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Did he cause pain in the world? So what? Moses executed hundreds if not thousands; during the Great War, the kings of Europe dined on pheasant while sending hundreds of thousands to their deaths. No one dwelled upon the damage a boot print did to an anthill. The strong not only prevailed over the weak, they deliberately freed themselves from the restraints of morality. In so doing, they became weightless, able to float loose from their earthly moorings. It wasn’t a complex idea.
He shut his eyes and slipped deeper into the water, luxuriating in its warmth, his hands clasped on the tub’s rim, his phallus floating to the top of the water. Half of the upstairs had been ceded to him by the family, along with keys to the back entrance and the bathroom. He kept the bathroom door locked whenever he was not using it, in part so no one else would see the photos he had taped to the walls, in part to conceal the odor he left twice a day clinging to the sides of the tub, the bar of soap he used, the brush he scrubbed his skin with, the towel he wiped under his armpits.
The problem was a parasite, he was sure, one he had ingested by eating off a dirty plate in prison. It had laid its eggs in his viscera and cycled its way through his system and hidden in his glands, filling his clothes with an odor that made people move away from him in elevators and on public transportation. He was not the only victim. A blind inmate who had murdered his wife and children and stayed in twenty-three-hour lockdown had the same syndrome. So did a pederast who worked in the prison laundry. The prison psychiatrist said the problem was caused b
y either an obstructed bowel or food poisoning, and the odor associated with it was only natural; he said it would pass. When the psychiatrist excused himself to use the restroom, Geta spit in his coffee cup.
Now he drained the tub and washed himself again, this time with ice-cold water, sealing his pores, then sprayed his body with deodorant. He dressed in clean slacks and a white shirt and combed his bleached hair straight back in the mirror. He had lost weight and browned his skin and added bulk to his upper arms by splitting firewood in the sun, taking ten years off his appearance. Maybe it would be a good evening to do a little trolling downtown, visit a college bar or two. Just for fun. Nothing serious. A test of his powers. His own kind of catch-and-release program. He smiled at his sense of humor.
All the photos on the walls had been shot with a zoom lens after he decided to reopen his career in western Montana. Of the twenty photos, eight of them contained a diminutive yet buxom middle-aged woman who affected the dress and indifferent air of a 1960s flower child.
He touched one of the photos with his fingertips, then breathed on it as if trying to fog a windowpane. He stroked her face and hair and wet his index finger and drew a damp line across her throat and another one across her eyes and another one across her ribs. There was a whirring sound in his ears, like the hum of a crowd in a giant stadium, the sun boiling down directly overhead. He thought he heard the cry of wild beasts, a rattling of chains, an iron grille sliding open, the crowd roaring. He could have sworn he smelled the raw odor of blood and hot sand and the sweaty stench of people held captive in underground rooms.
He patted the photo affectionately, his cheeks dimpled with a suppressed smile. Our time is almost at hand, he thought. It will be a grand event announced by trumpets and dwarfs beating drums and a costumed Chiron waiting to dance around the dead and soldiers thumping the shafts of their spears on stone.
He began to experience a sense of arousal so intense that he had to close his eyes and open his mouth, as though he were on an airplane that had lost altitude in the midst of an electric storm.
Through the door, he heard the two girls hurrying down the wood stairs and out the front of the house, their father telling them to be home early. Geta went back to his bedroom and bolted the door behind him, then took four clear plastic wardrobe bags from his footlocker and laid them on the bed. Yes, be home early, my little ones, he thought. And you, Mommy and Daddy, enjoy your menial, insignificant lives while you can. Your embryonic sacs await you.
He was startled by a knock on the door. “Who is it?” he said.
“It’s me,” the wife said. “Will you join us for coffee and dessert?”
He thought for a moment. “Are you having cherry pie?” he asked through the door.
“Why, how did you know?”
“The season for cherry picking is upon us,” he replied. “I’ll be along in just a minute. It’s so nice of you to invite me.”
I SLEPT UNTIL SEVEN A.M. Friday and woke with no memories of my dreams or even of having gotten up during the night. I woke with a clarity of mind that seems to come less and less frequently as we grow older, maybe because the memory bank is full or because our childhood fears are unresolved in the unconscious. Regardless, I came to a realization that had eluded me prior to that morning—namely, that Asa Surrette, a man I had never seen, had threaded his way into all our lives and divided us among ourselves.
I had alienated both Alafair and Gretchen by going to the FBI and placing Gretchen in their bomb sights. I suspected the discord and distrust was exactly what Surrette wanted. The great irony in combating evil people is the fact that any proximity you have to them always leaves you soiled, a little diminished, a little less sure about your fellow man. It’s theft by osmosis.
After I brushed my teeth and shaved, I went downstairs and fixed two cups of coffee and hot milk, then took them to Alafair’s bedroom. She was awake in bed, lying on her side, gazing out the window at a yearling and its mother playing with one of Albert’s colts, racing up and down the pasture.
Alafair looked over her shoulder at me. “What’s up, doc?” she said.
I pulled a chair up to her bed and handed her one of the coffee cups. “The only lasting lesson I’ve learned in life is that nothing counts except family and friends,” I said. “When you get to the end of the road, money, success, fame, power, all of the things we kill each other for, fade into insignificance. The joke is, it’s usually too late to make use of that knowledge.”
She sat up, her back against a pillow, her long black hair touching her shoulders. “I never doubted what was in your heart,” she said.
“We’ve all done the best we could in dealing with Surrette,” I said. “He wins if we become angry and distrustful with one another.”
“I started all this when I interviewed him.”
“That’s good of you to say, but I don’t think that’s where it started. Surrette didn’t follow us from Louisiana to Albert’s place. He was already here.”
“But why?”
“Maybe it has to do with the Youngers. Maybe not. He shot an arrow at you on the ridge behind the house. He left his message in the cave behind the house. He set a bear trap for Gretchen behind the house. He seems to take an enormous interest in this particular stretch of terrain.”
“Albert?” she said.
“Surrette fancies himself an intellectual and a writer. Albert is both, and notorious for his radical political views. Maybe that has something to do with it.”
Alafair drank the rest of her coffee and put on a robe. “Gretchen and I did some background checking on Angel Deer Heart’s family,” she said. “Her parents were killed in an automobile accident. The three children were sent to an orphans’ home in Minnesota. Angel’s brother and sister died during an outbreak of meningitis. That’s when Angel was adopted by Caspian Younger and Felicity Louviere. You with me so far?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
