Ghost Lights by Lydia Millet (classic fiction txt) 📕

Yet Gretel. Gretel had picked him.

Maybe she was simply unaware that there were other options. Much could be ascribed to ignorance, in the world.

And anyway the fitness of these bodies was only partly a reflection on the men themselves. It was a fitness achieved by the state, in a sense, or at least the cost of the fitness was borne by the state. Also the state-sanctioned deployment of the fit and muscular bodies (which were in no way similar to Hal’s body, sadly for him) was further augmented by a wide variety of complex and powerful weapons, explosives, and multimillion-dollar, high-tech delivery systems for same. When the state chose to spend roughly the same on its military as on all other things combined, the owners of these now-fit and muscular bodies were the beneficiaries.

True, their occupation could also bring sudden death. But so could many occupations. Sewage work, for instance. No one wept for the sewage workers. Or the electric-light-and-power men. Life insurance companies hated them. Were they needed? They were. Were they acclaimed as heroes when they died? They were not. Same with miners, truck drivers, roofers, all the guys with high premature mortality rates, or PMRs, as the insurance industry called them. Even doctors had a high PMR, the cause being suicide.

In Hal’s line of work, which was also conducted in defense of the state, a fit, muscular body was not required. As a result employees of the Internal Revenue Service often suffered from a wide range of their own work-related ailments, including migraines, coronary artery disease, chronic obesity, and carpal tunnel syndrome. These were admittedly less glamorous than battleground injuries. Yet the discomfort was real. And like the sewage workers and the electricity guys, if Hal were to be killed in the line of duty he would not be mourned as a fallen hero. Despite the fact that he had toiled not for private industry but in the unflagging service of his country and all that it stood for, no Taps would play for him.

IRS service did not, however, happen to carry a high PMR.

But finally it was hard to sustain resentment toward the Coast Guarders. Armed forces personnel were not as bad as cops, when it came to the aggregate probability of antisocial personality disorder. They had a different makeup. They were not homicidal so much as Freudian; they liked to feel the presence of a constant father. And their fringe benefits included fit and muscular bodies.

Still, one or two might be behind on their taxes.

He smiled privately at the horizon, a hair-thin line between two shades of blue.

•

The armed forces took small powerboats from Monkey River Town, loaded with personnel so that they lay low in the water. Roger was not coming with them. There was a Coast Guard guy of lower rank, in blue, whose name Hal did not catch at first. Hans told him he could call the guy “Lieutenant.”

There were others in camouflage, some in berets, all wearing mirrored sunglasses through which it was impossible to establish eye contact. His fellow Americans were bedecked in chunky black equipment, belts and holsters and field packs and canteens and knives; they wore headsets and spoke to each other in clipped undertones, as though everything they said was both highly confidential and extremely important.

The sheer weight of their accessories, Hal thought, could capsize the boat if they all moved at once.

The local cadets had no veneer of soldiery and hardly any gear either. Their beige uniforms hung loosely on them and Hal thought they looked eighteen or younger, thin and lost.

“How come they need all those guns? We’re just looking for someone in the jungle,” he whispered to Hans.

They rounded a curve in the river, which was so brown it looked more like mud than water.

“They are active-duty military. Of course they have guns.”

“What are they going to do? Shoot the trees?”

“They’re treating it like an extraction. For training purposes.”

“Uh huh.”

“By the way,” said Hans, close to his ear, “no photographs are permitted. This is an unofficial mission.”

“I didn’t bring a camera,” Hal protested, though at the same time it occurred to him that he probably should have. Documentation; proof. For Casey and Susan. “Are you kidding?”

Then the men hunched around maps, Hans among them. They appeared to be tracing routes on the maps with markers and pushing buttons on their watches. The Americans took a paternal air with the local cadets, who nodded eagerly at every directive. Hal tuned them out and gazed into the foliage growing over the stream banks. It was bushy and disordered, thick, unruly—it could hide anything. A wave of dismay rolled over him. There was no way they would find Stern.

That was all right though, in the end. Wasn’t it? He would have made an unimpeachable showing. If these Rambos could not locate Stern, Susan and Casey would never think to be disappointed in little old him.

•

After a while they tied the boats to some trees at a place in the river where there was a muddy embankment. It looked like a dirt path of some kind, mostly overgrown.

“This is the trailhead,” said Hans, and pointed at a place on the map. It was where Dylan’s brother had directed them.

“So we’re all getting out here?” asked Hal.

“There are several groups,” said Hans, as the Coast Guarders surged around him off the boats. “You will go with the BDF group. The trainees. It will be less strenuous.”

“Oh, good,” said Hal. He was being babied, but he could care less. “Little hungover, sorry to say.”

The Americans were using their black radios, or walkie-talkies, or whatever they were. Static squawked out of them, and nasal tinny voices. All of them huddled on the bank, nodding and talking; Hal grabbed his pack and stepped off the boat with barely room to walk between the broad impervious backs and the hem of reeds and bushes along the water. He stepped too far into these and soaked