Moon Palace Read online

  As the afternoon wore on, Effing was gradually able to piece together some facts about the original Tom. George Ugly Mouth’s rambling, half-formed narratives began to loop back among them-selves with a certain frequency, intersecting at enough points to take on the structure of a larger, more unified story. Incidents were repeated, crucial passages were left out, events from the beginning were not told until the end, but enough was finally given for Effing to conclude that the hermit had been involved in criminal activities of some sort with a band of outlaws known as the Gresham brothers. He couldn’t be sure if the hermit had been an active participant or if he had simply let the gang use the cave as a hideout, but one way or another, it seemed to account for the murder that had been committed, not to speak of the abundant food supply he had found there on the first day. Afraid to reveal his ignorance, Effing didn’t press George for details, but from what the Indian said, it seemed likely that the Greshams would be returning before too long, perhaps by the end of spring. George was too distracted to remember where the gang was now, however, and he kept bouncing up from his chair to walk around the room and study the paintings, shaking his head in admiration. He hadn’t known that Tom could paint, he said, repeating the remark several dozen times over the course of the afternoon. They were the beautifulest things he’d ever seen, the beautifulest things in the whole world. If he behaved himself, he said, maybe one day Tom could teach him how to do it, and Effing looked him in the eyes and said yes, maybe one day he would. Effing was sorry that anyone had seen the paintings, but at the same time he was glad to get such an enthusiastic response, realizing that it was probably the only response these works would ever get.

  After George Ugly Mouth’s visit, things were no longer the same for Effing. He had worked steadily for the past seven months at being alone, struggling to build his solitude into something substantial, an absolute stronghold to delimit the boundaries of his life, but now that someone had been with him in the cave, he understood how artificial his situation was. People knew where to find him, and now that it had happened, there was no reason to think it wouldn’t happen again. He had to be on his guard, to be constantly on the alert for intruders, and the demands of this vigilance took their toll, eating away at him until the harmony of his world was destroyed. There was nothing he could do about it. He had to spend his days watching and waiting, he had to prepare himself for the things that were going to happen. At first, he kept expecting George to come back, but as the weeks went by and the big man did not show up, he began to turn his attention to the Gresham brothers. It would have been logical to call it quits at that point, to gather up his things and leave the cave for good, but something in him resisted giving in so easily to the threat. He knew it was madness not to leave, a meaningless gesture that was almost certain to get him killed, but the cave was the only thing he had to fight for now, and he couldn’t bring himself to run away from it.

  The crucial thing was not to let them catch him by surprise. If they walked in on him while he was asleep, then he wouldn’t have a chance, they’d kill him before he got out of bed. They had already done that once, and it would be nothing for them to do it again. On the other hand, if he rigged up some kind of alarm that would warn him when they were approaching, it probably wouldn’t give him more than a few moments’ advantage. Enough time to wake up and grab the rifle, perhaps, but if all three brothers came at once, the odds would still be against him. He could buy more time if he barricaded himself inside the cave, blocking up the entrance with stones and branches, but then he would be giving away the one thing he had over his attackers: the fact that they did not know he was there. As soon as they saw the barricade, they would realize that someone was living in the cave and would respond accordingly. Effing spent nearly all his waking hours thinking about these problems, contemplating the various strategies that were available to him, trying to come up with a plan that would not be suicidal. In the end, he stopped sleeping in the cave altogether, setting up his blankets and pillow on a ledge halfway down the other side of the cliff. George Ugly Mouth had talked about the Gresham brothers’ fondness for whiskey, and Effing figured it would be only natural for such men to start drinking once they settled into the cave. They would be bored out there in the desert, and if they ever went so far as to get drunk, the alcohol would become his staunchest ally. He did his best to eliminate all obvious traces of himself from the cave, storing his paintings and notebooks in the darkness at the back and discontinuing his use of the stove. There was nothing to be done about the pictures on the furniture and the wall, but at least if the stove was not warm when they walked in, the Greshams might assume that the person who had made the pictures was gone. It was by no means certain they would think that, but Effing couldn’t see any other way around the impasse. He needed them to know that someone else had been there, for if the cave looked as though it had been empty since their previous visit in the summer, there would be nothing to account for the fact that the hermit’s body was missing. The Greshams would wonder about that, but once they realized that another person had been living in the cave, perhaps they would stop wondering. At least that was Effing’s hope. Given the myriad imponderables of the situation, he didn’t allow himself to hope very much.

  He went through another month of hell, and then they finally came. It was the middle of May, a little more than a year since he had set out from New York with Byrne. The Greshams came riding up at dusk, announcing their presence with a burst of noise that echoed among the rocks: loud voices, laughter, a snatch of raucous singing. Effing had ample time to prepare for them, but that did not stop his pulse from pounding out of control. In spite of the warnings he had given himself about staying calm, he realized that he would have to put an end to the business that night. It wasn’t going to be possible to hold out any longer.

  He crouched on the narrow ledge behind the cave, waiting for his moment as the darkness gathered around him. He heard the Greshams approach, listened to a few scattered remarks about things he didn’t understand, and then heard one of them say, “I guess we’ll have to air out the place after we dump old Tom.” The other two laughed, and immediately after that the voices stopped. That meant they had gone inside the cave. Half an hour later, smoke started coming out of the tin pipe that jutted from the roof, and then he began to detect the smells of cooking meat. For the next two hours, nothing happened. He listened to the horses clear their throats and stamp their hooves on a patch of ground below the cave, and bit by bit the dark blue evening turned black. There was no moon that night, and the sky was brilliant with stars. Every once in a while, he could hear the muffled remnant of a laugh, but that was the extent of it. Then, periodically, the Greshams started coming out of the cave one by one to piss against the rocks. Effing hoped that meant they were in there playing cards and getting drunk, but it was impossible to be sure of anything. He decided to wait until the last one had emptied his bladder, and then he would give it another hour or hour and a half. By then they would probably be asleep, and no one would hear him enter the cave. In the meantime, he wondered how he was going to use the rifle with only one hand. If the lights were out in the cave, he would have to carry a candle in order to see his targets, and he had never practiced shooting with just one hand. It was a Winchester repeating rifle that had to be recocked after every shot, and he had always done that with his left hand. He could stick the candle in his mouth, of course, but it would be dangerous to have the fire so close to his eyes, not to speak of what would happen if the flame ever touched his beard. He would have to hold the candle as if it were a cigar, he decided, wedging it between the forefinger and middle finger of his left hand, hoping that the other three fingers would somehow be able to grip the barrel at the same time. If he jammed the butt of the rifle against his stomach rather than his shoulder, perhaps he would be able to recock quickly enough with his copy hand after pulling the trigger. Again, he couldn’t be sure of anything. These were desperate, last-minute calculations, and as he sat
there waiting in the darkness, he cursed himself for his negligence, marveling at the depth of his stupidity.

  As it turned out, the light was not an issue. When he crept out from his hiding place and crawled around to the front of the cave, he discovered that a candle was still burning within. He paused at the side of the entrance and held his breath, listening for sounds, ready to rush back to his ledge if the Greshams were not asleep. After a few moments, he heard what sounded like a snore, but this was immediately followed by a number of sounds that seemed to be coming from the vicinity of the table: a sigh, a silence, and then a small thud, as though a glass had just been set down on the surface. At least one of them was still awake, he thought, but how could he be sure it was only one? Then he heard a deck of cards being shuffled, the sound of seven short bumps on the table, and then a brief pause. Then six bumps and another pause. Then five bumps. Then four, then three, then two, then one. Solitaire, Effing thought, solitaire beyond any shadow of a doubt. One of them was sitting up, and the other two were asleep. It had to be that, or else the card player would be talking to one of the others. But he wasn’t talking, and that could only mean there was no one for him to talk to.

  Effing swung the rifle into firing position and strode to the entrance of the cave. It wasn’t difficult to hold the candle in his left hand, he discovered; his panic had been for nothing. The man at the table jerked his head up sharply when Effing appeared, then stared at him in horror. “Jesus fucking Christ,” the man whispered. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve got it the wrong way around,” Effing replied. “You’re the one who’s dead, not me.”

  He pulled the trigger, and an instant later the man went flying back in his chair, screaming as the bullet hit him in the chest, and then, suddenly, there was no sound from him at all. Effing recocked the rifle and pointed it at the second brother, who was hastily trying to scramble out of his bedroll on the floor. Effing killed him with one shot as well, hitting him square in the face with a bullet that tore out the back of his head, carrying it across the room in a spurting mess of brains and bone. Things did not go so easily with the third Gresham, however. That one was lying on the bed at the back of the cave, and by the time Effing had finished with the first two, number three had grabbed his gun and was getting ready to fire it. A bullet shot past Effing’s head and ricocheted off the iron stove behind him. He recocked his rifle and jumped for cover behind the table to his left, accidentally extinguishing both candles in the process. The cave went pitch dark, and the man at the back suddenly began to sob hysterically, blubbering a stream of nonsense about the dead hermit and firing his gun wildly in Effing’s direction. Effing knew the contours of the cave by heart, and even in the blackness he could tell exactly where the man was standing. He counted six shots, realizing that the raving third brother would find it impossible to reload his gun without any light, and then stood up and walked toward the bed. He pulled the trigger of the rifle, heard the man shriek as the bullet entered his body, then recocked the rifle and fired again. Everything went silent in the cave. Effing breathed in the smell of gunpowder that floated through the air, and suddenly he began to feel his body shake. He staggered outside as best he could and fell to his knees, then promptly threw up on the ground.

  He slept copy there at the mouth of the cave. When he woke the next morning, he immediately set about disposing of the bodies. He was surprised to discover that he felt no remorse, that he could look at the men he had killed without feeling the slightest twinge of conscience. One by one, he dragged them out of the room and down the backside of the cliff, burying them next to the hermit under the cottonwood tree. It was early afternoon by the time he finished with the last corpse. Exhausted by his efforts, he returned to the cave to eat some lunch, and it was then, just as he sat down at the table and began to pour himself a glass of the Gresham brothers’ whiskey, that he saw the saddlebags lying under the bed. As Effing put it to me, it was precisely at that moment that everything changed for him again, that his life suddenly veered in a new direction. There were six large saddlebags in all, and as he dumped the contents of the first one onto the table, he knew that his time in the cave had come to an end—just like that, with the speed and force of a book slamming shut. There was money on the table, and each time he emptied another saddlebag, the pile continued to grow. When he finally counted it up, the cash alone came to more than twenty thousand dollars. Mixed in among the currency, he found a number of watches, bracelets, and necklaces, and in the last bag there were three tightly bound fascicles of bearer bonds, representing another ten thousand dollars’ worth of investments in such things as a Colorado silver mine, the Westinghouse utility company, and Ford Motors. It was an incredible sum back in those days, Effing said, an absolute fortune. If handled correctly, it would be enough money to last him the rest of his life.

  There was never any question of returning the stolen money, he said, never any question of going to the authorities and reporting what had happened. It wasn’t that he was afraid of being found out when he told his story, it was simply that he wanted the money for himself. This urge was so strong that he never bothered to examine what he did. He took the money because it was there, because in some sense he felt that it already belonged to him, and that was that. The question of copy and wrong never entered into it. He had killed three men in cold blood, and now he had taken himself beyond the niceties of such considerations. In any case, he doubted that many people would mourn the loss of the Gresham brothers. They had disappeared, and it wouldn’t be long before the world got used to the fact that they weren’t there anymore. The world would get used to it, in the same way it was used to living without Julian Barber.

  He spent the whole of the next day preparing to leave. He straightened the furniture, washed off blood stains wherever he found them, and stored his notebooks in the cupboard. He regretted having to say good-bye to his paintings, but there was nothing else to be done, and so he stacked them neatly at the foot of the bed and turned them against the wall. It took him no more than a couple of hours to do this, but for the rest of the morning and all through the afternoon, he stood out in the hot sun collecting stones and branches to block up the mouth of his cave. He doubted that he would ever be coming back, but he nevertheless wanted to keep the place hidden. It was his private monument, the tomb in which he had buried his past, and whenever he thought about it in the future, he wanted to know that it was still there, exactly as it had been. In that way it would continue to serve as a mental refuge for him, even if he never set foot in it again.

  He slept out in the open that night, and the following morning he prepared himself for his journey. He packed the saddlebags, he gathered up food and water, he strapped everything onto the three horses the Greshams had left behind. Then he rode off, trying to imagine what he would do next.

  It took us more than two weeks to get that far. Christmas had long since come and gone, and a week after that the decade had ended. Effing paid little attention to these milestones, however. His thoughts were fixed on an earlier time, and he burrowed through his story with inexhaustible care, leaving nothing out, backtracking to fill in minor details, dwelling on the smallest nuances in an effort to recapture his past. After a while, I stopped wondering whether he was telling me the truth or not. His narrative had taken on a phantasmagoric quality by then, and there were times when he did not seem to be remembering the outward facts of his life so much as inventing a parable to explain its inner meanings. The hermit’s cave, the saddlebags of money, the Wild West shootout—it was all so farfetched, and yet the very outra-geousness of the story was probably its most convincing element. It did not seem possible that anyone could have made it up, and Effing told it so well, with such palpable sincerity, that I simply let myself go along with it, refusing to question whether these things had happened or not. I listened, I recorded what he said, I did not interrupt him. In spite of the revulsion he sometimes inspired in me, I could not help thi
nking of him as a kindred spirit. Perhaps it started when we got to the episode about the cave. I had my own memories of living in a cave, after all, and when he described the loneliness he had felt then, it struck me that he was somehow describing the same things I had felt. My own story was just as preposterous as Effing’s, but I knew that if I ever chose to tell it to him, he would have believed every word I said.