His eye was distracted by a gull riding out on a gust of air, holding wings steady and straight as it floated in a gentle swaying motion.
“Do you have an urge to go into that water?” Wendy said. He studied the freckles on her nose and her eyes. He remained silent.
“I’m sorry about what I said. My dad knew his story. You don’t. You know a little bit more now and you’re not as pathetic.”
“And I’m sorry about what I said. But I meant it. I can’t really say how I feel, I mean exactly how I feel, until I know exactly what the deal is.”
“Love means saying you’re sorry over and over and over again,” she said, and they laughed.
“I really don’t want to go in the water,” he said.
“You looked, sitting there, like a man who wanted to go for a swim.”
“Maybe a quick romantic dip? To wash the smoke out of my hair.”
“We should get in the car and keep driving. We don’t want to arrive at the target in the dark. Not if we can help it.”
* * *
The guns were out in the backseat, arranged neatly, along with two grenades. Miles and miles of forest were making Singleton’s head ache. In his report, he’d describe how the trees had been planted in a straight line that somehow suggested eternity, forcing the eye down long corridors of green, creating a strobe of light on the road when the sun was at the right angle. The only clear signal on the radio was from Canada, a CBN show playing Bach, the notes too pure and clear and precise.
“I’ll remember my military training when the time comes,” Singleton said. “I did the hand signals, on the porch back at the safe house. They came to me. I remembered details. A diagram of a clip and a spring came to me.”
“We don’t really have much of a plan, do we?”
“Training says approach target with assurance. Entrapment is the result of not having an exit plan, a detailed map of the stakeout area.”
In the report, he’d say the trees in their straight lines seemed to draw him onward toward Rake, either to terminate him or to confirm his status as dead. He’d tweak it as needed.
“Stop with the report,” Wendy said. She was eating a C-ration bar. He glanced and saw her tooth marks on it.
They drove until abruptly the trees thinned out and the road passed through a gate in a chain-link fence and the sky opened overhead, a galvanized, post-sunset gray. Right here, he thought. This is where the north begins. This is where at night the sky shimmers with cosmic activity. This is where the imaginations of most folks reach a limit and they draw a blank, like the isolated edge of my Causal Events Package. The beauty of the land disappeared as soon as the first house appeared, a one-story with peeling paint and a yard littered with stone monuments (some kind of private graveyard?), white concrete angels with stubby wings, three crosses, absurdly white, seemingly lit from within. On a wooden pole a black flag was snapping in the wind. Three choppers sat parked in the driveway, lined up side by side, like a chorus line, exactly at the same angle.
Wendy poked through the ashtray and found the half-burned joint. She lit it up.
“Late May the snow finally breaks and then in mid-October the snow begins. Not much of a season for riding a chopper.”
“Want a hit?” she said.
“Keep it low, don’t let it show. I’ve got to maintain an edge.”
A gas station. A liquor store. A tavern with a cop car — a star on the side panel, faded, gray — parked in front. Past a stoplight (blinking yellow), the lake revealed itself, a vast gray corrugation of waves, an inland sea.
“Give me a hit,” he said.
Headed east from the Harbor of Refuge as per instructions, he’d write, if he wrote. Took Deer Park Road. The lake was relatively calm.
They drove through the wind-battered landscape. This part of the state looked completely untarnished, but it was deep into the so-called Zone of Anarchy. At any moment a gang of bikers might appear beyond the bug specks on the windshield.
When they got near Rake’s encampment, Singleton pulled over and parked the car in the grass. Wendy kept lookout while he checked the weapons. He handed her a gun and watched as she kissed the barrel for good luck and tucked it into her waistband. The night was getting cool. She put on her leather jacket with fringe. (In the report, he’d say they were wearing the regimental uniform with badges, as per regulation. Pants clean pressed and shirts neatly tucked. He’d say they made it clear that they were agents from the Corps. He’d say they had assessed the road situation — dead quiet — and assured themselves that no one was coming. He’d say they were keenly aware of the idea of north, remembering, from the manual, that northern climes enhanced the intuitive clarity of agents while increasing the psychotic intensity of failed enfolds.)
“Hug,” she said, pulling him close. He would omit from the report the desire he felt for her. There was a faint smell of smoke in the air.
“Time to reconnoiter,” he said.
“I fucking love that word. Reconnoiter.”
Approach the perimeter and establish the target in relation to the landscape and make necessary adjustments, he might write in the report. They stopped and listened. A clear intuitive drive. That was the phrase he’d use. What does it mean, he thought, that all I can do is try to frame this in the technical terms of a report I might write. He shook his head. He was feeling lonely, isolated.
There was a single goat in the field to the left. It made a sound like a laugh. Then another.
The gun slung on his shoulder; the grenade hanging from his belt.
Farther down the road they came to a driveway with a mailbox, a sign that said KEEP OUT, and a skull impaled on a stick. The skull was clearly human, not dog or goat. It was missing the jaw and bleached clean and white.
Merle had said the hideout was at the end of the paved road. Two rutty tracks ran through thick weeds and plunged into a dark hole in the woods. To the right, what Singleton would call a windrow in his report. Windrow was the word he’d use. The windrow formed a perimeter of deadfall with a clearing that was visible as a brighter glow of purplish light. He put up his hand to signal halt. They listened to the faraway sea sound of the surf and the wind rising in the pines, dying away, rising again. Nonspecific vibrations at the coordinates’ location, as specified in prior vision. Dangerous vibrations, northern negative lure. This had to be the feeling you got being on point in Nam.
Singleton crouched down and Wendy crouched beside him. You can enfold the trauma but you can’t enfold the age and time. In the field you’ll be thinking about the war, starting from the moment you stepped onto a Pan Am airline flight and heard the stewardess sweet-talk you, serving coffee, knocking hips, flirting, to the final moment you were lifted up and out of the hellhole to return home, passing fresh grunts on the way in, their assholes clenched, their faces fresh and bright as they went to their destinies. Just can’t wash all that away, no matter what, Klein had said. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
The smell of her patchouli and the glow of her hair beside him. He stood and she stood. They walked forward a few yards and stopped.