He gave a sharp laugh and started to walk again. To the right, a light had become visible through the trees.
“I care not whether a man is good or evil,” Sam remarked in a stilted voice. “All that I care is whether he is a wise man or a fool.”
He looked at me expectantly.
“Another quote?” I murmured.
Sam smiled and nodded. I’d traveled a long way that day and was in no mood for party games.
“Beats me,” I said.
Sam didn’t reply. We had emerged onto a gently sloping clearing. I could just make out what seemed to be a number of huts and other buildings. We made for the largest of these, a long structure made of roughly hewn tree trunks with a steeply pitched roof. The light I had seen, a dull yellow glow, came from two small windows in the wall facing us. We walked around to the other side, where there was an imposing doorway with three steps leading up to it. Sam pushed the door open and ushered me inside.
The interior of the building seemed at first sight to consist of one huge room. The flooring was worn wooden planks and the walls made of the same tree trunks as outside, only painted white instead of dull red. The only light was provided by two naked bulbs which dangled on their cords from the ceiling some twenty feet apart. At the back of the room, opposite the door, a wood fire smoldered in an enormous fireplace made of beach rock. The air was drenched with the pungent smell of cedar smoke.
I took in all this at a rapid glance, but the feature of the room which most struck me was a large television set standing against the right-hand wall. A group of about five men and three women were sitting and lying in front of it, watching a movie featuring Sylvester Stallone blasting away with a weapon the size of a rocket launcher. They mostly looked to be in their early thirties, and were wearing the sort of cheap and durable clothes you can see on any street in the country. I was relieved to see that there was no sign of homespun fabrics or hippie regalia.
Sam picked up a remote control unit from the arm of a chair and stilled the video. Instead of protesting, the people who had been watching it all greeted him loudly, breaking into wide grins. Sam waved like a star restraining excess adulation with a mixture of appreciation and hauteur.
“This is Philip,” he said, turning to me. “He’s an old friend of mine. An old, old friend.”
They all stood there, studying me with expressions I could not exactly gauge, envy perhaps, or awe.
“Phil’s going to be staying with us,” Sam went on. “I’m really happy he’s here, and I want him to be happy too.”
The men and women all got to their feet and came toward me, smiling and holding out their hands.
“It’s great!” one of them said.
“Fantastic!” echoed another.
“We’re really happy you’re here!”
“Cool having you around!”
“Good to meet you!”
It all sounded crude and forced. Why were they coming on so strong to someone they’d only just met? They reminded me of salesmen welcoming a newcomer to the “team” under the beady eye of the manager.
“Way to play!” cried a tall man, gripping my hand forcefully. “You’re the man!”
Sam’s smile broadened.
“Andy used to be a baseball coach,” he said. “He treats everyone like they’re in the Little League.”
The others laughed uproariously at this quip.
“Hey, some of us are playing in the Majors now!” the tall man remarked in mock protest.
One of the men had stayed behind, munching on a package of corn chips and drinking beer from the bottle. He was staring at the frozen frame from the video, which showed Rambo in midburst, trembling as though from the pent-up frustrations of this enforced coitus interruptus.
“Hey, Mark!” called Sam. “Come and say hi.”
Mark got up with obvious reluctance and shambled over. He looked older than the others, more Sam’s age. He was a big guy, six one or two, and built to match. He wore a long beard divided into nine tiny pigtails tied up with silver bands, while his head was shaved almost bare, leaving just a dark stubble showing on the scalp. He wore a silver ring in his right ear and another in his left nostril, and glowered at me in a way I found physically intimidating.
“Hi,” he said with deliberate flatness.
Sam slapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey, loosen up, man!”
He turned to me.
“Mark’s kind of pissed because I kicked him out of his room so you’d have somewhere to sleep.”
“You didn’t need to do that!” I protested. “I could have slept anywhere. I don’t want anyone to have to give up …”
“Hey, it’s OK!” Sam replied. “Not a big deal. Right, Mark?”
Mark shot him a look, shrugged and walked back to the TV. I wasn’t the only person who was embarrassed by this, I realized. Several of the others shuffled about and looked at the floor as though they wished they were somewhere else. I found myself looking especially hard at one of the women.
I hadn’t noticed her the first time around, but now something about her struck me. She seemed different from the others, in a way I couldn’t quite pin down. She was dressed equally shabbily, in a pair of old khakis and a baggy gray sweater, but she managed to suggest that this was meant to conceal a great body, and had almost succeeded. Her face looked tired, but her brown eyes had an intelligent wariness which contrasted strongly with the flat, vapid expressions all around.
Our eyes met briefly. There was definitely a flicker of interest there, an intensity that made me realize that the facile smiles of the others had been directed at Sam, not at me. If I existed for them, it was simply as an extension of him.
“Come on, Phil,” Sam said, putting his arm around me. “I’ll show you where to bed down. We can talk in the morning.”
He led me around a massive rectangular dining table to a door at the end of the hall. The small room inside was furnished with a bed, a chair, a chest of drawers and an empty bookshelf. There was no window, and the air felt cold and damp.
“The Hilton it ain’t,” said Sam wryly. “This place was an old summer camp used to belong to some nutty sect. We’ve made a few improvements, but everything’s still kind of basic.”
“It’s great,” I murmured. “I just wished you hadn’t inconvenienced that guy for my sake.”
“It wasn’t just for your sake,” Sam replied, lowering his voice. “Truth is, Mark had it coming. He’s been getting out of line lately. This’ll be a good lesson.”
I wondered which line Mark had been getting out of, and why such a mean-looking dude would let someone like Sam push him around.
“Anyway, it’s just for now,” Sam went on. “Later on we can make other arrangements.”
“Oh, I won’t be able to stay long,” I said quickly “I’ve got to be getting back in a week or two, and there’s a couple of other places I want to see first.”
I wanted this established right away. I planned to stay a few days, a week at most. It would be something to look back on later as an “interesting experience.”
“If you need the can, there’s one across the yard,” Sam continued, ignoring my comment. “It’s kind of primitive, but you’ll get used to it.”
He stepped forward and grasped my hand.
“You’re going to find happiness here, Phil. A happiness you never dared dream would come to pass. I know that may seem kind of strange now, but it’s true. I’ll prove it to you.”
I smiled weakly and nodded.
“Great. Thanks a lot for inviting me.”
Sam turned in the doorway. He shook his head solemnly.
“You invited yourself, Phil. Everyone who comes here invites themselves. They’re the only invitations we accept.”
He turned and walked out, closing the door behind him. I undressed quickly, turned out the light and got into bed, pulling the covers over my head just as I had as a child in our badly heated house in Holland. Shivering with cold, I lay there sorting out stray sounds which seeped in through the cracks in the walls: a flurry of indistinct voices next door, rapid spasms of gunfire from the video, the dull thud of the Costeo goodies being stashed away, and then the disturbingly familiar sound of a child crying somewhere in the distance. That was the last thing I was conscious of, and when I thought it over in the morning I wasn’t sure if I had really heard it or if it was part of a dream.