HANGTREE/THE HIGH DESERT
The coffee the cop gave him tasted like cowshit. Park drank it anyway. The deputy, the one named Jimmy, gave him a grin like there was a joke Park didn’t get. Jimmy drove fast and sloppy with that cop carelessness for yellow lights and speed limits. Hangtree was a true shithole, but something about it glittered as the sun came down. Something about the way the light flickered against the window glass made Park’s eyeballs tickle.
“Sure you want to go out to Slabtown?” Jimmy asked. Park fought the urge to tell the man he was the color of a shaved dog. The thought made weird laughter inside him. He tamped it down.
“I told you already, Deputy, you don’t have to come with me.” The coffee at the bottom of the cup was gritty. He choked it down. Jimmy smiled so wide Park started to wonder if the fucker had spat in it.
They hit a dirt road that took them up a hill. Halfway up it Jimmy took a right into a wash that barely even qualified as a road. Park had been in a car all day. His kidneys were jammed to shit.
“I thought Slabtown was in an old army base.”
“It is.”
“This doesn’t feel like the road to an army base.”
“We’re taking the back way in,” Jimmy said. His eyes seemed like they’d migrated to the sides of his head. The fat fucker looked more piglike than ever. When Jimmy moved his head it seemed to Park that some of the molecules in the fat man’s face moved slower than the rest.
Something was wrong. Not just with the situation, or with this dipshit townie cop. There was something wrong all the way down to the electrons.
Park tried to remember the last time he’d slept. How much caffeine he was running on. Tried to find some explanation for the body-thick vibrations echoing through him. His stomach roiled with them.
“Stop the car,” Park said. Jimmy smiled that secret-joke smile again. His tongue flickered behind his teeth, a wet snake. Park locked his throat to keep from puking right then.
“Feeling poorly?” Jimmy stopped the car. Park undid his safety belt, ran out into the night, dropped to his knees, and puked into the rocks. He sat back on his ass and felt the world barrel roll. The sky above him was a smear of stars. They flickered; they danced.
Jimmy came up behind him. Too close. He had a sour smell to him like kimchi. Jimmy said, “I better take that.” He took Park’s gun with one hand.
“What’s happening?”
“Ever hear of MK-Ultra?”
Park tried to make those words make sense. They didn’t make sense.
“You put something in my coffee.”
“You know that psilocybin mushroom? I grabbed some off a hippie a little while back. The CIA thought they could use shit like that for mind control. I like to run my own experiments. And you’re a pain-in-the-balls chink who asks too many questions. So here we are.”
The way his face throbbed to the beat of his words told Park this was no lie. Mushroom vibrations and adrenaline buzz all over him. You are going to die thoughts ricocheted all through his brainpan. But the animal panic was only a few inches deep. Something heavy and swelling sat underneath it.
“They say you see colors and shit,” Jimmy said. “What do you see?”
“You’re the color of a shaved dog,” Park told Jimmy. Park laughed, and then he laughed at the laugh. The sound of it unwound within him. Like pulling a thread, threatening to turn him into a pile of string.
“Shit,” Jimmy said. “You’re totally fucking worthless. No wonder the CIA gave up on this shit.”
Park dropped to his back. The earth was so cold under him. He looked up to the shimmying sky. He felt his skin against the air and knew there were no barriers, none at all, between anything. Him and the sky and all of it were just one big ocean.
Jimmy’s pig-eyed face floated into his sight. He squinted at Park, like Park was out of focus—and maybe he was—and then Jimmy pulled his pistol from its holster and pointed it at Park’s face.
This was the moment he’d been chasing. The buzz had led him here. It hadn’t been the case or saving the girl that had driven him here. He’d been chasing death his whole life, he saw it so clean and clear, and now it was here and he surrendered to it in the moment.
Everything calm.
Okay then. Time to die.
Then an oh shit look washed over Jimmy’s face like a wave. He put the gun back in its holster.
“Got to use the peckerwood’s gun,” he said as he walked away. Park tilted his head to watch him walk to his car and pop the trunk.
Park sat up. Tried to make sense of this moment he wasn’t supposed to have. Looked down on the ground behind him to see if he’d find his body splattered under him. But no, he was still flesh. And he figured if he’d managed to be okay with dying then there wasn’t anything that could stop him anymore.
He saw the rock next to his hand. Volcanic. Shard-shaped. Sharp.
He saw how it would fit into Jimmy just so. Like it belonged to him.
Park got the rock in his hands. He crouched down and moved toward Jimmy. Jimmy turned with a sawed-off in his hands. He looked right over Park’s head as Park moved in.
Park brought the rock down. It fit into Jimmy’s knee just the way Park knew it would. The fat man went down.
The desert rippled when Park ran. Like he was a giant and his feet shook the world. He ran into the scrub. Jimmy shouted all sorts of mad shit behind him. Jimmy swore he’d shoot. Jimmy shot. When the pellets whipped past Park he could see the paths they tore through the air. He ran after them. He chased those pellets out into the night.