“I don’t remember things too well,” Remy said, his voice a low croak.
“Don’t worry. It will all be included in the report that Mrs. Kraft gets.” He spun through several more pages before the lawyer arrived at a page with smaller writing than any of the others. It was a breakdown of the fees the law firm would take. He said that they were taking a reduced rate, but the lawyer pointed to two columns on the bottom of the page, deductions for “Vicarious Trauma” and “Compassion Fatigue.”
Remy leaned forward. Compassion fatigue? “Are those for… you?”
“Yes. For the lawyers working on the case. As you might imagine, these are difficult cases… emotionally.” He removed his glasses and wiped his dry eyes. Then he seemed to think of something else and put the glasses back on. He looked hard at Remy. “Oh, in case you are wondering, April can remarry without affecting her settlement in any way. You wouldn’t have to wait, in other words.” He smiled as if he and Remy were in the same profession. “So that’s good. For you. Obviously.” He smiled and reached in his pocket, pulled out a tin of mints, and offered Remy-
A BIG truck, the biggest he’d ever seen, sat on risers in front of him. It was a pickup as high as a two-story building, on tires taller than a man. At first Remy thought his sense of scale had been thrown off, that his eyes were playing some kind of trick, but this was, in fact, a giant truck. Remy looked around. He was in an arena of some kind – empty and dark – except here in the center, where spotlights shone down on the dirt floor and on this giant truck. He looked closer at the pickup. It was painted red and blue, airbrushed with American flags fluttering in an unseen wind, with an angry-looking eagle perched on the hood and, on the doors, a long list of familiar names, cops and firefighters, Italian, Irish, and Latin, like the roster of a Catholic school football league.
“So what do you think?” Guterak came around the truck and stood next to Remy, gaping at it. He was wearing a suit without the tie and his hair was forcefully parted to the side. He seemed nervous. His voice seemed to disappear in the empty arena.
“Big truck,” Remy said.
“Yeah,” Paul said. “It’s pretty cool. Hey, thanks again for coming down.”
“Sure.”
“Impressive up close, isn’t it?” A woman was speaking behind them. Remy turned and saw her approach from an open door on the floor of the arena. She had curly brown hair, blonded at the tips, and wore a tight denim skirt, like a country music singer. A cell phone earpiece sat perched on her head as if she’d just walked away from a fast-food drive-through window.
When she was closer, the woman handed Guterak some papers. “Here you go, Paul. Countersigned contracts, as Michael promised. And the schedule for next week. Tractor pulls at seven each night, followed by the demos, and then before the finale we’re going to have a moment of silence. That’s where you come in.” The woman was in her thirties and her thin legs disappeared in elaborate cowboy boots. She smiled. “We’ll announce the Eagle Truck, Hero-One, and that’s when you come out with the firefighter-” She looked down at her notes. “ – Davie Ryan, both of you in uniform. The two of you walk out, wave to the people, look… you know… serious or whatever. Then you climb that staircase over there and stand on that platform in the dark. Take off your hats. We have a moment of silence and then Bam! The lights come up and we play ‘America the Beautiful’ and then Hero-One comes out. People go ape-shit and the truck runs over a bunch of shit and everyone goes home. Easy, right? I’ll bet it’s much easier than chasing bad guys.” The woman handed Paul a brochure, which he read and handed to Remy.
WE’RE TURNING VETERANS ARENA
INTO A GIANT MUD PIT
TO HONOR OUR DEAD HEROES!*
*Ten percent of all proceeds to go to the widows and orphans fund.
Tractor pulls, monster trucks, demolition derby!
And for the first time anywhere: The Eagle Truck, Hero-One
With its haunting display of airbrush artistry featuring America’s lost heroes.
“When do I talk?” Paul asked as he leafed through the program.
“Talk?” the woman asked. “About what?”
“Well.” Paul looked around the arena. “I don’t know. Maybe I misunderstood. I thought I was going to get to talk.”
“No, no.” The woman smiled. “We don’t need you to talk.”
“Oh. Yeah. See, I was under the impression that I would get to talk.”
“No. There’s no talking.”
Paul took a couple of steps and looked at the truck. “No. See that’s what I do… I talk. You know… about what I saw?”
“No,” she said. “No talking.” She leaned forward. “Honestly, I don’t think people want any more talking. For a while they did. But I think they’ve had enough of that kind of thing. I think we get it. No, all we need you to do is… look appropriate.” The woman shrugged, opened her handbag, and handed Paul an envelope. He held it for a moment before opening it.
While Guterak stared at his paycheck, Remy walked toward the truck and read the names, and indeed they were airbrushed with such artistry that the shadows seemed real and the letters had a disquieting depth. The names – all that was left of good people – rose like bruises from the metal-flake paint.
THE DOCUMENT looked just like Australia; in fact, in a way it was Australia, its edges burned into a perfect representation of the coastline, in that distinctive, thick oblong shape of the continent, bent in the middle, with a hole at the top corresponding perfectly with the Gulf of Carpentaria. Helpfully, someone had paper-clipped an actual map of Australia to the file; he glanced from the burned page to the map and then back again, and at the yellow flag on the plastic baggy in which the paper was placed: “Forward to SECURE. Isn’t this uncanny? Doesn’t it look like Australia? – SM.”
Remy looked around. He was back behind his desk. There was still nothing on the walls except the photo of him between The Boss and The President, nothing to make this office look like anyone actually worked here. He opened the top drawer, found a pen, and wrote, “Yes,” on the flag. Then, after a moment, he initialed it. Before that day, when it became Australia, the page had been a simple expense report from a lunch meeting between March Selios and a man named Bobby al-Zamil, identified as “vice pre-” (the rest burned away down near the Great Sandy Desert) of a business called “Feynman-Mid-Ea-” something (burned away down in the populous regions near Melbourne and Sydney).
Remy glanced around his office. He turned the nameplate around again, just to be sure. It said REMY. Good. He’d begun to feel he could manage the skips with nonchalance, and he thought it best to treat this burned piece of paper with the same knowing shrug. He picked up the phone and hit zero, and a few seconds later an operator’s voice came on line.
“This is Diane.”
“Uh. Hi. Diane. This is Brian Remy.” He looked around again. “I’ve got this piece of burned paper that looks like Australia. Am I supposed to do something with-”
“Let me see if I can get him on his car phone.”
A few minutes later, Remy heard the buzzing of a phone and Markham picked up, apparently in traffic. “Markham.”
“It’s Remy.”
“Hey, buddy. We’re just on our way back. So… did you get the Australia document I sent over? Isn’t that wild?”