Going Bovine (46 page)

I want to run after him, but we can’t chance it, so we stay hidden behind the dune, watching. Two of the vigilantes wade out and drag Balder back in, laying him on the sand. More cops are on the scene now. One kicks Balder with his foot.

“There’s your terrorist,” the cop snickers. “A yard gnome.”

Statements are taken, witnesses’ phone numbers given. The last people to leave the scene are the vigilantes.

“Should we take the gnome in for processing?” Employee #458 asks.

“Nah. Just leave it,” answers Employee #456. “Let’s go back to the hotel. They have Casino Cash on the channel options.”

“Can I have him?” a little girl with a plastic shovel asks.

“Sure,” Employee #458 says, and the kid starts burying our yard gnome in the sand.

“At least we got this one.” Employee #458 flips the snow globe in his hand, and my heart flips along with it.

As I watch, frozen, they cover Dulcie in bubble wrap, pack her away in a box of other snow globes, and load it into their truck. I memorize the license plate number: USGW 3111. They drive it across the street and park in the lot of the Ancient Mariner hotel. They secure the door with two different combination locks, and my heart sinks.

“Dude,” Gonzo says quietly. “Balder.” And I know there’s nothing else I can do right now.

We run out to rescue our valiant Viking, who is buried up to his neck, the driftwood still sticking out on the sides.

I offer the kid ten bucks. “For the yard gnome.”

We carry Balder to a more secluded spot. “I saw it. I saw … Ringhorn.” We help him to his feet. He winces. “Cameron? Are you … all right?” he asks.

“They got Dulcie. They turned her into a snow globe.” I’m trying not to cry. My eyes sting.

“I am … sorry,” Balder says. He pulls on the driftwood spear but can’t dislodge it.

It’s really wedged in there. “Could you?”

Together, we manage to yank it free. The end is slippery and it stains my hands red.

“Oh. My,” Balder says. He stands there, arms wide, gazing at his chest in total wonder. And that’s when I see it: a small trickle of blood burbling up and spilling down the front of his shirt. Balder is bleeding.

Gonzo’s eyes are wide.

“Oh my,” Balder repeats. He puts a hand to his chest and the blood seeps between his closed fingers, a thin red waterfall. “That stick …” He examines the end. A small cluster of white berries sprouts from a tiny knob. Balder rubs the berries between his fingers, inhales their scent. “Mistletoe.”

“Balder!” I shout as his legs give out. I grab hold and we drop to the sand, Balder cradled in my arms, as his warm, sticky blood pools in my hands. “Balder.”

Our Viking’s breath comes fast and shallow. “All pledged no harm to Balder … save for the mistletoe, who was too young. But Loki, Loki the trickster … he must have known. …”

“Shhh, don’t talk. We’ll get you in the car.”

“No,” he says, and coughs. “No. Leave me here on the beach. For Ringhorn.”

It’s gotten dark. The fishing boats are heading in. Their lights cast lonely pools of white on the water. There’s no Ringhorn.

“We’ll come back for your ship,” I lie. “You need a doctor.”

“No. Ringhorn will come. Wait. Wait with me,” Balder urges.

When I look over, Gonzo’s got his arms crossed. He’s kicking at the ground and crying without making a noise except for a little strangled sob deep in his throat.

“Wait with me,” Balder asks again.

We keep our vigil through the night, checking on the truck when we can. Sometimes, Balder mumble-sings a few words in Norse. He grabs at the air for something we can’t see, something just out of reach. “The dark does not weep,” he whispers. Toward dawn, he gets so quiet I’m afraid. Early-morning surfers take to the waves. Seagulls circle us.

“I like … that sound,” Balder says, his words pushing out on shallow gasps.

At first I think he means Gonzo’s sniffling. “What sound, Balder?”

“The gulls. Cry. And the waves. Answer. They wash … over the shore. Say, it is all …” His eyes move back and forth in his head like he’s searching for the word, the thought. He looks at me as if he’s said it. “Right?”

I listen, but the only thing I can hear are those damn birds wailing. One starts and the rest follow. They’re all crying at once. It’s a terrible sound.

“Balder …,” I say.

His mouth is still open in that weird little smile. His eyes are fixed and staring. The gulls fly off, leaving nothing but the soothing whoosh of the tide rushing up, washing back out, again and again. All. Right. All. Right. All. Right.

It takes us a while to get everything we need. Scavenging along the beach, we find a surfboard, a cardboard Taco Shack tray, an abandoned T-shirt, seashells, and handfuls of seaweed and small sticks. We duct-tape the cardboard tray to the surfboard and rig the Caddy’s bull horns to the front. We load the tray with his Sammy the Surfer outfit and all my Great Tremolo CDs. When it’s ready, we place Balder’s lifeless body gently on top of the tray, in his chain mail and helmet, just like a Viking warrior on his way to Valhalla. Last, we add a hand-lettered sign: RINGHORN.

“What do you think?” I ask Gonzo.

“Good.” His eyes are red. He takes a puff off his inhaler and puts it in Balder’s hands. “The air might be crap there.”

He hands me a disposable blue lighter we found half-buried by the Taco Shack. I put it to the dry seaweed, which starts to smoke immediately. The flames eat through the cardboard pretty fast. In seconds, they surround Balder in a hot orange halo. I lift my foot, Gonzo gives the surfboard a final push, and the sea does the rest. The water’s pretty choppy. It buffets our makeshift pyre back and forth, and finally over, till the only thing left on the peach-pink horizon are those crazy bull horns.

And then, even those are gone.

An hour later, the United Snow Globe Wholesalers truck, license plate number USGW 3111, pulls out of the hotel parking lot. One minute after that, we follow.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

In Which the Coyote and the Roadrunner Go Again

“You still see him?”

“Yeah. He’s four cars up,” Gonzo answers. “Dude, shouldn’t we be going after Dr. X and your cure?”

“Not going,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going after Dulcie.”

“Cameron, this is crazy.”

“Just keep an eye on that truck.”

For the next hour, we drive in silence. No talk. No music. Nothing but the white noise of asphalt under tires. The road sways in the afternoon sun. Little waves of clear heat spiral dance in front of me, bathing everything in shimmery motion. I keep glancing in the rearview mirror, expecting to see Balder in the backseat, and the emptiness of it presses down on me, along with the last sight I had of Dulcie. The signs are starting to blur into big globs of reflective green and white that hurt my eyes. Sometimes on the sides of the roads I see things that aren’t there: Mom and Dad holding each other. Balder running through the grass toward a glimmering hall. Glory switching out the bag on an IV pole. The old lady with her garden shears; she waves to me. The coyote. The road-runner. The Copenhagen Interpretation playing Hacky Sack with the Calabi Yau. Just a bunch of travelers on the same road. But I don’t see Dulcie, no matter how hard I try to make her appear.

The Caddy veers over the yellow line, nearly hitting a big truck, whose horn blast has me swerving back into our lane with a jerk.

“Holy shit,” Gonzo says, putting his hands on the dash.

“Sorry,” I say. I pull the car over to the shoulder and rest my head on the steering wheel. I’m clammy, and my muscles ache.

“You okay?” Gonzo asks.

“Yeah,” I lie.

USGW 3111 turns on his blinker and hits the exit, stopping at a Freedom Waffles. There’s a salvage yard on a dusty yellow road to the right of the diner. I park beside the chain-link fence and the mile-high towers of tires and cut the engine.

“Can you keep watch?” I ask, and then I remember how Gonzo got our asses stranded by not looking out for the bus. Seems like years ago. “Never mind. I’ll keep an eye out.”

“No, man. It’s okay. Get some sleep. I’m on it.” And I can tell he is.

“Thanks. You know, for everything. You’re a great wing-man,” I say.

Gonzo smirks. “Yeah. Well. That’s what you get when you sign up the Dwarf of Destiny, cabrón.”

I climb into the backseat, shut my eyes, and go to sleep.

I’m a roadrunner. I look down and see those big bird feet and that’s when I know I’m dreaming. I’m standing in the middle of a cartoon desert landscape. It’s two-dimensional, a bunch of squiggly lines and paint. There are no anvils rigged over my head. No fake holes painted on a backdrop. No explosives rigged to a fuse that will trigger a domino effect of roadrunner-snuffing devices. Nope. I’m alone out here. Just me. And then I see the coyote sitting in a chair, watching TV, his paw in a big bowl of popcorn, like he could care less. At first I think it’s a trap, but then I realize that he really doesn’t care about chasing me. I say, “Beep, beep,” and he keeps flipping channels with his remote. Finally, I give up and hop over to him.

“Aren’t you going to chase me?” I ask.

He looks at me. His yellow eyes are weary. “What’s the point?”

He’s got me there. “I don’t know,” I say, sitting on the edge of his chair. “Because it’s what we do.”

“Huh,” he says. He offers me some popcorn. I peck at it because I’m a bird now.

We sit watching cartoons. A tumbleweed rolls past. It’s really just a bunch of angry pencil marks made to look like motion, an illusion. I guess this is nice, but what I really want to do is run. But without the coyote chasing me, I don’t have a reason to run. Knowing he wants to catch me makes me keep going; and knowing I’m just out of reach makes him keep coming after me. We can’t really live without each other. That’s how it works.

“Come on,” I whisper in my bird voice. “Chase me. Just one more time.”

“Dude. Wakey-wakey.” Gonzo’s face looms over mine. “We got movement.”

I wipe the sleep from my eyes. Through the windshield I can see Employees #457 and #458 opening the back of the truck and loading a box onto the dolly. Two minutes later, they come out of the diner with the empty dolly, climb into the truck’s cab, and head back toward the interstate.

“Dude, aren’t we following them?” Gonzo asks.

“Gotta check the diner first,” I say, making my way toward the door. My legs have really stiffened up.

A shining, bright-smiled hostess greets us at the door, a couple of menus the size of atlases in her hands. “Joining us for breakfast today? Will that be smoking or nonsmoking?”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “We’re sort of in a hurry. We were just wondering about that box of snow globes that was delivered? Could we check them, please?”

Her thumb hovers over the silent alarm button near the cash register. Buddha Burger had one of those. “We don’t let people just check out our snow globes till they been inventoried.”

“Inventoried?” Gonzo mouths.

My eyes flash a Don’t Go There signal. I’ve got to see if Dulcie’s in that box. “I’m sorry. I’m with quality control. We think you may have gotten one of our tainted shipments.”

“Tainted?” the hostess repeats, her smile gone. “What’s that mean?”

“There might be something wrong with them. Really wrong. Like laced-with-poison wrong.”

Her hand flies to her mouth. “Omigosh. We better call the police, then.”

“No!” I say too quickly.

The hostess’s eyes narrow. She looks from me to Gonzo and back again. “Is this some kind of prank? Are y’all with a fraternity?”

I shake my head. “You got us. It is a prank”—I steal a look at her name tag—“Freedom LaToya. Actually, we’re casting for a new reality TV show.”

Freedom LaToya’s eyes get very big. “For real?”

“You bet. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but …” I make a show of craning my neck left and right. “It’s set in a restaurant and it’s all about finding the perfect restaurant hostess. In fact, it’s called The Hostess. United Snow Globe Wholesalers is the sponsor. You know, you’d make a great candidate. I’m gonna let them know.”

“Wow. Thanks. TV. Oh wow.”

“Yeah. But we do need to get some footage of me looking through that box. For the show.”

“Oh sure! Go right ahead!”

Freedom LaToya takes us to the stockroom. “I’ll just leave you to it, then.”

“You do that. Thanks.”

We cut through the tape, open the box, and pull the bubble wrap from all ten snow globes. Not one of them is Dulcie.

“Let’s go,” I say, running for the car.

“Dude, that was awesome,” Gonzo says, fastening his seat belt. “How did you think of something as stupid as a reality show about restaurant hostessing?”

I gun the engine. “You don’t want to know.”

* * *

It takes us about ten minutes of driving like a bat out of hell before we have the truck in our sights again. We follow it to each drop-off—gas stations, restaurants, gift shops, churches—until it’s late afternoon and the Caddy Rocinante starts kicking up that hot oil smell again. Shit. Hold together, pal. I might as well be talking to myself. The twitches are back, and I really don’t know how much longer I can safely drive with my arms ready to break-dance. Green and white signs pass overhead, telling us where we are, where we’re headed.

ORLANDO. INTERSTATE 4. NORTH EXIT 62. OSCEOLA PKWY.

The green dreads of the palm trees dance in the breeze. Gleaming hotels play peekaboo with the crisscross of highways. Streetlights crane their necks over the roads like metal flamingos.

536 EAST. TO INTERNATIONAL DR S. LAKE BUENA VISTA. CENTRAL FLORIDA PKWY. The signs change from green-and-white to blue-and-red. MAGIC KINGDOM. WORLD DRIVE. Up ahead is a huge archway with the world’s most beloved mouse attached.

“No way,” Gonzo says as the truck makes the turnoff.

Every cell in my body is on high alert.

“Welcome to Disney World,” I say.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Of What Happens When We Hit Fantasyland

Finding a parking spot for the Caddy in the cavernous Disney World lot proves challenging. Every white-striped piece of asphalt for a mile is taken. The tops of the cars are like colored circuits on some huge motherboard. I end up parking the Caddy on a strip of grass that I’m sure will get it towed. It doesn’t matter now.