In such circumstances, not reliably but occasionally, Radley Dubose experiences a welling up of down-home neighborliness and backwoods charm, which most of the time exists in him only to the extent that water exists in a stone. He is then capable of spending an hour to help a lost three-legged dog cross a busy street, take it to the address on its collar, and chat with the grateful owner.
With the phone to one ear, muttering solemn one-and two-word responses to whatever the caller is telling him, Dubose fortunately is not in a she-reminds-me-of-my-granny mood. He increases speed as they approach the disabled pickup, although as they flash past the old woman, he toots the horn twice as if to say that he’s rooting for her not to end up as a vulture’s dinner.
When the big man terminates the call and returns the smartphone to his crotch, his eyes remain unreadable behind the lenses of his sunglasses, but otherwise his expression is somber. “Here it is party time, and someone pissed in the punch bowl.”
Jergen supposes that must be a Princeton expression. “Give me a translation.”
“We got a really bad crocodile incident over at the Corrigan place.”
“Crocodiles are tropical, not desert reptiles,” Jergen says.
“It’s not that kind of crocodile. It’s the kind Bertold Shenneck worried about.”
Shenneck was the scientist who’d developed the nanomachine brain implants. With the assistance of several financial backers of his research, he also evolved the strategy and tactics for imposing the Arcadian utopia on a troubled, disordered world.
Dubose says, “You’ll see soon enough, when we get to Rooney Corrigan’s place.”
“Who’s he?” Jergen asks.
“Third-generation Borrego Valley. Knows a lot of people around here, who’s who, what’s what. He’s ideal for the search party.”
“Sandsucker high society.”
“He, his wife, two sons—all were brain-screwed last night.”
“The approved term is adjusted. They were adjusted last night, and they’re now adjusted people.”
Dubose makes a dismissive sound between a sigh and a snort. “I say potato, you say po-tah-to.”
2
CORNELL WOKE EARLY. On the ipod, Mr. Paul Simon was softly singing an ultra infectious song: “Some people say a lie’s a lie’s a lie, but I say why, why deny the obvious child, why deny the obvious child.…”
When Cornell had awakened hours earlier, he’d been scared and needed music. The iPod was programmed with different playlists of Mr. Paul Simon’s songs that he found suitable for the dead of night.
The boy was still snoozing on the other big sofa. Both dogs were curled up there with him, and right now they didn’t look like they had ever bitten anyone or ever would.
Cornell went into the bathroom, where he stopped just inside the door, abruptly in the grip of dread, though he didn’t know why. Oh, yes. The toothbrush. But the toothbrush wasn’t here now, and the boy hadn’t meant to terrorize him. It wouldn’t happen again.
Cornell brushed his teeth without fear, showered, dressed for the day, and returned to the sofas. The boy still slept, but the dogs were alert.
Mr. Paul Simon was singing: “Losing love is like a window in your heart, everybody sees you’re blown apart.…”
The German shepherds got off the sofa without disturbing the boy. They were very considerate dogs.
Cornell fed them kibble and took them out to toilet.
While he stood waiting, he heard an airplane. It was louder than usual for air traffic in this remote valley. He searched the sky. When he found the plane, it was passing over at less than two thousand feet, heading south.
The dogs peed first but then they wandered around, sniffing the ground, sniffing the weeds, and took their time deciding whether and where to poop.
Just as the dogs finished their business, the sound of the airplane, which had faded, grew louder once more.
Duke and Queenie scampered over toward the little blue house, not running away, just playing with each other.
Cornell watched the sky, and this time the plane appeared on a northward course. He was pretty sure this was the same aircraft and that it was a twin-engine model, not a light single-engine Piper or the like that came and went from the Anza Air Park.
After all these years of living with himself, Cornell Jasperson still didn’t know why he was the way he was. He probably never would understand himself, because each time he seemed on an even keel, his day shaped by routines and rituals that kept him nicely balanced and content, something that never disturbed him before suddenly caused him great anxiety. Like a toothbrush. Or this airplane.
Previously, the sounds made by airplanes—or by trucks, cars, motorcycles, machinery—had not once concerned him. But for some reason, this plane … this plane now threw off a sound that he felt as well as heard, that crawled on his skin like thousands of ants, spiraled up his nostrils, squirmed in his ears, prickled across his eyes on tens of thousands of invisible-ant legs.
For years, Cornell had worn dreadlocks. Just ten days earlier, he’d learned that Mr. Bob Marley, the reggae star, had been dead for decades. So then he began waking up at night and thinking about Mr. Bob Marley in a coffin. He felt as if he was wearing a dead man’s hair. Although he never liked reggae, Cornell became so disturbed that he shaved his head as smooth as a misshapen egg.
The dreadlocks incident was a minor disturbance compared to his reaction to the airplane. The noise again slowly faded, this time as the craft flew north, but its effect on Cornell didn’t diminish with its volume. Invisible ants were crawling over him and all through his insides, even through the chambers of his heart. The sound was touching him, touching him in the invasive, demanding way that people touched him, and he knew the airplane was going to drain his mind and soul from him, so that he would not be anybody anymore, just a thing without memories and purpose.
He shouted at the dogs, calling them to him. He turned from them and hunched his dinosaur shoulder blades and ducked his head and ran in his shambling fashion toward the barn that was a secret library, surprised at how far he had moved away from it.
The electronic key in a pocket of his jeans signaled the lock to disengage. He stumbled into the vestibule.
The dogs exploded into it behind him, excited by his anxiety, or maybe thinking he wanted to play, panting and whining with what sounded like delight, tongues lolling, claws clicking on the floor, spanking each other with their tails, dancing around in the small space, thumping against the walls. The door fell shut behind them.
From this side, the inner door of the vestibule would open only to Cornell’s touch. In his fright, he reached for the lever-style handle and thought of the boy inside and stayed his hand and stood trembling, confused, torn between an urgent need for the refuge of the library and a desire not to alarm the child.
A crawly feeling head to foot, blood flukes swimming through his veins and arteries and nibbling at his heart from within its auricles and ventricles, spiders swarming across the walls of his stomach, centipedes squirming into his bones to lay eggs in his marrow: Pestilence in great variety infested him, consuming his soul and mind in millions of microscopic bites.…
The airplane had passed to the north, and although a little of the engine noise might still be scratching at the morning beyond the outer door, none penetrated to the vestibule. However, the absence of the offending sound didn’t at once relieve his reaction to it. Sometimes, after such an episode, he was distraught for hours, needed to lie down in the quiet dark to imagine that he floated in a cooling pool of water.