Irma smiled blankly, idly stroking Chester’s thin back.
Ernie volunteered, ‘I worked for GM, thirty-five years at the Chevy plant in Detroit – what we call “Motown.” Irma and me been married thirty-four years. I retired three years ago, kids gone, house paid for, so me and Irma just take off whenever the notion moves us. Going out and seeing things keeps ya young. Last fall we went and looked over New England. Real pretty in the fall, all them red and golden leaves. Now this country here strikes me as a little grim, but the light’s nice, the sunsets and all.’
Irma, with the same distracted smile, said to herself, ‘It always is.’
Daniel said, ‘What’d you do at GM, Ernie?’
‘I was just on the line. Mounted the spare, put in the jack and lug wrench, then shut the trunk.’
‘Did you enjoy it?’ Daniel said.
Ernie shrugged his heavy shoulders. ‘Like ya said, it’s a job.’
Irma said to the poodle, ‘He enjoyed it, didn’t he, Chester?’
Chester yapped sharply once.
Irma nodded with satisfaction.
‘You know,’ Ernie addressed Daniel, ‘I didn’t mind the routine. Gives life shape. And even if you’re doing one thing all the time, it’s never really the same. Like closing those car trunks – each one sounded different. Millions, and every one different. You know what I mean?’
‘I think so,’ Daniel said.
Irma asked Chester, ‘Does Daddy know what he means?’
Chester yapped twice. ‘Twice means “no,”’ Irma translated, a smug glint in her eyes.
Ernie muttered, ‘Damn dog hates me. I was the one who thought he needed some exercise. Let him off the leash to go sniff around the park and the Doberman bit off all his tail and half his ass in one chomp ’fore I could nail him with a rock and run him off. Tried to tell Chester he was up against a rule of life: Big dogs eat. Being on the leash wouldn’t have made no difference.’
Daniel bent and said to the quivering poodle, ‘We don’t like big dogs, do we, Chester?’
Chester hid his head. ‘He’s so amazing,’ Irma trilled. ‘He understands everything he hears.’
Ernie, Irma, and Chester said good-bye on the west side of Las Vegas during the sunset’s fiery crescendo of gold and crimsons, the colors so pure and clear that the blinding sundown on Ernie’s shirt paled to the edge of vanishing, so stunning that Ernie turned off the engine and they sat and watched in silence, Chester stretching his front paws against the dashboard to get a better view. Daniel was taken with how easily the air let the colors go, how inexorably Earth turned on the axis of darkness and light. He suddenly felt a panic to get out of the truck’s cab, vanish, vanish or else start weeping. But he couldn’t vanish with them there. He said, fighting the tightness in his throat, ‘Well, on that lovely, fiery note, I’ll take my leave. Thank you for the ride and your splendid company.’
Amid their farewells, he slid out. Just before closing the door, Daniel said, ‘Drop it in a river.’ Even Chester seemed puzzled by the remark.
Daniel stepped back to let the truck pull away, but it didn’t budge. Muffled inside the cab, Chester barked frantically. Irma rolled down the window, calling excitedly, ‘You forgot your balling ball! Chester saw it! Understands everything, just like I told you.’
Daniel lifted the bowling bag through the open window. ‘Wish I had Chester’s mind,’ he said. ‘Pretty dumb to forget your means of livelihood. Thanks again. Take care.’
He watched the taillights disappear back toward Las Vegas. He knelt to unzip the bowling bag, shielding the Diamond’s light from traffic, though the road was empty. He looked into the Diamond. ‘You don’t want me to let you go, do you? I’m the one, aren’t I? If so, help me. Help me. Please, please help me.’ He vanished with the Diamond.
Around midnight, without warning, Daniel’s concentration buckled and collapsed. He tried to tighten his focus but there was no power left. Overwhelmed, it took him a terrifying moment to gather himself and imagine him and the Diamond returned. The entry back was ragged. Daniel had no idea where in the world he was. On his knees, he stared at the Diamond, wondering where the spiral flame had gone. He heard a faint roar to his right. He turned, blinded by a ball of light hurtling toward him. He dove to the side, wrapping his body protectively around the bowling bag just as the driver of the black Trans-Am stood on the brakes and skidded into a one-eighty, stopping a hundred and fifty yards down the road. As the car headed back, Daniel zipped the bowling bag shut. The driver pulled onto the opposite shoulder and swung across the divider and stopped beside Daniel. For a moment the long blond hair made Daniel think it was a woman. He was sharply disappointed when a stocky man in his mid-thirties wearing cowboy boots, Levis, and an army fatigue jacket stepped around the car and said, ‘What in the name of fuck was that all about?’
‘What?’ Daniel said with puzzled innocence, getting to his feet.
‘Didn’t you see it, man? There was this huge fucking flash of light and bam! There you were, this weird glow all around you. No fucking way you could miss it.’
Daniel said, ‘I was squatting down when I heard you coming and stood up real sudden – might have been the headlights reflecting off the case here, lots of bright metal, might have caught the light perfect.’
Slowly shaking his head, the blond man stared at Daniel and his belongings. He shrugged. ‘Maybe I was having a ’palm flashback. Looked like the true item to me, though. Fuck, who cares, huh? Why sweat the little shit when Death knows your address, that’s my motto.’
‘It’s a good one,’ Daniel said.
‘So, what is it, you hitching here or what? I’m going west till dawn, then I turn around and head back.’
‘Thanks,’ Daniel said. He picked up the attaché case and bowling bag.
The blond man said, ‘What are you got up as there, anyway? You the Wandering Bowler or what?’
‘I’m a professional bowler and a religious zealot,’ Daniel explained.
‘Yeah, just about anything beats the fuck out of working.’ He opened the door for Daniel.
‘How about you?’ Daniel said, slipping inside. ‘You’re out late for a nine-to-five man.’
‘I repair slot machines at the Shamrock. Swing shift, two to ten. Gives me the hard side of midnight and early morning to ride patrol.’
‘What are you patrolling for? Or against, if that’s the case.’
‘My old employer,’ the man said. ‘Death. I used to be Death’s Chauffeur.’
‘For true?’ Daniel said. He didn’t feel like listening to bullshit.
‘Straight skinny, brother; mortal fact. Let’s get it rolling here and I’ll tell you how it is.’ He shut the door.
‘Great.’ Daniel barely said it aloud, but he couldn’t decide if he felt ironic. ‘Don’t sweat the little shit,’ he reminded himself. ‘Ride on through.’
The blond man’s name was Kenny Copper. Shortly after his eighteenth birthday, a judge had presented him with a choice between two years on the county labor farm for disturbing the peace/resisting arrest/assault on a police officer – which the court saw as a cluster of offenses, not a logical progression of self-defense – and immediate enlistment in the marines. He landed in Saigon eight months later, a PFC rifleman with Baker Company. Within the week they were shipped to Khe Sanh.
He told Daniel as they rocketed northwest on 95, ‘I put my head up the Dragon’s ass, man, and I saw the World of Shit. The Cong were shelling the holy fuck out of us. We sent out a couple of recon patrols just for drill; never saw the dudes again. Anything that touched the airstrip got blown away. No Med-Evac. No replacements. They air-dropped rations and ammo, but whatever came down outside our perimeter – which was about half the shit they dropped – that was Christmastime for Charlie. We owned Hell; Charlie owned everything else. But here’s the twister, Herm, your basic cold fuck – we were just bait for the trap, dead and stinkin’ meat,’ cause they wanted the Cong to mass for a siege, get ’em all heaped up on us, and then bring down the hammer. Real neat thinking, huh? Real swift. I mean, the gooks didn’t whip our ass by being dummies, not that you needed a Ph. D. in chemistry to figure it out, right? The Cong kept the pressure tight enough to choke, but they didn’t overcommit. So we went down, not any fucking hammer.