When Letty got off the phone, something in her spine relaxed. Lucas was on the way up: that was a good thing. A Juggalo went by, looking for volunteers: “We’re putting up the fire and we need somebody to help. Could you help?”
She was doing nothing else, so she went to help. The Juggalos were building a fire stack out of cardboard boxes stuffed with stove-length pine logs. From the fire site, Letty could keep an eye on the travelers, and Skye’s backpack.
? ? ?
LUCAS WAS BOTH furious and frightened. Letty thought she was tougher than she actually was, and she didn’t know enough about crazy. He changed clothes, got his gun, climbed into the Porsche and took off. He drove the route so many times during the year that he could almost do it with his eyes closed. He stopped once to pee and stuff the footwell cooler with Diet Cokes, and flew on into the evening.
? ? ?
SKYE GOT BACK to the campground just after dark, looked for Letty, didn’t see her in the milling mass of bodies. When she’d left that morning, there might have been dozens of people. Now there were hundreds, and at the far end of the field, a moderately good rap group was performing, the music pounding over the heads of the crowd. The organizers had strung long lines of Christmas lights down the length of the field, on both sides. A dozen campfires were going on the edges of the field, and the smell of roasting meat mixed with the odor of marijuana.
Lucy was lying on her sleeping bag, staring at the stars. Skye crouched next to her and asked, “That chick show up? Letty?”
“Who? Oh . . . yeah. Just for a minute.”
At that moment, Letty walked up: “Skye.”
And Skye looked up and said, “Ah, shit.”
Letty: “What are you doing? Are you looking for Pilate? And if you find him, then what?”
“I’ll figure that out when I find him,” Skye said. She didn’t look toward Pilate’s encampment. She squared off with Letty, and added, “Letty, I owe you, I appreciate the help, but you’re not my mom.”
“I know I’m not your mom, but if you try to go up against Pilate and those guys who had you . . . I mean, Skye, that’s crazy,” Letty said. “You can’t do that. You’ll get hurt. My dad’s coming up here. If you can spot Pilate, he’ll bring in the cops—”
“Yeah, yeah, and then what’ll happen? There’ll be some kind of bullshit legal stuff and Pilate will blame everybody else and he’ll walk. You watch, you’ll see. He’s the devil.”
“He’s just an asshole,” Letty began. “My dad’s handled a lot worse than him.”
“There is no worse than him,” Skye said. “That’s what nobody gets.”
She turned and looked out at the growing crowd and then asked, “You bring your car? Could you lock up my pack?”
“Yeah, sure. I’m just down the field.”
Skye picked up her pack, said, “Thanks,” to Lucy, and to Letty, “Let’s go. This stuff is too good to get ripped off.”
They dropped the pack at the car and Letty asked, “So you’ll wait for Dad?”
Skye shrugged. “Might as well. What are they doing over there? Building a teepee?”
“Fire stack. They’re going to torch it off at midnight,” Letty said.
“Jeez, you’ll be able to see that from outer space,” Skye said.
“Not done yet. Once they get it built up to the point, they start another ring of boxes and build that up. They got a lot of boxes left. I was over helping to build it.”
“Then let’s go help . . . at least until your dad gets here.”
? ? ?
THEY WORKED STACKING fire boxes for ten minutes, then Letty turned away, caught up in the construction, and when she turned back, Skye was gone. She looked around, like a mother for a lost child, then stepped outside the ring of workers, still didn’t see her. Stepped farther outside and looked down the field, and caught a flash of Skye’s face, forty yards away, looking back at her. Their eyes touched, then Skye juked and disappeared into the crowd.
“Goddamnit.” Letty jogged after her. When she got to where Skye had been, she couldn’t see her. She wandered through the crowd, turning, but the lights, the painted faces, were like something out of a nightmare. The Juggalos were dancing to the rap music now, long chains of them . . .
? ? ?
THE DISCIPLES HAD BUILT a fire in the middle of their camp circle. They were all sitting around or lying around, talking, smoking, but nobody was singing “Kumbaya.” Most of them were wearing clown faces, including Pilate: Laine had painted a half dozen faces on him, wiping them away and redoing the work, until he was satisfied. The white paint was fluorescent, and she’d outlined his face with it, and put a dab on the tip of his nose. He was wearing a Catholic priest’s black clerical suit, including the white collar, which, he thought, made a proper Juggalo statement.
Raleigh, Bell, and Chet were also in costume, and were moving the last of the cocaine. They’d already figured out that there wasn’t much around, and they stepped on it again with dry baby formula, and still got premium prices. They wouldn’t get rich, but they’d have enough cash to get back to L.A.
? ? ?
SKYE SAW A PRIEST with a clown face, but didn’t recognize him as Pilate because of the costume and face paint. She stood in a clump of trees behind the circle of cars, in the dark, waiting for him, handling the knife, calm, quiet as a hunting cat. Thinking about Henry. About Henry’s baby face, and how he’d always go off somewhere to pee, so Skye couldn’t see him, even though they’d been together for months.
At eight, a decent rap band broke out on the stage, and the crowd got tighter; several people in Pilate’s campground moved out toward the stage, and the new band set off a series of powerful strobes that flashed red, white, and blue at the crowd.
From her stand in the clump of trees, Skye saw the clown-face priest amble off toward the bonfire structure. She fumbled a joint out of her breast pocket, lit it, and with most of the disciples gone, she went looking for Pilate, moving into the circle where three remaining disciples were sprawled on blankets.
She said, “Dudes.”