The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

Tan

ON TINH TAN SITS in the waiting room. She avoids looking directly at the other patients. The Americans. She can see them partially reflected in the mirror that is the back pane of the fish tank. She can look past the underwater flash of lionfish, saltwater angels, yellow tangs, rock beauties, sea robins, past a ceramic replica of the Golden Gate Bridge, to watch the Americans, sitting and waiting.

There is music playing around Tan, music so quiet and without edge that sometimes it is like she is humming it to herself, though none of the songs are familiar. A single receptionist shuffles file cards at a desk. The window behind her overlooks the Golden Gate Park. The receptionist has large, blue eyes, made rounder and bluer with liner and shadow, made larger still by the tinted aviator glasses she wears. Tan wonders if the receptionist could ever keep a secret, could ever hide a fear behind such open, blue eyes.

Tan can see a small boy reflected from the fish tank, half obscured by a drowsy grouper, a small boy with a harness strapped around his head, cinching into his mouth. When he turns to talk with his mother his lips stretch far back over his gums and he looks like a small muzzled animal. He seems not to notice or care.

In 1963 Tan was thirteen and in the mornings would bicycle with her two younger brothers along the walls of Hue to the nuns' school. Her little sister Xuan went to grammar school closer to home, inside of the Citadel, and her older brother Quat crossed the river to go to high school. The nuns taught Tan poetry in Vietnamese, prayers in French, mathematics and history in English. She was a good student, which pleased Father very much. Your father expects you to do well in school, he would tell them at dinner. Only the educated person can save himself. Father never said what the person was saving himself from. Tan believed it was the lake of fire the nuns warned about, and she worked very hard.

Each night they faced the family altar to think about their ancestors, beginning with Mother. Then they'd say French prayers. All of Tan's ancestors, back as far as Father knew, had lived in Hue. But none lived and worked in the Citadel like Father did. Father had grown up with the Ngo family, had been a high-school friend of Ngo Dinh Diem. When Diem received the Mandate of Heaven he remembered his friend, and Father was given an important job in the city government. In Tan's house Diem was always spoken of in the same tones as the ancestors. They called him the Virgin Father and he was included in Tan's nightly prayers.

Tan liked mornings best, when she could take her time riding to school, surrounded by the high walls and the moats, the tiled roofs and gardens. She could look over the walls to see the mist rising off the Perfume River, could stop and rest by the Emperor's Gate and watch the city waking up. -Hue was a walled garden.

The ride home was too hurried to enjoy. Tan was the eldest daughter, responsible for dinner and cleaning. It never bothered her. If she waited around school too long the boys' section would let out and they would tease her. Monkey. Tan had an extra pair of canine teeth that pushed her upper lip out and made her nose look fatter. Face like a monkey! the boys would cry and bicycle circles around her. Monkey- monkeymonkey.

But sometimes Tan would sit with the picture of Mother they kept on the altar and see the same teeth, the same lips and nose. It was her connection with Mother. It was her face.

Quat mostly stayed out with his friends from the high school. He came home just before dinner, tried not to get in an argument with Father, and then went out again. Father was a quiet and gentle man but Quat always managed to make him angry. Quat did well in school but didn't like the priests. Quat would speak against the priests or the government at dinner and Father would remind him where he was. They would begin to shout and Xuan would cry and then they would stop speaking to each other. Your father has work to do, Father would say to them, and move to his desk facing the far wall. Your brother is going out, Quat would say to them, and he would leave, grabbing a few last bites of food.

When they were younger Quat would sit with Tan in the walled garden behind the house and tell her stories. He told of the wars with the Chinese, and the one Tan liked best was about the Trung sisters who rose up to fight the invaders on elephant-back. She felt very safe and very peaceful, sitting inside the garden behind their house in the Citadel of the walled city of Hue. The stories Quat told were often bloody and terrible, but the Chinese had been defeated long ago.

Father arranged to have Tan's teeth taken care of. Their own dentist had said there was nothing to be done, but Father went to the Americans.

The Americans were there to fight the country people. The Virgin Father had allowed them to come. They lived in a place beyond the walls and across the river and weren't allowed to come into Hue. Tan had seen people who weren't Vietnamese, like the French priests, but she hadn't ever seen an American. She had heard stories, though, and was scared of them.

Father worked with the Americans sometimes. Sometimes he did favors for them and they returned the favors. He said they were very strange people, always laughing, like children. Father did some favors and arranged for an American dentist to work on Tan's extra teeth.

Father went with her the first time. The American was a young man who laughed and made faces for her, like a child. He was so big she didn't know how his fingers would ever fit in her mouth. He gave her shots till she could no longer feel any of her face but her eyes. She was too scared to make a sound or move. She felt that if she closed her eyes she might disappear. Though she studied English in school the American mostly used a kind of sign language with her. He slipped tongue sticks under his lip for fangs and made a deep monkey growl. Ugly. Then he yanked them out with a pair of pliers and smiled, showing all his white teeth. Dep. Pretty. That was what he was going to do to Tan.

Tan lay back and watched the huge fingers work over her and tried to keep her eyes open.

When she came home that first time her lip and gums were so swollen that she looked more like a monkey than ever and Father let her stay home from school for two days. Quat had an argument with Father about the Americans. But on the third day most of the swelling had gone down and Father was very pleased. He told Tan that she would go back to school, and that she would go back to the American for follow-up treatments.

She got used to eating and talking again and the boys no longer called her monkey. The nuns said it was wonderful. Tan was not so sure. Looking in a mirror, all she recognized were her eyes. The American had taken her face.

It was after the last visit to the American that Tan saw the bonze. He was trying to sit on the sidewalk just outside of the gate to the American compound. American soldiers were forcing him to move away and a crowd had gathered around. There were three or four other bonzes in the crowd, sunlight flashing off their shaven heads. Tan rode closer on her bicycle. The monks scared her, scared her even more than her Catholic nuns did. Father said that the Buddhists would never get ahead, would never move into the twentieth century, and that the monks were traitors to their people. The bonze who was trying to sit was very young, no older than Quat. Tan could see that he had let the nails on his little fingers grow long. The American soldiers pushed gently with the sides of their rifles and the bonze and the other Vietnamese moved across the bridge.

Tan followed, pedaling slowly. The crowd grew as the bonze walked through the edge of the city, they whispered and kept their eyes on him. He walked solemnly, looking straight ahead.

The bonze tried to sit in front of a huge pagoda. The people inside came out to watch but government soldiers roared up in a truck and began to push them away. The soldiers jabbed and threatened with the barrels of their rifles, and soon the bonze had to get up and move again.

He was crying a little. The crowd began to drop away. He no longer looked straight ahead, 'he wandered in a wide arc looking about for a place to sit. The section of town was familiar, he was leading Tan home.

He finally settled by the Emperor's Gate. He sat and began to pray and the crowd ringed around him. Three of the other monks sat to pray a few feet away from him, while another placed a metal gallon can at his feet like an offering. The bonze finished praying and dumped the contents of the can over himself. The crowd stepped back a few paces, and Tan held her breath against the fumes. The young man burst into flame.

Tan watched. No one in the crowd spoke. The bonze was the black center of a sheet of flame, he began to rock forward, began to fall, then straightened and held himself upright, still praying. The only sound was the burning. Tan watched and wondered if it was a sin to watch. She smelled him, meat burning now and not gasoline. He fell over stiffly on his side, a crisp sound like a log shifting in a cooking fire, and as if a spell had been broken sirens came to life and the crowd moved away. Tan pedaled home as fast as she could. She didn't tell what she had seen. She fixed dinner but couldn't eat, saying that her teeth hurt from the American.

Shortly after that the Virgin Father and his brother Nhu were murdered in Saigon. People shouted in the streets, honking horns and raising banners and the nuns kept Tan's class inside all day and told them stories of King Herod. Father was put in jail. He was a loyal friend of the Ngo family. Some government soldiers came during dinner and drove him away for questioning. Quat tried to stop them but Father told him to sit and finish his meal. He would be back after the questioning. He told them all to pray for him. The soldiers took Father away. Quat sat at Father's desk, facing the wall, and cried.

One of the office doors opens and a doctor walks into the waiting room. He nods to the boy in the face harness. The boy closes his mouth tightly and shakes his head. His mother whispers to him. He won't go. The doctor leans down next to him, talking in calm, fatherly tones. The boy's face turns red, he presses his knees together and clamps his fingers to the edge of his chair. The mother whispers through her teeth, the doctor takes hold of the boy's arm and squeezes. The boy goes with the doctor, looking to his mother like he'll never see her again.

The sergeant major darts after the Moorish idol, seeming to nip at its tail. They shoot through the tank in jumps and spurts till finally the bigger idol turns and chases the sergeant major all the way back under the shelter of the Golden Gate.

When Tan was sixteen she lived in the Phu Cam section of the right bank with Dr. Co, one of Mother's brothers. He didn't allow Tan and Quat and the other to call him Uncle. Always Dr. Co. He was older than Father. Father died in the jail from tuberculosis. A man came from the government and said that was what happened. Father was buried in the Catholic cemetery.

Most of the Catholics in Hue lived in Phu Cam. Dr. Co was political chief of their ward. He had eight children of his own and now five of his sister's to care for. The house was very crowded. Sometimes Tan rode her bicycle back into the center of town, to their old house in the Citadel. She would watch it from across the street until she saw someone moving around in it. Everything had to be sold or left behind, there wasn't even room for the family altar. Dr. Co kept Father's desk.

It wasn't good living with Dr. Co and his wife. Their children teased the younger brothers and Xuan all the time. Tan was the oldest girl and had to work hard in the house. Quat and Dr. Co hardly spoke to each other. Quat was going to Hue University with the money Father had put aside for him, money that Dr. Co thought should be used to run the combined family. Quat drove a taxi and brought some money home but it didn't seem to please Dr. Co. He said the university teachers were Communists. And that the Communists were responsible for Father's death. Quat spent much of his time with his friend Buu, who was working in the Struggle Movement. Dr. Co said the Struggle Movement was backed by the Communists, and that Quat or Buu or anyone else who got involved with the crazy Buddhists and their burn ings and demonstrations would end in serious trouble. Quat never argued, he just walked away.

Tan went to the Dong Kanh girls' high school. She would ride along the river on Le Loi Street on school mornings, enjoying her freedom from the Co house. She did well in her studies and was considered one of the prettiest girls. The boys from Quoc Hoc would say things sometimes when she rode past but not in a mean way.

Dr. Co had late-night meetings at the house. All the children would be- crowded into one room and Madame Co would go to sleep, but Tan had to serve the men. There were politicians from the ward and men who must have been doctors or worked at a hospital. They spent the night buying and selling medicines. Tan was tired at school the next day and she hated the way the men looked at her and made jokes when she brought them their food and drinks.

Tan tried to be obedient and agreeable in the Co house and tried to make sure everyone got enough to eat. Quat had his dinner out and the younger brothers could fight for themselves, but Xuan was small and thin and Tan had to save something out of her own bowl to give to her when the rest were sleeping. They would sit up and Tan would try to tell the stories Quat had told her, but the only one she could remember completely was about the Trung sisters. Xuan loved that one and always asked for it. Tan left off the last part, the part where the Chinese came back and the sisters had to drown themselves.

One day in the spring Tan and her classmates were let out of school early. People were milling in the streets, radios blasted news at every corner. Everyone had a different rumor about what was happening. Tan tried to bicycle home, but the way was too full of people. They were crowded around an old man carrying a radio and Quat's voice was coming from it.

Tan was excited and scared. Quat said that the Struggle Movement was coming to fruit all over the country and that here in Hue the Buddhists and their friends had control of the city. Control that they meant to keep until their demands for reform were met. After each demand that Quat read, the people in the street cheered.

It was a strange kind of control. There weren't soldiers in the streets with guns like there had been after the Virgin Father was killed. The soldiers were all staying in their barracks in the Citadel. The city-government people were staying inside too, and there was no one guarding them. There were Buddhist flags flying everywhere. The Buddhists had the radio stations and the people in the streets. Tan had never seen so many people outside at once in her life.

The people in the streets were saying that they couldn't be beaten, the soldiers in the barracks were on their side and the Americans wouldn't dare interfere. The generals in Saigon would have to have elections, for none of them had the Mandate of Heaven.

In Phu Cam people were in the streets too, but they were much quieter. Trucks drove through with loudspeakers saying not to worry, they wouldn't be hurt. No one seemed to believe them.

There was a meeting at the Co house late that night. The doctor and his politician friends from the ward were there. Quat was there, and Buu, and several other people from the Struggle Movement, including two bonzes. They talked about peace, talked about how to avoid having people get hurt. Tan listened from the next room. Buu explained how the Buddhists had control of the city, how the First Division was staying neutral and the Americans were all hiding in their compound. He explained that it was important for the city officials to cooperate if they were going to avoid violence. That much of the violence might be directed at the city officials themselves. Dr. Co and his friends pledged to do anything they could to help in the difficult times ahead.

People waited to see what would happen. There were demonstrations but no government soldiers to break them up. Tan went to school, people went to their jobs, but there was a feeling of waiting, that no normal routine could be taken up till the demands were resolved one way or the other.

Quat started coming home for dinner. He talked openly about politics, about what he thought should be done to choose new leaders. Dr. Co hardly spoke. Quat talked constantly and in ways that were not right in front of one's uncle. It frightened Tan. Often at night now she could hear through the wall that Dr. Co was hitting his wife. Tan felt like she did after Confession, waiting to hear the Penance the Father would give her.

The rumors came first. Ky. Ky was coming to attack them. He was coming, closer, closer. It was hard to get reliable reports. They lived in a walled city and were afraid to travel far. They waited. They wondered if the Americans would let Ky come. One night when Quat was out Dr. Co said that Ky was a good man. He might not have the Mandate of Heaven but he knew how to get things done.

Buu brought the news that General Ky was in Da Nang, fighting the people there. So close. Ky's men were fighting the soldiers who had been stationed there, were shooting civilians in the streets and in the pagodas. The Americans had helped them transport the troops and weapons. Hue would be next.

Dr. Co didn't say anything. He went to bed. Madame Co looked relieved and said maybe the best thing would be to surrender. Quat and Buu talked late into the night. The only way to save it, to keep the Struggle Movement alive, was if Hue could present a united front against Ky. The Buddhists and the Catholics and the soldiers in the Citadel and the citygovernment people — all standing together.

School ended for Tan. Ky was coming, he had cut off food and supplies. Dr. Co brought home some bags of rice and boxes of medicine one night and hid them in the attic. They were for the siege, he said. When things got really tight he would ration them out to the people in his ward. He didn't tell Quat about them. Every day people said that Ky would come tomorrow. They waited. Rumors went around about the killing in Da Nang. But Da Nang was different, people said. Da Nang was crowded with refugees and Communists and Americans. The Americans walked around in the city like they owned it and dumped mountains of garbage alongside the roads. It was the kind of place you could expect a lot of killing. Ky would never dare to do the same thing in the Imperial City, would never march shooting into Hue.

A nun burned herself. Somebody burned the American library, and the American consulate. The leader of the Buddhists, Thich Tri Quang, told people to pray and be very holy. Buddhists planned to put their family altars out on the streets to stop Ky's tanks when he came. Everyone listened to the radio station. Quat spent most of his time there, and Tan heard his voice often.

One day Quat gave her a message to bring to Dr. Co. The doctor was gone when she reached home. She tried the house of one of his political friends. The friend's wife said he had left with Dr. Co, in a hurry. Tan tried the ward hall. No one was inside but an old man who said Dr. Co had been there with the other politicians but had left.

Tan rode into the center of Hue, to the city offices. There was no one but janitors in the City Clerk office and the District Court was empty. Tan went to the soldiers' barracks.

The soldiers were gone. The people in the streets in the Citadel said the soldiers had gotten into trucks and jeeps and driven northward out of town. Ky was to the south, in Da Nang.

Tan started back to the station. Thich Tri Quang was on the speakers telling people to stay off the streets. Ky was on his way and there was no one left to stop him. They had been betrayed. Tri Quang told people not to resist, he didn't want Buddhists killed like in Da Nang.

Before Tan reached the station the talking had stopped and there was music playing. When she arrived there were government soldiers standing guard at the entrance with their rifles pointing out.

Dr. Co came home three nights later in a very good mood. He said the traitors would be taught a lesson. He said that he was glad that order had come back to Hue. He didn't mention what he was going to do with the supplies in the attic. Quat didn't come home. Dr. Co said he must have run off to join the Communists. He was lazy, he wanted other people to do all the work, then come along and take it over. Dr. Co had a lot to drink and said more about Quat. Quat was twenty years old, he said, and yet without a wife or a job. He would never amount to anything, never be able to take care of a wife and twelve children, four of them orphans, like Dr. Co did. When Dr. Co and Madame Co went to bed there was noise, but not because he was beating her.

A week later a boy gave Tan a note from Buu. He had hidden in a Catholic church when the soldiers came and now he was going into the country. He had seen Quat captured by the Ky soldiers and taken away for questioning. When Tan went to the soldiers they said she should try the city police. The city police had a record proving the existence of a Con Tinh Quat, but had no idea of his whereabouts. He was wanted for questioning.

Quat didn't come back. Sometimes late at night Tan and the younger brothers and Xuan would sit facing each other in a small circle and pray for him and cry. But quietly, so as not to wake Dr. Co.

Tan sees a little girl watching her in the fish-tank mirror. The girl is maybe five years old, sitting with her mother. One side of her face is puckered with burnt skin, a nostril and the corner of her lip eaten away. Her blond hair is tied up in pale blue ribbons. She smiles at Tan through the fish and plastic eelgrass and Tan smiles back. The little girl takes her fingers and folds her lids down to make thin eyeslits like Tan's. The mother looks up from her magazine and gives the girl a quick slap on the wrist.

Tan was eighteen. It was very early morning, only a few hours into the Year of the Monkey, when she was wakened by the popping. Close, a sporadic hollow popping and flashes like heat lightning in the sky. Dr. Co had just come back from a Tet party at the ward hall, he was still in his rumpled street clothes when he wandered out from his bedroom. It was monsoon season and had been drizzling on and off all night. Dr. Co held newspapers over his head and went out. He came back without the papers, hair plastered to his head, looking very pale. The Communists were attacking all over, he said — trying to take over the city. It would be best to stay in and wait for the Americans to come out of their compound and chase the Communists away.

They sat in the dark, no one sleeping, no one speaking, and listened to the popping. The sounds grew very close, the house shuddered a few times, and then they moved away. That was the Americans, said Dr. Co from the corner he was huddled in. When the ground shakes like that it is the Americans chasing Communists with their big guns.

At dawn Dr. Co and Tan went out to look. It was very quiet, raining lightly. Soldiers walked in the street carrying rifles — Vietnamese soldiers. They weren't the ones from the Citadel though. These men wore khaki uniforms and greenand-red armbands, and called to each other in the rapid dialect of northerners. Dr. Co hurried Tan back inside.

Dr. Co sent Madame Co and the young children to shelter at the Phu Cam Cathedral, a little ways across the railroad tracks. The soldiers wouldn't bother a woman and children. Tan had to stay and help him gather their valuables. When it was dark they would try to reach the Cathedral.

Now and then Dr. Co had Tan peek into the street. There were people with rifles in everyday clothes, and the people with their hair in buns, the country people in black pajamas. The popping and explosions came from up by the American compound now, and from the walled city across the river. The Communists were in control of Phu Cam.

Dr. Co cursed the Saigon generals and the Americans. This was what came of declaring a truce with the Communists. Dr. Co gathered his papers and money and some of the medicines he had stored in the attic. Ever since the Struggle Movement failed, Dr. Co had been bringing home supplies and storing them in the attic. Things he said the Americans had given him. He put the medicines and a few cartons of cigarettes in his suitcases, but he left the American ham and beef upstairs.

In the early evening someone pounded on the door. Dr. Co told Tan to say he had gone to the hospital to treat casualties, and ran up into the attic. The pounding continued, someone yelled that they should come outside, that no one would be harmed. Dr. Co was called by name. Tan sat on the floor, too scared to answer the pounding. It stopped. After several quiet hours Dr. Co came down.

They tried to sneak out late at night. At the railroad tracks someone called for them to stop and searchlights came on. Dr. Co ran into the darkness and Tan tried to follow. The suitcase she'd been given was heavy and when she heard men close behind her she had to drop it and scurry away. Tan spent an hour squatting in the shelter of a small pagoda and then found her way home. Dr. Co slapped her for leaving the suitcase behind. How would the family eat, he asked, now that she had thrown all their money away? Tan saw no sign of the suitcase Dr. Co had been carrying.

They lay on mats in the children's room, several feet of darkness between them. They didn't speak for over an hour. Neither slept. Then there was pounding on a door down the street. Voice shouting. Screaming, and a shot, very loud, very close, and a woman wailing on the street. Pounding on a door, closer. Dr. Co came over and lay by Tan, putting his arms around her. She couldn't tell which one of them was shaking so hard. Pounding right next door, more shots, more crying. Tan held her breath. She felt Dr. Co's heart beating against her back. The pounding came again, on the other side of the house. They had been passed over. The pounding moved on down the street.

Tan felt Dr. Co's breath hot on the back of her neck. He pushed his face through her hair and kissed her there. She was the one shaking now, she was sure of that. He rolled her onto her belly and pulled her clothes up. The northerners were near, she couldn't cry out. She couldn't think who she would cry to.

Tan felt crushed under his weight, the matting dug into her breasts. She tried to think of prayers. She was glad she didn't have to see his face. Tan bit her lip against the pain and he pushed into her from behind. That evening, frightened by the pounding, she had forgotten and not called him Dr. Co, had not even called him Uncle. Father, she had said, what will we do?

Dr. Co lay still on top of her when he had finished. He lay so still and so long that Tan thought he must have fallen asleep. But then he rolled off her and she groped her way to where she could wash herself. Tan sat shivering under her father's desk until dawn.

It rained heavily all morning and the fighting sounds were muffled. Dr. Co didn't meet her eyes or speak. When Tan looked out she saw a few of the country people riding by on bicycles. They didn't seem to notice how wet they were getting.

The pounding came in the afternoon. Dr. Co was called by name. He went up in the attic to hide. The people outside said they would start shooting if no one came out. Tan opened the door.

There were country people and a few people dressed in city clothes. They all wore red armbands. One was a girl who went to the Dong Kanh high school with Tan, a very pretty, popular girl. She wore a pair of pistols in her belt. Another of the people was Buu.

He looked much older. He held a clipboard in a hand with only one finger and a thumb on it. He pretended he didn't know Tan.

Buu asked where Dr. Co was. Tan said he had gone to the hospital. Buu said they knew that wasn't true. The people stood in the house, dripping, and told her not to be afraid, they were here to protect the Vietnamese from the Americans and the Saigon generals. Tan was too frightened to speak. Father, her uncle, the nuns in school — all had told of the terrible things that the Communists did to people.

Buu sat on the ladder leading to the attic and asked if they were hoarding meat in the house. Tan shook her head. Buu said he had learned about decay since he had been away from the city. If you lived too close to it you never noticed the smell, but any outsider could tell right off that things were rotten. Buu led the people up into the attic and they found Dr. Co hiding behind containers of American beef.

Dr. Co cried and pleaded. They bound his hands behind his back with wire, told him not to worry. They were only taking him for questioning. Buu told Tan to stay in the house until told what to do by the People's Army. The country people carried the meat out into the rain. Dr. Co didn't say good-bye.

Tan dressed in black and waited for night. There was no trouble at the railroad tracks and she reached the Phu Cam Cathedral. Women inside were wailing, beating their faces with their hands. There were no men. No men and almost no boys.

The Communists had come that morning, sobbed Madame Co, and had taken all the men and boys away. Just to a political meeting, they said, and then they would be brought back. They had taken Madame Co's four sons and Tan's two brothers. No one had returned. Xuan had volunteered to go for help to the government soldiers. She knew her way in the Citadel.

Tan told Madame Co her husband had gone to work at the hospital.

She started after Xuan in the morning. Rain beat down and there was fighting everywhere. She ran north toward the river, ducking between buildings when the fighting came close. She saw northern soldiers. She saw Americans. Loudspeakers said the People's Army was winning. A sound truck blared that the government soldiers were in control.

Tan was knocked to the pavement by an explosion. Her head hurt. She went on. Somebody shot at her. She felt the bullet pass, dove to the ground and cut her hands open. She stumbled onto a man lying dead in a puddle on the street. Tan crawled off him and ran for the river. The fight roared around her, trucks burning, houses burning, flames sizzling up to meet the rain. Tan saw blood running through the gutters with the rain. A flying piece of brick hit her, her side burning, and an old man fell in front of her, bleeding, tangled with his bicycle. It was the lake of fire,the nuns had told of, it was the Day of Atonement. Her head hurt. Tan ran upright down the middle of the street, knowing only that she had to reach the river.

The bridge was gone. There was no way back to the Imperial City. Her head hurt. She had to get across. She held her head in her hands, tried to remember. She was the sister of — there was someone floating by in the water, facedown. She was the daughter of — the water was gray, its surface alive with rain. Glowing embers blew from the fires in the walled city and died as they landed on the water. She held her head and sat on the bank of the Perfume River, trying to remember who she was.

The air conditioner blows on Tan, her nipples stand up and hurt a little. She folds her arms across her breasts. They are so big, so hard, since the Chinese doctor did them. She is a tiny, thin woman with huge breasts. She wonders if they'll ever be small again, be soft. If she gives him her eyes maybe he'll let her have her body back.

There are pictures on the wall. Chins pushed back or strengthened, noses straightened and reduced, harelips mended. Oriental eyes made round. Before and After, say the pictures.

When Tan went back to the Co house it was full of government soldiers hiding from their commanding officer. They sat half-naked on the floor with their clothes hanging to dry, eating what was left of the food, cooking on a fire made from Father's desk. They called for Tan to come in and sleep with them. She ran. The Americans and Communists fought in the Bien Hoa suburb to the north. The Americans built a pontoon bridge and Tan crossed with thousands of other homeless people. The people said the Americans would feed them.

Tan wandered in the walled city, looking for Xuan, looking for food. Thousands wandered with her. The walls had crumbled under the bombing, half the houses were knocked down. People looted what they could before the soldiers came back. The soldiers had guns and took the best of everything.

The sun came out for one day and the bodies in the streets began to stink. Families, dressed in white for mourning, made circular graves for their dead in the red earth of the parks and school yards. The bodies were wrapped in black cloth, then in white, and buried in the mud. The Americans wrapped their dead in green plastic bags and left them on the curb for trucks to pick up.

Tan found Madame Co at a refugee center the government soldiers had set up. There was no food. Dr. Co had been found with his hands still bound behind his back, buried alive. There was no word of Madame Co's sons or Tan's brothers. No word of Xuan.

Tan wandered in the monsoon. Sometimes Americans would give her food. She was afraid to approach them alone, but joined groups of begging children. Tan found the men gave more if she talked like the little children. Hey, you, GI, she would call, you numba one. You give gell to eat, yes?

The Americans would smile if they weren't too tired and hand out a little food. People cooked what they could beg or steal right on the street, in water pots made from artillery shells.

The first time Tan saw Supply Sergeant Plunkett he was wrapped around a case of Army K-rations. He grinned at her as he hurried across the rubble, rattling his cans of beans and processed ham. Care for a bite? Tan was too hungry to be scared. His legs were so long that she had to run to keep up with him.

You, me, pom-pom, he said to her in the abandoned house they sheltered in. Boom-boom. Fuckee-fuckee?

He seemed very pleased when she didn't understand what he meant.

You vir-gen gell?

She told him she was.

Vay good. Me show you boom-boom. Then you eat. Beaucoup food.

He did what Dr. Co had done to her, but he looked her in the eyes afterward and smiled.

You no vir-gen now. You Plunkett gell.

Tan smiled back at him like she had learned from the young children, smiled and said you numba-one GI. Numbaone boom-boom. Me eat now?

The Communists disappeared and bulldozers came to bury the walls and buildings that had been blown down. Tan went with Plunkett to Da Nang. He would give her money. If the Communists had taken her brothers and Xuan she would become wealthy enough to buy them back.

Plunkett set her up in a house on the edge of the sand flats in Da Nang, close to the refugee camps. There were four other girls who had American soldiers. Plunkett paid her rent and gave her money for food and clothes. She sewed most of it into a chair. It was nice having the other girls to talk to, there was a mama-san to keep the house and always enough food. Plunkett visited at least twice a week.

There was garbage everywhere in Da Nang, small mountains of it that little boys fought and played on. People in the camps sat all day waiting for food, crowded together like insects. There were girls on the streets, country girls who had sold eggs and produce in the market before the fighting. Buy me, buy me, they said. Me numba-one gell, suckee-suckee, sixhundred pi.

Plunkett would come to drink and for boom-boom. He liked how thin her body was, how her breasts barely stuck out. My little girl, he called her. He asked if she had a little sister he could meet. Tan said she had no sisters. He showed pictures of his little daughters back in America. Plunkett didn't like the name Tan, he called her Betsy. It was the same name as one of his daughters.

He smiled and laughed constantly, like a child. He said he didn't like her eyes. They looked like she was hiding something from him. You trick me, he would say. Alla time samesame. You Betsy unscrutable gell. He gave her money to have the round-eye operation like Madame Ky, like the other girls in the house. She sewed it in the chair.

Tan had been in Da Nang three months when the word came about the men and boys taken from the Phu Cam Cathedral. Their bones were found buried together in the jungle a few miles from Hue. Most shot, some buried alive. Over four hundred men and boys. Plunkett gave Tan money to send to care for her brothers' bones.

Her belly grew. The other girls noticed first, then Plunkett. He was very angry and took her to his friend Dr. Yin.

Dr. Yin was Chinese and smelled of ammonia. Tan was terrified. Plunkett reassured her that Dr. Yin was an American, a soldier, and his friend. But Chinese was Chinese. Tan screamed and had to be given a shot when the young doctor approached her.

She was thin again then, but Plunkett didn't seem to like her so much. He brought her a Catholic-schoolgirl's uniform, like she had worn when she was little, and had her put it on for the boom-boom. Sometimes he made her bend over so he could hit her with his belt. He didn't smile or laugh so much anymore.

Plunkett left things at the apartment, medicines, food, sometimes guns. He ordered Tan not to touch them. She listened for hours to the American radio he had given her. She would lie in the dark at night twisting the dial back and forth, listening to all the different languages, all the voices blending into each other. She felt like she was floating, hearing everyone's private thoughts. When she woke the batteries would be dead and she'd be without radio till Plunkett came. He always had batteries with him.

Tan was twenty, had been in Da Nang two years, when she saw her sister on the street. Two Americans were walking with their Vietnamese girls. One of them was Xuan. She looked like all the other street girls, looked like she could take care of herself. Her American called her Sue-Anne. Tan followed, listening to her sister laugh at what the Americans were saying, and then let them walk out of sight. A moment later she thought better of it and tried to catch up, but Xuan had turned some corner and was gone.

Plunkett said he would send Tan to America. She would help him be a rich man. He explained that in America opium was used just like money, better than money. But government police would steal it from you, just like in.Viet- nam. It was hard to bring opium to America, but Tan could help him.

He took her back to his friend Dr. Yin. They explained how much just a little opium was worth if it was pure. She watched the doctor put it into the implants. They would be like a cyst, he said, like a thorn that the skin grows over. Harmless.

Tan lay on the slab and remembered all the stories Quat had told her. Dr. Yin put her under. She dreamed of riding a bicycle in a quiet, walled city.

When she woke her breasts felt mammoth, they jutted out stiffly from her body. The skin was stretched taut, the nipples pointing up and out. There was a scar in the crease beneath each breast, creases she had never had before. The breasts didn't feel a part of her. They belonged to Plunkett. He loved to grab them in bed. The-future is in my "hands, he would say, and smile like he used to.

He arranged for her to go to the American city of San Francisco. He would come later. Tan was afraid to tell him about the money she had hoarded, afraid he wouldn't understand. It was in piasters, and wouldn't be any good in America. It wasn't opium. The day before the plane took her, Tan ripped the money out of the chair and gave it to the other girls in the house.

It would be good in San Francisco, she thought. No one was fighting and there was always enough food.

A nurse, a young American girl, calls Tan into the office. She is seated in a leather reclining chair. Doctor is in the back washing his hands, says the nurse, I'm his assistant. The nurse asks Tan if she is sure she wants to go through with the eye operation, says she is a very pretty woman already. Tan says she wants to go ahead. The nurse leaves.

There are more pictures on the walls inside the office. Before and After pictures, profiles of breasts enlarged or made smaller. A picture of the doctor in Army fatigues sitting on a pile of sandbags. Tan closes her eyes, tries to steady her heartbeat.

Tan lived in a bad-smelling Mission Street hotel run by an old Thai man. The rent seemed high, but that was something the nuns hadn't taught about in English. Tan avoided talking to anyone, she took all her money with her if she went out and never walked more than a few blocks from the hotel. She waited for Plunkett.

A young brown-skinned woman with a little baby lived in the next room. Sometimes at night she would play her radio, slow, sad songs in Spanish to keep her baby from crying. Tan would lie in bed, listening through the wall, and think how nice it would be if she could be friends with the woman.

Tan waited. Her American money began to run out. She ate rice at a Vietnamese restaurant on Powell Street. On the sign out front was a map of Vietnam with the northern half painted red and the southern half painted green and all the major cities labeled. Young American men would come by with their girls and point to spots on the map, but very few came inside. Mr. Thuong, who ran the restaurant, would talk with Tan while she ate. He had come to America during the fighting between the French and the Communists. He seemed very kind, but Tan was careful not to tell much about herself. Her bill never came to what it said on the menu.

Tan waited in her room on Mission Street. She was afraid. Afraid of the Americans, afraid of being alone, afraid of being caught with the opium. They had searched her when she got to the Hawaii airport, a woman had put her hands up in Tan's private parts.

Plunkett wrote her a letter saying when he was coming. He wrote in the child-language he had used to talk with her. It was very hard to read. Tan went to the docks to meet him.

Passengers came off the big boat, but Plunkett was not among them. Tan asked a man from the boat, who took her to a policeman. The policeman said that Plunkett had been taken for questioning. He asked Tan's name and address and she gave him false ones. Plunkett never showed up at the hotel. Questioning meant the same thing in America that it did in Vietnam.

Mr. Thuong gave Tan a job at the restaurant when her money was gone. She made salads in the kitchen and tried to avoid the busboys and dishwashers, who were all Chinese. Mr. Thuong couldn't pay her much, she didn't have a Green Card, but if she ate at the restaurant she had enough to pay her rent.

One of the waitresses, a Korean girl named Kim, was friendly to her. Kim had another job, being a girl in a Chinese bar on Pacific Street. The Chinese men would come in a little drunk and Kim would sit by them and talk and they would buy her drinks. It made more money for the bar. The Chinese tried to do more and you could make extra. Kim let them touch her breasts. Kim said she was willing to sell her breasts but nothing beyond that. The girls in the bar were all Koreans and had American boyfriends or husbands. They had come over from their country with soldier husbands. Kim said it would pay much more than making salads, said the Chinese men would like Tan. She was small and delicate but had big breasts for them to touch.

Kim told her to have the round-eye operation. If she ever wanted to get an American boyfriend, to be able to become a citizen and get papers so she could have a nice job, she would have to have her eyes changed. That was how they wanted it. Tan said she was interested, but kept putting it off.

One morning Mr. Thuong came out from listening to the news and began to paint the bottom half of the Vietnam map red. There were tears in his eyes as he painted. At least, he said, it is all the same color now. It was that morning Tan decided for the operation.

Kim showed her the ad for the plastic surgeon in the yellow pages, a big ad with a picture of the doctor. Tan recognized his face.

Tan lies in the reclining chair wondering what he'll do. If he'll remember her. If he'll steal it from her or give her to the police. But one way or the other, she'll be free of it. The last of Vietnam locked inside her, next to her heart, will be gone.

The doctor comes in rubbing his hands on a towel. Tan catches her breath, tries to look calm. She wonders what she'll do when her eyes are round and unguarded.

Hello Tan, says Dr. Yin. I've been expecting you.

Children of the Silver Screen

AIN BLASTS THE STREET, each gray bullet bouncing up a half-foot from the pavement before it disintegrates. There is a loud, flat smacking from the posters on the wall. Black tears stream from

Bogart's eyes, strings of ink dribble from his cigarette and gun. In the background a burro smears into desert sand.

Shine unlocks the glass doors though it is still early. He examines his reflection — forty, pleasant-looking but not handsome. Comic relief maybe, or the hero's older brother. He has always thought of himself as a sidekick, but never found a Duke Wayne to play Ward Bond to. The type that could never carry a picture alone.

The regulars start to trickle in, sniffing and dripping on the nearly bald red carpet, and Shine calls Gerald out to man the tickets. Gerald is deep into Eisenstein today, making change and tearing stubs without looking up, scowling intently at the book in his lap. "Montage," he mutters from time to time, nodding his head. "Montage."

They straggle past him, the buck-twenty-five matinee regulars, stomping their feet and blowing their noses, peeking back uneasily at the storm-slapped doors. Shine slides behind the candy counter and stations himself between gurgling tanks of orange and purple. He tries to guess what each will have, though there is not much to guess at with the regulars. Raisinets are a big mover, as are Black Crows and Chuckles, but the word has spread that the mr. Goodbars are past their prime.

The regulars mill beneath publicity pix of stars past and stars present, touring the lobby walls like penitents making the Stations of the Cross. A tall girl, made taller by the rubycolored platforms she stands on, pops jawbreakers with her back teeth and wrinkles her nose at Carmen Miranda. The ruby is repeated on the girl's fingernails and wide, painted mouth, her polka-dot blouse is cinched in at the waist and puffed at the shoulders. Carmen Miranda smiles back, topheavy with fruit, face frozen in a wink. Hard candy crunches, plastic jewelry clacks and the tall girl hums the opening to "Give Me a Band and a Bandanna." Catholic Prep boys, four of them, fidget and jostle in the middle of the floor and periodically bust out laughing at some enormous adolescent in-joke. A shifting, self-conscious island, they pace in their blue-nylon school jackets, flitting their eyes to the full-length lobby mirror with each pass and swiping furtively at the hair hanging wet on their foreheads. A very fat girl under an orange poncho drifts near the counter, sighing down into the glass, then tears herself away to stand by the water fountain. Her eyes never leave the bin of too-yellow popcorn. Two young men in tight, bright jean-suits sit on the black Naugahyde couch crossing their legs so their toes nuzzle between them, discussing triumphs and tragedies of the Great Ladies. Marvelous, they say — exquisite. It is all Marlene, Bette and Babs with them, Judy and Barbra and Joan and of course Poor Marilyn. They share a box of wintergreen Canada Mints and jiggle their matching two-tone saddle shoes. A thick-bodied old woman in tweeds enters, shaking droplets from her long, black umbrella. She sees Shine behind the counter and comes over to express her condolences.

"You've given us all a great deal of pleasure," she says, "I think you should know that we appreciate it."

They blow in, the Jujyfruits and Almond joys, junior Mints and Planters nuts, they grin and wince into bad Bogart impressions, they match wits naming the Magnificent Seven, or the Seven Dwarfs, or the seven major Golden Age studios. Dopey, they say, Warners and Universal. Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson, they say. Grumpy. A boy who looks like the Spirit of Che Guevera does a soggy soft-shoe in front of the men's-room door. The fat girl in the poncho tumbles for a box of popcorn, large, with a nickel's extra butter. A boy in a cape and a girl with a yellow slicker do a brief exchange from a Marx Brothers' picture and the young men on the couch roll their eyes and cluck their tongues. Old Pudge comes out from the projectionist's booth and nods to Shine. The lobby empties into the theater.

Shine flicks switches and the tanks of orange and purple settle, the yellow bulb in the popcorn machine goes out. A girl in an Army fatigue jacket comes in sopping and pays Gerald in quarters and dimes. She asks Shine for Good and Plentys, then rattles them loudly inside the box. "Lotta leg room in there," she says and grins. A boy with a bad complexion and an armful of books sheltered under his coat buys a ticket and then asks what is playing. Shine closes the back of the counter and locks it. The empty street seen through the streaming glass doors has no edges, cars and buildings appear out of focus. The theme from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre begins in the theater and Shine tells Gerald he can go read in the office.

A car washes up in front of the doors and Eddie Pincus — Pincus Jr. - scurries in with a large box in his arms. He passes Shine without speaking, heading for the office. Eddie is wearing a red pointy-collared shirt and plaid pants, shoes with semi-Cuban heels, and rings on all the fingers of his left hand. An Italian-hood type, thinks Shine, down low in the organization. A gunsel. A Dead End Kid pushing thirty. Pincus Jr. comes back empty-handed, goes to the car and brings in another box. Shine counts ticket stubs so their eyes won't meet. Before he leaves for good Eddie reaches over the counter and scoops himself a handful of popcorn, leaving a trail on the carpet.

Inside the theater Bogart and Tim Holt catch up with the labor contractor who has stiffed them. They argue, then fight silhouetted in stark barroom light till the contractor lies bleeding on the floor. The two winners take only what they are owed from his wallet.

Shine brings the stubs and the cashbox to the office. His swivel chair is occupied. "They never picked this up," says Gerald nodding toward two film cans on the desk, "and Mr. Pincus wants you to clear your stuff out today."

Shine leans against the desk and dials a number.

"Mr. Brandt's office, may I help you?"

"This is Mr. Shine? And I'd like to — "

"Mr. Brandt took special pains to see that you received a good print. If there's anything wrong with it then it happened on your end."

"No, see, the print — "

"In fact we're considering charging you for restoration of a few we've gotten back from you — "

"The print is fine."

"there is also some evidence of extra screenings not provided for in our agreements. Film is a delicate medium, Mr. Shine — "

"Miss, you didn't pick up the last one."

"Pardon?"

"You didn't come and pick up last week's feature from us. On the Town. Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra? I thought. you might want it."

"Oh. Oh dear. Let me check something."

There is a long silence. Gerald begins to nod at his book. "Mise-en-scene," he says.

"Mr. Shine? We're very sorry, there's been a mix-up. How late will you people be open?"

"Till eleven. Have whoever you send just come in the back."

"We'll do that."

"I'd also like to confirm the cancellations."

"Cancellations?"

"There should be a letter on your desk by now."

"You realize, Mr. Shine, that there is a fee for cancellations? We take a loss on the arrangements we make. Ordering, shipping, things like that."

"Don't try to con me, Miss, you've got all our standards in stock. So put them back on the shelf."

"There is a fee for cancellations."

"You can take that up with Mr. Pincus," he says, and hangs up. "Film," he says to Gerald, "is a delicate medium."

"Time," says Gerald, deep in his book, "and space."

The two cardboard boxes Eddie Pincus brought are sitting in the corner, their tops wet. Shine can't read the smeared label and pulls one open to see. There are a couple pages of promotional literature lying on top of a boxful of tinted plastic glasses in cardboard frames. At the bottom of the promo there is a blob of pink roughly in the form of a woman. Shine puts a pair of the glasses on and the blob sharpens into a naked woman, her tits pimpling up at him from the paper. 3-n PUSSYCATS it says in mound-letters. Shine looks about him and sees that Gerald has lost all definition, the wall posters are smudged faceless, only the miniature naked lady is real anymore.

"A delicate medium."

Shine reaches around Gerald and pulls the drawers from his desk, laying them on the floor. He starts a junk pile and a Keep pile, but keeps almost everything. Publicity photos, posters, even snippets of film — he saves them all. He sorts the posters by studio, MGM and Fox claiming the-most..

"The stuff on the walls too," says Gerald. "Mr. Pincus said the stuff on the walls goes too."

Technicolor! say the posters. Cinerama! All Talking all Singing all Dancing! Brando in The Wild One, Dean in Rebel, Garfield in The Sea Wolf and Wayne in Stagecoach, all looking impossibly young and lipsticked. A picture of Shine, also impossibly young, standing with Pincus Sr., in front of the first theater. The old gentleman looking serious and dignified, his young partner grinning, out of place. Shine takes them all down and gently adds them to the pile. He imagines a cliche flashback to his youth, a slow dissolve with a harp flowing distantly on the soundtrack, till his father's face appears looking down as if to a child.

"Our bissness," he whispers as if sharing a great secret. "The motion-picter bissness is our bissness. Never forget this. Luke et Mayer," he says, "luke et Cohn. Thalberg, Selznick, Sammy Goldfish. Op front it may be American boyss, powdered meelk, Gables end Crossbys, but it's our bissness. We pull on the strings. Never forget this."

The camera tracks back to show a thin, middle-aged man in a faded blue usher's uniform. RIALTO it says in yellow script over the left breast.

Ridiculous casting, his father never had an accent.

Shine ties paper into bundles. The junk pile, mostly old bills, he kicks into the corner with Eddie's 3-D glasses.

In the theater, on the screen, the three prospectors strike gold near the top of the mountain and rig a sluice to mine. There are weeks of hard, hot work. Greed creeps into the camp, and paranoia. They begin to split each day's take three ways and hide their goods from each other in the bush. Ban- ditos attack, their leader Gold Hat braying evilly to set the standard for a generation of Mexican outlaws. An outsider tries to extort his way into the find and is killed. The gold begins to peter out and the men break camp, first putting the mountain back the way they found it. Thanks mountain, they say as they head down the trail toward civilization.

The old man, Walter Huston, is taken by Indians to be honored for saving a half-drowned native boy, leaving Bogart and bland Tim Holt to manage all the heavy-laden burros. Gold-fever and isolation begin to work on Bogart, he grapples with Holt and has his gun taken away. They sit across the fire from each other that night, Holt wary but fading with exhaustion. We'll see who falls asleep first, says Bogart. His wild, flame-lit face breaks into Satanic laughter. We'll see who falls asleep first, partner.

During slow scenes or long dissolves there is a mass creaking as the audience shifts in the old seats, like some huge animal stretching after a century's sleep. There is an occasional wet sniff and the methodical crunching of jawbreakers in the back row. The people sit deep in their seats, prop their legs before them and tilt their heads back as if being fed a long, satisfying meal. The rain outside is faintly audible, but like the glowing red Exrr signs to either side of the screen, it has long since become subliminal. The drying clothes and wet hair give off a woolly must peppered with sweat and cola and aged peppermint gum. Someone in the front has a mild case of asthma.

The phone rings in the office. Gerald listens for a moment, then offers it up to Shine.

"Hello."

"Mr. Shine?"

"Yes."

"This is Arnold Marchand of Picoso Productions? We've been informed that your theater operation is undergoing a change of policy, and we'd like to give you the chance to look over our line and see if we can do some business."

"I'm not in business anymore."

"This is Mr. Shine, isn't it?"

"Yes, but — "

"It won't be any trouble, we'll just bring down a few samples of the product for a screening. You know, trailers of the best scenes cut together — "

"I don't think you — "

"Some of our double bills have been getting very heavy traffic in your area. Did you catch Teenage Temptress and Evita at the State-Ex?"

"No."

"Ours. Played five weeks, house record. Area's been saturated with those two of course, but there's plenty more where — "

"I'm not connected with booking anymore. You'll have to speak with Mr. Pincus."

"We can supply all the promotion ourselves, it's written into the rental. Whatsay we set up a meeting Saturday, fourthirty, maybe five?"

"Talk to Pincus."

"We've got the full range, hard-core right down to Russ Meyer and the cuntless wonders, we — "

Shine hangs up. "Trash," he says to Gerald. "He's buying trash."

"So what do you call this stuff?" Gerald nods to the bundle of posters. "Art? It's pornography of the spirit, Hollywood propaganda, fluff. Different brand of trash, that's all." He returns to his book.

The phone rings again. Shine grits his teeth and lifts it. "Talk to Pincus."

"Pardon?" It is a new voice.

"Oh. Sorry. What can I do for you?"

"When are you going to have the wizard again?"

"The wizard?"

"Of Oz. When are you going to have it again?"

"I don't know," says Shine, "but I wouldn't hold my breath."

Bogart gains the upper hand and wounds Tim Holt, leaving him for dead in the brush. He tries to handle all the burros and gold himself. Not far from safety, he runs into Gold, Hat and two other banditos. The two try on his hat and measure his boots as he tries to bluff them into thinking help is on its way. Gold Hat cuts him down with a machete, and not knowing unrefined gold dust from sand, slashes the bags open, leaves them lying on the desert floor and scrambles after the burros. A wind begins to pick up.

Meanwhile, Holt has been found by Indians and brought to the old man. His wounds are treated and they mount up to search for Bogart.

The phone rings again. Gerald leaves to find a spot where he can read in peace till the six-o'clock showing. "Crosscutting," he mumbles at the door.

Shine answers. "No," he says. "Top Hat won't be playing tomorrow. Did you try the University? Right, bye now."

Shine puts the cans of film under his arm and goes to the lobby. The rain is heavier outside, boiling on the pavement and glass. He walks into the theater and stands at the head of the aisle. The desert wind is roaring now, Holt and the old man barely visible through the blasted sand. Shine stands with the rainstorm behind him and the dust-blow before and lets out a long, shuddering sigh. The old man and Holt find the split bags, empty now, and squat behind a crumbling adobe wall for shelter. The fortune they work months to mine and risk their lives for has blown away. Shine is shivering now and the old man begins to laugh — loud, desperate to-keep-from-crying laughter that Holt joins in, the laugh of men who have reached bottom and found it bearable. Shine is warmed for a moment, their laughter drowning out wind and rain alike, but then the movie is over and old Pudge brings the lights up before the credits are finished. There is a long, blinking silence, the audience surprised it is ended. The world is in color now, washed-out color, tufts of yellow ish stuffing peek from split seat cushions, rips and seams are visible on the mottled-white screen. The people rise like roughly wakened sleepers, rubbing eyes and buckling coats, and file past Shine into the lobby. He sees a stationary head left near the front and walks up to it. It is the old tweed-lady, asleep, smiling slightly. He leaves her to rest.

In the lobby he finds them all stalled before the storm. They wriggle in their coats and stomp their feet for warmth, psyching up, they take turns pressing noses against the glass to check the downpour. No one looks eager to leave, they glance back nervously at Shine, read the wall posters, adjust clothing. No one wants to open the door and let it in.

"Listen," Shine calls to them, "would you like to stay and see a musical? On the Town. For free?"

They turn, smiling uncertainly, and cheat back toward the theater a bit.

"Come on," he says, "it's wet out there." They grin, conspirators with Shine, and file back in.

He tells old Pudge to go home and that the union can fuck itself, if he wants to run it himself he will. He has trouble threading the film, it has been a long time, and twice he curses and almost gives up. But he hears the rain beating outside and thinks of the teenage temptresses, the soft-core quickies that will follow him here and finally all the sprocket holes engage, the leader snakes through the guts of the machine and fastens to the take-up reel. Shine brings down the lights and the audience grows quiet. The title appears blurred at first, as if seen through a film of tears, and Shine is a technician for a moment longer, adjusting till it is sharp. There is an applause of recognition. Shine turns out all but the pilot light in the booth and waits as the clatter of the machine fades from his mind, taking the rainstorm with it. He flows onto the shaft of dancing light and is carried forward to safety, to the bright, warm colors, into the pulse and flicker of life.

I-80 Nebraska, m.490-m.205

HIS IS THAT ALABAMA REBEL, this is that Alabama I Rebel, do I have a copy?"

"Ahh, 10-4 on that, Alabama Rebel."

"This is that Alabama Rebel westbound on 8o, ah, what's your handle, buddy, and where you comin from?"

"This is that, ah, Toby Trucker, eastbound for that big 0 town, round about the 44'5 marker."

"I copy you clear, Toby Trucker. How's about that Smokey Bear situation up by that Lincoln town?"

"Ah, you'll have to hold her back a little through there, Alabama Rebel, ah, place is crawling with Smokies like usual. Saw three of em's lights up on the overpass just after the airport there."

"And how bout that Lincoln weigh station, they got those scales open?"

"Ah, negative on that, Alabama Rebel, I went by the lights was off, probably still in business back to that North Platte town."

"They don't get you coming they get you going. How bout that you-know-who, any sign of him tonight? That Ryder P. Moses?"

"Negative on that, thank God. Guy gives me the creeps."

"Did you, ah, ever actually hear him, Toby Trucker?"

"A definite Io-4 on that one, Alabama Rebel, and I'll never forget it. Coming down from that Scottsbluff town three nights ago I copied him. First he says he's northbound, then he says he's southbound, then he's right on my tail singing `The Wabash Cannonball.' Man blew by me outside of that Oshkosh town on 26, must of been going a hundred plus. Little two-lane blacktop and he thinks he's Parnelli Jones at the Firecracker 500."

"You see him? You see what kind of rig he had?"

"A definite shit-no negative on that, I was fighting to keep the road. The man aint human."

"Ah, maybe not, Toby Trucker, maybe not. Never copied him myself, but I talked with a dozen guys who have in the last couple weeks."

"Ahh, maybe you'll catch him tonight."

"Long as he don't catch me."

"Got a point there, Alabama Rebel. Ahhhh, I seem to be losing you here — "

"io-4. Coming up to that Lincoln town, buddy, I thank you kindly for the information and ah, I hope you stay out of trouble in that big 0 town and maybe we'll modulate again some night. This is that Alabama Rebel, over and out."

"This is Toby Trucker, eastbound, night now."

Westbound on 8o is a light-stream, ruby-strung big rigs rolling straight into the heart of Nebraska. Up close they are a river in breakaway flood, bouncing and pitching and yawing, while a mile distant they are slow-oozing lava. To their left is the eastbound stream, up ahead the static glare of Lincoln. Lights. The world in black and white and red, broken only by an occasional blue flasher strobing the ranger hat of a state policeman. Smokey the Bear's campfire. Westbound 8o is an insomniac world of lights passing lights to the music of the Citizens Band.

"This-that Arkansas Traveler, this that Arkansas Traveler, do you copy?"

"How bout that Scorpio Ascending, how bout that Scorpio Ascending, you out there, buddy?"

"This is Chromedome at that 425 marker, who's that circus wagon up ahead? Who's that old boy in the Mrs. Smith's piepusher?"

They own the highway at night, the big rigs, slip-streaming in caravans, hopscotching to take turns making the draft, strutting the thousands of dollars they've paid in road taxes on their back ends. The men feel at home out here, they leave their cross-eyed headlights eating whiteline, forget their oily-aired, kidney-jamming cabs to talk out in the black air, to live on the Band.

"This is Roadrunner, westbound at 420, any you eastbound people fill me in on the Smokies up ahead?"

"Ahh, copy you, Roadrunner, she's been dean all the way from that Grand Island town, so motormotor."

(A moving van accelerates.)

"How bout that Roadrunner, this is Overload up to 424, that you behind me?"

(The van's headlights blink up and down.)

"Well come on up, buddy, let's put the hammer down on this thing."

The voices are nasal and tinny, broken by squawks, something human squeezed through wire. A decade of televised astronauts gives them their style and self-importance.

"Ahh, breaker, Overload, we got us a code blue here. There's a four-wheeler coming up fast behind me, might be a Bear wants to give us some green stamps."

"Breaker break, Roadrunner. Good to have you at the back door. We'll hold her back awhile, let you check out that four-wheeler."

(The big rigs slow and the passenger car pulls alongside of them.)

"Ahh, negative on that Bear, Overload, it's just a civilian. Fella hasn't heard bout that five-five limit."

"10-4 and motormotor."

(Up front now, the car is nearly whooshed off the road when the big rigs blow past. It wavers a moment, then accelerates to try and take them, but can only make it alongside before they speed up. The car falls back, then tries again.)

"Ah, look like we got us a problem, Roadrunner. This uh, Vega — whatever it is, some piece of Detroit shit, wants to play games."

"Looks like it, Overload."

"Don't know what a four-wheeler is doing on the Innerstate this time of night anyhow. Shunt be allowed out with us working people. You want to give me a hand on this, Roadrunner?"

"10-4. I'll be the trapper, you be the sweeper. What we got ahead?"

"There's an exit up to the 402 marker. This fucker gets off the ride at Beaver Crossing."

(The trucks slow and the car passes them, honking, cutting sharp to the inside lane. They let it cruise for a moment, then the lead rig pulls alongside of it and the second closes up behind, inches from the car's rear fender. The car tries to run but they stay with it, boxing it, then pushing it faster and faster till the sign appears ahead on the right and the lead truck bulls to the inside, forcing the car to squeal off onto the exit ramp.)

"Mission accomplished there, Roadrunner."

"Roger."

They have their own rules, the big rigs, their own road and radio etiquette that is tougher in its way than the Smokies' law. You join the club, you learn the rules, and woe to the man who breaks them.

"All you westbound! All you westbound! Keep your ears peeled up ahead for that you-know-who! He's on the loose again tonight! Ryder P. Moses!"

There is a crowding of channels, a buzzing on the airwaves. Ryder P. Mosesl

"Who?"

"Ryder P. Moses! Where you been, trucker?"

"Who is he?"

"Ryder -1"

"crazy — "

"weird — "

/.P. -l„

"dangerous — "

"probly a cop — "

"Moses!"

"He's out there tonightl"

"I copied him going eastbound."

"I copied him westbound."

"I copied him standing still on an overpass."

Ryder P. Moses!

On 8o tonight. Out there somewhere. Which set of lights, which channel, is he listening? Does he know we know?

What do we know?

Only.that he's been copied on and around 8o every night for a couple weeks now and that he's a terminal case of the heebie-jeebs, he's an overdose of strange. He's been getting worse and worse, wilder and wilder, breaking every trucker commandment and getting away with it. Ryder P. Moses, he says, no handle, no Gutslinger or Green Monster or Oklahoma Crude, just Ryder P. Moses. No games with the Smokies, no hide-and-seek, just an open challenge. This is Ryder P. Moses eastbound at 260, going ninety per, he says. Catch me if you can. But the Smokies can't, and it bugs the piss out of them, so they're thick as flies along Nebraska 8o, hunting for the crazy son, nailing poor innocent everyday truckers poking at seventy-five. Ryder P. Moses. Memorizes your license, your make, and your handle, then describes you from miles away, when you can't see another light on the entire plain, and tells you he's right behind you, watch out, here he comes right up your ass, watch out watch out! Modulating from what must be an illegal amount of wattage, coming on sometimes with "Ici Radio Canada" and gibbering phony frog over the CB, warning of ten-truck pileups and collapsed overpasses that never appear, leading truckers to put the hammer down right into a Smokey with a picture machine till nobody knows who to believe over the Band anymore. Till conversations start with "I am not now nor have I ever been Ryder P. Moses." A truck driver's gremlin that everyone has either heard or heard about, but no one has ever seen.

"Who is this Ryder P. Moses? Int that name familiar?"

"Wunt he that crazy independent got hisself shot up during the Troubles?"

"Wunt he a leg-breaker for the Teamsters?"

"Dint he use to be with P.I.E.?"

"Allied?"

"Continental Freightways?"

"drive a 25oo-gallon oil tanker?"

run liquor during Prohibition?"

"run nylons during the War?"

"run turkeys during Christmas?"

"Int that the guy? Sure it is."

"Short fella."

"Tall guy."

"Scar on his forehead, walks with a limp, left-hand index finger is missing."

"Sure, right, wears a leather jacket."

"and a down vest."

"and a lumber jacket and a Hawaiian shirt and a crucifix round his neck."

"Sure, that's the fella, medium height, always dressed in black. Ryder P. Moses."

"Dint he die a couple years back?"

"Sheeit, they aint no such person an never was."

"Ryder P. who?"

"Moses. This is Ryder P. Moses."

"What? Who said that?1"

"I did. Good evening, gentlemen."

Fingers fumble for volume knobs and squelch controls, conversations are dropped and attention turned. The voice is deep and emphatic.

"I'm Ryder P. Moses and I can outhaul, outhonk, outclutch any leadfoot this side of truckers' heaven. I'm half Mack, half Peterbilt, and half Sherman don't-tread-on-me tank. I drink fifty gallons of propane for breakfast and fart pure poison, I got steel-mesh teeth, a chrome-plated nose, and three feet of stick on the floor. I'm the Paul mother-lovin Bunyan of the Interstate system and I don't care who knows it. I'm Ryder P. Moses and all you people are driving on my goddam road. Don't you spit, don't you litter, don't you pee on the pavement. Just mind your p's and q's and we won't have any trouble."

Trucks pull alongside each other, the drivers peering across suspiciously, then both wave hands over head to deny guilt. They change channels and check each other outhandle, company, destination. They gang up on other loners and demand identification, challenge each other with trivia as if the intruder were a Martian or a Nazi spy. What's the capital of Tennessee, Tennessee Stomper? How far from Laramie to Cheyenne town, Casper Kid? Who won the '38 World Series, Truckin Poppa?

Small convoys form, grow larger, posses ranging eastbound and westbound on I-8o. Only the CB can prove that the enemy is not among them, not the neighboring pair of taillights, the row of red up top like Orion's belt. He scares them for a moment, this Ryder P. Moses, scares them out of the air and back into their jarring hotboxes, back to work. But he thrills them a little, too.

"You still there fellas? Good. It's question-and-answer period. Answer me this: do you know where your wife or loved one is right now? I mean really know for sure? You been gone a long time fellas, and you know how they are. Weak before Temptation. That's why we loveem, that's how we get next to em in the first place, int it, fellas? There's just no telling what they're up to, is there? How bout that Alabama Rebel, you know where that little girl of yours is right now? What she's gettin herself into? This minute? And you there, Overload, how come the old lady's always so tired when you pull in late at night? What's she done to be so fagged out? She aint been haulin freight all day like you have. Or has she? I tell you fellas, take a tip from old Ryder P., you cain't everbe certain of a thing in this world. You out here ridin the Interstate, somebody's likely back home ridin that little girl. I mean just think about it, think about the way she looks, the faces she makes, the way she starts to smell, the things she says. The noises she makes. Now picture them shoes under that bed, aint they a little too big? Since when did you wear size twelves? Buddy, I hate to break it to you but maybe she's right now giving it, giving those faces and that smell and those noises, giving it all to some other guy.

"Some size twelve.

"You know how they are, those women, you see them in the truckstops pouring coffee. All those Billie Raes and Bobbi Sues, those Debbies and Annettes, those ass-twitching little things you marry and try to keep in a house. You know how they are. They're not built for one man, fellas, it's a fact of nature. I just want you to think about that for a while, chew on it, remember the last time you saw your woman and figure how long it'll be before you see her again. Think on it, fellas."

And, over the cursing and threats of truckers flooding his channel, he begins to sing -

They curse and threaten but none of them turn him off. And some do think on it. Think as they have so many times before, distrusting with or without evidence, hundred-mile stretches of loneliness and paranoia. How can they know for sure their woman is any different from what they believe all women they meet to be — willing, hot, eager for action? Game in season. What does she do, all that riding time?

I imagine — as I'm hauling Back this load, You waiting for me — at the finish.Of the road. But as I wait for your hello There's not a sound. I start to weep, You're not asleep, You're slippin round.

The truckers overcrowd the channel in their rush to copy him, producing only a squarking complaint, something like a chorus of "Old MacDonald" sung from fifty fathoms deep. Finally the voice of Sweetpea comes through the jam and the others defer to her, as they always do. They have almost all seen her at one time or another, at some table in the Truckers Only section of this or that pit stop, and know she is a regular old gal, handsome-looking in a country sort of way and able to field a joke and toss it back. Not so brassy as Colorado Hooker, not so butch as Flatbed Mama, you'd let that Sweetpea carry your load any old day.

"How bout that Ryder P. Moses, how bout that Ryder P. Moses, you out there, sugar? You like to modulate with me a little bit?"

The truckers listen, envying the crazy son for this bit of female attention.

"Ryder P.? This is that Sweetpea moving along bout that 390 mark, do you copy me?"

"Ah yes, the Grande Dame of the Open Road! How's everything with Your Highness tonight?"

"Oh, passable, Mr. Moses, passable. But you don't sound none too good yourself, if you don't mind my saying. I mean we're just worried sick about you. You sound a little — overstrained?"

"Au contraire, Madam, au contraire."

She's got him, she has. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

"Now tell me, honey, when's the last time you had yourself any sleep?"

"Sleep? Sleep she says! Who sleeps?"

"Why just evrybody, Mr. Moses. It's a natural fact."

"That, Madam, is where you are mistaken. Sleep is obsolete, a thing of the bygone ages. It's been synthesized, chemically duplicated and sold at your corner apothecary. You can load up on it before a long trip — "

"Now I just don't know what you're talkin bout."

"Insensibility, Madam, stupor. The gift of Morpheus."

"Fun is fun, Ryder P. Moses, but you just not making sense. We are not amused. And we all getting a little bit tired of all your prankin around. And we — "

"Tired, did you say? Depressed? Overweight? Got that rundown feeling? Miles to go before you sleep? Friends and neighbors, I got just the thing for you, a miracle of modern pharmacology! Vim and vigor, zip and zest, bright eyes and bushy tails — all these can be yours, neighbors, relief is just a swallow away! A couple of Co-Pilots in the morning orange juice, Purple Hearts for lunch, a mouthful of Coast-to-Coast for the wee hours of the night, and you'll droop no more. Ladies and gents, the best cure for time and distance is Speed. And we're all familiar with that, aren't we folks? We've all popped a little pep in our day, haven't we? Puts you on top of the world and clears your sinuses to boot. Wire yourself home with a little methamphetamine sulfate, melts in your mind, not in your mouth. No chocolate mess. Step right up and get on the ride, pay no heed to that man with the eight-ball eyes! Start with a little Propadrine maybe, from the little woman's medicine cabinet? Clear up that stuffy nose? Then work your way up to the full-tilt boogie, twelve-plus grams of Crystal a dayl It kind of grows on you, doesn't it, neighbor? Start eating that Sleep and you won't want to eat anything else. You know all about it, don't you, brothers and sisters of the Civilian Band, you've all been on that roller coaster. The only way to fly."

"Now, Ryder, you just calm — "

Benzedrine, Dexedrine, We got the stash!

he chants like a high-school cheerleader,

Another thousand miles Before the crash.

"Mr. Moses, you can't — "

Coffee and aspirin, No-Doz, meth. Spasms, hypertension, Narcolepsy, death.

Alpha, methyl, Phenyl too, Ethyl-amine's good for you!

Cause when you're up you're up, An when you're down you're down, But when you're up behind Crystal You're upside down!

The airwaves crackle with annoyance. Singing on the CB1 Sassing their woman, their Sweetpea, with drug talk and foursyllable words!

"man's crazy — "

"s'got to go — "

"FCC ever hears — "

"fix his wagon — "

"— like to catch — "

"hophead — "

"pill-poppin — "

"weird-talkin — "

"turn him off!"

"Now boys," modulates Sweetpea, cooing soft and smooth, "I'm sure we can talk this whole thing out. Ryder P., honey, whoever you are, you must be runnin out of fuel. I mean you been going at it for days now, flittin round this Innerstate never coming to light. Must be just all out by now, aren't you?"

"I'm going strong, little lady, I got a bottle full of energy left and a thermos of Maxwell House to wash them down with."

"I don't mean that, Mr. Moses, I mean fuel awl. Int your tanks a little low? Must be runnin pert near empty, aren't you?"

"Madam, you have a point."

"Well if you don't fuel up pretty soon, you just gon be out of luck, Mister, they isn't but one more place westbound between here and that Grand Island town. Now Imo pull in that Bosselman's up ahead, fill this old hog of mine up. Wynch you just join me, I'll buy you a cup of coffee and we'll have us a little chitchat? That truck you got, whatever it is, can't run on no pills."

"Madam, it's a date. I got five or six miles to do and then it's Bosselman's for me and Old Paint here. Yes indeedy."

The other channels come alive. Bosselman's, on the westbound, he's coming down! That Sweetpea could talk tears from a statue, an oyster from its shell. Ryder P. Moses in person, hotdam!

They barrel onto the off-ramp, eastbound and westbound, full tanks and empty, a steady caravan of light bleeding off the main artery, leaving only scattered four-wheelers to carry on. They line up behind the diner in rows, twin stacks belching, all ears.

"This is that Ryder P. Moses, this is that Ryder P. Moses, in the parking lot at Bosselman's. Meet you in the coffee shop, Sweetpea."

Cab doors swing open and they vault down onto the gravel, some kind of reverse Grand Prix start, with men trotting away from their machines to the diner. They stampede at the door and mill suspiciously. Is that him, is that him? Faces begin to connect with handles, remembered from some previous nighttime break. Hey, there's old Roadrunner, Roadrunner, this is Arkansas Traveler, I known him from before, he aint it, who's that over there? Overload, you say? You was up on 1-29 the other night, north of Council Bluffs, wunt you? What you mean no, I had you on for pert near a halfhour! You were where? Who says? Roadrunner, how could you talk to him on Nebraska 83 when I'm talking to him on I29? Overload, somebody been takin your name in vain. What's that? You modulated with me yesterday from Rawlins? Buddy, I'm out of that Davenport town last evening, I'm westbound. Clutch Cargo, the one and only, always was and always will be. You're kidding! The name-droppin snake! Fellas we got to get to the bottom of this, but quick.

It begins to be clear, as they form into groups of three or four who can vouch for each other, that this Ryder P. Moses works in mysterious ways. That his voice, strained through capacitors and diodes, can pass for any of theirs, that he knows them, handle and style. It's outrageous, it is, it's like stealing mail or wiretapping, like forgery. How long has he gotten away with it, what has he said using their identities, what secrets spilled or discovered? If Ryder P. Moses has been each of them from time to time, what is to stop him from being one of them now? Which old boy among them is running a double life, which has got a glazed look around the eyes, a guilty twitch at the mouth? They file in to find Sweetpea sitting at a booth, alone.

"Boys," she says, "I believe I just been stood up."

They grumble back to their rigs, leaving waitresses with order pads gaping. The civilians in the diner buzz and puzzle — some mass, vigilante threat? Teamster extortion? Paramilitary maneuvers? They didn't like the menu? The trucks roar from the Bosselman's abruptly as they came.

On the Interstate again, they hear the story from Axle Sally. Sally broadcasts from the Husky three miles up on the eastbound side. Seems a cattle truck is pulled up by the pumps there, left idling. The boy doesn't see the driver, all he knows is it's pretty ripe, even for a stock-hauler. Some thing more than the usual cowshit oozing out from the air spaces. He tries to get a look inside but it's hard to get that close with the smell and all, so he grabs his flashlight and plays it around in back. And what do you think he sees? Dead. Dead for some time from the look of them, ribs showing, legs splayed, a heap of bad meat. Between the time it takes the boy to run in to tell Sally till they get back out to the pumps, whoever it was driving the thing has pumped himself twenty gallons and taken a powder. Then comes the call to Sally's radio, put it on my tab, he says. Ryder P. Moses, westbound.

They can smell it in their minds, the men who have run cattle or have had a stock wagon park beside them in the sleeping lot of some truckstop, the thought of it makes them near sick. Crazy. Stone wild crazy.

"Hello there again, friends and neighbors, this is Ryder P. Moses, the Demon of the Dotted Line, the Houdini of the Highways. Hell on eighteen wheels. Sorry if I inconvenienced anybody with the little change of plans there, but fuel oil was going for two cents a gallon cheaper at the Husky, and I never could pass up a bargain. Funny I didn't see any of you folks there, y'ought to be a little sharper with your consumer affairs. These are hard times, people, don't see how you can afford to let that kind of savings go by. I mean us truckers of all people should see the writing on the wall, the bad news in the dollars-and-cents department. Do we 'Keep America Moving' or don't we? And you know as well as me, there aint shit moving these days. Poor honest independent don't have a Chinaman's chance, and even Union people are being unsaddled left and right. Hard times, children. Just isn't enough stuff has to get from here to there to keep us in business. Hell, the only way to make it is to carry miscellaneous freight. Get that per-item charge on a full load and you're golden. Miscellaneous — "

(The blue flashers are coming now, zipping by the west bound truckers, sirenless in twos and threes, breaking onto the channel to say don't panic, boys, all we want is the cattle truck. All the trophy we need for tonight is Moses, you just lay back and relax. Oh those Smokies, when they set their minds to a thing they don't hold back, they hump after it full choke and don't spare the horse. Ryder P. Moses, your ass is grass. Smokey the Bear on your case and he will douse your fire. Oh yes.)

"freight. Miscellaneous freight. Think about it, friends and neighbors, brothers and sisters, think about what exactly it is we haul all over God's creation here, about the goods and what they mean. About what they actually mean to you and me and everyone else in this great and good corporate land of ours. Think of what you're hauling right now. Ambergris for Amarillo? Gaskets for Gary? Oil for Ogallala, submarines for Schenectady? Veal for Vermillion?"

(The Smokies moving up at nearly a hundred per, a shooting stream in the outside lane, for once allied to the truckers.)

"Tomato for Mankato, manna for Tarzana, stew for Kalamazoo, jerky for Albuquerque. Fruit for Butte."

(Outdistancing all the legitimate truckers, the Smokies are a blue pulsing in the sky ahead, the whole night on the blink.)

"Boise potatoes for Pittsburgh pots. Scottsbluff sugar for Tampa tea. Forage and fertilizer. Guns and caskets. Bull semen and hamburger. Sweet-corn, soy, stethoscopes and slide rules. Androids and zinnias. But folks, somehow we always come back empty. Come back less than we went. Diminished. It's a law of nature, it is, a law — "

They come upon it at the 375 marker, a convention of Bears flashing around a cattle truck on the shoulder of the road. What looks to be a boy or a very young man spreadeagled against the side of the cab, a half-dozen official hands probing his hidden regions. The trucks slow, one by one, but there is no room to stop. They roll down their copilot windows, but the only smell is the thick electric-blue of too many cops in one place.

"You see im? You see im? Just a kid!"

"prolly stole it in the first place — "

"gone crazy on drugs — "

"fuckin hippie or somethin — "

"— got his ass but good — "

"know who he is?"

"know his handle?"

"seen im before?"

"the end of him, anyhow."

All order and etiquette gone with the excitement, they chew it over among themselves — who he might be, why he went wrong, what they'll do with him. Curiosity, and already a kind of disappointment. That soon it will be all over, all explained, held under the dull light of police classification, made into just some crackpot kid who took a few too many diet pills to help him through the night. It is hard to believe that the pale, skinny boy frisked in their headlights was who kept them turned around for weeks, who pried his way into their nightmares, who haunted the CB and outran the Smokies. That he could be the one who made the hours between Lincoln and Cheyenne melt into suspense and tension, that he could be -

"Ryder P. Moses, westbound on 8o. Where are all you people?"

"Who?"

"What?"

"Where?"

"Ryder P. Moses, who else? Out here under that big black sky, all by his lonesome. I sure would preciate some company. Seems like you all dropped out of the running a ways back. Thought I seen some Bear tracks in my rearview, maybe that's it. Now it's just me an a couple tons of beef. Can't say these steers is much for conversation, though. Nosir, you just can't beat a little palaver with your truckin brothers and sisters on the old CB to pass the time. Do I have a copy out there? Anybody?"

They switch to the channel they agreed on at the Bosselman's, and the word goes on down the line. He's still loose! He's still out there! The strategy is agreed on quickly — silent running. Let him sweat it out alone, talk to himself for a while, and haul ass to catch him. It will be a race.

(Coyote, in an empty flatbed, takes the lead.)

"You're probably all wondering why I called you together tonight. Education. I mean to tell you some things you ought to know. Things about life, death, eternity. You know, tricks of the trade. The popular mechanics of the soul. A little exchange of ideas, communication, I-talk-you-listen, right?"

(Up ahead, far ahead, Coyote sees taillights. Taillights moving at least as fast as he, almost eighty-five in a strong crosswind. He muscles the clutch and puts the hammer down.)

"Friends, it's all a matter of wheels. Cycles. Clock hand always ends up where it started out, sun always dips back under the cornfield, people always plowed back into the ground. Take this beef chain I'm in on. We haul the semen to stud, the calves to rangeland, the one-year-olds to the feedlot, then to the slaughterhouse the packer the supermarket the corner butcher the table of J.Q. Public. J.Q. scarfs it down, puts a little body in his jizz, pumps a baby a year into the wife till his heart fattens and flops, and next thing you know he's pushing up grass on the lone pray-ree. You always end up less than what you were. The universe itself is shrinking. In cycles."

(Coyote closes to within a hundred yards. It is a cattle truck. He can smell it through his vent. When he tries to come closer it accelerates over a hundred, back end careening over two lanes. Coyote feels himself losing control, eases up. The cattle truck eases too, keeping a steady hundred yards between them. They settle back to eighty per.)

"Engines. You can grease them, oil them, dean their filters and replace their plugs, recharge them, antifreeze and STP them, treat them like a member of the family, but poppa, the miles take their toll, Time and Distance bring us all to rust. We haul engines from Plant A to Plant B to be seeded in bodies, we haul them to the dealers, buy them and waltz around a couple numbers, then drag them to the scrapyard. Junk City, U.S.A., where they break down into the-iron ore of a million years from now. Some cycles take longer than others. Everything in this world is a long fall, a coming to rest, and an engine only affects where the landing will be.

"The cure for Time and Distance is Speed. Did you know that if you could travel at the speed of light you'd never age? That if you went any faster than it, you would get younger? Think about that one, friends and neighbors — a cycle reversed. What happens when you reach year zero, egg-andtadpole time, and keep speeding along? Do you turn into your parents? Put that in your carburetor and slosh it around."

And on he goes, into Relativity, the relationship of matter and energy, into the theory of the universe as a great Mobius strip, a snake swallowing its own tail. Leaving Coyote far behind, though the hundred yards between stays constant. On he goes, into the life of a cell, gerontology, cryogenics, hibernation theory. Through the seven stages of man and beyond, through the history of aging, the literature of immortality.

(Through Grand Island and Kearney, through Lexington and Cozad and Gothenburg, with Coyote at his heels, through a hundred high-speed miles of physics and biology and lunatic-fringe theology.)

"You can beat them, though, all these cycles. Oh yes, I've found the way. Never stop. If you never stop you can outrun them. It's when you lose your momentum that they get you.

"Take Sleep, the old whore. The seducer of the vital spark. Ever look at yourself in the mirror after Sleep has had hold of you, ever check your face out? Eyes pouched, neck lined, mouth puckered, it's all been worked on, cycled. Aged. Wrinkle City. The cycle catches you napping and carries you off a little closer to the ground. Sleep, ladies, when it has you under, those crows come tiptoeing on your face, sinking their tracks into you. Sleep, gents, you wake from her half stiff with urine, stumble out to do an old man's aimless, too-yellow pee. It bloats your prostate, pulls your paunch, plugs your ears, and gauzes your eyes. It sucks you, Sleep, sucks you dry and empty, strains the dream from your mind and the life from your body."

(Reflector posts ripping by, engine complaining, the two of them barreling into Nebraska on the far edge of control.)

"And you people let it have you, you surrender with open arms. Not me. Not Ryder P. Moses. I swallow my sleep in capsules and keep one step ahead. Rest not, rust not. Once you break from the cycle, escape that dull gravity, then, people, you travel in a straight line and there is nothing so pure in this world. The Interstate goes on forever and you never have to get off.

"And it's beautiful. Beautiful. The things a sleeper never sees open up to you. The most beautiful dream is the waking one, the one that never ends. From a straight line you see all the cycles going on without you, night fading in and out, the sun's arch, stars forming and shifting in their signs. The night especially, the blacker the better, your headlights making a ghost of color on the roadside, focusing to climb the whiteline. You feel like you can ride deeper and deeper into it, that night is a state you never cross, but only get closer and closer to its center. And in the daytime there's the static of cornfields, cornfields, cornfields, flat monotony like a hum in your eye, like you're going so fast it seems you're standing still, that the country is a still life on your windshield."

(It begins to weave gently in front of Coyote now, easing to the far right, nicking the shoulder gravel, straightening for a few miles, then drifting left. Nodding. Coyote hangs back a little farther, held at bay by a whiff of danger.)

"Do you know what metaphor is, truckin mamas and poppas? Have you ever met with it in your waking hours? Benzedrine, there's a metaphor for you, and a good one. For sleep. It serves the same purpose but makes you understand better, makes everything clearer, opens the way to more metaphor. Friends and neighbors, have you ever seen dinosaurs lumbering past you, the road sizzle like a fuse, night drip down like old blood? I have, people, I've seen things only gods and the grandfather stars have seen, I've seen dead men sit in my cab beside me and living ones melt like wax. When you break through the cycle you're beyond the laws of man, beyond CB manners or Smokies' sirens or statutes of limitations. You're beyond the laws of nature, time, gravity, friction, forget them. The only way to win is never to stop. Never to stop. Never to stop."

The sentences are strung out now, a full minute or two between them.

"The only escape from friction is a vacuum."

(Miles flying under, North Platte glowing vaguely ahead on the horizon, Coyote, dogged, hangs on.)

There is an inexplicable crackling on the wire, as if he were growing distant. There is nothing for miles to interfere between. them. "The shortest distance — between twd points — ahh — a straight line."

(Two alone on the plain, tunneling Nebraska darkness.)

"Even the earth — is falling. Even — the sun — is burning out."

(The side-to-side drifting more pronounced now, returns to the middle more brief. Coyote strains to pick the voice from electric jam, North Platte's display brightens. Miles pass.)

"Straight — "

There is a very loud crackling now, his speaker open but his words hung, a crackling past the Brady exit, past Maxwell. (Coyote creeping up a bit, then lagging as the stockhauler picks up speed and begins to slalom for real, Coyote tailing it like a hunter after a gut-ripped animal spilling its last, and louder crackling as it lurches, fishtails, and lurches ahead wheels screaming smoke spewing saved only by the straightness of the road and crackling back when Coyote breaks into the Band yelling Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! pulling horn and flicking lights till the truck ahead steadies, straddling half on half off the right shoulder in direct line with the upspeeding concrete support of an overpass and he speaks. Calm and clear and direct.)

"This is Ryder P. Moses," he says. "Going west. Good night and happy motoring."

(Coyote swerves through the flameout, fights for the road as the sky begins a rain of beef.)