GRAND A kilo!” Steve tugged a plastic bag of powder from the broken coffin and jumped down from the plane. “What this,” he held it up. “is worth on the street! And there’s a ton of kilos in these coffins!”
“So what?”
“It’s a fortune!” Steve stared out at the fading landscape, the white snow almost dark now, the black trees and dark night. “Imagine, if we could sell this …”
Zack laughed. “You nuts? It’s not even ours.”
“So do we care?” Steve nodded at the plane. “These guys are drug dealers. Crooks.”
“What would we be, if we took it?”
Steve grinned. “Could make us rich.”
“We’re already rich.” A black scorpion logo, Zack saw, was printed on the bag: A warning. The bag was torn on one end and the powder trickling out made him want to cup it in his hands. He glanced up at the glacial peaks, the lofty darkening trees, the hills of deep silent snow, the horizon empty of humans. “What would we do with it?”
“Sell it!” Steve tipped powder onto the blade of his Buck knife. “Oh Jesus this is good.” He sniffed again, head back, inhaled. “Absolutely pure.”
“If we take it, then these guys,” Zack nodded at the plane, “they come after us.”
“You’re telling me you are afraid of some scumbag coke dealers?”
“It’s an added hassle, that’s all.”
Steve smiled at him with affection. “You know, in all my life, all the shit I’ve done, all that’s happened, Lady Coke’s done me more good than bad.”
“I don’t care. Let’s get back to camp.”
Steve tipped more powder on his knife and held it blade-first to Zack. “Try it.”
“Giving it a break for a while. You know that.”
“Because Monica told you to?”
“You know she wouldn’t.”
Steve withdrew the blade. “Never have you had coke like this. We’re on vacation … don’t tell me you don’t do it when you’re going live.”
“Not anymore.”
“You, the great white linebacker, and now the handsome TV guy with all the answers – and you’re afraid of a little snow?” Steve took another hit. “Is that why you’re losing your edge? Why they’re not offering you another season?”
“I didn’t say they weren’t. I said it was possible. I’ve got a meeting next week, after we get back …”
“Are you’re losing your edge? You’re in a wicked business, every instant have to have the right words, the fast talk … Be looking good …”
Zack laughed. “I can retire now. I told you.”
“You don’t want to. Not when the market’s this hot.” Steve snorted some coke, tipped more on the blade. “Just try it. We do this right, we can make so much money you won’t need to sell our portfolio.”
“It’s not our portfolio. It’s mine. Money I made breaking bones and pissing blood.”
Steve gave him a curious look. “So what’s the difference between doing that and selling coke?”
“Maybe nothing.” Zack unsheathed his own knife, with a fingernail scraped dried elk blood from the blade, shook on some powder. “This ain’t so unusual.”
Then it seared into his bones, electrified his muscles, drove pure oxygen deep into his lungs, exploded his vision to infinity. Everything grew clear. He sat on the snow. It felt warm and cradling, fit his body like a glove. He looked out over the vast horizon, the great sweeping white plateaus, the raw black peaks and tree-thick ridges under the near-black sky, and sensed the magnificence of it all.
Jesus life is magical. What a great gift. He smiled at the white plateaus, sharp cliffs and endless forests. Thank God for this.
With this God inside him, he could do anything. So what was he afraid for? “Holy shit!”
“Yeah,” Steve chuckled. “Holy shit.”
“How much you say?”
“Thirty grand a kilo, Wall Street or Vegas.”
It always amazed Zack how coke instantly hones your judgment and will power. You can do whatever you decide to.
But does it hurt you? He couldn’t tell. Is it evil, to steal what’s evil? Or is coke even evil? It’s always been good to me. Or maybe coke hurt one person inside him but helped another. Helped the athlete facing endless pain from so many battered places in his body, helped the TV anchor deal with the endless fraud and hustle. But hurt the other side, the one Monica loved, the one she called the real you.
What seemed impossible an hour ago now looked easy. As if you can move the earth with one hand.
True, a century ago lots of folks did coke. It was in every bottle of Coca Cola – how Coke got its name. It’s been the basis of so many medicines that have done so much good – why forbid it?
Funny how so many government prohibitions were not to protect the citizen but rather the powerful interests that could be financially harmed by the item proscribed. Like it’s okay to smoke cigarettes that kill half a million Americans a year – the industry even gets government subsidies. But smoking marijuana, which kills no one, is against federal law. How funny. How tragic.
“Is it better to be poor and honest?” Steve grinned, “or rich and crooked?” He hunched into his black parka against the thickening snowfall. “Is coke even crooked? Anyway,” he chuckled, “if it comes down to a choice, I’ll take rich and crooked any time.”
Zack laughed. And felt a blade drop between his past and now.
“All I’m saying,” Steve added, “is what if there’s a way to do this? Think what we’re doing with our lives. You want to spend thirty more years like this? Or do you want to live?”
“It’s insane. How would we get it out of here?”
Snow began to fall harder, twirling down through the green-black treetops and blotting out the early stars.
FIRELIGHT flickering through the trees ahead made Steve think of ancient hunters returning home out of the cold darkness, generations after generations over thousands, millions of years.
“You boys been gone a while,” Curt said. He stood from the fire and helped them shake snow off their coats. “I was even thinking of looking for you.”
“Beautiful night out there,” Zack said, excited from the coke and trying not to show it.
They unloaded their rifles and slid them into their tents, knelt by the fire. Curt handed them each a cup of coffee and Jack Daniels. “This’ll warm you up.”
“You’re not going to believe what I found,” Zack said.
“Zack killed an elk,” Steve broke in, “but a griz got it.”
Curt glanced at him. “What griz?”
“That’s not all I found,” Zack said.
Steve slapped Zack’s shoulder. “A big griz. Chased Zack, knocked him down … Then he chewed on the elk and Zack got up a tree.”
Curt turned to Zack. “You okay?”
“Fine. Just scared for a while.” Zack looked down at his snow-soaked, still-bloody boots. “But the griz got my elk. Six-pointer.”
“That’s