Bobby Trubate was back in his cot, hooked to a drip, wrapped in loose gauze. His face was bruised and runny, his mustache singed down to a ridge of hairy blisters. He looked like some formerly majestic bird pulled from a crash site fuselage.
"Jesus, Bobby," I said. "What'd he do to you?"
"Saved me," said Trubate.
Estelle lounged in the corner with a magazine from the Johnson administration. There were stacks of these around, good for pop scholarship, kindling. I don't know who collected them, but paeans to the sexual revolution and tawny sideburns abounded. I tended to pore over the ads myself, stereos like space bays, secret sodomy in the Rob Roy ice.
"Funny to read this crap, now," she said. "It's like inscriptions in your yearbook. Remember me when you're a movie star. Send me a postcard from Paris."
"We need to get him to a hospital."
"He'll be fine. I've been looking after him."
"They took his stuff."
"There's a laundry run."
Trubate began to moan. His body sputtered under the sheets.
"Did you know," said Estelle, "that before this was the Center for Nondenominational Recovery and Redemption, it was a POW camp?"
"A what?"
"Simulated. For executive types. They'd come up here for a huge fee and Heinrich would keep them in cages, torture them."
"Didn't read that part in the Tenets."
"Editorial discretion."
It looked like Bobby wanted to speak. His lips split their scab caulk and sound dribbled out.
"Maa. .Faa. ."
"Ma?"
"What is it?" said Estelle.
"Maah. . Faah. ."
"Mother," I said. "Father."
"No," said Estelle. "Mothered by Fire. He's acknowledging his passage."
"Maah. ."
"What is it, Bobby?" I said.
Trubate strained up from the bed.
"My face," he said. "My fucking face."
Estelle was tired. I told her I'd watch Trubate for a while. He slept like a stone, or a stoned man. Maybe there was some morphine in his drip. His wounds, I saw now, were mostly superficial, show-biz gashes. Character-building for the character actor. Maybe he could ride the crest of the next disfigurement fad to stardom.
Me, I was going to ride the hell out of here. There was nothing for me here, nothing shit-free. Organized psychosis had its rewards, but I was pretty sure you needed a future to reap them. I was a dying man, futureless. A lone wolf. A lone wraith.
I dozed at Trubate's bedside, got up near dawn, walked back to Heinrich's window. He was asleep at his desk when I tapped on the pane. Heinrich didn't wake so much as boot up. You could almost sense the circuits firing, the cautious ascent to speed.
"I need to talk to you," I said.
"Your need is your demand," said Heinrich, waved me in.
We sat in wicker, sipped root tea. Books, bales of them-paperbacks, hardbacks, chapbooks, manuals, sheaves-spilled out the rough pine shelves. There were survival guides and bird guides and bound sets of American Transcendentalists, but also computer manuals and some simulation theory I recalled my pal William flogging himself to ecstatic bongstates with in college. Heinrich set his tea mug down on an upturned clementine crate. He followed my gaze to the encrusted Esperanto phrasebook beside it.
"Since the misfortune in Babel it has been a dream," he said. "I think it's folly, myself. Everyone should sing his own incomprehensible, inconsolable song. What I want to do here is help people find it."
"Is that why you ran a POW camp?" I said.
"That was a business proposition."
"Clearly not a very lucrative one."
"I did okay. Look, Steve, I'm a soldier. I've been all over the world hurting people. I don't apologize. Who am I to apologize? But this, all of this, it's a surprise to me. What I. . what we have done here. What we've made. You've heard me make my crazy speeches to them. My beast-tales. Maybe I have fuck's clue what I'm talking about, but at least I am talking. And maybe we're getting somewhere, too. The mothering hut. Who could have known the power of such a thing? It just came to me one day. I thought it was an interrogation facility. It was an interrogation facility. We used it for a sweat lodge in the off-season. Naperton said it first. Like giving birth to yourself in there."
"Sounds like kitchen duty."
"Hardly."
"I guess I'll have to ask Bobby about that."
"Mister Fucking Melodrama. You love this stuff, don't you? You loved it when those quacks told you you were dying and you love thinking I have some awful plan for you. And here I was banking on the idea that your cowardice was just a surface ploy. You really are addicted to your existence, aren't you? You'd be better off strung out on smack."
"I just came to say goodbye."
"Goodbye."
"And thank you."
"For what?"
"I don't know."
"There's going to be a reckoning tonight. Old Gold will face his demon. I think you should stick around. Maybe you'll change your mind about all of this. If you don't, wait outside your cabin. Naperton's making a cheese run tonight. He'll give you a ride."
"I'll be there."
"It's too bad," said Heinrich.
"What's that?"
"I was hoping you'd be my entree into a whole new market."
"I'll recommend you at the racquet club."
I did the day. I did the rest of the day. I went to the kitchen for my bubble dance. I did big hellos.
"What are you grinning about?" said Parish.
"These all the dishes?" I said. "Bring it on! Greasy platters, gunked spoons, the dried ketchup of martyrs! Bring the shit on, Parish! I am the cleanser."
"Who gave you permission for giddiness, you little shit? Listen, I'm in a funk. I'm in no mood."
"I'm all moods," I said. "In and out of them."
"I'm the boss of you," said Parish. "I set the mood."
We squared off. I got up on boxer's toes, popped Parish in the tit. He dropped me with a whisk handle to the mouth. I got up, got quiet, rubbed my teeth.
"Oh, don't be sulky," said Parish. "I think you're charming. I'm just having a day. Too many peepers on the potatoes. I don't like to be so seen by tubers. I'm sorry. You're the cleanser, okay?"
"I'm the cleanser," I said.
"That's my boy. Now don't forget to punch out."
My rye'd gone green.
I went back to the cabin to check on Trubate. The room was dark and stank of balm. He was sitting up, the drip ripped from his arm. He stared up at the rafter beam.
"Bobby?" I said.
"Bobby died in a fire," he said.
I walked out to the trance pasture, saw Lem Burke sitting in the punk weeds, smoking a joint, gerrymandering an ant colony with a stick.
"Got some of those in my cabin," I said.
"What?"
"Ants."
"What kind of ants?"
"I don't know. Black ants."
"These are red ants."
"Communists."
"I wouldn't say that," said Lem. "They just do what seems right."
Lem whipped the stick. It careened off my knee.
"Sorry," he said.
The weeds were high. I could only make out the top of the kid's head. He was so long and scrawny, weedlike himself. It seemed like he'd always been here, sitting, dreaming, playing Hitler with dirt life.
"Hear about Old Gold?" I said.
"Poor fucker," said Lem.
"You don't like it here, do you?"
Lem said nothing.
"How's your continuum awareness coming?"
"Why do you ask so many questions?" said Lem. "What are you trying to hide?"
"Sometimes people ask questions just to find out things."
"My continuum awareness is coming along fine," said Lem. "The past present and future are entirely saturated with one thought, one image, one sensation. My mom knew what she was doing, tell you that."
Smoke was rolling off the ridge. Both of us sniffed at the sky. Wolves, I thought. Rabbits, I revised.