Free Vineland by Thomas Pynchon Page A

me. . . .”
    â€œHe’s bullshittin’ you, Prairie, he’s DEA, his business is lying.”
    â€œPlease,” Hector called, “could you do somethín about the glee club here, ’causs it’s makín me, I don’ know, weird?”
    â€œYou’re abducting my kid, Hector?”
    â€œShe wants to come with me, asshole!”
    â€œThat true, Prair?”
    The door opened. Big fat tears were rolling down her cheeks, with little swirls of violet eye makeup. “Dad, what is it?”
    â€œHe’s crazy. He escaped from the Detox.”
    â€œYou better know how to protect her, Wheeler,” the federale getting frantic now. “You better have some resources, you’re gonna wish she
was
with me before too long,
ése
, I ain’t the only stranger in town today.”
    â€œYeah you must mean that army up at my place—tell me Hector, who is that?”
    â€œAnybody less of a fool would know already. It’s a Justice Department strike force, they got military backup, and it’s beín led by your old pal himself, Brock Vond, remember him? Man who took your ol’ lady away from you, hah,
cabrón?
”
    â€œWell, shit.” Zoyd had just assumed all along they were Hector’s people, DEA plus their local dope-squad tagalongs. But Brock Vond was a federal prosecutor, a Washington, D.C., heavy and, as Hector had so helpfully recalled, the expediter of most of Zoyd’s years of long and sooner or later tearful nights down in places like the Lost Nugget. Why, at this late date, would the man be coming after Zoyd full-scale like this, unless it had something to do with Frenesi, and the old sad story?
    â€œAnd you might as well forget about goín home, chump, ’cause you got no more home, paperwork’s already in the mill to confiscate it under civil RICO, ’causs guess what, Zoyd, they found marijuana? in yer house! Yah, must’ve been two ounces of the shit, although we’re gonna call it tons.”
    â€œDad, what’s he talkin’ about?”
    â€œThey’re up ’ere all right, Trooper.”
    â€œMy diary? My hair stuff, my clothes? Desmond?”
    â€œWe’ll get ’em all back,” as she moved beside him into a one-arm embrace. He believed what he was saying, because he couldn’t quite believe the other yet. Trent could’ve been taking some artistic liberties, right? Hector could be having a Tubal fantasy provoked by watching too many cop shows?
    â€œThen I still need to know,” Zoyd addressed the beleaguered narc up on the table, “why Brock Vond and his army is doin’ this to me.”
    As if their chanting had been recitative for Hector’s aria, everyone now fell silent and attended. He stood beneath a stained-glass window made in the likeness of an eightfold Pizzic Mandala, in full sunlight a dazzling revelation in scarlet and gold, but at the moment dark, only tweaked now and then by headlights out in the street.
    â€œIt ain’t that I don’ have Hollywood connections. I know Ernie Triggerman. Yeah and Ernie’s been waitín years for the big Nostalgia Wave to move along to the sixties, which according to his demographics is the best time most people from back then are ever goín to have in their life—sad for them maybe, but not for the picture business. Our dream, Ernie’s and mine, is to locate a legendary observer-participant from those times, Frenesi Gates—your ex-ol’ lady, Zoyd, your mom, Prairie—and bring her up out of her mysterious years of underground existence, to make a Film about all those long-ago political wars, the drugs, the sex, the rock an’ roll, which th’ ultimate message will be that the real threat to America, then and now, is from th’ illegal abuse of narcotics?”
    Zoyd squinted. “Oh, Hector. . . .”
    â€œI’ll show you the figures,” Hector raved