Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (8 page)

 
          
“Nobody
is,” Tommy said. “But what the hell, we can still enjoy ourselves.”

 
          
They
enjoyed themselves. Various anonymous foods—some animal, some vegetable—were
consumed, all liberally laced with hot peppers and other explosive devices. The
home-brew cooled the throat while the marijuana cooled the brain. A plastic
radio picked up a salsa station from Guatemala, fading in and out while the sun
went down and the breeze whispered funny stories among the leaves in the upper
branches, to which the stream chuckled and giggled below. Various people showed
what they looked like dancing on uneven ground while both drunk and stoned.
Night fell, and so did many of the villagers. Fires were started; in the
orangey-red light, black ghosts whipped by, and people spoke to them in their
native tongue.

 
          
Kirby
lay on the cooling ground, head propped on an empty inverted clay stewpot,
half-empty jug in one hand and faintly smoldering joint in the other, as he
watched the moon come up over his mountain. Seated cross-legged beside him,
dark face stony and rough-sculpted in the moonlight, Luz Coco told his story:
“I was a kid,” he said, “my Mama took up with an oilman.”

 
          
“Rich
oilman?”

 
          
“That’s
what
he
said.” Luz spat at the fire,
which spat back. “Just a ragged-ass geologist, is all, wanted somebody with him
in his sleeping bag. Looks for oil in these hills around here, works for Esso.
They called it Esso then.”

 
          
“There’s
oil here?” Kirby was trying to find his mouth with the unlit end of the joint.

 
          
“Lotta
good it does,” Luz said. “Oil’s got to be in lakes, down underground, or it’s
no use. This limestone around here, the oil’s just in millions of little
bubbles, not worth shit. Cost too much to pull it up.”

           
“You know all that, huh?”

 
          
“I
grew up with it,” Luz said. “That’s the story. The village threw my Mama out,
we went to Houston.”

 
          
“Back
up a little bit,” Kirby said. “I don’t think you touched all the bases.”

 
          
“These
assholes around here,” Luz said, waving an arm to indicate each and every
resident of South Abilene, “they’re very strict, man. Specially about sex. You
fuck around the wrong place, you’re in
trouble
.”

 
          
“I
get it,” Kirby said. “Your mother was sleeping with this geologist—”

 
          
“And
my Daddy wasn’t dead yet,” Luz pointed out.

 
          
“So
the tribe threw her out.”

 
          
“The
village
threw her out.”

 
          
“Okay,”
Kirby said. “I buy that.”

 
          
“She
took us kids along,” Luz said, “mostly because she was pissed off. I was nine,
Rosita was one.”

 
          
“Rosita?”

 
          
“My
sister. You met her before.”

 
          
“Okay.”

 
          
“So
we went to Houston, and Cary’d forgot— Did I tell you? His name was Cary
Smith.”

 
          
“Really?”

 
          
“He
was
John
Smith,” Luz said, “my Mama’d
never found him. But she got him. We went up through Mexico, we tracked into
the States, got to Houston, and old Cary’d forgot to mention Mrs. Smith.”

 
          
“Whoops,”
said Kirby. “So then what?”

 
          
“Mama
signed on as the maid. Lois didn’t give a shit.”

 
          
“That
was Mrs. Smith?”

 
          
“She
was okay,” Luz said. “Had three kids of her own, older than us. We all grew up
together, big fucked^up family. Tommy come to visit a couple of times—”

 
          
“Wait
a minute. Tommy Watson?”

 
          
“Yeah,
he’s my cousin.”

 
          
“He
came up from South Abilene to visit?”

 
          
“Naw,”
Luz said, “South Abilene didn’t want to
know
about us. Tommy was in Madison, Wisconsin.”

           
“Wait a minute,” Kirby said. Surging
to his feet, he reeled away into the darkness. He propped himself against a
tree for a while, listening to the splash, then found another jar of home-brew
and came back and fell on the ground again beside Luz. “Madison, Wisconsin,” he
said.

 
          
“You
from there? Cold, man.”

 
          
“Tommy
was there.”

 
          
“Sure,”
Luz said. “His old man was with the college, the scientists took him up. He
knew all that carving stuff, you know, the old arts and crafts baloney from the
old days, he taught it and, uh . . . What do you call it when you say this
thing’s okay, this thing’s a piece of shit?”

 
          
“Validate?”

 
          
“That’s
cars.”

 
          
“Authenticate,”
Kirby decided. “Say if it’s real or fake.”

 
          
“That’s
it. Tommy’s old man did that. Tommy could do it, too, but he’s like me. We’ve
seen
the world, man, you can have it.”

           
“How’d you both wind up back here?”

 
          
“Tommy’s
old man died, is how with him,” Luz said. “Tommy brought the body back, he was
nineteen, he felt relaxed here, he never did like that snow shit, he was home
again.”

 
          
“Same
with you?”

 
          
“Naw.
I’m sixteen, Rosita’s eight, Mama gets mad at Cary, we go off to L.A., get into
some very
weird
scenes. Mama’s
dealing, we’re into all this heaviness, Chinamen, Colombians, I took it three
years, I said, I got to get
out
of
this. I got in the car, head south, turns out Rosita’s hiding in the trunk, she
can’t stand that shit either. So we go down to San Diego, sell the car, come on
down south.”

 
          
“Where’s
your Mama now?”

 
          
“Alderson,
West Virginia.”

 
          
“That’s
a funny place to be.”

 
          
“Not
that funny. It’s the Federal pen for women.”

 
          
“Oh,”
said Kirby. He thought a few seconds, and then he said, “Luz?”

 
          
“Present.
”

 
          
“If
these people here are so moral ...”

 
          
Some
time went by. Luz said, “Yeah?”

 
          
Kirby
woke up: “What?”

           
“So what’s the question?” Luz said.
“If these people here are so moral, what?”

 
          
“Well,”
Kirby said, taking a hit as an aid to thought, “to begin with, how about all
this pot?”

 
          
“What’s
immoral about pot?” Luz wanted to know.

 
          
“Good
point,” Kirby said.

 
          
“You
go on south,” Luz told him, “you got people down there, all these mushrooms,
these button things, they got peyote coming outa their
pores,
man. You got people down there, nobody’s seen their eyes in
years.
”

 
          
“Okay,”
Kirby said. “Okay.”

 
          
“Pot
and brew, now, you just relax. Sex, now, that’s family, it’s property, people’s
feelings, it’s, uh, it’s, uh, it’s
politeness.”

 
          
“Got
it,” Kirby said. “Sexually conservative, makes sense.”

 
          
“So
your question is,” said Luz, “how come these simple, conservative, primitive
assholes put up with spoiled goods like Tommy and Rosita and me. Right?”

 
          
“I
guess so,” Kirby said.

 
          
“Everybody’s
cousins,” Luz said. “That’s number one. And our Mama, Tommy’s daddy, they took
us away, and on our own we came back, that’s number two.”

 
          
“Okay.”

 
          
“Everybody
knows we’re different, cause we were out
there
,
but we’re still family.”

 
          
“That’s
nice.”

 
          
“We
just lay back,” Luz said. “Tommy and Rosita and me, we just coast with it.”

 
          
“Go
with the flow,” Kirby suggested.

 
          
“You
got it. Where else we gonna do that? Play by our own rules and they
accept
us, man. Listen, I’ll be right
back.” Luz rolled over, and left. On all fours.

 
          
Kirby
slept, or maybe not. Maybe those weren’t dreams. The white moon rolled slowly
across the blacktop sky. Then a form slid between him and the moon, and
collapsed in a flutter of skirts. “Hello,” she said.

 
          
This
was the sister of Luz, Kirby remembered that now, and if the moon weren’t
revolving in those slow circles up there he’d probably even remember her name.
“Harya,” he said.

           
“Rosita,” she said.

 
          
“You’re
right. You’re absolutely right.” He remembered her now. She was as short as the
rest of them, but skinnier, with the wiry spareness of the bom neurotic. Her
eyes were large and liquid brown, cheekbones strong, mouth broad and sensual,
skin like warm cocoa. She moved like a puma.

 
          
While
Kirby watched the way moonlight silvered her earlobe, she took the joint from
his fingers, made inhaling sounds, put the joint back where she’d found it,
leaned down over him, kissed him, and exhaled smoke into his mouth.

 
          
It
took a major effort of will neither to throw up nor bite her tongue in half,
but he managed, and when he obediently inhaled while she exhaled, then exhaled
while she inhaled, it turned out the moon was making those slow revolutions
inside his head.

 
          
After
a while, she lifted up and said, “You sleep out here all night, the bugs gonna
bite you to death.”

 
          
“True.
True.” It was a sad thought.

 
          
“So
come inside,” Rosita said.

 
          
So
they went inside, and soon it was morning and his body and brain were in
terrible difficulties. He had a rash like poison ivy on the surface of his
brain, he knew it, he could tell. He felt as though he were being digested, his
whole self shriven and melted by the gastric juices inside the whale that had
eaten him.

 
          
He
crawled out to a sun that had approached much closer to Earth overnight, was
now about 11 feet from the ground. He peered around and was not surprised to
see that the rest of the human race was as stricken as he. Was there hope for
mankind?

 
          
Some.
Coffee, bacon, more coffee, tortillas, more coffee, a joint, and a brief
retirement with Rosita all helped. The villagers doctored themselves in similar
fashion, and in the afternoon the party started again. Rosita explained to
Kirby how she’d always felt maybe she’d left the States a little too soon,
before she’d really experienced the place, given it a chance. She was just a
kid, really, when she came back. She’d always thought, she told Kirby, it might
be nice to go back there some time, spend a while; with the right companion,
you know. “Uh huh,” Kirby said, and went off to wander around town.