A Thousand Steps

38

Barreling downhill down Bluebird on his bike, Matt almost gets airborne. He’s shirtless — as usual in summer — and the empty, sweat-drenched carrier vest billows and provides lift. And cools him like a radiator. Air-cooled, he thinks. Like the Westfalia but faster. He fishtails the Heavy-Duti north onto Coast Highway.

A moment later he kickstands the bike up in front of Mystic Arts World, runs his hands through his sweaty, really-getting-long hair, and walks in.

Busy. Neither Christian nor Johnny are there, but Hamsa Luke is, and he whispers to Matt that Johnny left something in the office for him. Matt feels the long shadow of Judas in his heart.

Luke raises his fist and the Hamsa eye studies Matt. The good eye that protects you from the evil eye.

“You look like something that just crawled onto dry land for the first time,” Luke says. “Like that newspaper bag is the obsolete gills that your lungs have evolved from.”

“No wonder I’m so hungry.”

“Top drawer of the office desk,” he says quietly. “Johnny said to go right in.”

Matt reads the note from Grail:

Matt puts it in his wallet and sits back down in Johnny’s swiveling wheeled chair.

His heart speeds.

What he is about to do here — or not do — is more complicated than thou shalt not steal. It’s not only about theft, it’s also about betrayal, and about preserving himself and his sister and his mom. It’s about contradictions and irreconcilable differences. He looks to the bookshelf, where the Holy Bible defends the button to the Bat Cave.

And he asks God, what do I do?

Waits. Waits more.

Tells himself there’s plenty of time but he knows there isn’t.

Then he’s standing at the book shelf, the Holy Bible in his hand, peering through the shadows to the steel button within. He listens intently for Hamsa Luke.

Consult God himself, he thinks. Ask your question directly.

Again he asks what to do, then opens the Holy Bible to a random chapter.

Ezekiel:

“Son of man, when a land sins against me by acting faithlessly, and I stretch out my hand against it, and break its staff of bread and send famine upon it and cut off from it man and beast, even if these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness, says the Lord God.”

Not exactly sure if that applies, Matt thinks.

Kings:

“Now King Solomon loved many foreign women: the daughter of Pharaoh, and Moabite, Ammonite, E’domite, Sidonian and Hittite women...”

Matt doesn’t think this is his answer either.

John:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way that man is a thief and a robber...”

According to John I’m fucked, Matt thinks.

Philippians 2:

“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”

But that’s a maybe.

He closes the book and presses the button. Bows his head while listening for Hamsa Luke, while waiting for God to just plain answer.

Waits.

Steps into the Bat Cave, hits the lights, sets the Holy Bible back in its place.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead volumes are shelved together and easy to see. The embossed gold letters glimmer even behind the plastic wrap. He’d forgotten how heavy it is. He drops it into the depths of his newspaper bag, rearranges the books on the shelf to close the gap. Then bags a box of the Languedoc Toffees from France.

In a blink he’s back in the store, which is even busier than a few minutes ago. Luke is ringing up a handsome ceramic-and-bamboo Nichols hookah and five ten-packs of incense for an astonishing $39.

“Everything groovy, Matt?”

“Yeah, it’s cool.”

Customers are already heading into the meditation room for tonight’s introductory meditation sessions guided by Vortex of Purity Enlightener Don Stanwood.

“Busy for a weekday,” says Matt.

“Yeah, and still early.”

A few blocks down at the Post Office, Matt uses the key supplied by Furlong to open the commercial-sized P.O. bin into which The Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Languedoc Toffees easily fit. He removes a handful of junk mail advertisements — an alibi supplied by Furlong — in case Matt runs into anybody he knows.

Next, he stops off at the GTE building on Third to use the pay phones. Sungaard gives him a time and place for tomorrow morning, right here in Laguna, be up at the water tower in Bluebird Canyon, nine o’clock. Sungaard wants Matt to talk to some friends about the Hessians. Take just a few minutes, says Sungaard, an edge to his voice.

By seven Matt has pedaled to the Dodge City packing house with the idea of buying a jar of Laguna Sunshine stewed tomatoes. Nobody around. Matt sets two cans into each side of the paper carrier, tucks some money under a canning jar wrench, then walks his bike to his mom’s little red barn on Roosevelt Lane.

He unslings his now heavier paper carrier and locks it in the Westfalia. It’s getting near sunset and there’s a rosy glow over Dodge City, and a fragrant scent of burning marijuana and canyon scrub. Random cars and trucks up and down Roosevelt, as usual. It’s hot and stuffy inside so he leaves the door open.

Water is running in his mom’s room.

In the middle of the cable-spool table stands a liquor bottle. Even from this distance Matt recognizes it as Bruce Anthony’s brand of whiskey, Colonel Givens. Beside it are two white take-out bags from Husky Boy.

A big suitcase stands behind one of the chairs. There are two smaller carrying cases beside it. Matt recognizes them.

The water has stopped running, and Bruce Anthony walks in from Julie’s room.