The Buck Passes Flynn (16 page)

There was no smoke in the immediate environs of the Shack.

The Shack: Flynn guessed it was a twelve- to fifteen-room house. Rustic. With neatly clipped lawns and tended flower gardens. On the edge of a high, blue lake. Surrounded by forests and mountain peaks.

In its graveled parking lot was a yellow Land Rover. On its hood was a red figure one in a red circle.

“So,” said Flynn. “This is where George Udine is when he’s at home.”

The door was open so Flynn went in, saying, “Hello? Hello?”

He followed the corridor into a bright, well-furnished living room.

A man in his early sixties, dressed in a plaid lumberjack’s shirt, brown slacks, and sport shoes, was in the room, leaning over a wide windowsill, tying flies.

Flynn stood in the doorway.

“George Udine?”

The man didn’t look up.

“Yes?”

“Also George Lewis?”

He still didn’t look up, but his response was slower.

“Yes?”

“From Ada, Texas?”

Finally the man looked at Flynn.

“What do you want?”

Instead of the imposing figure Flynn had expected, George Udine had the face and body of an attractive young boy who had faded, slowly, ever so slowly, into being sixty years old. His hair was thin but still sandy. Liver spots gave the impression of freckles. His eyes were a chocolate brown. He was a little less than average height, and still slim.

Flynn ambled into the room and sat down in an armchair.

“I saw your mother a few days ago.”

“That old whore still alive?”

George Udine returned his attention to tying flies.

Flynn said, “They call her the ‘pig woman.’ ”

“That’s about right,” Udine said. “She’s a pig. And I guess she’s a woman.”

Flynn said, “She lives in a tar-paper shack in a gully off the main road out of Ada, Texas. She dresses in a ball gown and glass earrings and necklaces and bracelets and tends her pigs and her chickens and her cats.”

George Udine chuckled. “I hardly remember her. She must be about eighty now. Surprised to hear she’s still alive.”

“There’s a rumor around,” Flynn said, “that she had a son, named George, who ran off and became a very rich man.”

“That’s right, I guess. Although how anybody down there would know about it, I don’t know.”

“They don’t believe it,” Flynn said.

“Good,” George Udine said. “Good.”

Flynn took out his pipe and tobacco pouch and then put them away again. He had had enough smoke in his lungs.

“I haven’t seen her in over fifty years,” George Udine said. “Over half a century. I haven’t thought of her twice in half that time.”

Through the windows of the living room Flynn saw a terrace overlooking the dock and the lake. There was a cabin cruiser at the dock, and a two-meter rowboat.

“You have a yacht?” Flynn asked. “I mean, an oceangoing yacht?”

“Yeah, I have one somewhere. I think it’s in the Bahamas right now. I think I lent it to somebody. The president of something. Some country.”

“Two years ago you were cruising in your yacht and you stopped for the night in East Frampton, Massachusetts.”

“Did I?”

“And you didn’t go ashore?”

“Probably not. Lobster restaurants. Fat people with too much sunburn. Taxis in unlikely colors. Why should anyone go ashore?”

“Did anything unusual happen to you that night?”

“I don’t even remember being … wherever you said I was.”

“East Frampton, Massachusetts.”

“Wherever.”

“Have you been there before or since?”

“I don’t know. Two summers ago I cruised New England’s waters. I had before. I haven’t since.”

“East Frampton, Massachusetts, means nothing to you?”

“I’m not aware of ever having heard of the place.”

“And you haven’t seen your mother in over fifty years?”

“In the wisdom of my youth, I left her to the pigs.”

“Have you never been back to Ada, Texas?”

“Never.”

“Do you hate your mother? Do you hate Ada, Texas?”

“I have nothing but indifference for both. Complete indifference. Does that disappoint you?”

Flynn smelled smoke.

“ ‘Crazy old Mrs. Lewis,’ as she’s called, and Ada, Texas, are where you came from.”

George Udine shrugged. “What’s your pinch?”

“ ‘Pinch’?”

“How are you going to hit me up? Blackmail me with photos of my mother in a ball gown feeding pigs? Hell with it. I was born without concern for what people think of me. Or are you just here out of the goodness of your heart to see if I might spring some cash her way, to provide her with decent living and care? I won’t. I only spent nine or so years with the bitch, but she did not provide me with decent living and care. I remember that.”

“That doesn’t sound like ‘complete indifference’ to me,” Flynn said. “That sounds like bitterness.”

“ ‘Bitterness’? Bullshit. I left her to the pigs more than fifty years ago, and I’ve never looked back. I’ll never do anything for her. There are a lot of people
I don’t care about I’ll never do anything for. That about includes everybody. Including you. Whatever you came here for, fella, you’re not going to get it.”

Through the windows there was no sign of the smoke.

“A while ago,” Flynn said, “someone gave your mother one hundred thousand dollars in cash.”

Udine snorted. “Great. What did she do, feed it to the pigs?”

“Not yet. She was quick to hand it over to a stranger, though.”

“Sure she was.”

“Odd thing is, someone gave everyone in Ada, Texas, one hundred thousand dollars in cash.”

“Everyone?”

“Every man, woman, and child.”

“I didn’t.”

“Could you have? Could you afford to do a thing like that?”

“I suppose so.”

“Everyone in East Frampton, Massachusetts, got one hundred thousand dollars in cash.”

Udine said, “Pretty upsetting to their economy, I should think.”

“Why would anyone do a thing like that, Mister Udine?”

“I’ve lived my life upon one principle, and it’s never been proven wrong: everyone is crazy.”

“You’ve never been proven wrong?”

“Not once.”

“What would be even a crazy reason for doing it, Mister Udine?”

George Udine thought about it, while continuing to tie flies.

“I don’t know.”

Flynn stood up and headed for the door.

George Udine said, “Is that all you wanted? To see if I was the one who gave one hundred thousand
bucks each to the people in Ada and … wherever else?”

“Yes. That’s all.”

“I can assure you,” George Udine said, with a charming smile on his handsome face, “I have never voluntarily done charity in my life. I never will.”

Flynn said, “Thanks.”

Then he stood a moment longer, looking at George Udine in profile against the window.

“One other question, Mister Udine.”

Udine did not answer.

“I was in Washington last night. A man, a government bureaucrat who seemed to know his potatoes, gave me quite a lecture on the world’s economy.”

“He said it was falling apart, didn’t he?”

“He did.”

“And he was very convincing.”

“He was.”

“They always are.”

“Who are?”

“Doomsayers. I’ll guarantee you that at any time in history you can find people with scriptures, with maps, with charts, with astrological forecasts, all of which absolutely prove—at least to them and whoever else they can get to take them seriously—that the world is falling apart.”

“And it never is?”

“It never has yet.”

“Mister Udine: is the world’s economy in good shape?”

Udine grinned at him. “Mine is.”

At the door, Flynn turned again to Udine. “Don’t you smell smoke?”

Udine sniffed. “There’s probably a fire somewhere on the place.”

TURNING the key in the ignition of his jeep, Flynn marveled that never once had George Udine expressed the slightest curiosity about him. Udine had not asked Flynn his name, where he was from, or whom he represented. He had not even asked how Flynn had gotten through Cleary Mountain’s electrified fence, patrolling guards, and attack dogs.

“That,” said Flynn, “is an indifferent man.”

He was only five hundred meters down the road from the Shack when something leaped across the road in front of him, high up, from tree to tree, something almost human in its leap, like a ballet dancer, but more than human in its speed.

He braked.

Both sides of the road were blazing fire.

By the time he turned around on the narrow dirt road, the fire, red, vicious, crackling, had caught up to the rear of the jeep. There was a rush of wind. Accelerating hard did not drown out the noise of the wind rushing and the trees snapping, falling through each other, crashing to the ground.

Flynn left the jeep in front of the house, pounded
up the steps, along the corridor, and into the living room.

“Let’s go,” he said.

George Udine looked up.

“Quick! Fire! the wind is this way.”

George Udine laughed, softly.

Flynn yelled, “Will you move, man?”

Udine rose slowly from the window seat. “Where are we going?”

“To the middle of the lake.”

All the way down the dock, Flynn had to hustle Udine along. He wasn’t sure whether Udine didn’t believe him, didn’t like taking orders, or simply was indifferent to whatever would happen.

Once on the dock, they saw the smoke climbing, rising high above the house.

Udine began to get into the cabin cruiser, while Flynn was untying the rowboat.

“Not that,” Flynn shouted. “It has gas in it.”

Udine, moving a little more quickly, joined Flynn in the rowboat.

Flynn pulled hard for the middle of the lake.

The north shore of the lake was a wall of fire.

There was enough wind from the fire to stir up the surface of the water.

Ashes were falling on them.

Sitting on the stern thwart, George Udine watched the fire with an odd, appreciative smile on his face: a boy granted a special fireworks display for his birthday.

Flynn got to the middle of the lake and rested on his oars.

There was too much noise from the fire for them to speak.

Under the smoke, the light had turned to an eerie, deep dusk.

Flynn coughed.

He was surprised to see how thick with ashes the bottom of the boat and the surface of the water were.

He spun the boat around so he could see the fire and the house better, making George Udine pivot on his seat to watch.

After a while, from the other side of the house there was a boom and then another boom. Flynn guessed the jeep and Land Rover had blown up.

He kept his eye on the house, the Shack.

The cabin cruiser at the dock exploded first.

Then there were flames in the windows of the Shack, oddly enough the second story first; then the walls blew out, collapsing the roof.

After a minute, Flynn shouted, “I guess you lost your house.”

Udine said, “I have seven others. No, eight. No … seven.”

Shouting had caused Flynn to cough smoke out of his throat and lungs.

The two men were to sit in the rowboat a long time, watching the fire. At times the smoke was so thick they had to duck their heads toward the bottom of the boat to find air to breathe.

Night fell.

Tall-stemmed, red-blossomed flowers of fire ran through the forests on all sides of them.

I’ll never be over it, will I?
Flynn’s voice began inside his head.
Me, coming home to the little apartment in Munich—the Irish Consulate, it was, a modest enough place, a living room, two bedrooms, a bath, a kitchen—me, in my short pants and neckerchief of Hitler Youth, after standing an air raid watch—finding the both of them, my mother and my father, on the floor of the kitchen, each shot between the eyes
…

Were they shot as an arbitrary thing, a gratuitous act in those last, frantic, insane days of the war when there was so much suffering and death around there was as little resistance to shooting another person as there ever is to shaking a hand and saying something pleasant
?

Or were they shot for good reason, because it had
been discovered that the Irish Consul and his wife had been smuggling American and British fliers out of the country, home to fight again, on their own good time? That the wee son of the Irish Consul and his wife, me in the neckerchief and short pants, had been keeping up correspondence in my schoolboy scrawl with my own chums in Ireland, Master Timothy O’Brien and Master William Cavanaugh, who existed only as names on letter boxes at British Intelligence, London
?

Were they shot for good reason, or just shot
?

Sometimes I’ve thought I’d give the rest of my life to know the answer to that question
.

Then the weeks and months, living in the streets
.

It was never the bombs that bothered. They just came. It was the fires, the constant fires, acrid smoke always in the back of the nose, the top of the throat, the special smell of human bodies burning; sleeping against the stone wall of a building and having the heat of it burn you awake, you knowing there was fire the other side of that wall whether you could see it or hear it or smell it or not; once, being surrounded by fire
—
like this
—
helping people to pry up a sewer lid from the road, and then lowering ourselves, one by one, into the sewage of the City of Munich. The filthy stuff was up to my chin
.

It’s the fires I’ll never be over
….

It was after midnight.

Francis Xavier Flynn and George Udine sat in the small rowboat, still roughly in the middle of the lake, having said very little to each other. On the surface of the lake the smoke had cleared only slightly. No stars or moon were visible through the mantle of smoke that hung over them. On the shore, all sides of them, against the mountain walls, thousands of small fires were still blazing along their own courses. Occasionally one would flare for a brilliant moment. They were their own world in their own galaxy.

Soot was in Flynn’s hair, his eyes, his nose, his mouth.