DROPPING BOMBS ON THE SUN

January 1990

i

i

Ty Garret stood at the stern of the Dag Tadič — fifteen thousand tons of Yugoslavian freighter bound for somewhere. He watched the ship’s blue water wake lay for the horizon. Twenty degrees above the horizon a tropical sun burned in the sky. The kind that rises at six and sets at six like clockwork. Garret figured it was four in the afternoon.

A hatch opened and a man wearing a grease stained apron came on deck. He carried two steel pails filled with potato skins. He walked to the railings, set down the pails, and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his apron. The red star on the pack tagged the smokes as made in the USSR. Just the ship’s cook, Garret thought.

“Hello, chef. What’s for dinner?”

The cook lit up and released a cloud of smoke.

“Ne pričam engleski.”

Garret heard the same line from other crewmen after coming aboard.

“Do you know where I can get a drink of water?”

“Ne pričam engleski.”

“What’s the next port of call?”

“Ne pričam engleski.”

But while the crewmen shunned him, the cook lingered to stare at Garret’s shoes. Nike Airs — a little scuffed up, some blood on the side panels and laces but good enough.

“Želite pušiti?”

He was a big man for a cook. Maybe execution was on the menu. Garret knew it was coming after sundown. Just a question of who would do the job. At the moment the cook looked good for it, for even as he offered a cigarette with a smile his eyes were predacious things.

Garret flashed back ten hours.

Two Humvees mounted with .50 caliber machine guns escorted an Army supply truck onto the Colón docks at dawn. The convoy stopped thirty yards from the Dag Tadić. The ship was moored with engines ready for quick departure. A squad of Rangers dismounted from the back of the truck with Garret in tow. He was handcuffed, his face looked like the losing end of a barroom brawl.

A man in civilian clothes alighted from the lead Humvee. He wore a Panama hat and carried a canvas backpack. His name was Rigby, the CIA’s number one spook in the Canal Zone. He had been busy of late. It was day fifteen of the American invasion. Panamanian Defense Forces were crushed, Manuel Noriega was in chains, American KIAs had topped out at twenty eight. Things were muy bien. Only a few loose ends to tie up. Ty Garret was one of them.

“I’ll take him from here. You men have a piss then mount up. We’re gone in five minutes,” Rigby said.

He grabbed Garret’s arm and marched him toward the Tag Dadič. The ship’s captain and two deckhands waited at the bottom of the gangway. The captain raised his hand like a traffic cop.

“Stop. Do you have the money?”

“Hello, Pablo. Is my cargo onboard?”

“If you have the money, I will answer your question.”

Rigby tossed over the backpack. Inside was nearly six hundred grand US. Garret knew the number to the dollar. It was his backpack. He watched the captain finger the cash until satisfied.

“Yes, your cargo is onboard.”

“Then get lost.”

“I would love to but one of your destroyers is cruising offshore.”

“You’re cleared on a course of zero five zero degrees. Once underway maintain radio silence until you’re fifteen miles out. Do not screw up or you will be blown out of the water.”

The captain pulled a walkie talkie from his belt. He pressed the transmit key to call the bridge.

“Spremi se za plovidbu.”

The ship’s horn sounded twice. The deckhands rushed to release the mooring lines from their bollards. Rigby unlocked Garret’s handcuffs and shoved him onto the gangway. A stanchion slammed against his battered ribs, he buckled in pain. The captain hauled him upright and pushed him ahead. The spook walked away, Garret called after him.

“Is she safe? Did you get her out?”

“Fuck her.”

“We had a deal.”

“Fuck you too.”

“Where am I going?”

“Does it matter?”

Garret reconnected to the point in time where the cook in the grease stained apron was offering him a commie cigarette.

“No thanks,” Garret said.

“Nyema problema.”

The cook pocketed his smokes.

“Dolazite iz Američki?”

“Sorry?”

“You. Američki.”

“American? Sure. Land of the free, home of the brave.”

“Da, Američki. USA, USA. Urah, yes?”

He poked his thumb into Garret’s ribs as if knowing where it would cause the most pain. The cook was sizing him up — height, weight, fuck about factor in breaking his all American neck.

“Nyema problema,” he said.

Garret pushed away the cook’s hand.

“Actually there is a problem.”

“Što?”

“Your feet are too big for my shoes.”

The cook shrugged.

“Znam. Šteta.”

That one had the ring of I know. Too bad.

The cook picked up his pails and emptied them over the side. He watched the potato skins fall as if judging the trajectory of a six foot male weighing one hundred sixty five pounds, his legs bound with hawser rope, tossed from a freighter cruising at sixteen knots. With a little luck the body would be sucked under the keel and shredded by the propeller. He looked at Garret.

“Vidimo se kasnije.”

Judging by the smirk on the cook’s face Garret guessed that one meant See you later. The cook sauntered off, banging his steel pails against the railings like bells.

“Sure,” Garret said.

He turned back to the blue water wake laying for the horizon. Random memories came and went. The house he grew up in Boston, hiking the Appalachian Trial with a black lab named Boz, sitting on a beach with his mother to watch the sun go down and her telling him the sun wasn’t going down, not really.

“It’s the world turning away from the sun at one thousand miles per second. Isn’t that a wonderful thing to know, Ty?”

He was seven years old when his mother said those words. Even so they made perfect sense. Then out of nowhere the spook’s last words dropped in his head — “Does it matter?” Just now it sounded like the punchline of a bad joke. In the beginning it was a warning from the universe.

ii

In the beginning a woman lay naked on pearl colored sheets. A black and white TV in the corner offered the only light in the room. Onscreen was an Indian Head test pattern, the sine tone was muted. Garret was pulling on his blue jeans when he saw a painting on a table near the window — a black circle on a sheet of mulberry paper. Renegade bristles missed the paper in some places, others touched just outside the arc.

“Yours?” he said.

“Yes. It’s called ensō.”

The woman said she painted a new one each morning after burning the one she painted the day before. She said they were all made the same way. Dip a brush in black paint, clear the mind, then in the space of a single breath touch brush to paper and paint a continuous arc while maintaining an equal radius from an imagined point of center until you reach the point of the beginning.

“It’s a Buddhist symbol,” she said.

“Of what?”

“Everything. Nothing. Like the universe.”

“The universe?”

“It’s everything but it doesn’t exist.”

“When we met in the lobby you said the universe was out to get me.”

“I most certainly did.”

“How can the universe be out to get me and not exist at the same time?”

“Don’t ask me, I’m just the messenger.”

Garret looked at the fireplace. Embers and ashes blazed red. He stepped closer to the ensō.

“Grant this one a pardon. I’ll frame it and hang it in my bungalow.”

“No can do.”

“Why not? I’ll think of you every time I look at it.”

“That’s sweet, but if one of my paintings leaves this room I’ll vanish in a puff of smoke.”

Maybe she really was a little mad. But she was brilliant and funny and a wondrous lover.

“Come back to bed, Ty. Let’s have another round of fun.”

He checked his watch. It was 04:15 hours.

“I need to catch a plane and I haven’t packed.”

“Ah, yes — your business trip to Houston. What business exactly?”

“An army pal owns a string of car dealerships across the South. He specializes in custom models for wealthy clients. I deliver the custom jobs and handle the money.”

“How do you attend the University of Colorado and drive cross country at the same time? Are you a master of quantum bilocation?”

“Quantum what?”

“It’s another Buddhist thing.”

“I only work over semester breaks during the academic year and through the summer to pay the bills. This is my last trip though. I’m staying in Boulder from now on.”

She considered his words.

“It sounds disharmonious,” she said.

“Like an out of tune piano?”

“Like something in need of reconciliation.”

Garret sat on the bed and pulled on his socks and shoes.

“It isn’t a crime to drive around the country. Your pal Kerouac did it,” he said.

“Jack was a rebel looking for America.”

“Isn’t being a rebel disharmonious?”

“Not in the pursuit of truth.”

“Kerouac drank himself to death. How is that pursuing truth?”

“He got lost. The object of the mission is to not get lost.”

“The mission?” Garret said.

“Yes.”

“In a universe that doesn’t exist?”

“Yes.”

“How does that work?”

The woman sighed as she sat up. She traced the fingertips of her right hand over Garret’s eyes.

“Dalham sikkhatha santiyā,” she said.

“Wow. You and your Buddhist things.”

“What about me and my Buddhist things?”

Garret smiled.

“So far I’ve heard about Annica___”

“Impermanence.”

“Dukkha___

“Suffering.”

“And one more. Ana — something.”

“Anatta. Which is the one you shouldn’t forget. It’s the gateway to rebirth. But you probably will forget it until your last moments. It always happens to the ones like you. So I’m adding dalham sikkhatha santiyā to the list of my Buddhist things.”

“Which means what?”

“‘Resolutely train yourself to attain peace.’”

Garret laughed a little, the woman pinched his arm.

“What’s so funny?” she said.

“I’m getting life lessons from a wine swilling Buddhist who helped Jack Kerouac write Big Sur when she was sixteen.”

She made a motion with her hands as if moving from Kerouac’s ghost to Garret in the flesh.

“And she took you to her secret place in the Hotel Boulderado where she ravished you at the stroke of midnight as a vampire movie played on a portable black and white TV.”

“None of that strikes you as funny?”

“Buddha once said, ‘Life is what it is.’”

“Bullshit.”

She fell back on the bed.

“Not bad, Ty. I think we got somewhere in the Crazy Wisdom department.”

He touched her hand.

“Can I call you when I get back? We’ll go to Dot’s Diner. Best huevos rancheros in town.”

Her eyes lost focus a second, then she was back.

“It depends,” she said.

“On what?”

“On whether the universe gets you first.”

Maybe more than a little mad, Garret thought. He liked her even more. He stood and pulled on his down vest. He leaned down and kissed her cheek.

“You’re beautiful, Professor Smith.”

“Thanks for noticing.”

­­­He walked across the room and opened the door. Lamplight spilled in hallway. He looked back as the woman as she rolled on her side to watch him. Her skin glowed marblelike in the light.

“Mind if I ask a question?” he said.

“That’s why I’m here, Ty. You ask questions, I answer. For one night only.”

“Why is the universe out to get me?”

The woman — no, he thought. — the Oracle blew him a kiss.

“Does it matter?” she said.

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