GPS (33 page)

“I don’t know, Delaney, you tell me,” Paulo said. “Have you missed it?”

- 40 -

“Why do you do it, Simmons?”

Jeff couldn’t help himself. He was picking up the vibe that Simmons and most of the other guys here wanted nothing to do with him or his questions. But if there was any chance he was coming back here after today, he wanted to get a little perspective beyond what he was hearing from Paulo. So the questions continued.

The sun blazed down on the stadium grass as the entire crew of transients who’d spent the last two days training now pulled tent stakes out of the ground, cleaned weapons, moved equipment and loaded trucks in the stadium parking lot. As always, they would leave town as quickly and quietly as possible after dark. Jeff stood next to Simmons in the outfield, helping him fold up the tents now lying flat in the grass.

“Do what?” Simmons grunted without turning to face Jeff.

“All this. I mean, you’ve got a wife at home for God’s sake, don’t you? I mean, you wear a wedding band. So why, and how, do you keep coming over here? What’s your job back home? When do you sleep? Do you have kids, friends, family over there, or —”

“All that shit you just asked me, all that shit? You don’t need to know about any of it,” Simmons hissed. But then, for the first time since Jeff had met him, Josh unclenched his teeth and sagged his shoulders just a touch. He sighed and stared very deliberately off at the mountains in the distance before he spoke.

“Look man. I’m sorry. I know you’re new here and I know how confusing this all is, believe me. And I know I haven’t exactly rolled out the red carpet for you. But the thing is, learning the answers to all the questions out here can be pretty tough, and a lot of the answers are ones you end up wishing you didn’t know once you know them. It’s an ignorance is bliss kind of place, you know? That’s just part of the deal.

“We’re all here doing this thing together, but we’re all coming here from totally different directions, different places, different backgrounds, and knowing too much about each other is not always the best thing. So we have kind of a standing rule out here, a code, that nobody talks about home, about what we do or what we did at home, what we miss or don’t miss, why we’re here. You just sort of accept the way things are, accept that for one reason or another, we’re all here. If you don’t accept that, it won’t matter because you won’t be coming back.”

Simmons stopped folding for a minute and looked directly at Jeff.

“So yeah, I do have a wife and kids at home, and all you really need to know is, well, I guess I’m doing this for them, or at least I think I am. This whole thing that’s going on here, it’s sort of a glance at where our world, the one at home, is headed. When I saw this place the first time, I just couldn’t walk away from it without trying to help make things right, even if it meant putting absolutely everything on the line to do it. That’s what I’m doing. And I’m not planning on dying here either. And that’s it.”

Now Jeff was glad he’d asked so many questions, and that apparently he’d finally asked the right questions to the right person. These were the first real answers he’d gotten here. Josh was human after all, and had just explained hundreds of things with just a few words. Jeff had started to think everyone over here was just another someone like him, someone with nothing left to lose in life and no other reason to go on living. He had thought these guys were all at the ends of their ropes like him, and probably lots of them were. But not all, and that gave Jeff renewed hope about the revolucion.

Josh went on folding and stacking tents, throwing all the metal stakes into a pile which Jeff was supposed to be stuffing into a huge nylon bag. He had stopped what he was doing, but then caught himself and continued.

“You never know what’s going to come flying at you from one minute to the next out here. You only know that any minute, every minute, you might get caught in an ambush or you might get run over by some nut like you whose GPS went berserk and sent them over here,” Simmons said. “You know the first night I was out here I almost got run over by some lunatic who crossed over right into our campsite? The shit happens. Bastard drove right overtop of our fire, hit a tree, jumped out and started shooting in every direction. Killed Rico, one of our best guys. So when I saw you that first day, and these last two days, I saw someone who I wasn’t sure would be able to handle this shit without going crazy. Forgive me.”

Jeff had already said his farewell to Paulo, who instead of showing Jeff the way back home had enlisted Simmons to do so while Fonseca looked into some impending arrivals. Josh had agreed to the errand, saying he was just “popping in and popping out today,” wouldn’t be around all weekend and would be in Victoria for just a couple of hours Monday morning. Simmons had wandered out onto the field from the clubhouse entrance, and had quickly strode into center field and scolded two men for their careless tent folding. He shooed them off, took over the task himself and made Jeff join him. When two different men arrived, men Simmons seemed to know and like, he turned to Jeff and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

As complex and inexplicable as the travel between the two places seemed to be, it was quite simple to carry out, apparently, once you had figured out a few simple things. Josh didn’t go into any exhausting detail when it came to programming Jeff’s GPS to take him to the Victoria wastelands, but he spent a solid two minutes typing in the address.

“When the time comes to leave for Ol’ Vic, just select this as your destination, and drive,” he said as he entered what looked to be a massive jumble of code, not really an address, into the GPS. As seemed to be his habit, Simmons had first pulled out his elaborately customized map before he started thumbing away at the GPS. “And as far as getting out of here right now, I assume your home address is listed as home on this thing, right?”

“Yep. I think so,” Jeff answered.

“Well, select home and go home is the way to get out of here,” Simmons said. “But here’s the catch. You need to program two home addresses in here, the one that actually takes you to your house when you’re driving around in the regular world, and then another one, a second one, that takes you out of here and someplace
close
to home, but one that won’t send you crashing into a bunch of buildings or people or your house itself. So you have to decide someplace close by where no one’s going to notice a car suddenly showing up out of nowhere that’s already moving, and where you’ve got some adjustment space to apply the brakes and steer. I’m lucky. I’ve got an abandoned construction site right behind my neighborhood that I always use, so after I cross back over I can just come steering right into my driveway like a normal dad and husband.

“So anyway, for now, until you understand how the coordinates all work, think of some back road, but something with a name the GPS will recognize. Do you know anything like that?”

Jeff was in no position for deep thinking at the moment. But lucky for him, he had one such place in mind already. “Yep, I do, actually,” he said, thinking of Stadium Drive, the U-shaped road that encircled Zephyr Field over in Metairie. He figured the place would be quiet this morning even if the Zephyrs were home this weekend, something he should have known off the top of his head but did not. If the Zephs were on the road, it would be totally deserted. Considering where he’d been and what he’d seen the last few days, driving to Esplanade Avenue from Metairie seemed pretty easy. Too easy, but he wasn’t complaining.

“Well, whatever it is, put it in here and save it as Home 2, or whatever, and hang onto the steering wheel when you go,” Josh said. “Don’t keep your foot on the gas too hard and don’t slam on the brakes when you go through, and everything should be cool. The only other thing I’ll say is that if you decide to come to Victoria, make sure it’s after tomorrow and before the end of next week. Otherwise, it might be you versus the desert, or you versus the Freemen. Or both.

“Oh, and one last thing. Thanks for the other day,” Simmons said, balling his hand into a fist, kissing it and flashing Jeff a peace sign. The gesture was one Jeff would have to work on if he was going to look as cool as Simmons did when he did it.

With that, Simmons snapped Jeff’s GPS onto the windshield of the Celica, hopped out and walked across the stadium lot to a silver Lexus that glowed like a solar panel in the sun. Jeff spied what he thought to be a Texas plate on the back, and suddenly wondered how many of the transients took the license plates off their cars before coming over here, a way of perhaps trying to mask who they were or where they were coming from. He also wondered how many of them regularly traveled back and forth, and whether anyone jumped back and forth as often as Simmons seemed to. Had anyone noticed his Louisiana tags? Did they even care?

He looked around briefly to see that the pickup trucks and the other vehicles that would be making the trip with the transients across the desert were steadily lining up along the front side of the parking lot. It appeared everyone else’s personal cars other than Simmons’ Lexus and his Celica were staying put. It gave Jeff one final twinge of jealousy over missing the big trip to Victoria, even though Simmons seemed relieved to be missing it.

Jeff pulled himself into the car, head still haunted by the images of his peyote trip, and programmed Stadium Drive, Metairie, La., into the GPS, saved it as ‘Vacation Home’ and turned the key in the ignition. Slowly, stubbornly, the Celica chugged to life and he kicked it into reverse. He crept at a slow roll out of the lot as he followed the red EXITOSO signs.

“
In, five, hundred, feet, keep straight.”

- 41 -

The feeling of crossing over would have been about as easy to describe to someone as the feeling of being perfectly upside-down in the loop of a roller coaster. Although it lasted just a couple of seconds, there was a brief stillness as it happened. It was a feeling of weightlessness in which Jeff didn’t really feel or see anything. There was no sound at all, no bright flash of light until, seconds later, the tires reunited with the road and he was doing about 30 miles per hour, albeit on the wrong side of the road, on Stadium Drive next to Zephyr Field in Metairie.

It was the most remarkable thing Jeff had ever experienced, and as he turned onto Airline Drive toward home, the entire city of New Orleans took on the same kind of newness to him that it had when he’d first driven into it as a teenager. His heart still racing, he looked around the interior of the car as he sat at a red light, confirming that everything had once again made the trip over. Although he’d taken his Blackhawk with him when he left, he’d left the deer rifle with Paulo on the other side, perhaps to give himself an excuse to go back.

There was no way of fathoming the jump from one reality to another, so Jeff simply tried to enjoy the simple realism of the drive home without trying to dissect how weird it felt to have been standing in the parking lot of Estadio Revolucion one minute and looping around Zephyr Field the next. The GPS on the windshield was calmly flashing the familiar names of New Orleans streets and, in an effort to maintain his unexpected calm as he drove, Jeff turned the volume completely down on the Warren.

The city was awash in the beauty of early summer and, although he had the sinking feeling of a teenager who’d stolen his parents’ car and gone joyriding for the weekend, he felt better armed than any other time in his adult life to confront whatever trouble awaited him. He sped up when he reached the elevated section of I-10 that looked out over the entire city (the skyline dominated by the Superdome to his left never looked so cool), trying to decide what to do first.

A vibration began coming from the passenger-side floorboard of the Celica. When the car came to a stop at the bottom of the Esplanade Avenue exit ramp, Jeff reached to his right and began to follow the black spiral cord coming out of the cigarette lighter until he was able to pull his cell phone out from beneath the floormat.

“
SEVEN NEW VOICEMAILS”
the screen said. Here we go again, Jeff thought, as he disconnected the phone from its charger, flipped it open and braced himself for what would undoubtedly be an unlucky seven messages. As he meandered the streets for the first time in what seemed like years, Jeff heard numerous voices in his phone, and he couldn’t help but think it was a pretty accurate chronological listing of who actually cared about him or needed him, who felt compelled to hear his voice these last few days:

“
Message, one, Wednesday, May 7
^th
, 7:38 p.m.
—
‘Hello Jeff, it’s Mrs. Avery. Just wondering about this month’s rent. It’s two days late, and I just don’t want you to have to pay more than a couple days in late charges. Don’t mean to pester you, and I know you’re probably busy with baseball. Mainly just wanted to remind you, OK? How ‘bout those Zephyrs, huh? See you soon.’”

“
Message, two, Thursday, May 8
^th
, 9:21 a.m.
—
‘Jeffrey, my boy, ‘tis the one and hopefully only Nifty Carlson reporting. I think I left my boxers in your bed last week … just kidding numbnuts. Hey, I was wondering if you managed to see that Cintron kid last week before the deluge arrived out there in Utah. Couldn’t remember which nights you were trying to head out there, or if you ever did. I know you’re not one to pass notes in class or anything, but Toronto wanted to take a crack at him too and, although I’m hardly a scout, I was just wondering what you thought of him and, but I don’t want to step on your toes. Oh, and there was one other thing I can’t remember now. Oh yeah, there’s a center fielder playing for Midland right now that you probably already know about, but damn was he something the other night, especially in the field. We went and watched the San Antonio game after we played a matinee at Round Rock. Anyway, can’t remember the bastard’s name — Simpson maybe — what the hell, anyway, call me when you get a minute and maybe I’ll think of it. Later.’”