Counting Up, Counting Down Read online

  In the old days, they would have been inextricably linked. Travelers went where and how the roadway allowed, and that was that. It’s different now; deconstruction has established that the roadway possesses its own existence, independent of travelers and their purposes. Because events are just events, not related, deconstruction lets the gang reach back through the false connections of time and make the roadway into what it always should have been, regardless of the builders’ original intentions.

  It’s the hardest work you’ve ever done. Sweat trickles down from under your hard hat, drips off your chin. You take off your jacket and lay it on the ground. But in the trench, you can see the progress you’re making. Jerome pushes against the referential being of the roadbed. Just as the new figurality, the one you’ve been grinding toward, begins to take shape, the lunch whistle blows.

  “We’ve got to keep at it,” Brian says quickly, before anyone can get up and head for the catering truck that’s just parked down the block. “If we knock off now, we’ll get a regression to the opposite and we’ll have to do most of the work all over again.”

  So on you go, though the savor of hot grease from the truck makes your stomach growl like an angry beast. Tony walks by, sees you’re all too busy to go to lunch. He doesn’t say anything; he knows deconstruction is delicate work and doesn’t want to distract you. But when you get to a place where you can stop for a while, he comes back with a gray cardboard carton full of hamburgers, fries, and Cokes.

  “Tony, you’re a lifesaver,” Brian says. Everybody else nods.

  Tony just grins. “Keeping you folks doing your job is part of my job.” He won’t even let any of you pay for the food. He has other things to see to. With people like him in this business, you begin to understand why the rest of the academics in your gang aren’t busting a gut trying to escape.

  Then you unwrap your hamburger from its yellow waxed paper and sink your teeth in. It’s burnt on the outside, raw and soggy in the middle, and it hasn’t been hot, or even warm, for quite a while. “Dewishush,” you say with your mouth full.

  You eat fast. So does everyone else; the deconstruction you’ve established up to now is only metastable. If it regresses before you can establish and validate your new and strong synthesis, you’ll be in deep kimchi, worse off than if you never started.

  It tries to snap, too, not five minutes after you go back to work. It’s Louis who saves the bacon with a beautiful adaptation from Derrida. Together, you force the road back toward the pattern unperceived by its designers, toward force and away from weakness, a signifying structure of the sort only deconstructive analysis can produce.

  “De la Grammatologie,” you say when you have a moment to catch your breath.

  “Bet your ass.” Louis sounds even more exhausted than you are. If he is, he has a right to be; he carried the ball when things were toughest. After that, you’re going downhill. Deconstruction by its nature subverts what was authoritative and revises what has been accepted. The road will be, and indeed always will have been, as it should exist by your analysis, not as it was made—with good intentions, no doubt, but also with ultimate ignorance—by the authors of its design.

  You keep close watch on the roadbed, tracking the progress your figurality makes in replacing its inadequate predecessor. For a long, tense moment, the deconstructive operation allows both versions of the roadbed to exist together. Then, as if in consummation, the veil is torn and the new figurality displaces the old for good.

  Tony, naturally, is there when it happens. “Way to go,” he says to Brian. “The night shift’ll have to check out what you’ve done, of course, but it looks real good to me.”

  “Thanks.” Brian points at you. “He pulls his weight. Glad you found him.”

  Tony nods. “I thought he looked good when I met him.” You just stare down at your dirty Reeboks, but you feel nine feet tall, maybe ten. These guys are all right.

  Brian glances at his watch. “My God, is it five o’clock already? We wouldn’t have come close to finishing this stretch today without a whole gang.” He turns to you. “Want to have a beer before you head home? I’ll buy.”

  You’re not much of a beer drinker, but you say, “Sounds wonderful. Thanks.” Camaraderie counts.

  Your joints creak as you stand up and stretch. All over the work site, men are putting away tools, heading for their cars or for the bus stop. Quitting time, you think. Fair enough—you’ve earned your day’s pay, as Brian said when you started out what feels like a week ago.

  A pretty redhead in tight jeans walks by across the street. Along with everyone else who notices her, you whistle like a steam engine. She just walks faster. A couple of guys laugh. You feel sheepish; you’d never have done that back on campus. But what the hell? You have to fit in with the gang.

  The Green Buffalo

  Sticking things in places and times where they don’t belong is one of the standard techniques of science fiction. I had a lot of fun doing it in the context of a Wild West tall tale. John Hatcher was a real paleontologist, and also really was a good poker player. By all surviving accounts, there were times when he needed to be.

  * * *

  I’m stackin’ sacks of beans in the back of my brother Pete’s general store when the door through the false front opens up and hits the bell a whack. The beans can wait. I hustle out front to see who it is.

  “Mornin’, Mr. Hatcher,” I says, and touch one finger to where my hat brim’d be if I was wearing a hat—Pete, he always says be polite. “What can I do for you today? You haven’t come down to Lusk in a while.”

  “Hello, Joe,” John Hatcher answers. He’s a little skinny fellow, already mostly bald no matter that he can’t be more than thirty. He looks like an undertaker, is what he looks like. Anyway, he goes on, “I came in to send a new shipment off to Professor Marsh, and I figured I’d telegraph to let him know it’s on the way.”

  “Right you are.” I go on over to the telegraph clicker off in one corner, set myself down. “Go ahead. You want to write your message out, or can you just talk it to me?”

  “I’ll talk it,” he says, the way he usually does—he knows how to say what he thinks, does John Hatcher. “Let’s see, today’s the seventeenth, isn’t it? All right, here we go, Joe: ‘August 17, 1890. To Othniel Charles Marsh, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.’ “

  “Spell me ‘Othniel,’ “ I say. I’ve sent the man a dozen telegrams, and I never can rightly remember how his name goes.

  Hatcher spells it out, then goes on, “ ‘Coming east will be two skulls and other skeletal remains of Triceratops brevicornus—’ “

  “Of what?” I say, and I take my hand off the key. “You know you got to spell me out those funny names you throw around.” He spells out TRICERATOPS BREVICORNUS, nice and slow, and I tap it out a letter at a time. Then I ask him, “Beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Hatcher, but what the hell is a Triceratops brevi-whatever?”

  “A dinosaur, Joe, a dinosaur with a skull as long as you are and ten times as heavy.” John Hatcher’s been out here for years, diggin’ up old bones and shippin’ ’em back East. Damn fool way for a grown man to spend his time if you ask me, especially for a man as good with a deck of cards as Hatcher. Anyways, he goes on, “ ‘—excavated from the Upper Cretaceous’ “—I had him spell that one, too—” ‘Lance Creek beds. More to be forthcoming as discovered. John Bell Hatcher.’ “

  I send it off, then count up the words and say, “That’ll be a dollar twenty, Mr. Hatcher.” He tosses down a gold dollar and a couple of dimes. I ask him, “What else can I do for you today?”

  “Well, we’re running low on beans out at the camp,” he says, and it’s all I can do to keep from cheering. I’d sooner sell beans than stack ’em, any day. He wants some salt, too, and some flour, as much plaster of Paris as we have, and a couple of other things I misremember. Then he says, “If you want to help get my boxes down from the wagon over at the train station, there’s two dollars gold in it for you.”
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  “I’m your man,” I say, and we both head out of the store. I shut the door after me, but Pete comes up just then, all fresh-shaved from the barber shop. “Got some stevedore work from Mr. Hatcher here,” I tell him. He waves for me to go on, so I go.

  Seems like half the menfolks in Lusk are already gathered round Hatcher’s wagon by the time I get there. He needed us, too—we work and we work, and by the time we wrestle this big crate off it and down the ramp to the ground, we’re licked, I tell you. “What the devil you really got in there, anyways?” somebody asks Hatcher.

  “Dinosaur bones,” he answers, the same as he always does. He’s been shippin’ the things east out of Lusk for years now. ‘Most everybody in town’s rode out to his digs one time or another, to look things over. Ain’t nobody ever caught him minin’ gold on the sly yet. Now he says, “I do thank you, gentlemen. Drinks are on me.”

  Nobody tells him no, either. We’re all sweaty from fightin’ the crate, and even if we hadn’t been, who’s going to turn down a free shot? We all troop over to the Rebel Yell, and Hatcher buys, just like he said he would. Then he sits himself down at one of the tables, and five or six of the boys sit down with him.

  Me, I knock back my whiskey and get on out of there, before I’m fool enough to try playin’ poker with John Hatcher again. That’s not a wise thing to do, and I learned it the expensive way. So has every poker-playin’ man in Lusk, but it don’t stop some of ’em from comin’ back after him. Some folks purely ain’t got no sense, you ask me.

  I go on back to the store and start stackin’ up what Hatcher ordered from me. Pete asks me why I’m back so soon and I tell him the same thing I just told you—“Hatcher’s in a poker game.” Pete, he only grunts. He’s stubborner’n me, my brother is, so Mr. John Bell Hatcher won a deal more money off him than off me before Pete figured out he couldn’t lick him. You throw me in the ocean, I’ll tell you pretty damn quick I’m in over my head. My brother, he’d sooner try to wade to China, he would.

  Maybe there’s some new suckers in the Rebel Yell that day, maybe the cards are even hotter for Hatcher than usual, or maybe he’s just plain glad to be in town—even a pissant excuse for a town like I know Lusk is—because he doesn’t come in for his supplies all afternoon long. Come to think of it, maybe he went upstairs a time or two, too, instead of playin’ cards all that while. Women’s another thing you’ll find in town that’s in short supply diggin’ old bones out by Lance Creek.

  The sun’s close to setting when the telegraph clicker starts to chatter. Pete’s closer to it than I am, so he gets the message down. When it’s done, he gives it to me. “It’s for Hatcher,” he says. “Why don’t you take it on over to him?”

  So I take it. Sure enough, he’s still at the poker table when I walk back into the Rebel Yell, and sure enough he’s got a nice stack of gold and silver in front of him. He’s got a bottle in front of him, too, a bottle he’s been workin’ on, but it don’t look to have made him lose his card sense, not one bit of it.

  “Telegram for you, Mr. Hatcher,” I says. “It’s from New Haven, it is.”

  “I thank you kindly, Joe.” Hatcher takes the telegram from me, reads it through, and then, so help me Hannah, he starts to howl like a coyote, he’s laughin’ so hard.

  “What’s funny?” I ask him. He’s been comin’ into Lusk three, four years now, and I ain’t never heard him laugh like that before.

  “Listen to this.” He picks up the telegram from where he’s dropped it on the table, reads it out loud to me and everybody else. It goes like this: “ ‘To John Bell Hatcher. The perfidious Cope may by pure luck have found and described in Monoclonius the first of the ceratopsian dinosaurs, but my own’ (that’s Marsh talking, not me, mind you) ‘continued discoveries of these fine specimens of Triceratops serve to cast him into the shade which is his natural home. Signed, O.C. Marsh.’ “

  I’m not the only one inside the Rebel Yell scratchin’ my head over all that. I say, “Beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Hatcher, but I don’t quite see the joke.”

  “Well, for one thing, Marsh and Cope have hated each other’s guts for twenty years now. If Cope were in a firepit of hell and screaming out for water, Marsh would hand him a bottle of kerosene—and the other way round, too. So if I’ve found a bigger, fancier dinosaur that’s related to one Cope found first, half the reason Marsh is tickled about it is that he gets to score points off Cope’s hide.”

  “I always thought professors were quiet, peaceable sorts,” I says.

  Hatcher commences to laugh again, but this time he gets hold of himself before it runs away with him. He goes on, “For another thing, notice they’re his dinosaurs, even if I’m the one who’s excavating them and shipping them off to him. He named the strata—the rock formations—from which we’re digging Triceratops the Ceratops bed, and traced them eight hundred miles along the flanks of the Rockies, and carefully explored them, too, all in the space of three and a half days’ time in the field.”

  “He did?” I say.

  “He says he did.” Hatcher lays a finger alongside of his nose.

  “This here’s a professor? Sounds more like a snake-oil salesman to me.”

  “He is. And if he were selling, you’d buy, too. He’s like that.” Hatcher sets down the telegram again, picks up his cards, just like he’s forgot what he’s holding. He tosses a gold half-eagle and then an eagle onto the middle of the table, careless-like. “See your five dollars, Fred, and I’ll raise you ten.”

  Long as I’m at the Rebel Yell, I figure I’ll buy me a drink. So I do, and sure as hell Fred loses that hand. He stomps out, all disgusted, but somebody else with more money’n sense sits down in his seat. John Hatcher, he doesn’t even smile.

  I go on back to the store, work some more. Hatcher’s stuff is all piled up nice and neat, but he doesn’t come get it. The fellow who took Fred’s seat must be one natural-born greenhorn. Finally Pete and me, we go on up to bed up above in the attic.

  Hatcher finally shows up the next morning. I hear later he’d played poker all night long, but he doesn’t look it. I help him and his people load up their wagon—believe me, what we throw in isn’t near as heavy as them bones we’d took out the day before. He pays me off, starts to get up onto the wagon, then stops and rubs his chin like he’s just thought of somethin’.

  He had, too. He turns around, says to me, “Joe, how would you like to ride out to camp with us? We’re short of fresh meat, but we’ve been too busy digging to do much in the way of hunting. Maybe you and a couple of other folks from Lusk can shoot some for us.”

  “Three dollars a day, like the last time?” I ask. He just nods. It doesn’t faze him a bit. I don’t know whether he’s spending Marsh’s money or what he wins at poker, but he always seems to have plenty. I say, “Let me go in and ask Pete.”

  I do. Pete says, “Sure, go on. I’ll do well enough alone for a few days, and you’ll have yourself a good time.” So I go get my Winchester and two, three boxes of shells, walk over to the livery stable for my horse, and I’m back to Hatcher’s wagon inside half an hour. By then he’s not there—he’s off gettin’ his other people. My pa, he fought in the States War. He always used to say soldierin’ was like that—as soon as one thing’s ready, another one ain’t. So I light up a cigar and I wait.

  Hatcher, he comes back before too real long, I will say. Then up ride Jake Snow and Clancy O’Doole, one after the other. Clancy works for his brother Charlie, the farrier. Jake, he just drifts. Sometimes he rides herd, sometimes he does odd jobs, sometimes he just sits in the Rebel Yell cadgin’ drinks. Can’t deny he’s a good man with a gun, though.

  We ride out of Lusk, must have been a little past eight. The sun’s right nice that time o’ day. It lights up the red cliffs west of town pretty as a penny postcard. And you know what else? The air’s a sight fresher out of town, too, away from the chimneys and the stables and the privies. I ought to get out more often. I really should.

  We rattle along, not i
n any tearin’ hurry but makin’ good time all the same. Somewhere around noon, Hatcher goes inside the wagon, lays down, and damned if he doesn’t lay himself out on top of the beans and go to sleep. How he can have such a clear conscience after skinnin’ so many folks at the card table is purely beyond me. But when he comes out a couple of hours later he’s cheery as could be, might as well have slept the whole night long.

  By the time the sun goes down, we’re every one of us ready for bedrolls. We’re still half a day out from where the rest of Hatcher’s crew is digging. He wants to talk about his bones, but he’s the one had a nap. The rest of us are too worn (and I’m too sore-assed; I hadn’t been in the saddle all day for a while) to listen long.

  Anyway, we get to Hatcher’s camp a little past noon the next day. He set himself up by this outcrop of rock in the middle of nowhere, near as I can see, but seein’ the way he knows poker, I figure he knows his own game, too. When we ride up, a couple of his people that was still there come runnin’ over and shoutin’ like they found gold or somethin’ really good.

  But it’s only more bones. They’re carryin’ on somethin’ fierce about a fibia and tibula or tibia and fibula or whatever the hell the right names of ’em are. Hatcher gets all excited, too. He jumps down from the wagon and goes runnin’ over like wolves are after him. Over his shoulder, he says, “Joe, Jake, Clancy, this is what we spend our time doing out here, if you care to see it.”

  I get down from my horse and go on over after him. Sure as hell, his people’ve dug a couple of great big bones out of the rock. There’s picks leaned up against the outcrop, and chisels, and little awls and things like a dentist uses to poke inside your mouth with.

  John Hatcher, he’s carryin’ on like my sister Betty did after she had her baby. He’s as careful with those bones as Betty was with Tyler, too—he touches ’em like they’d break if he looked at ’em sideways. Then one of the fellows who was there when we came in says, “We saved these so you could have a look at them. We’ll protect them now.”