Michael McDowell - The Amulet

The Amulet

Born in Enterprise, Alabama, in 1950, Michael McDowell attended Harvard College and received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University. He has been a theatre critic for several publications and wrote the screenplay for The Amulet, his first novel. He is currently working on his fourth.

Mr McDowell lives in Medford, Massachusetts.

Available in Fontana by the same author

COLD MOON OVER BABYLON GILDED NEEDLES

Michael McDowell

The Amulet

Fontana/Collins

First published in the USA by Avon Books 1979 First published in Great Britain by Fontana Paperbacks 1982 Copyright 1979 by Michael McDowell

Made and printed in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, Glasgow

CONDITIONS OF SALE This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is

published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

To David and Jane

Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures, What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures! To carry pure death in an earring, a casket, A signet, a fan-mount, a fillagree-basket!

The Laboratory Robert Browning

In March 1965, Fort Rucca - in the southeastern corner of the state of Alabama - was a busy, crowded area. Here new army recruits underwent basic training, and were further instructed in helicopter piloting and helicopter maintenance. It had become known what a terrible war was being fought in the jungles of Vietnam, and how little prepared our soldiers were against that tropical foliage, where thousands of men, and whole factories of machinery and weapons could be moved along supply trails that were invisible from the air. The'earliest veterans of the war had come back, and were frantically training more men, with the terrain of Vietnam in mind. The Chattahoochee River is not far from Fort Rucca, and the basin of that slow-moving, wide stream is very similar in density and quality of vegetation, and was the ideal proving ground for those men who would soon see combat.

Fort Rucca is located in the most unfriendly section of Alabama, a flat, featureless landscape, that seems always hot, always menacing, always indignant when farmers try to scratch their meagre livings out of the hard soil. The vegetation is coarse, and sharp, and not much good for anything. The only plants that seem to grow well are trees whose lumber is worthless, and shrubs with thorns and briars. The four kinds of poisonous snakes indigenous to the continental United States are found together in only one place: the Wiregrass area of Alabama. That seems only natural to the people who live there.

In one corner of the crowded camp, 'wiregrass', the coarse ground cover that gives the area its nickname, had been shorn close, and an extensive firing range constructed for the rifle instruction and practice of army inductees from all over the country. One very hot Friday morning, shortly before noon, and underneath a blazing, cloudless sky, about seventy-five men, in three equal groups, were shooting at targets cut in the shape of men, with yellow faces and slanted eye-slits.

Well behind the line of prone, firing privates were the other fifty who were waiting their turn. Two men, not much different from the others, leaned against the wire fence that separated the camp from the dusty peanut fields belonging to an Alabama state senator. The senator had made a fortune out of this soil, obtaining government subsidies for not raising cotton and corn, and taking a tax loss on his income each year, because somehow or other, the peanut crop always failed. He was one of the very few who could make money off the land of the wiregrass.

The two privates could not have cared less about the senator's peanut fields. One of the men was of middle height, coarsely handsome, and in extraordinary health; from his thick accent it was apparent that he was very much at home in this part of the country. His companion was somewhat taller, but more delicate; his features had a distinctly Jewish cast to them.

The first man, whose name was Dean Howell, said to his companion, 'You look here at this, Si.'Dean held upthe rifle he carried, and thrust the butt of it before Simon's eyes. 'You see that pinecone?'

Si nodded. He had already noticed the small pinecone embossed in the lowest corner of the butt of every rifle on the firing range.

Dean continued: 'This rifle was made - start to finish - in Pine Cone, Alabama, and my wife Sarah is right there on that 'ssembly line. She had her hands on this piece 'fore I did. It's like it was blessed, in a way.'

Si nodded. 'How far is Pine Cone from here?'

'Oh', said Dean, 'if you was to stand on my shoulders, you could see it. It's about thirty miles.' He pointed vaguely over the senator's peanut fields. 'We got pine trees and cotton fields and the Pine Cone Munitions Factory and that's about all.' He waited a moment, while the line of men fired at the targets again, and then continued, 'But the pine trees get burned down, and the cotton gets eaten up, and so there's the rifle plant that's left. Ever'body I know works in that place. You know why?'

Si shook his head, and asked, 'Why?'

Dean Howell spoke harshly now. 'I tell you why.' The rifles fired once more.

'Why?' Si repeated his question. Dean Howell was being deliberately mysterious.

Dean's strange smile turned sour. "Cause', he said, with unexpected bitterness, 'you get a job there, and you get a deferment - ' 'Services necessary to the National Welfare and Security." Ever'body I know works in that place', he repeated, with angered significance.

'And you wanted a job there too?' said Si, who had begun to understand Dean's apparent disgust with the Pine Cone Munitions Factory.

'You're right, you're exactly right', said Dean, 'and I ought to be there right now myself. I ought to have a good job there, inside , not out in the sun like this, building these damn things, or carrying 'em from one place to another. Not firing 'em off. I ought to be there, 'cause I know the man who's in charge of hiring there, I know him real good, 'cause we used to go after the quail together ever' year.'

'Why didn't he hire you then?'

'Well, he said he didn't have no place for me, and that he just had to wait until something opened up, but goddamn I'd have taken anything, I tell you, not to have to go to goddamn Asia. I love this country, but goddamn, I want to have both my legs this time come three years. Well, he was "waiting for something to open up" when I got drafted, and here I am.'

'But your wife had a job there, you said.'

'Yeah', said Dean Howell, 'Larry thought he could make ever'thing all right by putting Sarah on the line. That's what they call the 'ssembly line in Pine Cone - the ' 'line" and ever'body knows what you're talking about. But Sarah being on the line didn't make nothing all right. Sarah and I hadn't been married more than a year when I got drafted. Even the people down at the draft board said it was a shame I was getting taken away like that, but they said there wasn't nothing they could do about it, either.'

'Dean', said Si, it sounds like you got the wrong end of the stick.'

'Listen, Si, you listen to me - we both did.' The two men shook their heads, for neither of them was happy to be in Fort Rucca, with only the prospect of jungle combat before them. There were many rumours just then going around the camp, about tortures that the Vietnamese had designed just to prolong the deaths of captured American soldiers, of the terrible things they could do to a man that would make him beg for immediate execution. Dean pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped his forehead and his hands of the sweat there, and then handed it to Si, who did the same. They were being called forward by the platoon sergeant to take their places on the firing line.