He needed to head east. They wouldn’t expect him to reverse directions.
He needed to decide how to travel. This time he wouldn’t compromise anyone’s safety by letting them see him vanish, or by revealing anything about the Diamond. He decided to keep hitching. Hitching provided him with instructive company. He’d felt lonely driving the Cutlass, self-enclosed.
He was impressed by the simplicity of his plan, and grateful for it. He swung off the bed and padded naked into the warehouse’s high-shelved aisles of costume-box identities and five long racks of hangered shelves.
His identity should provide comfort, warmth, and a natural way to carry the Diamond. An Italian Duke with a bowling-bag? Too much. He needed something with a certain symbolic congruence with his journey. He liked the idea of the Spanish Explorer – Cabeza de Vaca in the Rocky Mountain high – but he’d have to cut off the damn collar. The Riverboat Gambler, which he’d already mostly assembled, was as good a choice as any if he could find the beaver top hat to crown it and a way to pack the Diamond. He spent twenty minutes pawing through hatboxes but didn’t find anything fitting.
The mind is the sum of the identities it assumes.
Frustrated, Daniel thought of randomly plucking from the racks and boxes. He ambled down the aisle marked Miscellaneous. Staggering under the armload he’d collected, he set it down on the floor to see what he’d snagged and how the pieces fit each other.
There were some arresting possibilities: a Coptic tunic of undyed linen inlaid with roundels of multihued wool; an Aegean helmet with boar tusks jutting from each side (it would be daring with the Riverboat Gambler outfit); two tasseled cloaks, one a brilliant cardinal, the other lapis-lazuli blue; another tunic, this one fur-lined, with a sleek taper to the sleeves; a Babylonian
Daniel was squatting there wondering if he could hide the Diamond under the turban when he saw, directly across the aisle, at eye level, exactly what he was looking for. The listed contents indicated a complete costume:
MOUNTAIN MAN / TRAPPER
AMERICAN CIRCA 1840–60
SIZE 46 (APPROX.)
BUCKSKIN SHIRT/PANTS
ELKSKIN MOCCASINS & LEGGINGS
FOXHEAD CAP (7?–?)
CHEYENNE DYED- QUILL BELT W/ ANTELOPE SKIN POUCHES
LARGE POSSIBLES SACK: BUFFALO HIDE,
BRAIDED OTTER-SKIN STRAP
POWDER HORN, BUCKSKIN THONG
The first two words – MOUNTAIN MAN – convinced him; the contents delightfully confirmed it. Perfect. Especially the possibles sack, which if he remembered correctly from his boyhood reading was a large pouch for the miscellany of the trapper’s work as well as personal treasures, totems, and medicines. Johnny Seven Moons had told him the mountain men were about as close as whites ever came to being Indians.
Daniel, for a long moment, remembered walking naked in the spring rain between Seven Moons and his mother, each holding a hand, how safe he’d felt, how complete, as the warm rain streamed down his body. Seven Moons and his mother were both dead now, but he knew the memory would remain when there was no one left to remember, curving through space like light from a dead star, curving back to its origin in the Infinite Dazzle.
Daniel dressed slowly, savoring the assumption of another self. As he slipped on the buckskins, he imagined the odors of pinesap and smoke and grease dripping from buffalo steaks. The moccasins and foxhead cap fit like they’d been custom made, and the pouched belt decorated with dyed porcupine quills was a work of art. The rough-tanned possibles sack, however, looked worrisomely small.
He picked up the powder horn and returned to the bedroom. He lifted the Diamond from the bowling-bag. To his great satisfaction, the Diamond slipped right in the possibles sack. He cinched the thong around the elkhorn catch, knotting it securely. He put his few toilet items in the belt pouches, then carefully stuffed the powder horn with some of the money from the attache case – around eight thousand dollars.
He hid his old clothes in various costume boxes, stashed the day pack and its four thousand dollars in the SWISS MILKMAID box. He slipped the case – with about five thousand left in it – onto a shelf with other luggage and hand grips. He returned all the costumes he’d strewn around to their proper boxes.
He smoothed out the bed and hung the damp towel behind the dresser after using it to wipe off prints.
He stood a few minutes, pondering what he might have missed. Granted, the mountain-man garb would attract attention, but, as Jean Bluer had taught him, the outlandishly improbable is often the best disguise. Besides, seriousness needn’t necessarily compromise style.
Daniel loved the hang of his buckskins, the way the moccasins connected him to the floor, the slung weight of the Diamond under his left arm, the idea of a fox curled on top of his skull. Without the case and bowling bag, he felt lighter. Lighthearted, too, but not giddy.
He vanished and exited through a wall, heading north. A half mile later he reappeared, turning west toward town. He ignored the curious stares, waved back when someone yelled from a passing car. He tried to recall what he’d read on the mountain men, their stories, their names. He wanted a name that fit his journey. He chose Hugh Glass. He remembered the story of Hugh Glass, who had crawled two hundred and fifty miles to the nearest fort after a grizzly had mauled him. Strength. Determination. Tenacity. He would be Hugh Glass.
A dusty old pickup waited in the gas bay of a Shell Station on the corner while a stooped gray-haired man watched it fill. On impulse, Daniel asked if he happened to be heading east. He was. But his wife and granddaughter were with him, just freshening up in the bathroom, and they were taking Highway 50, which he called the ‘loneliest road in the world,’ and their turnoff was only thirty miles out, and that would leave Daniel in the middle of goddamn nowhere in the dark. But hell, if it didn’t make him no mind, hop on in the back.
Daniel felt lighter and lighter.
THE FIRST NOTEBOOK OF JENNIFER RAINE
APRIL/LEAVING RENO
