the crossing-place, the sky hole between this land and the Land of the Dead. How he fooled the white man into thinking he was a corpse, by swapping his bones with the bones of a dead coyote. How he escaped to live a long and happy life in Snow-Having, far to the west.

Some people remembered, some didn’t. Few knew the name of the jealous white man, or that afterward he was driven insane by the guilt of what he thought he’d done. Very few indeed knew he came back to the rocks to dig for Willie Prince, trying to cross over and take his place in the Land of the Dead.

No one but Ike—no one living—knew Willie Prince ever had a son.