D b, p.13
D. B., page 13
Having made little progress on the generator, Cooper was tilted back in the swivel chair, admiring the busy knit of mud dauber tubes attached to the rafter boards, when Baron appeared. “Wait until dark and they're snugged into their barracks before you gas them,” Baron said, pointing at the nests.
“I don't want to do that,” Cooper said. “I kind of like the way they come and go, always in a hurry to improve on what they got.”
“They're insects, they don't know any better. Have you spotted their leader yet?”
“You mean the queen?”
Baron nodded.
“No, I have not.”
“When you do, kill her and then note the confusion. Remember, small ripples lead to tidal waves. I say you tamper with their election, exert your influence. It's always bothered me how successful this matriarch business is.”
“I just like to watch.”
“Watch all you want, you won't learn anything. Trust me—I've looked long and hard at the insect world for answers, and let me tell you, it's highly organized but empty and cruel. Busy is about the best you can say for the whole lot. Don't forget we have dominion over them.”
“How do you explain spider webs?”
“Let's not go down that road,” Baron snapped. “Besides, I didn't come here to talk bugs. I've got orders from April.”
Cooper turned to face him, not liking the sound of it one bit.
“I know about the pagan village and her plans.”
“La Tontería?”
Baron nodded. “She has decided that they need radios.”
“What happened to damming the creek and setting them up with a catfish farm?”
“I talked her out of that,” Baron said. “We can't have little chiclets falling in and drowning. Mess with mother nature and we'll have the elders wringing their hands over agua diablos and bad omens. I think hi-fi is a good start, give them a taste of the BBC or, radio waves willing, maybe a little Paul Harvey—give them the rest of the story.” He slapped the generator. “Now, let's get this mother running. Have you seated the brushes and checked the filters? And what about this pull cord? We need to get our fingers on some good nylon bonded cord. The jungle's not kind to cotton.”
Baron was a natural mechanic, and as soon as he got the generator up and purring, they took the camp car down the mountain to buy radios for the villagers. The car, a rusty Mercury Colony Park wagon with a crumpled front bumper and busted dual-action tailgate, sputtered and swung back and forth across the road. Baron complained about the bumpy ride, giving Cooper a hard time for steering with one hand draped over the wheel like a pimp.
They successfully bartered with a local junk peddler for eight badly damaged clock radios, a large sea-band all-weather radio, a spool of lamp cord, and a box of salvaged socket plugs. Baron refused to accept the junk peddler's as-is terms and instead cajoled the man into shaking on a twenty-four-hour satisfaction guarantee.
Halfway back to the camp the car sputtered out and quit. Cooper tried all his usual tricks to get the wagon going but the car refused to cooperate. Baron sat watching his peace offering to Reba, pistachio ice cream, melt into a froth. He tossed the ruined ice cream into the jungle and said, “Let's have a look.”
He circled the wagon, his hands hovering inches over the ticking engine as he read the Detroit Chi and muttered to himself. He sniffed the tailpipe, put an ear to the carburetor, and even dipped his finger into a spot of oil and tasted it.
When Cooper asked what he was doing he replied, “Diagnostics. Part of the problem is that business with the gas pedal. That little flutter you were giving it. My mother has the same problem. You don't want to tease the carb. I mean, I hate to criticize another man's driving but . . .”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“Well, there it is,” Baron said. “Looks like I hit a nerve.” From his pocket he produced a flip-top tin of aspirin and dropped a tablet into the gas tank. He dried the carburetor with his shirttail, fiddled with the distributor cap, and pulled a vacuum tube, plugging it with a golf tee he'd found rolling around on the floorboard of the car. Then he sat under the shade of a large tree to consult his watch and eye the stalled wagon.
While they waited, a column of ants threaded themselves across the road. Bored, Cooper dropped oatmeal cookie crumbs in the shape of an A, trying to get the ants to form the letter. He'd once watched a beautiful Seri Indian woman fool a string of ants into a series of pulsing loops with a bottle of vanilla extract. But these ants remained on their stubborn course, unswayed by his oatmeal raisin cookie. Only one ant stepped out of line to lift a crumb before rejoining the queue.
“They respond to vibration,” Baron called out from his shade. “I find a Popsicle stick pounded in about this far and then bowed on top with another such stick does the trick. All that vibrating turns their tiny ant brains to mush and they go into an earthquake panic. Same with chickens and earthworms. When it comes to predicting natural disasters I'll take a rock hen any day of the week. All that talk of dogs warning their owners is propaganda from the American Kennel clubs—old ladies looking to push their breeds on the public.”
Cooper looked around for a Popsicle stick or paint stirrer and found nothing and so he watched the ants disappear into the jungle, imagining them beating out little ant work tunes with their feelers as they zeroed in on the melted pistachio ice cream.
Baron rose and began shaking the car, the struts groaning and popping. Then he reached in and turned the key with a flourish, grinning as the engine roared to life.
“Hey, it worked,” Cooper said.
“Of course it worked. Now steady pressure on the gas pedal.”
When they reached camp, April was waiting for them, her hair tucked under a faded red bandana. She hugged Cooper and then inspected the radios while Baron gabbed on about the plan to run the radios off the generator and give the villagers news of the world and music.
“Remember,” Baron said. “Charity's a dish best served cold.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“Leave it on a doorstep and ring the bell.”
Cooper took the radios back to the shed, where he worked late into the night replacing frayed cords, mending bent antennas, blowing dust from the delicate speaker cones, and wondering why they just hadn't bought a bunch of battery-operated transistors. He got six radios running and tossed the others under the tool bench with the rest of the junk.
The next day he hiked down to La Tontería with April and Baron, who'd contracted Molto, the most servile member of his flock, to wheel the cumbersome generator and crate of radios down the rutted jungle path. April was in high spirits and sang the whole way, even accepting Baron's requests for a Blood, Sweat, and Tears tune.
A light rain started, drizzling down through the heavy green canopy, causing Baron to remark, “This is going to play hell with the reception. I hope you haven't overbilled the project.”
Cooper assured him that he'd thoroughly tested the radios and was fairly certain they could pick up some stray signal. “But I'm not makin' any guarantees,” he said.
As they hit the outskirts of the village Baron sniffed the air and said, “I'd feel better if we consulted a bruja before we get started with the radios and pollute these simple folk with rock music and Bromo-Seltzer commercials. There's mucho big magic afoot here.”
Before they could stop him he barged into the nearest shack, demanding an audience with the local bruja. An old woman chased him out into the street, denouncing him as a loco piojo and spitting on his shoes, much to the amusement of the ancient wrinkled men watching the spectacle from a nearby log bench.
“What sort of village is this?” Baron shouted.
April told Baron in a motherly tone to be quiet, and much to Cooper's surprise he shut his mouth and stepped away from the old woman. A crowd gathered and a man with curled, callused hands and long black hair appeared, introducing himself as Manu, the village autoridad. April explained that she'd brought radios and a generator as a gift, telling him how they could get weather reports, listen to music—anything they wanted. She did not want anything from them, she reassured him several times, nor had she come to ask them to work clearing trails in the jungle or to trick them into signing on as porters for some ill-fated scholarly expedition.
Manu agreed and allowed Cooper and Molto to begin hooking up the radios.
Baron, meanwhile, had stationed himself under a tree and was locked in an elaborate evil eye contest with the old woman. She had him on the psychic run—rubbing his temples and calling out to Molto to loan him some pagan spell to turn her into a toad. The village children were no help. They pestered Baron, pointing at the coins in his penny loafers and asking him about his binoculars. Every now and then he would reach out and granny thump one who got too close.
When the moment arrived to fire up the generator, April took a minute to recheck the connections before giving Cooper the sign, and after a few stubborn pulls the generator finally growled to life with a gassy cough. Molto wiped mud from the extension cord and sank the ends together.
For a second nothing happened and Baron rose flapping his arms about in the rain like a large flightless bird. The woman backed away, spitting in his general direction one last time.
April looked at Cooper. “Do something,” she said.
So he reached down and carefully wiggled the cord and a loud snarl of static rippled through the village. Baron immediately stopped his flapping.
“It works,” April shouted, rushing around twirling dials and knobs until she had all six radios playing “Lara's Theme.”
Although she expected the villagers to break into dance or gather around her in a swarm of gratitude, they stood frozen as the slow, leaking strings and brooding horns struggled over the drone of the generator. For the better part of an hour she and Cooper sorted through the radio dead zone, trying to get a response from the villagers, some of whom had gone back to work as the rain broke, others submitting to Baron's spiritual quizzes, which he administered in loud, harshly enunciated English.
Midway through a static chopped version of “96 Tears” one of the radios began to melt and spew sparks. The sparks struck a grass mattress that quickly sprang into flame before anybody knew what was happening. Cooper smelled smoke and turned in time to see a man rush out of the shack. His hair had been singed into a frizz and he was shouting as flames crept up the old and highly flammable burlap coffee sacks that served as makeshift window treatments.
The crowd scattered to fetch buckets but they were too late and the water did little except to push a rich, creamy blanket of smoke into the air. Babies cried, old men shook their heads, and the teenagers stood transfixed by the flames coiling up the shack's support beams in search of more thatch. Cooper tried comforting April but when “96 Tears” gave way to the stupid thud of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” and the shack collapsed, the “no-goodwill mission,” as Baron called it, was officially over.
Manu pointed to the trail and told them to get out, that they were no longer welcome in the village.
Later that night Cooper woke to find Baron scratching at his tent with the frog gig, looking vaguely satanic in the moon shadow. “I've come to collect and draw on our deep brotherly bond,” he whispered, motioning for Cooper to be quiet.
Cooper rubbed his eyes, his head still muzzy from the homemade wine he'd consumed with dinner and the peyote tea he'd shared with April in a futile attempt to stop her from pulling at her split ends and humming “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” as if it were some sort of penance.
“Arise, Irv,” Baron commanded, waving his hands about in a complicated pattern.
He groped for his shoes. “What's with the fancy hand movements?”
“You're either a natural resister or I am out of practice.”
“What do you want?”
“It's better I show you.”
Cooper hesitated before following Baron into the heart of the camp, where he saw the bus. It had been cleared from its viney mooring and was sitting like an overgrown soapbox derby car, ready to drop down the hill. Figures moved about sleepwalking or tripping on something, he couldn't tell.
“What's going on?” Cooper asked.
“I'm afraid this is our exodus. It's on to greener pastures with a few new flock members, Irv. Do you dig?”
“No, I don't dig.”
“Very well.” Baron went over to one of the small four-wheel camp trailers and grabbed the tongue, knocking away the pillar of stones beneath it, feverishly motioning at Cooper to help. “If you don't dig, can you at least give me a hand with this heavy mother? I don't want to bulge any more discs.”
Princeton Bob and Magnolia stumbled out of the shadows, holding hands and moving with a weary, zombied deliberateness. Cooper thought about taking this opportunity to fuck with Princeton Bob or maybe even punch him but figured that going off with Baron was a more fitting punishment.
He tapped Baron. “You got me out of bed to help you steal a trailer?”
“I've cleared this with Reba, Irv, and the short of it is I'm to play the camp scapegoat and that involves borrowing this trailer and sneaking out under the cover of night.” He dropped the trailer tongue, took up the frog gig, and poked Cooper in the chest, saying, “Now, why don't you chuck it all and come with this—you're either on the bus or off the bus. If you're on the bus and you get left behind, then you'll find it again. If you're off the bus in the first place, then it won't make a damn. In other words, you don't wanna traipse through life being a last-chance Charlie, do you? This place is over, man. Paris is burning—chuck it and get out.”
Princeton Bob and Magnolia began droning, “Chuck it, chuck it all, chuck it . . .”
“I'm going back to bed,” Cooper said, taking one last look at their slack-jawed faces and deciding that he didn't want any part of whatever Baron was up to. “I think I'm going to sit this one out,” he said.
Baron shook his head and lowered the frog gig. “‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.' Is that your plan, Irv?”
“I have no idea what you're talking about.”
“Humans are pattern-seeking animals. What pattern do you seek?”
Before Cooper could answer, Baron backed away, trembling as something large ambled out from behind the dome.
It was Ethel, the bus hermit, wearing nothing more than a cotton sheet printed with little lambs frolicking over picket fences, wrapped toga style around her immense rolls of fat. Cooper stood frozen, marveling at the lava lamp–like ooze of her shoulders, the thick shelf of stomach and breast, and her arms, square like flour sacks, that terminated in tiny pale hands. She closed in, panting with the effort, swinging one thick leg in front of the other, her eyes fixed and determined.
“You've done it now, buddy boy. Ethel's anxious to get on the road,” Baron said. “I have no control over this gal—she's all want and need. Four hundred bills of pure id.”
“Call her off.”
“I lack those skills,” he cackled. “I'm afraid you've stepped into the eye of the hurricane this time, Irv.”
Cooper turned to run, but Baron brought the frog gig up to his throat, stopping him before he could shout and warn the slumbering camp denizens. The maneuver allowed Ethel to snatch Cooper off his feet and smother him in a chubby, vinegar-scented bear hug. Trapped inside the sheer jiggling wave of her, he struggled for breath only to surrender and let himself be carried across the field to a large stone, where she set him down, took his face in her hands, and kissed him lightly on the lips. He tasted butter and chocolate and looked up blinking at the sheer mooning blot of her as he groped for words.
“Deliverance,” said Ethel in a soft and pleasant voice. “You don't have to thank me. You wouldn't like where we're going anyway. We're on the road to nowhere.”
Cooper made no move to get up as she smiled at him and trudged off to put a shoulder to the trailer, rocking the rust-locked tires until the thing began to move slowly toward the waiting bus. A small ramp was lowered from the bus's emergency door as people teemed around Ethel like worker ants swarming a pale, helpless queen, pushing and dragging her slowly up the ramp to safety.
When they were done Baron waddled over to Cooper and pried a wheat penny from the slot in his loafer. “A small token of our time together,” he said, handing him the penny. “See you down the road some time.”
“Happy trails.”
Baron grinned. “And then some.” He hustled back to the bus and climbed aboard, the doors swallowing him from view like a magic box.
Cooper watched them go as Chet crawled behind the wheel, adjusting the bus's mirrors before releasing the clutch. Gravity did the rest and the bus silently disappeared down the hill, with the trailer in tow.
The next morning they found a note from Baron tucked inside a signed first edition of Journey to Ixtlan. The note said, “Our services are needed in Chihuahua, ASAP. Please accept this book as partial payment for the trailer and stew pot—all regards, The Baron, et al.”
There was much talk of kidnapping or worse, foul play facilitated by brainwashing techniques Baron claimed to have learned in Sri Lanka. Cooper stepped forward and gave his account of the past night's events, leaving out the kiss from Ethel and how maybe he could have stopped them.
A month went by with no word from Baron or the missing campers, but reports of petty thefts dropped off and in her nightly fireside chats Reba referred to Baron and his followers only as those wretched, trailer-thieving Roma.
The monkeys returned to the rock garden and at night Cooper listened to them. He was growing restless and tired of the camp's lazy routine. Yes, he was in Mexico, an important man hiding from his big crime, but that feeling had recently begun to fade and it dawned on him that he was going to need more entanglements and some adventure, because lounging around Reba's jungle commune was beginning to feel a little too much like work. To make matters worse, April had been avoiding him since the radio incident, somehow blaming him for the faulty wiring that had incinerated her dreams of making a difference in the world. She spent most nights getting stoned, staring at the campfire, and talking about Austen's Emma and how she wanted to go back to school someday or maybe open a muffin shop or bead store.
