“Your father will be fine,” he said. He didn’t believe it. Fine for the old man meant upholding a vision of the self that had been created at a young age, in circumstances that were unusual — the Black Forest, snow, youthful cunning and gumption set against huge historical forces. He’d be fighting the wrong war.
Back behind the wheel she drove quietly and carefully and continued thinking, he guessed, about her father’s chances. At least the old man could remember his combat training. Some said — and this might just be one more of the countless rumors, of course — that the mechanics, the fighting techniques, the useful stuff could never be lost, because it was somehow entwined into your sense of destiny (something like that). It was all tiresome. Rumors appeared around a context of need; they were nothing but a formation of an idea around a precise desire.
“What are you thinking about,” she said later. Darkness had fallen quickly. He listened to the engine, felt it vibrating at his feet, on the floorboards.
“Nothing,” he said. She shook her head, letting her hair drift into and remain in her eyes. Then she took one hand from the wheel and swept the hair back into place.
An hour later as they were nearing the safe house, he rooted in the duffel for the Corps kit bag, which contained pills that could light you up when you needed a zip. He took one and she took one and within minutes their eyes were wide open, their night vision enhanced. When the house came into view, a two-story farmhouse with a wide porch, across a wide field, they could make out a strange lean-to structure behind it. A small chimney in the structure was releasing puffs of smoke that looked chalky in the rising moon. Nothing moved. Behind the structure were dark woods.
“It certainly doesn’t look safe,” Wendy said.
“That smoke in the back’s from the forge. Klein said the operative is some kind of blacksmith. We should sit for a few minutes and assess this in a professional manner. You know training. Never think a safe house is safe until you feel safe.”
“Never feel safe unless you know you’re safe, I think it was,” Wendy said.
They waited. The zip pills had given them a good, clean professional edge, an esprit de corps intensified by a sense that they were facing a convergence between what the Corps called Forces of Inherent Evil imported into the culture from abroad (meaning Vietnam) and what the Corps called Trained Moral Positioning. When he mentioned it, she told him to shut up.
* * *
In his operations report he’d write about how they got around to the back of the house undetected, on tiptoe, past a mound of cycle parts rusted together — smelling of rust and oil — and then past a pump with a broken handle (every farm in the state had a pump with a broken handle). Discrete puffs of smoke rose from the forge structure, white, signaling to the sky. Singleton put his finger to his lips. Let the scene gather some meaning, he thought. Hearing the absurd pounding of his own heart, he wondered if his ability to sense danger ahead had been enfolded, or simply lost in the war. Wendy watched as he lifted his gun, held it like a divining rod, let it quiver slightly, and then, as if following its advice, moved forward with a sudden assuredness along the side of the house toward the front porch. (Why the front? he might be asked later. We went to the front because the front was maximally distant from the forge, and the forge was emitting bad vibes, not just smoke — I mean, it was weird smoke, sir. So we went around to the front and I told Agent Wendy Z to wait. I used the recommended hand signals. I did the toe-to-heel walk, as instructed.)
On the porch he touched the top of his head once with his palm, and then swung one arm in a windmill motion, the old Nam signal to provide cover. He stood and listened. Just the tick of wood contracting in the cool night. Another rotting porch in a state of rotting porches. He moved slowly to the window and then swept a portal in the dust and ash. Wendy came up behind him as he peered inside, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. In the pale light from under a door he could see an old pump organ against one wall. Hanging from the ceiling were six vague shapes, slightly conic, widening as they approach the floor, swaying slightly. He looked out the corner of his eye. The six shapes were bodies hung by their feet, bound tight, with arms extended out to the floor beneath them, some of them moving slightly.
(He knew what he’d have to say when he was being debriefed. He’d say it took him a while to make sense of what he was seeing, those forms hanging down, although for God’s sake the truth was he knew right away what he was seeing.)
“He’s hanging them by their feet.”
Beneath the shapes were oily pools of blood. (No, sir, he’d say. We weren’t sure what we were seeing exactly. They were slightly conic in shape and seemed to be swaying — but the light coming from the back room, a bit of light from under a door, was hardly enough to make them visible.)
A voice came from the yard. It was deep, husky, with a French-Canadian accent. “Them is the ones on the edge of oblivion, not quite there yet but on the way.”
Singleton and Wendy stopped breathing.
“Give me the passphrase and I’ll consider your salvation. Otherwise you’ll hang up there with those folks.”
“The dominion of the Corps is over memory ceded to terror,” Singleton said.
“Non-fucking-sense,” the voice said. “That was last month’s passphrase. Every man north of Grand Rapids knows that one. Give it one more try and get it right or you’re dead. This old buddy of mine is itching to go off. The clip longs to ease the burden of the spring, so to speak.”
Singleton visualized the rectangular spring pressing the follower. (Don’t remove the follower from the spring when cleaning, he remembered. Jiggle spring follower to install. If the spring comes loose, turn in the pieces. Don’t fix in the field.)
“Come out with it, folks,” the voice said. “Last chance to give the correct passphrase.”
“The stillness within is still within,” Wendy said.
“Correct,” the voice said. “Now turn around so I can get a look at you.”
He was at the foot of the stairs holding his flashlight to his chin. His face was caked with ash. He waved them down with the gun.
“We’d better go around back. You never know who might be watching us out there.” He gestured at the woods with the gun. “You two trainees look so out of place I’m surprised you’re not dead right now.” He staggered in his buckskin chaps, swinging a gimpy leg, motioning for them to follow him around to the back of the house. He opened the forge door and led them into a dark room with a low ceiling. The forge wasn’t much, just a small brick structure with a pile of charcoal and a bellows beneath a steel hood. Hanging from the ceiling — Singleton imagined he’d write in his report, if he lived — were all manner of motorcycle parts, chopper bars, along with what looked to be dried animal hides or jerky.
“The name’s Merle,” he said, bowing slightly. “The gang members, the wayward failed enfolds, whatever you call them down there, catch the scent of the smoke and know I’m working metal. That lures them in here and I do some work on their choppers and gain some trust. I was a biker myself, before the Corps got ahold of me, so to speak. I enjoy orderly flames after seeing so much fire that wasn’t controlled, so to speak.”
He lifted up his shirt to show a scar that flared out from his belly. (A burn scar, Singleton thought. If I were looking for conspiracy I’d say we’re linked.)
“This doesn’t look like much, but it produces brilliant heat,” he said. He pumped the bellows and stuck a poker in and shifted the coals.
Singleton would put in the report that the fire hurt their eyes because the zip pills made light too light. We were standing there blinking, trying to see in the brightness.