Stone Junction (31 page)

‘Nothing. I used the ability to perform escapes in my magic act.’

‘Sounds like magic to me, all right.’

Volta said emphatically, ‘It’s
not
. Vanishing is a tool, a technique, another manipulation of appearance. Magic is the expropriation of the real.’

‘Well, hell, let’s get started. I can’t wait to see if I can vanish into nonexistence and magically expropriate a reality you dreamed.’

‘You’ve forgotten
your
dream; you might have to battle that raven for the Diamond.’

‘I suppose I’ll find out. Are we going to start soon?’

‘Early tomorrow morning. Meet me at the Oakland airport at midnight, Pacific time. You can pick up your tickets and itinerary at the Gilded Lily Pawn Shop at the top of President Street. You’ll be leaving this afternoon. I have some business, so I’ll be taking a later flight. We’ll meet at Gate Seven and then catch a private flight north to the Eel River, and from there to my place. We’ll get started after breakfast.’

‘That’s not much sleep,’ Daniel noted.

‘Daniel, I can only tell you what I know. And one thing I know is that exhaustion encourages vanishing.’

Daniel and Volta took the interfacility shuttle to the private hangars. On the way, Volta told him, ‘Our pilot will be a young man named Frederic Malatest. Red Freddie, we call him. Don’t bait him on politics. He takes them seriously.’

‘Red Freddie and Low-Riding Eddie – that’s quite a crew.’

‘
That
,’ Volta sighed, ‘is our entire western air force. No wonder we’re forced into imagination.’

Red Freddie was in his mid-twenties. His lanky frame and laconic movements were in contrast to his piercing brown eyes and the message emblazoned in black letters across his motorcycle helmet:
Smash the
State
. While Volta sat with his eyes closed, Daniel started Red Freddie on politics before they’d even taken off.

Over Ukiah Daniel expressed serious reservations about Red Freddie’s claim that the highest revolutionary act available to a middle-class people in the 1980s would be piling their television sets in the middle of the street and setting them ablaze with their front doors. They argued for a few minutes, until Red Freddie warned, ‘Reconsider your position,’ and put the twin-engine Beechcraft into a steep power dive.

Pressed back in his seat, Daniel watched the town lights below rush toward him. He was too stunned to speak until Volta, with a trace of reproach, said in his ear, ‘I told you he takes his politics seriously.’

Daniel immediately leaned over and screamed in Red Freddie’s helmet, ‘You’re
right!
Build a bonfire with those front doors. And while you’re at it, throw on all the word processors, too!’

‘Right on!’ Red Freddie bellowed, lifting the nose back up and leveling it before beginning a series of exuberant snap-rolls, each punctuated with a scream of ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’

‘Another thing,’ Daniel yelled. ‘After the televisions and typewriters, every speck of paper in the country.’

‘You got it, bro! You think something is important enough to write down to be remembered, important enough for others to know, well you can write it on a goddamn wall. Imagine it, man: motel room walls would be like poetry magazines.’

Volta sleepily opened his eyes and said, ‘Did you two realize that Ukiah is haiku spelled backwards?’

Before Daniel could admit he’d missed that one, Red Freddie threw out his arms and dramatically declaimed,

When the last capitalist is strangled

With the guts of the last bureaucrat,

Cherry trees will blossom in our minds.

Daniel said, ‘And when all the paper’s burning, people should throw their clothes on the blaze and snake-dance around the neighborhood naked, then sit in a big circle and toast marshmallows and drink whiskey and smoke dope and trade stories, lies, and rumors.’

Red Freddie nodded rapidly. ‘And the next morning form labor syndicates and call a general strike.’

As Daniel and Freddie raved back and forth, Volta eased back in his seat. He admired youth and ambition, the seizures of endless possibilities and unqualified enthusiasm, but lately they were making him tired. He tried to relax and let everything go, but he couldn’t shake an image of Daniel looking at himself in a mirror. The boy was bright, maybe even brilliant, but he was not wise.

For the thousandth time Volta wondered whether he would have offered Daniel the chance to vanish if there was no Diamond to steal. He remembered how Madge Hornbrook had touched his sleeve just before the ceremony when he’d replaced her as a member of the Star, whispering ‘Just remember that the crucial decisions are always too close to call.’ He was encouraged by Daniel’s claim that he, too, had dreamed of the Diamond – a good sign. Yet he found little solace in it. He was getting old, he realized. Old.

Twenty minutes later, Red Freddie set them down on a fog-shrouded strip along the Eel River. He kept the motor running as Daniel and Volta quickly unloaded. In minutes he had the plane turned around, gunning it down the strip.

When Red Freddie lifted off, Daniel picked up his duffel. ‘All right, what do we do from here? Walk?’

‘Right,’ Volta said absently.

‘Which way and how far?’

Volta looked at him, then bent to pick up his own suitcase. ‘Northeast. About a hundred yards. To my truck.’ Volta started walking, Daniel falling in beside him.

Daniel said lightly, ‘Your
truck?
Given your position as a senior member of the Star, I thought a limo would be waiting.’

‘The truck was indulgence enough.’

‘What is it? Something along the lines of Smiling Jack’s Kenworth?’

‘You’ll see,’ Volta said.

To Daniel it looked like any other old battered pickup, though it had new rubber all the way around. He told Volta, ‘Bad Bobby would book it eight to five that the tires outlast the truck.’

Volta took Daniel’s duffel bag and swung it into the bed on top of his suitcase. ‘No he wouldn’t. Robert has a discerning eye for the deceptions of appearance.’

‘Well,’ Daniel allowed, ‘maybe even money.’

‘I intended to let you drive, but since you persist in insulting a work of art, you merely ride.’

Not until Volta turned the engine over and Daniel felt the whole truck shimmying with an almost erotic anticipation did he understand the work of art under the hood.

Volta smiled, a boyish gleam in his eye. ‘The music you hear is a 427 Chrysler. This is an authentic moonshiner truck – not much to look at, granted, but since it’s rocket on the road, all you see’s a blur.’ Volta tapped the gas.

‘You like power, don’t you?’ Daniel said.

‘Properly applied.’ Volta slipped the truck into first and applied some.

It was just as well Daniel couldn’t think of a reply, for it would have been lost in the engine’s chattering howl.

The narrow road soon left the river plain and began twisting up a long ridge. An hour later they dropped down and crossed the north fork of the Eel, its water shivering with starlight. A few miles farther on they turned onto a dirt road blocked by a sturdy metal gate. Volta pushed a button under the dash and the gate swung open. Daniel assumed they’d arrived, but it was another chucked and rutted seven miles and three gates before the road sloped down off the broad point of the ridge, curving slowly north as the land leveled, ending abruptly at a small frame house with an adjacent barn and scattered outbuildings. Volta touched another button under the dash and the house and yard lit up.

Daniel drawled – a fraction too slowly, Jean Bluer would have noted – ‘I got it figured ’twernt any ol’ moonshiner done did your ’lectronics.’

‘No, it was a young electromagnetic genius, a German anarchist in love with waves.’

‘I heard Wild Bill claim more than once that “German anarchist” was a contradiction in terms. That the best you could hope for was a Hegelian Baptist.’

Volta laughed. ‘Bill’s prejudices are notorious. But let me welcome you to my retreat, which is known locally as Laurel Creek Hollow. I wouldn’t forbid you to reveal its location, but I ask you, as I do all visitors, to exercise the utmost discretion.’

‘You may depend upon it,’ Daniel promised, vaguely mimicking Volta’s formality.

‘Tell me,’ Volta said, ‘do you find me a bit grandiose and dramatic?’

‘A little,’ Daniel answered.

Volta leaned toward him, his gaze so intense that Daniel was surprised when he whispered, with a mixture of apology and exasperation, ‘That’s show biz, Daniel. Pure show biz.’ Before Daniel could respond, Volta pointed out the window, adding, ‘And that’s the house. It’s four fifteen. I suggest you unload our bags while I start a fire and cook us some breakfast. It’ll be your last meal for a while, and I’d like to make it special.’

It was. Air-light buckwheat pancakes with fresh butter and Vermont maple syrup. Ham from the Blue Ridge Mountains, cooked with a peach glaze and sliced thin. A fruit dish of apples, grapes, and slivered pecans, barely sauced with curried sour-cream. For beverages: Gravenstein apple juice and a choice of Vienna Roast espresso or Volta’s own blend of tea, the latter with a squeeze of lemon and a dollop of fireweed honey.

As Volta cooked, he told Daniel about the origins of the ingredients. The buckwheat was grown and milled by a Montana woman named Jane Durham. She sent him a fifty-pound sack every year because Volta had personally tracked down her grandfather’s grave – he’d been a Wobbly organizer – and purchased a headstone for it. Tick Hathaway cured the ham, the last of twenty Volta had received in exchange for the 1925 Honus Wagner baseball card Tick needed to complete a collection. The apples were from a feminist commune in coastal Sonoma County, juiced on an old screw press. Smiling Jack had brought him ten gallons of maple syrup from the Hewlitt Jefferies’ farm near Burlington. The honey was from the five-percent dues of another commune, whose members rejected the use of money – Dead President Trading Cards, as they called it.

Although Daniel felt both the urge and obligation to savor each morsel, it was all he could do not to wolf the food. It had been almost twelve hours since the airline dinner of gooey Yankee pot roast and boiled vegetables. Daniel was eyeing the last slice of ham, half listening to Volta recount the geological history of the Eel River watershed, when suddenly Volta stopped and delicately pushed the ham platter toward him.

‘I’m sorry,’ Daniel said. ‘I’m so hungry I’m afraid I can’t really appreciate how good it is. But I do appreciate you cooking it for me; I really do.’

‘I’m sure the food appreciates your hunger as much as my preparation. Hunger, you know, has always fascinated me. I have seen people on the verge of starvation standing in line to give food away. This was in Tibet, in a small mountain village. There was a holy man who lived in a cave higher up the mountain. Every full moon, for as long as it was visible in the sky, he would receive petitioners at the mouth of his cave. Each petitioner brought him a gift of food. In exchange, he would answer one question. When the holy man had enough food to last the month, he would start giving each gift to the next person in line. It was a rough climb to the cave, remember, and food was scarce, but the line of petitioners would begin forming well before sunset. There were often over a thousand people in line, and all of them knew that the holy man would withdraw when the moon set.

‘The first time I visited I asked him, “What is reality?” Without hesitation he replied, “A handful of rice.” Sort of your standard holy-man answer. The second time, I asked, “What is the greatest obstacle to wisdom?” He shut his eyes a moment, and when he opened them they had this wonderful delighted twinkle. “Wisdom is easy,” he said. “The mind is difficult.”’

Daniel wiped his lips. ‘I don’t know about how easy wisdom is, but the mind being difficult, he got that right.’

‘Indeed. But I mention it because I’m experiencing some of that difficulty. I have reservations about your attempting to vanish. Gut reservations, nothing I can explain – except to assure you that they reflect uncertainties regarding my judgment, not yours.’

Daniel, surprised by the turn of the discussion, said, ‘I
want
to try it. That’s
my
judgment,
my
call. You’re relieved of the responsibility of the decision.’

Volta said, ‘I don’t accept responsibilities that can be absolved. Clearly, since your approval is necessary to the attempt, and my instruction may be critical to your success and safety, it is a mutual decision. I’ll be responsible for my part; you take care of yours.’

‘That’s all I was trying to indicate – that I intend to.’

Volta leaned back in his chair and looked at Daniel closely. ‘All right. From this moment onward, Daniel, don’t speak to me. Don’t speak at all. If you do, or if you violate any subsequent instructions, our work will end there, and along with it, my responsibility. Now please, finish your tea.’

When they’d cleared the dishes, Volta took a six-volt flashlight from a shelf and told Daniel to follow. He led him out the back door and along a wide trail toward the cedar-shingled barn. Stars still glittered overhead, but the sky had begun to pale in the east. Volta followed the trail around the barn, then down a gradual slope to a small shack. Volta opened the door and entered, shining the light back for Daniel. When Daniel was standing beside him, Volta shined the light around the room. Along the far wall was a narrow bed. Three thick quilts were folded and stacked on the foot of the bed, a small white pillow on top. The only other furnishing was a straight-backed wooden chair.

Volta held the light on the chair and told Daniel, ‘Sit down.’

When Daniel was seated, Volta held the light on a door in the wall Daniel was facing. ‘The door opens on a small compost toilet. If you’ll remember to sprinkle a small can of wood ashes when you use it and replace the seat cover, there shouldn’t be any odor.’

The light flicked back to the bed. ‘Against the wall at the foot of the bed are three one-gallon jugs of local spring water. I advise you to use it sparingly.’

Volta snapped off the light. ‘I want you to shut your eyes, Daniel, and I want you to listen well, listen as if your life depended on it. This is where I make my speech.’