The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller by J. M. Porup

Author:J. M. Porup [Porup, J. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-11-05T16:43:36+00:00

Fourteen

She said, “Mother Earth’s in danger.”

“Why?” I asked. “Has Papa Earth been a bad boy?”

We walked in growing shadow. I took off my wet boots and socks, felt the frigid sand between my toes. The sun had set behind the mountains, but there was still daylight on the lake. A cold evening breeze numbed my ears. We strolled along the shore, past a row of half-completed wooden houses. A dozen men and women labored on the empty shells, hammers banging, saws grinding.

“Yes,” she said. “He has.”

Kate put her arm through mine. Unlike the other monks, who wore orange and scarlet, her robes were black. The feel of her wrist in the inner softness of my elbow, even through four layers of clothing, broke open the dam of my memories. It also broke open half a dozen fresh burns. She looked up at me. How many times had she done that, wanting to be kissed? But those days were dust and ashes.

“Now we must atone,” she said.

“For what?”

“For hurting her.”

I swallowed. “Hurting who?”

“Gaia.”

“Oh.”

She led me along the beach. I studied the workers, looking for Pitt. They wore jeans and Incan beanies with woolen ear flaps. They were gringos, all of them, and ranged from late twenties to early eighties, including a pair of grandparents who later tried to put me to sleep with photos of their offspring. None of them was Pitt.

“Don’t tell me you’ve gone New Age.”

Kate grinned and closed her eyes. She nodded her head. “Gaia is the world, Horse. She is the mother spirit who inhabits every living thing.” She stopped walking. “And yes, she is in danger.”

“You tried calling 9-1-1?”

She laughed, her face tilted up at the moon. “Never lose your cynicism, Horse,” she said, and lay a cold knuckle against my cheek. “Gaia is everywhere, even in you.”

Her touch hit me like a downed power line. All the memories, the longing and the loss, crackled between her skin and mine.

I nuzzled her hand, feeling the coldness. “Why am I here, Kate?” I asked. “Did you plan this?”

She pulled away. “Plan what?”

“You kidnapped me, didn’t you?” I threw out my arms. “Well here I am. You wanted me that bad, why didn’t you just say so?”

She drummed her fingertips against her face. “Horse,” she said, and looked at the ground. “Horse, I—”

“Blessed Katherine, please tell us, when will be the leave-taking?” The voice came from the last of the construction sites. A fat man in blue overalls three sizes too small for him climbed out from under a wooden porch. His voice was effeminate.

Kate pulled away. “Soon,” she called out, on tiptoe, as though willing him not to come near.

“We are all of us so impatient to go.” The man waddled toward us. His face held the cherubic innocence of a child. He waved a chubby hand at the houses. “This building activity. It grows tiresome.”

“You’re paying what, two grand a week to be here, and you’re in a hurry to leave?” I asked.

He smiled the smile of an idiot.

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