Stone Junction (44 page)

It confused him. He tensed, like he was about to bolt, his jaw
working for traction on something to say.

I barged right ahead. ‘I’m looking for my daughter, Mia. She’s
eleven. Blond, blue eyes, wearing jeans, sneakers, navy sweatshirt with
a hood. She’s imaginary, my daughter – wouldn’t think you could lose
her, but they drenched me with so much fucking Thorazine I lost track.’

Clyde wrapped his arms around himself and shook his head
vehemently. ‘No-no, never, I
didn’t
touch her,
I
didn’t
, no-no, I
wasn’t here.
’

The chopped skidding language, the childlike exaggeration of gesture,
that opaqueness in his eyes – it was plain as his face he was retarded.
And from the why he’d collapsed into himself at the mention of Mia, I
figured he was here instead of a ‘home’ because there’d been trouble with
touching little girls. If I hadn’t been gauzed out, I would have seen it
immediately. But I didn’t, and I felt like shit. I told him I was sure he
hadn’t touched Mia, not to worry about it.

I started to walk away but he uncoiled out of himself and grabbed
my hand with both of his – not hard, not snared – and said, ‘I’m
Clyde. My name is Clyde Hibbard. Hi. Hi, how are you?’ He smiled
uncertainly.

I let him hold my hand a moment, then gently slipped it free. I
wasn’t sure what to do, so I said, ‘My name is Jennifer Raine, Goldie
Hart, Serena del Rio, Belle Tinker, Annie Oakley, Lola Montez. Mia
and I are new here. Just checked in. Glad to meet you, Clyde.’

He was nodding excitedly. ‘You-you-you are beautiful. You are. Just
like the other men said. Beautiful.’

I tried to tell him as clearly as I could: ‘I’m not what anyone says,
Clyde. Either are you. It’s complicated enough being who we are.’

It only bewildered him. He fastened his gaze back on the clock.

‘Nice talking to you, Clyde,’ I said. ‘I have to find my daughter
now.’

He swung his eyes to mine, pleading a case I didn’t understand. ‘I’m
thirty-three, thirty-three, thirty-three years old.’

‘Don’t watch the clock, Clyde,’ I said. ‘Clocks lie. Watch the sun
and moon.’ I squeezed his shoulder quickly, and left him there.

And I didn’t see him again till he was on top of me tonight like
some nightmare lover pecking my face with slobbery kisses. I think that’s
all he really wanted to do, kiss me, because he had his clothes on and
wasn’t choking me or anything, but just his weight had me pinned, my
arms under the covers. But I didn’t know what he wanted, and I was
terrified, so I yelled for Mia to crawl under the bed so she wouldn’t
have to watch and then I tried to fight out from under him, twisting my
face away from his mouth, finally squirming an arm loose, and when I
turned to roll free my elbow caught him in the nose. The pain seemed to
startle him, then scare him. He grabbed my bare shoulders hard, shaking
his head as he looked at my face. ‘Please, please, please,’ he blubbered,
each ragged breath spraying blood from his nose on my face, shoulders,
breasts. He shut his eyes and lowered his head, moaning ‘Please, please,
love, I love you, please.’

When he started sobbing he let go of my shoulders and I slapped him
as hard as I could. He flinched and ducked as I swung again, and I
know if I had a gun it would have meant nothing to me,
nothing,
to
blow his stupid fucking brains out.

‘Love you,’ he cried, eyes closed, shaking his head.

‘No. You have to
ask,
Clyde. You need permission. This is
rape,
Clyde; you’re scaring me, hurting me.’

He opened his eyes then, looking at me, and his eyes just kept
getting wider, as if he was trying to open them far enough to hold what
he was seeing in my face. He worked his mouth, a gummy white string
of spittle at the corner, a wet, strangled whimper rising from his throat.

I realized he was looking at his blood on my face. ‘You
hurt me
,
Clyde,’ I hissed. ‘You did.’

He lifted his hands helplessly, beseechingly, his mouth trembling to
speak what he found impossible to believe.

I helped him believe. ‘It
hurts,
goddamn you, Clyde, you
motherfucker, it
hurts
!’

‘No,’ he begged me. ‘Love you. I do. I do. I do.’

It was too much pain and hopelessness and fear. I started crying.

‘I hurt you,’ Clyde said, amazed, destroyed, lost. He slid off me
onto the floor and curled up in a ball, sobbing. I jumped naked from
the bed, looking for something to club him with, or to scream for help,
or run, but instead I knelt down beside him, stroked his shoulder,
whispered it was all right, it was over.

I promised him I wouldn’t tell.

He promised he’d help me escape.

Daniel reappeared with the Diamond. He was sitting cross-legged, the Diamond before him, on a high desert somewhere in Arizona on a windless, starless night, with the moon close to the horizon. He was crying, but he couldn’t remember why. Not because he couldn’t see inside the Diamond-center flame. He would eventually. The Diamond needed to be seen as much as he needed to see it. He could feel the permission there, but not the way. He would just have to keep sitting at the gate, keep mapping the axis of light until it illuminated the way. He smiled at the memory of Wild Bill trying to hammer into him that the map was not the journey.

‘Okay, Wild Bill,’ he said aloud, ‘until it illuminates the territory.’

He looked at the Diamond in front of him and told Volta, ‘It’s not a metaphor. It’s not the seed of the next universe. It is not a beacon. I think the Diamond is an entrance, a door, a portal – into what, I don’t know, but I will find out. When I do, and if I can, I will bring it to you.’

Since the telephone call nearly a day ago, Daniel talked aloud to Volta to discover and rehearse what he wanted to say the next time he called. He’d been too rattled from the theft the first time, less certain. One part of Daniel’s new certainty was the understanding that the Diamond wouldn’t permit him full passage until he honored his agreement with Volta or could explain, to his satisfaction and Volta’s, why he couldn’t bring him the Diamond. Daniel’s failure to fulfill his part of the agreement upset him deeply. He wondered if that was why he was crying when he reappeared, or if it was because he’d had to return. He checked his watch: They’d been gone five hours.

He’d discovered that when the Diamond vanished with him in daylight, he couldn’t see the spiral flame inside. The flame either dissolved in the sunlight or fused with it. The spiral-flame center was only visible when he vanished at night, and Daniel was convinced the flame was the threshold he needed to cross to enter the sphere.

He wiped his tears. As he got to his feet, he was seized by a vision of two moons on the horizon, one setting, one rising to meet it in mirror image. For a spinning moment he thought the moon was setting over the ocean or a lake, but unless the desert had turned liquid this was physically impossible. But so, supposedly, was vanishing. He thought his tears might be refracting the light and wiped his eyes again, this time with his sleeve. When he looked up, the moons were almost touching, as if a ghost twin were rising to join the real moon. He watched them melt into one. The moon seemed to brighten as it set.

Daniel shook his head. ‘What do you say, Volta? Was that a vision, an optical illusion, a hallucination, or a nightly occurrence I just haven’t noticed before?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. He put the Diamond in the bowling bag and headed for his truck. When he pulled onto the highway five minutes later, he was laughing.

When Smiling Jack called Volta the next morning he had something besides his essential good humor to make him cheerful. ‘We have made Melvin Keyes “extremely uncomfortable.” That’s his description of how he felt about providing the identity of the Livermore snitch, but I thought his discomfort came from the idea that we were about to start running downhill with his nuts in our hand. I gambled that the guy was this Debritto shit, and it was. I could almost feel the phone trembling in poor Melvin’s hand. I told him I’d get back to him soon, and while I understood he could fabricate any name he pleased, dump it on anybody, I knew it was one of three people as sure as I knew Debritto did Dredneau – and I also mentioned that solid documentation brightened my disposition and excited my gratitude.’

‘Excellent,’ Volta said.

Jack’s smile broadened. ‘Let’s make it a roll – you give me some good news.’

‘He hasn’t called,’ Volta said. ‘However, the sun rose this morning.’

‘Now, you got it, Volt – look on the bright side.’

Daniel had driven an hour west, watching the mountains take form in the rising light, when he caught some words in the corner of his eye, a blink, subliminal, but enough to shatter his reverie. He hit the brakes and fishtailed to a stop, then slammed the truck in reverse and backed up the highway.

The sign was written in sun-bleached red paint on a piece of whitewashed plywood wired to a cactus:

TWO MOONS REST STOP

1 mi. right on dirt road

Cabins Food Pool TV

Daniel decided the two moons he’d seen earlier were a vision from the Diamond instructing him to rest. The last time he’d slept was before the theft. The last time he’d eaten, too. He’d been drawing energy from vanishing with the Diamond, and now maybe it wanted some back. He drove on slowly, turning right at a rutted dirt road marked with an arrow that lanced two circles.

A dusty mile farther on was a weather-beaten building with office vacancy lettered in peeling white paint. Behind the office, arranged in a ramshackle circle, were twelve cabins, none of which had been close to a paintbrush in the last decade. Daniel stiffly dismounted from the cab and looked around. If not for some tire tracks near the office, he would have thought the Two Moons Rest Stop had been abandoned. He knocked on the office door.

A short, strong-shouldered man wearing black cotton slippers with plastic soles, jeans, and a short-sleeved red-and-yellow checked shirt opened it immediately. Daniel thought he might be either American Indian or Mongolian: of all the faces Daniel had studied with Jean Bluer, this would have been the most difficult to duplicate. He judged the man to be in his early fifties, but realized he might be off twenty years on either side.

The man looked past Daniel. ‘Nice truck,’ he said. ‘That three-fifty’s a good engine.’ He turned his attention to Daniel. ‘You want a cabin?’

Daniel, about to slide into his Isaiah Kharome voice, looked into the man’s shrewd black eyes and decided to play it straight. ‘Yes, I do. I know it’s a little early to be checking in – wanted to make Phoenix, but I’m too tired to drive. Safer to stop.’

The man nodded. ‘Figured you were a guest. The bill collectors never drive campers. They like those compact foreign rigs. I’ll get you a key.’ He turned back into the office, saying over his shoulder, ‘Welcome to come in if you want.’

‘Thanks, but I could use some air.’ Daniel glanced around as he waited. The cabins didn’t look like much, but as long as they had a hot bath and a bed he didn’t care. He didn’t see the pool or the coffee shop.

The man, moving silently in his slippers, returned holding a large leather cup and a feather.

Daniel indicated the feather. ‘That from an owl?’

‘Great Horned. Found it on the door step the day after we bought the place.’ The man squatted on the porch and slowly swept the owl feather back and forth above the sun-bleached planks, shaking the cup and chanting softly to himself. Abruptly, he spilled the cup’s contents onto the decking: twelve small brass keys, various small bones and claws, a flat silver disc, a small gold nugget, obsidian shards of various shapes and transparencies, a pig tusk, and four dried seeds, each different, and none that Daniel recognized.

The man studied the arrangement a moment, then decisively picked up a key and gave it to Daniel. ‘Number Five.’ He pointed to the cabin. ‘That one there. Park in back.’

Daniel hefted the key in his palm. Hesitantly, he said, ‘I didn’t notice the coffee shop.’

The man looked up blankly. ‘Coffee shop?’

‘I mean, I just assumed – the sign down the road said food.’

The man tilted his head. ‘You hungry?’

‘A little.’

‘Got some jerky and half a loaf of pumpernickel bread in the house. I’ll bring it over as soon as I get the keys put away.’

‘Don’t bother yourself, really – I have some stuff in the truck.’

‘No bother. I’ll bring it over in a bit. You go ahead and get started on your rest.’

‘Thanks,’ Daniel said. He felt he should go, but stood there watching the man return the various items to the cup. ‘I’ve been told my curiosity often lapses into rudeness, but I can’t help asking how you can tell which key to select.’

The man dropped the last seed into the cup and rose to his feet, facing Daniel. ‘I don’t know how I do it. Kept trying, and after a while got a feel for it, I guess.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Daniel said, ‘I see. So it’s intuitive, right? I mean, there’s no method.’

‘No, no particular method. But there are traditions.’

Daniel plunged to the point: ‘Well, what exactly do you
feel?
’

The man cocked his head, sunlight catching his high, strong cheekbones. ‘What do I feel? I feel which key fits the guest.’

‘Ah ha,’ Daniel said, realizing no secrets were going to escape the tautology of the obvious, ‘sure – that makes sense. Thank you for indulging my curiosity.’