Kirby’s apartment was two rooms and three closets. His living room was small and square, with windows in two walls, reed mats over the concrete floor, a rough home-made table in the center where he and Manny played games, several mismatched small chairs, a few lamps, and one big, comfortable easy chair. On a shelf mounted on the wall opposite the easy chair were a TV set and a Betamax; the videotapes were in a rickety bookcase underneath.
The other room, which was smaller, contained his bed and two large wooden trunks and another rickety bookcase, this one half filled with books. A few air charts — sections of Burma, Madagascar, the Aleutians — were on the walls for decoration. The three closets were all off this room; the first was for clothing, the second for a shower stall, the third for the composting toilet.
Kirby, still yawning as he removed his shirt, entered the bedroom, kicked off the rest of his clothing and stood in the shower awhile, until he no longer felt like a horse that had just been sold for glue.
Twenty minutes later, happy in crisp clean clothes and old moccasins, Kirby went back around to the Cruz side of the house, where he and Manny played cribbage while Estelle ran the Cuisinart and the kids and the dogs watched “Rio Grande” on TV, dubbed into Spanish. (“Rio Grande” in Spanish is “Rio Grande”.) At one point, when John Wayne made a rather spectacular leap from a running horse, Kirby nodded over at the set and said, mildly, “That’s my father.”
Manny looked up, in mild surprise. “John Wayne?” He turned to look at the set.
“No,” Kirby said. “My father did that jump off the horse.”
Estelle had come over from the Cuisinart to frown at the TV, where a close-up of John Wayne now showed. In Spanish, John Wayne had the deep gruff voice of an old man missing some teeth. “He looks like John Wayne,” she said dubiously.
“Not there,” Kirby said. “Only in the long shots, doing the stunts.”
“A stunt man!” Manny said, pleased at knowing such esoteric English.
“That’s right,” Kirby said.
“Very brave, stunt men.”
“Kind of foolhardy,” Kirby said, and shrugged.
“You grew up around the movies, huh?” Manny was bright-eyed from more than Danish Marys; Kirby didn’t often open up about his background.
“I would have,” Kirby said, “only things went wrong.” He looked at his cards, not liking them very much, then glanced up to see Manny and Estelle both watching him, expectant. “Oh, well,” he said. “It was one of those things. My father was a stunt man, my mother was an actress.”
“A big star?” Manny asked, and Estelle told him, “Hush.”
“No, just an actress,” Kirby said.
Estelle, hesitant, nodded shyly toward the TV. “Is she in this ‘Rio Grande’ movie?”
“No. They always wanted to work together, but they never did. Then they had a chance to, on a circus movie, in Spain. What they called a runaway production. I was only two, so I don’t really remember it.”
“You went with them, in Spain?”
“Sure.” Kirby sighed, and dropped the cards on the table. Might as well go ahead and tell it. “They only had one scene together,” he said, “on a rollercoaster. It was supposed to be safe, but it wasn’t.”
Hushed, Estelle said, “They were killed?”
“Yeah. I got shipped home to my aunt in upstate New York.”
Manny said, “So you didn’t know them, like.”
“Not really,” Kirby said, but in his mind’s eye he could see the pictures of his father and mother all over his Aunt Cathy’s house. Old-maid Aunt Cathy, his mother’s sister, had had a lifelong crush on Kirby’s father and had transferred it to Kirby. From the time he could first remember, Aunt Cathy was saying things like, “Oh, you’ll be a devil with the girls,” and, “You’ve got your father’s wildness, I can see it in your eyes.” He’d been spoiled rotten, and he knew it.
Manny maybe had some inkling of Kirby’s thoughts. He said, “You think you’re like him, your old man?”
“Some ways, some ways.” Kirby shrugged. “I think I’ve got more interest in a real home somewhere; they never much cared where they lived. The other thing is—” Kirby picked up his cards again, studied them, seemed reconciled “—I stay away from rollercoasters.”
14
The Unknown Land
“We must drive the corrupt profiteers out of government,” Vernon said, as he changed the sheets on his bed, “or we’ll never get the profit.” Above, a slowly turning fan made absolutely no difference.
“Hush,” said the skinny black man, holding up the cassette recorder. “Listen to this part.”
“I don’t think you get the picture,” Kirby’s voice told Vernon, as he tossed the rumpled sheets into the hall and snapped the clean lower sheet into the air, holding it by his fingertips; gently, the sheet settled onto the bed, guided by Vernon’s hands. “What he’s going to do is,” Kirby said, “he’s going to knock the temple down. You come back a year from now, this’ll be just a jumble of rocks and dirt.”
“What do you think of that?” the skinny black man asked.
“Greedy bastards,” Vernon said. “Most of the tomb robbers just burrow a hole in, they don’t knock the son of a bitch down.”
Vernon finished making the bed while Kirby and his customers talked about the destruction of the temple. Then he carried the dirty sheets to the back of the house, the skinny black man following, holding up the recorder. After tossing the sheets in the big laundry sink, Vernon went to the kitchen, got two bottles of beer, and he and the skinny black man went to the living room to sit and listen to the rest of the tape. At last Feldspan giggled his giggle, the skinny black man pushed OFF and REWIND, and Vernon said, “Jail.”
“For somebody,” the skinny black man agreed.
“St. Michael,” Vernon said, with savage hope.
“I don’t see it yet,” the skinny black man told him.
“St. Michael’s a crook,” Vernon said.
“The sun rises in the east,” the skinny black man said.
“He’s in my way. He stands between me and, and, and...”
“The pot of gold.”
“Do you have to give him that?” Vernon asked, pointing at the cassette.
“You know I do. I can play it for you, in here, nobody knows about it, but now I gotta go give it to St. Michael.”
“Maybe the tape got loused up some way,” Vernon suggested.
The skinny black man shook his head. “You don’t want me to lose my job,” he said. “Think about it.”
“I need to hear it again,” Vernon said, making a fist, punching his own knee in his frustration. “If I could have a copy.”
The skinny black man looked around at the underfurnished tiny living room. “You don’t have anything to make it with,” he said. “Or play it on.”
Vernon stared furiously around his room, blinking; with every blink, he was seeing something else he didn’t own. “I want,” he said, through clenched teeth, “I want...”
“Yeah, man,” the skinny black man said. “So do I.” He got to his feet. “I got to go, man, I’m taking too long as it is.”
“Wait a minute,” Vernon said. “Tell me about these guys, the ones on the tape. Who are they?”
“They’re what they say,” the skinny black man said, shrugging. “Antique dealers from New York City.”