Free Bear and His Daughter by Robert Stone Page B

with any kind of stunts, do we, Fencer? We don’t have to have sentimental dramas to act out where we’re at.”
    Fencer and Willie looked at him sympathetically.
    “I mean, we’re all party to the same thing. I proved that by coming up here.”
    “You’re sure party to something, Fletch,” Fencer agreed. “But see, we’ve got to go up on the volcano.”
    “Literary Fletch,” Willie Wings said.
    The path they were to follow led over the rock at the edge of the mountainside. There was no path leading downward.
    “It’s gonna be dark,” Fencer said. “That’ll make it harder.”
    Fletch saw that they were waiting for him to lead.
    He took a drink from the thermos and stepped forward.
    “Maybe,” he said, “we could all begin again.”
    When he closed his eyes, he saw the formless colors of the mountain. Yellow and black. He tried to raise the thermos again but failed to muster the strength. Opening his eyes, he looked at the steep path for a moment. Then he raised the thermos and hurled it, with surprising force, into Willie’s face.
    Ax edges of rock flew up at him as he leaped; the merciless ground tore at his shoes. At times it seemed to him that he was bouncing, gliding over clefts and boulders like a hurdler. He could hear the parrot squawking and Fencer shouting “No!” Once he turned and saw Fencer start after him.
    Willie had climbed on a rock and was screaming, waving his pistol. “Don’t you play gingerbread boy with me, you fuckin’ poet!”
    Fencer had stopped and was shouting “No!” at Willie. Fletch heard a pistol shot and somewhere a bullet rang against the iron-fibered rock.
    When he heard the car engine start up, he ran faster. It was all down, over rank after rank of jagged rock.
    After a while, he found the dry bed of a stream and followed it through a dark arroyo. The farther down he went, the more difficult it became for him to see; shadow and rock grew together. After about a mile he could no longer run because the ground was too steep—he climbed downward, facing the rock wall. His knees were bloody but his feet found holds with a sure instinct. At one point a cloud passed over him, leaving him chilled through, and when the cloud had passed he saw that night was coming on the valley below. He could see the last of sunlight play on green waxy leaf in the fingers of rain forest along the lower slope. He found a stretch of smoother rock on which to rest and let the night slip over him. Sounds of a life he had not suspected rustled from the barren ground.
    Leaning back against the rock, he tried to shake the colors of the day from his mind. After a while, he discovered the remnant of a joint in his trouser pocket and, having no matches, ate it. The shadows of the valley swayed beneath his feet. In the distance he could see the lights of Corbera, the illumination of the cathedral tower and the wooden bullring.
    He began to regret that he had not seen the crater. He deserved to see it, it seemed to him, since he had come all the way and crowned the journey with a masterly escape. Willie Wings and Fencer had sealed him in a box of speed madness that interfered with the spontaneous joys of active living—they were mere circumstances, artifacts. Yet it had been necessary to escape them: the pair were overripe, deracinated by years of smoking grass in the tropics, consumed by maniac ravings and heaven knew what bizarre commitments to serpent-headed lava gods and human sacrifice.
    It was humiliating, he thought, to be forced to survive by guile, but in a crisis, could he not bring it to bear? Indeed, it seemed to him, he could.
    As the world darkened, Fletch became more and more exhilarated, and for a time he considered retracing his steps and going to the crater after all. But he stayed where he was until the moon rose and then stood up to survey the valley. As he watched, the lights of Corbera suddenly flickered and died—in a few seconds they went on, stayed on for a short time, and