(Let us have the body, the machinoix would demand. We need it for our science. Its soul has dissipated. What use is it to you? But Sam Oakenhurst would refuse to give it up. He would take it with him all the way to the Fault and pitch it in. The machinoix would not be offended. He was of their number. He could do no wrong, save betray another of their own.)
Mr Oakenhurst waded through the shallow mud of the lake shore. There seemed no end to it. At present the flat, troubled liquid reflected nothing, but every so often a shape threatened to break through the surface. The clouds had become a solid monochrome grey. Once in a while a long thread of bright scarlet would rise from below the horizon and give the sky a lizard’s lick. Mr Oakenhurst ran secret fingers over his most intimate scars. His longing for the past was like physical hunger. A madness. He prayed for a vessel to rescue him.
Mr Oakenhurst walked through the mud. Sometimes his legs would begin to tremble, threatening to give out completely, and he would panic, turning slowly to look back at Ambry’s and the long, dark jetty whose far point penetrated the mist.
‘Darling.’ Precious Mary led him home on these occasions.
‘Darling, Sam.’
Sam Oakenhurst decided that if he stayed another week he would take it as a sign and let New Orleans call him back. He shivered. He had made no real decision at all. He glared at the grey water. The sky, he thought, had turned the colour of rotten honey.
4. LA MUERTE TERRIO UN PRECIO
PRECIOUS MARY WAS not impatient to leave. She had discovered an interest in the vegetable garden and, with another woman called Bellpai’s, was planting in the assumption there would be some kind of new season. The garden lay behind the house, where it was most sheltered. Mary complained about the lack of sunlight, the clouds of dust which swam forever out of the north. ‘It seems like it’s the same clouds keep coming around,’ she said. ‘Like everything’s on repeat.’
‘Hope not,’ said Sam Oakenhurst, thinking of New Orleans. As a child he had played his favourite records until the phonograph’s machinery had started to show the strain. Gradually the voices grew sluggish and the music became a mixture of whines and groans until finally the records brought only depression, a sense of loss, a distorted memory of harmony and resolution. He sometimes thought the whole world was running down in a series of ever-widening, steadily dissipating circles. ‘I cannot believe that one thing cancels out another,’ he admitted to Precious Mary.
‘It’s like a roof.’ She looked at the sky. ‘Like a cave. We could be underground, Sam. Living on the innards of the world.’
Across the surface of measureless grey, past the end of their jetty, a couple of spots of colour floated. The spots moved as if with purpose but both Mr Oakenhurst and Precious Mary knew they drifted more or less at random around the perimeter of the lake, carrying with them an assortment of organic flotsam. Bones, feathers, twigs, tiny corpses made a lattice through which gleamed the dull gold and silver of the colour, blank round eyes staring out from a void. The colour seemed like a magnet to certain vegetable and animal matter. Other material it repulsed violently, not always predictably.
(We are the whole within the whole, Sam. Your ancestors knew that. And we are unique.)
‘I reckon Jack Karaquazian struck colour up on the Trace,’ mused Sam Oakenhurst. ‘But something happened that didn’t suit him. What the hell is that, Mary?’ He pointed out over the lake. Through the twilight a slow bulky shape was emerging. At first the jugador thought it might be the tapering head of a large whale. Then as it came nearer he realized it was not a living creature at all but a ramshackle vessel, shadowing the shore, a great broad raft about ninety by ninety, on which was built a floating shanty-town, a melange of dull-coloured shacks, tents, barrels and lean-tos. In the middle of this makeshift floating fortress stood a substantial wooden keep with a flat roof where other tents and packing-case houses had been erected so that the whole had the appearance of an untidy ziggurat made of animal hides, old tapestries, painted canvases, upholstery and miscellaneous pieces of broken furniture.
Observing what distinguished this floating junkpile, Precious Mary said: ‘Ain’t that queer, Sam. No metal, not much plastic ... ‘
‘And there’s why.’ Sam showed her the dull gleam of colour spilling up from under the raft’s edges. ‘She’s moving on a big spot. She’s built to cover it. You saw it. That kind of colour won’t take anything much that’s non-organic. It’s kind of like anti-electricity. They haven’t figured any real way of conducting the stuff. It can’t be refined or mined. It moves all the time so it’s never claimed. I guess these types have found the only use there is for it. Ahoy!’
5. MUCHOS GRACIAS, MON AMOUR
THE IDEA OF being trapped on a raft which would put the Texas Waters between him and New Orleans was immensely attractive to Mr Oakenhurst just then. There was no way of stopping the spot, only of slowing it down with metal lures floated out from the shore on lines. As soon as the goods had been thrown aboard, he jumped from the jetty to the slow-moving deck, shook hands with Captain Roy Ornate, master of The Whole Hog, and thanked him for the opportunity to take passage with him. He did not bother to announce his trade.
He had been allowed to carry no arms aboard The Whole Hog, no razor, no metal of any kind except alumite, and so glad was he to be on his way that he had accepted the terms, leaving his gold, his piles noires, his slender Nissan 404 and all other metal goods with Precious Mary. She had loaded the raft with so much collateral in the form of fresh provisions that she had put him in excellent credit with Captain Ornate. The bandy-legged pig-faced upriver rafter had lost his original trade to the Colorado Gap. ‘Took the river and half the State with it. You can still see the spray fifty kays away.’ He was a cheerful man who apologized for his rules. His methods were the only practical ones for the service he offered, which was, he admitted, not much. ‘Still, chances are this spot’ll carry us round to Waco and you’re halfway to Phoenix, or wherever it is you’re heading, mister. You won’t be old when you get there, but I can’t guarantee how long it will take ...
‘You won’t be bored, either, mister. There’s a couple of jugaderos in the main saloon glad to make room for another. This is an easy vessel, Mr Oakenhurst, and 1 hope you’ll find her comfortable. She’s rough and ready, I’ll grant, but we have no power weapons aboard and hardly any violence, for I don’t tolerate trouble. Those who make it I punish harshly.’
‘A man of my own principles, captain,’ said Sam Oakenhurst, conscious of the loss of his fancy links. His shirt was heavier on the wrists, the cuffs now decorated with antique Mickey and Minnie Mouse figures his daughter had given him for his twenty-fifth birthday, almost exactly forty-four seasons ago, and which he had never expected to wear in public. Now that the need had arisen he welcomed it. Wearing the links felt like some sort of confirmation. Serdia and Ona had died together on the Hattiesburg Roar, trying to escape an army of half-wild blankeys released by a shiver from the nearby pens. He had been in Memphis, running a powered game for Peabody and his fellow barons who could command all the necessary colour. He had been unable to resist.
Mr Oakenhurst had never known the detailed circumstances of his wife’s and daughter’s deaths and time had put that particular pain behind him. He sensed some link between his grief and his taste for machinoix torments. He had never, after all, thought to blame himself for the deaths. They had wanted to remain in Hattiesburg where everyone agreed it felt pretty stable. For a while he had wished he could die, too, that was all. Maybe he felt guilty for not following them.