the way a fat man’s midriff overlaps his belt, I learned a little more.
“Good pie, huh?”
“Always.” He was using a spoon.
“You brought in a gunshot a while back.”
“The soldier? Uh-huh.”
“How did you know that?”
“Heard talking.”
“The ER crew?”
“Uh-huh.” Another bite of pie went away.
“Was he conscious?”
“By the numbers he was. But he just looked at me. Like …”
I waited.
“Like he was flat. Somebody let the air out?”
“What did the soldier have with him?”
Andrew’s quirks kicked in. “Shirt, dark blue, size sixteen—we cut that off. Khaki pants, almost new, thirty-six waist, thirty-two length. New Balance walking shoes, elevens, maroon and gray. Cream-colored baseball cap, no writing.”
“Was there anything else? A backpack? A weapon?”
“He had a wallet with an Oregon driver’s license, a Visa card expiring in July, sixty-seven dollars. Fifty-eight cents in change in his left pocket. No belt.”
“And did he say anything? Try to?”
“Only at first, when he first looked up at me. Sounded like ‘Billygoat, that you?’”
“‘Billygoat, that you?’”
“Like that. Twice.”
11
Next morning we watched the parade as Sebastian Daiche’s pit team pulled out, vehicles shedding gravel and dirt as they trooped down Maple Street toward the interstate. Felt like when you’re a kid standing at the edge of town seeing the carnival leave. Bye-bye, mystery and magic. Hello, ordinary life.
Not that it was.
Gordie and I were sitting on one of the benches out front, drinking bad coffee as people came and went through the hospital’s front entrance.
Strange how you can work alongside someone for years, have him as a friend, then one day suddenly understand—not simply know, but understand—that his beliefs are so unlike what you thought. That he lives in quite a different world from the one you had him in.
Strange too how we’d failed to get the press attention we expected. Two skeleton news crews had straggled in, but for the most part interest in Willnot’s “shocking find” had been eclipsed first by the latest Washington scandal, then by eruption of new civil wars in another small part of this large, unwieldy world.
My chief back during residency, Teddy Wu, kept telling us that life is just a long recovery before the fatal illness strikes. Bobby Lowndes lay inside in ICU recovering—from what, besides a bullet wound? I’d been brought up around people with a profound mistrust of received wisdom, appearance, surfaces. My father used to quote André Gide: “Fish die belly upward and rise to the surface. It’s their way of falling.” His old friend Ted Sturgeon said always ask the next question.
And the next question here was who shot Bobby? And why?
The same people who’d fostered in me such skepticism for received wisdom, for what we all know, steadfastly mistrusted the government. Talk of CIA assassinations, the coup in Chile, illegal wiretaps and entrapment flowed about me the way other children grew up hearing about the latest TV shows, hometown football team, or summer vacation. I didn’t hesitate to question whether Bobby’s own agency and bureaucracy might have acted against him.
“You think much about government conspiracies?” I asked my benchmate, provoking two quick volleys of laughter that turned heads toward us.
“You’re seriously asking this of someone who chooses to live in Willnot? Government is conspiracy. We all know that.”
It wasn’t what he said so much as it was the pressure behind it. My old friend, staid, lightly comedic Gordie with his tailored suits and country-club membership up at the capital, had been flying under false colors all these years?
He laughed again. “When I was twelve, a friend of my father who was a movie nut proudly brought over a print of Invaders from Mars and a projector to show it, real old-school. The boy in that movie saw something no one else did. That Others were here,
“Good pie, huh?”
“Always.” He was using a spoon.
“You brought in a gunshot a while back.”
“The soldier? Uh-huh.”
“How did you know that?”
“Heard talking.”
“The ER crew?”
“Uh-huh.” Another bite of pie went away.
“Was he conscious?”
“By the numbers he was. But he just looked at me. Like …”
I waited.
“Like he was flat. Somebody let the air out?”
“What did the soldier have with him?”
Andrew’s quirks kicked in. “Shirt, dark blue, size sixteen—we cut that off. Khaki pants, almost new, thirty-six waist, thirty-two length. New Balance walking shoes, elevens, maroon and gray. Cream-colored baseball cap, no writing.”
“Was there anything else? A backpack? A weapon?”
“He had a wallet with an Oregon driver’s license, a Visa card expiring in July, sixty-seven dollars. Fifty-eight cents in change in his left pocket. No belt.”
“And did he say anything? Try to?”
“Only at first, when he first looked up at me. Sounded like ‘Billygoat, that you?’”
“‘Billygoat, that you?’”
“Like that. Twice.”
11
Next morning we watched the parade as Sebastian Daiche’s pit team pulled out, vehicles shedding gravel and dirt as they trooped down Maple Street toward the interstate. Felt like when you’re a kid standing at the edge of town seeing the carnival leave. Bye-bye, mystery and magic. Hello, ordinary life.
Not that it was.
Gordie and I were sitting on one of the benches out front, drinking bad coffee as people came and went through the hospital’s front entrance.
Strange how you can work alongside someone for years, have him as a friend, then one day suddenly understand—not simply know, but understand—that his beliefs are so unlike what you thought. That he lives in quite a different world from the one you had him in.
Strange too how we’d failed to get the press attention we expected. Two skeleton news crews had straggled in, but for the most part interest in Willnot’s “shocking find” had been eclipsed first by the latest Washington scandal, then by eruption of new civil wars in another small part of this large, unwieldy world.
My chief back during residency, Teddy Wu, kept telling us that life is just a long recovery before the fatal illness strikes. Bobby Lowndes lay inside in ICU recovering—from what, besides a bullet wound? I’d been brought up around people with a profound mistrust of received wisdom, appearance, surfaces. My father used to quote André Gide: “Fish die belly upward and rise to the surface. It’s their way of falling.” His old friend Ted Sturgeon said always ask the next question.
And the next question here was who shot Bobby? And why?
The same people who’d fostered in me such skepticism for received wisdom, for what we all know, steadfastly mistrusted the government. Talk of CIA assassinations, the coup in Chile, illegal wiretaps and entrapment flowed about me the way other children grew up hearing about the latest TV shows, hometown football team, or summer vacation. I didn’t hesitate to question whether Bobby’s own agency and bureaucracy might have acted against him.
“You think much about government conspiracies?” I asked my benchmate, provoking two quick volleys of laughter that turned heads toward us.
“You’re seriously asking this of someone who chooses to live in Willnot? Government is conspiracy. We all know that.”
It wasn’t what he said so much as it was the pressure behind it. My old friend, staid, lightly comedic Gordie with his tailored suits and country-club membership up at the capital, had been flying under false colors all these years?
He laughed again. “When I was twelve, a friend of my father who was a movie nut proudly brought over a print of Invaders from Mars and a projector to show it, real old-school. The boy in that movie saw something no one else did. That Others were here,
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