Read Online Blood Makes Noise by Gregory Widen - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Gregory Widen
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where she is?” Michael loaded the camera body into the case. He just wanted to go home. “Do you know, Mike? Do you know where she is?”
Michael stopped and the two stared at each other as Wintergreen, the station guard, came barreling suddenly through the door in his civvies. Lofton smiled, “Master Wintergreen, everyone’s favorite marine. Favor us with some Basque, dear boy.”
“
Zoaz infernu
. It means ‘Go to hell.’”
“Warms the heart to see a boy speaking the native language of his parents.”
“Only when I’m pissed off.”
Michael looked in disbelief from Wintergreen to Lofton. “You always tell the marines where our safe houses are?”
“Well, young Wintergreen here is hardly just
any
marine. He’s
our
marine.”
Michael thought,
Scratch one fucking safe house
. He shook his head, buckled the case, and stood.
“Ed and I were just getting some dinner,” shrugged the marine.
“Raising a little
infernu
tonight,” Lofton said, walking back to retrieve his newspaper. “We’d invite you, Mike, but most of your hell seems to be pretty much self-contained.”
June 22, 1956
7.
T hey were in the land of frightening skies.
Here, the earth was an afterthought, a pathetic strip of taupe running away without character or form. It was the sky that consumed everything: color, movement, texture. It was the sky that was real and the earth insubstantial. So hungry, so big, you lost trust in your feet, as if you could tumble upward into the maw. Vast, empty blue that was an arrogant, mean piece of forever.
Karen liked the pampas. She had spent summers as a child in eastern Colorado, and it spoke to her. To Michael it was a vaguely evil place in which he never felt at ease.
Michael studied his wife’s profile, fuller now with pregnancy. That same profile first glimpsed against a foggy morning in the Reynolds coffeehouse at the University of Chicago. Her hair was full of midnight, like his mother’s, with just a few silvery strands she’d had since sixteen, like her mother. It cupped a face the color of no color, with eyes so startlingly gray Michael had never seen them on anything but wolves. When he’d finally glanced over her shoulder, she had the worst handwriting he’d ever seen…
They shot past a pampa town, its grim coupling of expressionless buildings low and fearful of rising from the earth’s safety into the swallowing sky. A poverty fragment sucked away in a dusty second.
Karen was in a good mood. These flat, expressionless miles west of BA always lifted her morale, and they were playful with each other—careful play, cautious of the hidden hair triggers that had grown into the fabric of their lives here. But nobodymisstepped. Karen was in too high a spirit, happy just to be freed from a city they’d begun to see as the enemy.
The estancia’s gate was white between two gnarled ombu trees. It was swung open, a shotgun gaucho checking names. The ranch house lay three miles farther along a sycamore-shaded road, where two dozen cars already crowded the circular drive. The house was like most out here: a sprawling, Mediterranean one-story. The floor was cool tile, the furniture covered in treated hide. Everything had a tricked-up, kitschy feel: the Lore of the Gaucho. Like most pampa estates it didn’t feel lived in, and it wasn’t. The wealth of Argentina came from these pampas, but it didn’t stay. Like the owners of the estancias, it slipped quickly away to the city and rarely returned. The lords of these nation-sized plots lived most of their lives as urban
Porteños
, putting on their grandfather’s gaucho knife only on the weekends when they’d return to the muddy source of their cars, furs, and perfume. The only people that truly lived out on these horizon tracts were the impoverished peasants who worked them. Half-breeds whose flat noses were all that remained of an Indian culture Spanish colonialists wiped out in just six bloody years. There were no Indian
Michael stopped and the two stared at each other as Wintergreen, the station guard, came barreling suddenly through the door in his civvies. Lofton smiled, “Master Wintergreen, everyone’s favorite marine. Favor us with some Basque, dear boy.”
“
Zoaz infernu
. It means ‘Go to hell.’”
“Warms the heart to see a boy speaking the native language of his parents.”
“Only when I’m pissed off.”
Michael looked in disbelief from Wintergreen to Lofton. “You always tell the marines where our safe houses are?”
“Well, young Wintergreen here is hardly just
any
marine. He’s
our
marine.”
Michael thought,
Scratch one fucking safe house
. He shook his head, buckled the case, and stood.
“Ed and I were just getting some dinner,” shrugged the marine.
“Raising a little
infernu
tonight,” Lofton said, walking back to retrieve his newspaper. “We’d invite you, Mike, but most of your hell seems to be pretty much self-contained.”
June 22, 1956
7.
T hey were in the land of frightening skies.
Here, the earth was an afterthought, a pathetic strip of taupe running away without character or form. It was the sky that consumed everything: color, movement, texture. It was the sky that was real and the earth insubstantial. So hungry, so big, you lost trust in your feet, as if you could tumble upward into the maw. Vast, empty blue that was an arrogant, mean piece of forever.
Karen liked the pampas. She had spent summers as a child in eastern Colorado, and it spoke to her. To Michael it was a vaguely evil place in which he never felt at ease.
Michael studied his wife’s profile, fuller now with pregnancy. That same profile first glimpsed against a foggy morning in the Reynolds coffeehouse at the University of Chicago. Her hair was full of midnight, like his mother’s, with just a few silvery strands she’d had since sixteen, like her mother. It cupped a face the color of no color, with eyes so startlingly gray Michael had never seen them on anything but wolves. When he’d finally glanced over her shoulder, she had the worst handwriting he’d ever seen…
They shot past a pampa town, its grim coupling of expressionless buildings low and fearful of rising from the earth’s safety into the swallowing sky. A poverty fragment sucked away in a dusty second.
Karen was in a good mood. These flat, expressionless miles west of BA always lifted her morale, and they were playful with each other—careful play, cautious of the hidden hair triggers that had grown into the fabric of their lives here. But nobodymisstepped. Karen was in too high a spirit, happy just to be freed from a city they’d begun to see as the enemy.
The estancia’s gate was white between two gnarled ombu trees. It was swung open, a shotgun gaucho checking names. The ranch house lay three miles farther along a sycamore-shaded road, where two dozen cars already crowded the circular drive. The house was like most out here: a sprawling, Mediterranean one-story. The floor was cool tile, the furniture covered in treated hide. Everything had a tricked-up, kitschy feel: the Lore of the Gaucho. Like most pampa estates it didn’t feel lived in, and it wasn’t. The wealth of Argentina came from these pampas, but it didn’t stay. Like the owners of the estancias, it slipped quickly away to the city and rarely returned. The lords of these nation-sized plots lived most of their lives as urban
Porteños
, putting on their grandfather’s gaucho knife only on the weekends when they’d return to the muddy source of their cars, furs, and perfume. The only people that truly lived out on these horizon tracts were the impoverished peasants who worked them. Half-breeds whose flat noses were all that remained of an Indian culture Spanish colonialists wiped out in just six bloody years. There were no Indian
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