Michael Dibdin - Dark Specter

So I may have sounded slightly abrupt when I answered the phone. I thought it might be someone trying to sell me a home improvement scam or a carpet-cleaning service. This was the time they usually called. Instead, I heard a hazily familiar voice.

“Phil? How you doing, man? This is Sam. Remember me?”

It took me a moment to work it out.

“Oh, hi,” I replied flatly. “How are you?”

“Good! Vince wrote me with your number. So what are you doing?”

“I’m a teacher.”

Sam’s laugh made him real for me again. How often I had heard it ring out as we cracked up helplessly over some nonsense which tickled our drug-fused synapses!

“No, man! Like what are you doing now? Tonight?”

“Tonight?”

I frowned.

“Where are you calling from, Sam?”

“Right here in town.”

“In St. Paul?”

“Other side of the river. Where are you at? Vince gave me the street address. Maplewood, right? Can I get a cab out there?”

There was no way I wanted Sam to come to our modest tract house, identical to all the others in our neat, convenient suburb. The distance between my present lifestyle and the one I had shared with Sam and the others could not be measured in years. I had become the kind of person we all despised then, myself included. I was faithful to my wife, my strongest drug was whisky, and although some of my rock albums were still lined up beneath the stereo, I never played them any more. But part of my new persona was a concern for the feelings of others, and although I had no desire to see Sam again, neither did I want to seem rude. So after conferring with Rachael, I eventually agreed to meet him for a drink.

My choice of venue was Shaunessey’s, a self-styled “Irish pub” located in a new shopping precinct in downtown Minneapolis. It was snowing lightly, and I drove with care. The Mississippi was frozen over, as bleak and bare as the concrete freeway. I left our sensible Chevy Nova in a multilevel parking garage and walked the three blocks to the bar, trying to figure out how to fill a decent amount of time with someone I would never have chosen to see again. Still, it was no big deal. A couple of hours, a couple of drinks, and Sam would be history.

The first thing that struck me was how relaxed he seemed, how serene. Unlike Vince, or for that matter me, he didn’t seem to have changed one iota from the person I remembered. He had aged, of course, but his lean, bony frame and ferrety features had taken it well, merely tautening up a little, shrinking to a sinewy, leathery essence. His straight mousy hair was as long as ever, tied back in a ponytail, and his clothes-jeans, denim jacket, checked shirt and boots-epitomized the no-bullshit, low-maintenance look we all used to strive for. By comparison, I felt staid and conventional in my V-neck sweater, tweed slacks and moccasin-style loafers bought at sale prices from a department store in our local mall.

Sam didn’t seem to notice, though, or maybe didn’t care. In fact he showed almost no interest in me at all. He didn’t ask any questions about my life, and when I mentioned a few details he didn’t bother to conceal his indifference. References to my work, my marriage and my child elicited only a nod, a grunt and a slightly contemptuous smile. It was as if all that was irrelevant, and he was faintly amused that I hadn’t realized this.

Nor was he any more forthcoming about his own life. He didn’t volunteer any information, and when I asked what he’d been doing the smug smile stayed right in place.

“I’ve been through a lot of changes, man.”

There was no hint of irony in his voice. I nodded warily.

“We all have.”

Sam’s smile grew broader than ever.

“Some more than others.”

I was beginning to get annoyed. This kind of supercilious, cooler-than-thou posturing had been standard operating procedure in our former life, but it had not worn well.

“So where are you living?” I asked shortly.

He hesitated before answering, as though this was a difficult question. At the time I dismissed this as just another mannerism, an attempt to make himself look deep and mysterious.

“Out on the coast,” he said eventually.

“Any particular coast?”

I was no longer bothering to hide my irritation. But he wouldn’t be drawn.

“There’s a bunch of us,” he said. “We’ve got a place out there.”

He looked me in the eye suddenly.

“Why don’t you come out and visit us some time, Phil? See for yourself.”

For the first time, it sounded like what he was saying mattered to him. This made his complete lack of interest in my actual circumstances all the more maddening.

“I’ve got a job, Sam. I’ve got a wife and child. We go to see my parents once in a while and go camping in the summer. Vacation-wise, that’s about it.”

He didn’t seem to hear.

“Do you remember that night we went down to the Commercial Hotel and Larry and I got into that argument about God?”

He was speaking in a quiet, intense tone, leaning across the table as though he didn’t want to be overheard. I was afraid he was going to lay the whole story on me with some pseudophilosophical spin about Fate and Chance.

“Sure I do,” I replied. “It happened right here.”

Sam looked around at the Guinness posters, the Irish flags, the leprechaun figurines and all the other laboriously inauthentic decor, contrasting with the bustling team of attractive young waitpersons and the well-heeled, well-groomed clientele.

“Here?” he echoed.

I had the advantage for the first time, thanks to local knowledge, and I seized it.

“The Commercial’s long gone, of course, but this is what they put up on the same spot. That’s why I suggested we meet here.”

Sam nodded intently, as though I’d said something profound.

“That’s good, Phil. I’m real glad. Because this is where it all started.”

“Where what started?”

He looked down at his beer, which he’d hardly touched, and then back at me.

“You remember we scored all that shit, and then the cops stopped us on the way home and I ate the whole stash?”

“How could I ever forget?”

“Something happened to me that night. Something I’ve never told anyone.”

I groaned inwardly. Surely to God he wasn’t about to lay some wacko acid insight on me after all these years? Sam was still staring at me unblinkingly.

“You’re someone I could tell.”

Not if I can help it, I thought. Some hint of my feelings must have showed in my expression, because he suddenly backed off, drank some beer and went on in a normal tone of voice.

“I always really respected you, Phil. You were different than the others. You’d been in Europe and all. Plus there was that class we took together. That makes a big difference, the fact that you’ve read Blake.”

“What’s Blake got to do with it?”

It occurred to me for the first time that Sam might be slightly crazy. Maybe that year in Vietnam had taken its toll after all.

His next words seemed to confirm my suspicions.

“Blake is very important,” he whispered, as though confiding a great truth.

I shrugged.

“Try telling that to my students. Most of them don’t read anything except the funnies.”

Sam nodded.

“Do you ever get the feeling that some of them aren’t exactly real?”

I frowned. Once again he’d thrown me for a loop.

“What?”

“Don’t you ever feel that there are some of them who just don’t get it? Who never will get it? I’m sure you’re a great teacher, Phil. An inspirational teacher. But I’ll bet that when you look around the class, you see maybe five or ten people out there who just aren’t picking up the signals you’re sending. You know? They don’t get it, because they don’t have it.”

“Don’t have what?”

Sam gave me his meaningful look again.

“Soul,” he said.

It was the first time for years I had heard the word except in a religious context. “Soul” was one of those loose, capacious words we used so much, into which we could pour our feelings without having to analyze them at all. If you liked something, it had soul. If you didn’t, it hadn’t. A neat way of not thinking, but one which had also worn badly with the passing years. I felt slightly sickened by Sam’s hippie one-upmanship, with its unearned suggestions of superior insight and more radical consciousness.

“Some of my students are more gifted than others, of course,” I replied stiffly. “Some are going to get the credits they need to get into a four-year college, others will wind up delivering mail or driving a bus. My job is to educate them up to the level of their abilities, not pick out the brightest and best and stroke their egos.”

Sam smiled and shook his head.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?” I shot back.

He tossed his head slightly. The smile disappeared.

“It’s not something you can discuss over a beer. Words are such little things, Phil. You should know that.”

“Words happen to be my business,” I replied huffily.

Again he didn’t seem to hear me.

“All those nights we sat up tripping together,” he said, gazing dreamily at the tabletop. “What happened then was real, wasn’t it? Realer than anything you’d ever felt before. But you could never talk about it after, never describe what you’d seen and heard. You had to have been there. You had to have lived through it.”

I eyed him coldly.

“I don’t do drugs any more, Sam.”

“Neither do I,” he said. “I haven’t touched them since that night we were just talking about.”

Given what I’d heard about the dope intake of our boys in Vietnam, I found this hard to believe. But it was none of my business.

“OK,” I said, “so what was it that happened that night? You didn’t make a big deal of it at the time. In fact you hardly said anything about it.”

Sam smiled and nodded.

“Sure, I know. It took me months to come to terms with it at all. I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t accept it. It was all too new, too overwhelming. It wasn’t till I got back from the war that I really mastered it.”

Our eyes met.

“Is that why you volunteered to become a rifleman?” I asked.

Sam grinned delightedly.

“That’s right, man! You understand!”

He spoke with such feeling that I was almost reluctant to disappoint him.

“I just figured that since you’d done two oddball things, they might be linked.”

He nodded, still grinning.

“I had to put it to the test.”

I stared at him.

“By risking your life?”

He nodded.

“If what I learned that night was true, you see, then I possessed a secret which would give me the power of life and death over every single person on the planet.”

So he was crazy after all. I felt slightly disappointed, but also relieved.

“That’s why it was important to make sure,” he went on in the same conversational tone, “and the only way to do that was to lay my own life on the line. If I survived, against all the odds, that would prove I was right.”

My only wish was to get the hell out of there, but I controlled myself. If I walked out now, leaving him with a sense of unfinished business, I might never hear the end of this. Better to let him get it off his chest now.

“So what’s this all about, Sam?”

He didn’t reply for a moment.

“Remember that argument I had with Larry?” he murmured. “I said that God either wasn’t omnipotent or He wasn’t loving, but you couldn’t have it both ways? Well, I was wrong. You can have it both ways. And that night I was shown how.”

“Uh huh,” I prompted.

He sat looking at me.

“Well, are you going to tell me?” I asked.

He laughed.

“It’s not something that can be told, man.”

“But you said I was someone you could tell,” I retorted, childishly pleased to have caught him out.

Sam turned over the bar tab and wrote a phone number on the back. He pushed it across the table toward me.

“Come out and see us some time,” he said. “It’s very quiet, very peaceful. A good place to kick back and get your head together.”

I tried to keep a straight face.

“So what’s the deal on this place? Is it some kind of commune?”

“Kind of. We’ve got some land, all the basic stuff you need for survival. There’s about twenty of us hanging out there. They’re nice folks. You’d like them. Some great-looking chicks, too.”

I imagined a rag-taggle group of aging hippies camping out in some clearing in the woods, their hand-knit clothes reeking of woodsmoke, a pack of grimy children crawling around their feet while they strummed out-of-tune guitars and cultivated a cozy sense of moral superiority.

“I’d really like for you to join us, Phil,” Sam continued seriously “That would complete the circle. And for you it would mean a whole new life, something you can’t even begin to imagine now. But first you have to change. That’s the key to the whole thing. The old must pass away before the new can be born. First you change, then you are changed.”

I had had enough.

“I have changed,” I replied calmly. “I’ve changed a lot. Not in the twinkling of an eye, after ODing on acid, but day in, day out. That’s the kind of change I believe in, the kind that lasts.”

“My kind of change outlasts everything,” Sam said softly. “Even death.”

This was intended as a challenge, but I wasn’t going to rise to the bait. I had made my point. Now it was time to throw in the sweetener and get this guy out of my life forever.

“I really admire you, Sam,” I said. “I like it that you’re still tackling the big questions, the big issues. We were all like that once, but most of us have lost it somewhere along the way. I think it’s great that you’re still out there on the edge, but personally I can’t live like that. It turns out I work best with my feet on the ground. I’m neither proud nor ashamed of that. Maybe you’re more flexible. All I know is the kind of change you’re talking about would break me.”

Sam looked at me solemnly a long moment. Then he smiled, as if dismissing the whole matter.

“Well, it’s been good to talk to you, Phil.”

“Sure has,” I agreed heartily. “If you’re ever in town again, give me a call.”

The idea was to reduce everything that had been said to the level of a banal social encounter. I knew he wasn’t likely to pass through the Twin Cities again.

Sam shook his head decisively.

“Next time, you’ll call me.”

I edged out of the booth, gathering my things around me, asserting my separate existence.

“What are you doing here anyway?” I asked.