Six
It was not a long climb, but a steep one, up a
path Lance had not seen from the road. It weaved between the cracks of stone as
if designed for secrecy, narrow enough to make them go single file. Several of
the shadowy indians lead the way, and several followed behind. Mike, Chris and
Lance like prisoners between.
It reminded him of patrol, of weeks out in the
muck and mire of swamp lands, climbing finally the hills along the Cambodian border,
always moving with one eyes to either side. Waiting for the crack of rifle fire
or explosions of mortar, each step possible death.
"What's the matter?" Chris asked,
touching his sleeve.
"Nothing."
"You look bad."
"I'm worried about the others."
"If Dan was smart, he's long gone by
now," Mike said, from in front of Lance, huffing as the path took another
acute angle up. The air pressed cold and heavy against Lance's chest, too. He
didn't seem able to breathe well enough.
"Watch your step," one of the
indians ahead of them said. "Rough ground."
Stony ground. Like broken teeth under foot,
poking through the bottoms of their shoes as they struggled to keep balance.
But even touching the rocks on either side shocked them with cold and sharp
jabs. Lance wished he had dug his gloves from his knapsack. Or a heavier coat.
And just when Lance thought he could go no more, the ground leveled and the
path opened out into a gravel-filled space of about twenty yards square.
"Well," Mike said, leaning on a boulder.
"It looks like Dan wasn't very smart at all."
The van sat at the far edge of the clearing,
its headlight illuminating the ruts of a more conventional dirt road up from
below. To Lance, the engine sounded worse for the climb. Dan, Sarah and Marie
leaned against its dented side.
"Mikie!" Marie yelped when she
caught sight of them, and darted toward them with outstretched arms. "I
was so worried," she moaned and hugged him.
Their indian guards looked impatient, and the
man who had brought them up the path, motioned to keep moving.
"Not here," he said.
Mike sighed. Lance waited, but Sarah made no
similar effort to greet him, remaining where she was by the van till he reached
her. She looked bored.
"Well, well," Dan said. "Fancy
meeting you people here. The question is why?"
"For your safety," the dark indian
said.
"Our safety?" Chris said. "You
were supposed to meet us down mountain."
The indian shook his head. It was hard for
Lance to see any of his features for the criss-cross of paint, though even in
the side glow of the flashlights, he caught high cheek bones and broad brows,
and the black hair framing a sun beaten face.
"Others are on the road tonight besides
the ones you sent away," the indian leader said.
"You know these people?" Dan asked, pushing
up his hat by the floppy brim.
"They are friends," Chris said, but
seemed most interest in the indian's news. "Who else?"
"The police from what we can
gather," the indian said. "At least there are police cars among
theirs-- on both sides of the mountain."
"What?" Mike moaned.
"Where?"
"Along the road by which you would have
come down. They seem prepared to stop you once you cross over into
"Damn!" Mike said, slapping the side
of the van. "Isn't that just dandy! What the hell do we do now?"
"There are many roads through our land of
which the police know nothing," the indian said.
"And you'll help us?" Mike asked.
"For Chris and you," the Indian
said, a slow smile rising to his lips. "Oh, don't be surprised. We know
who you are, Lost Dog, and of your anger."
***********
He didn't like or trust them, but he let them
lead him up a path deeper into the mountain. The bowie knife Lance had passed
back to him, poked through his sleeve. What a knife could do against rifles, he
didn't know. Nor did he know exactly what Chris had in mind, diverting them
here, but suspected the worst. And he was angry for letting it happen. Her
plots generally ended in misfortune.
"Where are we going?" Mike asked,
when the man paused near a small ledge. Beneath them, the gravel square showed
like a patch on the side of the mountain, colored only by the splash of the
still-illuminated van headlight. Around it showed the vague shapes of Mike's
companions, stomping their feet against the cold. Yet, his gaze was drawn
beyond them, over the ridge to a cup in the tip of the mountain and a dawn
rising over the blue lip of a lake. A lake now frozen over, pine trees
encircling it like a wall.
Wisps of stream came and went with his
breathing, coming faster as he began to understand where he was.
Over the lake, clouds drifted, like giant
islands of ice floating on a black sea. Yet, beyond the clouds, lights glowed,
the distant fires of
"What do you want?" Mike asked, more
firmly, afraid to sink too deeply into the vision.
The man ignored him, leaning on the stone and
staring out at the lake. "This is a holy place," he said. "it is
a place of watching and of peace. Our ancestors used it for ceremonies in
ancient times, before the white man, and for a while even when the white man
hunted below. Few outsiders have we allowed to see it."
"I'm impressed," Mike said, and was,
though his tone was bitter. "The question is, why me?"
The indian leader looked at Mike, the dark
eyes like lakes themselves, shimmering with the distant dawn and lights of the
cities. There was pain in those eyes, and pride, and a deep bitterness which
spread the ache into Mike.
"You are a legend," the man said.
"Tales of your battles with the white man come to us from all directions,
the way such things did of warriors in other days."
"Stop it!" Mike barked, turning away
from the eyes and the lake to the cold reality of the stone behind him, his
voice echoing like a gunshot down in the valley beneath. "Chris has been
filling your head with bullshit. I'm no revolutionary. I'm out of the business
of fighting white men, black men, red men or green. All I want to do now is
survive. The old wars are over. Our people have proved they can't be won."
Disappointment flooded the face and eyes of
the indian leader. It was a look Mike had seen previously in the eyes of the
Weathermen when he ceased his campaign of bank bombings.
But why, man? they'd asked him. Don't
you want to cure imperial oppression of the masses?
No, he told them. I just want to
cure my own pain.
"You're wrong," the indian leader
said, his voice tighter than it had been. "The wars have just begun."
"Not the wars that count," Mike
said, staring down at his own shaking hands. "if you wanted to win you
should have killed the white man when he stepped from the boat. Now he's
entrenched. Can't you see the lights of his cities?"
"We see them," the indian said,
kneeling before a flat stone. He unrolled a cloth of sticks, removing several.
A spark set them to flame. Mike smelled gasoline. "Even now our brothers
strike against his forts..."
"Your brothers. Not mine."
"There is our blood in you."
"And the stench of reservation. I won't
get trapped in this place the way my mother did."
"But you're already trapped," the
indian said, looking up, the light of the fire catching in his eyes.
"Bullshit!"
This time the man looked angry. He stared down
into the fire, and when he spoke, his voice had an edge.
"I can see you're not ready to accept
us."
"Accept you? For what?"
"Chris said you would lead us."
"What?" Mike roared. "I ought
to... Lead you where? To slaughter?"
"They slaughter us now in their own
way."
"Slowly," Mike said. "By
abandoning you. But make a noise and they shall bring here the full weight of
their power, and crush you like every other revolutionary-- like they crushed
the Black Panthers up north."
"We can shoot back," the indian
said, his gaze fixed upon the flames, looking every bit the model of the
Weathermen and Panthers Mike had seen. Idealistically violent, yet ignorant of
the pale-faced monster he intended to challenge.
Mike groaned and leaned against the rock
behind him, looking back out at the horizon. "Look, friend, do what you
want. But I'm splitting this scene."
"Leaving? For where?"
"For the place where
"You will change your mind," the
indian said flatly. "You must."
"Like hell I will," Mike barked.
"Now are you going to tell us how to get out of here, or do we try and run
the cops down when he find them?"
The indian rose and kicked dirt onto the fire.
He pointed northwest into the gloom. "There is a road that way," he
said.
"One they don't know about?"
"An old miners road," the indian
said.
"Sounds impossible. We've got a VW van
not a covered wagon."
"It's possible-- with care. It will bring
you down to the highway beyond where they wait. But do not trust my words
completely. Travel at night. Hide the van during the day. All roads will be
watched once they discover they've been fooled."
Mike laughed. "Friend, they have always
been watched. Let's get back to the others."
***********
"You bitch!" Mike said as the van
rolled over the lip of the hill and down into a gull. The mountains rose around
them like great hands preparing to clap. But they'd done the worst and now
everything went down hill, each gully part of steps descending into
"Stop harping on it," Chris said,
seated beside him with a hand-drawn map in her lap. The others slept in the
back. "I said I was sorry, didn't I?"
"Sorry isn't enough," he said. It
was already less dark outside, dawn catching up with them in the lower lands,
glowing against the fore-ground of mountain peaks. Mike stepped on the gas a
little harder. "You're trying to get me wrapped up in something and I
won't have it."
"You owe something to your people,
Michael," Chris said.
"I'm half Irish," Mike spat.
"Does that mean I should go and fight for the IRA?"
"That's different and you know it."
"I don't see it that way," Chris
said.
"And you don't read the papers either.
The revolution's fizzling out. Kids are going home. The FBI's killing the
leaders."
"Not our leaders."
"Oh brother!" Mike moaned. "Now
you're going to start singing me the praises of Indian solidarity? I'll bet
they've already been infiltrated."
"You wouldn't be riding away if they
were," Chris said.
"Maybe," he conceded. "But the
reason your brothers are condemned to reseverations is because of other
indians, indians the white man's converted, indians who sold their souls
helping the white man hunt and kill us. Those are the people you expect me to
lead?"
Chris stayed silent.
Mike cursed and shifted gears for another
round of rising land, the last before open and ground and heart
***********
They came into
Lance woke to the sticking gears and Mike's
cursing.
"Problems?" Lance asked, poking his
head through the curtain. Chris leaned against the passenger door, snoring
slightly, her brown face smooth in the growing light, almost pretty. Dan
grumbled from the rear and made his appearance, wincing at the highway.
"Oh God! Not this place again," he
moaned. But there was a hint of cheer in his voice, drawing a curious glance
from Mike.
"You don't sound all that
displeased."
"I am. But it is home, sort of," Dan
said. "You ready for me to take the wheel?"
"No, we can't keep driving in
daylight," Mike said. "We should find a place to park. We all need
rest."
"There's a twenty four hour diner up
ahead a bit," Dan said, squinting out at the scenery. "And a lot
behind it nobody uses."
"Out of sight?"
"As much as anything can be in this
town," Dan said, lighting a cigarette, wincing at that, too. "There
it is."
The van bumped over the lip of the roadway and
into a gravel drive, stones banging the bottom as Mike steered the machine
around the back. Low citrus trees formed a fence along the far end and Mike
parked the car behind these. He turned off the engine.
"I'll sleep here," he said, slumping
down in the front seat like a bookend to Chris.
Dan sagged against the side door, but looked
far from sleep.
"Aren't you going to crash out?"
Lance asked, feeling the sudden stillness, and that much wearier because of it,
as if he hadn't really slept at all during the trip.
"In a minute," Dan said and sucked
the cigarette again. "I just want to sit and breathe. This is supposed to
be healthy air."
But he seemed to be thinking and Lance left
him, returning to the two sprawled bodies on the bed. Sarah sprawled to the
right; Marie curled in a fetal position to the left. He found space between
them and drifted off.
***********
Someone shook him. Hot air pressed into his
face like a hand trying to smother him. Cigarette smoke filled in interior of
the van. Chris' angry face floated over his.
"You're on my bag," she said,
dragging it out from under his head, glancing at it as if he could have caused
it damage.
"Sorry," Lance mumbled. He
remembered tossing and turning with the rising heat and yanking something cool
from the pile of packages.
"Forget it," she said, wiping the
sweat from her forehead. Her hair dripped, down the tangled strands.
Someone had opened the side doors and the
windows on either side of the driver's seat. Mike and Marie huddled just
inside, perched and wary, watching the rumbling trucks through the trees.
Tractor trailers speeding along the highway, rocking the land beneath them.
Lance struggled out and stretched. But the air
outside the van felt just as warm, a precursor to coming Summer when the
temperatures would rise into a daily ritual of over a hundred. In the north, a
low line of mountains showed like the grey teeth of a wolf grinning, made hazy
by the distance. He had seen them before on his first journey west, closer up,
nearer the
An odd deja vu struck him.
He sucked in the warm air. It felt fresh in
his lungs despite the heat. It was the smell, the perfume of growing things,
citrus groves making him want to take a bite out of the air.
"Okay," Dan said, booted foot hooked
onto the splintering front bumper, one hand holding down his hat against the
wind. "We're here. Now what?"
"We make connections," Mike said.
"There's a man named Gil who runs the underground here. You should know him.
You spent time here."
"I've heard of him," Dan said.
"Not many people actually meet him."
"But you'd know how to get in touch with
him?"
"You mean you don't?"
"I can't show my face around this
town," Mike said. "They know me here. By sight."
"Which means?"
"You, the Pacifist and his old lady'll
have to make the connections while the rest of us make scarce."
"Wait a minute!" Chris said.
"I'm not wanted in this state. Why should I duck out of sight."
"Because you could draw attention to
me," Mike snapped. "Some cops still think we run together and if they
see you, they'll start searching. You'll stay low until we talk to Gil, and
then you can go on your way."
"Lay low where?" Chris asked.
"If Dan's got the van."
"There's a motel up the road," Sarah
said, looking particularly uncomfortable in the heat.
Mike shook his head.
"They wouldn't let us in without a car.
Just drop us downtown. We'll get lost. We can meet up you later near the
square."
Dan nodded, eyeing Mike, Marie and Chris with
a certain obvious humor, as if their union had its own odd irony to it.
"Just like the old days," he said with a grin.
"Not quite," Mike said sourly.
"Let's get on with this thing."
The others climbed back into the van. Dan
started the engine. But Lance lingered, staring out at the sandy world.
"Lance," Sarah called, as if reading
his thought from his expression. "Get in."
***********
Dan downshifted for the light-- the flat
unbearable city of boredom steaming with heat and old men waiting for death, haunted
men with golf hats and bland expression, slumped onto bus stop benches, eyeing
the van as if part of their recreation. Men too old and tired to hate hippies,
shaking their heads at Dan's early retirement, asking with shock: You mean
you made no money at all on Wall Street? As if the crime had not been the
disease but Dan's inability to make new capital.
Money had always been the key to Dan's life,
starting with his impoverish shoe-making farther in
This here's my boy! the old man
bragged, brandishing Dan before them like a piece of gold. The boy would make
up for killing his wife during child birth, or costing so much in worry over
early life in the streets. With Punk and gangster the most often
descriptions.
Yet no blow seemed so hard on the old man as
when Dan brought Susie home. You want to marry her? the old man had
howled, hating everything about her from her blond hair to her untrustworthy
smile. A gold digger, he called her. Only much later did Dan agree. Only
after the coughing started and the doctor's reports said Dan needed dry air.
And the uptown life vanished to one of dessert and divorce. The alimony based
on Dan's former income evaporated his savings, killing the old man-- who
neighbors said wandered through the neighborhood for weeks like a bum, with
even his shoes bits of crumbling leather he refused to remove or repair. The
police found the body frozen under the Brooklyn Heights side of the Manhattan
bridge, clutching a faded photograph of Dan's mother.
He shivered and shifted gears as the light
changed to green, the vague pattern of streets flowing back into his head,
shopping malls and retirement villages dotting either side of the road, part of
the stretched out nature of the town which reminded him of L.A.
"There's a cop behind us," Lance
announced, laying flat on the bed with his nose to the rear window.
"Of course there is," Dan mumbled.
"Get out your ID."
Lance slipped forward. Sarah stared back into
the crumbled mirror on the passenger side. "You mean they're going to stop
us?" she asked.
"Yes," Dan said, watching the car
pulling closer. "They don't like hippies in this town."
Yet it was more than just hippies, they hated
strangers of any kind or color. They endured the indians because they'd grown
used to them under foot, and knew where in the pecking order red skins
belonged.
The cop car made its move, pulling up in the
left lane, one of its two officers motioning them to the shoulder. Stones
kicked up under the van as it stopped and the cop car doors slammed as its
officers exited. Two sandy-skinned males came along either side of the van,
pushing up their Texas-Ranger hats in a slow imitation of a cowboy drama.
"So it is you," the cop on Dan's
side said, his face part of that miserable time when Dan was last here.
"Billy said it was. But I didn't believe him. What would old cool
Dan be doing back in our town, especially riding a junk like this. But there
you are, boy, big as life."
"Don't give me a hard time, Sweeny,"
Dan said. "We're just passing through back to L.A."
The cop leaned against the door. A slow grin
spread across his sun-beaten face. "I seem to recall a bulletin on you,
Newhaul," the cop said. "Something about alimony."
"Damn it, Sweeny!" Dan moaned.
"Nobody's asking for trouble here."
He wondered how far he could get if he chose
to run. But the other cop showed up on the passenger side.
"What happened over here?" he asked.
"You been in an accident?"
"Side-swiped while I was parked,"
Dan said.
"By a goddamn tractor from the look of
it."
"Must have been," Dan agreed. Look
straight. Don't act scared. "Happened in Denver."
"Run it anyway," Sweeny said,
grinning at Dan. "Wouldn't want you to pull anything over on us, would we
Newhaul?"
"How long's this going to take,
Sweeny?" Dan asked with a groan.
"It depends, Danny-boy."
"On whether or not you're carrying any
drugs in there. Why don't you and your friends step out of there while we have
a look."
Dan sighed and motioned the others out. Sweeny
circled around and admired Sarah as she climbed out.
"Your taste in women has improved,"
the cop said.
"She's his," Dan said, lighting up a
cigarette. His hands shook. Half out of anger.
Sarah smiled as the other cop came back from
the police car looking rather puzzled.
"What is it?" Sweeny asked.
"No warrant," the other cop said.
"But there's an APB"
Sweeny looked sharply at Dan. "Just
passing through, eh?"
"There's something else," the other
cop said, motioning Sweeny away from Dan. The two exchanged words, growing
animate and loud.
"What is it?" whispered Lance.
"Damned if I know," Dan said, though
he heard Sweeny say New Mexico once. But nothing about his ex-wife,
though he could already envision the trip back east in handcuffs and his wife's
hard stare across a court room.
He felt stupid. They all should have been more
careful, rather than merely worrying about Mike. Somehow they could have found
Gil without the parade through town.
"All right, Newhaul," Sweeny said,
his voice losing its edge. "Get out of here."
Dan looked up startled. "What?"
"Didn't you hear me, Goddamn it! I said
get! Or do you want to spend the day in a jail cell?"
The cop didn't look happy, a nasty touch to
his glare which translated into anger and danger.
"Come on," Dan said to the others.
"Let's not argue with the man."
Yet once started again, he saw the cop still
standing on the side of the road, staring helplessly after them, his thoughts
loud enough to kill.
Dan gunned the gas.