James Ellroy - Silent Terror

“Have you got transportation?”

“Yes. What—”

“I’m a real-estate developer in Sausalito. I need a husky kid to clear tree stumps out of my new site. It’s tough work, but the pay is a five-spot an hour, off the books, with no deductions. What’s your name?”

“Martin Plunkett.”

“Okay, Marty, I’m Sol Slotnick. You want the job?”

“Yes.”

“Can you meet my foreman tomorrow? In Sausalito?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then write this down: Over the Golden Gate, off the highway at exit four, right turn, left turn at Wolverton Road. You’ll see a big field with signs posted — Sherlock Homes, a logo with the detective guy. Tomorrow at eight. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“A-okay. You’re gonna need tools, an ax and a scythe, but I’ll supp—”

I interrupted my new employer. “I’ll supply my own tools, Mr. Slotnick.”

“Do your own thing, huh? Okay, kid, good luck.”

That night I devastated my remaining money. At an army surplus store I bought khaki work pants and shirt, a pair of waterproof hiking boots, a webbed cartridge belt and my first instruments of brushed-steel utility since my burglar’s tools years before: one short-handled ax, one long-handled ax and one heavy-duty gardener’s scythe. The ax heads were coated with transparent Teflon, and guaranteed to be “self-sharpening” — the more you used them, the sharper they were supposed to get. It sounded too good to be true, so I bought a sharpening stone to back up the claim.

The next day I drove across the Golden Gate Bridge to the “Sherlock Homes” site. It was a huge clearing overgrown with brash and dotted with tree stumps, surrounded on all sides by thick pine forest — months of work for one man. The foreman told me that Mr. Slotnick wanted the job completed by September 10, when the construction crew was scheduled to begin laying the foundations, and if I was lucky and the environmentalists didn’t fuck things up, I could get an additional job chopping down trees across the highway at the proposed site of Slotnick’s “Singles Paradise” tract. After explaining that all I had to do was uproot every tree stump on the property and chop down all the brush and let it lie for the bulldozers, the man pointed to the tools affixed to my belt and said, “You look like a pro, so I won’t be coming around to check on you. Payday is every Friday at five, here.” Shaking my hand, he left me alone with nature.

And nature, even though I was conspiring against her, gave me four and a half uninterrupted months of exhilarating beauty and blessedly mindless work.

I swung and hacked with my axes and scythe from April through August, eight hours a day, seven days a week, oblivious to heat waves and torrential rain. Shock waves pulsed through my body as I worked, and I felt myself getting stronger and stronger, but I never worried about developing attention-attracting muscles as I had in jail, because the scent of hay and ripped wood protected me, the pines enveloped me, and when I chopped with my eyes closed I saw pretty soft colors, shades that got darker the harder I swung, but still remained kind and gentle in my mind. Completely exhausted at the end of each day, the colors held at the corner of my vision as I drove home, ate dinner and fell immediately into deep sleep.

I was parking my van outside my apartment one night in early September when I heard, “Martin! Hi!” The words didn’t fully register at first — no one had addressed me by name in months, and I was exhausted from an especially long day’s work and hungry for food and sleep. Then the voice repeated itself — “Hi, Martin!” — and I looked across the street and saw a pretty woman with long black hair. The hair, backlighted by a streetlamp, drew me like a magnet, and I walked over to her.

She was standing on the sidewalk with a man, and they were weaving very slightly, as if tipsy. It took me a few seconds, hut finally an image of hair brushing my face gave me the woman’s name. Shroud Shifter, appearing out of nowhere, hissed, BE NICE. “Hello, Jill,” I said. “Nice to see you.”

Jill giggled and reached for her companion’s arm. “We’re really zonked. Did you get a job? You must have, you’ve still got the place.”

Shroud Shifter was waving a conductor’s baton, whispering something I couldn’t hear. “Yes, I followed your advice. It worked, and I’ve been working ever since.”

Jill said, “Great. Steve, this is Martin; Martin, this is Steve.”

I turned my attention to the boyfriend, a surly type with ridiculous muttonchop sideburns. S.S. was saying BE NICE BE NICE BE NICE . I said, “Hey, Steve, what’s happenin’,” and stuck out my hand hippie-style. Steve said, “What’s happenin’, man,” and gave me a counterculture bone-crusher. I winced in mock pain, and Jill laughed. “Steve’s an airline mechanic, and he’s really strong. You want to come up for a drink or something?”

At the “or something,” S.S. waggled his eyebrows. I said, “Right on,” and Jill got between her boyfriend and me and took our arms, saying in a stage whisper, “I am so stoned.” Her hand on my elbow felt alternately hot and cold and soft and hard, but the touching wasn’t the least scary. We walked three abreast halfway down the block and up the steps of a Victorian four flat, and Steve unlocked the door and flipped on a light switch. Jill dropped my arm and said, “There’s something Stevie’s been alter me to do for a long time, and now I’m just stoned enough to do it.” She skipped through the living room, and my eyes automatically circled the four walls.

Airline posters were crookedly Scotch-Taped along them, and of all the countries represented, Tahiti and Japan jumped out at me, as if I had once visited them. Shutting the door, Steve said, “I been all these places at least twice. You work for Pan-Am, you get two free trips a year, bring your chick if you want.” He pointed to the as clipped to my belt. “You a carpenter?”

I said, “I’m a tree surgeon,” and surveyed the room again, wondering why places I had never seen seemed so familiar. Steve was giving me a strange look, so to put him at ease I added, “Jill got me my job. I was broke when I first landed in town, and I hit Mighty-Man looking for a gig. Jill sent me down to the S.F. State employment office.”

Steve said, “Jill’s the friendly type,” and S.S. sent me a series of snapshots: Jill flirting and sleeping with other men, but always returning to Steve, who was grateful to have her back and would take her on long reconciliation trips to exotic places, courtesy of his employer; Steve brooding over being treated like a doormat, getting drunk with his mechanic buddies and railing against Jill, but always calling her from the bar to tell her he’d be late.

“What are you drinkin’, man?”

Steve’s voice snapped me out of the movie he had been co-starring in. “You got a beer?” I said.

“Does a bear shit in the woods? Come on, let’s hit the fridge.”

I followed Steve into a small kitchen. More airline posters were taped to the walls, but the grease-coated pictures of Paris and the Bavarian Alps did not dig at my memory. Steve caught my look again, and said, “You’re scopin’ them posters like a man who needs a vacation.” He opened the refrigerator and pulled out two cans of beer. When he handed me one, I said, “Yeah, Tahiti or Japan, maybe.”

Popping his can, Steve said, “Those places suck. The food sucks, and the Japs look like the slopes in ’Nam.” He guzzled beer and belched, then laughed. “Coors, breakfast of champions. We had the Coors Olympics at work last year. Guy who won drank four six-packs, held t in for two hours, then filled a gallon gas can with piss. That was the triathalon. Get it? Three events, like in the real Olympics. You been to ’Nam?”