“What’s your name?” Wendy said.
“I go simply by Hank and this is Meg Allen. She’s the one you’re looking for, if you’re looking for a girl who was kidnapped by Rake. If that’s what you’re looking for, that’s who you’ve got right here. And over there is my mother, who got the name MomMom by me when I was a little kid — I could only say things twice, I guess, when I was a certain age — and when she got her dementia she had to be called that or her fits would get worse, so we all just got used to calling her that,” he said.
“MomMom’s sick,” the woman named Meg Allen said.
“She’s up and about now, but she’s been bedridden since the report came in about the president. It would help us if we see your badges,” Hank added.
“They’re in the car,” Wendy said.
“In case we caught you and held you hostage.”
“You could put it that way.” Singleton lifted the gun slightly.
“You can put the gun on me as long as you want but I’m not about to tell you what’s going on until I’m sure you are who you say you are and doing what you say you should be doing.”
“You cover them and I’ll go to the car,” Singleton said. He felt the exhaustion of the last two days in his arms, holding the gun. The weight of being armed, Klein would’ve called it. Holding death at your fingertips too long was unbearable.
I had an intuitive recognition of the instability inherent in the scene and an awareness of my own awareness as it related to my enfolded material, he’d write in the report.
What is this sadness? It is the particular sadness that comes at the end of a certain sequence of planned events — an entire summer, in this case. Again, he had a sense that he knew the man at the table and perhaps the girl, too, and it saddened him. Had the entire summer been dedicated to achieving this scene?
“You OK?” he said to Wendy.
“I can hold them,” she said.
“How far up the road are you parked?” Hank asked.
“About a quarter mile.”
“That’s probably fine. Farther away you’d be in trouble because of Black Flag. They come in on recon missions, poke around, look for signs of change, and then leave. They don’t dare come up too close, not yet.
“I’ll pull into the driveway.”
“Make sure no one follows you in.”
It was a beautiful night outside. He kept his gun out as he walked up the road to the car. He stood for a second, listening to a distant bike roaring. Assessing, trying to pick up a scent, an awareness. He had — he admitted to himself — been hoping to put a bullet into the skull of the man named Rake, to get it all over in one quick action, to reach an end equal to what he imagined.
He could feel the wild rage of the lake just through the trees, the vast, heavy gravity of its cold depth. This was a land that held on against the forces of wind and raging snow, and the air had a hint of winter and iron. The brutal individuality of the men and women who lived here had been channeled by historical forces, by the anger in the wind, and yet he knew, he was sure standing there, taking another deep breath, lighting a cigarette, that there were also good people, and that it was just as likely, in the scheme of chance and luck, that a soft, warm, cleanly lit kitchen scene would be found in a house hidden from the road.
* * *
An hour later they were in the living room, still tense but exhausted. Two old sofas faced a coffee table and, in the corner, a wooden stereo console stood with records piled on each side. Sinatra’s youthful face stared out from one, his lips pursed in a smile flushed of irony. Don’t fuck with me, the smile said. I’m humorous but only to a certain degree. His hat was cocked to one side and he looked like a man — Singleton thought — who had been enfolded again and again until he lost sight of everything but his body and his voice. On the other side of the console the Rolling Stones sneered at the world, completely unfolded. They jeered and mocked and looked out with twisted lips and a frankness that was clear and brutal but honest.
“You folks go ahead and interrogate us now if that’s what you want to do,” Hank said. “If you want to start right in, feel free, but I’m not going to be ready to confess all the details until I’m sure you’re not just here looking to see if Rake is alive or dead, to confirm the information and pass it on to some gang members out there waiting to know the truth so they can strike as hard and fast as they want, and believe me, that’s what they want because Rake called in accounts all over the state, even up into Canada, and made as many enemies as he could.”
The subjects struck an assumptive pose of innocence that had a tinge of disguise. The feeling — he’d find a more technical term when the time came — was that Meg and Hank were enfolds partly unfolded, something like that. Search of premises revealed absence of target. Established a friendly cooperative vibe — again, another word? — and a casual rapport via the use of marijuana.
Singleton sat alongside Wendy on the couch, still holding his gun, resting it against his knee but keeping it aimed slightly away from Hank. His hand was tired and his head was starting to pound from the buzz.
“What can we say that will assure you that we’re agents?” Wendy said. “We’ve shown you our badges and the papers and explained that our mission is to come up here to find Rake.”
“I’d like to hear something that testifies to your nature,” Hank said.
Singleton explained that they were running ahead of the riots downstate, but that they hadn’t been sent up ahead of some kind of collapse.
“Anybody can buy a badge and papers on the black market. All we want now is to be left in peace. If I tell you — I mean, really confirm it somehow, although I’m not sure how we’d do that because we don’t have something to show you in the way of a body — that he’s dead, not lurking out there, or on a run, coming back any moment, are you gonna take that information back to the world and bring every member of Black Flag, every man Rake’s ever screwed over in one of his bad deals, not to mention all the men he betrayed in Vietnam. Are they going to swarm our encampment?”
“You can trust us,” Wendy said.
“How do I know?”
She leaned in and kissed Singleton and put her hand on his knee.
“That’s a good sign. How about we do this? You place the guns on the table and we kick back here and see what happens. You can keep your guns trained if that helps you, but consider the vibe. Truth is, I’m close to believing you are who you say you are, and I don’t want to string this out just for the sake of stringing it out, so let’s put some music on and see how it goes.”
“You’re a man of the woods,” Singleton said.
“No, I’m a man of the forest. There’s a big difference between the two, but I’ll spare you the lecture right now.”
“Thank God,” Meg said with a laugh of newfound happiness.
Deep in the night, they turned the music off and listened to the night sounds, the moan of mufflers down the road. Sometime, near dawn, they drifted asleep — Wendy and Singleton against each other on one couch, Meg and Hank against each other on the other, MomMom upstairs snoring loudly.
Singleton woke first. He’d been dreaming of a cozy, warm house full of love. He’d also been in a train looking out into the dark night at a house down in a hollow, one single light glowing, the roof frosted with moonlight. In the train and the house at the same time. The house, secluded, the train somehow secluded, too, in its transcontinental rush across the dark valley, moving tenderly to some unknown destination.