T. Boyle - Budding Prospects

It was a stifling, bone-dry night in early October, a month from harvest (with hope, fear and a nod to the demons, we’d chosen my birthday, circled in black on the apocalyptic calendar, for the day we would reap what we’d sown). Gesh was gone, damping his inner fires in the anodynic embrace of Tahoe Nelda, and Phil and I were sitting up late — well past midnight — drinking big glasses of vodka and tonic, smoking pot and playing pitch. The fuel in the ancient Coleman lantern was burning low. I shuffled the cards. All the world was as hushed as if it were about to plunge into eternity.

Phil took the bid, and I could tell he had a killer hand by the way he let his eye wander casually over the room (he was contemplating the appointments, struck with the smart conjunction of couch, armchair and splintered end table, cards the furthest thing from his mind). He threw the queen of spades (the son of a bitch, I knew he had the king and jack back there, too), just as the lamp began to flicker. “Damn,” he said, raking in my deuce and slapping down the king. The light was fading fast. I studied his king for a long palpitating moment, as though debating the loss of another point card, and then with a grin laid down the ace. Of spades. “I’ll get it,” Phil said, jumping up to refill the lantern. “Make me another drink, will you?”

I got up and shuffled to the cooler in darkness as Phil fumbled for the flashlight, snatched the lantern from the table and hurried out the door. Ice. I pawed around, dropped some cubes in a pair of fresh glasses and felt the house rock gently as Phil thumped across the porch. CAUTION: DO NOT REFILL WHEN HOT, warned the inscription on the base of the lantern. I poured from bottles. Glug-glug-glug. Outside were the stars, the trees, the endless blanched hills. I settled in the darkness, drink in hand, and listened to the slow weary moan of the storage shed door as it pulled back on its hinges.

In August, I never thought I’d see September on the farm, let alone October. Any shred of hope I may have nurtured after the earlier disappointments — the reemergence of Jerpbak, my confinement to the property, the ongoing decimation of the crop — was dashed by the leapfrogging catastrophes of that nightmarish two-day period at the end of the month. In the space of just over thirty hours I’d managed to rearouse the viper’s pit of the Bum Steer, alienate Petra, sully Jerpbak’s mother, feel the pinch of Jones, witness the eruption of physical conflict between my partners and experience the onset of cardiac arrest in the terrible moment in which Aorta had gasped and I looked up to see that leering face in the window. Was ever man so beset by demons? I was ready to hang it up, flay myself through the streets, run to the authorities and turn myself in: I saw that face in the window and knew we’d reached the end. But here it was October, and we were alive and well and unincarcerated, and looking forward to reaping not thorns but dollars.

We’d been spared. For the moment, at any rate. The great jaws had come near, gaping so that all we could see was the darkness within, and then they’d rushed on by to gobble up some other luckless creature while we bobbed helplessly in the wake. August had left us with two choices: run or stay. If we ran, we would take next to nothing with us, the plants having barely begun to bud. If we stayed, we faced loss, disorder, sorrow and ruination. We stayed. Through inertia more than anything else. We were stuck in gear, crushed by indecision and apathy, unable to throw down our shovels and hoses no matter what the cost. Like the mule that goes on pulling its cart after the muleskinner drops dead of sunstroke, we went on. Out of necessity. Out of boredom, fatigue, confusion. Out of habit.

It was in this state that we awaited Jones. We waited through that long Tuesday, Phil, Gesh and I (Dowst and Vogelsang had vanished, of course), waited grimly, heroically, waited like prisoners on death row. Jones wanted ten thousand. Between us we had sixteen dollars and forty-two cents. Noon came and went. No Jones. We were puzzled, anxious. Had he gone to the police after all? Had he forgotten the whole thing? Had he died and gone to hoods’ heaven? Night fell. We sat in darkness so we could see him approaching. We emptied half a gallon of vodka. Gesh smoked two packs of cigarettes. Jones didn’t show. By the third or fourth day the tension began to ease, and we forgot him for minutes at a time as we went about our chores and fought the tedium with the usual round of drinks, bombers, cheap paperbacks, tortured naps, horseshoes, Monopoly and cards.

A week after the appointed date, we were jolted from our postprandial torpor by the throaty roar of a foreign car negotiating the hill. I looked into my co-workers’ eyes and saw fear, despair and resignation. We shuffled outside and stood in a grim knot on the porch. We weren’t running. I chewed my lip and watched the trees for the first heartless red flash of Jones’s MG. Phil began to whistle tunelessly. As the sound of the engine grew closer, I began to whistle, too. Oh, Susannah , I whistled, don’t you cry for me , but then Vogelsang’s Saab rounded the corner and lurched into the field, and I felt as if I’d been resurrected from the dead.

Unfortunately, the appearance of Vogelsang’s Saab did not necessarily indicate the appearance of Vogelsang (though we didn’t realize it at the time, he’d already paid his final visit to the summer camp). Aorta was alone. We watched as she slid out of the car and made her sinuous way toward us, a flat white envelope clutched in her hand. “Hi,” she said, her face as expressionless as the late Mao Tse-tung’s. I saw that she’d dyed her hair anew: a two-inch azure stripe now ran from her brow to the nape of her neck, giving her the look of some bush creature, some weirdly striped antelope or prowling cat. “Vogelsang said to give this to you.”

“Where is he?” Gesh demanded. “What’s he doing about all this shit that’s coming down?”

“Jones never showed,” I said.

She glanced up at me, then focused on the crumpled Pennzoil can at my feet. “We know,” she murmured. “Read the letter.” And then, as if she were messenger to a colony of lepers, she turned to hurry off before we could contaminate her.

I tore open the envelope, which bore my name across the front in the blocky misaligned characters kidnappers clip from magazines in gangster movies. The letter inside was pasted up in the same way:

Felix:

I have contacted J., having found his address in the court record for his arrest. He will not bother us further. I was able to bargain him down to $5,000, which I paid him in cash. The money, of course, is a debit against out net earnings, and will have to be deducted from our respective shares.

The other problem, the problem of S., has I think been resolved, and far less painfully (see enclosure).

The Fates are smiling on us, yes?

Yours

V.

Phil and Gesh read over my shoulder.

“Five thousand bucks,” Phil said. “Ouch.”

“I’d kill him for five hundred,” Gesh muttered, and I wasn’t sure if he was referring to Jones or Vogelsang.

“What enclosure?” I said.

The car door slammed. Vroom , the engine turned over with a low sucking moan. Vroom-vroom. I glanced up, noting absently that Vogelsang had removed the license plates, than bent for the crumpled envelope. Inside, equally crumpled, was a newspaper clipping. LOCAL GIRL MISSING, I read. Savoy Skaggs, 17, a June graduate of Willits High School and a resident at 199 °Covelo Road … No, it couldn’t be, I thought, the moment poetry, sweet as revenge, victory, the beatific light that shines on the darkest hour. … no leads … investigating the possibility … Of course, of course. She’s run off to consort with Eugene, suave and irresistible offshoot of G. P. Turner, the gentleman pugilist. I pictured her hitchhiking to Wiesbaden, thumb out, skirt hiked, sick to death of being a conniving country bitch and bar slut, hastening to marry off her little mangoes before they rotted. Love conquers all.