'Good. I'm very glad that someone understands what's going on here. Fucking hair-pie summer camp snipe- hunt is what it is.' He ran his hand through the short bristles of his hair, then turned to Curt again. 'Do I need to tell you to turn around and come out of there if you sense anything - any slightest thing - wrong?'
'No.'
'And if the trunk of that car comes open, Curtis, you fly. Got it? Fly out of there like a bigass bird.'
'I will.'
'Give me the video camera.'
Curtis held it out arid Tony took it. Sandy wasn't there - missed the whole thing - but when Huddie later told him it was the only time he had ever seen the Sarge looking scared, Sandy was just as glad he spent that afternoon out on patrol. There were some things you just didn't want to see.
'You have one minute in the shed, Trooper Wilcox. After that I drag you out whether you're fainting, farting, or singing 'Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean'.'
'Ninety seconds.'
'No. And if you try one more time to bargain with me, your time goes down to thirty seconds.'
Curtis Wilcox is standing in the sun outside the walk-in door on the north side of Shed B. The rope is tied around his waist. He looks young on the tape, younger with each passing year. He looked at that tape himself from time to time and probably felt the same, although he never said.
And he doesn't look scared. Not a bit. Only excited. He waves to the camera and says, 'I'll be right back.'
'You better be,' Tony replies.
Curt turns and goes into the shed. For a moment he looks ghostly, hardly there, then Tony moves the camera forward to get it out of the bright sun and you can see Curt clearly again. He crosses directly to the car and starts around to the back.
'No!' Tony shouts. 'No, you dummy, you want to foul the rope? Check the gerbils, give em their goddam water, and get the hell out of there!'
Curt raises one hand without turning, giving him a thumbs-up. The picture jiggles as Tony uses the zoom to get in tighter on him.
Curtis looks in the driver's-side window, then stiffens and calls: 'Holy shit!'
'Sarge, should I pull - ' Huddie begins, and then Curt looks back over his shoulder. Tony's juggling the picture again - he doesn't have Curt's light touch with the camera and the image is going everywhere - but it's still easy enough to read the wide-eyed expression of shock on Curtis's face.
'Don't you pull me back!' Curt shouts. 'Don't do it! I'm five-by-five!' And with that, he opens the door of the Roadmaster.
'Stay out of there!' Tony calls from behind the madly jiggling camera.
Curt ignores him and pulls the plastic gerbil condo out of the car, waggling it gently back and forth to get it past the big steering wheel. He uses his knee to shut the Buick's door and then comes back to the shed door with the habitat cradled in his arms. With a square room at either end, the thing looks like some strange sort of plastic dumbbell.
'Get it on tape!' Curt is shouting, all but frying with excitement. 'Get it on tape!'
Tony did. The picture zooms in on the left end of the environment just as soon as Curt steps out of the shed and back into the sun. And here is Roslyn, no longer eating but scurrying about cheerfully enough. She becomes aware of the men gathered around her and turns directly toward the camera, sniffing at the yellow plastic, whiskers quivering, eyes bright and interested. It was cute, but the Troopers from Statler Barracks D weren't interested in cute just then.
The camera makes a herky-jerky pan away from her, traveling along the empty corridor to the empty gerbil gym at the far end. Both of the environment's hatches are latched tight, and nothing bigger than a gnat could get through the hole for the water-tube, but Jimmy the gerbil is gone, just the same -just as gone as Ennis Rafferty or the man with the Boris Badinoff accent, who had driven the Buick Roadmaster into their lives to begin with.
NOW:
Sandy
I came to a stop and swallowed a glass of Shirley's iced tea in four long gulps. That planted an icepick in the center of my forehead, and I had to wait for it to melt.
At some point Eddie Jacubois had joined us. He was dressed in his civvies and sitting at the end of the bench, looking both sorry to be there and reluctant to leave. I had no such divided feelings; I was delighted to see him. He could tell his part. Huddie would help him along, if he needed helping; Shirley, too. By 1988 she'd been with us two years, Matt Babicki nothing but a memory refreshed by an occasional postcard showing palm trees in sunny Sarasota, where Matt and his wife own a learn-to-drive school. A very successful one, at least according to Matt.
'Sandy?' Ned asked. 'Are you all right?'
'I'm fine. I was just thinking about how clumsy Tony was with that video camera,' I said.
'Your dad was great, Ned, a regular Steven Spielberg, but - '
'Could I watch those tapes if I wanted to?' Ned asked.
I looked at Huddie . . . Arky . . . Phil . . . Eddie. In each set of eyes I saw the same thing: It's your call. As of course it was. When you sit in the big chair, you make all the big calls. And mostly I like that. Might as well tell the truth.
'Don't see why not,' I said. 'As long as it's here. I wouldn't be comfortable with you taking them out of the barracks - you'd have to call them Troop D property - but here? Sure. You can run em on the VCR in the upstairs lounge. You ought to take a Dramamine before you look at the stuff Tony shot, though. Right, Eddie?'
For a moment Eddie looked across the parking lot, but not toward where the Roadmaster was stored. His gaze
