I knelt by the bare earth. The wind had eroded the impressions of the Case-Jordan’s treads but not quite erased them; somewhere beneath those faint indentations was a man wearing a Rolex.
‘Dolan,’ I said chummily, ‘I’ve changed my mind and decided to let you out.’
Nothing. No sound at all. Dead for sure this time.
I went back and got another square of asphalt. I placed. it, and as I started to rise, I heard faint, cackling laughter seeping up through the earth.
I sank back into a crouch with my head forward — if I’d still had hair, it would have been hanging in my face — and remained in that position for some time, listening as he laughed. The sound was faint and without timbre.
When it stopped, I went back and got another asphalt square. There was a piece of the broken yellow line on this one. It looked like a hyphen. I knelt with it.
‘For the love of God!’ he shrieked. ‘For the love of God, Robinson!’
‘Yes,’ I said, smiling. ‘For the love of God.’
I put the chunk of asphalt in neatly next to its neighbor, and although I listened, I heard him no more.
I got back to my place in Vegas that night at eleven o’clock. I slept for sixteen hours, got up, walked toward the kitchen to make coffee, and then collapsed, writhing, on the hall floor as a monstrous back spasm racked me. I scrabbled at the small of my back with one hand while I chewed on the other to stifle the screams.
After awhile I crawled into the bathroom — I tried standing once, but this resulted in another thunderbolt — and used the washstand to pull myself up enough so I could get the second bottle of Empirin in the medicine cabinet.
I chewed three and drew a bath. I lay on the floor while I waited for the tub to fill. When it was, I wriggled out of my pajamas and managed to get into the tub. I lay there for five hours, dozing most of the time. When I got out, I could walk.
A little.
I went to a chiropractor. He told me I had three slipped discs and had suffered a serious lower spinal dislocation. He wanted to know if I had decided to sub for the circus strongman.
I told him I did it digging in my garden.
He told me I was going to Kansas City.
I went.
They operated.
When the anesthesiologist put the rubber cup over my face, I heard Dolan laughing from the hissing blackness inside and knew I was going to die.
The recovery room was a watery tiled green.
‘Am I alive?’ I croaked.
A nurse laughed. ‘Oh, yes.’ His hand touched my brow — my brow that went all the way around my head. ‘What a sunburn you have! My God! Did that hurt, or are you still too doped up?’
‘Still too doped up,’ I said. ‘Did I talk while I was under?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
I was cold all over. Cold to the bones of me.
‘What did I say?’
‘You said, ‘It’s dark in here. Let me out!” And he laughed again.
‘Oh,’ I said.
They never found him — Dolan.
It was the storm. That flukey storm. I’m pretty sure I know what happened, although I think you’ll understand when I tell you I never checked too closely.
RPAV — remember that? They were repaving. The storm almost buried the section of 71
which the detour had closed. When they went back to work, they didn’t bother to remove the new dunes all at once but only as they went along — why do otherwise? There was no traffic to worry about. So they plowed sand and routed up old paving at the same time. And if the ‘dozer operator happened to notice that the sand-crusted asphalt in one section — a section about forty feet long — was breaking in front of his blade in neat, almost geometric pieces, he never said
anything. Maybe he was stoned. Or maybe he was just dreaming of stepping out with his baby that evening.
Then came the dumpsters with their fresh loads of gravel, followed by the spreaders and rollers. After them the big tankers would arrive, the ones with the wide sprayer attachments on the backs and their smell of hot tar, so like melting shoe-leather. And when the fresh asphalt had dried, along would come the lining machine, the driver under his big canvas parasol looking back frequently to make sure the broken yellow line was perfectly straight, unaware that he was passing over a fog-gray Cadillac with three people inside, unaware that down in the darkness there was a ruby ring and a gold Rolex that might still be marking off the hours.
One of those heavy vehicles would almost surely have collapsed an ordinary Cadillac; there would have been a lurch, a crunch, and then a bunch of men digging to see what — or who —
they had found. But it really was more tank than car, and Dolan’s very carefulness has so far kept anyone from finding him.
Sooner or later the Cadillac will collapse of course, probably under the weight of a passing semi, and the next vehicle along will see a big broken dent in the westbound lane, and the Highway Department will be notified, and there will be another RPAV. But if there aren’t Highway Department workers right there to see what happens, to observe that the heavy weight of a passing truck has caused some hollow object under the road to collapse, I think they will assume the ‘marsh-hole’ (that is what they call them) has been caused by either frost, or a collapsed salt-dome, or possibly a desert temblor. They will repair it and life will go on.
He was reported missing — Dolan.
A few tears were shed.
A columnist in the Las Vegas Sun suggested that he might be playing dominos or shooting pool somewhere with Jimmy Hoffa.
Perhaps that is not so far from the truth.
I’m fine.
My back is pretty much okay again. I’m under strict orders not to lift anything which weighs over thirty pounds without help, but I’ve got a good bunch of third-graders this year, and all the help I could want.
I’ve driven back and forth over that stretch of road several times in my new Acura automobile.
Once I even stopped, got out, and (after checking in both directions to make sure the road was deserted) took a piss on what I was pretty sure was the spot. But I couldn’t produce much of a flow, even though my kidneys felt full, and when I drove on I kept checking the rearview mirror: I had this funny idea, you see, that he was going to rise up from the back seat, his skin charred to a cinnamon color and stretched over his skull like the skin of a mummy, his hair full of sand, his eyes and his Rolex watch glittering.
That was the last time I was on 71, actually. Now I take the Interstate when I need to head west.
And Elizabeth? Like Dolan, she has fallen silent. I find that is a relief.
The End of the Whole Mess
I want to tell you about the end of war, the degeneration of mankind, and the death of the Messiah — an epic story, deserving thousands of pages and a whole shelf of volumes, but you (if there are any ‘you’ later on to read this) will have to settle for the freeze-dried version. The direct injection works very fast. I figure I’ve got somewhere between forty-five minutes and two hours, depending on my blood-type. I think it’s A, which should give me a little more time, but I’ll be goddamned if I can remember for sure. If it turns out to be O, you could be in for a lot of blank pages, my hypothetical friend.
In any event, I think maybe I’d better assume the worst and go as fast as I can.
I’m using the electric typewriter — Bobby’s word — processor is faster, but the genny’s cycle is too irregular to be trusted, even with the line suppressor. I’ve only got one shot at this; I can’t risk getting most of the way home and then seeing the whole thing go to data heaven because of an oHm drop, or a surge too great for the suppressor to cope with.
My name is Howard Fornoy. I was a freelance writer. My brother, Robert Fornoy, was the Messiah. I killed him by shooting him up with his own discovery four hours ago. He called it The Calmative. A Very Serious Mistake might have been a better name, but what’s done is done and can’t be undone, as the Irish have been saying for centuries . . . which proves what assholes they are.