The Paper Grail (21 page)

“How much did you soak them for?” asked Howard.

“Nearly five hundred bucks,” Uncle Roy said.

“I bought that truck with it.” Mr. Bennet nodded out toward the curb. There was a flatbed truck with stake sides parked there, half on the grass. It looked like it had been through some rough times.

“We used it to haul a load of chicken manure up from Petaluma just last week.”

“That was two weeks ago,” Mr. Bennet said. “Nothing like chicken manure for the rosebushes. Put too much around them, though, and it burns the roses right up.”

Uncle Roy stood up to pour himself another cup of coffee, shaking his head sadly at the pot, as if it were a crime against the gentle art of cooking. “People around here are big on organic gardening,” he said. “You can sell a truckload of chicken manure
to the Sunberries nearly any day of the year. Leaf mold, too. You can drive out toward Ukiah for a load of leaf mold out of the oak woods.” He shrugged. “It’s a way to earn a couple of bucks. We’re saving a little up in a joint fund, isn’t that right?”

His friend nodded. “We need a stake for when we make the run out to Reno.”

“Tell him about numbers some more,” Uncle Roy said. “I can see that he still doesn’t get it.”

“The problem with numbers,” Mr. Bennet said darkly, settling down to the task, “is that there isn’t any end to them. Do you get it?”

Howard said he did. He knew that much about them, anyway.

“I mean to say that they’ll trip you up that way. You’ll chase them like a dog after a mechanical rabbit until you drop dead. That’s the Babel effect.”

“That’s right,” said Uncle Roy. “What he means is that you can’t get there from here. There’s no such thing as rich enough, nor anything else of the kind. Your man Stoat, now …”

Mr. Bennet looked up sharply at the mention of the name.

“Howard’s all right,” Uncle Roy said, waving his hand. “He’s come in with us, lock, stock, and barrel.”

“Well, then,” Mr. Bennet said, and shook Howard’s hand solidly again. “Good to have you.”

“So people like Stoat,” Uncle Roy continued, “and your woman across the road there, they
want
things, don’t they?” He looked very serious. “‘I want more and more and more,’ that’s what they go around mumbling all day long. It’s the song they sing. What do they
want
, though? They don’t know. They can’t put a name on it. It burns them up, though. It’s a little taste of hell, isn’t it, all this wanting. Is it another dollar? That’s not it. They’ve got more than they can use. Another acre of land? What for? A mechanical eyeball in the middle of the forehead? What good would that do them?—they can’t see worth a damn out of the eyes they’ve got. I know what it is, though, what they want. It’s
apotheosis
. They want to be God almighty.” He slammed his open palm against the tabletop, and coffee sloshed out of his cup. “Damn it,” he said, “gimme a paper towel.”

Bennet handed him a sponge off the counter. “The boy don’t see the connection,” he said. “He don’t see the number business. You get too worked up to explain it worth, a damn.”

“I’m right, though, aren’t I?”

“Right enough. It’s a matter of patterns is what it is.”

“Everything is,” Uncle Roy said.

“Now take the gluers, for instance. What’s their motto? ‘No rules.’ That’s it, plain and simple.
Look
at them, wearing two different shoes, never driving into town by the same route twice in a row. And let me tell you something you won’t believe. When one of the elders, one of the gluer saints, comes around, what happens?”

Howard shrugged.

“Everything goes haywire.”

“That’s a fact,” Uncle Roy said. “Picture frame corners open up. Aquariums leak. Streets don’t even meet perpendicular anymore. Believe it.”

“Your table saw won’t cut square,” Mr. Bennet said. “Don’t matter how hard you try to tune it up.”

“It’s anarchy, pure and simple—chaos, hanging around them like a magnetic field.” Uncle Roy sat back in his chair, squinting at Howard. “It’s elemental energy.”

“But what is it,” asked Mr. Bennet carefully, “when you’ve got anarchy written into the rulebook?”

“When you
compel
it?” asked Uncle Roy.

They waited for a moment, forcing Howard to answer. “Well,” he said finally, “I don’t suppose it’s anarchy anymore.”

“Give that man a cigar,” said Uncle Roy. “There’s more to it than that, though. Do you remember what Bennet was telling you about the numbers?”

Howard nodded again.

Mr. Bennet hunkered forward in his chair, dropping his voice. “What your Samoan uncle means to say is that there’s
patterns in the chaos
.”

“What you might call ‘the Way,’” said Uncle Roy.

“The Dance.”

“And the Hoku-sai sketch … ?” Howard started to ask, but his uncle stopped him by holding up a hand. He shook his head and jerked his thumb backward toward the window, toward where Mrs. Lamey once again meddled with her rosebushes. She seemed to have her head cocked, as if she were listening to voices on the wind.

“We’re not like the others,” Uncle Roy said, gesturing out the window. “We’re the king’s men, aren’t we? Isn’t that what I told you? The circle’s been broken. We mean to put it back together again before they have a crack at it. We mean to put the pattern in order.”

“And the lion will lie down with the lamb,” Mr. Bennet said, with a note of finality in his voice.

“This is alchemy that we’re talking about,” Uncle Roy said, clearly worked up almost to a missionary zeal. “There’s the one crowd, the Stoats and the Lameys who would turn lead into gold to line their pockets with, and worse. And there’s another crowd …”

“Us,” said Mr. Bennet.

“… who don’t give a damn about metallurgy, except to drag this whole sorry world up out of the leaden age it’s fallen to—back to a place that’s a little bit sunnier, if you follow me.”

“Won’t it just fall again?” Howard asked. Clearly his uncle and Mr. Bennet were deadly serious, even though they’d lapsed into the mythological. They weren’t talking platitudes and abstractions here. That was certain. They were driving toward some goal that they could see with their eyes, like the walls of El Dorado, perched on a meadow above the sea.

Uncle Roy shrugged. “It will, certainly. Just like your Humpty Dumpty. But the path to the garden is a crooked one, hid by mist. You’ve got to be walking on it to see it clearly.”

“That’s right,” said Mr. Bennet. “Your man
will
fall off the wall, won’t he? That’s his nature, and God bless him. Then some damned old fool will try to put him back together again, sure as you’re born, and God bless him, too.”

Uncle Roy gave him a sharp look. “Who are you calling a damned old fool, you damned old fool?” Then to Howard he said, “But there’s no choice in the matter, not really, not for men like you. That’s paramount, isn’t it? This matter of choice and no choice. You’ve got it and you don’t. It sounds contradictory, and that’s just fine. Sense is nonsense when you get around behind it, and the opposite, too. You can see that, can’t you? I knew that when I saw you. Here’s a lad who’ll do his part. That’s what I said. He’s got the instinct. Like a salmon. That’s why he’s come north. Forget the damned museum. It’s redemption you’re here for. Break out that can of Glub’s glue and start puzzling the pieces back together again. The other crowd’s at it right now, hammer and tongs. Only it’s the dark tower they’re mortaring back up, piece by piece, and by God we mean to bring it down.”

“Earthquake and thunder,” Bennet said, putting down his coffee cup.

“Brimstone and fire,” said Uncle Roy. Then he hooked his fingers under his coat collar, looking very much like Humpty
Dumpty himself, having had his say.

“Nearly noon.” Mr. Bennet stood up abruptly and smashed out his cigarette into his empty coffee cup. “You got the wigs for the corpses?”

“In the truck,” Uncle Roy said. And then he winked broadly at Howard. “Don’t make too much of this, my boy. Don’t lose any sleep. Take Sylvia somewhere nice. Here.” He hauled an old, wrinkled ten-dollar bill out of his pants pocket and gave it to Howard. “Have a drink on me. Life goes on in the midst of the battle. Otherwise what’s the battle for?”

“Really …” Howard said, trying to think of a way to refuse the ten. It was clearly leftover money from hustling food stamps.

Uncle Roy frowned. “Take it,” he said. “Wasn’t I just telling you about making a run out to Reno? This isn’t all nonsense, you know. This is no time for doubts. The sand’s running out. The king is wounded, but we mean to put him right, or bring the whole shebang down in the effort. Have a drink on your poor old uncle.”

Howard nodded and stood up. “Right, thanks.” He shoved the bill into his pocket. “I’ll just catch up with you later, then.”

The three of them went out, Mr. Bennet locking the door. And after hauling the wigs out of Howard’s camper, Uncle Roy and Mr. Bennet shuddered away up the street in the flatbed truck. Howard watched them turn the comer, heading for the highway, and then stepped across toward where Mrs. Lamey sat on her porch.

12

M
RS
. Lamey sat in an armchair, bent over and mixing up a potion of some sort in a ceramic bowl that lay on the floor of the porch. It was apparently fertilizer—fish emulsion from the smell of it. She glanced up at Howard as he came up the flagstone walk, between the tree roses. “Well,” she said, standing up and wiping her right hand on her apron. Then she held it out so that he could shake it. Her face still had the pickle look, but it wasn’t
distorted by rage now, probably because there was no chance of being assaulted by rubber bats.

“I’m afraid I made a rather negative impression on you yesterday,” she said, not in an apologetic tone, perhaps, but with some hint of regret and shared responsibility.

“It was a difficult business.”

“Well, I oughtn’t to lose my temper like that. But Mr. Barton can be an irritating man.” With a momentarily bemused smile, she shook her head and said, “I’m afraid he’s not what they’d call fiscally responsible.”

Howard couldn’t argue with that, although he hated the phrase “fiscal responsibility,” because usually it meant nothing, and left everything out. He was intrigued, though, that Mrs. Lamey was apparently apologizing in her way, making amends. She was puttering in the garden now, carrying on like a human being. Obviously she had discovered that Howard’s check was good. “Putting out a little fertilizer?” Howard asked. “What’s this can of rusty nails for?”

“For the hydrangeas,” she said. “Do you garden?”

“Not much, no. A few tomatoes in pots, some houseplants, that’s about all.”

“Well, if you bury rusted nails around the roots of hydrangeas, the pink blossoms come out blue. It’s the iron in them. Sounds almost magical, doesn’t it? You can change the color of roses, too, although not so easily. It’s rather messy, but you get interesting results. I’m something of an amateur horticulturist, and put this together myself.” She gestured at the ceramic pot, and Howard could see, now that he was standing next to it, that it didn’t contain fish emulsion at all. It was full of a heavy red liquid.

“Don’t shudder when I tell you that it’s blood,” Mrs. Lamey said, putting on a pained expression. “Any sort of blood works well enough, but fish blood is best. Wonderful fertilizer at the same time. And easy to come by, too, at the cannery. I put it around the white roses. You’ve got to soak the roots, though, and keep after them with it, if you want the full effect. I use safflower stamens to color white daisies yellow. I even raised a black orchid last year.”

“A black orchid?” Howard asked. “How?”

“Squid ink and charred wood.” She nodded at him, with a look that suggested she was telling the solemn truth. “The colors aren’t natural, of course. But that’s the beauty of it. Look here.” She led him across the patchy grass to where a little forest of
pink ladies was blooming against the wall of the house. They stood there alien and huge, thrusting up through the dark soil, their blooms an alien, fleshy color of brown-pink. There was a rotten smell in the air around them, as if there were a dead animal under the house. “These were a product of blood and rust,” she said, “and a couple of other ingredients that I’ll keep secret.”

“Fascinating,” Howard said. He couldn’t think of any other word for it, except maybe “morbid” or “abominable” or some other word out of an old pulp horror story. The heavy blooms suggested something both human and unearthly, the effect heightened by a web of faint bluish veins beneath the flesh, reminding Howard uncomfortably of bloodstreams or, worse, tattoos. He thought of the “witch flower” mushrooms that Uncle Roy had been collecting in the woods around Graham’s shack, and in his mind he saw Mrs. Lamey sowing fungal spores in the sea wind, watching them blow north across the road and into the forest.

“You’re the curator of an art museum, I’m told.”

“Well,” said Howard, suddenly on his guard, “that’s close. I’m not actually curator. It’s a small natural-history museum that dabbles in art. I’m not even certain I’m going back to it. I like it up here.”

“Do you? I’m
so
happy to hear that. I was afraid I’d rather put a damper on that. Here you were, newly arrived, and I lost my temper completely. I’ve been wanting to apologize ever since.”