American Elsewhere (30 page)

Parson does nothing. He is hardly even breathing.

“And I guess you can’t tell me about the thing that tried to crawl out of his fucking gourd, can you?” says Mona. “The thing that foamed up like a… like a fucking science fair project when it touched asphalt? Or what I saw in that house?”

Parson clears his throat. “We should discuss what you are going to do with this key.” He pats the glove on the table.

“No,” says Mona.

He raises an eyebrow. “No?”

She coughs, hawks, and spits a lump into the trash can. Then she takes a Kleenex and blows each nostril thoroughly. “No,” she says. “I’m not doing a fucking thing, Mr. Parson. Not until you start telling me what the hell is going on.”

“I have told you about this,” says Parson calmly. “There are some things I am not allowed to discuss, or do.”

“I honestly don’t care,” says Mona. “I just endured some serious shit for you. I say we play fair and spread it around. This is a two-way street, Mr. Parson. Get fucking driving.”

“I do not understand your metaphor,” he says.

“What I am saying,” says Mona, and she hauls herself up and sits in the chair before his desk, “is you tell me something worth knowing. For starters, why the hell would I care about this key, anyway, let alone why would you?”

“It is a key to a door.”

“That’s specific.”

“I
think
it is the key to a door.”

“You don’t even know?”

“I have never… been there. And I do not know exactly what is inside the door. But I think… I think it is important.”

“This sounds like the worst setup I could imagine. I’m not just going to go out and open this mystery door of yours because you ask politely.”

“It is important to me,” Parson says quietly. “And it will be important to you.”

“Mr. Parson, you might not understand the meaning of this, but whatever you had me do tonight, it involved something apparently worth dying over. Because I’m fairly sure that spook in the hat offed himself to make sure he couldn’t talk. That’s a lot of devotion right there. I was a cop for seven years, and I never saw
anyone
do that. Usually folks are all about self-preservation. So whatever it is you have me doing, people are willing to die for it, and if they’re willing to die they’re almost certainly willing to kill. Now, don’t try and tell me you don’t know anything about this. And don’t send me out to some fucking mystery door without giving me the details, Mr. Parson. Don’t you even try to tell me to do that. I’m shocked I have to tell you this, but that dog won’t hunt.”

Parson contemplates this. He looks a little weary, as if this is a task he’s been dreading for a long time. He swallows, takes a breath, and says, “Are you quite sure about this?”

“After what I’ve seen tonight, I am damn sure, Mr. Parson.”

He nods and swallows again. “All right, then. I admit, I have thought about how best to do this,” he says. “Here is what is going to happen. Listen carefully. And you must trust me.”

“Well, I don’t really cotton to the idea of you telling me how to run this sho—”

“You
must
trust me.”

She gives him a glare, but gestures to go on.

“I am going to tell you more about what you need to do with this key.” He thinks. “And after that, I will do several things that make no sense to you. They might even seem to be quite silly. Is this acceptable?”

“What part of your crazy fucking head thinks that’s a fair shake?”

He takes another breath. “The things I will be doing will be done for
no reason
,” he says forcefully. “They will make
no sense whatsoever
. Neither to you, or to me. They have
no bearing on what we are discussing at all
. Do you understand?”

Mona looks him over. She worked with criminal informants only a couple of times as a cop, but in those times she became quite aware that double-talk and insinuation are the natural grammar of C.I.’s. Now, listening to Parson describe his plans, she perceives that he is using those same techniques, albeit in the most ridiculous way possible: he cannot even admit that what he is saying could be important, so he must claim that it is wholly unrelated. It’s as if he’s trying to trick himself into talking.

“Okay,” she says.

“All right,” he says again. He looks a little relieved, but he’s sweating prolifically, like his feet are being held over a flame. “You know about Coburn. You know that it is situated on top of the mesa.”

“I also know it’s gone.”

“Nothing is ever truly gone in Wink,” he says. “Everything tends to come back, even if it does not wish to. In the case of the lab, it is still there, though it is empty… but if you should visit it and look at it the right way, I think it might prove otherwise. If not, I am sure there are
records within that might help you. But the main door to Coburn is gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?” she asks.

“I mean it is buried under several feet of caved-in rock.”

“How the hell did that happen?”

“Please do not interrupt,” he says. “You need to listen, not speak.”

“Jesus.”

“That door is gone, but there are many other doors that lead to Coburn. There is one door in particular we can consider.”

“And where can I find this door?”

He shuts his eyes, as if envisioning it. Sweat is pooling in the wrinkles around his cheeks. “There is a road that leads out of Wink,” he says hoarsely. “It climbs high, high up, up to the mesa. It is the only road that does so. Take this road, but as you travel you must look at the fencing alongside it. There will be a stretch that is black and mangled as if it has been burned. At one point there will be a break in the fencing. It will look like there is nothing exceptional beyond this gap—more rocks, more scrub, more wilderness—but it is lying to you. It is the start of another road. Follow it, carefully. It winds around the mesa, through rocks and trees and gullies, and… and some things I cannot describe. Keep going. Eventually, you should find a door where none belongs. That is the door to Coburn. The
back
door.”

“And am I going to find the same things in Coburn as I did in Weringer’s house?” asks Mona.

“I have never been to Coburn, so I cannot say,” Parson tells her. “I honestly have no idea what is waiting for you there. But if any place holds answers, it lies atop that mesa.”

“Why haven’t you looked yourself?”

He smiles sourly at her.

“Ah,” she says. “It’s not permitted, is it. It seems you’re not allowed to do much, Mr. Parson. I bet you chafe something awful.”

He shrugs. Mona looks at him for a long time. His speech appears to have horribly strained him. “It sounds to me,” says Mona, “like this is mighty dangerous.”

His brow declines in the slightest of nods.

“And you seem to know a lot about it,” she says. “So why don’t you come with me, so I don’t get my dumb ass killed?”

Parson is still as a stone.

“Why not, Mr. Parson? Why don’t you and I hop in the car and take a road trip?”

“I cannot,” he whispers.

“I know you’re not permitted and all, but I’m the one who’s going to have my goddamned life at stake, so the least you can do is come with me. You’re trying to help in your own way, but to be frank it don’t seem like much help to me right now, and I really,
really
don’t care to be your errand girl, Mr. Parson.”

“I have already done too much…,” he says. It’s like his stomach is paining him horribly. “I cannot tell one of
you
what is there. I cannot help you. I cannot”—he grunts a little, as if something in his gut has just turned over—“directly help you to know what you do not know.”

“What’s happening to you? What’s wrong?”

He looks at her pleadingly. “Please… please, stop.”

Mona goes quiet. She definitely does not like how he called her “one of
you
,” as if she were a foreigner. “What did they do up there, Mr. Parson?” she asks softly. “What happened on that mountain?”

Parson, panting, takes a sip of coffee and turns up his handheld radio. The Sons of the Pioneers are playing now, crooning “Blue Shadows on the Trail.” When he turns back around Mona sees his eyes are brimming with tears, though his expression is not sad or anguished in any way. He wipes the tears away, sits down, and takes another breath.

“I’ve made a gift for you,” he says.

“Oh?”

“Yes,” he says. He takes out a small stack of note cards. “I have written down some of my favorite words and their definitions.” He holds them out to her, and his hands are trembling. “Please look at them. Later.”

Bewildered, Mona takes them and glances at the top card. It reads:

CAT

(noun)

A small domesticated carnivore,
Felis domestica
or

F. catus,
bred in a number of fun, fuzzy varieties.

“The fuck?” she says.

“Please keep them somewhere safe,” he says. “They are very important to me. Allow no one to see them. And I mean
no one
.”

“Are you serious?”

“Very.”

“All right… I guess I’ll do that.” She puts them in her pocket.

“Thank you.” He sits back, head cocked as he listens to the radio. “Would you like to hear a story?”

“What kind of story?”

“A fairy story. A parable.”

She shrugs.

“It is about many things. It’s about family. About travel. About home. I think you’ll find it very interesting. It’s one I think about a lot, every day.” He stares at her gimlet-eyed, and for the first time Mona thinks she can see genuine terror in that gaze; it is the sort of look given by people about to march to the scaffold, not old men about to relate fairy stories in broken-down motels.

“Are you ready?” he asks.

She shrugs again.

He clears his throat, takes a deep breath, and begins to speak.

Once upon a time, in a place far, far away from here, there was a big, leafy tree with many big, strong branches. The tree reached up very high in the sky. In the morning its leaves touched the bottom of the sun, and at night they touched the bottoms of the stars. And in between the two biggest branches at the very, very top of the tree was a big, happy bird making a nest.

“Oh, how happy I shall be when I have children!” said the bird. She worked on the nest and worked on it, and when she
thought it was ready she laid a single egg in its middle. It was a very large egg, and she sat on it, and sat on it, and when it finally hatched…

Out came her first baby bird.

But the mother bird was not happy with this baby bird. For though it was large—very, very large, in fact—it was not pretty, or intelligent, or graceful; it was an ugly, ungainly, cruel thing. This was because the mother bird was unused to making children, and she realized she needed practice. This was but the first sketch before the real work could begin.

“I am sorry,” said the mother bird to the baby bird, “but I cannot keep you.” And one night as the baby bird slept she kicked it out of the nest, and it tumbled down through the branches of the tree, and out of sight.

Such is nature.

But the mother bird had learned a great deal in laying this egg, so she tried again. And this time she laid not one egg, but
five
of them. And these baby birds were far finer and more beautiful than the first one, and each had its own talent.

The first baby bird to hatch was gifted with perception, and could see things far, far away, even things hidden to most eyes.

The second baby bird possessed great wisdom, and could spot folly and truth where others could not.

The third possessed great hope, and all who came near him felt sure their futures were bright and rosy.

The fourth was shrewd and practical, and could think up cunning plans and clever plots while other birds were dumbfounded.

And the fifth baby bird was incredibly strong and fearsome, and could overcome any foe or obstacle.

The mother bird was so encouraged by this that she laid many eggs and hatched many baby birds besides these, but all of them were far younger than the first five, and did not know much of the wider world.

Yet soon there were so many birds in the tree that it began to bow down with their weight. The bigger the little birds got, the more it bent, and someday—probably soon—the tree would break apart under their weight. The mother bird realized she would have to find somewhere else for them all to live.

So one day she told her younglings, “Stay here, and wait for me. Each of you should obey the next eldest while I am gone, and you should never harm one another or anything else besides. If you do this, you shall not perish or come to any harm, and you will see me again.” And the baby birds all agreed, and they wept as their mother flew away.

They waited and waited for her, worrying day and night. Then one evening a terrible storm broke open in the skies, and it seemed as if the tree would break in the wind. But then they saw a speck on the horizon: it was the mother bird, and though she was returning to them she looked weary and tired and faint.

When she landed the trunk of the tree began to creak, and crack, and groan. They knew it would not be much longer.

“Climb on my back, all of you,” the mother bird said to them. “Those that can, carry the unhatched eggs with you.”

“But where are we going?” asked the baby birds.

“To someplace safe and quiet, far away from here,” she said.

All of them crowded upon the mother bird’s back, and with one great leap, she took off to the skies. This huge leap was the last straw for the tree: with a great
snap!
it fell apart, branch by branch.

All the baby birds watched as their home was destroyed. Yet as the second-eldest bird watched, he noticed something. Was there another bird following them, winging its way through the rain? It could not be, for how could there ever be a bird so large, so ungainly, so ugly, and so cruel-looking?

Yet then they entered the night sky, and all was dark, and the baby birds were fearful.

“Will it be long, Mother?” they asked her as she carried them through the darkness.

“No,” she said. “It will not be long.” But her voice was no more than a whisper, and her breath rattled in her chest with each beat of her wings.

Soon they saw their new home: it was not a tree, but a huge old mountain. She swooped down to its peak, yet her landing was not graceful: she struck the ground with a terrible force, and collapsed, yet all the baby birds were saved.

They all climbed off and looked at their mother. She was gray and weak, falling apart just as the tree was. The flight had destroyed her.

“She will die,” said the first baby bird, who could perceive much.

“She is dying now,” said the second baby bird, who was wise.

“It is true,” she whispered to them. “I am dying.”

All the little birds wailed to hear this.

And she told them, for the second time: “Stay here, and wait for me. Each of you should obey the next eldest while I am gone, and you should never harm one another or anything else besides. If you do this, you shall not perish or come to any harm, and you will see me again.”

And then she died: her feathers were blown away by the wind until there was nothing left.

“She will come back some day,” said the third baby bird, who had hope.

“Why should you believe such a thing?” said the fourth, who was practical. “She is gone, gone forever.”

“How dare you say such a thing after we have just lost her?” asked the fifth baby bird angrily. And she, who was hugely strong, picked up the fourth and threatened to throw him down and dash him apart on the mountain.

“Do not do it!” said the third. “She forbade us from violence! And besides, we must find a home here.” And he led them down the mountain, except the eldest two stayed behind.

“I wonder,” said the second-eldest bird, “what sort of place these children shall make. I doubt if it will be much good.”

But the eldest bird was quiet, and looked to the sky. He could perceive many things, and what he saw in those moments no one could guess. Finally he said, “I know what kind of place.”

“What kind?”

“It does not matter.”

“Why not?” asked his brother.

And the eldest little bird said, “Because she
will
come back one day, regardless of what they do. And when she does, they will see she