As I followed the dog into the forbidden zone, the ragged edge of one of
the cut fence links snared my cap and pulled it from my head. I snatched
it off the ground, dusted it against my jeans, and put it on again.
This navy-blue, billed cap has been in my possession about eight months.
I found it in a strange concrete chamber, three stories underground,
deep in the abandoned warrens of Fort Wyvern.
Above the visor, embroidered in red, were the words Mystery Train. I had
no idea to whom the cap once belonged, and I didn’t know the meaning of
the ruby-red needlework.
This simple headgear had little intrinsic value, but of all my material
possessions, it was in some ways the most precious. I had no proof that
it was related to my mother’s work as a scientist, to any project of
which she was a par tat Fort Wyvern or elsewhere but I remained
convinced that it was. Though I already knew some of Wyvern’s terrible
secrets, I also believed that if I were able to discover the meaning of
the embroidered words, more astonishing truths would be revealed.
I had vested a lot of faith in this cap. When I wasn’t wearing it, I
kept it close, because it reminded me of my mother and, therefore,
comforted me.
Except for the cleared area immediately beyond the breach in the
chain-link, driftwood and tumbleweed and trash were piled against the
sifting fence. Otherwise, the bed of the Santa Rosita was as well made
on the Wyvern side as it was on the other.
Again the only footprints were those of the kidnapper. He had resumed
carrying the boy from this point.
Orson raced along the trail, and I ran close behind him. Soon we came to
another access road that sloped up the north wall of the river, and
Orson ascended without hesitation.
I was breathing harder than the dog when I reached the top of the levee,
even though, in canine years, fur face was pretty much my age.
How fortunate I’ve been to live long enough to recognize the subtle but
undeniable fading of my youthful stamina and spryness. To hell with
those poets who celebrate the beauty and the purity of dying young, all
powers intact. In spite of xeroderma pigmentosum, I’d be grateful to
survive to relish the sweet decrepitude of my eightieth year, or even
the delicious weakness of one whose birthday cake is ablaze with a
hundred dangerous candles. We are the most alive and the closest to the
meaning of our existence when we are most vulnerable, when experience
has humbled us and has cured the arrogance which, like a form of
deafness, prevents us from hearing the lessons that this world teaches.
As the moon hid its face behind a veil of clouds, I looked both
directions along the north bank of the Santa Rosita. Jimmy and his
abductor were not in sight.
Nor did I see a hunched gargoyle moving on the riverbed below or along
either side of the channel. Whatever it had been, the figure from the
highway embankment was not interested in me.
Without hesitation, Orson trotted toward a group of massive warehouses
fifty yards from the levee. These dark structures appeared mysterious in
spite of their mundane purpose and in spite of the fact that I was
somewhat familiar with them.
Although enormous, these are not the only warehouses on the base, and
although they would cover a few square blocks in any city, they
represent an insignificant percentage of the buildings within these
fenced grounds. At its peak of activity, Fort Wyvern was staffed by 36,
400 active duty personnel. Nearly thirteen thousand dependents and more
than four thousand civilian personnel were also associated with the
facility. On-base housing alone consisted of three thousand
single-family cottages and bungalows, all of which remain standing
though in disrepair.
In a moment we were among the warehouses, and Orson’s nose guided him
swiftly through a maze of service ways to the largest structure in the
cluster. Like most of the surrounding buildings, this one was
rectangular, with thirty-foot-high corrugated-steel walls rising from a
concrete foundation to a curved metal roof. At one end was a roll-up