“Could you always do that?” Marge asked.
“Hot-wire it? No, I learned it over there. From a Vietnamese.”
“That’s a switch.”
“Yes,” Converse said. “It is.”
There was a clear road ahead of them. For nearly a half hour they climbed—for the hump of the ridge, then the road descended in hairpins along the north side of the wall. Marge poked her head out and looked up and down the track.
“We’re fucked now,” she said. “There’ll be cops.”
“It hadn’t occurred to me,” Converse said. “I suppose there will be.”
“What do we tell them when they stop us?”
Converse sighed. “I don’t know. If they give us back to Antheil we better get a receipt for ourselves. Antheil,” he told her, “is that guy back there.”
“He must be a pretty corrupt cop.”
“Yes,” Converse said.
“I suppose,” Marge said, “they were waiting for us all the time.”
“Yes, they were.”
“I knew it would happen.”
“I did too,” Converse said. She was leaning over to see his face. He kept his eyes on the road.
“Did they give you a tough time?”
“Pretty tough.”
“I knew they must have,” Marge said, “when you said they had Janey.”
“Sorry about that.”
“You couldn’t help it.”
“You know,” Converse explained, “they said… or else.”
“Right,” Marge said.
After the next turn, they saw lights ahead—the tail lights of a line of trucks moving before them out of the valley. They had overtaken the main body of the Brotherhood’s retreat. They moved behind the last truck at about fifteen miles an hour. Small brown fingers clung to its tailgate grid, frightened eyes peered from under blankets at their headlights.
“He wants us to pick him up,” Marge said.
“I heard him.”
She was silent.
“Even if we get that far,” Converse told her, “he won’t be there. You must realize that.” She had buried her face in her hands. “I’m sick,” she said. She curled herself against the seat. “Look,” she said after a moment, “I have to try. But you don’t. Maybe if we get through here you can get up to Janey.”
“He won’t be there.”
“Him,” she said, “he might be.”
“If he is,” Converse told her wearily, “he’ll just have the dope and the goddamn thing will start over again. He’s not a sane person. And he’s not very bright.”
She wiped her face with her sleeve.
“He came down for you,” she said. “That’s why he came down. We could have gotten out.”
Fatigue wore him down. He kept himself hunched forward to see through the dust and gloom ahead and his muscles ached.
“That can’t be true.”
“He’s not a sane person,” Marge said. “And he’s not very bright. Sometimes,” she told him, “people do simpleminded things like that. They take a chance to help their friends. Can’t you respond to that?”
“Yes, I can respond to it,” Converse said. “I’m responding to it. He won’t be there.”
“Haven’t you ever done anything like that?”
“Yes and no,” Converse said. When he turned to her, she moved her back to him pressing her forehead against the hard metal seatback. “Like what?” he demanded. “I don’t know what that guy did or why he did it. I don’t know what I’m doing or why I do it or what it’s like.”
“It’s something simple,” Marge said. She twisted in the seat, bringing her head to rest against the plastic window. “Jesus, I think I’m really sick now.”
“Nobody knows,” Converse told her confidently. “That’s the principle we were defending over there. That’s why we fought the war.”
_
WHEN HE WAS PARTWAY UP THE HILL, THE MOON ROSE over the mountains on his left, tracing the ridge line in hard silver light. Moonlight made the wound hurt more. He eased down on one knee and slowly rolled over a shelf of loose rock until his weight was supported by his hip and good shoulder. Tucking his knees up, he rocked slightly on the ground, trying to shake the pain off. It had seemed bearable at first and he had climbed to the place he was by marching to songs and cadences in his mind.
It was like eating morning glory seeds. Not so bad at first, you think you can take more and more of them but after a while they’re the worst thing in the world. At first you think, well, I’ve had these before but presently they get to you.
Part of himself had seemed to come off in his hand; it had taken him some time to realize that the bloody mass he held was a canvas bag, some kind of expanding cartridge that had struck him under the arm and sent him sprawling.
A man with a beard had fired it.
It hurt him very much to stand up. He closed his eyes to the moonlight and began to erect a blue triangle against the base of his skull. The background was deep black and there was some effort involved in delineating the borders of blue. At the heart of the triangle, he introduced a bright red circle and within the circle he concentrated his pain. The circle glowed and lit the triangle from within, making it lighter against the blackness.
Give me a triangle and a song, he thought, and I’ll climb this son of a bitch. For the song you wanted something simple and pleasant because you would be hearing it for hours over and over
and it could drive you out of your mind when the pain got to it.
He started up to “Red River Valley.” His breathing felt so mechanical and unrewarding that he feared his lungs were not filling, that there was a puncture somewhere — but he convinced himself that his trunk was sound, the vital organs untouched and functioning.
He was glad to be alone. The triangle held and his legs with it.
The most difficult part of the climb was the rain. It was light rain, that grew warmer and warmer, jungle rain that closed off the breeze — it took an act of concentration for him to realize that it was the clearest of moonlit nights, that the ground on which he walked was dry as dry bones, as chalk, as dry as his mouth was dry.
At the entrance to the shelter, he took a few deep breaths and brought the bag out and slung it by its straps across the rifle sling on his good shoulder.
The trees at the top of the hill were full of lights and music; they wrecked his concentration and infuriated him. The mission building was flashing on and off. He made steadily for the carved doorway; when he had climbed the steps and passed through it he was disappointed that the pain did not subside. He would have to take it in with him.
Dieter had turned off the interior lights. The only illumination in the room came from the flashes outside and the tubes of the console in front of him. When he saw Hicks, he stood up in alarm.
“How about some light,” Hicks said.
Dieter lit a desk lamp and closed the switches on his forest. Hicks sat down in the stiff Spanish chair and tossed the little bloody bag which had wounded him on the floor. He had carried it all the way up the hill, clenched in his right hand. He flung the dope at the foot of Dieter’s altar.
Dieter stared at the things and then at Hicks.
“What’s the matter with you, Dieter?”
“You’ve been shot. You’re bleeding.”
“Did you think everybody was kidding?” Hicks asked, trying to pull his matted shirt away from the wound. “You been away, man. You been living in the country too long.”
“What happened?” Dieter asked breathlessly. “Who’s out there now?”
“I got their fucking car with an M-70,” Hicks said laughing. “Did you see it?”