This Magnificent Desolation (31 page)

Mother nods, still sucking in air, but Duncan asks: Why Spider?

I don't know, perhaps because I'm tall and lanky and I can climb anything.

Why not a monkey?

Spider bares his teeth. Do I look like a monkey to you?

Mother bunches her dress between her legs and sits against the wall beside Duncan, reaches over and pulls him close. He looks up at the sky passing above them, blue and absent of cloud. There is the sweet, cloying smell of tamarisk, the rusk of limber pine and piñon, and narrow-leaf cottonwood, its fluffy white catkins floating above them like small clouds a mile distant and falling as if in a dream and then a glaze of heat settles upon the dump car and Duncan's throat is suddenly raw and dry.

What's the matter with him? Spider asks and gestures at Duncan, his hands dangling weakly from his wrists. Why's he making so many faces?

Nothing. Nothing's wrong with him.

Spider snorts and shuffles forward. Mother's hand squeezes Duncan's shoulder firmly, and Duncan knows she's trying to be reassuring.

He looks into Duncan's eyes. There's something wrong with you, all right. He taps his head. It's up here, isn't it? Something not quite right. I can always tell.

His gaze flickers to Mother. He stares her up and down, eyes moving slowly across her body. After a moment, he hisses: You two don't know ANYTHING. You be good to Spider and he'll show you.
I've been on every train in the West. I've been all through California. I know where to get food and who to talk to and who to avoid. I get things done and nobody messes with me. There ain't a person riding these rails who don't know the name Spider.

Okay, Spider, Mother says very slowly. We'll all be good.

The hours pass in the dull daze of heat, the click-clacking of the wheels, and the slow, metal groan of the cars as they move across the plain. From half a mile ahead the engine sounds its horn as they pass through signals, empty transfer stations, and water depots. Duncan leans his head against his mother's shoulder and dozes. When he opens his eyes, Spider, sitting just beyond the edge of the tarp yet engulfed in its shadow, is looking at them.

What do you want? Mother asks but she sounds bored and closes her eyes again. Spider sips slowly from a silver flask bound in bands of old leather wrap, tarnished a blackened brown. But it isn't Spider's. Duncan knows this just as he knows that Spider will hurt them if he can, and he shudders at the thought of who it had once belonged to and how Spider had made it his own. Duncan sees a body in a ditch just off an abandoned rail cut and flies crawling upon a pulpy, indistinguishable face, turning it black.

Spider stretches his long, emaciated arms forward, the sun-darkened
skin loose and sagging against the bone. On his left bicep a dulled tattoo of the 23
^rd
Infantry Division, which Duncan recognizes from the flags at the Windsor Tap, shows itself. And below that a cheap blue-ink caricature of a Vietnamese wearing a
nón lá
with a dagger piercing the far eye and emerging through the cheek, and the slogan Dead Cong, Good Cong!

You were in Vietnam? Duncan asks.

Oh yeah. Spider nods vehemently and spittle flies from his mouth. Did a tour in '68 and '70. He chews on his tongue and looks thoughtfully at Duncan. Hey, you like my tatts? I got some more too.

Spider pulls back the short sleeve on his right arm and shows an ace of spades tattoo and above that an American soldier spearing a bayonet between the spread legs of a naked Vietnamese girl.

Spider stares at Duncan and licks his cracked lips. You like that one, Huh? Got it done special in Saigon.

Duncan, mother says, and gestures for him to come by her side.

Those gook whores loved us Americans.

Duncan, come over here.

Yeah, I was in Vietnam all right. Killed me a lot of gooks, killed anything that moved.

He grins. As many gooks as I could, I killed them. I killed women and children. It didn't matter if they were civilians. I shot so many civilians I lost count. If they weren't supposed to be in an area, I shot them. If they didn't understand fear, I taught it to them. There's this time when we'd pulled this family out of a hooch—

We don't need to hear any of your stories, mother says.

Spider pauses and grabs violently at his crotch. I got more tattoos, pretty lady. You want to see 'em?

We don't want to hear your stories, Duncan echoes, and Spider lets go of himself and rolls his eyes.

So anyway, this gook was trying to hide her baby and the thing wouldn't shut up, so, Second Lieutenant Calley, joking around, fires
his 45 at it, and he misses. He's not really trying to hit it, but the mother and child are both roaring now, and we're all laughing. So Calley, he gets closer now and fires again, and damn, he still misses. And this makes us laugh even harder, but it's getting old, y'know? So while everyone's laughing, I go right up on top of the thing and plug it and suddenly everyone is real quiet.

Duncan thinks of Joshua's few words about the war, his long silences, his staring off through the kitchen window and out into the night when Duncan knew that the war was all he was thinking about, and of how, in the end, there is no salvation and no redemption from the past, and about the type of men who talked about such things, the things they did, as if they took pleasure from it, and he wonders how much of what Spider is saying is true.

Spider shakes his head. Nobody who hasn't been in a war understands what fear is. The way to live is to kill, because you don't have to worry about anybody who's dead. Over there you get a medal for it. Here they put you away. And that's why Spider rides the rails where no one can tell him what to do.

He unscrews the flask and puts it to his lips. He tips back his head and Duncan listens to him, drinking long and slow, watches his Adam's apple moving up and down.

Spider shuffles forward on all fours, presses the flask to Mother's face. You want a drink?

Mother opens her eyes and looks at him.

No. I don't.

Spider withdraws the flask, leans in and loudly sniffs the air about her like an aggressive dog, then stares at her and smiles. Sure you do, he says. Sure you do.

In the heat of the sun Duncan begins to doze, but he can feel Spider looking at them still.

You ain't got no daddy, son?

Mother tenses beside him.

Shame. Your mother's too pretty not to have a man in her life. She's just sooooo pretty, ain't she? But I bet all the guys tell you that.

My father was in Vietnam, Duncan says. Just like you.

Spider's eyes narrow. He killed over there?

Duncan considers this for a moment; tears come to his eyes and his chin trembles and he hopes Spider will mistake his fear for grief.

He nods.

Mother is working at something in her hand and when Duncan glances down he sees she's pulled a nail file from her bag, concealed it in the flat of her palm. Spider stares at Duncan and then at her for a moment longer and then returns to his spot beyond the edge of the tarp. Mother exhales long and slow, so slow and long the tension it contains is almost undetectable. She relaxes her fingers on her nail file and lays its curved and soft hook against her thigh.

I don't like you, she says finally, and Spider looks at her blearily and then flashes his pearly white teeth.

He nods. That's good. That's real good.

At a place called Brandon, incorporated 1912, the engine stops for water. Duncan listens to the metal hiss and tick as it cools, as the engineer and rail workers shout over the din of the diesel. Giant dragonflies swoop over the tops of the cars. Spider climbs the side of the car and looks out across the yard toward the small town. His shirt pulls up and Duncan can see the knobbed ridge of his spine, curved like a snake.

He looks back and grins at them. Need supplies, he says. Going to show you two how it's done, and then he is clambering over the top and they hear him dropping down onto the tracks.

Duncan and his mother climb up onto the rim and watch Spider zigzagging his way toward the far shape of squat, flat-roofed buildings, obscure and shimmering in the haze of heat.

I don't trust that man, Mother says. We can't let him back on the train.

…

At a little past two in the afternoon the engineer hollers and big diesel engine thrums and Duncan and his mother hold on to each other as the cars suddenly jolt forward and then bang against each other and they begin moving. The few clouds in the sky race above them and a sluggish breeze pushes at their hair, and then they hear Spider hollering and they climb to the ledge at the top of the dump car. He's twenty or thirty yards down the track, breathing hard to keep pace with the train. He throws something from his hand and a knotted plastic bag sails into the car. It bangs against the side and slides along the hot metal. Finally, Spider covers the distance between them and, catching hold of the ladder, swings himself up onto the bottom rung. He begins hauling himself up the ladder as the ground blurs beneath him.

Mother stands at the top of the dump car looking down at him. You're not coming up here, she says. Jump before the train picks up any more speed.

Spider stares up the ladder, blinking. Oil smears the creases above his eyes. His nostrils flare. You fucking crazy?

He hacks phlegm, turns his head into the wind and spits. The engine is moving faster now and Duncan watches as his spit flies down the tracks behind them. The wind whips the hot air against his face.

Bitch! I ain't jumping from no train, he hollers and begins to climb again.

He reaches up to the top rung and Mother slashes at his hands with her nail file, stabbing the sharp nub again and again into his hands so that blood flows from the puncture wounds and streams into the air, drips down upon Spider's upturned face. Spider howls and then with surprising strength lunges and catches both of mother's arms in his own.

Maggie screams as the weight of Spider yanks her forward. Duncan tries to pry Spider's hands off of her but her arms are streaked with blood and he can't get a grip on Spider's fingers. Spider looks
up at him, laughing, his grimy neck stretching as it convulses, and Duncan punches him full in his Adam's apple, feels his fist driving the bulbous flesh back into his throat. Spider's eyes widen and his mouth opens and he gurgles loudly, and then Duncan punches him again and again. Spider's hands reach for his throat and then he is falling backward through space, Spider strikes the rails hard and fast, his legs crumpling beneath him, and then, arms outstretched, rolls and bounces, upon the ties.

In a cloud of dust and gravel he smacks the wood, one tie after another, perhaps twenty in all. His straw cowboy hat is tumbling and lifted by the warm air into the silver sky. And then he is still. Only his hat continues to rise and float and then gradually, as the dust cloud collapses, it, too, settles, a hundred or so feet beyond him.

The sun sinks lower in the sky, blinding Duncan and his mother and turning the rails and hillsides black. They are almost at the top of the ridge when they see the black shape of Spider moving between the divides, struggling to slowly pull himself up. He stands, weaves for a bit, and then his legs seem to go out from beneath him and he sits again.

Do you think he's all right? Duncan asks, and as they stare, they see him look in their direction. Duncan has only the sense of his face—a pale, barely distinguishable oval—and then his hands begin to wave and a skew of curses come to them on the air.

Mother says, I think he'll be fine.

What's he saying? Duncan asks, and, looking back, Mother shakes her head, purses her lips. I can't make out a damn word.

Above, momentarily, a single telephone line dissects the sky and then there is only the wide expanse of blue, which, Duncan imagines, must parallel the wide expanse of desert stretching out on all sides of them with nothing in between for hundreds and hundreds of miles, and Spider fading into that expanse.

After a moment Mother turns to him, squeezes his shoulder. Shall we see what's in that bag?

There are hamburger buns, hot dog rolls, tins of pork and beans, and tuna fish, two tins of tomato soup, and a fifth of Jack Daniel's. Duncan stares at his mother as she contemplates it. She takes it up in her hand, pauses, and then pats the bottle. We'll save this for when it gets cold, she says and pushes it back to the bottom of the bag.

What if it doesn't get cold?

Why then, Duncan, she says primly, we won't drink it.

Soon a breeze comes across the plains, whistling across the tops of the cars. Duncan and Mother stand for a while in the center of the car and watch the passing landscape, the warm wind drying their sweat and plastering their clothes to them. The rails seem to thump and tremor beneath them, as if the landscape itself is undulating with the train's rhythmic pounding, and as if each stretch of land, field, pasture, and prairie is being tamped into shape by their passing.

Beneath the tarp they lather themselves in sunscreen, and mother double checks to make sure Duncan has covered the tips of his ears, the back and side of his neck. She rummages in her bag for her kerchief, and Duncan slowly ties Joshua's bandanna about his head.

Where did you get that? Mother asks.

It's Joshua's. He gave it to me for when I'm riding on his bike.

She leans forward on her knees and pours water from his bottle onto the bandanna until Duncan's head is soaked and water trickles down his face and into his mouth. Then she moves close and touches her face to the cloth. She closes her eyes, and after a moment says: It smells like him.

Later, after the sun has set and the stars come out over the plains and a pleasant wind has cooled the car, they open two tins of pork and beans with Duncan's penknife and scoop out the beans with bread, mother begin to speak of Spider again, but then a laughing fit takes her so that tears come to her eyes and soon Duncan is laughing as well. They both let the laughter take them, and when they are done, they lean their backs against each other and watch the sky.
Long after mother is done, Duncan can feel her laughing still, deep in her belly, the vibrations trembling in his backbone. Finally she sighs long and hard: Oh, my Duncan. What shall we do?