Coyote Fork. James Wilson
was like witnessing some long-drawn-out gladiatorial combat. Anne parries, saying she isn’t homophobic and has a lot of gay friends. None of them, I note, goes to her defense.
Neither did you, did you?
And then her many-headed adversary renews its attack:
@Pugwash #toxichate More horseshit from @AGrainger the old “some of my best friends are gay” gag She must think were stupid or something
@Guesswho24 #toxichate @AGrainger 1. Clever that. See what she did? Now she’s the victim, and the LGBTQ+ community are the oppressors.
@Guesswho24 #toxichate @AGrainger 2. How did that happen?
@Jiminy #toxichate @AGrainger You don’t fool anyone you hatefilled old bitch Dont worry youve got it coming
More parrying. Anne calls Evan Bone the Angel of Death. His fanatical supporters claim to be progressive, but they are the virtual SS. There are more reproaches to her friends and colleagues for abandoning her. Then the end-game.
@Guesswho24 #toxichate 1. Surprise surprise So much for “its just about freedom of speech”
@Guesswho24 #toxichate 2. Heres an email showing what @AGrainger really thinks about gay marriage: xbyth889
For two millennia, “marriage” has been defined as a lifelong relationship, ordained by God, between a man and a woman. How do Cameron and co. think they can just unilaterally, with the wave of a wand, make it mean something else?
@Skinky #toxichate @AGrainger You lying cunt
@Redcuff #toxichate @AGrainger Anyone got a chainsaw
I closed the computer and sat there, my fingers on the lid, anchoring myself-by the slenderest thread—to my own life.
So that was what had finally done for her: a years-old email to me, chiding me for my pusillanimity over the issue of gay marriage, my conniving at the Orwellian abuse of language. A fist grabbed my guts and squeezed. For all that I’d found her tone off-putting, I could, I should, have gone to her defense. Anne and I may have disagreed, but nothing can justify this obscene invasion of privacy.
It was, of course, chastening to acknowledge how craven, how mean-spirited, I had been. But it was also, in some way, a relief. I’d kept my distance from Anne to avoid having to face up to my own weakness. And then—just at the moment when I was at my most fraught and disorientated—a guilty memory of her had wormed free of my unconscious and materialized in front of me. Simple. Obvious. It made perfect psychological sense. No other-worldly element required.
I got up and walked round the motel room, feeling the walls. There were no mysterious panels, no hidden trapdoors: just solid breezeblock, skimmed over with a thin coat of plaster. I went to the window and looked out. A family of four were getting into their people carrier, ready for the next stage of their vacation. The younger daughter was crying about something, struggling as her mother strapped her into the child-seat. On the sidewalk behind them, crowds of young people hurried to work, just as they did every morning.
Yes, that must have been it: my uneasy conscience playing tricks on me. Which meant that—after a brief absence without leave—the universe could now go back to normal, doing its thing according to the laws of physics. There was no magic, either black or white. So I should simply ignore what had happened, return to London as planned, cobble together the piece I’d been contracted to write—and then accept the logic of my own pessimism and take up fly-fishing or golf. I would carry the burden of Anne’s death for the rest of my days. But, beyond that, nothing was required of me.
I switched on the TV and searched for a music station. Bach would have suited my mood, but all I could find was 70s cheese. But even cheese was a welcome change, a reminder that I was back in the real world. I turned it up loud, then shaved and had a shower. When I came out, below the furniture-shaking bass beat, I heard my phone whimpering.
“Rob?” Graham again. “Why are you listening to the late great Mr. Barry White?”
“Sorry.” I silenced the TV.
“I’ve just got home,” he said. “To find a card waiting for me. From Anne. She must have posted it just before. . . Anyway, I’ll read it to you. ‘I’ve been trying to reach Rob. I can’t get through. I don’t trust email. Tell him to look into Carter Ramirez.’”
Outside in the street I heard brakes screeching, and the banal clang of a van door.
“Did you get that?” said Graham. “Carter as in President Jimmy. Ramirez spelt, R-A-M-I-R-E-Z. Mean anything to you? Rob? You still there?”
3
THE HUMAN PSYCHE IS INFINITELY adaptable. Confront it with two contradictory ideas, and it will respond by what psychiatrists call splitting: that is, by locking each one in its own separate domain, and preventing it from ever coming into contact with the other. That—after a twenty-minute meltdown when I feared I might genuinely be going mad—was the way I coped now. In cell number one, a message from Anne from beyond the grave. In cell number two, a perfectly rational explanation, which—when you took into account all the coincidences involved—appeared equally incredible. In my confusion, I didn’t feel ready to choose between them. But on one point they agreed: Anne had always had an unerring nose for a story.
I googled Carter Ramirez. Instantly I was bombarded by a barrage of emotive words: fraud, martyr, crook, predator, low-life, hero or villain? I ignored them as best I could while I excavated the bare facts: Carter Ramirez had been a self-styled Native American activist, who claimed to be of Ohlone Indian descent, whatever that was. When the Global Village headquarters was being built, construction workers uncovered two ancient American Indian skeletons, which Ramirez said belonged to his ancestors. He started a campaign to persuade Global Village to give his people money, so that they could buy another piece of land nearby. Global Village investigated Ramirez’s background, and revealed that he was a petty thief who had links with organized crime. The only reason he wanted the land, they said, was so his mobster friends could build a lucrative casino on it. Publicly discredited, and hounded by online trolls, Ramirez started drinking heavily. Nine months later his body was found at the bottom of a cliff. It wasn’t clear if he’d fallen or jumped.
After his death, everyone and his dog seemed to have got in on the act: White supremacists; an organization called End White Supremacy Now; a conspiracy theorist claiming that the bones found at Global Village were the remains not of Native Americans, but of aliens; a conservative columnist saying the whole sorry story was a morality tale for our time. It would take me the whole day to wade through all those bees in bonnets, and at the end I’d be none the wiser. Best just to interview the daughter and make up my own mind about what she had to tell me.
It took three calls to reach her. When I finally did, her voice sounded flat and harassed. Yes, she remembered me. When I told her I was interested in doing a piece on her father, she thought about it for a moment, then said, OK, she guessed that we could meet. She was at work right now but would be free later. Did I know the Presidio park in San Francisco? She’d be there, at the Inspiration Point Overlook, at three.
OK, I said.
What do you wear to meet a Native American activist? It’s not a question I’d ever had to deal with before. Since I was travelling, the choice was fairly limited, and I quickly settled on my light jacket and a dove-grey shirt. But that left the tie issue. The case against: it might seem snooty. The case for: it showed respect. In the end, I came down for selecting a sober beauty with a rich dragonfly-wing sheen that she’d have to be dead not to appreciate.
I thought I still had plenty of time to get there, but the traffic was agonizingly slow, and I got lost in the vertiginous three-dimensional maze of Pacific Heights. When I eventually reached the Presidio, it turned out to be bigger than I’d expected—a huge expanse of grass and trees, crisscrossed by sandy trails. I broke into a half-run, my bag jigging against my back. Every minute or so I stopped to check the directions on my phone. At last, after struggling up a steep, treacherous woodland path, I emerged huffing and sweating at the Overlook. There, in the distance, beyond a crescent-shaped stone