Libra - Don Delillo [32]
David Ferrie walked in wearing an undersized panama hat and a turtleneck shirt with a drooping collar. To Mackey, who’d met him once before, he had a look of sad apology, like a man who’d betrayed a public trust. (Banister claimed he was a defrocked priest.) He moved in a languid glide, loafers slapping.
He said to Banister, “Shouldn’t be drinking this time of day.”
“What do we have in the storeroom?”
Ferrie glanced at T-Jay.
“Some old, old Springfields. Thirty-aught-six. I mean old. We have M-1s, a whole raft of Yugoslav Mausers with markings stamped in Russian if that impresses you. We have some M-4s out by Lacombe. I burnt off a magazine only yesterday. ”
“Where do we keep our scopes?” Banister said.
“Most of the scopes and mounts are out at the camp. We have some extra-long target scopes stored here. Of course it depends on what you want to shoot. Hairy big game like Fidel, you want a wide field of view because he’s always in motion. The fact is I used to admire Dr. Castro, secretly. A brief moment only. I wanted to fight by his side.”
His voice was whispered, incredulous; something about the curious paths of his own life caused him endless surprise. The face itself was disbelieving, the stark pasted brows looped high over his pale eyes. Nothing he said could be separated from the eerie facts of his appearance, least of all, apparently, by Ferrie himself.
“Where would you park a light plane below the border?” Mackey said. “Figure you’re leaving home in a hurry.”
“I’d point her right on down to Matamoros. Below Brownsville. There’s a field there. You want to go deeper into Mexico, you can play hopscotch on dry lakes. Avoid populated areas entirely.”
“No offense. How old are you?”
“Forty-five. Perfect astronaut age. I’m the dark scary side of John Glenn. Great health except for the cancer eating at my brain.”
“You’ll die violently,” Banister said.
“I want to believe it.”
“A nacho stuck in your throat.”
“I speak Spanish,” Ferrie said, amazed to hear it.
He went into the small room behind the office, where Delphine Roberts was compiling one of the lists that someone in the firm was always gathering material for. Delphine was Banister’s secretary and research aide, a nailed-down American, middle-aged, with airy spraywork hair.
“These are supposed to be runless stockings,” she said.
“Everything is supposed to be something. But it never is. That’s the nature of existence.”
“I know. You studied philosophy where was it.”
“Did you eat lunch?”
“I’m back on Metrecal.”
“But you’re a wisp, Delphine.”
He turned on the little TV.
“Why do you think a Negro would want to be a communist?” she said, running a finger down the list. “Isn’t it enough for them being colored? Why would they want a communistic tinge added on?”
“Are you saying why be greedy?”
“I’m saying don’t they have enough trouble. Besides, if you’re colored, you can’t be anything else.”
She worked at a Formica desk by the window. A cardboard shirt support was taped over a hole in the screen.
“I priced a bomb shelter last week,” Ferrie told her.
“It’s not the bombs coming out of the sky I worry about. The missile crisis came and went. It’s the troops that will just appear one quiet morning, armies landing on the beaches, paratroops dropping through the clouds. Guy received a report that the Red Chinese are massing troops in Baja California. ”
“I have private torments, Delphine. They require something larger than an army.”
They were watching As the World Turns. Ferrie sat in a folding chair with his legs crossed. He took off his hat and placed it on his right kneecap.
“I say to myself, I wonder why Delphine comes to this rat-trap office every day. A woman like her. With a background and so forth. A real pretty house on Coliseum Street. Social niceties, let’s say. The DAR.”
“This is the