BEAST OF THE WOODS

Chapter 9

"Hey, kid. Do you think Flocman is crazy?"

The kid thought for a second, said, "Nope. Just hasn't got anything else to do."

True enough, Bolger thought. Wonder what a surveyor's salary is these days?

That's when he realized he'd begun to split his time between finding Sonoria and investigating Flocman, as if investigating Flocman might lead him to Sonoria.

When he got back to the motel, he called up Flocman.

"Hey, Flocman. I've got an update. I need more money per day for this wild goose chase."

"I don't have more money."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. It's like a mantra with you. Listen, I checked with a few relics from the Old Country. I found out they can't remember for s**t, and especially nothing sounding like Sonoria. I've been to three old folks' homes and found out nothing except I hate the smell. I've checked the libraries. I've rechecked the Internet. I've checked with foreign embassies. I've read through some goddamn boring history books. Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Not a damn thing. You got any suggestions?"

"You're the detective."

"Yeah, and I'm working on it," Bolger said, scowling. "I still got some more old people to visit. And other stuff I can do. But, really, why don't you just give me a map or something, Flocman. Make it easier."

"Let me send you some photocopies."

"What?" Bolger asked.

But Flocman had hung up.

Flocman knew it was crazy as he said it. He knew it was like starting out on the surface, seeing a hole in the Earth, and after climbing down into it and seeing the light above begin to fade, to just keep traveling down rather than climbing back up.

Bolger took the envelope Flocman sent him down to Curly Sue's, the corner dive, took a stool next to the jukebox because it shed enough light to read by, and asked the bartender for a shot of Irish Highlands whiskey.

He sat there for a while, nursing the whiskey, the envelope on the counter in front of him. Flocman's handwriting on the front was as spidery and lucid as Flocman.

Part of Bolger wanted to rip the envelope open. Part of him just didn't, not ever. By now, Bolger felt like he had one foot in the Murat and one foot in Sonoria. He could handle that. There was a kind of balance, a kind of balancing act, to it that he could maintain. That he didn't mind maintaining.

But, finally, Bolger ordered another shot and tore open the envelope, began to skim the pages. After a while, Bolger began to get a sense of it. Flocman's observations tended to be precise but dry, things like "22 feet from the river, approximately 50 yards from the base of the first rise of hills preceding the mountains, you will find a village of about 70 people, mostly fishermen." Or, "There was a battle three years later. The lancers of the plains won, leaving 20 foot soldiers dead or dying." A History of Sonoria read like something b****y rendered bloodless. It read like the biography of a country written by a surveyor.

Bolger kept muttering "That's bullshit. That's bullshit" under his breath, once so loud the bartender came over to ask if he wanted another shot.

It all sounded so right, and yet Flocman had gotten it all wrong. The images in Bolger's head, the raw, vibrant hues, the movement - none of it was as tepid, as careful as Flocman made it out to be. Everything Flocman had come up with was crap, and now it was in Bolger's head.

But when Bolger turned to the final page, in full color, he gasped, almost choked on his whiskey. Flocman's map of Sonoria was a thing of beauty. Flocman had used a medley of blues, greens, and sepia browns, with burgundy for the dots of cities. Rachel had helped him pick the colors because Flocman was color blind. She'd helped him shade it in, too. It showed topographical changes, roads, rivers, mountains. All names had been written with brackets around them, which Bolger thought meant Flocman was guessing.

But, of course, he was guessing about the whole thing. There was no Sonoria. Bolger knew that.

Ahmed, the manager of the Murat, slid into the stool next to Bolger at some point. He was a young, ambitious man who always looked more put together than anything in the Murat.

"Hey, Bolger - " Ahmed started to say, but Bolger cut him off, still staring at the map.

"Ahmed, you ever heard of a place called Sonoria?"

"No," Ahmed said. "You ever heard of a place that kicks you out when you owe more than two months' rent?"

Flocman kept working on the book. As long as he worked on the book, he didn't notice the tiny house around him. He forgot that he was alone. Day after day, Flocman filled more pages in the book, and when he was done, he pulled out another and began to write and draw in that one. He'd developed a sympathy not just for the farmers and tradespeople on Sonoria, but also its rulers, who had to navigate a treacherous diplomatic landscape to survive in the midst of much greater powers.

Rachel continued to help him. When Mrs. Sanderson dropped her off, Flocman would sit her up next to him at the kitchen table with a glass of water, some sardines, and cookies he'd finally remembered to buy.

Then Flocman would read Rachel his work from the previous day and night and Rachel would give Flocman her opinions.

Rachel had a serious, conscientious streak, and never let him off lightly for a mistake.

"You said that bit already. Days ago."

"I like the story about the sisters who have to climb the mountain to save their father."

"I didn't understand that bit at all. You have to explain it."

Flocman noticed that during these sessions time no longer had a static quality, and that when he wasn't writing, he didn't think about Sonoria much at all. Instead, he thought about things like what he wanted for dinner or what was on TV or a book he wanted to read. Or, about Bolger and the investigation. Flocman wanted to call off the investigation, but the way Bolger ignored what other people said made it hard to stop Bolger.

Flocman's payments stopped coming. At first, Bolger didn't care. He sat in bed staring at the map of Sonoria. Around him on the sheets he'd spread the pages of the history, which he'd heavily marked up. Every once in a while he'd think of some new lead, and he'd take out the phone book and call someone or get into his battered car and take a trip. Soon he stopped doing even that. Some days Bolger didn't even make it down to Curly Sue's. Some days he'd just watch bad TV with Sonoria bleeding through and drink until he slept. Those dreams were odd ones, his face all distorted and Sonoria full of demons that flew and swam and crawled. He'd wake up from them with a jolt, like he'd fallen into his bed from a great height, his breathing shallow, hard, and fast.

One day the jolt was a banging on the door.

Ahmed. Again. Even with Flocman's money, money never went far enough. Not with Bolger's debt.

"Get the f**k away from my door!" Bolger shouted. "You don't want to f**k with me!"

Ahmed's voice, tinny through the door: "Get out. Get out by tonight or I'll call the cops. Or pay me. Your choice."

Bolger took the bottle of cheap whiskey on the night stand and threw it against the door. It only bounced, but at least it made a loud sound. His

dad used to do that in the middle of the night with a glass bottle, if the dogs started barking outside the bedroom door.

"I'll leave when I want to leave," Bolger said, largely to himself.

Bolger had never done anything but drink and play detective. He looked around the motel room, at the faded, discolored lamp shades, at the chairs with the uneven legs, at the old, dusty TV, and wondered why he bothered.

The next day, a Saturday, Bolger showed up on Flocman's doorstep. It was around noon and the sun glistened on the crackling snow. Bolger had a five o'clock shadow, bloodshot eyes, and a stain on his white shirt. His jacket showed a slight bulge from Flocman's envelope about Sonoria. The g*n was shoved into his jeans, in the back, and the photo of his mother was in his front shirt pocket. All of his belongings were out in his 199o Corolla hatchback.

Bolger had only rung the doorbell after a pattern of indecision that had him pacing up and down Flocman's walkway, until a few kids passing by on bikes made him self-conscious.

Flocman looked at Bolger and almost closed the door.

Almost.

"Here're some notes on your book," Bolger said, taking out the wad of dirty, marked up pages, shoving them into Flocman's chest, and pushing past him into the house.

So here they were now, in Flocman's living room, again, two months later. Flocman had put the pages away, not even insulted but more puzzled. He'd thought of Sonoria in his book as a kind of truth, transcribed from reality. How did you change that?

Bolger got right down to it: "Flocman, I think I've found Sonoria."

The stare Bolger gave Flocman tried to tell Flocman that fifty a day wasn't enough to fund this kind of inventive bullshit. Flocman's stare back tried to indicate polite interest, but nothing could hide his shock.

"You've found it?"

"f**k yes I have."

The unspoken information lay between them - half-curse, half-blessing.

"In a stuffy old literary magazine. I was just about to throw it across the reading room because this essay on how tough the Serbs have it was putting me to sleep. And then I found it - in a footnote. It said something like `Sonoria, a hidden valley in the mountains between Bulgaria and the Czech Republic."'

Bolger pulled out a map of Europe he'd ripped from a library book.

"Right here," he said, slapping a fat finger down. "Right there."

Bolger almost believed it, in that moment. But the visions in his head said it wasn't true. Sonoria didn't exist in this world, and maybe the sadness over that led to the anger.

Flocman looked over at Bolger and then down at the blank spot on the map. The mountains, the valley, the river. A chill, a shiver, that started in his brain and traveled down to his feet.

"Could it really exist?" Flocman said, looking at all those jagged boundary lines. He hadn't considered it for weeks. Sonoria kept receding in one way and coming into focus in another.

Bolger tried to read Flocman's face, couldn't tell what he saw there.

"So now you pay me what you owe me for the past weeks and we go there."

Flocman frowned, and Bolger thought: s**t, but now I've said it.

"Go there?" For a second, Flocman really didn't know what Bolger meant.