He’s appeared alone here today because of Randi’s refusal this morning, flat out, to get out of bed if the purpose of her rising was to travel to Jeffersonville. Just overflowing with hostility these days. Hot to get back to those brown California foothills, the tinderbox calm of late summer. There’s been scene upon scene over the last week or so. Tiresome and, irritatingly enough, ultimately persuasive. Randi began by pulling out the last few months’ bank statements, charting for him the oceans of cash that had flowed out of their hands. This never bothered Guy, but he understood that for Randi money was always a suitable way to frame an issue that had moral dimensions. He was like, OK, develop your thesis. Moving right along, Randi pointed out that if anything, he had less sympathy for the SLA’s tactics and objectives today than he’d had when he first heard of the group. That Teko, Yolanda, and Tania did not hesitate to demand money, food, shelter, transportation, supplies, and weapons but viciously rebuked the Mocks for their politics, values, and way of life. That Joan, too, now not only seemed to take their largesse as her due but appeared also almost to resent their ability to provide it. She suggested to him that it was only a matter of time before the feds linked the personal check Guy had written to Fire Lieutenant Lafferty to the place in South Canaan and were all over it and them.
Uh, Guy still hasn’t gotten around to mentioning his little indiscretion with Ernest to Randi.
But these are suddenly the problems of the past. There are more immediate problems to be dealt with, Guy can see that. He can be blind to many things, God knows, but the data rolling in here are hard to overlook. Missing parties. Wounds. Suspicious questions. He’s moving quickly, finding a bread knife, a bottle opener; fishing condiments out from around the uncovered plates of congealed food Yolanda has stocked the fridge with, yuck, getting things together in a hurry. He drops a saucer removing it from the cupboard and watches it fall, wheeling itself gracelessly toward the linoleum, absurdly slow. It bounces on impact, lucky break. He reaches for it, thinking of the traditions encased in a single life, secret and rich and headed for oblivion. The way, for example, he turns a loaf of Italian bread on its side, to easily slice it lengthwise. The way, say, he rings a plate with overlapping slices of cheese. The way he wipes his ass and then examines the toilet paper. The various stylistic distinctions of superficially indistinct men. Oh, how he does not want to die. Not ever, really, but certainly not here and now. Could be he’s just being paranoid. Could be that. But there is a dread feeling here, an alarm, a ghost vibe drilling its way right through his skin.
He turns from the counter, holding plates of food in both hands. Still no Tania, no Joan. Could it be that they’re already occupying the hole that waits for him and Trout? The modern way to go, standing at the edge of an open pit, at the head of the final queue.
“Here’s the food,” he says.
They eat hurriedly, without conversation. Trout remains sullen, wordless, making short, stabbing gestures at the food on his plate. Teko eats in his robotic fashion until he empties his plate, and then he immediately pushes it away. Yolanda lingers over her food. Guy notices that she makes faint humming noises as she eats. When he looks into her eyes, he discerns a sort of patient hostility there, latent and coiled. She’s been sitting on it since day one, but she studies him now with an anticipation that sends a chill down his spine. Does he imagine her pupils dilate at the contemplation of him?
Tania says, offhand, while they stand waiting for the clerk to finish slicing liverwurst for another customer, “They’re taking Adam’s tapes before he goes, you know. Guy’ll be pissed off.”
“Who?” asks Joan.
“Who else? I heard them talking up in the loft.”
“All that work.”
“Funny, huh? What a waste of time.”
“Why, I wonder.”
“Oh, I know why,” says Tania. “They think Guy wants to rip them off for the book. I’m like, what book?”
“Guy? Steal the book?”
“For the money, I guess. They’re totally paranoid.”
“Why? What else they said?”
“They said he was setting us up, that the whole Jeffersonville move was a setup.”
“A setup, God. I’m sure Guy has a secret reason for being us up here, but that’s not what it is. Must have been tough for you not to bust up laughing.”
“Oh, my God, it was. They said they had to get the tapes and shut Guy up before we got out of here. I’m like, where are we going now?” She yawns, glances at the wall clock.
“What do you mean shut Guy up?”
Tania offers a noncommittal shrug.
Joan’s reaction is delayed for a moment, but then she takes Tania by the elbow and leads her out of the store.
“Joan, we left the groceries.”
“Come on, honey.”
Whatever grievances she may have against Guy Mock, however much evidence she has gathered proving that his every move is informed by self-interest, however much of a pain in the ass he may be, however much better off she personally would be with him out of the picture, Joan is skeptical of Teko and Yolanda’s view of things, and she most assuredly does not want to see Guy Mock die at their hands because of some wacky misapprehension. Stiff them out of some of their advance, maybe, but sell them out to the pigs?
“What’s going on? Why are we rushing back?”
They hurry along the side of the road. A dog dashes across the yard before a house and stops at the edge of the lawn, circling, pawing the mown grass and barking at them as they walk past.
“Good dog,” says Joan.
It’s all been heading here, Joan realizes. Talk all that talk about guns and death, call people pigs and insects until they stop being people, until they’re nothing, vermin, just a problem, and suddenly it’s easy: You press a button; they die. Why not? She remembers with Willie, when his beliefs, the gale force of his righteousness, weren’t close to being enough anymore. That stupid bomb factory! First they blow up IBM Selectrics, Xerox machines, and acres of indoor/ outdoor carpeting, all the things that make today’s modern offices so distinctive, so interesting. Then one day they’re trying to off a saloon full of cops. She’s glad he got caught, she’s glad. If he were to have tried something like this, she would have rushed to stop him. Is it prescience that moves her now?
After the meal Yolanda invites Guy and Trout on a little stroll.
“OK,” says Guy. “I think we have time. Have to hit the road with those tapes soon, though.”
“Oh,” says Yolanda, “couldn’t you just call Randi, tell her you’re spending the night? And for God’s sake, ask her to come.”
That’s it.
Still, Guy has to step back and admire himself a little; his impulse is to try to wheedle the tapes out of her, just so he can hold them, possess them. Despite the approach of death — his certainty that even as he and Yolanda chat pleasantly, Teko is sneaking up behind him, ready to stove in his braincase — he talks right on through, trying to gain the tapes even as he awaits the deathblow.
And then, from under the dark awning of the trees covering the road, Tania and Joan appear. Joan runs to Guy. She hugs him. She hugs him!
“What the — what are you doing back so soon?” asks Yolanda.
This is the moment when Guy realizes that he will live, will remain alive for the foreseeable future, overwhelming emotion flooding his system: deep relief — not happiness, but a grateful sense of reinstatement. Grateful for: the little birds. Grateful for: the blades of grass.