The Only Words That Are Worth Remembering by Jeffrey Rotter Read Free Book Online Page B

us.”
    I looked for the golf cart in the parking lot, but Terry had engaged a far more splashy ride for this momentous day. His white Darling Vanster featured three rows of seats, front and rear bumpers, and a handsome pebbled-vinyl dash. On the road to Cape Cannibal we made little in the way of conversation. We each contemplated our separate miseries and aired our individual gases. Nguyen rolled down every window but his own. His delicate movements, I realized, were on account of that hairpiece. For a man who reveals nothing, the loss of a wig must be intolerable.
    The freeway tumbled by under intense sun, past Hiya City, where I slunk low in my seat. Up the coast the world grew more peopled and its commerce less practical. We passed discount flooring shops and private nightclubs with names like the Duck Inn and the Boiler Room, a shooting range called Head Woundz. A guy dressed as scissors waved at us from the parking lot of a haircuttery. Pop waved back. I tried to imagine the lavish lives of midstate Floridayans, their busy social calendars, the firearms and paid-for hairstyles, the colorful tiled floors.
    Nguyen turned off where the sign read CRUISE SHIP TERMINAL . Indian River, deep carved and sheltered from the sea, is a traditional port of call for these magnificent vessels. I remember a white liner standing tall over the cranes, sleek and poetic. Pop wondered aloud at the cost of such a ship, at the wealth of its passengers. Nguyen made no comment, only pushed on past the terminals to the interior of the cape.
    Here the blacktop fell to pieces. Bubbled, sank, pimpled up, and boiled forth sand. Palmettos had pushed through the asphalt, requiring some deft steering, which Nguyen handled with minimal fuss. We came upon a crowd of turkey vultures picking at a flat whitetail. He blew the horn and they fluttered into the air, in no special hurry, only to settle back down to lunch after we’d passed. The road turned to concrete slab, an improvement and indication that the route had once borne heavy payloads. On the right appeared a clutch of rotted buildings. The sign read VISITORS CENTER . Dented missiles lay around in a pile like cigarette butts. Grackles stood on the nose cones, lords of all that busted potential.
    From a distance the security gate looked bully enough, but when we drew close I saw that it was nothing more than a plywood cabana borrowed from a private beach. The guard rested her squirrel popper on a sawhorse. At the sight of Terry Nguyen she dragged the barricade onto the shoulder, taking her time. Under her reflective vest I saw that she wore a spine brace.
    â€œThat your muscle?” Pop asked Terry. He was getting his spark back, which concerned me.
    Nguyen told him this headland used to be a walled city, a fortress. The Astronomers named it after a Gunt warrior priest called Jack Kennedy. This man had declared war on all Commies. They’d had a spat about who adored the Moon more, Terry explained, so Jack and the Reds settled it with a gentleman’s wager: whoever reached it first would be most beloved by heaven. To protect his facility from the Commies, Kennedy’s Space Center was gated off, like Hiya City. Had its own power supply, water, and police. They hid all the secret stuff inside a gator-infested swamp.
    Terry pointed out three good-sized bulls in the culvert. “Now,” he said, “the whole place belongs to those monsters.” When they were clearing land for the cruise-ship terminal, every foreman was required to carry a shotgun, “and we still lost three men.”
    The world goes wild so fast, I thought. The flattop dipped in and out of black water, and the Vanster struggled. Pine trunks stood blanched and headless in the wake of a hurrycane. The only sign of habitation was a single edifice that rose among the scrub palms like an ocean liner run aground. A factory and warehouse, Nguyen explained, the grandest in the Gunt world, for storing their holy