Hymn (27 page)

‘Maybe,' said Lloyd, and gave Waldo's hand a last affectionate squeeze. This little fat guy, who took so much pride in his work, and had so much to give to the world that the world probably didn't have room for it all. ‘Sometimes you have to think of the future, as well as the past.'

They left La Jolla a few minutes before nine o'clock, and headed eastward, with the sun in front of them. This time, Lloyd did the driving, wearing Otto's tiny green-lensed sunglasses, which he had discovered in the Mercedes' glove compartment. Kathleen said, ‘God, you look like Himmler.' Franklin had made himself comfortable in the back seat, and by the time they started climbing toward Santa Ysabel, he was already snoring.

‘You want me to talk to you?' asked Kathleen, suppressing a yawn.

‘Not if you want to sleep.'

‘I'll just close my eyes for a moment, okay?'

And that's how it was that Lloyd sped across the scrubby outskirts of the Anza Borrego State Park in a stolen Mercedes sedan with Kathleen lolling in the front seat, her forehead knocking softly against the passenger window with every bump in the road, and Franklin stretched out on the back seat, snoring in two distinct keys. Lloyd wryly wished that Celia were with them: she could have identified the exact key in which Franklin was snoring, and maybe sung along to it, too.

Celia had been brilliant, bright, and always funny. Lloyd tuned the Mercedes radio to KFSD on 94.1, and caught Bruch's Kol Nidrei, played by Vladimir Ashkenazy. It was uncanny: the Kol Nidrei had always been one of Celia's favourites, and Lloyd felt almost as if Celia were trying to get in touch with him.

Ahead of him, the desert burned bright, a land of hills and mirrors. Behind him, the dust blew high. But Lloyd felt neither lonely nor sad, nor particularly grief-stricken, not now. He had a job to do which nobody else in the world could do, and for which (in all probability) nobody would thank him. He hummed along with Bruch, and watched the miles ticking steadily upward on the Mercedes' clock.

By early lunchtime, they drove past the place where the bus had burned. The wreck had been towed away now, and there was no reminder of what had happened except for a cross that somebody had fashioned out of two charred aluminium roof-supports, a cross that was hung with dried-out wreaths and withered flowers. Kathleen was still asleep as they drove by, and Lloyd didn't wake her. Some places are worth remembering, other places are best forgotten.

But Kathleen woke as they drew up outside Tony Express's store, and stared at Lloyd for a moment as if she couldn't think who he was.

‘You know, I was having the weirdest dream? I dreamed I was swimming off Baja with Mike. The ocean kept rocking me up and down. I guess it must have been the car.' But then she frowned, and said, ‘Mike looked so strange, in this dream. He looked like he didn't have any eyes.'

‘Come on,' said Lloyd, and opened the car door. ‘Let's go see what accommodation we can find for ourselves.'

He found Tony Express sitting inside the shadowy darkness of the store, threading beads. Considering he was blind, Tony Express was working with extraordinary speed, his fingers sorting out beads of different colour and texture, and swiftly impaling them on his threading-needle, almost as if he were an insect-collector. Or an eater of flies, thought Lloyd, obliquely, and it was a thought which seemed to take a long time to go away, like a train disappearing across the flattest of horizons.

‘Tony? How're you doing?' he asked.

The blind Indian boy kept on picking out beads, picking out beads. ‘Doing fine, thanks. Doing what Red Indians are best at. Walla-walla-walla, heap good necklace, all that stuff.'

‘Looks good to me,' said Lloyd.

‘Ho-ho.' Tony Express retaliated. ‘A heap of shit would look good to you, if I painted it red, white and blue.'

‘Do you remember me?' Lloyd asked him. Because—God almighty—if he couldn't remember Lloyd's voice—then how could he clearly remember the voice of the man who had called out ‘Junius! Junius!' to a busload of burning disciples?

‘Sure I know you, man,' said Tony Express. ‘What you come back here for? I told you everything, there's nothing else.' I'll tell you everything I can, there's little to relate.

‘I was wondering if we could maybe hang out here for a while.'

‘You're wearing Hugo Boss aftershave and you want to hang out here?'

‘I'm looking for a little peace, that's all. A few days' break from the hurly-burly of yuppiedom.'

‘You're not hiding from the law?'

‘Of course not.'

Tony Express suddenly lifted his head. ‘Who's the big guy, man? He wasn't with you before.'

Lloyd was taken aback, and turned around to Franklin and shrugged. Maybe Tony Express was only kidding that he was blind.

But Tony Express immediately said, ‘It's a knack, man. I can only do it in the afternoons, when the sun's shining into the store. I can feel him blot out the warmth.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Franklin, stepping out of the sunshine.

‘Don't worry about it, man,' said Tony Express. He deftly knotted the necklace he was stringing, and closed the lid on the cigar-box full of beads. ‘There's an empty trailer next to ours. It belongs to an Indian called Zuni Tone. He's no damn Zuni and he sure doesn't have no tone, but there you go. You can rent it for twenty a week.'

He led them around the back of the store, where instantly two brindled mongrels launched themselves furiously from their makeshift packing-case kennel, their eyes bulging, until they were brought to a throttling halt by the chains around their throats. ‘Don't mind them,' said Tony Express. ‘They only eat lawmen and truancy officers. They've got the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.'

Kathleen held Lloyd's arm as they skirted around the growling, slavering dogs. ‘That's one guarantee that I wouldn't like to put to the test,' she told Tony Express.

Tony Express opened the high wire gate to the compound, waited patiently while they filed in, and led them between the trailers with the nonchalance of somebody who knows exactly where he wants to go. He dodged potholes, washing-lines, upturned Coca-Cola crates. He acknowledged old men sitting on dilapidated armchairs under tattered awnings, he called to women and children, and even said, ‘Hi, Geronimo!' to a cat that was sleeping in the middle of a worn-down tyre.

‘It's hard for me to believe that this boy is blind,' Franklin remarked.

‘In his way, he can see more than we can,' Lloyd replied. ‘He's a damned sight more intelligent, too.'

Tony Express didn't say anything, didn't turn around, but he lifted one finger in the air to show Lloyd that he had heard.

At last they reached a large, sagging, green-painted trailer with overgrown window-boxes and a Charley Noble stovepipe sticking out of the black-tarred roof. Tony Express opened the front door for them and let them take a look inside.

The trailer was gloomy and fiercely hot, but almost the first thing they bumped into was a huge Westinghouse air-conditioner which looked as if it had previously been used to cool the Superbowl. The rest of the interior was surprisingly clean and tidy. There was a table, set with a vase of dried flowers, a dresser with willow-pattern plates arranged along it, an old-fashioned but scrupulously neat kitchenette, and a tiny bathroom with a mahogany-veneered Civil War washstand and a bean-shaped re-enamelled bath.

Lloyd went to one of the bookshelves and picked out a paperback at random. ‘The poems of Sterling Brown?' he queried.

Tony Express laughed and quoted.

O Ma Rainey

Li'l and low,

Sing us ‘bout de hard luck

Roun' our do';

Sing us ‘bout de lonesome road

We mus' go

He added, with a smile, ‘Zuni Tone is heavily into the emancipation of oppressed people, man.'

‘Yes, well, I think we are too,' Lloyd replied.

Tony Express circled around and around in the middle of the floor, as if he were looking at everything. Maybe he was picking up vibrations, maybe he was picking up smells, or noises, all of those nuances which sighted people are usually too insensitive to notice.

‘You like it, man? What do you think?'

‘It's better than I could have expected. Cleaner, for sure.'

Tony Express stopped circling. ‘You think that Indians are dirty or something?'

Lloyd felt uncomfortable. ‘No, no. Of course not. What I meant was . . .'

Tony Express flapped his hand at him as if to tell him to forget it. ‘The twenty up front, man. In folding. Our credit-machine's broke.'

Lloyd produced a twenty, and pressed it into Tony Express's hand. ‘It's yours,' said Tony Express. ‘Power extra, depending on what you use. There should be clean linen in the closet, Zuni Tone's very particular. Like he always sweeps up the rug after he's been clipping his toenails.'

‘Glad to know it,' said Lloyd.

Tony Express was about to leave the mobile home when they heard a car horn honking, out by the front of the store. ‘Wait up,' he said, and swung himself down the steps, and jogged off between the mobile homes. Lloyd went through to the kitchenette and tested the gas and the water. The gas was working and after a brief, asthmatic pause, the water came coughing out of the tap.

Kathleen sat down on the bed. ‘You know, you always picture these trailer-parks as being so slummy. But look how neat everything is. I guess it's the discipline of living in such a small space.'

They were still talking when Franklin lifted the net curtain and peered out. ‘The boy's coming back,' he said. ‘He's got two policemen with him.'

‘Oh, what?' Lloyd demanded. He lifted the other side of the curtain and saw that Franklin was right. Tony Express was weaving his way back between the trailers closely followed by a fat ruddy-complexioned highway patrolman, and a thinner, darker officer in designer sunglasses and a sharply pressed shirt.

‘What are we going to do?' Kathleen asked, as Lloyd let the curtain fall back.

‘Nothing we can do,' Lloyd told her. ‘Tough it out, is all.'

They stood waiting in silence while Tony Express and the two highway patrolmen approached the trailer. The door opened, and the entire trailer groaned and dipped to one side as Sergeant Jim Griglak climbed aboard, closely followed by Ric Munoz. Jim Griglak shuffled his way toward the living-area, holding his wide-brimmed hat pressed against his chest, as if he were paying a respectful visit to some friends of the family. Ric Munoz was relentlessly chewing Orbit, and he left his sunglasses on.

‘Sergeant Jim Griglak, Highway Patrol,' said Jim Griglak, although Lloyd could read that for himself. ‘We've been asked to stop a Mercedes-Benz sedan answering the description of the vehicle parked by the roadway back there, and detain the occupants. Are you the occupants?'

Lloyd shook his head. ‘Don't know what you're talking about, Sergeant. I never owned a Mercedes-Benz in my life. Beverly Hills Skodas. I'm a BMW man, myself.'

Jim Griglak breathed patiently. ‘We're not talking ownership, here, sir. We're talking grand theft auto.'

‘Still don't know what you're talking about. If I don't like Mercedes-Benzes, why should I steal one?'

Ric Munoz put in, ‘Sometimes any vee-hickle is better than no vee-hickle.'

Jim Griglak looked around the three of them. ‘Do you want to tell me your names, and what you're doing here?'

Lloyd said, ‘We're an ethnic study group from UC San Diego. I'm Professor Holden Caulfield, these are my assistants. We're putting together a social profile of small disaffected Indian communities, such as this trailer park.'

Jim Griglak closed his eyes for a moment as if summoning huge internal reserves of patience. At last he said, ‘I'm arresting all three of you on suspicion of grand theft auto. I've read The Catcher in the Rye, too, Professor Caulfield. Pity you couldn't have thought of some much more convincing alias, like Bruce Wayne.'

He sniffed, and recited their rights. Then he said, ‘Let's go. You're going to make me late for my lunch.'

Ric Munoz added, ‘Sergeant Griglak get seriously pissed if he's late for his lunch.'

There was nothing they could do. Led by Tony Express, they filed out of the trailer and back through the gate toward the store, where the dogs snarled and yapped and hurled themselves wildly against their chains.

‘Thanks a lot, pal,' Lloyd told Tony Express, as they walked around the side of the store. ‘Remind me to do you a favour some day.'

‘I couldn't help it, man,' Tony Express replied. ‘They'd already seen the car, they knew you had to be around someplace.'

Lloyd said, ‘That guy we're trying to catch . . . the one who said “Junius! Junius!” when the bus was burning . . . I want you to know that he's just about the most disgusting slime on two legs. So if we do manage to get this sorted, and we do manage to catch him, I hope you're going to be ready to come forward and identify his voice.'

‘What if I don't?'

‘Then he and his friends are going to do to today's Americans what yesterday's Americans did to the Indians. Capiche? He and his friends think they're some kind of master race, do you understand what I mean? They think the world belongs to them, and they're the people to rule it. You ever heard of Adolf Hitler?'

‘Sure I heard of Adolf Hitler. I told you I was over-educated for a kid of my age.'

‘Well, what this Junius guy is trying to do is carry on where Adolf Hitler left off.'

‘Here? In California?'

‘Why not? It's one of the richest and most influential places in the world. What California does today, the rest of the world is going to be doing tomorrow.'

‘Give your mouth a rest, will you?' Jim Griglak called out. ‘You elected to remain silent, so frigging well remain silent.'