Robert Stone - Children of Light

“Yes,” Walker said. “I know.”

“If you don’t believe me,” Lu Anne said. “Just ask me my name.”

“What’s your name, Lu Anne?”

“My name is Legion,” she said. “For we are many.”

For a minute or so she let him hold her.

“Is it all right now?” he asked.

“It’s not all right,” she said. “But the worst is over.”

He was delighted with the reasonableness of her answer. He went to get himself a drink. When he returned Lu Anne was lying in the stack of seed husks.

“Well,” he said, “that looks comfortable.”

“Oh yes,” she said, “very comfortable.”

He lay down beside her in the warm sun and buried his arms in the seeds.

“Downright primal.”

“Primal is right,” Lu Anne said. She laughed at him and shook her head. “You don’t know what this pile is, do you? Because you’re a city boy.”

She sat in the pile, sweeping aside the seed husks with a rowing motion until the manure it covered was exposed and she sat naked in a mix of mud and droppings, swarming with tiny pale creatures that fled the light.

“There it is,” she told Walker. “The pigshit at the end of the rainbow. Didn’t you always know it was there?”

“You’ll get an infection,” Walker said. He was astonished at what Lu Anne had revealed to him. “You’re cut.”

“Out here waiting to be claimed, Gordon. Ain’t it mystical? How about a drink, man?”

When he bent to offer her the bottle she pulled him down into the pile beside her.

“I had a feeling you’d do that,” he said. “I thought …”

“Stop explaining,” Lu Anne told him. “Just shut up and groove on your pigshit. You earned it.”

“I guess it must work something like an orgone box,” Walker suggested.

“Walker,” Lu Anne said, “when will it cease, the incessant din of your goddamn speculation? Will only death suffice to shut your cottonpicking mouth?”

“Sorry,” Walker said.

“Merciful heavens! Show the man a pile of shit and he’ll tell you how it works.” She made a wad of mud and pig manure and threw it in his face. “There, baby. There’s your orgone. Have an orgoneism.”

She watched Walker attempt to brush the manure from his eyes.

“Wasn’t that therapeutic?” she asked. “Now you get the blessing.” She reached out and rubbed the stuff on his forehead in the form of a cross. “In the name of pigshit and pigshit and pigshit. Amen. Let us reflect in this holy season on the transience of being and all the stuff we done wrong. Let’s have Brother Walker here give us only a tiny sampling of the countless words at his command to tell us how we’re doing.”

“Not well,” Walker said.

“Yeah, we are,” Lu Anne told him. “We’re going with the flow. This is where the flow goes.”

“I wondered.”

“Yeah,” Lu Anne said, “well, now you know.”

“I suppose anything would be better than this,” Walker said, but he was not so sure. He had come chasing enchantments. After all, he supposed, he would as soon be blessed in pigshit by Lu Anne as in holy water by some sane woman’s hand.

“I’ll tell you what we can do now that we’re here,” Lu Anne suggested. “We can have a pigshit fight. How’s that sound?”

“That’d be fine,” Walker said.

For a while they exchanged handfuls of pigshit, heaving it toward each other in an increasingly halfhearted manner.

“This is the scene they left out of Porky’s. The pigshit fight scene. We should have one in The Awakening. ”

“When you’re washed in the blood,” Lu Anne said, “the shit is sure to follow.” She looked down at her bare breasts, fondling them. “And milk. But I have none and never will.” She held each breast between her filthy fingers and squeezed her nipples. “I should have tits all around,” she said. “I should have seven like a dog.” She lay back resting her head and shoulders in the chaff; her lower body stayed in the muck. “I wish they could take me out for fertilizer with the pigshit. I’d be worth more as fertilizer than I ever was as an actor.” She sat up, looking at Walker with cool curiosity. “What’s with you, Gordon? What you all seized up about?”

Walker tried to compose himself.

“I’m a little tired,” he said.

Walker saw her gaze sweep past him toward the top of the road. When he turned he saw two Mexicans in the green uniform of the tourist police. One of them was holding a shotgun pointing in their direction — not quite aiming it, but coming close. Both of the policemen wore expressions of profound melancholy.

“Hi, you all,” Lu Anne said to them.

A cluster of little brown children were at the foot of the posada stairs waiting to watch them as they passed. Walker led the descent, holding Lu Anne by the hand. Both of them stared straight ahead, affecting a sort of blindness. A woman shouted from the kitchen and the children scattered to conceal themselves.

The woman who had shouted came out to be paid. She had the physique of the valley people; dark and round with high cheekbones and bold intelligent eyes. Her husband was hiding in the kitchen.

Walker gave the woman fifty dollars. She raised her chin and lowered it.

“ Ochenta ,” she said. Walker gave her the extra thirty dollars without complaint. It was good, he thought, to be in a place where people knew what they needed.

When she had been paid, she backed away without turning, her eyes downcast. The afternoon sun streamed in through the open front door and it seemed to Walker that she was avoiding the shadow Lu Anne cast.

Outside, the two tourist police were waiting and the man who had driven them to Monte Carmel, standing at something like attention beside his car. Walker and Lu Anne got in the taxi and the policemen into their cruiser.

“How much did you give her?” Lu Anne asked.

“Eighty,” Walker told her.

It had not been a bad buy. They had been able to shower at the posada and children were sent out to buy clothes for them. The tourist police and a state policeman in town had been paid a total of four hundred dollars.

“Fortunately,” Walker said, “money’s waterproof.”

They were both barefoot. Walker was wearing a pair of Mexican jeans he could not button and an aloha shirt with red palm trees on it that said MAZATLAN. Lu Anne had a white rayon blouse and a wide print skirt that was too small for her.

At the airfield, young Benson was pacing beside his plane, drinking a can of Sprite. He managed a warped smile and a silly little wave as they drove up. When they got out, the taxi driver turned at once for town. The police parked beside the runway and stayed there.

As they took off into the sun, a score of children and teenagers broke from cover and ran out for a closer glimpse of them. The goats that had been grazing beside the strip fled. Not until they were truly airborne did the police car drive away.

Within minutes they saw the dazzling sea ahead. They were both in the rear seat. The Benson boy pulled his headphones from his ears and turned to speak to them. His expression was one of grave perplexity.

“Don’t ask questions, son,” Walker said to him. “Fly.”

One of the Benson drivers took them back to Bahía Honda. When they passed China Beach, just outside the mouth of the bay, Lu Anne said that she wanted to get out and walk.

“I’m exhausted,” Walker said. “I can’t believe you’re not.”

“I’m fine,” Lu Anne said. “I walk here all the time at low tide. It’s a much shorter distance at sea level.”

The driver pulled over and they went to the edge of the bluffs.

“See how low the tide is?” Lu Anne said to Walker. “And we can be back at my bungalow before dark.”