Time to Hunt Part 9

"That's the gist of it, yeah."

"Oh, G.o.d," she said.

She turned from him and walked a step or two away. Across the way, she could see the Potomac and the dark far sh.o.r.e that was Virginia. Above it, a tapestry of stars unscrolled, dense and deep.

"Donny," she finally said, "there's only one answer."

"Yeah, I know."

"Go back. Do it. That's what you have to do to save yourself."

"But it's not like I know he's guilty. Maybe he doesn't deserve to get his life ruined just because-"

"Donny. Just do it. You said yourself, this Crowe is not worth a single thing."

"You're right," Donny finally said. "I'll go back, I'll do it, I'll get it over. I'm eleven and days, I'll get out inside a year with an early out, and we can have our life. That's all there is to it. That's fine, that's cool. I've made up my mind."

"No, you haven't," she said. "I can tell when you're lying. You're not lying to me; you never have. But you're lying to yourself."

"I should talk to someone. I need help on this one."

"And I'm not good enough?"

"If you love me, and I hope and pray you do, then your judgment is clouded."

"All right, who, then?"

Who, indeed?

There was only one answer, really. Not the chaplain or a JAG lawyer, not Platoon Sergeant Case or the first sergeant or the sergeant major or the colonel or even the Commandant, USMC.

"Trig. Trig will know. We'll go see Trig."

Bitterly, from afar, Peter watched them. They embraced, they talked, they appeared to fight. She broke away. He went after her. It killed him to sense the intimacy they shared. It was everything he hated in the world-the strong, the handsome, the blond, the confident, just taking what was theirs and leaving nothing behind.

He watched them, finally, go toward Donny's old car and climb in, his mind raging with anger and counterplots, his energy unbearably high.

Without willing it, he raced to the VW Larry Frankel had lent him. He turned the key, jacked the car into gear and sped after them. He didn't know why, he didn't think it would matter, but he also knew he could not help but follow them.

CHAPTER S SEVEN.

Peter almost missed them. He had just cleared a crest when he saw the lights of the other car illuminate a hill and a dirt road beyond a gate, then flash off. His own lights were off, but there was enough moonlight to make out the road ahead. He pulled up to the gate and saw nothing that bore any signal of meaning, except a mailbox, painted white with the name WILSON WILSON scribbled on it in black. He was on Route 35, about five miles north of Germantown. scribbled on it in black. He was on Route 35, about five miles north of Germantown.

What the h.e.l.l were they up to? What did they know? What was going on?

He decided to pull back a hundred yards, and just wait for a while. Suppose they ran in there, and turned around and collided with him on the road? That would be a total humiliation.

Instead, he decided just to watch and wait.

At the top of the hill, they turned the engine off. Below lay a farm of no particular distinction, a nondescript house, a yard, a barn. Propane tanks and old tractors, rusted out, lay in the yard; there was no sound of animals. The farm, in fact, looked like a Dust Bowl relic.

Yet something was going on.

Twin beams illuminated the yard, and Donny, with his unusually good eyesight, could make out a van with its lights on, a shroud of dust, and two men who were in the process of moving heavy packages of some sort out from the barn into the van by the light of the headlamps.

"I think that's Trig," Donny said. "I don't know who the other guy is."

"Shall we go down?"

Donny was suddenly unsure.

"I don't know," he said. "I can't figure out what the h.e.l.l is going on."

"He's helping his friend load up."

"At this hour?"

"Well, he's an irregular guy. The clock doesn't mean much to him."

That was true; Trig wasn't your nine-to-fiver by any interpretation.

"All right," said Donny. "We'll walk down there. But you hang back. Let me check this out. Don't let them see you until we figure what's happening. I'll call you in, okay? I'm just not feeling good about this, okay?"

"You sound a little paranoid."

He did. Some hint of danger filled the air, but he wasn't sure what it was, what it meant, where it came from. Possibly, it was the mere strangeness of everything, the way nothing really made any sense. Possibly it was his own fatigue, raw after the many hours on alert.

They headed down the hill, and Donny detoured them around the house, until at last they came upon the two men from the rear. Donny could see them better now, both working in jeans and denim shirts. They were loading by wheelbarrow immensely awkward sacks of fertilizer into the van, packing it very full, AMMONIUM NITRATE AMMONIUM NITRATE, the sacks said. Dust that the wheelbarrow tires ripped up from the ground filled the air, floating in large, shimmering clouds, which shifted through the beams of the truck lights and in the yellower light that blazed from the barn door. It lit wherever it could, coating the truck, the men, everything. Both Trig and the other man wore red bandannas around their faces.

Pushing Julie back into the dark, Donny stepped out and approached, coughing at the stuff in the air as it filled his mouth and throat with grit. He stepped farther; n.o.body noticed him.

"Trig?" he called.

Trig turned instantly at his name, but it was the other man who reacted much faster, turning exactly to Donny, his dark eyes devouring him. He had a full, tangled web of blond hair, much thicker than Trig's, and was large and powerful next to Trig's delicacy. They looked like a poet and a stevedore standing next to each other.

"Trig, it's me, Donny. Donny Fenn." He stepped forward a little hesitantly.

"Donny, Jesus Christ, I didn't expect you."

"Well, you said to come on out."

"I did, yeah. Come on in. Donny, meet Robert Fitzpatrick, my old friend at Oxford."

"Halloo," said Robert, pulling off his own bandanna to show a smile that itself showed a mouthful of porcelain spades, a movie star's gleam of a smile. "So you're the war hero, eh? We've hopes for you, that we do! Need boyos like you for the movement. We'll stop this b.l.o.o.d.y thing and and get the west field covered in horses.h.i.t and ammonium nitrate, if I'm a judge of things. Roll up your sleeves, boy, and get to work. We could use some back. Me G.o.dd.a.m.ned pickup broke down and I'm stuck with this piece of s.h.i.t to git the stuff out to the spreader. We're doing it at night to beat the heat." get the west field covered in horses.h.i.t and ammonium nitrate, if I'm a judge of things. Roll up your sleeves, boy, and get to work. We could use some back. Me G.o.dd.a.m.ned pickup broke down and I'm stuck with this piece of s.h.i.t to git the stuff out to the spreader. We're doing it at night to beat the heat."

"Robert, he's been on some kind of alert for seventy-two hours. He can't do manual labor," Trig said.

"No, I-"

"No, we're almost done. It doesn't matter."

"You left so suddenly."

"Ah, one more demonstration. I was worn out. What did it prove? I've lost my will for the movement."

"You'll get your will back, boyo," said the giant Fitzpatrick heartily. "I'll go get us a beer for the recharge. You wait here, Donny Fenn."

"No, no, I just had a thing I wanted to talk over with Trig."

"Oh, Trig'll steer you right, no doubt about it," he said, his voice light with laughter. "It's a drink I'll be gittin', Trig. You lads talk."

With that he turned to the house and headed in.

"So what is it, Donny?"

"It's Crowe ... they arrested him. Violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I'm supposed to testify against him in"-he looked at his watch-"about seven hours."

"I see."

"Maybe you don't. I was asked to spy on him. That was my job. That's why I got close to him. I was supposed to report to them on his off-base activities and try and put him with known members of the peace groups. That's why I was with him at the party that night; that's why I came to your party. I was ordered to spy."

Trig stared at him for a while, then his face broke into the oddest thing: a smile.

"Oh, that's your big secret? Man, that's it?" He laughed now, really hard. "Donny, wise up. You work for them. They can ask you to do that. If they say so, that's your duty. That's the game in Washington these days. Everybody's watching everybody. Everybody's got an agenda, a plan, an idea they're trying to push or sell. I don't give a d.a.m.n."

"It's worse. They have some idea you were Weather Underground and you planned the whole thing. I mean, can you imagine anything so stupid? He was feeding you deployment intelligence so the May Tribe could humiliate the Corps."

"Boy, their imagination never fails to amaze me!"

"So what should I do, Trig? That's what I'm here to ask. About Crowe. Should I testify?"

"What happens if you don't?"

"They've got some pictures of me smoking dope. Funny, I don't smoke dope anymore, but I did to get in with him. They could send me to Portsmouth. Or, more likely, the 'Nam. They could ship me back for a last go-round, even though I'm short."

"They're really a.s.sholes, aren't they?"

"Yeah."

"But that's neither here nor there, is it? This isn't about them. We know who they they are. This is about you. Well, then it's easy." are. This is about you. Well, then it's easy."

"Easy?"

"Easy. Testify. For one reason, you can't let them get you killed. What would that prove? Who benefits from the death of Lochinvar? Who wins when Lancelot is slain?"

"I'm just a guy, Trig."

"You can't give yourself up to it. Somebody's got to come out on the other side and say how it was."

"I'm just ... I'm just a guy."

People were always insisting to Donny that he was somehow more than he really was, that he represented something. He'd never gotten it. It was just because he happened to be good-looking, but underneath he was just as scared, just as ineffective, just as simple as anyone else, no matter what Trig said.

"I don't know," said Donny. "Is he guilty? That would matter."

"It doesn't matter. What matters is: you or him? That's the world you have to deal with. You or him? I vote him. Any day of the week, I vote him."

"But is he guilty?"

"I'm no longer in the inner circle. I'm sort of a roaming amba.s.sador. So I really don't know."

"Oh, you'd know. You'd know. Is he guilty?"

Trig paused.

Finally he said, "Well, I wish I could lie to you. But, G.o.ddammit, no, no, he's not guilty. There is some weird kind of intelligence they have at the top; I just get glimmerings of it. But I don't think it's Crowe. But I'm telling you the truth: that doesn't matter. You should dump him and get on with your life. If he's not guilty of that, he's guilty of lots of other stuff."

Donny looked at Trig for a bit. Trig was leaning against the fender of the van. He lifted a milk carton and poured it over his head, and water gushed out, sc.r.a.ping rivulets in the dust that adhered to his handsome face. Trig shook his wet hair, and the droplets flew away. Then he turned back.

"Donny, for Christ's sake. Save your own life!"

Peter was no good at waiting. He got out of the car and walked along the shoulder of the road. It was completely dark and silent, unfamiliar sensations to a young man who'd spent so much time OCS-on city streets. Now and then he heard the chirp of a cricket; up above, the stars towered and pinwheeled, but he was not into stars or insects, so he noticed neither of these realities. Instead, he reached the gate, paused a moment, and climbed over. He saw before him a faint rise in the land, almost a small hill, and the dirt road that climbed it. He knew if a car came over the hill and he were standing on that road, he'd be dead-cold caught in the lights. So he walked a distance from the road, then turned to head up the hill, figuring he could then drop to the ground if Donny and Julie returned.

Gently, he walked up the hill, feeling as alone as that guy who had walked on the surface of the moon. He reached the top of the hill and saw the farmhouse below him. No sight of Julie but he saw Trig and Donny slouched on the fender of a van in the yard between the house and the barn, and they were chatting animatedly, relaxed and intimate. There was no sign of danger, no sign of weirdness: just two new friends bulls.h.i.ting in the night.

But then small things began to seem off. What was Trig doing way out here? What was this place? What was going on? It connected with nothing in Peter's memory of Trig.

Puzzled, he stepped forward and almost tripped as he b.u.mbled into something.

Two figures rose before him.

Oh, s.h.i.t, he thought, for they wore suits and one of them carried a camera with a long lens.

Clearly they were feds, spying on Trig.

They had the pug look of FBI agents, with blunt faces and crew cuts; one wore a hat. They did not look happy to be discovered.

"W-who are you?" Peter asked in a quavering voice. "What are you doing?"

"I don't think I can sell him out," said Donny. don't think I can sell him out," said Donny.

"Donny, this isn't a Western. There are no good guys. Do you hear me? This is real life, hardball style. If it's you or Crowe, do not give yourself up for Crowe."