Stone Junction

‘Daniel, I can only tell you what I know. And one thing I know is that exhaustion encourages vanishing.’

Daniel and Volta took the interfacility shuttle to the private hangars. On the way, Volta told him, ‘Our pilot will be a young man named Frederic Malatest. Red Freddie, we call him. Don’t bait him on politics. He takes them seriously.’

‘Red Freddie and Low-Riding Eddie – that’s quite a crew.’

‘That,’ Volta sighed, ‘is our entire western air force. No wonder we’re forced into imagination.’

Red Freddie was in his mid-twenties. His lanky frame and laconic movements were in contrast to his piercing brown eyes and the message emblazoned in black letters across his motorcycle helmet: Smash the State. While Volta sat with his eyes closed, Daniel started Red Freddie on politics before they’d even taken off.

Over Ukiah Daniel expressed serious reservations about Red Freddie’s claim that the highest revolutionary act available to a middle-class people in the 1980s would be piling their television sets in the middle of the street and setting them ablaze with their front doors. They argued for a few minutes, until Red Freddie warned, ‘Reconsider your position,’ and put the twin-engine Beechcraft into a steep power dive.

Pressed back in his seat, Daniel watched the town lights below rush toward him. He was too stunned to speak until Volta, with a trace of reproach, said in his ear, ‘I told you he takes his politics seriously.’

Daniel immediately leaned over and screamed in Red Freddie’s helmet, ‘You’re right! Build a bonfire with those front doors. And while you’re at it, throw on all the word processors, too!’

‘Right on!’ Red Freddie bellowed, lifting the nose back up and leveling it before beginning a series of exuberant snap-rolls, each punctuated with a scream of ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’

‘Another thing,’ Daniel yelled. ‘After the televisions and typewriters, every speck of paper in the country.’

‘You got it, bro! You think something is important enough to write down to be remembered, important enough for others to know, well you can write it on a goddamn wall. Imagine it, man: motel room walls would be like poetry magazines.’

Volta sleepily opened his eyes and said, ‘Did you two realize that Ukiah is haiku spelled backwards?’

Before Daniel could admit he’d missed that one, Red Freddie threw out his arms and dramatically declaimed,

When the last capitalist is strangled

With the guts of the last bureaucrat,

Cherry trees will blossom in our minds.

Daniel said, ‘And when all the paper’s burning, people should throw their clothes on the blaze and snake-dance around the neighborhood naked, then sit in a big circle and toast marshmallows and drink whiskey and smoke dope and trade stories, lies, and rumors.’

Red Freddie nodded rapidly. ‘And the next morning form labor syndicates and call a general strike.’

As Daniel and Freddie raved back and forth, Volta eased back in his seat. He admired youth and ambition, the seizures of endless possibilities and unqualified enthusiasm, but lately they were making him tired. He tried to relax and let everything go, but he couldn’t shake an image of Daniel looking at himself in a mirror. The boy was bright, maybe even brilliant, but he was not wise.

For the thousandth time Volta wondered whether he would have offered Daniel the chance to vanish if there was no Diamond to steal. He remembered how Madge Hornbrook had touched his sleeve just before the ceremony when he’d replaced her as a member of the Star, whispering ‘Just remember that the crucial decisions are always too close to call.’ He was encouraged by Daniel’s claim that he, too, had dreamed of the Diamond – a good sign. Yet he found little solace in it. He was getting old, he realized. Old.

Twenty minutes later, Red Freddie set them down on a fog-shrouded strip along the Eel River. He kept the motor running as Daniel and Volta quickly unloaded. In minutes he had the plane turned around, gunning it down the strip.

When Red Freddie lifted off, Daniel picked up his duffel. ‘All right, what do we do from here? Walk?’

‘Right,’ Volta said absently.

‘Which way and how far?’

Volta looked at him, then bent to pick up his own suitcase. ‘Northeast. About a hundred yards. To my truck.’ Volta started walking, Daniel falling in beside him.

Daniel said lightly, ‘Your truck? Given your position as a senior member of the Star, I thought a limo would be waiting.’

‘The truck was indulgence enough.’

‘What is it? Something along the lines of Smiling Jack’s Kenworth?’

‘You’ll see,’ Volta said.

To Daniel it looked like any other old battered pickup, though it had new rubber all the way around. He told Volta, ‘Bad Bobby would book it eight to five that the tires outlast the truck.’

Volta took Daniel’s duffel bag and swung it into the bed on top of his suitcase. ‘No he wouldn’t. Robert has a discerning eye for the deceptions of appearance.’

‘Well,’ Daniel allowed, ‘maybe even money.’

‘I intended to let you drive, but since you persist in insulting a work of art, you merely ride.’

Not until Volta turned the engine over and Daniel felt the whole truck shimmying with an almost erotic anticipation did he understand the work of art under the hood.