Sometimes when he visualized her face, he saw vertical bars superimposed on the image, and that had bewildered him for a long time, until he weighed the variables and realized he was seeing her through the slats of his crib. He could smell stale urine, feel the sodden lumps of his own feces in his full diaper. Nobody was supposed to be able to remember that far back, but "nobody" wasn't him.
He could not picture the men. He had seen them, but they were nothing to him beyond huge figures looming over his crib, or, worse, part of two locked bodies a few feet away, moving together in what had seemed to him a cruel struggle that surely hurt Lureen.
He'd sensed that some of those strangers had liked him O.K., and that others were pissed that they had to do what they did to his mother while he watched them silently, his little, useless hands clenching the crib's bars. He did remember his rage. He'd wanted to kill them before he had even known the word for it.
One of them took her away and never brought her back. He'd heard dead then, and whispered phrases that made him feel dead too. He shut his eyes and blocked the memory.
The twitching in his arms accelerated, and he lowered the glasses from his brow and stretched, sending a family of quail fleeing in panic. He remembered the canteen, reached
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for it, and drained it of the hot, tinny-tasting water. He'd have to remember to get some salt tablets; the weather was much hotter than he'd expected. He'd always heard that Washington was cool and rainy, but that turned out to be the part around Seattle. All the sweating was making him lose potassium. Salt tablets would fix that.
He lay back on the rock, and the flat surface felt good under his extended spine. Tiny bits of sand and mica adhered to his damp skin, and he felt the difference in tactile sensation between the unscarred skin and the fibrous keloid. He would have to remember to wear a shirt to cover the scar; it made him highly describable to the law.
Research. Anything could be researched—legal or illegal —and understanding witness identification was one of his more meaningful projects. The dead didn't describe, but there were always others. He had a long head start on any adversary because of his intelligence, and he'd bettered his odds with information. He'd tried it on brains alone in the beginning, but the sheer number of cops, even bumbling along, outweighed his advantage. Most cops were stupid assholes who went by the book, never seeing subtle movement outside the pattern, but there had been a few of them who took the time to think and they'd blocked his path.
He'd done time for the little stuff—not a lot of it, but enough to let him know he couldn't stand to be locked up. Juvey hall, which was basically a joke. A month or two in one of their "training schools," but they'd never put him in the joint, and they never would. He was almost grateful to the smarter dicks because they'd taught him more unaware than they'd taken from him; he'd vacuumed what he needed out of their heads.
He knew how to change the way he was remembered. If he slumped, he could diminish his tallness by inches. The old fart in Denver who'd handed over her savings to the "bank examiner" had been adamant that he was under six feet and over thirty; she hadn't recognized him in the lineup, picked the off-duty cop standing next to him. The bunco dick had been pissed when he couldn't get the prosecutor to file. And Duane was out of Denver on the next plane. It was
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a disappointment anyway. Smog. He'd expected Denver to be clear and on a mountain and it was flat and smoky, full of pretend-cowboys and dull brick houses.
Washington looked like the calendars said it did. Seattle was surrounded by mountains, and it got even better when he'd crossed over them to the east. He liked the orchards and the brown hills that looked like giants fallen asleep in the baking afternoon, Gullivers who might wake at any moment to roll over and create an entirely new skyline. Most of all, he liked the forest. He looked straight up at the trees above him. The firs and pines seemed to grow higher as he stared, their top-most branches turning to black filigree against the sun. There was a continuity here. They must have always been here, and they would always be here, reaching stoically toward the sky. It gave him a transcendent peace that only reinforced his choice of this place. He closed his eyes against the sun, pale green eyes flecked with hazel. From the side the pupils were not the smooth concave half-sphere others had, but notched.
Lureen's image emerged now on the nether surface of his eyelids. He could see her little face with the regular features, her huge frightened pansy eyes, the faint dusting of freckles that touched her nose and cheeks in summer, and the mouth so soft. She had such a mass of dark flyaway hair, hair so fine that it curled in tendrils around her jaw and then became as evanescent as smoke haloed around her fragile skull. She'd hated her hair and tried to tame it with endless brushing that had only set it alive with electricity. Everything about her had been ephemeral, that tiny girl-woman as transient as a dragonfly. He sighed. At twenty-four, he was already two years older than she would ever be. Still, she was always with him, waiting just beyond the limits of his peripheral vision. He sometimes felt that, if he could only turn his head quickly enough, he would catch her and draw her back to him. He knew that Lureen was gone forever. But he also knew that she did not rest, that she still wandered lost and terrified in the world just beyond the tree tops and on the other side of the mountains. 39
His name was about all she had been able to give him, beyond life itself. Duane Elvis Demich. One of his cell mates in the reform school had pointed out to him what his initials spelled.
"You're dead, man," the stupid ass had chortled. "Get it? D.E.D. Dead. That ain't what you'd call lucky initials. Dee-wane Elvis. What the hell kind of pussy name is that?"
He had slammed the other boy back against the metal bunk and held him, dangling, above the floor until he just about peed his pants. Nobody ever mentioned his name again.
She had chosen that name, given him a name unlike any other. The only material things he ever bothered to keep were the warped 45 records she'd treasured so—Elvis's records. God, when the man himself dropped dead, it had been like she'd died again. He liked to think that Elvis was with her someplace, making it easier for her until he could set her free.
Sometimes he wondered why he couldn't have looked like her, and shuddered when he imagined her giving birth to him. How could such a tiny girl have delivered the great mass of him? Had she forgiven him the pain of that May night in Michigan? He'd found his creased, stained birth certificate and seen his birth weight: ten pounds, eleven ounces; it had made him wince to think of it.
"Mother Lureen Dorothy Demich. Born: March 7,1940. Birthplace: Coatesville, Pennsylvania. Father: Unknown."
His hair was light auburn, thick, and wavy. His eyes were green, or gray, or hazel, depending on his thoughts. His features were powerful, chiseled, defined, where hers had been so delicate. Viewed from the side, he had the etched-coin image of a young Greek god, just as her Elvis had had when he was younger. Seen full face, he had a slightly jarring appearance; the two sides of his face had come together and joined a few millimeters from true alignment. The off-center result was not enough to make him less handsome, and most people didn't notice it, but he wondered about it sometimes. His right eye slid off just a little,
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drooping when he was tired, as did his cheek on that side. Sometimes, he covered up one side of his face or the other and studied the portion left to view in the mirror. The left side looked angelic and calm, but the right was evil.
What the hell. He'd only done what he had to do. Survival is the law of the jungle, and the fittest don't regret what they do to stay alive. He had surmised that morals consisted of only what one perceived as right or wrong, and that what people said and what they actually practiced rarely coincided anyway. Most of the carnies he'd known in his first world took care of each other and ripped off anyone in the civilian world with impunity. Even cons had certain standards of ethical behavior. But the straight world—outside the tents and outside the walls, anything went. That's where the real animals were.
The tree darkness overhead devoured the sun and the wind lost its warmth, reminding him he was about out of time for the day. The massive rock had turned dank beneath him. He sat up and made a sweep of the two-lane road fronting the river's edge, looking for any sign of activity. It was presently empty of cars or joggers.
He had a gut feeling that this was going to be the place. He had always sensed vibrations of what was going to be propitious for him, and he'd been almost shaken with the strength of the signals he'd picked up as he had crossed the Cascades and seen the vista of eastern Washington spread out before him. What he sought waited here for him to discover. He was a watcher, unseen, and he had an indefinable control over those he observed; they never knew he was near. Sometimes he prowled through lovers' lanes, padding silently up behind parked cars to see what was beyond the steamed windows, a woman struggling and sighing in the arms of some horny bastard behind the steering wheel, glimpses of bare flesh and tangles of arms and legs. He could get so close he could hear them rutting there, heedless of any danger.
Although he wasn't a voyeur, he couldn't stanch the
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unbidden rush of blood to his groin, the erection that pushed at the fly of his jeans when he watched the fools playing at love. They had no comprehension of what real passion or commitment was, but they could mimic the act of love and trick his body to react instinctively. It annoyed him because that meant he'd have to find a place to relieve himself of the urgency in his genitals. He never thought of breaking into the cars and having the women he watched, nor did he consider having sex with the loud and pushy tramps who flocked into the Trail's End Bar back in Natchitat, sending out less than subtle signals to him with their self-conscious laughter, their compliant posture as they leaned against the jukebox pretending to make selections. Women always came on that way with him. They liked his bigness, his lidded stare as he watched them over a schooner of beer, but their made-up faces fell and their giggling faltered when he turned his back on them and walked across the gravel lot to his motel room.
He had no time now for any of that, and he was irritated at the betrayal of his own body, of that male response to anything female and young and soft, or anyone who looked that way in barlight.
The Big Apple Motel lacked a lot, but it gave him a base of operations. And it was cheap, a few steps up from the shacks furnished for migrant workers who flooded Natchitat when the crop neared fruition. The manager had assumed that he was part of them, a little better dressed, a little more savvy, but basically a transient willing to pay twelve bucks a night for a single iron bed, a toilet, sink, and a hot plate.
He'd stayed at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, the Brown Palace in Denver, and the Fairmont in Dallas, and had been charged more for one breakfast from room service than two days rent at the Big Apple. The Big Apple stank of sweat, spilled beer, semen, and Pine-sol, a permeating miasma that seemed to be ingrained in the asphalt tile floors and plywood walls. He could rid himself of the odor only by smoking and staying out of the dump from dawn until
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midnight. But it suited for now. Suited his medium-thick bankroll and suited his need for anonymity in Natchitat.
He had a couple of hundred bucks, and that was as low as he planned to get, and so he worked one of the minor scams available, nothing that would take much energy or much thought. It had taken him only a day to isolate the product most needed in Natchitat. The migrant shacks were a few miles outside of town, and few of the alkies had transportation into town. He saw they would cheerfully kill each other over a half-full bottle of Tokay but would not walk into Natchitat to buy the stuff for
$ 1.19 a fifth at the Safeway. He could buy the cheapest vinegar-wine for $3.29 a gallon, and he bought ten gallons a day. Bottling was cheap; he paid one of the winos a buck to gather all the empties he could find, and he filled the dirty bottles with his Safeway supply. He made the rounds of the camps each evening with his Harley's sidecar filled with fifths of retread Tokay, and sold out quickly at two and a quarter apiece. His daily profit was $75.60—less the buck for the bottle man.
"A goddamned savior," one of his customers had called him, as he cradled a full bottle of Tokay. Two thousand bucks a month and he was a goddamned savior to boot. He'd made ten—twenty—times more than that as a bunco man, but that had taken full days of his time, and he needed time far more than money now.
The road was offering possibles infrequently; he was spotting mostly carloads of fishermen headed home. He stood finally and whirled his long arms to ease the strain of watching all day. He pulled the sweatshirt with Ohio State printed on it over his head, replaced the binoculars with mirrored sunglasses, and leapt off the rock.
He disliked this part of his day the most. He would have to eat, deliver to his customers, sleep, and rise tomorrow to begin again. He resented his need to eat and sleep as much as he detested the sexual embers that flashed into fire so often. Bodily functions delayed his quest, but he was ravenous now and could think only of a raw steak and cold beer. The bike was safe, hidden by the fallen fir and the huckleberry bushes. Even a plane overhead would not be
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able to make it out. If the time came when he had to ditch it, he planned simply to send it roaring into the river. He ran his hand over the bulges in the saddle bag instinctively and relaxed as he felt the outlines of the guns inside; they were both there—the pistol and the dismantled rifle.
He was pushing the bike through the last copse of trees onto the roadway when he saw her. He blinked his eyes to clear the orange outline of the setting sun, but she was still there when he looked again, his breathing suspended by her perfection.