'And the chief's been raising hell with that Homeland Security asshole about not notifying him about activity on his turf.'
'Did Pap's grandson get away?' Mandeville asked.
'Course he did,' Myers said. 'And the fire department said it's not leaving the station until the gunshots stop, so all the Feds can do is stand around and shoot possums and stray cats.'
We hit the unpaved part of the road and bounced into the night. When our laughter faded, Myers turned the volume down on the radio.
'That ain't the last surprise that ole boy's gonna get either. Sometime tomorrow, Homeland Security's going to get a call from two very embarrassed agents.' Myers looked at Jasmine and me.
'I had two babysitters watching me, followed me over to Lena's.' He chuckled. 'Itta Bena PD's evidence locker is missing just enough GHB to send those folks to nevernever land. Lena slipped that old date-rape drug in their drinks.' He smiled at the thought. 'The chief left 'em in the backseat of one of their cars, naked as a jaybird and covered in their own jism.'
'How did-?' Jasmine started to speak.
Myers shook his head. 'You really don't want to know.'
We road in silence for a long time, way past Runnymede. The sky glowed yellow over toward Itta Bena.
'Jay Shanker's in there,' Jasmine said then, her voice low and heavy.
'Oh lordy, lordy' Myers said. 'There was a man we all needed.' He shook his head. 'I can't tell you how many people's lives he made a difference in, how many youngsters had their lives turned around by him, how many people-like Pap-who finally got rewarded for their backbreaking labor because that man went to bat for them out of the goodness of his heart.'
I had known Jay Shanker for only those handful of minutes in the gin, but Myers's words iced the darkness that hung black in my soul.
Mandeville steered the van toward the northeast and over the newly opened Yazoo River bridge to Greenwood.
'So what's your plan?' Myers asked me as we approached Highway 82.
I shook my head. 'Don't have one yet, but somehow we've got to get Talmadge out of the VA in Jackson and find the load of records he hid.' I summarized what we had learned from Shanker.
'I'd like to help you there, but I think Pete and I… the chief and all the others have gone about as far as we can without landing in jail.'
'I understand.'
'You can count on me,' Tyrone said. 'I went to med school right next to the VA, been in there any number of times.'
'Anita still works there,' Rex said.
'I'll do what I can,' Quincy said, amazing Jasmine and me again.
'Get me back to my truck,' Rex said. 'I got me an idea.'
CHAPTER 73
Rex drove us south through the night, the headlights of his truck chasing ideas for a plan that rose and vanished like wisps of road fog. I sat next to Jasmine in the backseat, holding her hand, thinking about how to rescue Talmadge, grab the documents, get them to the media.
Rex had an abundance of unconventional resources and ideas and spun one scenario after another. All of these involved rebar, ropes, breaking and entering, safety harnesses, aircraft hijacking, and numerous other criminal acts no sane person would ever consider 'When the going gets insane, the insane get going,' Rex kept saying.
I didn't argue because insanity had saved my life way too many times in the past. Along with outright lunacy, all our plans required the illegal appropriation of someone else's property, the fastest, most untraceable way to acquire the materials we needed. No matter what we needed, Rex seemed to know where to steal it. Thus, from one scenario to another, a plan developed, much like constructing a vase out of whatever shards were at hand.
During the lulls when the planning discussions fell silent, dark, swirling waters backed up in my head with thoughts of the quick and the dead. I thought of the recently dead-Camilla, Jay Shanker, Chris Nellis-and the incredible loss their absence would cause.
Their deaths not only gouged out holes of love and dependence in the lives of the living, but also deprived the world of the remarkable body of knowledge they had wrested from ignorance, thought by thought. Knowledge was just a different memory. Where did they go? I asked myself again. And did we go there too?
The question gnawed at me during the dark silences connecting Phillipstown, Mayday, Quofaloma, Midnight, Panther Burn, Zelleria, and a score of other lonesome settlements embedded in the Delta darkness. I could not shake my preoccupation with the intriguing theory of Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, who think our consciousness arises from a quantum mechanism that alters the very woof and weave of space-time, or that of Hameroff's colleague David Chalmers, who feels we will eventually discover consciousness as a fundamental building block of the universe.
From there, I had no trouble thinking of consciousness as an inscription in spacetime or imagining how those inscriptions could directly affect consciousness.
For me, this begged a connection to the Hindu concept of maya, which says we are a grand illusion of God, and which, to my way of thinking, squares with Genesis, which tells us the world was without form, then God created the heavens and the earth. So, if we live in a world created by God out of nothing, there's no reason we shouldn't view our lives and everything in the world as 'real,' just as God intended. But I don't think we should be surprised when we dig down deep enough into the fundamentals of existence to find God created it all out of the infinite everything of nothing.
I fell asleep thinking about this. I didn't dream about whether love endured, but recognized it as one of those unknowable things the soul did.
CHAPTER 74
The country roads of Sonoma Valley still slept soundly at four thirty in the morning when Dan Gabriel steered his rental car to a halt on the westbound shoulder of Highway 116 to look at Harper's directions he had jotted down. The setting moon backlit the vineyards and pastures with a halo surrounding the highway and a ragged ridge of hills to the west.
Gabriel turned away from the scene, then flicked on the overhead dome light to decipher his sleepy scrawl. Frank Harper had called him less than two hours before and dragged Dan from his nightmares haunted by undead soldiers.
'I'm sorry to call you at this hour,' Harper had apologized. 'But I am concerned and can't sleep.'
'Makes two of us.'
'We could talk privately at the campaign meeting this afternoon at the General's retreat,' Harper had said. 'But this should offer a better opportunity.'
Gabriel looked at his writing, then up at the road. Straight ahead he followed the westward curve of the highway, then spotted the distant traffic light, precisely as Harper had described it. A little closer, faintly as lighter black on black, a road led off to the right.
Putting the car in gear, Dan pressed ahead, nearly running off the road at the poorly marked transition onto Arnold Drive. Two traffic lights down and a left turn later, he drove streets lined with neatly landscaped houses. Gabriel got lost twice on the winding streets, before spotting Harper at the end of the correct cul-de-sac, leaning against a cane by his mailbox.
'Thanks for coming,' Harper said as Gabriel stepped out of the white rental car and shook the offered hand. Harper's grip was strong despite the underlying Parkinson's tremor.
