Rootless - Howard Chris - Страница 13

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“It’s not for me,” I said, standing up. “But give me two hours. I got someone ready to trip his balls off.”

When I got back to the scrap farm, the Rasta was sitting on top of my wagon and singing a song about Babylon. Old One Eye raised both eyebrows at me as I walked back to where I’d stashed the car. I just nodded and smiled like this was business as usual. Then I climbed on top of the wagon with my new crazy pal.

“I need you to tell me where you saw my father,” I said. “I need you to remember things.”

The Rasta stopped singing and stared at me. “Oh, I remember, man. Promised Land. Across the ocean.”

“But how’d you get there?”

The old guy just grinned and pointed north, then south, east, and west. “The King.”

“The King,” I muttered, and I studied the Rasta’s wrinkled face. “We gotta take a trip,” I said. “You and me.”

“Right on, sire. Right on.”

I helped the old man to his feet and the two of us balanced on top of the wagon, sticking out of the rust and scrap that stretched all around.

These people were like tickets, I thought. Zee’s mother with her tattoo. The Rasta with his skin made of bark. And though Frost figured the woman was his golden key, I reckoned this old fool might prove more valuable. And Frost didn’t even know the Rasta existed.

Not yet, anyway.

I thought about Zee and wondered whose damn side she was on. Guess I hoped she was on Frost’s side, tell you the truth. Because if she wasn’t, that girl was in a whole world of trouble.

The sun was setting by the time I got back to the Tripnotyst’s tent. I peered through the door but was wasting my time — the gypsy was right where I’d left him, sleeping the crystal off, wound up inside his hammock and covered in dust and debris.

I shook him awake and he pulled his shawl over his shoulders, shivering at my touch. “Want another fix?” I said. I held my book at him. “You can read it or trade it.”

The gypsy sat up and snatched the book. “‘The Journals of Lewis and Clark,’” he read off the back cover. “‘The first report on the West, over the hill and beyond the sunset, on the province of the American future.’” The gypsy stared at me. “True story?”

I shrugged.

“This buys you one trip,” he said, standing. “One.”

“Fine,” I told him. “One’s all we need.”

The old Rasta’s eyes grew huge as the door to the steel box began sealing us inside. Me and him were squeezed together, facing up at the blank screen.

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “You’re gonna love it. Just do what the man tells you is all.”

The Rasta made a hollow smile and the Tripnotyst sneered at me from the other end of the box, his face telling me just how big a waste of time he thought this would turn out to be.

“Direction?” he asked, the blue light flashing on above us.

“Zion,” I said. “The Promised Land.”

“Pick one.”

“The Promised Land, then.”

The gypsy punched it in on his keypad as I pulled the goggles onto the Rasta’s head.

“Relax,” I told him as music bathed the inside of the booth, but then the Rasta’s face drooped and his tongue wound out and I knew it had started.

I leaned back and stared up at the screen on the ceiling.

Blank.

I glanced at the Tripnotyst, but he just held a hand at me and punched something else at his control panel.

And then it began.

The trees were starting to look familiar — the tattoo, the photograph. And now this.

The Rasta’s memory swam across the screen, and I watched the leaves rustle and the limbs flow as the trees bent back and forth. I stared down at the base of the white trunks and peered high in the branches. But I saw no one. Nothing but forest.

When the trees faded they were replaced by water, and I should’ve seen that coming, but the sight still blew me away. The water stretched as far as the horizon, and it was calm enough you could count the ripples upon it.

Deep, still water. Soaking up the sun with the color of night. In the water, the Rasta watched his own reflection and his face was younger, his beard shorter, less patched with gray. A face appeared beside him. A hairless face. Pale skin taut on jagged bones. And that face kept multiplying until I could no longer see the water, and even the Rasta’s reflection was squeezed from view.

The screen went white. Blank again but for a single word. A word even I could read. The word plastered on every box of corn, every bottle of liquor. Every gallon of fuel. Same word that grows across each kernel of corn, purple letters embedded in those juicy, yellow stumps so you can never forget who grew them.

The word seemed to buzz on the screen but then stayed still, glimmering at me till the screen turned black.

“GenTech,” I muttered. “GenTech.”

“I don’t know if it matters,” the gypsy said, punching at the control pad and shutting down the machine. “But Promised Land didn’t do much for him. Typed in Zion to set him adrift.”

I stared down at the Rasta, still splayed out inside the box. Then I set to shaking him, shoving around at the old guy and pulling off his goggles. But the Rasta wasn’t going to wake up.

Not ever.

I could tell by the way his tongue had turned limp and his eyes were rolled back in his head.

“No you don’t,” I whispered. But it was useless. I tugged his eyelids closed and dragged him on my shoulders, and I was glad the gypsy had his back turned because all of a sudden I busted out crying as I stumbled for the door.

I moved like I was floating and my throat got thick. I breathed in the stench of the Rasta’s dreadlocks and felt his body, stiff and warped. It was my fault — forcing the old guy into that box. It had been too much for him. He was dead and I’d killed him. Must have been the oldest person I ever had seen.

And he’d known my father. Somehow. In some insane way. They’d both been taken someplace together.

And now the Rasta was dead.

But this was the gypsy’s doing. That’s what I told myself. He was the one that should’ve known better. The damn freak had ripped me off.

So after I’d stuck the body in the back of the wagon, I quit sniveling and wiped my face with a rag. And Pop always said I was a builder, not a fighter. But Pop weren’t there, was he? So I grabbed my nail gun and strode back into the tent.

“You killed him,” I said as the Tripnotyst spun around to face me. I held the nail gun up at him. “You junkie son of a bitch.”

“What the hell you gonna do with that?”

“That’s up to you,” I said. “I can pump you full of nails. Or you can give me back my damn book.”

On the sand flats outside of town, I burned the Rasta, and the stench about made me sick. But not as sick as I’d felt carving the bark out of the old man’s belly.

It’d been about an inch thick and his skin grew thin beneath it. I had to shave the wood off in pieces and ended up with one good chunk. The other scraps I burned and I listened as they popped and hissed and I watched as they smoked and flamed. Then I drew on the sand with the ashes and waited as night fell heavy upon me.

The bark was soft and spongy and I ran my fingers on it, rubbing the last bits of flesh from beneath it. Skin and bark. A piece of man and a piece of wood. It turned my guts, tell you the truth. But I couldn’t stop fiddling with it.

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