D b, p.32
D. B., page 32
Rosenbaum walked down an aisle ticking off the various names: “Pyramid ants, thief ants, big-headed ants, pharaoh ants, leaf cutters, velvety tree ants, and over in this apartment I've got some crazy ants, and right here's your basic pavement ant.”
“I wanna see them fire ants again,” said Lou.
Rosenbaum walked them over to the far corner and showed them a box filled with play sand where hundreds of ordinary-looking red ants were busily building a Tower of Babel out of the sand and bits of leaf molt.
Lou tapped on the plastic, trying to stir them up. “These dudes don't look so bad to me. What's all the fuss about?”
“Strength in numbers,” Rosenbaum said. “One bite burns, but when several hundred bite you it feels like you've been dipped in Drano.” He lifted up the lid and took a stick and knocked down their mound. The ants boiled out from under the rubble, confused and angrily looking for some enemy to carry off and bite to death.
“What did you do that for?” Lou asked as the ants swarmed over their wrecked project.
“You've got to keep them busy,” Rosenbaum explained. “Otherwise, if I let them establish themselves they start looking for something else to do. They keep building and building.”
“You sell fire ants?” Cooper asked.
“I'm not supposed to, but I get requests and I don't ask questions.”
Lou looked at him and smirked.
“I meant, do you make any money off them?”
“For the common stuff I can hunt up around here I get a penny an ant, plus shipping and handling, of course,” Rosenbaum said. “Now, some of the more exotic stuff I've got to wheel and deal for costs a little more. All in all I'm doing okay. I've made my hobby pay and it beats school.”
“Root canals beat school,” Lou said. “Hell, I'd rather buff floors than go to school. I'd rather assemble boxes and have gout. I'd rather—”
“We get the point, Lou,” Rosenbaum said. “Now, should we show Coop the battle arena?”
“Hell, yes.”
Rosenbaum ushered them over to a large birdcage-looking contraption built out of one-by-ones, porch screen, and Astroturf. There were tiny trap doors at the bottom and top and an empty Cool Whip tub in the center containing a stew of dirty honey and broken Nilla Wafers. Thousands of dead ants littered the edges, along with the dried-out bodies of other insects—walking sticks, locusts, yellow jackets, dung beetles, termites, centipedes, earthworms curled into hard brown question marks, capsized June bugs, wolf spiders, scorpions, silverfish, and dozens of strange bugs Cooper had never seen before.
“What is it?” asked Cooper.
“This is my insect coliseum,” Rosenbaum said. “I tried to build it to scale but it didn't come out right.”
Lou said, “You oughtta see some of the killer battles we've had, Coop.”
“Who wins?” Cooper asked.
“Most of the time the ants overcome with teamwork, persistence, and a willingness to die for their queen,” said Rosenbaum. “She's got a grip on them.”
“Hey, what happened to the chariots, Rosie?”
“The carpenter ants ate the cardboard ones,” said Rosenbaum. “I think I'm going to leave it just like it is.”
“You'll let me know when you do the killer bees versus the fire ants.”
“I'm still working out the details,” Rosenbaum said.
“It's gonna be bloodier than Antietam,” Lou said. “Get it?”
“Ants and bees don't bleed,” said Rosenbaum. “Sure, they ooze a little Technicolor stuff, but you couldn't call it blood.”
“Whatever, the point is the body count's gonna be high.” He turned to Cooper. “I keep telling him he should mount some cameras and sell the footage to PBS or some shit like that.”
“I don't seek publicity,” said Rosenbaum. “You start sucking on that tit and it's all over.”
“True, very true,” said Lou.
Rosenbaum shrugged and took them over to a corner of the barn where a pair of futons sat on a raised plywood platform with a nightstand sandwiched between them. “Here you go. Don't mess with the ants—you monkey with the wrong ones and they'll kill you. Same with the thermostat. I can't have you guys messing up the room temperature. I've got a system.”
Lou clicked his heels and saluted. “Yes, sir!”
After they'd hauled their bags in from the van, Rosenbaum called them over to a workbench and pointed at a small goldfish bowl filled with ants. Next to the bowl sat a bag of jumbo marshmallows, a tin of lighter fluid, and a tray of disposable syringes.
“Watch this,” he said, taking a marshmallow from the bag. “These guys lost their queen.”
“So they're expendable?” said Lou.
“Oh, I suppose I could let them assimilate into some other colony, but what's the fun in that.”
“That's the spirit, Rosie,” Lou said.
“I call this one marshmallow napalm death.”
They watched as he filled the syringe with a few ccs of lighter fluid, sank the needle into the marshmallow, and injected it. Then he took a piece of thread, stuck it in the marshmallow like a wick, slicked the whole thing with a little spit, and dropped it into the fishbowl. The ants promptly swarmed the sticky obelisk.
When the marshmallow was completely upholstered with cinnamon-colored ants, Rosenbaum handed Cooper a lighter. “You can have the honors,” he said, pointing at the thread dangling over the lip of the bowl.
It took several tries but Cooper finally got the thread to catch. They crowded around the fishbowl as the thread burned down the side of the glass. A few of the more alert ants tried to escape but were blown back when the flame hit the pocket of lighter fluid, the marshmallow quickly transformed into a ball of molten sugar and dying ants.
Lou hunkered over the workbench. “It's a good thing ants can't scream,” he said.
Cooper felt guilty as he watched the marshmallow expand into a bright orange globe, shedding fried ant bodies and a plume of evil black smoke that smelled like torched hair and burnt bologna.
Rosenbaum clamped a board over the opening and smothered the fire. “Okay, that's enough,” he said.
“Not bad,” Lou shouted, “not bad at all!”
Once the smoke cleared, Cooper studied the bubbling remains of the marshmallow for survivors. But there were none and so he handed the lighter back.
“What's the matter?” Lou asked. “I mean, that was pretty fucking cool, right?”
“It was okay.”
“Okay, what do you mean, okay?” Lou said, dancing around him. “Hey, Rosie, I think we have a conscientious objector here, a bleeding heart.”
“Without a queen they would have run around in circles and died,” Rosenbaum said. “They had nothing to live for.”
Cooper said he was tired and went to have a look at the futons. Mice had been at them and there was a hard-looking spider crouched on the nightstand waiting for its supper.
When Lou came over, Cooper reminded him about the phone call he needed to make.
“Of course,” Lou said. “My wallet's still smarting from that fill-up in Page. I don't believe you meant to push regular and hit ultra.”
“It was a mistake,” Cooper said. “Just keep a tab. I have every intention of settling the bill.”
Lou huddled with Rosenbaum and after a minute Cooper was led back to the house.
Rosenbaum stood lookout for his mother as Cooper dialed directory assistance. He got Moe's number easy enough and then Moe, who came on the line with a croak, sounding half whacked on something. It took Cooper a couple of minutes to jog Moe's memory. He cupped the receiver, whispering, “Moe, it's me, Fitch, come on, you remember. Old Ain't-It-a-Bitch-Fitch, your old war buddy . . . Yeah, that's right, just like Sarge Butera . . . No, I did not like the way he called cadence.” He chanted into the phone: “M-1 tanker gonna take a little trip, mission unspoken, destination unknown, don't even know if I'm ever comin' home . . .”
Rosenbaum motioned for Cooper to speed up the phone call. Mother was stirring in the other room.
“That's right,” Cooper said to Moe, “we'll shoot the shit and then some. Ice the beer, I'm comin', buddy.”
He hung up and dashed out the back door, and when he got back to the barn he was greeted by Lou, who was holding the old Wanted poster, grinning like a monk. Lou had obviously rummaged through his bags because not only was the parachute spread across the futon but the articles about the D. B. Cooper Day celebrations and Book IV were scattered across the pallets.
“Irv Cooper, my ass,” Lou said.
Cooper froze, not sure if he should run or try to concoct some loopy story and deny. He quickly surmised that both options lacked charm and neither would serve any purpose. There was no place to run to, plus he figured Lou was crazy enough not to get all worked up about his criminal past. But more than that, he was tired and no longer cared.
“Here I thought you were some kind of clever mooch, stringing me along with that buried-stash story of yours,” Lou crowed. “Turns out I've been sharing the road with D. B. fucking Cooper.” His eyes darted back and forth between the Wanted sketch and Cooper, now longhaired and slouching toward him. “I can see the years have been rough on you and then some. Your neck's filled out, and what do you have against sunblock?”
He snatched the poster and book from him, shoving them back inside his duffle. “That's not me.”
“Nice try,” Lou said, “but they got them beady eyes of yours right. And there's no mistaking that brow.”
“Shut up.”
“Relax, Jackson, I'm not going to turn you in. I'm just having some fun. I have no love for law enforcement. Hell, I'm not even going to tell Rosenbaum, because he's liable to tell his mother, who strikes me as a police scanner junkie. You'd do better to worry about melanoma than the Feds, as far as I'm concerned. I was born to keep my mouth shut. It's a must in my line of work. Come to think of it, I'm probably a wanted man someplace.”
“So you're not going to turn me in?”
Lou laughed. “What the hell for?”
“Well . . . there's the reward.”
“Oh yeah. Right. My lucky day.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“It was a long time ago, Coop. The law's moved on. All you've gotta do is turn on the boob tube to see crime's gotten more violent. But why don't we go down to the creek first and wash up. I've got a lot of questions.”
“Such as?”
“Let's see,” he said. “For shits and grins, tell me how you end up broke and hitching rides in Tucson after you nipped the airlines for all that money?”
“My big mouth, a girl, fear of Mexican banks, and some crafty bandits who were not above violence.”
“Ouch,” said Lou, tossing him a thin towel and a bar of hotel soap. “You coming?”
Lou led him across a dusty field to the creek. They walked along its rocky bank until they came to a sharp bend where the water elbowed around a long stone shelf and then bunched up into a slow gravel-bottomed pool before racing down past the dark Rosenbaum house.
“How cold is it?” Cooper asked, watching the moon and stars ripple and blink on its surface.
“It's a nut froster. You're better off jumping. You should be good at that.”
They undressed on a stone ledge and plunged into the heart-arresting cold of the back eddy, their toes grabbing smooth gravel. Cooper surfaced with a whoop and quickly hit the vitals, rubbing soap over his balls, pits, face, and ass before dipping under for a rinse and crawling back to the ledge, where he toweled off.
Lou followed and they sat on the ledge, listening to the creek burble by and a coyote yipping after something in the dark. Both men listened as other coyotes joined in.
“Sounds like they got what they were after,” Lou said, when the yipping suddenly stopped.
Cooper slicked back his hair. “Hoo, boy, I needed that. I feel like a new man.” He peeled some more skin off his arm and rubbed the rest of the scab off the back of his skull.
“So how did it feel?” Lou said, pounding on his head, trying to dislodge some creek water from his ears.
“Cold.”
“No, I meant taking all that money and jumping out of the plane?”
“That was cold too. I picked the worst day and at first it was like I was going to die, but when I landed and figured my knee wasn't too munched and I could walk, it was like I was never gonna get old, like I was some kinda secret hero and not just another hopeless asshole. A lot of that was the money and the fact that I hadn't killed myself.”
“How come you never did it again?”
“I didn't want to press my luck.”
“Everybody thinks you croaked,” said Lou. “They had you on In Search of . . . , man. Spock was talking you up. I remember because my brother couldn't get enough of the Bigfoot episode and we had to watch that stupid show and be fooled every week.”
“Well, I didn't die. I'm right here. I'm back.”
“And nobody's gonna care.”
“You don't know that.”
“Trust me, nobody's gonna give three shits. Half the folks in this country can't even name their senator—what makes you think they're gonna remember you?”
“I'm not worried about the folks, it's the law I don't want to meet and greet.”
“No problem,” Lou said. “I do it all the time.”
Cooper stood and tried to catch his reflection in the moonlit creek but saw only a shadowy tower of refracted starlight and a dark water moon where his head ought to be. He looked up and saw hundreds of bats cutting across the night sky, chasing dinner. It bothered him that birds seemed to get all the attention; the bat world seemed as rich and varied and twice as secretive. Plus they had radar, or was it sonar? He could not remember.
“Don't worry, I'll get you to Oregon,” Lou said. “As long as we've still got a deal. I'm not going to gouge you. As far as I'm concerned, any dude who jumps out of a jet deserves whatever he can take.”
“Actually, it's Washington I need to get to, not Oregon, but just across the river.”
“So we'll go to Washington. Same difference. It's not every day you get to meet a famous criminal and revisit former glory.”
Cooper stood and offered to shake hands on the deal.
“Don't worry, I'll get you there.”
“I called my buddy and we're all set.”
“This isn't some kind of ambush, is it? Lure a good Samaritan such as myself to some dark woods and then you and your mutant friends have some fun with me.”
Cooper said it was not and they shook again, dressed, and went back to the barn, and after Lou ran out of questions they turned out the light and fell asleep listening to the ants tunneling along the walls of their Plexiglas apartments, building towers of sand that in the morning would be leveled by Rosenbaum and his stick.
AFTER LEAVING ANNE'S, Frank stopped by the realty office to see Clare and ask if she wanted to get some lunch. He'd left the gun in the car and missed the weight of it on his ribs but knew that it would only make for more questions and he already felt guilty enough about his recent foolishness and wanted to make it up to her. But she was out at a showing and so he chatted with Cecil about parking tickets and some graffiti Cecil had observed in the courthouse bathroom about two blind men groping an elephant. Cecil kept excusing himself to pick up the phone and answer vague questions about various listings, all the while rolling his eyes at Frank and saying, “Yes, that's right, it's pretty firm, but there might be a little wiggle room. Let me take your number.” He did not take down any numbers.
Frank stood to go. “I'd better let you get back to work.”
“You want me to tell her anything for you?”
Frank shook his head. “Just killing time. Haven't been by in a while, but I see not much has changed. It's busy, the phones are ringing, and the coffee still tastes like cat piss.”
“What about you? Have you been keeping busy?”
Frank gave him a cagey, guy-to-guy look and said, “I've been poking around.”
“A shark swims to keep alive.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Cecil shook his head. He'd missed a few spots shaving and had a dab of dried cream perched behind his left ear. “Clare told me you were a little out of sorts.”
“Did she?”
“She did,” said Cecil. “She was worried and wanted my advice on retirement. You know, back when I retired from the school I spent a lot of time in the garage drinking.”
“That's not the problem.”
“I got help, Frank. There is a higher power, you know.”
“I don't need AA.”
“There are a lot of misconceptions about the program.”
“I don't want to get into it.”
Cecil tilted back in his chair and smoothed his candy-striped tie across his belly, ready for Frank to tell him he'd been drinking too much and not sleeping.
Instead Frank stood to go. The cold medicine was wearing off and he was beginning to feel like shit again. “Well, it was good seeing you, Cecil. Tell her I'll be home and have dinner ready.”
After an awkward silence Cecil walked Frank past the maze of tan work cubicles and light-starved plants to the front entrance. Cecil greeted a young couple who'd obviously exhausted the stack of out-of-date magazines. The girl's hair was twisted into athletic pigtails and her equally sporty husband sat bouncing his legs and staring up at the stained ceiling tiles, slack-jawed. Ten years ago Frank would have pegged them as possible drug addicts. But now the girl, with her gaunt cheeks and soft brown eyes, reminded him of Anne.
“Market virgins,” Cecil said, pointing at the young couple.
The girl sprang to her feet and forced a smile while her husband ogled the putty-colored appliance and steel hook that was Cecil's hand.
