First time Schmidt saw the Pinnacles he knew it was the place.
Three columns of rock shot up like the tentacles of some ancient
creature, weathered feelers probing the sky. He ran a couple of
tests, used the divining rods and the earth meter. Needle went off
the scale. No question, there was power here, running along the
fault line and up through the rocks: a natural antenna. The deal was
done quickly. Eight hundred bucks to the old woman who owned
the lot, some papers to sign at a law office in Victorville and it was
his. Twenty-year lease, easy as pie. He couldn’t believe his luck.
He bought a used Airstream off a lot in Barstow, towed it on to
the site and sat for a whole afternoon in a lawn chair, admiring the
way the aluminum trailer reflected the light. Took him back to the
Pacific, the Superforts on their hardstands at North Field. The way
those bombers glittered in the sun. There was a lesson in that dazzle,
showed there were worlds a person couldn’t bear to look upon
directly.
He didn’t sleep at all the first night. Lying under a blanket on the
ground, staring straight up, he kept his eyes open until the blacks
turned purple, then gray, and the wool was frosted with little droplets
of condensation like tiny diamonds. The desert smell of creosote and
sage, the dome of stars. There was more action up in the sky than
down on earth, but you had to drag yourself out of the city to know
it. All those damn verticals cluttering your sightline, all the steel pipes
and cables and so forth under your feet, jamming you up, interrupting
the flows. People hadn’t fooled with the desert. It was land that let
you alone.
He thought he stood a good chance. He was still young enough
to take on the physical work, unencumbered by wife or family.
And he had faith. Without that he’d have given up long ago, back
when he was still a kid reading mail-order tracts in his lunch-break,
making his first tentative notes on the mysteries. Now he wanted
no distractions. He didn’t bother about the good opinion of the
folks in town. He was polite, passed the time of day when he went
to pick up supplies at the store, but didn’t trouble himself further.
Most men were fools; he’d found that out on Guam. Sons of bitches
never would let him be, giving him nicknames, making childish
jokes at his expense. Took all he had not to do what was on his
mind, but after Lizzie he didn’t have the right, so he’d tamped down
his anger and got on with fighting the war. Those saps had flown
lord knew how many missions and with all those hours logged, all
that chance to see, they still thought the real world was down on the
ground, in the chow-line, between the legs of the pin-up girls they
pasted over their rancid cots. Only person he met with a lick of
sense was that Irish bombardier, what was his name, Mulligan or
Flanagan, some Irish name, who told him of the lights he’d spotted
when they were on their way to drop a load over Nagoya, green
dots moving too fast to be Zeroes. Asked to borrow a book. Schmidt
lent it to him, never did get it back. Kid went down with the rest of
his crew a week later, ditched into the sea.