The Paradise War Read Online Free PDF Page B

then?” Tension made my voice sharp.
    “Leaves.”
    Yes. He’d seen it too.
    We stopped for gas at an all-night service station just outside of Inverness. The clock in the dash read 2:47 a.m. Except for a flying stop to fuel the car and grab some sandwiches in Carlisle, it was exactly eleven hours since our last real rest break. Simon had insisted on driving straight through, in order to be, as he put it, “in situ” by daybreak.
     
    Simon saw to the gas while I scrubbed the bug juice from the windshield. He paid the bill and returned to the car, carrying two Styrofoam cups of Nescafé. “Drink up,” he said, shoving one into my hand.
    We stood in the garish glare of the overhead fluorescent tubes, sipping coffee and staring at each other. “Well?” I said, after a couple minutes of this. “Are you going to say it, or am I?”
    “Say what?” Simon favored me with his cool, bland stare—another of the many little tricks.
    “For crying out loud, Simon, you know perfectly well what!” The words came out with more force than I intended. I suppose I was still fairly upset. Simon, however, seemed to be well over it. “What we saw out there.” I waved a hand to the highway behind us.
    “Get in the car,” he replied.
    “No! I’m not getting in the car until—”
    “Shut up, Lewis!” he hissed. “Not here. Get in the car and we’ll talk.”
    I glanced toward the door of the service station. The attendant had wandered out and was watching us. I don’t know how much he had heard. I ducked in and slammed the car door. Simon switched on the ignition, and we pulled out onto the road.
    “Okay, we’re in the car,” I said. “So talk.”
    “What do you want me to say?”
    “I want you to tell me what you think we saw.”
    “But that’s obvious, don’t you think?”
    “I want to hear you say it,” I insisted. “Just for the record.”
    Simon indulged me with regal forbearance. “All right, just for the record: I think we saw what used to be called a Green Man.” He sipped some coffee. “Satisfied?”
    “Is that all?”
    “What else is there to say, Lewis? We saw this big, green man-thing. You and I—we both saw it. I really don’t know what else to say.”
    “You could add that it’s plain impossible. Right? You could say that men made of oak leaves do not, cannot, and never could exist. You could say that there’s no such thing as a Green Man—that it’s a figure of antique superstition and legend with no basis in reality. You could say we were exhausted from the drive and seeing things that could not be there.”
    “I’ll say whatever you like, if it will make you happy,” he conceded. “But I saw what I saw. Explain it how you will.”
    “But I can’t explain it.”
    “Is that what’s got to you?”
    “Yes—among other things.”
    “Just why is an explanation so important to you?”
    “Excuse me, but I happen to think it’s important for any sane and rational human being to keep at least one foot in reality whenever possible.”
    He laughed, breaking the tension somewhat. “So, seeing something one can’t explain qualifies one as insane in your estimation—is that it?”
    “I didn’t say that exactly.” He had a nasty habit of bending my words back on me.
    “Well, you’ll just have to live with it, chum.”
    “Live with it? That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say?”
    “Until we figure out something better, yes.”
    We had come to a small three-way junction. “This is our turn,” I told him. “Take this road to Nairn.”
    Simon turned onto the easterly route, drove until we were out of the city, and then pulled off the road onto the shoulder. He allowed the car to slow to a halt, then switched off the engine and unbuckled his seat belt.
    “What are you doing?”
    “I’m going to sleep. I’m tired. We can get forty winks here and still make it to the farm before sunrise.” He pulled the lever to recline his seat and closed his eyes. In no time at all, he