Read Page 146

“Wait with me,” Balder asks again.

We keep our vigil through the night, checking on the truck when we can. Sometimes, Balder mumble-sings a few words in Norse. He grabs at the air for something we can’t see, something just out of reach. “The dark does not weep,” he whispers. Toward dawn, he gets so quiet I’m afraid. Early-morning surfers take to the waves. Seagulls circle us.Advertisement

“I like … that sound,” Balder says, his words pushing out on shallow gasps.

At first I think he means Gonzo’s sniffling. “What sound, Balder?”

“The gulls. Cry. And the waves. Answer. They wash … over the shore. Say, it is all …” His eyes move back and forth in his head like he’s searching for the word, the thought. He looks at me as if he’s said it. “Right?”

I listen, but the only thing I can hear are those damn birds wailing. One starts and the rest follow. They’re all crying at once. It’s a terrible sound.

“Balder …,” I say.

His mouth is still open in that weird little smile. His eyes are fixed and staring. The gulls fly off, leaving nothing but the soothing whoosh of the tide rushing up, washing back out, again and again. All. Right. All. Right. All. Right.

It takes us a while to get everything we need. Scavenging along the beach, we find a surfboard, a cardboard Taco Shack tray, an abandoned T-shirt, seashells, and handfuls of seaweed and small sticks. We duct-tape the cardboard tray to the surfboard and rig the Caddy’s bull horns to the front. We load the tray with his Sammy the Surfer outfit and all my Great Tremolo CDs. When it’s ready, we place Balder’s lifeless body gently on top of the tray, in his chain mail and helmet, just like a Viking warrior on his way to Valhalla. Last, we add a hand-lettered sign: RINGHORN.

“What do you think?” I ask Gonzo.

“Good.” His eyes are red. He takes a puff off his inhaler and puts it in Balder’s hands. “The air might be crap there.”

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He hands me a disposable blue lighter we found half-buried by the Taco Shack. I put it to the dry seaweed, which starts to smoke immediately. The flames eat through the cardboard pretty fast. In seconds, they surround Balder in a hot orange halo. I lift my foot, Gonzo gives the surfboard a final push, and the sea does the rest. The water’s pretty choppy. It buffets our makeshift pyre back and forth, and finally over, till the only thing left on the peach-pink horizon are those crazy bull horns.

And then, even those are gone.

An hour later, the United Snow Globe Wholesalers truck, license plate number USGW 3111, pulls out of the hotel parking lot. One minute after that, we follow.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

In Which the Coyote and the Roadrunner Go Again

“You still see him?”

“Yeah. He’s four cars up,” Gonzo answers. “Dude, shouldn’t we be going after Dr. X and your cure?”

“Not going,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going after Dulcie.”

“Cameron, this is crazy.”

“Just keep an eye on that truck.”

For the next hour, we drive in silence. No talk. No music. Nothing but the white noise of asphalt under tires. The road sways in the afternoon sun. Little waves of clear heat spiral dance in front of me, bathing everything in shimmery motion. I keep glancing in the rearview mirror, expecting to see Balder in the backseat, and the emptiness of it presses down on me, along with the last sight I had of Dulcie. The signs are starting to blur into big globs of reflective green and white that hurt my eyes. Sometimes on the sides of the roads I see things that aren’t there: Mom and Dad holding each other. Balder running through the grass toward a glimmering hall. Glory switching out the bag on an IV pole. The old lady with her garden shears; she waves to me. The coyote. The road-runner. The Copenhagen Interpretation playing Hacky Sack with the Calabi Yau. Just a bunch of travelers on the same road. But I don’t see Dulcie, no matter how hard I try to make her appear.

The Caddy veers over the yellow line, nearly hitting a big truck, whose horn blast has me swerving back into our lane with a jerk.

“Holy shit,” Gonzo says, putting his hands on the dash.

“Sorry,” I say. I pull the car over to the shoulder and rest my head on the steering wheel. I’m clammy, and my muscles ache.

“You okay?” Gonzo asks.

“Yeah,” I lie.

USGW 3111 turns on his blinker and hits the exit, stopping at a Freedom Waffles. There’s a salvage yard on a dusty yellow road to the right of the diner. I park beside the chain-link fence and the mile-high towers of tires and cut the engine. pqdm.com