White Noise (40 page)

He gobbled more pills, flung others down the front of his Budweiser shorts. I advanced one step. There were cracked Dylar tablets all over the fire-retardant carpet. Trod upon, stomped. He tossed some tablets at the screen. The set had a walnut veneer with silvery hardware. The picture rolled badly.

“Now I am picking up my metallic gold tube,” he said. “Using my palette knife and my odorless turp, I will thicken the paint on my palette.”

I recalled Babette’s remarks about the side effects of the medication. I said, as a test, “Falling plane.”

He looked at me, gripping the arms of the chair, the first signs of panic building in his eyes.

“Plunging aircraft,” I said, pronouncing the words crisply, authoritatively.

He kicked off his sandals, folded himself over into the recommended crash position, head well forward, hands clasped behind his knees. He performed the maneuver automatically, with a double-jointed collapsible dexterity, throwing himself into it, like a child or a mime. Interesting. The drug not only caused the user to confuse words with the things they referred to; it made him act in a somewhat stylized way. I watched him slumped there, trembling. This was my plan. Look peripherally into rooms, enter unannounced, reduce him to trembling, gut-shoot him maximally three times, get off at the river road, shut the garage door.

I took another step toward the middle of the room. As the TV picture jumped, wobbled, caught itself in snarls, Mink appeared to grow more vivid. The precise nature of events. Things in their actual state. Eventually he worked himself out of the deep fold, rising nicely, sharply outlined against the busy air. White noise everywhere.

“Containing iron, niacin and riboflavin. I learned my English in airplanes. It’s the international language of aviation. Why are you here, white man?”

“To buy.”

“You are very white, you know that?”

“It’s because I’m dying.”

“This stuff fix you up.”

“I’ll still die.”

“But it won’t matter, which comes to the same thing. Some of these playful dolphins have been equipped with radio transmitters. Their far-flung wanderings may tell us things.”

I continued to advance in consciousness. Things glowed, a secret life rising out of them. Water struck the roof in elongated orbs, splashing drams. I knew for the first time what rain really was. I knew what wet was. I understood the neurochemistry of my brain, the meaning of dreams (the waste material of premonitions). Great stuff everywhere, racing through the room, racing slowly. A richness, a density. I believed everything. I was a Buddhist, a Jain, a Duck River Baptist. My only sadness was Babette, having to kiss a scooped-out face.

“She wore the ski mask so as not to kiss my face, which she said was un-American. I told her a room is inside. Do not enter a room not agreeing to this. This is the point, as opposed to emerging coastlines, continental plates. Or you can eat natural grains, vegetables, eggs, no fish, no fruit. Or fruit, vegetables, animal proteins, no grains, no milk. Or lots of soybean milk for B-12 and lots of vegetables to regulate insulin release but no meat, no fish, no fruit. Or white meat but no red meat. Or B-12 but no eggs. Or eggs but no grains. There are endless workable combinations.”

I was ready to kill him now. But I didn’t want to compromise the plan. The plan was elaborate. Drive past the scene several times, approach the motel on foot, swivel my head to look peripherally into rooms, locate Mr. Gray under his real name, enter unannounced, gain his confidence, advance gradually, reduce him to trembling, wait for an unguarded moment, take out the .25-caliber Zumwalt automatic, fire three bullets into his viscera for maximum slowness, depth and intensity of pain, wipe the weapon clear of prints, place the weapon in the victim’s hand to suggest the trite and predictable suicide of a motel recluse, smear crude words on the walls in the victim’s own blood as evidence of his final cult-related frenzy, take his supply of Dylar, slip back to the car, take the expressway to Blacksmith, leave Stover’s car in Treadwell’s garage, shut the garage door, walk home in the rain and the fog.

I advanced into the area of flickering light, out of the shadows, seeking to loom. I put my hand in my pocket, gripped the firearm. Mink watched the screen. I said to him gently, “Hail of bullets.” Keeping my hand in my pocket.

He hit the floor, began crawling toward the bathroom, looking back over his shoulder, childlike, miming, using principles of heightened design but showing real terror, brilliant cringing fear. I followed him into the toilet, passing the full-length mirror where he’d undoubtedly posed with Babette, his shaggy member dangling like a ruminant’s.

“Fusillade,” I whispered.

He tried to wriggle behind the bowl, both arms over his head, his legs tight together. I loomed in the doorway, conscious of looming, seeing myself from Mink’s viewpoint, magnified, threatening. It was time to tell him who I was. This was part of my plan. My plan was this. Tell him who I am, let him know the reason for his slow and agonizing death. I revealed my name, explained my relationship with the woman in the ski mask.

He put his hands over his crotch, tried to fit himself under the toilet tank, behind the bowl. The intensity of the noise in the room was the same at all frequencies. Sound all around. I took out the Zumwalt. Great and nameless emotions thudded on my chest. I knew who I was in the network of meanings. Water fell to earth in drops, causing surfaces to gleam. I saw things new.

Mink took one hand from his crotch, grabbed more tablets from his pocket, hurled them toward his open mouth. His face appeared at the end of the white room, a white buzz, the inner surface of a sphere. He sat up, tearing open his shirt pocket to find more pills. His fear was beautiful. He said to me, “Did you ever wonder why, out of thirty-two teeth, these four cause so much trouble? I’ll be back with the answer in a minute.”

I fired the gun, the weapon, the pistol, the firearm, the automatic. The sound snowballed in the white room, adding on reflected waves. I watched blood squirt from the victim’s midsection. A delicate arc. I marveled at the rich color, sensed the color-causing action of nonnucleated cells. The flow diminished to a trickle, spread across the tile floor. I saw beyond words. I knew what red was, saw it in terms of dominant wavelength, luminance, purity. Mink’s pain was beautiful, intense.

I fired a second shot just to fire it, relive the experience, hear the sonic waves layering through the room, feel the jolt travel up my arm. The bullet struck him just inside the right hipbone. A claret stain appeared on his shorts and shirt. I paused to notice him. He sat wedged between the toilet bowl and wall, one sandal missing, eyes totally white. I tried to see myself from Mink’s viewpoint. Looming, dominant, gaining life-power, storing up life-credit. But he was too far gone to have a viewpoint.

It was going well. I was pleased to see how well it was going. The trucks rumbled overhead. The shower curtain smelled of mildewed vinyl. A richness, a smashing intensity. I approached the sitting figure, careful not to step in blood, leave revealing prints. I took out my handkerchief, wiped the weapon clean, placed it in Mink’s hand, cautiously removing the handkerchief, painstakingly wrapping his bony fingers, one by one, around the stock, delicately working his index finger through the trigger guard. He was foaming, a little, at the mouth. I stepped back to survey the remains of the shattering moment, the scene of squalid violence and lonely death at the shadowy fringes of society. This was my plan. Step back, regard the squalor, make sure things were correctly placed.

Mink’s eyes dropped out of his skull. They gleamed, briefly. He raised his hand and pulled the trigger, shooting me in the wrist.

The world collapsed inward, all those vivid textures and connections buried in mounds of ordinary stuff. I was disappointed. Hurt, stunned and disappointed. What had happened to the higher plane of energy in which I’d carried out my scheme? The pain was searing. Blood covered my forearm, wrist and hand. I staggered back, moaning, watching blood drip from the tips of my fingers. I was troubled and confused. Colored dots appeared at the edge of my field of vision. Familiar little dancing specks. The extra dimensions, the super perceptions, were reduced to visual clutter, a whirling miscellany, meaningless.

“And this could represent the leading edge of some warmer air,” Mink said.

I looked at him. Alive. His lap a puddle of blood. With the restoration of the normal order of matter and sensation, I felt I was seeing him for the first time as a person. The old human muddles and quirks were set flowing again. Compassion, remorse, mercy. But before I could help Mink, I had to do some basic repair work on myself. Once again I took out my handkerchief, managed with my right hand and my teeth to tie it firmly just above the bullet hole in my left wrist, or between the wound and the heart. Then I sucked at the wound briefly, not knowing quite why, and spat out the resulting blood and pulp. The bullet had made a shallow penetration and deflected away. Using my good hand, I grabbed Mink by his bare foot and dragged him across the blood-dappled tile, the gun still clutched in his fist. There was something redemptive here. Dragging him foot-first across the tile, across the medicated carpet, through the door and into the night. Something large and grand and scenic. Is it better to commit evil and attempt to balance it with an exalted act than to live a resolutely neutral life? I know I felt virtuous, I felt blood-stained and stately, dragging the badly wounded man through the dark and empty street.

The rain had stopped. I was shocked at the amount of blood we were leaving behind. His, mainly. The sidewalk was striped. An interesting cultural deposit. He reached up feebly, dropped more Dylar down his throat. The gun hand dragged.

We reached the car. Mink kicked free, involuntarily, his body flopping and spinning, a little fishlike. He made spent and gasping noises, short of oxygen. I decided to attempt mouth-to-mouth. I leaned over him, used my thumb and index finger to clothes-pin his nose and then tried to work my face down into his. The awkwardness and grim intimacy of the act made it seem all the more dignified under the circumstances. All the larger, more generous. I kept trying to reach his mouth in order to breathe powerful gusts of air into his lungs. My lips were gathered, ready to funnel. His eyes followed me down. Perhaps he thought he was about to be kissed. I savored the irony.

His mouth was awash in regurgitated Dylar foam, half chewed tablets, flyspeck shards of polymer. I felt large and selfless, above resentment. This was the key to selflessness, or so it seemed to me as I knelt over the wounded man, exhaling rhythmically in the littered street beneath the roadway. Get past disgust. Forgive the foul body. Embrace it whole. After some minutes of this, I felt him come around, take regular breaths. I continued to hover just above him, our mouths almost touching.

“Who shot me?” he said.

“You did.”

“Who shot you?”

“You did. The gun is in your hand.”

“What was the point I was trying to make?”

“You were out of control. You weren’t responsible. I forgive you.”

“Who are you, literally?”

“A passerby. A friend. It doesn’t matter.”

“Some millipedes have eyes, some do not.”

With much effort, many false starts, I got him into the back of the car, where he stretched out moaning. It was no longer possible to tell whether the blood on my hands and clothes was his or mine. My humanity soared. I started up the car. The pain in my arm was a throb, less fiery now. I drove one-handed through the empty streets, looking for a hospital. Iron City Lying-In. Mother of Mercy. Commiseration and Rapport. I would take whatever they had, even an emergency ward in the worst part of town. This is where we belonged, after all, with the multiple slash wounds, the entry and exit wounds, the blunt instrument wounds, the traumas, overdoses, acute deliriums. The only traffic was a milk van, a bakery van, some heavy trucks. The sky began to lighten. We came to a place with a neon cross over the entrance. It was a three-story building that might have been a Pentecostal church, a day-care center, world headquarters for some movement of regimented youth.

There was a wheelchair ramp, which meant I could drag Mink to the front door without banging his head on the concrete steps. I got him out of the car, clutched his sleek foot and moved up the ramp. He held one hand at his midsection to stanch the flow. The gun hand dragged behind. Dawn. There was a spaciousness to this moment, an epic pity and compassion. Having shot him, having led him to believe he’d shot himself, I felt I did honor to both of us, to all of us, by merging our fortunes, physically leading him to safety. I took long slow strides, pulling his weight. It hadn’t occurred to me that a man’s attempts to redeem himself might prolong the elation he felt when he committed the crime he now sought to make up for.

I rang the bell. In a matter of seconds, someone appeared at the door. An old woman, a nun, black-habited, black-veiled, leaning on a cane.

“We’re shot,” I said, lifting my wrist in the air.

“We see a lot of that here,” she answered matter-of-factly, in an accented voice, turning to go back inside.

I dragged Mink across the entranceway. The place appeared to be a clinic. There were waiting rooms, screened cubicles, doors marked X-Ray, Eye Test. We followed the old nun to the trauma room. Two orderlies showed up, great squat men with sumo physiques. They lifted Mink onto a table and tore away his clothes in neat short practiced strokes.

“Inflated-adjusted real income,” he said.

More nuns arrived, rustling, ancient, speaking German to each other. They carried transfusion equipment, wheeled in trays of glinting implements. The original nun approached Mink to remove the gun from his hand. I watched her toss it in a desk drawer that held about ten other handguns and half a dozen knives. There was a picture on the wall of Jack Kennedy holding hands with Pope John XXIII in heaven. Heaven was a partly cloudy place.