April Smith - Judas Horse

You can only use a satellite phone outside, with a clear view to the sky. That is why he comes to the shooting range.

“Gemini? It’s Taurus. What have you got? You’re the expert. You’re the one with access to intel, the off-site, the whole deal. Don’t leave me hanging out here with my pants down, buddy.”

He waits. I wait. My breath comes fast.

“You said you could get past the SAC. I’m counting on it.”

The cold shower of logic becomes a deluge of ice. It is unmistakable. Dick Stone is talking to someone inside the Bureau.

On an untraceable satellite phone.

Once again, I am a passenger in the dark, being driven along unknown roads to an uncertain destination — just like in undercover school. As in undercover school, I have made the strategic decision to imbibe an illegal substance, meaning I am as stoned as the rest of them on some awesome weed.

That night, before I could alert Donnato to the discovery of the satellite phone, we learned through a posting on the FAN Web site that Lillian, the sweet old bird-watcher rescued from the mustang corral, was dead.

Dinner was quesadillas, and Megan was quiet.

“What happened?” Sara said. “I thought she was okay.” “She’d just had a heart-valve replacement and it got infected.” “Too bad,” said Stone with a mouth full of cheese.

“It was a direct result of the action,” Megan snapped. Her face looked slack, darkness beneath the eyes. “She was traumatized, and then she’s taken to a bad hospital in a piss-poor excuse for a town.” Slammer was jamming green apple halves and carrots into an industrial juicer.

“Do you have to do that?” Sara asked.

“Fiber, man.”

The juicer must have been outfitted with a jet engine.

Megan told Stone she was leaving for two days.

“Why?”

“Lillian’s memorial service.”

The juicer howled.

“Where?”

“San Jose.”

“Turn that thing off,” Stone shouted. “Fuck your fucking fiber.” The motor ticked to a stop. Slammer had extracted a quarter cup of amber-colored juice.

Megan put her head in her hand. I laid my arm around her shoulders.

“Megan’s upset. She saw the whole thing at the corral.” “Never should have happened,” declared Stone.

“The lady was too old to go on something like that,” Sara added.

“It wasn’t her being old.” Megan raised her burning eyes. “It’s us who were arrogant. We were breaking the law when—” “What’s the law anyway?” asked Stone. “Whatever the government decides. Arbitrary bullshit.” “I’ll be back late Sunday,” Megan said tiredly.

“You’re not going. It’s a trap. The feds will be there.” Megan stood. “That’s crazy!” She had gone shrill. “I am so sick of your paranoid fantasies. The world is fucked and we can’t save it. We’ve been living in fantasyland all these years, without one normal day. Without peace of any kind. Without family.” “We could have had a family.”

“All I ever wanted was a baby.”

“You could have had a baby.”

“No! I couldn’t! We were always on the run.”

“Hush up now!” Stone said menacingly.

“I won’t! This is my house.”

“You want me to leave? Because I’ll leave,” said Stone.

“Thank you,” Megan said. “After you have ruined my life.” And she walked out of the room.

We waited in silence until Sara and I got up to collect the dishes.

Stone told us to sit down.

We sank back into our seats.

“This is a tragic situation that did not have to happen,” Stone repeated in a hurt voice. “Nobody would have had to get messed up with wild horses if it hadn’t been for Herbert Laumann. He is the oppressor. He is the United States government. Megan has a right to be angry. A lady is dead who didn’t have to be.” He was good. Low-key and light on the rhetoric. You could feel him gathering up the fractured energy left in the room, wrapping it ever so piteously around himself.

Hours later, Megan was gone and Stone roused the household — Sara, Slammer, and me.

“We’re gonna have some fun,” he promised. “Gonzo political action.” Now, miles away from the lost farm, we are squeezed into the white truck, and Dick Stone is singing Otis Redding: “They call me Mr. Pitiful. That’s how I got my fame—” He keeps switching songs, genres, decades. Inside his head must be some crazy mix of rhythm and blues and screaming black-leather motorcycle metal. In a fraction of a second that goes on for eternity, he can hear Blue Oyster Cult expanding like the day of reckoning since 1975.

“Music is consciousness; it never dies,” Stone proclaims. “Music exists forever, somewhere in the universe.” “If it never dies,” Slammer apes, “where was it born?” “In a thirty-twoer laced with windowpane.” Dick Stone grins.

Rewind.

We are forty minutes outside Portland. Real time. It is way past the midnight hour, and this, in the grand saga of injustice and revenge, is what Dick Stone has been given: two kids passing a joint as if they are on a lark, the boy running his mouth about his wicked life, the poor little rich girl without a clue; and the pretender, the eager stranger with wild dark hair and shifty eyes, slouching in the seat beside him.

But he is pleased with the discipline of his rock ’n’ roll commando unit. Under his leadership, they have put together a goody bag of plastic squeeze bottles you would use for catsup, now filled with hydrofluoric acid; cans of red, white, and blue spray paint; a video camera; and Molotov cocktails made with the bandit’s signature Corona beer bottles.

Still the original, still the best.

For no discernible reason, he jerks the joint from Slammer’s mouth and flicks it out the window.

“What the fuck?” The boy laughs uneasily.

The bandit punishes him with silence.

Sara is all of a sudden in a fit of giggles, rolling on her back in the rear seat, long, thin arms and legs kicking out at funny angles.

“You’re a little butterfly.” Dick Stone looks in the rearview mirror. “Just like Megan, back in the day.” It was Megan, he tells us, who shared that thirty-twoer of psychedelic malt liquor in the Civic Auditorium down in San Jose, when BOC was at the height of their satanic debauchery; the concert from which he never came back. Like the apparition of young, idealistic Megan (aka Laurel Williams, the environmental scientist at Berkeley), Sara, he intones, is a butterfly who alights on your hand, revealing magic yellow granules of powder on its wings. Why would such a vision be given to you?

Meanwhile, the new one, Darcy, keeps to herself, staring at the suburban night. Dick Stone smiles at some reverie and rolls his window down, dropping an arm out of the truck, letting the cigarillo hang, wasting good Dominican smoke as a rush of air tears hot embers off the tip, leaving a trail of extinguishing sparks. It satisfies him, like pages burning in time.

“Hey now,” says the boy, “what’s that asshole doing?” Slammer jumps up and hits the horn and a van in front of us swerves to a stop. The driver of the van throws the door open, shouting in Farsi.

Stone turns his head very slowly toward the boy. His graying stubble looks Halloween raspberry in the cold red intersection light.

“Don’t…do…that.” He accelerates, but not too fast.

“I really feel like slapping someone right now.” Slammer pounds a fist hungrily. “I really feel like getting into a fight.” Dick Stone ignores him.

“That’s what I mean!” Slammer agrees, as if the old dude had said anything. “There’s two chicks in the car, know what I’m saying?” “I have no idea what you’re saying.”