Libra - Don Delillo [171]
But this wasn’t a mission to locate the social mean. They were making a crash journey over the edge. Wayne kept shaking his head to settle all the pieces. Making these shiver motions that drew a look from driver Frank. Wayne was amazed that an idea like this could even exist in America. And here he was in the middle of it, wind streaming through the car.
They stood pissing in a field in a light rain.
Wayne took the wheel with the first ruddled light breaking behind them. Radio off and windows shut now. Frank asleep in the rear seat and moaning through his crowded teeth.
“I’m still absorbing this thing,” Wayne said, looking across at Raymo. “You read science fiction?”
“Fucking crazy, Wayne?”
“There’s a quality I used to feel before a night jump. Like is this actually happening?”
“We’re talking this is real.”
“I know it’s real.”
“First they cancel Chicago right out. Then they do Miami without the motorcade. They know it’s real.”
Wayne kept studying Raymo, occasionally darting a look at the road. The car was tight and quiet, beautifully behaved.
“Like we’re racing across the night,” he said, mock-hysterical.
“They’re paying some nice money. Think of you’re doing a day’s work.”
“Like we’re hand-picked men on the biggest mission of our lives.”
They passed a convoy of military vehicles. After a while Raymo gestured toward the back seat and said, “There’s something cross my mind.”
“What?”
“I’m thinking I ought to put him down.”
“What? Your dog?”
“He lost all coordination. He tries to get up, he can’t keep his paws from sliding out.”
“When the nervous system goes.”
“I hate to take him to the box. They gas them in a box.”
“You don’t want gas.”
“I hate the idea they use gas.”
“Some things you know what has to be done.”
“I had this dog since before Girón.”
“But you don’t have the heart.”
“You hate to be the one.”
“I’m stopping first chance,” Wayne said.
He studied Raymo’s face, which showed nothing, and five miles farther on he took an exit for a regional airport.
He had his hunting knife wrapped in a couple of sweaters in his khaki poke.
He stopped on the grassy border of a long straight road that ran alongside a chain-link fence with barbed wire canted at the top. He got out and waited while Raymo eased the big dog onto the grass. Silhouettes of hangars and small planes. Raymo got in the car and drove fifty yards and stopped. The dog stood by the side of the road. Wayne approached from the rear, standing over the animal, straddling it. Stars still out. He grabbed the dog’s scruff and lifted hard. The front paws paddled air and Wayne moved his knife-hand under the dog’s jaw. He growled, cutting the animal’s throat. Then he let go with the left hand. The dog fell flat and hard, lying between Wayne’s feet, blood running. He growled at it again and walked to the car, holding the bloody knife high. He wanted Raymo to see it, just as a sign, a gesture that had no meaning you could put into words.
He was able to sleep now. They all slept for a brief time in the late morning. Hours later in the dark they picked up the first pulse of Dallas on the radio, a scratch and rustle at the edge of the band, and they listened to an eerie voice ride across the long night.
“Tell you something, dear hearts, Big D is ner-vus tonight. Getting real close to the time. Notice how people saying scaaaary things. Feel night come rushing down. Don’t y”all sense it around you? Danger in the air. You can see it in the streets. Billboards. Bumper stickers. Handbills. They’re saying awful things about our leaders. I’m walking down the street this morning and there’s a zigzag thing painted on a storewindow and it hits me all at once like it’s a swastika. Do you think I’m making it up? I’m not making it up. Let me pass a thought through the ozone just to get your clock unwound. How do we know it’s really him that’s coming to town? Don’t you know the rumors he travels with a dozen look-alikes when he goes into no man’s land? Just to disorient the enemy. So maybe we’re getting Jack