Gods Without Men

2008

Every moment is a bardo, suspended between past and future. We are always in transition, slipping from one state to the next. She’d had doubts over the years, wondering if this was where she really was, if this person Dawn even existed, or was just a momentary confluence of forces, a ripple on the pond. She’d pause as she made a bed or wrapped a scuffed water glass in a paper sleeve, sure there was something she’d forgotten, braced to find herself back in the dome on the night of the last ritual, falling away from the clear white light.

She shouldn’t have taken that New York woman up to see Judy, except the woman was so drunk and in such trouble already that it seemed like the best option. Judy had to help lay her out on a daybed, while Dawn told her what had happened, how some bastards off the base had gotten her out back of Mulligan’s and were fixing to run a train on her.

“And she’s got a husband, you say?”

“God knows what he’s doing, letting her go drink on her own in that place. Even with him it might not be so good, not in Mulligan’s. He’s from Pakistan, wears boat shoes. They got this retard kid.”

“As in touched? You think he’s got vision?”

“Hell, Judy. He’s a retard. He ain’t got no more vision than a dog. Look at the state of her. Sand all over her clothes.”

The woman — Lisa — babbled a little before she passed out. Take it away, she muttered. This isn’t what I ordered. Judy rolled her eyes, said You and me both, lady, and then got down to why it was so urgent for Dawn to drop everything and drive out. She needed a favor.

“It’s not for me.”

“Jesus, Judy. I already brought you more pain pills. And the chocolate milk you asked for.”

“That’s it. The chocolate milk.”

At least it wasn’t money. And this time Judy could remember making the call, which was something. She said her man was roaming around. He’d called her to say he needed chocolate milk and she was tweaking so hard she couldn’t handle getting behind the wheel.

“You got to drive me, Dawnie.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m serious. It’s important.”

“Fuck his chocolate milk.”

“He needs it.”

“He called you to say he wanted chocolate milk? You sure he actually called you.”

“Swear to God. He’ll get so mad if I don’t bring it. He likes to put it on Cheerios.”

“And he’s out in the desert.”

“He’s cooking.”

“Is that it? You ain’t got none left?”

“He needs chocolate milk, is all. I wouldn’t call you if it wasn’t a matter of life and death.”

And like she always did — out of pity, or the old suspicion that this world was a distraction and it didn’t matter either way — Dawn gave in. They left New York Lisa passed out on the daybed covered in a sheepskin and got back in the car. Most of the journey was off-road, Dawn’s old Nissan rattling across the dirt, bushes looming up in front of the headlights like ghosts.

A straight line across nothing.

As Dawn drove, she stole glances at Judy, squirming in the passenger seat, picking at some scab on her hand. The two of them, after so many years, still driving on into the dark.

She’d turned up — when? Sometime in the early nineties. The motel was doing OK and Dawn thought she’d put to rest the suspicion that she was dead — and then along came Judy to show her she couldn’t be certain of any such thing. They’d pulled up outside the motel in a Corvette Sting Ray sprayed several shades of primer, a patchwork of black and red oxide and gray. Somehow Dawn knew who it was before she knew. The driver stayed in the car. The woman got out and walked round to the office. She opened the door and the electric bell played its little tune.

Judy’s face was lined, and she didn’t look crisp or perky anymore. She looked, truth be told, like Maa Joanie: a middle-aged woman in denims and a white shirt (still that white shirt!) with graying hair and the thin lips of a person who’d had to say no too many times in her life. They stared at each other over the counter, old and tired and eaten up by trouble and abuse, and it was like a faded version of the first time, a photocopy of a photocopy, redone so many times that what had once been clear and hopeful was now just a smudge.

Do not cling to life. Even if you cling, it’s not in your power to stay. And do not fear, though the visions may be terrifying. Try to recognize the clear light of reality. Concentrate.

“Judy.”

“Hello, Dawnie. Looks like you made this place real nice.”

They embraced awkwardly. Judy felt thin and brittle in her arms, her spine a ridge, her shoulder blades two attenuated wings. The Corvette’s engine penetrated the thin office walls, a low sinister rumble that set the bug screens buzzing. Dawn peered through the window. She couldn’t see at first who was in the driver’s seat. Then he got out to smoke a cigarette. His long jaw. The sour scavenging expression. She would have known him anywhere.

“You with him?”

“That’s right. He came and found me.”

As they watched, Coyote stalked around the car, scratching himself. He finished his cigarette, ground it into the dirt with his boot, then got back in and pulled away. The tires kicked up gravel against the metal siding.

“He dumping you here?”

Judy’s laugh didn’t sound too lighthearted. “He’ll be back later. I heard you were living in town again. I wanted to say hi.”

“Are you back for good or just passing through?”

“We’ll be here a while, I reckon. We got ourselves a double-wide in that lot on Three Mile Road. It’s just for now. We’ll find something better by and by.”

“Not out at the rocks?”

“They made that part of the National Monument, so I heard.”

“With a trail and signposts and everything. They even put a barrier round the Indian marks. You want a drink? There’s soda, and a bottle of schnapps in the kitchen.”

“Schnapps sounds just fine.”

They sat on folding chairs under the carport and drank and watched the road. Judy didn’t say much about where she’d been for so many years and Dawn didn’t ask. It was the kind of conversation where more gets said in the silences than in the words. Coyote had spent some years south of the border. Belize. The Yucatán. Places with old gods. He and Judy had lived for a time in New Mexico, up in the mountains where you could walk for days without seeing another soul. They’d been in cities too. Judy skated over her dark times and Dawn skated over hers. Instead she asked about the others. After the split, they’d been scattered to the winds. Judy had news, but not a lot. Maa Joanie was dead of cancer. Clark Davis had passed too, shot to death in a twenty-four-hour diner in Reno. And Wolf? Judy shrugged when Dawn mentioned his name. He went west, she said. Dawn knew what that meant. It was the last anyone in this world would ever hear of him.

Turned out Coyote was into some shit. A month or two later, the trailer on Three Mile burned down and for a while he and Judy were living in their car out in back of the Taco Bell. After the fire he lay low for a while, but soon enough he was up and running again, driving an ancient RV out into the desert, brewing up his poison. In between times he propped up the bar in Mulligan’s, spending money, holes in his clothes, the stink of ether on his fur. Dawn had been around enough tweakers to know what that meant.

Overnight it seemed like his meth was everywhere. You saw tweakers all over town. Caved-in faces and rotten teeth. Starting fights in the diner, riffling through the dumpster behind the Circle K. They’d steal anything. Scrap metal, patio furniture. Once Dawn spotted a guy pedaling furiously down Main Street with a gravestone balanced on the handlebars of his bike. After someone swiped the pool robot and half the chairs, Dawn got a.45 at the pawnshop, kept it in a desk drawer in the office. No dinky little woman’s gun for her. Anyone came round she intended to put a hole in them, stop them from doing whatever they were doing.

Mostly the tourists never noticed, which was lucky for business. They just drove out to the park, took pictures of themselves at the designated viewpoints, drove home again. Soon Coyote’s crystal was running all over the desert, into every trailer and jackrabbit homestead, turning the people into hungry ghosts: mouths the size of a needle’s eye, stomachs like mountains; nothing could ever fill them up. Meth soaked its way along highways and train tracks, through drains and power lines and TV cables, into the very fabric of the houses where the tweakers lived. Meth in the air vents, in the furniture, caking the walls of the microwaves where they cooked their children’s food.

Judy was using. She’d stay up nights, riding the shoulder of her high, smoking cigarettes and talking on the phone, or sometimes just talking, without anyone to hear. She and Coyote moved into a weird old house some way out of town. It was all made of wood, beautifully finished, but though Dawn could see it was a nice place, she didn’t like it. With its dome roof and hippie angles, it reminded her of the Command. Sometimes she’d end up driving out there on a small-hours mercy mission, with oxy or booze or bandages to patch Judy up after a cut or a fall. Often she just needed someone to listen to her. She’d reminisce about men she’d known, places she’d been, how she wished she’d had a kid. She’d talk about Clark like he was still around — in the room even. Then she’d get paranoid, accusing Dawn of telling lies about her, bringing the cops round. Coyote kept a lot of guns in the place, automatic weapons for use in case the black helicopters landed and he needed to make a stand. Dawn was always nervous about Judy out there on her own, surrounded by all those guns. Once or twice she tried to talk to her about death, about how she was afraid they were both still caught up in an old lie, compelled to wander because they couldn’t recognize the inner light of reality.

“Evil past actions are very potent, Judy. The cycle of ignorance is inexhaustible.”

“Don’t come on to me with all that mystical shit. I had it with prophecy.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Sure is. You just can’t see it yet.”

Coyote avoided her. He was as slippery as ever. She caught up with him one night in Mulligan’s and told him flat-out he was killing Judy with his filthy chemicals. Not just her. Everyone. He was poisoning everybody. Why was he causing so much harm?

He just laughed. “What you care?” he asked. “You ain’t even sure any of it’s real.”

He knew how to get her. She turned and left, his howl of triumph in her ears.

Somehow Judy struggled on. She didn’t die. She took up hobbies. Basketry. Needlepoint. Quilting. All the varieties of warp and weft. After a few years the meth craze passed its peak, headed on to other towns. Coyote diversified. He was moving money through L.A. and Vegas. He had something going with computers, claimed he could tap into the New York Stock Exchange and tinker with all the ups and downs. That was bullshit, had to be. He was small-time. If he was such a big shot, how come he was out in some no-account place in the desert? He had friends on a reservation down near Yuma who were making big bucks from gambling. He started driving down to see them once or twice a month, coming back with whole crates of gadgetry, things he said arrived through air-conditioned tunnels from across the border. It was hard to say what he was doing and Dawn doubted he knew himself. He said he was part of the communications revolution. There were boxes of calling cards in the house. Cell phones, police-radar detectors. It was a compulsion, an addiction. Coyote never saw a fence he didn’t want to tunnel under. He had to mess with stuff, connect things together. He had a rage for transformation.

And so it went on. They all grew older. Things changed, sometimes quickly, sometimes so slow you didn’t even notice it happening.

Up ahead, Dawn could see a light.

Coyote’s battered old RV was parked at the edge of a dry lake. A couple of lamps were running off a generator, illuminating a patch of ground by the door. He reclined on a folding chair, a gas mask slung round his neck, drinking Jack and Coke mixed in a plastic bottle. When they drove up he pulled out a couple more chairs and they gave him the chocolate milk and then sat and smoked a joint, each thinking their own thoughts.

So, Judy said, when she couldn’t contain herself any longer. You got any for me to try?

Just before sunrise, Dawn drove Lisa back to her car and watched her fumble with the keys. In convoy they drove slowly up the hill to the motel. She hoped that would be the end of it, but when the boy disappeared, she knew she was probably responsible. Not in any way you could explain to a cop or a reporter. She hadn’t done anything wrong. But by taking Lisa out there, she’d got her family involved. They were mixed up with Coyote, mixed up in the paths and flows. Whatever was happening, Dawn didn’t want any part of it. It wasn’t her concern. She knew now — knew for sure — that she was still in the dome, descending through the realms of existence, heading toward the horror. All was not lost. At the edge of consciousness, she was beginning once again to catch the drone, the high white sound of reality.