He’s cat-dancing for real now. He no longer has to worry about remaining soundless in the rising light. Out and back, out and back, as the dawn’s terminator line creeps down the eastern slopes of the mountain. Suddenly, there’s something visible in the mouth of the cave. He catches only a quick glimpse at the top of the arc, seeing and then not seeing, imagining or seeing-which is it?-then down and out, then back, the light getting better, and then he knows. This swing, this arc. All his instincts are screaming, and then the cat’s screaming, right there, gathering to leap right off the ledge as he swings in for the last time. Her front legs are twitching back under her belly, the muscles of her massive shoulders and haunches quivering, her fangs baring, her eyes blazing while she shrieks at him and he shrieks back as he raises the camera, sees the blessed ready light, and shoots and winds, shoots and winds.
And then it’s rise, Lazarus, rise, as he swings back out again, away from that coiled tawny fury on the ledge. He raises his knees, bends in the middle, and then thrusts fully upright like a human inchworm, his hands together on the Jumars, climbing now in powerful lunges, kicking up with his legs. The sudden vertical surge of his body interrupts the rhythm of the arc, so that it diminishes with each powerful reach, while the cat shrieks again and races furiously back and forth in front of her cave; her whirling turns incredibly quick, her total outrage echoing across the canyon, creating an echo chorus of a dozen furious cats. He’s well above the ledge now, reaching up and grabbing whole meters of rope and pulling hard, the little camera bouncing around on his hip. The cat and the cave disappear as he approaches and then scrambles past the overhang. He can slow down now, catch his breath, savor the moment, pull the precious camera into his hip pack.
I have a face.
I have a face!
Now the trick is to get to the top and get the hell out of there before she figures it out and comes sprinting up after him. He should be safe, because she has cubs. She won’t leave the cubs. He hopes to God.
In his mind’s eye he can see White Eye waiting back at camp, a tiny Primus fire glowing against a circle of sharp rocks by now, the battered coffeepot balanced precariously on two stones, three cups of cold mountain water, grounds, eggshells, and his damned pinch of salt. He’ll be grinning, he thinks, just like I’m grinning, ear to ear, having heard that incandescent shriek transfix the morning air from the mouth of the cave, that feral “How dare you?” sound echoing down the gorge and over into the high pines, where White Eye’s been waiting since midnight.
Waiting and wondering if, after four years of training, I could really do it.
Well, I have done it.
I have a face.
Now for the good stuff.
2
K-dog is ranting. Hey, you know what, dude? We had the fucking thing done. The money was in my pocket, that clerk slapped down on the floor, a whole candy rack pulled over on top of his ass, our piece-a-shit rice-burner parked fifty feet away, pointed out at the street, the security cam bashed off the wall-and, shit, we even had its VCR smashed all to hell and lubricated with some convenient motor oil. That’s why they called it a convenience store, right?
And then here comes this fucking minivan, mama bear and baby bear pulling into absolutely the wrong place at the wrong time. A hundred gas stations in this fucking town, and these civilians pick this one? This bitch looking over as she shuts down the van. I mean, it was fucking obvious she saw our asses as we came through the door. I could almost hear her makin’ her statement, you know? “There were two of them, Officer. One was this sorta tall, skinny, scraggly-haired white boy in a sleeveless T-shirt and jeans. Dude had this huge gun in his hand? The other guy? Oh, he was this dumpy-looking black guy in baggy red sweats, a do-rag on his head, looking totally spaced.”
And that’s when we made our big mistake, man: We stopped. That was it right there. I just fucking know it. Stopped in the doorway when we saw her looking, and that’s when that old Paki dude must have realized there was a problem. Because, like, next thing we know? Here he fucking comes, man, rising up out of that pile of candy and shit with his own damn gun, if you could believe that shit, rising up and booming away at us. I mean, there’s shit blowing right off the door racks and busting out the glass of the door right in our faces. Flash, well, Flash, what can I say, man? Flash does his usual shit, goes right for the floor, yellin’ about motherfuckers this and motherfuckers that. And me? Well, shit, you know, I’m like Mr. Cool when the heavy shit starts to fly. That’s my rep, right? So I do what I have to do-you know what I’m saying? I get my ass down behind a newspaper rack, whip that TEC-9 around, and hose down that cashier’s stand. That Paki dude’s still shooting, I’ll give him that, man, two hands, like they show on the TV. But dig this: He had his fucking eyes closed, man. Incredible. Then one of my rounds takes the side of his head off, and then, shit, that dude’s all done.
But that wasn’t the bad part, man. After I drop the geezer-okay?-I get up, but then I trip over Flash, who’s still down there on the floor, got his fucking eyes closed, just like that Paki, and he’s all, like, babbling this black street shit. Anyway, so I trip over his worthless ass and fall right through the busted-out door glass. Lucky I didn’t get cut all to shit. I mean, my damn feet are all fucked up. I’m like trying to catch myself, but at the same time I forget to take my finger off that trigger, and that TEC’s stitching up the pump island’s roof, a couple of those big bright lights out there, and then, oh, man, the gas pump right next to that minivan. Soccer mommy was still sitting in the van, staring at me like I was from fucking Mars, man, until that pump island fucking lit up.
You talk about your fucking Fourth of July. That whole mess-the minivan, the gas pump, all that shit-had to have been fifty feet away, but I can still feel that fireball. Flash is up off the floor now and he fucking passes me getting out to the pickup. There is fire fucking everywhere now, and then we get another pump going up, and then some hose or some other shit breaks and then there’s, like, these blue waves of fire coming across the concrete. Fucking Hell’s Beach, man. I jam that rice-burner into big D and we peel the hell out of there, driving right over those waves of fire. I swear to God I can still feel that heat through the floorboards. That minivan is roasting back in there somewhere, along with the witnesses, so, you know, the whole fire deal wasn’t a total fucking loss. I was just wishing that wad of cash in my pocket was a whole lot thicker, because both of us knew there was gonna be some serious hell to pay over this shit.
So, anyways, we go screech-assing all the way across the center line before I can get ahold of it. We almost head-on some asshole comin’ the other way, and he leans on his horn while eatin’ up a ton of my gravel. I hammered down to straighten that bitch back out and then got us down the road and gone. Big-ass orange glow taking up the whole rearview mirror, all the way to the first curve. And, oh yeah, there’s my man Flash, the whole fucking time, sitting there with his eyes still closed, tears running down his face, those funny little hands of his banging against the dash while he says “Muhfuggah” over and over again. We called him Flash in the joint, but his real name is Deleon. Dee-le-on Butts. ’Tween you an’ me? That brother ain’t playin’ with a full deck, you know what I’m sayin’? Anyway, we’re boogyin’ down the road. I gotta wonder why I hooked up with him in the first place. I mean, yeah, we’d shared a cell up in Rock City for three years, and, you know, since we both came from the Triboro area, it just seemed okay. Right now, though, man, I don’t know if that was such a good move.
So, the next morning, like, late? We’re holed up in this shitty little curry palace on the east side of town, about a half mile from I-40, close enough so’s we can hear the semis. Flash is either dead asleep or passed out on the other bed; it’s always kinda hard to tell with Flash. He’s got this mostly empty quart of bourbon sticking up between his legs like a glass hard-on. I’m only medium high. I’ve got me an elephant head and that camel-crapped-in-my-mouth taste, you know, whiskey, two garlic pizzas, and maybe a half case of beer? I’ve got two, count ’em, two -fucking cigarettes, going, and there’s enough smoke in that room to set off the smoke alarm, ’cept it’s hanging by its wires ’cause those Pakis never fix anything, you know what I’m sayin’?