Jewelweed (53 page)

Winnie had been part of this. How many Sundays, she wondered, had she stood behind the pulpit and spoken of the great miracle, when the divine came alive in the most humble human circumstance? Through this same progression, wonder, love, and compassion would eventually overcome political and military power. She had stood in front of the church and explained how there was hope for a better tomorrow. “The despair you feel is a lie. It will pass away. Jesus will heal every wound, ease every sorrow. No matter what happens on earth, or in the wicked mind of government, the future has a home for you.”

Such fundamental belief made it possible to endure the great disappointment when advances in science and technology seemed initially to promise that modern societies need no longer fear destruction by more-primitive societies, only to witness the resurrection of barbarism among themselves. Such belief even made it possible to look into the open abyss of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the world's most advanced, well-informed, and cultured civilizations proved to be brutal, murderous, and evil.

Even now, sitting in the back pew and having just resigned her position because she could no longer continue in her role, Winnie trusted in the possibility of redemption. Life would not end in an apoplectic implosion of frustrated desires, foiled schemes, and defeated dreams, but rather in revealed glory.

I can't help it, she thought. I'm a daughter of the Midwest, and I never was sophisticated enough to be cynical. Blake was right. Once the imagination takes hold of the world in a certain way, nothing could possibly
change it. When properly heeded, even the land itself insisted upon a magical sense of reciprocity. She would never be free of religious thinking, and she couldn't imagine ever wanting to be. She just needed a new schedule for her faith, one whose appointments with the divine were arranged not only through sermons, songs, and scripture, but rather on a walk-in basis with rocks, water, air, blood, space, and time.

Winnie walked to the front of the church, knelt at the carpeted altar, folded her hands, and wept for joy. Then she went outside into the parking lot, got into her car, and drove away without looking back.

B
lake pulled to the edge of the deserted road, set the stand, and climbed off his motorcycle. The warm night enveloped him. Miles away, he could see houselights on the next ridge, remote and unmoving. He took off his jacket and laid it across the seat. A streak of yellow briefly marked the northern sky—a meteor or some other piece of space mineral burning up.

It was hard for Blake to conceive of astronomical speeds. What would it be like, he wondered, to move at the velocity of a meteor or comet?

His memory drew on the few grand-scale concepts he knew to apply to topics like these, and he reminded himself that motion was relative. Without the embrace of a gravitational field, you would have no sense of how fast you were moving until you came upon something moving at a different rate.

Everything on a galactic scale was hard to imagine. What would north, south, east, and west mean in deep space? There would be no orientation until you put yourself in relationship with something else, and arbitrarily decided that you and that something would serve as a basis for north, or south, or east, or west.

He'd recently read somewhere that space itself was expanding. Volumes of newly created intergalactic space were moving galaxies farther apart. In some cases whole orbital systems were moving away from each other faster than the speed of light. Some of the stars now visible in the sky would soon be disappearing, going out like switched-off night-lights along a dark hallway. Whole regions would soon go black, no longer visible from other regions, forever separate.

If Spinoza had known about expanding space, he might have been
forced to conclude that God was not just changing from minute to minute, but growing. Would Spinoza's god feel this as personal growth? Would God's experiences all be subjective and interior, the way people feel emotions, thoughts, memories, and pain? Had Spinoza thought about this?

Probably not, thought Blake.

He emerged from his thoughts and once again discovered that he was alone on top of a hill, looking at a billion stars and listening to the ubiquitous sound of insects. He breathed deeply and felt humbled. For now, things were complicated enough without wondering about the larger picture.

He was glad Skeeter Skelton had not showed up. Blake had almost not come himself. Meeting people from the past was difficult—hard to know what to say, and even harder to know what they might be thinking. This was especially true of someone like Skeeter, who occupied a significant place in his memory.

Blake had the same problem with Danielle.

He heard a noise in the distance. Of course Skeeter would be late, thought Blake. The sound of an engine moved closer and closer, out of the valley below.

After clearing the last corner, a single headlight lit up the two hundred yards of steep road between them. The sound accelerated rapidly and the beam of light rushed forward. Probably third gear, thought Blake. Then the engine noise ended abruptly and the light went out.

Rising silently out of the darkness, Skeeter Skelton coasted up the hill in neutral. His momentum died a couple feet away from where Blake stood.

“Hey, Blake,” said Skeeter. “Welcome back.”

Blake smiled. He couldn't help it. Skeeter hadn't forgotten how to make an entrance.

“Nice to see you again, Skeeter.”

In the milky skylight Blake noticed Skeeter had acquired some gray in his brown hair. Except for that, he looked much the same—short, wiry, still probably weighing less than 130 pounds. His face and the back of his hands were scarred and road-burned. His right leg—below the knee—had been replaced with a prosthetic. The refashioned body part had been made to look like several lengths of stainless steel pipe and black metal; when he climbed off his bike it gave the impression that part of the machinery had been dismantled.

Skeeter's handshake was quick, breaking away after the first hard bony squeeze.

“Still running tracks?” asked Blake.

“Don't race much anymore,” said Skeeter, unzipping his tight-fitting leather jacket. “My sponsors started telling me which races to enter.”

“What do you do now?”

“Pick my own. Things changed while you were away.”

“How's that?”

“New people, different. I'm semiretired now.”

Skeeter walked around Blake's motorcycle. “Looks like the same Gixxer you used to have,” he said, fondling a fender. “Old one with carbs.”

“I see you're still riding Ducks.”

“So, what's it like in prison?”

“Some days are better than others.”

“Someone said they sent you up for drugs.”

“That's right.”

“Didn't know you were into that.”

“Only takes once.”

Skeeter leaned against his own motorcycle, took a small cigar out of his coat, and lit it. “You still with that same woman?” he asked.

“Afraid not.”

“Damn, she was nice.”

“I didn't think anyone else knew that,” said Blake.

“Never works that way. I looked for her after you were gone. Found her too, but she wouldn't have nobody. She could ride nearly as good as you.”

“I know it,” said Blake. “I taught her.”

“She's got a kid now.”

“That's what I heard.”

“Does he belong to you?”

“He might.”

“He looks like you.”

“I heard that too.”

“Have you seen her?”

“Once. I'd like to see her again, but—”

“But what?”

“But nothing.”

Skeeter laughed, took a last pull from his cigar, and flipped the remainder into the ditch.

Skeeter was different, thought Blake. The risk-loving that had once characterized his racing seemed to have influenced the way he talked. He seemed to assume a greater familiarity than actually existed between them. It felt a little like a psychic invasion.

Skeeter spoke again. “You were the only guy around here who could keep up with me. You ran dirt and hills, short track and quarter mile, and then you spent the last three years in supermax. A couple nights ago you were ready to jump Jim Clay and Bobbie Jackson in the bar in Luster—both of 'em cage fighters. You live alone in the middle of nowhere, in a farmhouse most people think is haunted, and yet you're afraid to go see that little gal who works as a live-in outside of Grange.”

The night had turned cooler. Blake put on his jacket. “How'd you know all that?”

“Way too many people talk to me,” said Skeeter, walking around Blake's bike again, crouching and looking at the engine.

“I'm not afraid of seeing her.”

“Yes you are.”

“Why would I be?”

“She's got something you can't live without.”

“I'm living without it now.”

“You hope you might get her back someday, and you don't want to live without that dream.”

“What business of yours is this?” asked Blake, bristling.

“The few exceptional women in the world belong to everyone. She has something that can't be named. If people knew what it was they'd sell it by the pound and you could snort her up a paper straw and stay higher than a kite.”

Fighting against the older man's presumption of closeness was becoming more difficult for Blake. He felt himself giving in to his more charismatic companion. “I'd like to know what it is,” he said. “I mean, I agree with you that she has it, but I'd like to know what it is.”

“Wouldn't be what it is if you knew what it was,” said Skeeter.

“I'd still like to know,” replied Blake.

“Big mistake,” said Skeeter. “That's why most people don't know shit.”

Skeeter sidled back over to his bike. “Let's start,” he said, zipping up his jacket and climbing on. “First one to go past that tavern in Luster wins.”

“That's right in the middle of town.”

“Something about that bother you, Blake?”

“No, just checking. How many people know about this?”

“Not too many. And to make it more interesting, let's do this without lights.”

Blake started his engine and lined up beside Skeeter's reworked Ducati. Blue smoke rolled off their back tires.

Blake found himself ahead of Skeeter after the first corner, but he quickly became aware of the drawbacks of being the leader. All Skeeter had to do was keep up for twenty miles, letting Blake take all the risks, then try to take the lead at the end.

Blake felt like a fool. How did he get himself into this?

After three or four miles of riding as fast as he dared without a headlamp, Blake backed off a little, to see whether Skeeter intended to ride his tail all the way into Luster.

Sure enough, he stayed behind him, even along a straight run of sky-lit highway that could have been traveled twenty or thirty miles an hour faster than they were going.

After another couple miles, Blake tried to see how familiar Skeeter was with the road. By going wide on several corners that should have been taken on the inside and watching in his rearview as Skeeter followed him, he gathered that Skeeter did not know the road very well. This assumption seemed to be confirmed when a set of headlights came toward them in the distance; Skeeter narrowed the length between them, hanging close behind, afraid something unforeseen might happen with the vehicle, leaving him with too much distance to make up before Luster.

Blake smiled. In the old days, Skeeter never would have played it safe.

A doe standing in the road caused a moment of hesitation before both bikes raced by it on the left.

Three miles outside Luster, Blake felt his body tighten. While Skeeter might not be very familiar with the road they had traveled to this point, surely he was well acquainted with that part of it just outside of Luster, which is why he'd set the race up this way. Still, the caution he sensed in Skeeter's riding gave him an unanticipated confidence in himself.

On the outskirts of town, Skeeter nearly came alongside Blake, bidding for the inside on the last corner. They leaned into it together and came out side by side, headed into town.

Both bikes accelerated through the four-way stop and on past the tavern. Blake nipped Skeeter by a tire length.

They continued through Luster and pulled into a little park on the north side of town. Neither rider got off.

Skeeter, who almost never lost races, looked like someone had just poked him in the eye with a stick. But he smiled and sat there on his bike, shaking his head. “You've got a damn long third gear, Blake.”

“Listen,” said Blake. “No one is going to hear about this from me. I don't want your reputation, Skeeter. You can have it. But I need you to do something for me.”