Tongue tied - Stevenson Richard - Страница 19

In the center of the village of Monterey, we turned down a country road just past the general store, where about half the cars parked out front had Massachusetts plates and the rest were Volvos and Saabs from New York and Connecticut. The narrow road followed a meandering brook through stands of maple, hickory and birch, and meadows where cows and sheep once had grazed.

Few of the farms were working now, however, and instead of John Deere and International Harvester machines outside the barns, there were sleek sedans from Germany and Sweden, and Detroit SUVs the size of Soviet troop carriers for hauling the peasant bread and radicchio out from Great Barrington. The white clapboard farmhouses were beautifully kept, and many of the barns, also bright white, were now garages or guest houses with skylights and discreetly placed satellite dishes.

We passed the farm that produces renowned Monterey chevre -in a pasture several goats frolicked for our amusement-and then we drove on for another mile or two until we spotted a herd of llamas in a field. Then came the farmhouse and a large, faded, red barn nearby, with a sign on a post that read: Berkshire Woolly Llama Cheese, the Spirit of the Ancient Incas in a New England Country Setting.

Diefendorfer said, "It's like Grandma Moses at Machu Picchu. It's a little confusing."

Timmy asked, "Didn't you get a lot of this kind of cultural fusion-or at least weird commercial exploitation-in Lancaster County? Chain-hotel cocktail lounges with Pennsylvania Dutch happy hours, and so on?"

"We did. One of my favorites was a hex-sign extermination service. I once heard about a brothel over in Bucks County where for eighty-five dollars a dominatrix in an Amish farmwife's garb would raise welts on customers' bare backs with a buggy whip.

But I don't know if that story was true. Pennsylvania has never had much tolerance for commercialized sin. Historically, it's one reason New Jersey exists."

"Demand and supply," Timmy mused.

"Yes," Diefendorfer said, "the Bible should have included a book called Market Forces, with special verses commenting on New Jersey."

We pulled into the Berkshire Woolly Llama Cheese parking area and stopped under a big spreading oak. Bees buzzed and flies zigzagged through the thick air, and the place smelled of warm green growth. A sign directed visitors to the barn, so Timmy and Diefendorfer headed over there in search of Kurt Zinsser while I ambled over to the wire fence to look at the llamas. A mud-spattered Chevy Blazer with Massachusetts plates was parked next to the barn, and closer to the house was a newer, cleaner Chevy 4x4 pickup. There were just the two buildings, close to the road and not far from each other, and it now seemed to me unlikely that Leo Moyle would be held captive in so public a place. Traffic on this rural lane was light, but the location didn't feel isolated enough for the safety and security serious kidnappers would need.

I watched Timmy and Diefendorfer disappear into the visitors' entrance to the barn, then turned back toward the dozen or so llamas. The two nearest peered my way while the others continued to graze. With their big soft eyes and alert pointed ears, the llamas looked like friendly storybook animals, maybe from A. A. Milne. I half expected them to be holding toy buckets and shovels, or even to speak: "Pleasant day, amigo."

Unsure of what to do next-approaching the farmhouse made no sense-I was about to join Timmy and Diefendorfer in the barn, when the screen door to the farmhouse opened and a stout, middle-aged man clomped across the porch and down the steps.

His head was shaved, and he wore jeans, work boots and a sweat-stained T-shirt.

The shirt had a picture of a llama on the front, and the lower half of the animal, stretched across the man's ample belly, was distorted, as if the llama had been blown up like a balloon.

I didn't recognize him at first, but Kurt Zinsser looked my way and did a double take.

"Denver?" he said, coming over to me. "Nineteen- what? Seventy-nine? Eighty?"

"I'm not sure," I said, struggling to look blank. "I've only been to Denver once. It was around that time that I was there, as I recall. Wait a minute. You're not… uh… uh?"

"Kurt Zinsser. And you're a private investigator. Bill Straithwaite?"

"Don Strachey. I didn't recognize you at first. You had a big, bushy beard back then, like Alexander Pushkin or the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi."

Cordial enough and definitely curious at first, Zinsser now began to look suspicious.

"What are you doing here? Are you looking for me?"

"No, I'm with some friends, just poking around the Berkshires. Is this your farm? Are you the Berkshire Woolly Llama Cheese tycoon?"

Zinsser glanced toward the barn, noted Timmy's Honda, and said, "I'm on my way into Barrington. Sorry I can't show you around. But Darren's in the shop and he can help you out. Have you had our cheese?"

"Not yet. I'm looking forward to trying it. It's unusual."

"I learned to make it from an old woman I met in Cuzco. That's where I went after I left Denver in eighty-five. I heard it was going to be the high-tech center of the Andes, which turned out to be not quite true. But I found my health there, physical and spiritual."

"And your livelihood. I hear Berkshire Woolly Llama Cheese is catching on."

"You'll understand why once you've tried it. Eat it every day for a month and you'll be a different person."

Since Thad Diefendorfer was not present, I asked the question I knew he would ask.

"Why would I want to be a different person?"

Zinsser smiled a smile that I guessed he thought of as enigmatic. He said, "If you have to ask, you may never find out. But read my chapbook-you can pick one up in the visitors' center-and perhaps then you'll begin to understand what I learned in the mountains. And if you choose not to open yourself up to the wholeness of being, it's no skin off my ass."

I said, "I heard Billy Blount has done some traveling, too. Someone in Albany told me recently that he's in Singapore. Are you two still in touch?"

I could see the lightbulb go on inside Zinsser's head, and he looked at me hard. "Are you part of the investigation?" he said.

"Which investigation?"

"The investigation of Leo Moyle's kidnapping."

"I might be."

Zinsser snorted. "What horseshit. What a lying sack of bull puke you are, Strachey.

Good Christ Almighty!" Zinsser shook his head, which glistened with sweat in the afternoon sun. His more spiritual self was not in the ascendancy.

"Are you a Jay Plankton fan?" I asked.

"You're friggin' right I am."

"You talk like him."

"I'm flattered."

"Aren't you gay anymore? Have you become one of those ex-gays?"

"No, but I no longer parade myself around the American landscape wearing a big sign that says Victim. Instead of whining about how oppressed I am, I lead a life of dignified self-sufficiency."

"If you're a Plankton fan," I said, "you must have as much wool in your brain as you've got in your teeth. His loathing for you and me and other gay people is vast and unadulterated. Plankton could care less if you've turned into some kind of neoconservative twit. To him, to be gay is contemptible. And you still admire him?"

Zinsser, the former Marxist, SDSer, FFFer, et cetera, sniffed and said, "Plankton is not antigay; he is anti-politically correct. That's something the J-Bird and I very much have in common."