I RAN DOWN THE SLOPE OF THE HILL TO THE LEVEL ground. As I rounded the bottom of the hill I could see I was at the end of the airstrip and the Bonanza was coming to the end of the taxiway, about to turn onto the runway and take off. From the hangar, blurred in the mist, I saw two jeeps driving at high speeds toward the aircraft. I didn’t know whether I could make it to the plane, but made the decision to try and committed myself to it, sprinting to the edge of the pavement.
I was about fifteen feet behind the slow-taxiing plane as it pulled on to the runway.
I ran up behind it as Gus put in full power. In one jump I made it onto the right wing, hanging on to the handle above the door. When Gus felt the force of my lunge he powered back, but the Beech kept rolling. I jerked open the door and threw myself into the seat.
Gus looked at me, not recognizing me through all the mud. I pointed to the jeeps racing toward us.
“Go!” I yelled.
Gus fire-walled the throttle and we began the takeoff roll. One of the jeeps turned onto the runway and began to head directly for the plane. At this point it was simply a question of numbers. Either the plane would be airborne and over the jeep before it got there or it would not. Heroics would not help. We were now in the arms of certain laws
of aerodynamics. I stared at the airspeed indicator. The plane would lift off at around seventy knots. We were at thirty. The jeep was looming larger and larger as it raced down the runway. Then I could see the man standing in the back of the jeep, aiming an M16 at us.
Fifty-five knots. Gus began pulling back on the yoke, trying to get the little bird up. The nose came up slightly but there was no lift in the wings.
Sixty-five knots. The wheels were almost off. Seventy. We were flying, but only a few feet off the ground. The jeep was about twenty-five yards ahead. We would clear it easily, but what about the gun? To Gus’s credit he banked the plane to a hard right, climbing as fast as he could. Because of the fog we were visible for only a few more seconds, then we were enclosed, everything outside the window of the plane a dark gray. I looked at the instruments again. We were still in a climbing right turn. I wanted to ask Gus if he could fly on instruments, but it was meaningless. If he could, we would be through the clouds in a matter of minutes. If he couldn’t, we wouldn’t.
He leveled the plane out and began a best rate of climb. I relaxed a little. A few more seconds and the gray outside the plane turned to white, then yellow; then we were through the cloud and into a clear, blue sky. I sighed and settled into the seat.
Gus trimmed up the plane for the climb and finally looked at me.
“Who are you?” he said, flatly.
“It’s me, Nez. I was in the sunset room.” No connection. Once more. “We met last night. With Neffie?”
Gus nodded, still bewildered, still cautious.
“You’re not with the Justice Department?”
“No. I came with Neffie. I was the one that flew the plane. She was worried about Kweethu …” Finally it dawned on him.
“I told her the truth,” he said.
“I think she believed you. Actually, I’m worried about Neffie. We both were getting out of Armando’s the same way, from … from the study. But we got separated somehow.”
“I’m not going back, if that’s what you’re wanting,” Gus said, defensively.
It was what I wanted, but I knew it was impossible.
“I’m going to fly low until we get out of this area. I don’t know if they got the tail number, or what, but all I want to do right now is get as far away from there as I can.”
I nodded my understanding. “How did you get out?”
“The elevator. It goes down to the hangars. I would have left sooner, but I tried to put some fuel in. I only got about five gallons in the left tank before I heard them coming. We’re going to have to stop. I’m trying to think where. The best would be an uncontrolled field with a gas station on it. You’re a pilot?”
Gus was properly concerned with flying the plane and getting away, not the least interested in Neffie, me, or the preceding events. I nodded yes.
“Good. Get that sectional chart and see if you can find a gas stop we can get to in thirty minutes.” He pointed to the backseat.
I had to find us fuel within thirty minutes, but at one-hundred-seventy-knots per hour that meant I could look in
a radius eighty miles around the airplane. In the sky, off ramps are a hundred miles apart.
The only place I could find fuel was at Ely, but it was a controlled field. Even more troublesome, it was linked to Reno Center, which would most certainly have the tail number of the plane, if the ATF boys had managed to read it. I told Gus all this. Ely was really the only place to go.
“Then that’s what we’ll have to do,” he said with a sigh of resignation.
As we leveled off at cruise altitude, I had a good look at Gus’s pilot skills. He was not merely a good pilot, he was first-rate, smooth and confident.
“How long have you been flying?” I asked.
“Years,” said Gus, and let it go at that. He was not interested in making small talk with me.
“I’m sorry about this mud,” I said. “I fell down a hill”
Gus looked at me disdainfully, then back to the instruments. He didn’t accept my apology.
“You’ll have to get out at Ely,” he said.
“Well …” I fumbled. “Harouk was waiting for us at your place.”
“Harouk? You mean Li’s little fairy?” Vitriol filled the plane waist-deep.
“I don’t know about …” I said. “I mean, he was working with Li … far as I know.” I was at a loss. Whatever was going on at the diner that made Gus come in shooting was nothing I knew about.
“That little bastard. I oughta break his neck.” Gus’s teeth were clenched.
“What did Harouk do?”
“Not Harouk. Harouk is just some prick Li kept around. I mean Li.”
Gus was blustering. This was not a good conversation to be having with the pilot of the airplane in which I was a passenger. I looked for neutral ground.
“You think we’ll be okay to Ely?” I asked.
“I think so,” said Gus. “If that sonofabitch hadn’t run off with all that cash I wouldn’t be in this mess. Armando Hotchkiss is nobody you want to fool with. Does he think I can just make those lectures up?”
Gus was free-associating, but one thing was obvious, he felt damaged, treated unfairly, and I gathered, thought Li had caused it. It was also clear he was going to vent this all over me. If that was the case, I wanted to keep him calm, and provide relief without meddling, and do the best I could to convince Gus to let me stay with him until the center.
“Who … or what … is Armando?” I tried.
“One of the most incredible men I have ever known. Armando the Newt. That’s his nickname. Did you know he made a perfect score on the SAT’s when he was forty-three?”
“He told me. Armando the Newt? Like the salamanders that live in swimming-pool equipment?”
“No, like the creature that can live in fire … does live in fire. Mythological. Hell, Armando Hotchkiss is an impossibility. He’s got an IQ of two hundred and something.”
“So, he tests well. You’re friends? Acquaintances?”
“He loaned me the money to build the center. One of my students introduced us about fifteen years ago. He was
living in French Polynesia, bought an island that was sovereign, bought it from the croutons that lived there, some nose-boned natives, created a currency, and set up a safe haven for international money. Probably crime money, but Armando never got close enough to anything illegal to get caught, or always got out ahead of any trouble, as you’ve just seen. Had you ever met him before today?”
Croutons?
“No,” I said.
“Armando likes anomalies. He always was saying that’s how we learn the most, find the anomaly and chase it. Find the science behind it. Most people ignore aberrations as meaningless; they take the average, the consensus. The Newt always took the opposite. Find the hole, he said, find the flaw, follow it. That’s where you find truth. And, he said, where you find truth you find an opportunity to make a buck.”
I looked out the window and saw the ground. We were starting to get into cleared skies. Ely was just ahead. It was a good thing. The gas gauge read empty.
“You know what he’s doing now? He’s going into the trash business. He’s going to put trash on a spaceship and send it to the sun. He says the next big energy source is fission, and we’re going to need to do something with all the waste when it becomes our main energy source. Is that Ely?” He pointed to the town in front of us.
I nodded. “Yes. That’s it. Fission?”
“Don’t ask me.” Gus was preparing the ship for descent and landing. “He’s always so far ahead of everyone, I never know what he is talking about.”
Gus was now thoroughly into the airplane, getting it
ready to land. The conversation was finished. I was glad we had gotten on to another subject besides Li and his recent larceny, or whatever had caused the hatred in Gus. I felt closer to the center by the minute.
So Armando was betting on fission as the next energy source, and since fission created so much waste—dangerous waste—he was going to set up waste-carrying spaceships. If all he did was make a deal to dispose of the nuclear waste already on the planet, he could make a fortune. And what better thing to do with it than put it in a remote-controlled rocket and shoot it into the sun? He was going to build a fleet of garbage rockets, trash blasters.
Would it work? Possibly. But I was certain there was something wrong in this, some child pornography in it somewhere. On the face of it, it was pure Armando; find a need and fill it. Wasn’t that the first law of entrepreneurship? I would have savored the irony of Armando, in flight from the Justice Department for kiddie porn, on his way to rid the planet of nuclear waste were it not for the fact I was sure this was a genuinely bad man.
Gus obviously didn’t see it that way, even though it looked to me as if he might have spent the most terrifying time of his life in Armando’s control. I could tell Gus had a few screws loose or maybe a couple of logic chips, even if he was a terrific pilot. His landing was textbook perfect, and as we taxied to the gas station at one side of the airport, the engine quit a little short of the fuel truck and we rolled to a stop, out of gas. I was watching every movement on the field, looking for a sign of the boys from any branch of the Justice Department. At this moment I was afraid of any official, from the FBI to Fish and Game.
“Great landing” I said. “I would like very much if I could continue on to the center. I don’t know how … .”
Gus waved his hand; he had already decided. “All right, all right.” I had passed muster.
The airport was quiet, not a sign of an official of any kind. Either they had not gotten the number, gotten it wrong, had forgotten to write it down, or who knows what. I always wondered about the idea the enforcement mechanism in society could break down because of the simple foibles of humans, like not bringing a pen to write with. Fragile, very fragile.
The refueling went without incident and we were quickly airborne again. Now Neffie took over the chambers of my mind. It was no use talking to Gus about her, so I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. I tried to think of any possible place she might have jumped, but I couldn’t bring enough of the compound to mind to get anywhere with that. I hadn’t heard any shots fired, so if she had been captured she was probably unhurt. And if she was captured, her presence there would be explainable. I finally came to the conclusion that the best thing for me to do was to wait till we got to the center and Harouk and I could make some calls. I felt a certain level of comfort she was not hurt or in danger, so I left it at that.
That was the conscious part. Inside a tremor had started and I began to shake. A sad and low despair was upon me, a whisper that let me know Neffie was gone forever. I had no feeling she was dead, but more that her time with me was over. Whatever man-woman connection there was, was lost; whatever magic she had brought was out of reach; whatever movement in the story of my life was stilled. The
emotion was not grief, but it is the closest comparison I can make. I sank in the seat and silently the sorrow overtook me. I didn’t want Gus to see this. Thankfully, he was content to fly without conversation, and for the rest of the trip to the center he did not ask for help in navigation.
When we arrived, Harouk and Monica were standing on the parking ramp outside the hangars. I had forgotten the mud that covered me, but Monica’s look reminded me. Monica rushed to Gus and hugged him, Harouk stood next to me with a look of knowing that was disconcerting. Gus glared at Harouk for a second, but Monica interceded and pulled him away toward the center. She began questioning him urgently, but with the relief of someone whose worry has been suddenly and happily lifted. I bypassed any greeting to Harouk.
“Have you heard from Neffie?” I asked desperately.
Slowly Harouk shook his head. He was not surprised or concerned she was not with me.
“Why don’t you get cleaned up. Let’s get out of here. I’ll tell you what I know when we have some time to talk,” he said.
“Did you expect this? You act like …” Now I was unnerved.
“I never know what to expect from her. I’m not surprised she’s not with you.”
Monica walked back over to us after she had given Gus a loving push toward the compound. She brushed my shoulder and some dried mud fell off. She was upset too.
“You need to get cleaned up. There’s a room with a shower you can use.” She was near tears.
“Are you …” but Monica held up her hand to silence me.
“I’m okay. I have to adjust to the news. But I can do that. Follow me to your room, will you?”
The three of us walked together into the center and said nothing. Whatever had happened at the Newt’s was devastating to Monica as well as to me, and neither of us could really explain it to the other. I knew Harouk was ready to leave, so I hurried with my shower. I gave Monica all my clothes, which she had graciously offered to clean.
While I stood in the shower and the water poured over me I finally let loose with the despair. For me, this was never a good idea, whatever my friends or dime-store psychiatrists said. It was not a purge or a catharsis, because to give over to grief and loneliness, to wail and wallow, reinforced both and has always left me worse than where they found me. Still, sometimes you can’t help it, you can’t stop yourself from being taken over, and that is what happened to me.
It was a feeling of loss, not of sorrow. I didn’t think a terrible thing had happened to Neffie. Oddly, I had a sure sense she was well, but something had come into my life through the open door behind her, something more than a remarkable adventure, extraordinary people; more than a woman I wouldn’t forget. It was a connection to a spirit—or more precisely—to spirit. An unspoken, unknowable thing between us had caused me to see and feel things in a new and unforetold way. The fear I had now, the loss I was feeling, was this awful idea maybe I would not have that any more. That—with the absence of Neffie’s physical presence—I would lose her great spirit as well.
Like I say, I should not have given in to these maudlin
and useless ideas, this pitiful “poor me” crying, but I couldn’t help myself. I turned the shower as hot as I could until the pain from the heat made me focus my attention somewhere beside the wandering of my mind.
As the steam rose and the water stung me, my time with Neffie started to come into focus. I will admit I did not know this, as I came out of the shower and sat on the edge of the bed that day, but I can see what was happening now. I had been given a taste of life without boundary, of life as spirit, of life as infinite. It was the music that brought me into this incredible world, now it was the spirit of that music I was starting to understand, and it lifted me up.
There was a light knock on the door. When I opened it, Harouk was standing there with my clothes folded in a pile. He looked at me for a second, checking my state of mind.
I looked down the hall and saw Gus walking up to us.
“You two leaving?” he asked.
“Soon as I’m dressed. Unless you need anything from us … I mean if we can help.”
Gus looked at me and Harouk with pure disgust.
“Not unless you got twelve million bucks.” He glared at Harouk. “Tell your faggot friend he destroyed everything I have. Someday, some way, I’m going to make him pay. When you two get out of here, I want you …”
Gus sounded like he was about to go off on some harangue, but Monica approached and he controlled himself.
“These may be a little damp. But I knew you were anxious, so I took them out of the dryer early. Where are you off to?”
Monica was sweet, pleasant to a fault. But it looked as
if her most impressive achievement was getting a rein on Gus, keeping him from self-destructing and taking thousands with him.
“I have to get back to New Mexico. My car is there,” I said.
“Have a lovely trip. Gus, I think you need to talk to the kids.” Monica smiled, dismissive.
I was momentarily overtaken with a tinge of concern for her.
“Thanks for everything, Monica. Will you be okay?” I made sure to include Gus with my eyes in the word you.
“We’ll be fine,” she said, grabbing Gus’s hand in a shut-up-I’ll-do-the-talking gesture. “I think it’s time for us to try television. We really have to run. Good luck, boys.” Monica reached over and gave me a peck on the cheek, a quiet connection between the two of us, of thanks and we’ll be okay. I gave her a slight, encouraging smile. She and Gus walked off, hand in hand, down the hall.
In seconds Harouk and I were on the road. I was driving the El Camino, since he told me as we got to the car he couldn’t drive. It was twilight, another Southwestern sunset was upon us, this time to our back, so the mesas and sky ahead were sinking into the hues of evening as we saw only reflected light.
“So … tell me.” I turned to Harouk to see his expression, then back to the road. He nodded and looked at the floor, drawing something from inside.
“She said she might not come back with you. She’s done this before. She has an ability to get lost for long stretches of time. I thought she was going to leave when we got to
the center, but I guess she wanted to find out something or do more.”
“And where did she go? She was right behind me when I was jumping out of this fifth-story window, then I never saw her again. Do you know where she is?”
“No idea. But Nez, she isn’t who you think or what you think. If you could go back and reconstruct all the events that happened to you when she vanished, it would all be perfectly reasonable. Not as far-fetched as the old Saturday-morning serials, where you watch someone drive over a cliff in a ball of flame at the end of one episode, then find out they jumped from the car right before it crashed at the beginning of the next. But it would be something like that.
“And where she has gone, I can’t tell you because I don’t know. This is what I do know. Neffie has the gift of becoming what you need when you need it. Her insight is angelic, her wisdom is cosmic, and her laughter is … well … she only laughs when something is funny. If you never see her again, your life has been changed and you will never be the same for having known her. As it is written, ‘A little leaven, leavens the whole loaf. Allah be praised.’”
Harouk was saying almost exactly what I thought he would say, and it wasn’t helping my sadness.
“If I never see her again? I …”
“But … but … be happy to know you will see her again. She’ll pop up, except I have no idea when or where. You’ll find her, or she’ll find you. That’s the way it is with Neffie.”
“How long have you known her?” I asked.
“Long time. More important than the time we’ve been
together is what we shared. I think she’s so special because of her time in Welach, because of LittleHorse and RD.”
“I was thinking of going back to Welach, maybe looking up LittleHorse, trying to find out more. Is that where Neffie usually goes after she does whatever she is off doing?”
“I don’t know. Welach is where she was raised, but it isn’t her home. LittleHorse and RD are her family; RD is her brother. But going back to Welach is not so easy and doesn’t always get you what you want.”
Her brother. Now I did feel like the idiot Armando said I was. Could I go back and recapture the lost moments of love, love I gave away to pride and jealousy? No, of course not. This added to my depressed state. Harouk went on.
“LittleHorse told me once, ‘Do not try to revisit the process of inspiration.’ You can take that for what it’s worth. The important thing is Neffie is okay. You can be sure of that, and you can be sure she meant everything she said and did. You’ll never lose any of that. Do you like malted-milk balls?”
“No, my least favorite candy,” I said.
“When we get to the service station, will you stop so I can get some? It’s all I’ve been thinking about for hours.”
We could not see the service station yet, but the glow reached into the sky across the horizon. It was orange, like the glow from the big sodium lights surrounding Armando the Newt’s house-trailer fortress. I was happy to stop—we would have to stop for gas anyway—but this time I wasn’t getting out of the car for any reason other than to fill-up.
I turned on the lights of the El Camino. I was sure we would drive the rest of the night, there would be no sense in stopping. I didn’t know what to think of Harouk’s information
about Neffie, about going back to Welach. I liked Harouk, but didn’t know him as anyone I could trust. I didn’t know him at all, but he seemed to know a lot about me and Neffie.
Over the next rise the service station appeared, sprawled across the desert, a monster clacking and clicking in the night, hosting swarms of moths and other desert insects with its powerful yellow lights, hundreds of fiery eyes shining, incandescent, consuming. An inert yet undead beast devouring, consuming all. Malted-milk balls indeed.