The Hammer of Eden (34 page)

Priest knew this was not the real reason Dale wanted to talk to him, but he argued anyway. “Don’t knock the supermarket buyers—they saved our lives in the early days.”

“Well, they can’t save our lives now,” Dale said. “Priest, why the fuck are we doing this? We have to be off this land by
next Sunday.”

Priest suppressed a sigh of frustration.
For Christ’s sake, give me a chance! I’ve almost done it—the governor can’t ignore earthquakes indefinitely. I just need a little more time. Why can’t you have faith?

He knew that Dale could not be won over by bullying, cajoling, or
bullshit. Only logic would work with him. He forced himself to speak calmly, the epitome of sweet reason. “You could be right,” he said magnanimously. Then he could not resist adding a gibe. “Pessimists often are.”

“So?”

“All I’m saying to you is, give it those six days. Don’t quit
now
. Leave time for a miracle. Maybe it won’t happen. But maybe it will.”

“I don’t know,” Dale said.

Then Melanie burst in with a newspaper in her hand. “I have to talk to you,” she said breathlessly.

Priest’s heart missed a beat. What had happened? It must be about the earthquakes—and Dale was not in on the secret. Priest gave him a grin that said
Ain’t women peculiar?
and led Melanie out of the barn.

“Dale doesn’t know!” he said as soon as they were out of earshot. “What the hell—”

“Look at this!” she said, waving the paper in front of his eyes.

He was shocked to see a photograph of a seismic vibrator.

He hastily scanned the yard and the nearby buildings, but no one was around. All the same, he did not want to have this conversation with Melanie out in the open. “Not here!” he said fiercely. “Put the damn paper under your arm and let’s go to my cabin.”

She got a grip on herself.

They walked through the little settlement to his cabin. As soon as they were inside, he took the newspaper from her and looked at the picture again. There was no doubt about it. He could not read the caption or the accompanying story, of course, but the photo was of a truck just like the one he had stolen.

“Shit,” he said, and threw the newspaper on the table.

“Read it!” Melanie said.

“It’s too dim in here,” he replied. “Tell me what it says.”

“The police are looking for a stolen seismic vibrator.”

“The hell they are.”

“It doesn’t say anything about earthquakes,” Melanie went on. “It’s just, like, a funny story—who’d want to steal one of these damn things?”

“I don’t buy that,” Priest said. “This can’t be a coincidence. The story is about us, even if they don’t mention us. They know how we made the earthquake happen, but they haven’t told the press yet. They’re scared of creating a panic.”

“So why have they released this picture?”

“To make things hard for us. That picture makes it impossible to drive the truck on the open road. Every Highway Patrol officer in California is on the lookout.” He hit the table with his fist in frustration. “Fuck it, I can’t let them stop me this easily!”

“What if we drive at night?”

He had thought of that. He shook his head. “Still too risky. There are cops on the road at night.”

“I have to go check on Dusty,” Melanie said. She was close to tears. “Oh, Priest, he’s so sick—we won’t have to leave the valley, will we? I’m scared. I’ll never find another place where we can be happy, I know it.”

Priest hugged her to give her courage. “I’m not beaten yet, not by a long shot. What else does the article say?”

She picked up the paper. “There was a demonstration outside the Federal Building in San Francisco.” She smiled through her tears. “A group of people who say the Hammer of Eden are right, the FBI should leave us alone, and Governor Robson should stop building power plants.”

Priest was pleased. “Well, what do you know. There are still a few Californians who can think straight!” Then he became solemn again. “But that doesn’t help me figure out how to drive the truck without getting pulled over by the first cop who sees it.”

“I’m going to Dusty,” she said.

Priest went with her. In her cabin, Dusty lay on the bed, eyes streaming, face red, panting for breath. Flower sat beside him, reading aloud from a book with a picture of a giant peach on the cover. Priest touched his daughter’s hair. She looked up at him and smiled without pausing in her reading.

Melanie got a glass of water and gave Dusty a pill. Priest felt sorry for Dusty, but he could not help remembering that the boy’s illness was a lucky break for the commune. Melanie was caught in a trap. She
believed she had to live where the air was pure, but she could not get a job outside the city. The commune was the only answer. If she had to leave here, she might find another, similar commune to take her in—but she might not, and anyway, she was too exhausted and discouraged to hit the road again.

And there was more to it than that, he thought. Deep inside her was a terrible rage. He did not know the source of it, but it was strong enough to make her yearn to shake the earth and burn cities and cause people to run screaming from their homes. Most of the time it was hidden beneath the facade of a sexy but disorganized young woman. But sometimes, when her will was thwarted and she felt frustrated and powerless, the anger showed.

He left them and headed for Star’s cabin, worrying over the problem of the truck. Star might have some ideas. Maybe there was a way they could disguise the seismic vibrator so that it looked like some other kind of vehicle, a Coke truck or a crane or something.

He stepped into the cabin. Star was putting a Band-Aid on Ringo’s knee, something she had to do about once a day. Priest smiled at his ten-year-old son and said: “What did you do this time, cowboy?” Then he noticed Bones.

He was lying on the bed, fully clothed but fast asleep—or more likely passed out. There was an empty bottle of Silver River Valley chardonnay on the rough wooden table. Bones’s mouth was open, and he was snoring softly.

Ringo began to tell Priest a long story about trying to cross the stream by swinging from a tree, but Priest hardly listened. The sight of Bones had given him inspiration, and his mind was working feverishly.

When Ringo’s grazed knee had been attended to, and the boy ran out, Priest told Star about the problem of the seismic vibrator. Then he told her the solution.

*  *  *

Priest, Star, and Oaktree helped Bones pull the big tarpaulin off the carnival ride. The vehicle stood revealed in its glorious, gaudy colors: a green dragon breathing red-and-yellow fire over three screaming girls
in a spinning seat, and the gaudy lettering that, Bones had told Priest, said “The Dragon’s Mouth.”

Priest spoke to Oaktree. “We drive this vehicle up the track a way and park it next to the seismic vibrator. Then we take off these painted panels and fix them to our truck, covering the machinery. The cops are looking for a seismic vibrator, not a carnival ride.”

Oaktree, who was carrying his toolbox, looked closely at the panels, examining the way they were fixed. “No problem,” he said after a minute. “I can do it in a day, with one or two people helping me.”

“And can you put the panels back afterward, so that Bones’s ride will look the same?”

“Good as new,” Oaktree promised.

Priest looked at Bones. The great snag with this scheme was that Bones had to be in on it. In the old days Priest would have trusted Bones with his life. He was a Rice Eater, after all. Perhaps he could not be relied upon to show up for his own wedding, but he could keep a secret. However, since Bones had become a junkie, all bets were off. Heroin lobotomized people. A junkie would steal his mother’s wedding ring.

But Priest had to take the risk. He was desperate. He had promised an earthquake four days from now, and he had to carry out his threat. Otherwise all was lost.

Bones agreed readily to the plan. Priest had half expected him to demand payment. However, he had been living free at the commune for four days, so it was too late for him to put his relationship with Priest on a commercial footing. Besides, as a communard Bones knew that the greatest imaginable sin was to value things in money terms.

Bones would be more subtle. In a day or two he would ask Priest for cash to go score some smack. Priest would cross that bridge when he came to it.

“Let’s get to it,” he said.

Oaktree and Star climbed into the cab of the carnival ride with Bones. Melanie and Priest took the ’Cuda for the mile-long ride to where the seismic vibrator was hidden.

Priest wondered what else the FBI knew. They had figured out that
the earthquake had been triggered using a seismic vibrator. Had they progressed any further? He turned on the car radio, hoping for a bulletin. He got Connie Francis singing “Breakin’ in a Brand New Broken Heart,” an oldie even by his standards.

The ’Cuda bumped along the muddy track through the forest behind Bones’s truck. Bones handled the big rig confidently, Priest observed, even though he had only just been roused from a drunken sleep. There was a moment when Priest felt sure the carnival ride was going to get stuck in a mudslide, but it pulled through without stopping.

The news came on just as they drew near the hiding place of the seismic vibrator. Priest turned up the volume.

What he heard turned him pale with shock.

“Federal agents investigating the Hammer of Eden terrorist group have issued a photographic likeness of a suspect,” the newsreader said. “He has been named as Richard or Ricky Granger, aged forty-eight, formerly of Los Angeles.”

Priest said: “Jesus
Christ!”
and slammed on the brakes.

“Granger is also wanted for a murder in Shiloh, Texas, nine days ago.”

“What?” No one knew he had killed Mario, not even Star.

The Rice Eaters were desperately keen to cause an earthquake that might kill hundreds, but all the same they would be appalled to know he had battered a man to death with a wrench. People were inconsistent.

“That’s not true,” Priest said to Melanie. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

Melanie was staring at him. “Is that your real name?” she said. “Ricky Granger?”

He had forgotten that she did not know. “Yeah,” he said. He racked his brains to think who knew his real name. He had not used it for twenty-five years, except in Shiloh. Suddenly he remembered that he had gone to the sheriff’s office in Silver City, to get Flower out of jail, and his heart stopped for a moment; then he recalled that the deputy had assumed he had the same name as Star and called him Mr. Higgins. Thank God.

Melanie said: “How did they get a photo of you?”

“Not a photo,” he said. “A
photographic likeness
. That must mean one of those Identikit pictures that they make up.”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “Only they use a computer program now.”

“There’s a computer program for every goddamn thing,” Priest muttered. He was now very glad he had changed his appearance before taking the job in Shiloh. It had been worth the time it took to grow a beard, the bother of pinning up his hair every day, and the nuisance of having to wear a hat all the time. With luck, the photographic likeness would not remotely resemble the way he looked now.

But he needed to be sure.

“I need to get to a TV,” he said.

He jumped out of the car. The carnival ride had pulled over near the hiding place of the seismic vibrator, and Oaktree and Star were getting out. In a few words he explained the situation to them. “You make a start here while I drive into Silver City,” he said. “I’ll take Melanie—I want her opinion, too.”

He got back in the car, drove out of the woods, and headed for Silver City.

On the outskirts of the small town there was an electronics store. Priest parked and they got out.

Priest looked around nervously. It was still light. What if he should meet someone who had seen his face on TV? Everything hung on whether the picture was like him. He had to know. He had to take a chance. He approached the store.

The window displayed several TV sets all showing the same picture. The program was some kind of game show. A silver-haired host in a powder blue suit was joshing a middle-aged woman wearing too much eyeliner.

Priest glanced up and down the sidewalk. There was no one else about. He looked at his watch: almost seven. The news would be on in a few seconds.

The silver-haired host put his arm around the woman and spoke to
the camera. There was a shot of an audience applauding with hysterical enthusiasm. Then the news came on. There were two anchors, a man and a woman. They spoke for a few seconds.

Then the multiple screens showed a black-and-white picture of a heavily bearded man in a cowboy hat.

Priest stared at it.

The picture did not look like him at all.

“What do you think?” he said.

“Even I wouldn’t know it was supposed to be you,” Melanie said.

Relief washed over him in a tidal wave. His disguise had worked. The beard changed the shape of his face, and the hat hid his most distinctive feature, the long, thick, wavy hair. Even he might not have recognized the picture if he had not known it was supposed to be him.

He relaxed. “Thank you, god of the hippies,” he said.

The screens all flickered, and another picture appeared. Priest was shocked to see, reproduced a dozen times, a police photo of himself at nineteen. He was so thin, his face looked like a skull. He was trim now, but in those days, doping and drinking and never eating a regular meal, he had been a skeleton. His face was drawn, his expression sullen. His hair was lank and dull, with a Beatles haircut that must have been out of date even then.

Priest said: “Would you recognize me?”

“Yes,” she said. “By the nose.”

He looked again. She was right; the picture showed his distinctive narrow nose, like a curved knife.

Melanie added: “But I don’t think anyone else would know you, certainly not strangers.”

“That’s what I thought.”

She put an arm around his waist and squeezed affectionately. “You looked like such a bad boy when you were young.”