‘I am,’ said Mingolla, hoping to play on the guard’s delusions. ‘That’s why I’ve come… to instruct, to give direction.’
The guard laughed again, but shakily; he lifted his piece of mirror and reflected moonlight into his face.
Mingolla had just begun to make headway with the ropes when Coffee walked over, dismissed the guard, and squatted beside him. He sucked on his teeth, making a whiny glutinous sound, and said, ‘Ever think much ’bout the Garden of Eden, David?’
Coffee’s wistful tone—as if he were regretting original sin—took the edge off Mingolla’s anger and left him at a loss for words.
Read this article once’t,’ Coffee went on. ‘Said the Garden was somewheres in the Anartic. Said they found all these froze-up berries and roots from thousands of years ago. They figgered once’t the Serpent did his business with Eve, the life force drained outta the place, and everything turned to ice. Reckon that’s so?’
‘I don’t know.’ Mingolla tried to influence Coffee and failed. It seemed the drugs added a spin to the electrical activity of the brain, one with which he couldn’t synchronize even when under the influence himself.
‘Yeah, me neither. Can’t believe nothin’ y’read in the papers. Like all the horseshit they print ’bout politics.’ Coffee popped an ampule, sucked in the mist. He glanced toward the clearing. Only three men remained sitting there.
‘Where the rest of your men?’ Mingolla asked, leery.
‘Scoutin’ ’round.’ Coffee cracked his knuckles. ‘Yeah, the stuff they print ’bout politics… Man! Pure horseshit! Gotta dig out the truth for yo’self. Half of them First Ladies was guys wearin’ dresses. Y’can see that just by lookin’. Ugly! I mean if you was president, wouldn’t you have yo’self somethin’ better for a wife than one of them ol’ bags? Yessir, them presidents was all queers… members of a secret queer organization.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Mingolla, making another fruitless effort at mental contact.
‘Wouldn’t ’spect ya’ to know. Come to me as a revelation. That’s the only sorta knowledge y’can trust.’ Coffee’s profound sigh seemed the result of understanding the wide world and its great trouble. ‘Ever have a revelation, David?’
‘Depends what you mean by “revelation.”’
‘If y’have to figger what it means, y’ain’t never had one.’ Coffee scratched his beard. ‘Y’believe in anything… like a higher power?’
‘No,’ said Mingolla. ‘I don’t.’
‘Oh, yes y’do, David. You a man with a plan, a man what’s too busy schemin’ to stop and figger things out. That’s when the revelations come, when you stop.’ Coffee gazed out at the clearing again, his Lincolnesque profile set off by the pale light. ‘That’s what y’believe in, David. In not stoppin’, in not believin’.’
The three men in the clearing were as still and silent as prophets at their meditations, shadows in a milky globe, and the mystical quality of the scene convinced Mingolla for a moment that Coffee’s assessment had been accurate, that inspiration was to be had at the center of the light.
‘Last man with a plan to come ’round Emerald was me,’ Coffee said. ‘Way it looks from here, I can’t judge ya ’cause you a judgment on me. I ain’t been too clear in my mind lately, been slackin’ in my work. ’Pears you sent to test me, and I welcome the test.’
‘What kinda test?’
‘Fang and claw, David, Fang and claw.’ Coffee took a handful of ampules from his pocket and heaped them on the ground. ‘There’s your ammo, man. Roll on over, now, and I’ll cut ya loose.’
‘Wanna tell me what’s going on?’
Coffee turned Mingolla over, sawed at the ropes with a knife. ‘I’m comin’ for ya in the mornin’, when the light’s strong. Gonna take ya out, David.’
Mingolla’s stomach knotted. ‘What if I kill you?’
‘You a test, David, not a challenge.’
Mingolla sat up, rubbing his wrists, looking at Coffee. The moonlight brightened, and he felt it was illuminating more than their faces and clothes, enforcing honesty like a shared attitude. He thought he could see Coffee’s truth, see him leaning against a gas station wall at some hick crossroads, top dog in a kennel of curs, sucking down brews and plotting meanness, and it seemed to him that though Coffee was misguided, insane, he had at least come to an honorable form of meanness. He wondered what Coffee could see of him. ‘What ’bout weapons?’ he asked.
‘Like I said.’ Coffee held up his hands. ‘Fang and claw.’ He gestured at the men in the clearing. ‘The boys’ll make sure nobody gets illegal, and the rest is spread out in case anybody runs.’ With a show of weariness, he got to his feet, and from Mingolla’s perspective his head appeared to merge with the canopy, making him look as tall and mysterious as the trees. ‘See ya in the mornin’,’ he said.
‘This is bullshit, this crap ’bout a test!’ said Mingolla, his fear breaking through like a moon escaping cloud cover. ‘You just need to kill somebody, to prove something to your men.’
Coffee kicked a fern, moved off. ‘Why’s a car engine work, man? ’Cause ya turn the key in the ignition? ’Cause sparks fly from the generator? ’Cause you ’membered to gas up? ‘Cause some law of physics says so? Naw, it’s ’cause of all that and a million things more we don’t know nothin’ about.’ He strolled farther off, becoming a shadow among shadows. ‘Ain’t no such thing as cause and effect, ain’t but one law means shit in this world.’ His voice came from utter darkness and seemed the sum of all the dark voices issuing from beyond the clearing. ‘Everything’s true, David,’ he said. ‘Everything’s real.’
Coffee had left sixteen ampules, and feeling irritable and nauseated, symptoms he could trace to the packet of frost back at his camp, Mingolla popped a couple right away. A rain squall swept in, and after it had passed, to Mingolla’s ears the plips and plops of dripping water blended into a gabbling speech; he imagined demons peeping from beneath the leaves, gossiping about him, but he wasn’t afraid. The ampules were doing wonders, withdrawing the baffles that had been damping the core of his anger. Confidence was a voltage surging through him, keying new increments of strength, and he smiled, thinking of the fight to come: even the smile was an expression of furious strength, of bulked muscle fibers and trembling nerves.
Dawn came gray and damp, and birds set up a clamor, began taking their first flights, swooping over the heads of the three men in the clearing. The underbrush looked to be assuming topiary shapes. Violet auras faded in around ferns, pools of shadow quivered. Mingolla saw that the manlike objects affixed to the tree trunks were combat suits: ten slack, helmeted figures, each featuring some fatal rip or crack. Though he concluded that the suits might be equivalent to notches on Coffee’s belt, he was undismayed. The drugs had added a magical coloration to his thoughts, and he pictured himself moving with splendid athleticism, killing Coffee, becoming king of that dead man’s illusion and ruling over the Lost Patrol, robed in ferns and a leafy crown. But the battle itself, not its outcome, that was the important thing. To reach that peak moment when perfection drew blood, when you muscled aside confusion and—as large as a constellation with the act, as full of stars and blackness and primitive meaning—you were able to look down on the world and know you had outperformed the ordinary. This was the path he had been meant to take, the path of courage and character. A mystic star shone through a rent in the canopy, marooned in a lavender streak above the pink of sunrise. Mingolla stared at it until he understood its sparkling message.
The light brightened, and butterflies flew up from the brush, fluttered low above the ferns. There were, Mingolla thought, an awful lot of them. Thousand upon thousands, an estimate he kept elevating until he reached the figure of millions. And he thought, too, that it was unusual for so many varieties to be gathered in one place. They were everywhere in the brush, perching on leaves and twigs, as if a sudden spring had brought forth flowers in a single night: some of the bushes were completely hidden, and the trunks were thick with them. Now and again they would rise from one of the bushes in a body and go winging in formation about the clearing. Mingolla had never seen anything like it, though he’d heard how butterflies would congregate in such numbers during the mating season, and he guessed that this was something similar.