“Whoa, baby, I can see why that image had to go.” Lotis again. “Marching for peace at the wheel of a fifty-thousand-dollar topless Audi?”
“You keep coming from behind, don’t you?” Clearihue says.
“I heard that’s the way you like it.”
Clearihue returns to his Ford, his smile unwavering. “Okay, buddy, good luck. See you in court tomorrow.”
Lotis isn’t through. “By the way, whatever happened to our little sail?”
Clearihue seems unfamiliar with his stick shift, can’t find low gear. “You don’t want to get too close to this one, Arthur. She’s a bit of a tart. You wouldn’t believe how much she was willing to extend herself for a ride in a fast car.” A glare at Lotis. “Quit stalking me.”
“You lying self-admiring sociopathic freak!” Lotis starts after him, but he is finally in gear and down the road. Arthur can see why her film career “tanked,” as she’d told Arthur, after too many scraps with directors and producers.
Glowering, Lotis hoists her pack and goes up the path with Slappy. Arthur follows with his food basket, joins a gathering by the Holy Tree. “What’s happening?” he asks a wild-haired teenager.
“They’re tryna get the tree to vibe with love, or some hokey shit like that.”
News cameras are aimed at a circle of performers-some green-faced and clad in garments adorned with leaves, others wearing animal masks, all holding hands around the tree. Somehow they have coaxed Reverend Al into joining the circle, and he’s flushed with embarrassment. The women holding his hands are protected from the elements only by sprays of leaves.
The vibes are more Vedic than pagan, if Arthur correctly interprets the chant. Hands go up. “O-mm,” intones the leader, who leaves the circle, flapping her arms. The others join her in a choreographed dance of birds flying, all chanting “O-mm.” Corporal Al, standing to the side, looks on approvingly.
Watching from above are Margaret, standing, wrapped in a blanket, and Cud, swinging in a hammock. Life is sweet for the poet laureate of Garibaldi. One of his short works has been quoted in the New York Times. Liquor Balls has gone into a second printing. Single women are writing letters to him.
The omming continues for several minutes, bystanders joining in, until even Arthur, enveloped in the hum, finds himself giving voice. A hush follows, broken by Cud. “What kind of horseshit was that?” Not loud, but carrying well in the silence. Margaret looks at him severely.
The circle breaks up, and Corporal Al says, “Real interesting. Now I want everyone to kindly leave, except those with business.” The performers and onlookers go, but the press stays on, alert to human interest when Margaret’s husband is mooning around.
Lotis sets her gear down beneath the platform’s overhang, relieves Arthur of the basket, calls for the supply line. Cud, sensing food, maybe smelling the biscuits Arthur baked by hand, bounds from the hammock, lowers the rope.
Arthur asks Margaret about her health. She is focused on the green-haired, green-lipped waif below her. “What? Oh, I’m loads better. Temperature normal.” She says this with clogged nose. “The farm?”
“Hovering at the brink of disaster. I’ll write the details.”
Lotis affixes both the basket and her heavy pack to the line, and Cud must work up a sweat hauling them up.
“Beam me up next,” Lotis says. Hearing this, Corporal Al walks smartly up to her, and they engage in a low, intense debate.
As Lotis pleads her case, Corporal Al glances at Arthur. Finally, he joins him, away from eavesdroppers. “Sorry, Arthur, I didn’t realize you were falling apart that bad.” He bows, Tai Chi style, and leaves.
The rope ladder flutters down, followed by a safety line. Lotis hooks up to it, and climbs, hamming it up, waving to the cameras, falling into Cud’s arms as he helps her over the railing. After hurriedly unravelling herself from his grip, she dares Margaret’s germs, whispers words that, astonishingly, cause her to laugh. The two of them disappear from view. Cud pulls up the ladder with a broad, swaggering smile. Now he has a harem.
Lotis’s ascent has reporters talking into satellite phones. Activist-lawyer defies courts. Arthur can only wonder what Santorini’s reaction will be to this nose-thumbing by another agitator from the Blunder Bay farm team. It might take not much more than a stalled vehicle on the causeway to inspire another exponential sentence.
Vowing to return to his hike-a-day regimen, he trudges up the hillside. Slappy, twice deserted, scrambles behind. He pauses often to catch his breath and enjoy the panoramic views above the Sproules’ pastures. “Splendid,” he pants. “Majestic.”
He wonders if the Sanskrit om, that spoken essence of the universe, has found its winged target, but he sees no eagles. He’s still put out at Lotis, but supposes that was her idea of a noble gesture. Her mess, but he’ll try to pull her out of it.
Near the top of the switchback, not far from the bluffs, he makes his way to a mossy granite ledge, and lies on his back to regain his wind. Slappy finishes a tour of the area, and settles beside him. The day is warm, the sun high, and doves moan in the trees. The moss is warm and soft, and his body tired, and he allows sleep to come.
On awakening, he is disoriented by many things. First, by a remembered dream of Promethean death: he was bound to a cliff-face, an eagle flying off with his innards to Margaret and Cud in the nest, mouths wide, demanding to be fed.
An awareness even more morbid: Doc Dooley is kneeling beside him, taking his pulse.
Add to that a distant, disturbing shout: “There’s a good shot from here.”
Arthur becomes aware that evening is nearly upon them, a crepuscular light. Another call from afar, a woman: “A better shot over here.”
“What are they shooting at?” Arthur asks, rising to his elbows.
“How many fingers?” Dooley’s bony hand is in front of Arthur’s face.
“Five. I’m in fine fettle.”
“How is he, Doc?” Corporal Al’s voice, from a radio on Dooley’s belt.
“Rumours of his death are greatly exaggerated. The bugger was asleep.”
“Sorry if I’m a worrywart,” says Corporal Al, “but he’s been having an emotional crisis.”
Dooley frowns. “What were you doing out here, Beauchamp? Spread-eagled on the moss, you were, like a human sacrifice.”
Arthur sits up. “I stretched myself a bit, took a nap. What’s all that shouting?”
Now it’s Reverend Al on the radio: “Doc, a television crew is heading your way.”
“What’s happening?” Arthur asks.
“What’s happening is…” A pause to build suspense. Arthur takes pleasure in watching the doctor’s face crease into a rare smile: so rare that he wishes he had a camera. “We have an eagle pair. The mate has returned to the nest.” Arthur is astonished to see him take a few light steps, as if from a long-remembered Irish jig.
Dooley is pleased with his place in history-he was the first to sight the returning male, talons clutching a love offering: a large, overripe fish for the female, who has taken to the nest. Other witnesses include members of an Oregon birding club who pause on the way down to show Arthur digital images: two fiercely frowning eagles perched by the nest.
The television crew appears, straining under the weight of equipment. Puffing along behind, as if drawn by the magnet of their camera, is Kurt Zoller, with a squawking walkie-talkie, Corporal Al issuing commands: “I want no more than half a dozen folks up here at a time, and I want them quiet.”
“Roger, copy that, over.” Because he has an authoritarian bent, Zoller is regularly deputized for traffic control. He takes up position to guard the pass.
Arthur decides not to tarry, Kim has made dinner. He’ll return this evening for the changing of the guard ceremony. On his way down, he comes upon Nelson Forbish panting against a tree, looking as if he might explode. “How far, how…am I almost there?” Arthur knows he’s not going to make it, and leads him back to the Gap. “I was the first one to hear, I could’ve had a scoop.”