he’d had a go at succumbing for different reasons.
The next day, while his brain officially dealt with Bonar Law, Carson and the Ulster Volunteers, he turned over the question of Buck. Dreams couldn’t be true, could they: that was why they were dreams. There were supposed to be premonitory dreams—the wise man sees a vision of floods, and moves his tribe to higher ground; and in his own civilization, didn’t you have dreams before job interviews, warning you against making mistakes? So why couldn’t you have post-monitory dreams? It was, if anything, a more plausible concept. He could easily have picked up something from Ann at a subliminal level, and then his brain might decide to break the news to him tactfully in his sleep. Why not?
Of course, the Buck of his dream was very different from the Buck of
The Rattler and the Rubies
. In the dream, he’d been a threatening, coarse fellow; in the film, one of nature’s prairie gentlemen. Neither image, Graham assumed hopefully, would be particularly alluring to Ann; but then both of them were false images—one on a screen, one in his head. What was the real Buck Skelton like (what was his real name, for a start)? And maybe that Buck was the one to find favour with Ann.
Baulked, Graham’s brain turned, with scarcely any encouragement, to dreams of revenge. First, he drowned the cowboy in a swimming pool of Pina Colada: the final bubblesfrom Buck’s failing lungs went unnoticed among all the froth on the pool’s surface. Then he bribed someone to put a rattlesnake in the path of Buck’s horse just as he was passing a giant cactus: the stallion reared, Buck was thrown, and as he clutched automatically at the cactus, two giant spines, as strong as steel, drove through his leather chaps and transfixed his balls as if they were cocktail sausages.
The final revenge was the best, though. If there’d been one thing Graham hated, it was the way Buck had used his sunglasses. He disliked people who wore them as proof of character; but he also felt rather primly aggressive towards the glasses themselves. He disapproved of inanimate things taking on a life of their own, trying to organize a fourth estate in the world, after people, animals and plants; it upset him, threatened him even.
He’d once read a motoring column warning drivers against wearing such glasses if their route took them through tunnels: the shifts of light were too sudden for the glasses, which took several seconds to adjust across their full range. Graham was fairly sure that Buck was not a great reader of motoring columns, and would be unprepared for this hazard as he headed north out of L.A. along the coast road. Frisco by nightfall, he’d promised the whore bitch tart splayed out over the front seat of his Coupe de Ville. The radio was tuned to Buck’s favourite bluegrass station; on the back seat lay a tray of Coor’s beer.
Just north of Big Sur they reached a natural rock tunnel. For a couple of seconds Buck slowed, then his shades readjusted themselves and he picked up speed again. They came out of the tunnel into bright sunshine at sixty miles per hour. Graham hoped Buck would have time to utter a characteristic, ‘What in hell’s sakes is goin’ on here?’, but it didn’t really matter. Ten yards from the tunnel’s mouth the Coupe de Ville smashed into the lowered blade of a thirty-two-ton bulldozer. Graham himself sat in the control seat wearing oily denims and a bright yellow hardhat. A spurt offlame appeared above the top edge of the bulldozer’s blade, followed by Buck’s body, which hurtled high over Graham’s cabin. He looked round, kicked the dozer into reverse gear, and trundled slowly over the lifeless body, mashing its bones and rolling the flesh out as thin as pastry. He put the dozer back into forward drive, pushed the wreckage of the Coupe de Ville off the side of the road and heard it bounce down towards the Pacific. Then, with a final glance over his shoulder at the
The next day, while his brain officially dealt with Bonar Law, Carson and the Ulster Volunteers, he turned over the question of Buck. Dreams couldn’t be true, could they: that was why they were dreams. There were supposed to be premonitory dreams—the wise man sees a vision of floods, and moves his tribe to higher ground; and in his own civilization, didn’t you have dreams before job interviews, warning you against making mistakes? So why couldn’t you have post-monitory dreams? It was, if anything, a more plausible concept. He could easily have picked up something from Ann at a subliminal level, and then his brain might decide to break the news to him tactfully in his sleep. Why not?
Of course, the Buck of his dream was very different from the Buck of
The Rattler and the Rubies
. In the dream, he’d been a threatening, coarse fellow; in the film, one of nature’s prairie gentlemen. Neither image, Graham assumed hopefully, would be particularly alluring to Ann; but then both of them were false images—one on a screen, one in his head. What was the real Buck Skelton like (what was his real name, for a start)? And maybe that Buck was the one to find favour with Ann.
Baulked, Graham’s brain turned, with scarcely any encouragement, to dreams of revenge. First, he drowned the cowboy in a swimming pool of Pina Colada: the final bubblesfrom Buck’s failing lungs went unnoticed among all the froth on the pool’s surface. Then he bribed someone to put a rattlesnake in the path of Buck’s horse just as he was passing a giant cactus: the stallion reared, Buck was thrown, and as he clutched automatically at the cactus, two giant spines, as strong as steel, drove through his leather chaps and transfixed his balls as if they were cocktail sausages.
The final revenge was the best, though. If there’d been one thing Graham hated, it was the way Buck had used his sunglasses. He disliked people who wore them as proof of character; but he also felt rather primly aggressive towards the glasses themselves. He disapproved of inanimate things taking on a life of their own, trying to organize a fourth estate in the world, after people, animals and plants; it upset him, threatened him even.
He’d once read a motoring column warning drivers against wearing such glasses if their route took them through tunnels: the shifts of light were too sudden for the glasses, which took several seconds to adjust across their full range. Graham was fairly sure that Buck was not a great reader of motoring columns, and would be unprepared for this hazard as he headed north out of L.A. along the coast road. Frisco by nightfall, he’d promised the whore bitch tart splayed out over the front seat of his Coupe de Ville. The radio was tuned to Buck’s favourite bluegrass station; on the back seat lay a tray of Coor’s beer.
Just north of Big Sur they reached a natural rock tunnel. For a couple of seconds Buck slowed, then his shades readjusted themselves and he picked up speed again. They came out of the tunnel into bright sunshine at sixty miles per hour. Graham hoped Buck would have time to utter a characteristic, ‘What in hell’s sakes is goin’ on here?’, but it didn’t really matter. Ten yards from the tunnel’s mouth the Coupe de Ville smashed into the lowered blade of a thirty-two-ton bulldozer. Graham himself sat in the control seat wearing oily denims and a bright yellow hardhat. A spurt offlame appeared above the top edge of the bulldozer’s blade, followed by Buck’s body, which hurtled high over Graham’s cabin. He looked round, kicked the dozer into reverse gear, and trundled slowly over the lifeless body, mashing its bones and rolling the flesh out as thin as pastry. He put the dozer back into forward drive, pushed the wreckage of the Coupe de Ville off the side of the road and heard it bounce down towards the Pacific. Then, with a final glance over his shoulder at the
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