a symbol. Something awful, uncontrollable and random, and then I remember she said people would rather fund an empire than pay two cents more for plastic bags and she was right about that too because I saw it on the Wal-Mart campaign when we were standing out there with our leaflets and free coffee that tasted like water. I saw it then and that’s why I left. Tamara said it. Nothing would ever change until they saw what the real price was, right when they ran their cards.
I walked between the terminals, getting on and off the conveyors and counting the replicas of clustered businesses at the end of each spur. But it wasn’t until I was sitting back at the gate watching my sixth hour of television that I realized what was going to happen. Tamara and Jules were going to blow up the Wal-Mart near Superland™. They were going to do it on the day of the sale when all those kids were there. Just like that school and how it all happened last year. They were going to do it like I said, a trashcan fire in a tent, a bomb in the center because you’d never outrun the smoke with forty aisles of junk in every direction. It was a deathtrap. And more than that, it was a symbol. One you could even see from the golden valleys of France.
I ran to the payphones and called the Farm. Black Francis answered. He said everyone had gone back to town to prepare for the action. I called Tamara’s cell phone but it had been disconnected. I called Mirror. She answered with her mouth full and I had to tell who it was twice.
“They’re saying you’re a cop, dude,” she said and swallowed.
“Listen, I need to find Tamara or Britta or Jules or any of them. Are they staying with you?”
“Seriously, dude, are you a cop?”
“Are they staying with you? Do you know where they are? Would you please just tell me?”
“No—”
I hung up.
I looked around for crickets. They were everywhere, chirping and eating their young. I ran up to one and told him that I knew someone who was going to blow up the Wal-Mart.
“What? You need a day off too?” he laughed, licking decayed plant matter off his forewing. “You should just be glad you have a job.”
The police operator said the same. I called the cable news desk too but I knew they wouldn’t report it. For the past several days they had been following two immigrant families around while they shopped at threatened stores. The head of the Church of Enlightened Capital had been on every station preaching about the fearlessness of the American consumer. They weren’t going to do anything.
I took one last look at the gate and ran. Down the center of the terminal mall, down the escalators and through the shiny phone bank rings by baggage claim I went, out the doors and onto the street. Where I caught a taxi back to town as planes arced above me flying pools of light over the Black Ocean.
29 The Batholith
It was night when I left the airport. The stars were clear and sharp through the taxi window and the terminal glowed behind, a swimming pool in the dark. We climbed out of the valley, angling through the traffic, and broke free for several miles before hitting the next checkpoint where we waited, with Bhangra rhythms pattering in the dashboard while the crickets asked us questions before careening again along the old rural highways and arterials past Pretty Little Hopes and toward the South Mall Hills.
I didn’t try to stop my thoughts from racing. Instead, I directed them into the commercial intertidal zone where Wal-Mart was and tried to come up with a plan.
I had some cash, an old credit card, a field journal and an English-Lao dictionary. Everything else was in my luggage. The cab driver said he knew a cheap motel near Superland™ and I asked him to take me there. It was called the Welcome Home. It was about half a mile from Wal-Mart in the center of the Blackberry Massacre. Opposite the motel was a Holiday Inn Business Express and at the last minute the cabbie tried to get me to stay there but I assured him I much preferred the independently owned meth lab across the street and that’s where he dropped me.
The woman who checked me in was flat-faced and part Samoan. She asked where my luggage