North on U.S. Highway 395, through the western portion of the Mojave, a vast blackness all around, the clouds of the coast having surrendered the sky to stars, the moon far down…Later, dawn frosting the heavens with light, first a sweet rose-pink at the horizon, a paler pink farther up, and a swath of buttercream before all goes blue for the day…Lonely playas of salt flats and mud flats and sand flats, forbidding dark mountains in the distance…
There was Mozart again, Eine kleine Nachtmusik, when Jane at last brought up the subject that Hendrickson had not wanted to talk about until he was under her control. He had asked that, after he’d spoken of it, she would order him to forget that he had told her about this thing that apparently mortified him. “ ‘I think to myself, I play to myself, and nobody knows what I say to myself.’ What did you mean by that, Booth?”
His smile was pained, but at least it counted as a smile. He spoke with a note of nostalgic fondness that didn’t displace his melancholy, staring at the highway but perhaps seeing into the past. “ ‘So—here I am in the dark alone, there’s nobody here to see. I think to myself, I play to myself, and nobody knows what I say to myself.’ It’s from a book. Poems. A little book of poems.”
“What book?”
“Now We Are Six by A. A. Milne. But I was just five.”
After a moment of consideration, Jane said, “The author of Winnie-the-Pooh. What does that mean to you?”
“The books? They’re everything. They mean everything to me.”
“You could read at five?”
“She pushes me to read. She pushes, pushes, pushes.”
“Your mother.”
“Lessons all day, every day.” His brow pleated and his eyes narrowed and his voice hardened. “Focus, boy. Focus, if you know what’s good for you, boy. Focus, focus, focus, you lazy little bastard.”
She waited until his quickened breathing quieted. “So you read the book of poems when you were five.”
“I’m given the set. All four Milne books. To encourage me.”
“Encourage you to read.”
“To read more, faster, better. To understand what’s wrong.”
“Wrong with what?”
“With everyone in the story. Like the bear. He’s stupid and lazy. He’s not focused, and he’s kind.”
“It’s wrong to be kind?”
“He’s gentle and kind. Kindness is weakness. The strong own the world. The strong use the weak. They piss on the weak. They should piss on them. It’s what the weak deserve.” His face contorted with contempt, and his voice became harsh again. “Is that what you want, boy? Do you want to be used and pissed on all your miserable life?”
Out in the wasteland, Deadmans Dry Lake and Lost Dry Lake and Owl Dry Lake, the Lava Mountains ahead, Death Valley at a distance in the east…
Passing through the desert, Jane felt as if something of the desert were passing into her. “But what do those lines of poetry mean to you? Those lines in particular.”
“Mother says the only worthwhile life is a regimented life. Make a schedule. Stick to it. It’s a very bad boy who can’t stick to it. No day is a good day if it isn’t regimented.”
Jane waited, but after a silence said, “And so?”
“And so, fifteen minutes for breakfast. Fifteen for lunch. Half an hour for dinner. To bed at eight. Up at five. Lights out at eight. Out, out, out. Only two lamps in the room. She takes the light bulbs. Takes them with her. Takes them after I’m put to bed.”
“ ‘So here I am in the dark alone…’ ”
He nodded. “ ‘There’s nobody here to see.’ The poem is ‘In the Dark.’ So I take a book to the window. Sometimes there’s moonlight. Or landscape lights from outside. I can see the page if I turn it just so. For an hour or two, until I get sleepy, I can think what I want. Play what I want. My time. In all the day, it’s my own time.”
Jane said, “If she opened your bedroom door and found you not asleep but reading by moonlight—what then?”
“So then…the deeper darkness.”
“And what was that?”
“At first, it’s being made naked. And being spanked. Spanked on my…boy thing. Spanked hard so it hurts to pee. You’re not going to be like your father, boy, not like that worthless piece of shit. So I’m spanked and put in the box to sleep the rest of the night.”
“ ‘The box’? What box?”
“A wood box. It has a locking lid. A box the size of the boy. With a folded blanket to lie on. Holes to let air in. But no light. No light ’cause the box is in a closet with no windows.”
“Dear God,” she said.
“You don’t need a god if Mother loves you. Mother is all you need. Mother punishes out of love. To teach what’s true and right.”
In the arid landscape, geologic formations like crude timeworn temples by gods better left unworshipped, giant rocks graven with pictographs by tribes known and by others too ancient to have names other than those that anthropologists have chosen to give them…
“How often were you locked in a box?”
“Two nights a week. Or three. So then I start sleeping early and getting up at like two in the morning. After she’s sleeping.”
“Then you could read by moonlight.”
“Yes. And not be caught.”
“You said, at first it was being made naked and spanked and put in the box. And later it was…?”
“Worse. Later, worse. Later, it’s the crooked staircase.”
Previously, he told her and Gilberto all about the crooked staircase. Soon they will descend it together.