Chapter 31
Light. Dark. Light. Dark. Light. Dark.
Promise Stone lay flat on his back on the cool concrete of the loading dock, staring at the sky. Thunderheads had been rushing overhead through the course of the afternoon, turning day into night, driven by winds that sent them scudding northward in a tumult of ponderous motion. Every once in a while the massive cloud layer attenuated just enough to allow an aura of indirect sunlight to diffuse downwards, touching the alley and street beyond with a dull yellow pallor before reverting to an obscured shadowland. Light and dark. Dark and light. Stone watched silently, absorbing the pulse of wind and sky, and allowed himself to drift in his own thoughts.
He didn’t like too much thinking. Not because he couldn’t. He could think as razor fast as any man or woman alive, and his thinking about any matter at all had never led him astray. He could think just fine. It was just that too much contemplation interfered with the urgency of right now, and the need to act, and keep moving, and avoid falling into the many pitfalls that were all around. He had resolved deliberately many times over that he would never be like the timid gophers who surrounded him, content to follow the leader with mindless obedience. But right now, he felt himself sliding along, caught in a net that overwhelmed him, carrying him in a direction he could not control. So he let his mind run unfettered, imagining himself flying freely within the turmoil of the storm clouds up above,
He pondered matters great and small, past and present, and allowed himself just an occasional, cautious peek into the future. It felt strange, letting himself indulge in aimless reckoning like that. On most days, time seemed to run right past itself, hurrying quickly to its very end like a mischievous urchin child, doubling back and forth upon itself until exhaustion set in, resting just long enough to begin again. On this day, though, time seemed stalled, stuck in a turnstile of its own creation. It was an odd feeling, treading as he was on the wasted hours of the afternoon, but Stone understood why he felt the way he did, and for the moment at least he allowed himself to lie as still as a bedbaby.
It was all about Marla. In some mysterious way, she had ensnared him, and he couldn’t shake himself free. He had sensed something when they first met at the plantation, something that tweaked him in a place deep inside, almost as deep as the searing fire-iron of anger that stoked his soul, most every waking moment. Afterwards, he had thought about her from time to time, and allowed himself the kind of dreams that were born of fantasy. It had been easy enough to keep her memory at arm’s length in the beginning, but not after he saw her face for a second time. Nope, not after she had draped herself upon him like soft lace on a hardwood table.
She had come with the same elderly driver who had picked up Stone previously. This time, the old, white haired man kept his goggles parked securely on his forehead, giving him the appearance of a mythical swamp creature materializing out of an infested bog. She breezed along beside him, coolly made up in a long cotton dress and ankle length apron, her body bundled up in the plainest of packages. The old man spoke to the dock foreman briefly, waving in the direction of his automobile.
“Stone!” Orkin pointed peremptorily, but did not budge from his rocker. “Get his package out of the car and inside! Now!” He assumed a look of great satisfaction, and leaned back in his chair, but kept one eye cocked in Stone’s direction, flicking lizard-like with rapid up and down movements.
The old man was quick to join in. “Marla, you get with him and make sure he don’t drop it or nothin’, or break it or somethin’. Git!”
And with that, they were alone together inside the warehouse. He carried her wooden crate with an easy sureness, placing it near the locked door that led to the radio station upstairs. His first words to her were not so sure. “Surprised to see they sent you along.”
She waited a freighted moment before answering. “Good to see you too.”
“Well I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Well I did.”
Just another moment, and she was in his arms, squeezing hard, squeezing as if everything depended on that very second, and that everything about her life would be reborn in that one instant, and begin everything again as if the past had never happened, all beginning with that squeeze. She let out a short sob, a very brief one, much like a fluttering candle gasping for air before flaming out, creating darkness where there had been light.
Promise Stone did not believe in very much. Not in faith. Not in hope. Not in love. Without thinking about it too deeply, he knew that love required tomorrows, and he had no tomorrows to give. And even if he did, who was to say he should give any to this particular woman? But she squeezed and squeezed, and raised herself on tiptoes to lay her head against his shoulder, and he could feel her body pulse and burn, and soon, almost without realizing it, he glimpsed something he knew could never be real. He saw himself holding her by the hip as they walked together from dawn to dusk, and felt her lips against his neck as she lay upon him from dusk to dawn. Just as quickly, he realized that it was foolishness to think that way. There was to be no dawn. Dawn was nothing but a brief break from the night, a temporary intrusion of light into the dark. Even so, as she touched him he felt his own arms embrace her, and hold her, and a mighty shouting came to his ears, a thousand voices saying a million words all at once, all trying to tell him the same thing.
“I ain’t felt nothin’... Nothin’ like this before.” He surprised himself with the gentle murmur of his words. “I want to stand right here forever, right here together, like as if this is a house we just made, for me and you.”
Marla pushed away slightly to look upon his face. Her eyes were hazy, obscured by a cloudy smoke of desire and desperation. “You once said you wanted to take me away.”
“Still do. Do it now, right now. Take my hand and we’ll go.”
“Promise, don’t you fear?”
“Only thing I fear is losing what’s here and now. Fear taking a promise on tomorrow when all I want is this right here, this second.”
“Can’t promise tomorrow anyway.” She pointed at the crate. “Someone needs to do this.”
Promise Stone grasped her by the shoulders roughly, then lifted her like a baby in his arms. “I been all my lone all my life, that’s awright, and I can go out on my own, that’s awright too. But right now I want you.” He nodded his head towards the dark rear of the warehouse.
Marla cringed. “What if they come in after us?”
“Foe’man won’t come in. He knows I’ll kill him if he does.”
There were man-high wooden shipping crates along the back wall. Stone draped a spare tarpaulin over them, securing the corners carefully, and then spread raw cotton on the ground, and when he was done took Marla by the hand and led her step by step under the shrouding. Just for the moment, and just for them, the little space became transformed into a richly tapestried tent, and flowered bridal bower, and carpeted ceremonial chamber, and just for the while, underneath the thick flowing, falling folds of dirty canvas the inner dark turned into light.
Now, days had passed, and his mind was still addled. He wanted to see Marla again, but didn’t think he could. Or would ever. She had explained the secret of the suitcase packed within the crate, something he had already guessed at, and had told him what he needed to do. All in all, he didn’t mind. He was young. He knew that, though he didn’t know his actual age. There was a great much more in the world going on that would still go on, day after day, and mos’times mos’folks would want to be part of that world, and live their days until the coming of afternight, and only then call the deal complete. But he had seen too much of the ugly and the evil, and he wanted this particular world to end, and raise itself up from the mud and rocks and become something different. It was the only dream he held to, something he came to believe in from childhood.
He was big from the day he was born, so they told him. He was built from the bottom up, and big enough, when he was eight or nine, to be made a bird boy. They set him in a bean and cowpea patch and taught him to crack a whip to keep the birds away. He felt sorry for the birds because he could see they were hungry, but he was always hungry himself, and found the work to be the most tiresome he could remember, and so he was usually mighty sorry for himself as well. One day a big striped King snake, the biggest he had ever seen, squirmed out from beneath a raspberry bush, squiggled along, and without much care curled up into a ball and came to rest on the muddy ground not a yard away. Promise liked snakes as a rule, and admired this particular one a great deal. It looked fat and content, its belly full of frog and mouse, happy to soak in the mid morning sun. This made Promise feel happy in turn; without a moment’s thought he dropped his leather flail and began to dance, a crazy juba dance that sent him shaking and shimmying in all directions at once, bobbing his head up and down as he did so. It felt a fine thing to do, much better than wuppin’ the bare air just to frighten away little furry sparrows and blue-black magpies. The sun was low, the field was cool, and the gentle smell of magnolia seasoned a quietly drifting breeze. Soon enough, birds began to flitter close by and alight, chirping and squawking, their heads twisting and turning this way and that in curiosity, standing forward on their legs to see all the better.
One in particular, a long limbed cheweeka, lit on a nearby wild plum tree and pranced up and down, hopping from one leg to the other and fanning its orange rump. It seemed to young Promise that the brown legged bird was just about ready to join his dance of celebration in honor of the great King snake when it suddenly flew off in a flash, screaming its own name over and over with a disappointed shriek. He soon saw why. Mr. Carter was suddenly there, appearing silently out of nowhere on his big black horse, gazing at Promise with a look of sadness and pity. Mr. Carter was generally in charge of Promise, ordering him here and there as needed, giving him new clothing at Christmas and new shoes at Easter, rousting him out of bed at the first pink of day and rustling him from the fields when the last ruby kiss of sun was done. He was not a big man, just a few inches taller than the still-sprouting Promise, but he carried two badges of authority with him that showed him to be in charge. One was a cedar switch he kept thrust in his belt and the other was a book, something he called the Good Book. Nothing good ever came out of the book as far as Promise could tell, and the black stained switch seemed permanently placed at the hip, never to be removed except in dire circumstances.
On that particular occasion, though, the switch was drawn out like a long sword, and Promise was instructed to kneel. Mr. Carter opened the good book in his other hand, turned to a certain page, and said a few words that were apparently appropriate to the moment. Then he gave Promise a dozen blows over the shoulders and back in quick order. The switching raised some welts, but in a curious way did not cause too much pain. Instead, Promise felt a slow burning begin way inside him, a feeling that was new to him, a feeling that sizzled like a lit fuse from that day on.
“Promise, do you know why I whipped you?” Mr. Carter had asked.
“No. I mean, no suh.”
“I seen you there, Promise, seen you dancin’, having your fun and enjoying the bliss of the day. Seen all that. But this here is no place for fun and bliss, Promise. That’s left for heaven, if we get there. You can’t bring heaven here, says so right in the Good Book. Mebbee one day all this will end and you and me we’ll be nothing but old dreams and ashes and everything on this earth will go to heaven, but heaven sure ain’t comin’ down here. Right here is a way place, between God’s paradise and the devil’s hell. Remember that and let the pain of this whippin’ bring it to mind whenever ye seek bliss in your mortal time.”
“Mr. Carter, suh, what about the birds and King snake over there. They havin’ their fun, ain’t they?”
In response, Promise received a slash across cheek and chin, raising a welt that would serve as a mark of remembrance.
Promise had never forgotten and had suffered many reminders since then. Maybe Carter was right. Maybe there would be no happiness in this life. Or almost none, because his short time with Marla now seemed to almost fill a lifetime of contentment. That thought, and a few others, circulated over and over as he lay on his back on the cool slab of concrete at the edge of the loading dock, watching the clouds above scud by. Of one thing he was certain. He would do whatever was needed to be done with the heavy valise packed in the crate, and afterwards did not matter. Like any man, he thought it might be interesting to see what would be tooting round the corner on the day acomin’, and the day after that, and after that as well. But, if someone had to blow the whole thing up so that everything could start all over, he was glad to be the one. Maybe that was the most best happiness he could ever have.
As Promise Stone furrowed his brow in deepest meditation, a shaft of bright sunshine erupted from the skies, dispersing the dark of midday. Miraculously, the dense cloud cover had torn itself apart for a few moments, exposing the brilliant orb of sun. Light spilled from it as from a floating fountain, the radiance splashing down from a great height to engulf the entire world, as if heaven wanted to show itself one last time, out of reach, from high up where it was.
“He can go straight to living hell with my boot up his ass.” Pickett made a rude gesture with his finger. “Send him this here message just as I’m showin’ you. With my compliments, of course.”
Mosby shifted his feet uneasily. “Do you really mean that, sir?”
Pickett did not respond immediately. It was only the forenoon but he was extremely fatigued, and had already felt several waves of crushing pain over his upper chest. Since the Atlanta riots, his heart had been acting up almost daily, at times keeping him up at all hours. The past night had been very difficult, leaving him exhausted from the moment he opened his eyes that morning. He felt no patience for anything, especially anything to do with that maniacal ass Patton. “I’m still president, ain’t I? I still get to talk to the people, don’t I? I am intendin’ to make that speech.”
“Sir, you are playing long chances. He won’t let you, plain as day. The downtown district is still under martial law. He’s got an entire regiment up in there, and that makes him the king of Atlanta.”
“The real problem is he’s mean as a skunk and can’t be trusted. Actually, him and his ma both. She’s the one callin’ the shots, not chrome dome. He won’t take a piss without her holdin’ his wonky first.”
“Please, sir....” Mosby shook his head, refusing to smile. “He says he is doing everything in his power to break the Underground. Saying to everyone that he’s working hard at it, and folks are listening. They believe him. More than that. They’re beginning to believe in him.”
“He ain’t doin’ nothin’ like it. Firstmost, he was born lazy and raised fat. Nextmost, the only thing he’s doing is consolidating power for himself. Taking our rights away and destroying everything we stand for. Freedom, Mosby. Liberty. That’s what this nation and this government were created to protect, the cornerstone of our birth as a country. Ain’t I right?”
“I suppose. That and all the rest...you know...our societal situation. Just so’s you know, he’s claiming that you’re advocating for despotic inroads on the right of owning property.”
Pickett went on as if he were not listening. “I know in my heart that the people will reject all this once they figure out what’s goin’ on. They’ll want their rights back.”
“People want safety right now, Mr. President. They’re afraid that buildings will come crashing down on their heads, and that bombs might explode in a theater or marketplace, or their water or electricity will suddenly cut off. Nowadays, their telephones also. They’re afraid. All of us are, for ourselves and our families and we want safety first. Most are willing to give up a little to get a little. When everything is going up in smoke, rights might appear a bit hazy.” Mosby hesitated a moment, wary of how Pickett might react. “Not everyone has lived their life on the frontier, Mr. President, in the service of their country, and a hero and what all, as you have been. Most live quiet, ordinary lives, and want things around them to be quiet and ordinary. If there’s going to be any change they want it hidden away and out of sight. You know what I mean. Change they can’t see, that doesn’t up and slap them in the face. That’s the prevailing mood among folks out there, it seems to me, from the highest blue bloods to the poorest cohees.”
Pickett searched Mosby’s face carefully. “So, you’ve gone over to them.”
“No sir. I am with you. And I am with my country, to the last breath. You deserve my best opinion and counsel, sir, which I have rendered honestly.”
“No Southern man worth his salt would allow his rights to be taken from him by a Sunday proclamation.”
‘Sir, I think that people adapt to whatever they need to. Most folks are ... malleable. I think that’s the right word. It’s just human nature, is all. Most would agree to any number of things.”
“Really? No heroes out there?”
“There might be one or two. They may rise up but they’ll be cut down. Always are. Anyway, it’s not right to expect anyone to be a hero. Not everyone can be so. That takes a special brand.”
It didn’t take long for Pickett to unwind himself from his chair and begin pacing, one hand on his hip and the other with pen in hand, held forward as if aiming a pistol. “He’s in town now?”
“Patton? Yes sir.”
“How about I go find him and shoot him dead, how would that be?”
Mosby stared back with incredulity, his lips and mouth working up and down as if readying to spit out a chaw of tobacco. His hands jerked out reflexively, palms first as he croaked out a guttural exclamation, the sound a man might make after being hard struck at the back of his knees by a steel rod. “God forbid, Mr. President!”
Pickett crossed his arms over his chest grimly. “Naw. You’re gonna have to come up with something stronger than that to stop me. God’s not enough.”
“You can’t be serious. They’ll shoot you down. What will the country say?”
“That’s just the point. The country will say I’m a savior, don’tcha think? Saved them from a wannabe tyrant.”
Mosby bent his knees, almost sinking to the floor. “Sir, I beseech you, just think for a moment about what you’re saying. I am imploring you to please stop that kind of talk. There is no way you can win this. Live to fight another day. You’ve said that yourself many times.” He seemed ready to fall prostrate at Pickett’s feet.
The long march of a minute went by before Pickett slumped back into his high-backed chair, swiveling to turn his back to Mosby just as if he were a child pretending to disappear. Abruptly, a deep throb of darkness rubbed across his forehead, narrowing his vision to a few specks of light that danced before him. He was dizzied at first, but by leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes all became settled and serene, and the burning in his chest receded as rapidly as it had appeared. The quick paced patter of his heart slowed and became almost imperceptible, allowing thoughts to weave in and out of his mind without interruption.
Live to fight another day. Words he had lived by. But when would it all stop? The fighting. Maybe even the living. Both were tearing him apart. Pickett had lived all his life in two worlds. The one he could taste and hear and touch, the one he shared with others. Then there was the other, a world of his own, much deeper, a matrix of undefinable beliefs, unexplainable understandings, contradictory perceptions. It was a world both beautiful and polluted, filled with honor, pride, devotion, hatred, scorn, betrayal and cruelty, lifting him to the most sublime of heights and casting him into the darkest vale of shadows. It was a world of deep tradition, fixed expectations, starched uniforms, mangled bodies, and manicured parade grounds. He knew the outer world was where he lived with others, and the inner only with himself, but it was the thickly twined thread within him that seemed most real. Outside was adulation, glory, sex, booze, defeat, disloyalty. And death, eventually. Inside there was no death. The string of life had no ending, only a beginning, a legacy seeping into his bloodline drop by drop, a beginning he shared with many others in a timeless chain that connected him with the past. In the outside world time was precious, each second worth a king’s ransom. Inside, though, time did not matter. Only the beginning was important; where he had begun created what he had become.
A sudden wave of crushing pain lashed his chest again, shooting probing fingers to his neck and back, arrogant ambassadors of even greater agony to come. As the pain intensified, he winced, then regurgitated rancid acid into his mouth, causing him to choke and gasp. He slumped further down in his chair and remained turned away from Mosby. If this was to be the end, he wanted to be alone. As the pain increased in tempo he shut his eyes and turned his mind inward, readying himself to accept whatever lay just beyond the next moment. It would not be difficult; he had prepared himself in the same way many times before.
Unbidden, a face flashed into his mind, an unreal face, a distorted, doughy composite of his mother and father. It arose rapidly, high over the firmament of his memory, a full moon suspending itself over the mountainous terrain of his past. The moon face, rough and harsh, spilled memories like moonbeams, illuminating a landscape that lay at once nearby and far away. Shortly, it turned its gaze to shine brightly on his earliest years. Pickett did not care to think very much about his childhood. It was neither sad nor happy, a boyhood both deprived and privileged. He had a great name, he knew that from his earliest times, but he never knew the father who had given him that name. George’s only link to the great war hero was a sterile portrait that seemed tarnished around the edges for as long as he could remember.
His mother had always been the most dominant person in his life, teaching him the importance of duty, decorum and devotion. He often thought about those teachings, and how far he had strayed from those ideals. She had crooned stories about glory and honor as if they were lullabies but never said a word about the living man who had held her hand and fathered her child. Whenever George asked about him, and what he was like, and where he had gone, she wouldn’t answer directly. ‘The time is behind,’ she would say. ‘The time is behind.’ George Pickett the hero was no more than a ghost condemned to work the mines and quarries of the long ago, tap-tap-tapping at a marbled vein of memory. The father had created the beginning, and his had done the same before him, and his before him, and the same was true of his mother, and her mother, and on and on before that. Each generation in turn had crafted the many chains and cordons and dams and spillways that squeezed all those who followed down into the same narrow corridors. The son was taught with a teaching that required no words, told that he could no more ignore those boundaries than he could ignore the beating of his own heart. And so, without realizing it, he himself had become guilty of spinning the same eternal pottery wheel, molding the same earthen clay that had once spawned him, creating the same dead end.
“No!” Pickett, with great exertion, breathed the word again. “No!” He would not travel that road any longer. Hell, he had always been a maverick, an impulsive rebel who went his own way and didn’t much care what others thought. He had not lived a life within the four cubits of the law, and he would not be restricted now. He felt the blood rushing to his cheeks, and the old war-cry gurgling in his throat. There was a new day dawning. He would save his people by freeing them from the tyranny of old ideas. In his mind’s eye he could see himself in the saddle again, in the van of a great army, spurring his horse forward to gain glory and fame by flying first over the parapets. O mortalium validissimus! The words spilled into his brain involuntarily, words of both defiance and acceptance, words that had stirred him since he first memorized them as a boy at school. He had spent his life believing in the power of strength and courage over death. While the bit still chafed in his mouth, he would spend his last mortal days proving that what he believed was not an illusion. He would go it alone, the hero who saved his nation from extinction. In truth, that’s how he wanted it, and had always wanted it.
The tremulous palpitations within his chest began to subside as abruptly as they started, lifting the crushing weight over his heart. Pickett could feel his breath resuming a normal depth. For now, at least, it was not over. Fate had flipped him another hand to play. He did not turn his chair to face Mosby, instead speaking to the wall. “He said all of what he had to say in his letter, right?”
The secretary hesitated, obviously pained. “Yes. A letter. More like an edict. Forbids you from giving a speech at the radio station. Says he’s going to give one himself, instead of you.”
“So he says. Read that last paragraph again. The only part written by a human, I think. The rest was made by a machine. Or his mother, same difference.”
Mosby read:
It gives me no pleasure to view the sad state of our country. We have reached a point where we must rise back up or permanently fall, reclaim our former greatness or see it dissipate forever. There is a strong wind blowing, not just here but around the world, pushing us towards a horizon we do not know, and the only way to keep things right and orderly is through strength. You want to coax when we need to coerce. We need the right man for that job. You might have been the one twenty years ago, but not any longer. In this time of national need I require you to step aside graciously and let me do what needs to be done. Rest assured that any resistance on your part will be rendered nugatory. When the stable is cleared, as they say, you might have your horse back, but this will take some time. By the way, sorry about your nigger, but that was just the beginning. Many more will need to follow him. Looks like we didn’t find very much of him left. His remains were mixed in with the remains of our heroic dead, but we did find this cross of cloth, which is enclosed. I was going to retain it as a memento of our victory, but I suppose you might want it as a keepsake. I know you felt strong about him, a fact I will try to keep out of the public eye, but cannot guarantee depending on circumstances.
Yours most respectfully, etc.
Pickett spun his chair around. A small blue envelope sat in the center of his desk, delicate in appearance, the kind of envelope that might contain an invitation to a wedding, or a springtime cotillion. He grasped it as firmly as he could with fingers that felt numbed and tore it open. A finely stitched cross, white, was inside, looking much larger than he remembered. An indistinct memory pecked at him briefly, then faded quickly. As far as he could recall, Jones had worn it every day but never said a word about it. It was odd to see it this way, lying in sterile silence on his desk, disconnected from the man it belonged to. Seeing it, though, set off an avalanche of thoughts, and sounds, and sights and even smells. So very few of his memories were charged with any happiness, or for that matter any sadness. Some felt as familiar to him as the feel of his own flesh, others more like a distant port of call shrouded in fog. Kentucky...Nicaragua...Mexico... Moments from the past crowded near him, jostling him as if they were comrades sitting around a campfire, indistinct and hazy. Whether as friends or phantoms, memories pressed at him, pushed and prodded him, pummeling him to remember. Dreaming a lyrical kommos, Pickett began his dialogue with the demons of the past, closed his eyes and edged his hand forward, reaching for the cross, imagining it pinned to Jones’ lapel. Touching it made him feel uncomfortable somehow, as if it were an artifact belonging to a long dead civilization. He half expected Jones himself to appear, rising up in spectral silence, but rubbing the knitted cross brought only wispy, unsubstantial visions to mind, darting in and out like nimble finches flitting around the slender branches of a tea paper tree. In the end, he was left with only the briefest of glimpses from his past, all that remained of a life steeped in adventure and danger and loneliness.
Live to fight another day.
Pickett opened his eyes and rubbed at his chest. “I’ve got to fight him. You can see that, can’t you Mosby? He is the past, raising its ugly head one more time. We have to leave all that behind, leave behind how we began and change ourselves into what we have to become if we want to live. We’re going to end servitude. Don’t know if there’s anything wrong with it, I’ll leave that for others, but it’s not working. We’ll go broke abolishing it, it will trash our pockets and trash our minds, but then we dust ourselves off and march forward. We need to do that if we want to survive. No different than finding our way out of the wilderness.”
Mosby shook his head, feeling helpless. “Just like that? Do you expect people to ignore our own past?”
Pickett did not hesitate. He gave a grin. His grin, the kind that flashed his teeth pearly white. “Naw, not ignore....just forget. Forget none of it ever happened. Don’t write about it, don’t talk about it, remove it from the godamm history books or burn them all. Hell, we’ll have a national bonfire holiday. Think that way, and in fifty, a hundred years no one will give a damn. In fact, they will want to forget. Oh, there might be a so-called scholar here or there, might write a historical expose, but the feeling will be gone, disappeared. I know what I’m gonna do.” He leaned back in his chair, still grinning. “Yessir...smoke a cigar, have a drink, and forget the whole ball of wax. Out of sight out of mind, just like it never was.”
“Hey, Andrews, what’re you thinkin’?”
When there was no answer, Murphy crumpled up another piece of paper, compressed it into a tight ball, and tossed it at Andrews. He aimed at the head, only partly covered by unruly blankets heaped in large mounds on the bed. “Come on, what’s goin’ on in that Princeton head of yours? Review of the Roman Empire? Writing the great American novel? Mathematical ratios? Riddles? OK, OK...Riddle me this, smart boy...” He threw another paper ball as hard as he could, striking Andrews squarely on the ear. “Listen...what is it that no one can see, never was, but always is? Come on, I know you’re awake.”
Andrews did not respond. He had never felt so weak. Partly, it was due to the pernicious vomiting that had consumed him overnight. That stemmed from Murphy, who had persuaded him, much against his sense of discipline, to down a few whiskeys. Maybe more than a few. But it was more than that. He felt worn down, exhausted by the daily friction that had begun the moment he stepped off the boat in New Orleans. He had sensed something different immediately, something in the atmospherics, as if he had suddenly stepped out onto a high Andean plateau, remote from the earth below, a place where the air was thin and the wind blew with a cutting edge. There was a feeling all around him he could not escape. There were the stares of course; he had become accustomed to that since his boyhood and had long been immune to them. In the past, though, he had endured probing looks that ended in a question mark. Now, intense scrutiny twisted quickly into visible frowns and accusatory scowls. They know. The idea had begun to spin around and around in his brain from the beginning, and by now had reached cyclonic power, destroying any other thought with an aimless fury. They know. White cashiers and black laborers, the waiters who served him, maids, porters, high officials and low, they all knew. He was naked and exposed, and for the first time in a very long time, he was beggared by a sensation that seemed foreign to him.
He felt afraid.
He had long ago perfected the art of hiding who he was, obscuring himself for the sake of the carefully crafted persona he wanted the world to see. Now, everything he had worked to create seemed to be crashed and broken, like a mirror exploded into a million shards. The only John Andrews that existed was reflected in the distorted, fragmented images that remained, half lie and half truth, half symbol and half real. The proud tower had crumbled, and there were no supports to lean on.
Worse still, his sister’s memory had descended upon him, glimmering weakly, a wan star that seemed very far away, refusing to set beyond the horizon line of his memory. He had once banned her from his thoughts, but she had appeared to him frequently in recent days, each time triggering a deep anger. At her. At her death. At her life. At his own life. The feeling, so long suppressed, overwhelmed him, and like a sheet cowled around his head it threatened to asphyxiate him.
“C’mon, Johnny boy, get up. Looks like special agent man can’t handle his liquor.”
After a few moments a croaking sound emerged from under the covers. “Tomorrow.”
“What’r you saying....ain’t getting up until tomorrow?” Murphy prepared another paper projectile.
“No.” Andrews struggled onto his elbows and then swung his legs around to sit, slumped so low his head was at his knees. “No. Tomorrow. The answer to your riddle. Tomorrow.”
Murphy nodded, satisfied. “That’s right. Tomorrow. That’s what it’s all about, right? That’s what we learned yesterday. We live for tomorrow.”
Andrews plunged his face into the palms of his hands, rubbing furiously. He remembered most of the day before, until maybe the very end. It was the worst day, and in a way the best possible day, a day he knew he could never have again. It began the way this day had, except that it was Andrews who began throwing paper balls at Murphy’s sodden, unmoving form. It was the same kind of morning, the same beginning, happening over and over since they had arrived.
“Murphy! Get up! No time to sleep it off. Don’t know what Lieb will be up to today.” After a barrage of several minutes’ duration, he gave up trying to wake the sleeping agent. “Alright. You can be remiss in your duties, but I intend to be conscientious. I’m leaving.”
“Wait!” Murphy’s voice trilled with operatic clarity as he rose from the bed, clutching a white sheet around his head and torso as if he were a nomad wandering the desert. “I beg of you! Hold, good sir!” He raised his voice into an even higher falsetto, speaking in sing song. “Did you say remiss? Remiss? O great Jehovah, anything but that! Give me boils, or shingles, or pustulent drainage from my nether parts, or cover my ass in creepy crawlies, but I pray you....save....me....from....REMISS!”
In a flash, Andrews felt himself blinded by rage, completely overcome by his hatred for the older agent. With any sense of restraint drained dry, he lashed out with a stupendous blow to Murphy’s jaw. He had never hit another human being that hard, ever, even back in his hardscrabble Baltimore youth. Murphy fell backward on the bed, spread eagled, and for a pause of several seconds it appeared that he was unconscious.
Then, without moving, he spoke, his voice reduced to its normal scratchy hoarseness. “I guess that was the dictionary definition of a sucker punch. And you are the dictionary definition of a first class jerk.”
Andrews rubbed the knuckles of his right hand, in disbelief at what he had just done. He had violated his own stringent code of self control, and in one thoughtless moment his lifelong, careful accretion of armor plating, everything that defined him, was reduced to a thin veneer of pretension. He held both arms out, helpless and disarmed. “Agent Murphy, I didn’t mean to do that. I’m not sure why....”
“I’ll tell you why, you phony piece of shit, it’s because you’re as tight as a coil, and you’ve made yourself that way so you can pretend you’re not human like the rest of us. Perfect little Johnnie, as self-contained as a stick of TNT, just waiting to explode.” Murphy rubbed his jaw as he sat up and sidled to the edge of the bed. “I’ll say this. You’ve got a punch like a mule kick.”
“It doesn’t look like you’re feeling anything.”
“You’re wrong.” Murphy gave a long sigh, a thin rustle of breath that seemed to empty him completely. “I feel it. I feel pain. I got lots of feelings. The weird thing is, I screwed them up just as much as you have, just different.”
Andrews did not trust himself to answer directly. “Make up for it, though.”
“Yeah? When?”
“Tomorrow.”
Sometimes, what people do makes no sense, at least outwardly. There was no reason, particularly, for Murphy to begin a slow titter that grew gradually into a galloping laugh, and no explanation for Andrews, who responded with a staccato chortle that quickly escalated into gales of riotous snorting. Somehow, the laughter set both men free, putting them in a place just beyond where they were moments before, a liberation both were desperately seeking.
“Hey, this reminds me of that night in Berlin, at the bar, remember? With the old perfessor and that blond? We laughed our asses off.”
“Yes we did. Different time, though. Ages ago. Hated you so much that night.”
Both men quieted abruptly. Murphy stood to light a cigarette, taking a few moments before speaking again. “So how far up the ladder do you want to go?”
“As far as anyone can. To the top. Don’t care what I have to do to get there.” The words were crisp, defiant, but Andrews kept his head down as he spoke.”
Murphy took a short drag, then another quickly. “Listen, pal....John. Never gonna happen. You need to snap out of this little dream you got goin’ in that brain of yours, cause it ain’t real. You can pretend all you want, but someone upstairs has the goods on you. If these guys down here can figure it out, then it can’t be that hard. They know all about you. Bet that Nanny knows, for sure, and all the top brass. They’ll let you get so far, and no further, just enough to squeeze every last drop of use outta you. I’ve watched you, John, seen the way you’ve been since we landed, and I get it. Must be hell for you, and if you didn’t act like you always had a pin stuck up your ass I woulda said something sooner. Anyway, I feel like this is the first human thing I’ve said in a long time...thanks for letting me talk.”
Andrews sunk his head further, covering his face with one hand. His brow felt feverish, sweat surfaced along the back of his neck, and his heart beat to the very brim of explosion.” You think I should give up? What I’ve worked for? Everything?”
“No, not everything. But you’re waiting for tomorrow to happen. What about today? Lighten up a little, smell the roses, have a steak and smoke a cigar. C’mon, today’s Sunday. Nobody works on Sunday, right? Not even the so-called servants, some of them anyway. People will be out, livin’ their lives and doin’ what they’re doin’. I want to see what’s it really like down here, not what they’re spoon feeding us. These guys here might be worse than the Reds, I don’t know. For sure as bad as the Nazis, maybe worse. I say we go out and hit the streets, see what we can find.”
“What about Jona?”
“He’s spending the day with Koehler. That Kraut’s like an octopus the way he latches on, ain’t he? They can both go to hell. C’mon, we’ve got a life to live.”
The streets were teeming with cars and horse drawn carts, smartly dressed strollers, and not a few ragged-looking wayfarers. The two men wandered in no particular direction, soon finding themselves on a broad boulevard running roughly northwards. The street seemed quiet at first, but as they walked onwards other pedestrians began to appear, flowing in the same direction. The measured rivulet soon became a stream, a thin but steady crowd that thickened as they moved along.
“Hey Andrews, see all this?”
“Sure. People going somewhere. Not in a hurry, though. Like a brisk stroll.”
“Right. Kind of strange though, ain’t it?” Murphy swept his arm around.
“What?”
“Black and white, younger and older, men and women, kind of walking more or less together in the same direction. Almost no one the other way. Haven’t seen that before. Definitely going somewhere.”
“I believe you are correct.” Andrews abruptly veered to his left, accosting a black man who made a striking appearance in a crisp gray suit and black and white Oxford wingtips. “Excuse me, sir, is there something up the road, something where all these people are headed?”
“Yeassah...” The man halted, removed the floppy felt hat collapsed on his head and clutched it to his chest as he turned towards Andrews. “Sho’ is....” He stopped in mid-sentence abruptly, squinted carefully at Andrews, and quickly put his hat back on with a firm tug. “Man, you goin’ good. Keep goin’ that way and you’ll get there. If you’re fixin’ to see the ABC’s, that is.”
“What’s the ABC’s?” Murphy attempted his best smile as he spoke, but merely succeeded in baring his teeth as if preparing a predatory strike.
The man they stopped appeared to be older, his hair a thickly matted salt and pepper, with a spider web of finely carved furrows creasing his forehead and drooping cheeks. His face seemed plastic, morphing rapidly as he worked his chin and lips in and out and up and down in response to Murphy’s question. He ripped his hat off quickly once again, placing it over his chest, and gave a quick nod of the head. He did it rapidly, in one smoothly practiced motion. “Yeassah. The ABC’s. Atlanta Black Crackers. Baseball team, playin’ the Black Barons from Burminham today. Right up the road, there.” He gestured with his hat. “That’s where folks is goin’, up to Poncy Park to see the game.”
Murphy clapped his hands. “Fantastic! A day at the ballpark! Just what the doctor ordered! Thank you, friend, then that’s exactly where we’re going too. Can we walk with you?”
“Yeassah.” The man did not move. He began squeezing his hat repetitively as he pursed his lips into a tight grimace. “Please, suh, I don’t want no trouble. I be happy to go my own way.”
“Why should there be any trouble? From who?” Murphy’s jaw thrust out, instantaneously giving his face the semblance of a thuggish cartoon caricature.
The man glanced around nervously. “Yeassah. Y’all not from around here, mebbe. Don’t want things to look like we’re chums or nothin’ like that. Folks might not understand.”
“OK, OK, we’re not chums. We’ll walk nearby, that’s all.” Murphy extended his hand, and almost immediately withdrew it, nodding. “Lead the way. Don’t want to miss the first pitch.”
The man’s name was Adeleus, and he proudly announced himself to be in the best of health even though he had just turned fifty four. “I work every day, don’t take no treatments, and eat light. Those are the secrets.”
The three men were sitting on a grassy slope across the street from Ponce de Leon field, waiting for the box office to open. A dense throng crowded the small plaza in front of the main gates, in turbulent motion as they passed the time restlessly. Vendors trolled the area, hawking popcorn, cotton candy, and warm beer in strident foghorn voices. It had turned into a calm, gently sunlit summer day, and Andrews found himself lounging on the grass more comfortably than he could have imagined. He knows, he thought. He can tell. So what. Makes no difference to me. Look who I am, a U.S. Agent, and look at him. He paused an instant, then completed his thought. A nobody.
“Hey Adeleus, I’m ordering a beer. Want one, on me?” Murphy lay flat on the grass, arms propped beneath his head.”
“Don’t drink. That’s a rule too. Anyway, getting ready to go to work when the gate opens and need to stay sharp.”
Murphy raised his head. “You work in there? Doin’ what?”
“I take bets.” Adeleus nodded his head enthusiastically. “Make good money.”
“That so?” Murphy sat up, suddenly curious. “What kinda bets?”
“Any kind, suh, any kind. Fans will bet on anything during a game. Spot bets. Hits. Runs. Home runs. Anything. But I specializes in strikeouts. Almost never lose that, ‘cause I know all the boys, ya see, know how they are at the plate. Cool Papa Bell. Big Mule Suttles. Turkey Stearns. I know them all, and I know how they like to hit. Can tell when they’re in the groove and when they’re gonna go down. When y’all study things real good, ya’ll’ll know what’s gonna happen befohand, sure as shootin’. Told that to the mayor once, and he was mighty impressed.”
Murphy sat bolt upright. “You talk to the mayor? You?”
Adeleus gave a wistful smile, stretched his arms casually, and sprang to his feet. “Yeassah. Talk all the time. Hizzoner has my contract. I work for him.”
“It looks like you’re prospering.” Andrews regretted his words as soon as they left his lips, another sign of his loss of self control. He wanted nothing to do with Adeleus, who was part of the flotsam and jetsam that he needed to avoid as he maneuvered his way through the misery of this mission, a mission he was still determined to complete.
For his part, Adeleus gave Andrews a smirk, and snugged his hat down tightly on his head. “Man, ain’t you got bread in your belly, and a roof over your head? So do I, and one day even more.”
When Andrews did not respond, Murphy spoke up. “Go ahead, Adeleus. What are you saying?”
Adeleus puffed up his chest and set his chin firmly against his neck. “I’m sayin’ that my contract is done on my fifty fifth birthday, then I’ll be my own man, workin’ for nobody but me, and this....” he gestured expansively towards the stadium, “This action will all be mine.”
Murphy and Andrews entered the stadium through the main gate, passing beneath a fading sign announcing ‘White Only’. Adeleus had left them hurriedly, seeming anxious to part from them quickly in order to enter the stadium through a separate gate for ‘Colored’.
“Y’all go on your way. Y’all be sittin’ in the grandstands, your money bought you real good seats. I do my work in the left field bleachers, that’s where we all is allowed to be. No mixin’, so you can’t come with me and I sure as tootin’ can’t go with you. Not unless we want another riot like we just had not very much long ago.”
“Alright, but how about we meet after the game? I want to talk to you about how things really are down here.”
Murphy’s offer sounded more like a demand, but Adeleus shook his head vigorously. “Yeassah. The answer would be no, with respect. Can’t see nothin’ good comin’ from that. Nice to make yo’ gentleman’s acquaintance.” He doffed his hat and was gone, vaporized within the crowd heading towards the left field entrance.
Murphy was left standing, arms akimbo, his face flushed. “Look at all this, Andrews. Just look at this pile of crap going on. Blacks there. Whites here. This is considered normal for these people.”
“Congratulations, you’re right. What you call crap is going on, what a surprise. Where was your granddaddy seventy years ago? Where was everyone? There is nothing we can do about it now. Besides, it’s none of our business, nor does it relate to our mission. We should evacuate this area and go take our seats.”
They made it well in time to watch batting practice. Their seats were a few rows squarely behind home plate, affording an excellent view of the playing field. The infield was a luxuriant dark green, the grass mowed crisply to a fine nubbin. Deep center field sloped gently upwards towards an enormous, gracefully shaped magnolia tree that stood squarely in fair territory, a peculiarity of the park that had no explanation. A few balls caromed nearby, but none hit the tree, enthroned in haughty and isolated splendor, queenly sovereign over the emerald empire of grass that lay at her feet. Two bright white foul lines marked the earth with startling clarity, dividing fair from foul, in from out, cleaving the realm of the spectator from the circumscribed magical domain of the players.
One by one the Crackers came to the plate for their practice swings, some taking short, sharp strokes while others swung freely, launching blasts that arced like cannonballs towards the outfield. The fans, both men and women, young and old, ogled, goggled and boggled, hooted and hollered, raised their arms and shook their bottoms, yipped, yelled, shimmied and jiggled, stomped, hopped, shouted and shrieked, clapped, cried, twisted, turned, gaped and gawked, clutched their bellies and craned their necks, pointed, pounded, gasped, groaned, wiggled, waggled, wilted, huffed, squealed, preened, puffed and swore and reared and roared as each deep drive described a high, plunging parabola, punctuated by the sharp crack of bat meeting ball. Then the infielders made their appearance, playing shadowball, scooting left and right, pounding their weathered leather gloves, lunging for imaginary balls scudding on the turf and performing impossible pirouettes as they turned make-believe double plays and triple plays effortlessly. With each motion they played as if in a dream, casting a spell upon anyone who watched, the tall and lean or short and stocky, those in high waisted britches or baggy pantaloons, whether wearing department store cravats or dark blue work shirts, enchanting them all in that moment of magic, allowing them to believe for just one minute that they too could race so fast, and jump so high, and twist and turn as if spared of the laws of nature, and made free from all the limitless boundaries that chained them to the grinding passage of their days. It was mesmerizing. It was timeless. It was grand.
Murphy was entranced as he watched. “John, you ever play?”
“No.”
“You look pretty loose in the joints and light on your feet. Coulda been good.”
“Too busy studying. You?”
“Raised in an orphanage. That’s all we did, play baseball. Loved it. Thing about it, you could fail most of the time and still hit .300, and that would be great. And when you did fail, you could always come up with a reason, like you swung late, or your feet weren’t planted right, or the pitcher was throwin’ a spitter. It helped your mind sit right. You know, in baseball you don’t always have to hit a home run.”
“Thanks, but you can keep your transparent and simple minded analogies to yourself, if you please.”
“God, you are an asshole. Just tryin’ to help you, man.”
Andrews chose not to answer. He buried himself back into his chair and watched the game with scarcely a word. As a boy he had considered baseball nothing but a mindless diversion, a child’s pastime that robbed resources from more meaningful pursuits. He still felt the same way, as he did about so many other things. Baseball.... Theater.... Music... All were unnecessary diversions. Life was a journey. He was determined to stay on the main road and avoid aimless wandering along dead end side streets.
As the game went on he began to feel fretful, annoyed that Murphy now chose to play the role of philosopher-king when he had done so much to unravel their assignment with Lieb. By the sixth inning he felt he was ready to burst with boredom, anxiety, and frustration. He thought about Jona, ensnared by Koehler, and possibly planning another outlandish escapade on the very cusp of completing their mission. He worried that the Director must be waiting for a report from him, but he also worried that his report would be ignored and considered unreliable. Then there were the Russians, who planned to meet him in New York when he got back. In some unknown way, they had pledged to help advance his career if he supplied them with information. Any involvement with them, though, would be nothing short of an act of espionage. He could betray them of course, but at his own risk. His neat, organized life seemed to be spinning into a vortex of uncertainty, and there was little he could do about it. Still, as he pondered the matter, it all came back to Lieb. If this mission could be accomplished successfully, he was still confident his star would rise. If the mission failed, he was sure to crash and burn. There would be no parachute.
“Murphy, I’m done. Leaving.”
“Hold on. The best is yet to come.”
“My regrets. See you back at the hotel.”
“Naw, wait.” Unexpectedly, Murphy arose to follow as Andrews moved towards the aisle. “I’m not leavin’ you alone. Not today.”
The two men squirmed their way out of their row, and quickly out of the stadium. As they exited the main gate Murphy stopped abruptly and touched Andrews on the sleeve. He pointed. “Hey, isn’t that him? The gambling guy?”
Adeleus was standing across the avenue, in animated conversation with a young black woman in a blue dress and bright yellow hat. The two seemed to be in disagreement, as she could be seen waving her finger repeatedly back and forth right under his nose.
“Murphy, that is indeed our friendly bet collector, but whatever he’s involved with is of no concern of ours. We should be on our way.”
“Exactly.” Murphy grasped Andrews tightly by the arm, steering him in the direction of Adeleus. “On our way across the street to find out what’s going on. I’ll bet you he’s pickin’ up a hooker, and they’re having a little parley about the price. Let’s see!”
The woman saw them first as they approached. She took a step backwards, clutching her purse closely. “I was jes leaving, sirs!”
Adeleus spun around, gaped in shock at the appearance of the two agents, and spread his arms wide as if to protect the woman. “Yeassah, yeassah. Surprised to see you gentlemen, real surprised.” He kept his tone at a carefully neutral pitch and stood stock still.
Murphy waved jauntily and spread his mouth into a cadaverous grin. “Don’t mean no harm, pal. We were just leavin’ and saw you here. Just wanted to say hello.” He turned towards the woman and offered a surprisingly graceful bow. “You must be a friend. My name is Murphy. You can call me Murph.”
The woman gave a restrained nod in return, still pressing her purse against her chest. “Miss Irene, sirs. I have my papers right here, if you want ta see.”
“Well, Miss Irene, don’t mean to interrupt you and Mr. Adeleus here. I’m sure you two are busy.”
“Yeassah. Nossah. Not busy, just talking.”
“Oh yeah?” Murphy said nothing more, but the small creases around his eyes seemed to tighten, causing his eyes to swell with a probing stare.
Adeleus resisted, but Irene melted under Murphy’s glare. “Doin’ nothing wrong, sirs. Just talking. We meet here at about this time, whenever ABC be playin’.”
“Oh really?” Murphy leaned forward slightly and folded his arms, managing to tower over Irene.
She gave a quick, anxious glance at Adeleus and then backwards, as if gauging an escape route. “Yes sirs, that’s what I do. My job.”
Murphy took a half step closer. “That so?”
A nervous silence followed for several moments. Adeleus removed his hat once more, placing it at his side, and faced Murphy squarely. “Please ‘scuse me gentlemen, but I need to ask... Y’all police or de-tectives or somethin’? From Richmond or somewhere?”
Andrews answered irritably. “No, we are not police, and we are not from Richmond. Come on, Murphy, this is none of our affair.”
“No, no. I want to hear.” He pointed a finger at Irene. “What exactly do you do?”
She waited for Adeleus to nod before answering. “I give him my predictions. For the ball players.”
“What are you talking about?” Murphy shook his head in confusion.
“What I said. I can read signs about what’s gonna happen and I tell Adeleus. About the game, about whatever. He makes good money and so do I. Nothin’ illegal in that, I don’t think.” Irene lifted her chin defiantly. “I can tell what the coming hour will bring. Or day, or month. And I’m good at it.”
Murphy rocked back and forth on his heels, astounded. “You mean.... You mean you’re like a fortune teller?” His face convulsed through multiple shades of query and disbelief before blossoming into an enormous grin stretching from ear to ear. “Marvelous! Always curious about that abracadabra stuff. Where do we go? I want my fortune told.”
They took the Nine Mile line to the very end, a rickety ride that shook and wailed and rocked its way along. The tram itself seemed exhausted as it coasted to its last station, huffing with a cranky gnashing of its gears as it came to a stop. There were only two other passengers, both worn looking black men in greasy coveralls, both looking as tired as the trolley. Murphy tried not to stare at them. Adeleus had cautioned that they were entering a strictly segregated neighborhood, mostly factory people, a place that was not particularly friendly to whites. During the recent race riots this section had been hard hit by mass shootings and the wounds from that upheaval were still raw.
Andrews sat glumly during the ride, more and more convinced that the afternoon’s outing was turning into a huge mistake. The two agents sat in front row seats while Adeleus and Irene found empty seats in the rear, beyond a broad white boundary line painted on the floor. Andrews could not stop himself from twisting around to stare at them, evaluating both carefully. Adeleus seemed changed as the time wore on. Sitting in the dimly lit back of the tram, he appeared somehow younger, leaner, more thick necked and broad shouldered. He had transformed from the amiable, ambling stroller they had encountered on the street into a stone faced, sinister denizen of the darkest portion of the city. And then there was Miss Irene, who also seemed altered. She sat tall in her seat, head erect, one eyebrow permanently perched high on her forehead, gazing with regal confidence at the street scene outside the window. Her lips compressed and softened repeatedly, kissing an unseen lover, and her shoulder lowered to one side as if she were leaning into a casual moment of intimacy with someone sitting right beside her. In that pose an air of mystery and seduction wafted from her, an invisible vapor that enveloped Andrews with hypnotic effect. He shook his head, attempting to clear his mind as he turned forward again. Stay calm, he thought. Don’t let them affect you. They are who they are, and you are who you are, each of us in our places. Their place is behind the line.
Miss Irene’s place was a wooden, tin roofed shack set well back from a narrow dirt packed street and standing barely taller than the dense growth of sunflower plants that surrounded it. A prehistoric appearing plow was partially buried nearby, a broken yoke serving as witness to its long-ago demise. Dirty white sheets hung down from the roof and over the porch like conquerors’ flags, obscuring the entry way and casting the front of the house into shadow. Pig snorts and squeals competed with chicken squawks and the screams of crows circling overhead, and from somewhere nearby the resonant murmur of soft voices and quiet laughter perked through the deep purple-blue of the afternoon. Andrews soaked it all in, and imagined he had stepped back in time, passing through a curtain that revealed a hard faced, foreign, unforgiving past.
As they stepped inside the house both agents stopped in amazement. “Holy shit!” Murphy pointed to draw attention to the walls. “Look what she used for wallpaper!”
Every inch of every wall was covered by overlapping layers of yellowed newspaper. There were pages with advertisements, giant-fonted front pages with blaring headlines, sports sections with grainy, fading pictures, and anonymous, monotonous rows of plain newsprint. Murphy walked slowly, running his fingers along one wall, stooping to read the lowest pages and stretching on tip-toe to examine the highest, squinting in the light shed by a single ceiling bulb. “Amazing,” he muttered to himself. “It’s all here. All the whole world’s stuff. Everything that’s happened. Obituaries, birth announcements, arrests, four alarm fires, murders, kidnappings, bank heists.... Here’s one from 1930. Headline says Pickett elected. Looka this... A little article in the corner about Roosevelt becoming president, like it’s not important or nothin’.”
He strode across the room and began reading the opposite wall by running his finger along lines of type, mumbling to himself as he read. “The flood of ‘27. Flood in ‘22. Another one mentioned here, looks like May in ‘31. Thousands dead. Market crash of ‘29. Lindbergh. Fighting in China. Fighting in Ireland. Fighting in Mexico. They got something here about Hitler dated from 1924 goin’ to jail. Didn’t know that. How the hell did he get out? Look here, this is about some guy arrested for helping an underground railroad, whatever the hell that is. It’s like all of history is plastered here, surrounding this little room. You got to admit this is strange. I don’t know how this lady can live inside all this. And would you believe this one!” He rapped his knuckles on a crinkled section up near the ceiling. ‘The War in Europe is Over!’ it says. Big headline. Morning edition dated goddamn November 12, 1918. Still here. Still here.” He glared angrily at Adeleus. “You bastards down here did nothing to help.”
“Yeassah. Nossah, no. Did not. Don’ be lookin’ at me, though. Not in charge.”
“That’s right, sirs. We not in charge out there, just remember that. Y’all are. The famines, the wars, the traffic, the phony elections, train crashes, lynchins…It’s all y’all.” Irene gave a brief smile. “But not within these walls. I know it’s not much to look at, just this room and the room in the back, but it’s mine. And the newspapers, that was my doing. Reminds me of things. Brings it home to me. In here, Miss Irene rules this perch. As long as you be here, we play my way .”
Andrews snorted, readying a retort, but Murphy spoke first. “Yes ma’am. Your way it will be.”
“Then gather round. All of you sit on the flo’.”
With brisk, practiced movements, Irene turned off the light, dimming the room, and quickly shook out a coarse-woven russet towel between the sitting men, creating a deeply shaded, empty space on the floor. Quickly, she retrieved a rough-hewn wooden bowl and a fan made of jet-black crow feathers. Her yellow hat was off, revealing a black bandana that covered her hair entirely. As she sat herself down, she was careful to cover the bowl with the fan. The room became very still. Although it was full afternoon, light from the only two windows was shaded by the sheets hanging down over the porch. It was not dark, but it was not light. The edges and margins of face and form were diffused just slightly, as if measured through a thick glass. And then Irene began to sing.
At first it was a coarse, almost guttural hum, modulating up and down as if she were trying to find her true voice. Then words began to spill out of her throat, slowly, slowly, slowly, then more rapidly, and her voice became more urgent. “Come around, come around, I need y’all to come round right now. I ain’t got no crown, no jewel, but neither I ain’t nobody’s fool. So hear me out, all you mighty, kind and cruel, all y’all y’all, blackberry baby, bluehen brawler, big Mama, scatcat, bubbys big or small, old or new, you hold a shovel, spool, or drive a country mule, y’all come on, cut on, y’all be fish blooded or fire eater too.” Then she began to sing out names, great names and small, haughty and low. “Abraham, David, Old Herb”, she cried, “Peter, Flapjack Jim, Mother Myra, Holy Moses, LeRoi, Charly Charles, Elizabeth...” As she sang the names she spread her arms wide, beckoning, entreating, calling. Her face became flushed and a thin sheen of sweat appeared on her brow. “Rufus, Blue Neck Bill, Samuel, Blind Reverend Ralph, Remus, June, Pig iron Potty and Dandy Don...” She stopped abruptly, inhaled deeply, and with eyes shut tightly she pointed first at Murphy then at Andrews. “Here be James! Here be John!”
Without pause she swept up the bowl, removed the peacock fan, and tossed the contents onto the towel. Wondrous objects spilled out. There were bones and shells and shards, tiny and bigger, rough and smooth, painted and dry, piled one upon another in random disarray. A chestnut cut in half came to rest next to an eagle feather, and a clam shell lay with inner surface upright, shamefully exposed for the world to see. Almost in the middle of the heap a round green marble sat, glimmering with a hidden light. Miss Irene ran her hands over the artifacts without touching any, frowning intently. The minutes deepened as she began to mumble to herself once more. Slowly, she raised a shaking hand in Andrews’ direction.
“The bones is talkin’ about you.”
“What do they say?” It was Murphy who answered, leaning forward, eyes unblinking.
“Nothin’ that can be talked about with anyone but him.” Irene sprang to her feet and gestured imperiously at Adeleus and Murphy. “You two go out back and leave us alone. I’ll call you when we’re done.”
Andrews watched, entranced despite himself, but nagged by a sudden, urgent question. How did she know their names? He thought back as carefully as possible but could not remember that he or Murphy had ever revealed their identities. His mind whirled with possibilities. Someone told her, he concluded. Made no sense any other way.
Irene was on her feet, and commenced to walking in a circle around Andrews, who sat expectantly still. After a few circuits she began to moan, and with the moaning began to gyrate her shoulders and hips as if dancing to a silent rhythm. A faint aroma seeped from her, of rose, or honeysuckle, jasmine, gardenia, or all, or some, or the gathered fragrance of a thousand flowers spread within the cleft of her bosom. She waved her hand back and forth in front of his face as if he were blind. “You afraid now, ain’t you. I can feel it. Comin’ from all over your body, Babyboy John.”
He swiped her hand away but would not look up at her. “How do you know my name is John?”
“Because that is your name, and so I know it.”
“Are you a clairvoyant? A mind reader of some kind?”
“No, baby, I run much deeper than that. That’s how I see you afraid, the kinda fear a little boy has sitting in the dark and hearin’ the wolves bayin’ high up on the mountain. Or mebbe, just mebbe afraid about tomorra and what it bring.”
Andrews felt his heart skip a beat and then speed up frenetically. “That’s what your tokens tell you? If you really do know anything, then you must know I don’t believe in black magic.”
Irene clucked a soft laugh and squatted down very closely next to Andrews. “It is what it is, magic or black or whatever you like.” She pointed to a small pale seashell on the edge of the towel. “A cowry shell settin’ all alone. Cowrys tell what you buy and sell in life, an what you trade. Maybe for money, maybe for somethin’ inside you. Clam shells, they all about the journey. Then look here... More cowry shells, piled over a twig of catbrier. Catbrier be pain. And see...” She gestured at a thin curved bone but did not touch it. “See this one. Racoon penis bone, this one is, right next to a fox’s forebone. All around this corner are other bones I don’t care to talk about, except this coyote toe bone you can see here, with the cross on it. All about hope. And the marble is in the center, watching everything. It’s green, and you might know what that means, the color that can look through anything. The blue of a fine summer morning or the blackest winter night, green cuts through all of that and let’s you see alright. My ma’s grandma taught me that.”
Andrews smiled ruefully. “Sorry, I’m not afraid. Far from it. And they don’t teach any of this at Princeton.” He edged away from Irene. Her scent had become very strong, enveloping his ears, his nose, his mouth.
Unexpectedly, she stretched out two fingers and stroked his hair. “You really are almost perfect,” she sighed. “Almost perfect. But you are deep, much deeper than you want to show. I can tell.”
“You think I’m one of you? Tainted?” Andrews felt himself swaying very slightly, dizzied by the thick, perfumed smell drifting from Irene.
“I know your momma was one of us. An’ she was beautiful. You can’t escape that.” Irene continued to massage Andrew’s hair with one hand. “But you’re not tainted ‘causa that. Ain’t what I mean. Somethin’ is wrong inside you, like you been scarred by some fire that burnt you all up, charred you up, left ashes behind.”
The light inside the room became blurred, and a deep roar came from somewhere above Andrews’ head, a roar that pulsed within him with the impact of a great waterfall or the surge of a relentless tide. The aroma of lilac and hyacinth came to his nostrils with overpowering strength, and he felt himself falling backwards slowly, as if inch by inch, until gently nestled in Irene’s lap. He watched speechlessly as she retrieved a small glass vial from inside her corset, filled with a powder as blue-black as the Nile. With cadence slow and solemn she shook the powder over the magical objects strewn over the towel. It was as if each talisman was waiting, patient, thirsting to be touched by even a single grain of the powder in order to become alive. And soon, a sea of efflorescence shone brightly on the floor, specks of brilliance creating a whirling galaxy of wonder within the dark vastness of the surrounding room. Random lines of luminescence appeared, connecting bone to feather and tooth to shell, creating a mystical vocabulary unknown to the obedient stars above. The most inner of secrets were all spelled out there, ready to be read by one who knew the words.
Andrews felt his eyes closing drowsily as Irene sprinkled some of the powder on his forehead and chest. “It’s just some goof powder, baby, nothin’ more. It will help you come alive again.” She purred the words as she rubbed some onto both sides of his neck.
For the briefest moment, Andrews imagined that he could hear voices from the past calling him from a great distance, shouting through a gale of memories, demanding to be heard. With great effort he shut the open doors down, leaving him in silence once again. He stared at a newspaper pasted to the wall next to his face. The words spoke of famine, flood, fugitives, fires, and the myriad other afflictions that lay frozen in time within each line. Somehow, the words became larger and larger, throbbing mightily, crowning him with a living, dazzling corona of discovery, hatred, love, and exaltation. He imagined he could see his own name woven into the looming sentences and paragraphs, written in between the lines of type, glowing in sickly green through the mist of words like a lighthouse beacon glaring through the fog of written memory.
Irene stroked his forehead, then held his head tightly in both hands. “I feel you fighting, baby. I feel you...you lookin’ for somethin’ you don’t even know and can’t even imagine, like you’re wandering in the deepest darkest waters all by y’self, with no idea if anyone else is out there. You don’t got no strength enough to find your way. You getting feeble but you still are fighting to know. What you are. Who you are.”
Andrews nodded weakly, feeling that he was controlling his movements from far away. Fatigue cascaded down upon him as his limbs seemed to become loosened from his body. “I’m just so lost...” The words emerged with profound pain. His eyes were closed, and he was almost numb to the world, but he could sense Irene’s skillful hands massaging his neck and shoulders and rubbing his chest. She seemed gigantic somehow, overlapping his body like an enormous wave that rocked him back and forth before setting him to rest again.
“I feel you, baby.” She rubbed his chest gently, as if feeling for his heart. “I feel you. You struggling so hard, feelin’ so alone. I could tighten you up if you want, tighten you up good. I would do that for you, Johnny, make you feel alive again. Do you want?”
Andrews felt himself bobbing up and down, a dried up leaf coursing on a great river heading towards its end. His head, his torso, arms and legs surrounded him but were unconnected, each riding its own ripple in the same direction but each apart from the other, struggling to be whole again. “Yes,” he groaned. He felt detached and free, unmoored as he drifted rapidly along great waters. “Yes,” he croaked, finding it difficult to breathe. “Yes I want.”
“What do you think is taking them so long?” Murphy asked the question to no one in particular, and everyone laughed in response.
“Probably takin’ care of some serious business in there,” Adeleus hooted, passing a wooden cup over to Murphy. “And we should be takin’ care of some serious business out here!” He stood up and raised his own cup high. “I wanna thank the USA gov’ment for sendin’ Gen’lman Jim here down to old Atlanta, where he has proven to be a....ah....one....” Adeleus paused a moment to take a slurp from his cup before continuing. “One hell of a white man! Hoorah to Gen’lman Jim!”
Everyone roared their approval as Murphy stood, bowed formally, and took a long smooth draw of whiskey. He pointed towards Madge, who nodded, picked up his beaten up banjo, and began strumming nothing in particular. The afternoon had settled down to some serious drinking, and even Bishop Tillman was slumping perceptibly, leaning in a sideways direction in his chair, an imminent threat to crush anyone who might be sitting on the ground nearby.
It was Murphy’s offer to buy a keg of whiskey for the enjoyment of the group that had turned the day around. When Adeleus had led him out to Irene’s back porch as instructed, Murphy expected they would be alone. Instead, there were a half dozen or so others already there, loitering on chewed up chairs, sitting on the wooden planked floor or fanning themselves on the roughly fashioned steps leading down to a wildly flowering garden. One was a child, four or five, unclear whether boy or girl, moping next to a tall thin woman who leaned expectantly against the railing. Silence fell like a stone as the agent appeared among them.
Adeleus appeared flustered as well. “Yeassah, yeassah, didn’t anticipate these folks to be here at this hour. Ya see, Miss Irene has whole bunches of clients, and they come calling on her to get readings, don’t you know. I guess some is here now. Today is Sunday and they not at labor, but she took your friend first. That’s mighty special for her to do that.”
“You one of her clients too?”
“Yeassah, you might say that.”
“What about all that jive you were givin’ me, about how you knew the players, and could tell everything about to happen by just watching them?”
“Well I can and I do. I guess that is what I told you, and it’s true. But I’ve learned to have a little in-surance too. Can’t be careful enough.”
“So it was hogwash.”
Adeleus carefully removed his hat and hung it on a cornerpost nail. “Mister, I don’t even know who you are. And if you look around, you’ll notice you’re not like the rest of us. Yeassah, yeassah, so don’t go blaming me for anything I said. And by the way, who are you, anyway? What’s your name? Where you from? And what about him inside?”
Murphy did not hesitate, feeling good to open up for a few moments, He told Adeleus that he and Andrews were U.S. Federal agents escorting a famous doctor’s son on a tour of the South, upon the invitation of the university. As he spoke, he realized that everyone on the porch was leaning in and listening intently to his every word. He turned to face the others. “Up until now we’ve been shepherded around by the authorities on official business, so it feels really great to be able to get out finally and meet some ordinary people, real people, good people like Adeleus and all of you.”
To his surprise, his words were met with polite clapping, and a few shouted greetings. “Yo’ mos’ welcome!” “Y’all come back anytime!” “Now you be aknown, yo’ can come back as yo’ please!” were some that he heard, and there were others, spoken too thickly or quickly to be understood entirely. Murphy beamed. “Adeleus, this is great, just what I wanted. I’d like to meet these folks, talk to them.”
Adeleus shrugged. “Yeassah. Up to you.” He paused momentarily and gave Murphy a polite smile. “Look, you seems like a nice enough feller, and you from far away. Could be y’all are different than the ones we-all have down here, I wouldn’t know.... But don’t fool yourself. These folks are mostly polite, quiet folks, law abiding and God-fearing folks, but don’t think for a minute you gonna be their friend. There’s a whole wide river than runs between you and us, always will be. You are gonna be gone in a trace, and we all still gonna be here, still chained.”
“That’s why I want to understand what it’s like down here. This can change...”
“Change? Yeassah....change!” Adeleus spoke slowly but let his voice rise. He gave Murphy a sideways glare. “We tried change, ain’t you heard? Change be bought by blood, that’s the only way, or dj’all know that already. Now who’s blood is it gonna be? Your’uns? Uh uh. It’ll be mine, and the blood of these un’s standing here. You see them? Do you?” He gestured angrily at the little group watching silently. “You see people here, or just sticks? Walkin’, talkin’ sticks, no blood, no breath, just fillin’ in the landscape, carrying wood, thinnin’ cotton, diggin’ up goobers, or maybe they be just some souvenirs you can keep in your recollections. Nossah, nossah. So, kindly remember, Mr. Jim, we are people with blood, just as much as you. Truth is, maybe we got more, ‘cause we been through more than you. You think we low? Nossah, nossah. Maybe we higher.” He clasped his hands momentarily with a thin smile, as if waiting for a patron to read a menu.
“OK, lesson taken.”
“Now, that person there is Bishop Tillman, a special man, he’s a teacher and a preacher, and we just like to call him a bishop. He was used up mining cinnabar up near Murfreesboro, not feeling too well in his lungs these days.” Adeleus pointed to a giant of a man at the far end of the porch, who completely overwhelmed the spindle legged chair he was sitting on. “And this fella here with the banjo is Madge. He’s a man but we call him Madge on account of how he sings. His voice. You’ll see. And this one is my cousin Cornell. He’s a worthless, clay eatin’ boozer if you ask me, good for nothin’ and nothin’ is as much as he will be. Except for wrought iron, I guess. He can turn iron with the touch of an angel. They say he’s got a gift, he’s got gates and trellis and fences up all over town. They come from a hundred miles around to buy what his hands have made. ‘Course, the money don’t go to him.”
“I ain’t no boozer like you say, cuz.” Cornell strode up boldly and offered his hand to Murphy. “But I wouldn’t mind twice for a glass of aggie right now.”
Murphy didn’t understand what was said but understood perfectly what was meant. “Hey, Adeleus, isn’t there a joint nearby we can go to for a little refreshment? In fact, let’s all go.” He waved his arms to get everyone’s attention. “Who’s in the mood? Drinks on me!”
“No place like that nearby, but I can get us a bit of red eye from down the street here, from old Artemis Blow. He makes it real fine.”
“Good deal. Will this do?” Murphy offered a U.S. ten dollar bill.
Adeleus shook his hands violently. “I’ll get five years hard time at Milledgeville if I try to peddle that. Need gold if you got it.”
Murphy scowled, stroked his cheek, grunted, then reluctantly removed a twenty-dollar gold coin from a small pocket in his jacket. “How about this? All I got.”
“Yeassah, yeassah, yeassah, this will do just fine.” Adeleus beamed an artful smile, snatched the coin with the suddenness of a viper’s strike, then vaulted over the porch railing and disappeared from view.
“Jesus, I hope Deuce comes back and doesn’t take the money and run.” It was Cornell, shaking his head with a simultaneous smile and grimace.
Murphy nodded his own head in response with a confident air. “Deuce? Nickname? He looks like a good guy, I’m not worried. Surprised he knows this liquor place, since he doesn’t drink himself.”
Cornell gave a querulous look and took a deep breath. “First all, he ain’t in particular what you think. He’s been a stray cat in his past, a nasty one. Next all, he takes to whiskey like a Jesus lizard takes to water. Do you know anything ‘bout him?”
“What he told me on the street. Why don’t you set me straight?” Murphy crossed his arms, annoyed that he had been a willing and gullible fool, an easy pigeon for the dope Adeleus had pitched him.
“Well...” Cornell began to fidget. “Don’t know how much he likes to let out.”
“C’mon. I told you about me. Tell me.”
“Alright, but I only know what they says, wasn’t there m’self. As a young buck he was a gandy dancer. You know what that is, right? Worked on the railroad setting track straight, kinda like that, usually a gang of eight, nine or so men workin’ the rails. He was a free man at the time, all us freed in my grandma’s time, his father and mine. Anyway, he worked the tracks, ya see, got right on in there, made OK money, but he liked the cards. Poker, Peedro, anything would do, for money ‘a course. Well, he got his five dollars one Friday night, and commenced to gamblin’ with the boys in the usual way, may’ passed a few drinks around. I guess you might know how this story is going to go. He got into a fight with one of the boys, some accusations of cheatin’ goin’ on, who can know what really happened. Now, in those days, old Adeleus, he carried a big knife. Real big, what they called a Arkansaw toothpick back when. You may have seen pictures of what it looked like. I know I have. Carried it for snakes and whatnot. Well, he drove his knife into some poor boy’s heart just like he was spearing a wild hog, without a moment’s pity. Black boy named Pius, tall and good lookin’, had three childun’s they say. But Adeleus, bad man as he was, he don’t care, he killed that boy right there, took the money and lit off in a buzz. Well, all the folk around here say that he became a desperator after that, movin’ from town to town just one step ahead the law, tryin’ to make his way to Mexico. And he commenced to stealing here and there, seems like he whipped a few men and took a few womans, maybe killed a man or so, here and there, but that part is somewhat disputaceous. See here, once you be fugitative, like he was, people make up all kinda stories, make you look badder than you really might be.
Anyway, they caught him in a boarding house, caught him just as he was takin’ a crap or they never woulda got him alive. At his trial he pretended to be crazy, but they saw right through that. Been tried before, you see. Stealin’. Now here’s the peculiar thing. It turned out that everyone he trifled with was free, a free nigra, a very strange and unusual circumstance in these parts. No owners around at the trial to speak up for their property, see? So, they decided there was no call for him to die, but he was a bad man, and so he was sentenced to life. Guess they figured they would put him to hard labor and get some good use outta him. Would you believe it, a week later he was on a chain gang, doin’ exactly the same work as what he was doin’ before as a gandy dancer on the railroad. Life is grand, ain’t it, how it works out? That’s where the mayor found him, some years later. Old mayor Key, he found him in ‘23, and reopened the trial. He had a habit of doin’ that with others, you see. Kinda felt that it’s a waste to have a man like Adeleus servin’ the state of Georgia when he could be servin’ the old mayor himself. You understand? So old Key got some lawyers, and Adeleus got free with a contract on him from the mayor. And here we are, a year or so to go in that legality.”
“So he’s turned himself around?”
“Sho’ has, ‘cept the lyin’ and cheatin’.”
Murphy rubbed his chin, thinking. “OK. Understood. The betting. All a sham?”
“Well, mister, I don’t know exactly what that means, but it shor’ is easy to know what’s gonna happen when it’s already been arranged, you dig? Listen here, those ABC boys, they play for peanuts. Nothin’ wrong with makin’ a few extra dollars from time to time. The boss is makin’ money, ain’t he? So they share the pie.”
“And the dame?”
“All part of the show. He sees to it that everyone knows he gets his predictions from Miss Irene. Keeps it kinda real, ya know? It’s good for her, too, good for everybody.”
“Except for the people you’re cheating. And they’re your people!”
It was Cornell’s turn to pause in thought. A touch of sadness crossed his eyes. “That may be true. But they’s the only people we know. The only ones.”
They both lapsed into silence. Murphy leaned against the door leading back into the house, taking the measure of Bishop Tillman, Madge, and the others on the porch. Some sat quietly, others murmured quiet words to their immediate neighbor, and every few moments a snicker, laugh or jeer broke out. They all seemed very patient, waiting for a turn that had not come their way as yet. The child crouching in the corner with its mother caught his eye. It was a girl, he decided, with hair carefully braided and with clean scrubbed sable skin, wearing a white shirt and patched up corduroys. She sat on the floor next to her mother, very quiet, clutching her mother’s calf and leg with one arm and leaning her head against the mother’s knee as if listening to a secret catechism of instruction that was meant only for her. She glanced at Murphy with a tentative smile, her eyes luminous and large. Her neck seemed very thin.
“So you’re some kind of artistic type?” He spoke to Cornell but continued to stare at the little girl.
“That sounds too grand. I work with iron is all. Forge, bend, hammer, filigree, that sorta thing. I like making shapes, designs, unusual pieces that you not likely to see just anywhere. I loves curves. I loves gates. If something has to be, then it should have beautiful form. I just try to keep that in my heart.”
“Where do you get your ideas?”
“Great God Almighty, the picture of what I want to make just pops into my eyes, just like it was planted there, then it goes right to my hands. Just mebbe it comes from something I seen before but can’t remember, or mebbe my brain been workin’ on it a while and didn’t tell me right away. I dunno. Sometimes my ideas look impossible, but my fingers figure it out. Sometimes I surprise myself, but truthfully, the iron is more surprised than me.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes it’s the other way. Things are impossible, and it turns out we can’t always make it work the way we want. Gotta settle. That’s the difference between you and me, I think.” Murphy peered at the little girl through half closed lids, watching carefully. Her cheekbones and forehead seemed unnaturally prominent, giving her the appearance of someone who had long since seen a full meal. “Do you ever have regrets about anything you made? Like it didn’t turn out right?”
“Any much. Nothin’ I made was ever perfect. I ain’t no machine.”
Murphy found himself sliding down to sit on the raw wood floor, feeling the heat and laze of the day come over him. A dim memory came to mind, just the dimmest, a fleeting face that disappeared in a flash. He pointed at the girl. “She’s a cute tyke, but she looks frail to me.”
Cornell sat down next to him, leaned close and whispered. “She do, don’t she. That woman there, Bea, she had a child die before, about the same age. It was a girl and she was very fine also, thin around the waist and arms.”
“Thin, huh? Bastards didn’t let them have enough food?”
“True. Never enough food it seems, not always, not a lot. Clothes. Doctor care. Too many marks of shame to name. All that. Some do alright, some don’t.”
The child rubbed her eyes and crawled into her mother’s lap, curling up quiet and still as if nesting in for a long winter. Bea hugged her tightly with a sad smile, giving a gentle kiss on the forehead.
“Look...See...” Murphy tilted his head towards the two. He felt a salty burn come to his eyes. “Mater dolorosa.” He spoke to himself, not thinking he could be heard.
“What’s that?”
“Nothin’. Just some words from school I was taught from a long time ago.”
“I hear you. Just some words. But I hear what you’re feelin’ as well.” Cornell lowered his own voice, speaking barely above a whisper.
Murphy squirmed, feeling the prickly heat of late afternoon crawling down his neck and spine. “So what happened exactly? To the other one?”
“Who can know? One day she came down with the peek-a-boo, ailed by a little cough and so on, and in two days she had passed on. She was the prettiest little thing. We call that kind a come-see child. They come into this world, look around a bit. Maybe they don’t like what they see, and they go back. Those gates, man, those golden gates, they’re settin’ there right close, and they’re powerful in their beauty, crafted by divine hands. And shor’nuf, you can hear the music coming from over there, the other side, you just have to sit yourself still and listen. It’s a wonder more don’t turn around and go back.”
“And that’s why Bea is hugging her so hard? She thinks holding her tight in this world will keep her here so she won’t leave for the other?”
“Yeah, mebbe that. And mebbe...” Cornell twisted himself to speak into Murphy’s ear. “I know you not from down here, and it could be that the world is better where you from. If that’s true then praise Jesus. But down here, life be hard, sometimes hard with no let up, no chance to straighten your back and spread your arms, and shout the Lord’s name in joy. Hard. So we kiss our children, and hold them tight, and love them dear ‘cause we don’t know what might be coming at the next morning light. Mebbe to them, mebbe to you. Everyone should feel that feelin’ of love, even if the one they love is only one, and long gone, don’t you think?”
Murphy slumped further back and didn’t mean to answer, but his mouth, unbidden and unwilling, spoke anyway. “Yes.”
It was just then that Adeleus arrived, hoisting a keg of whiskey on his shoulder. For Murphy it was the chance for a temporary diversion, a brief, convenient voyage to a comfortable landscape of oblivion and discarded memories. He had a drink, then another very quickly, and a third, waiting impatiently for his turn at the barrel. At one point he saw that Bea refused the cup when it was passed to her. He had an impulse to offer her a drink himself, and make her at ease, and perhaps have a chance to hold the child for even a moment. Instead, he slumped down in the corner of the porch once again, eying the cup as it was passed from hand to hand. When he looked over again, Bea was gone, and the girl with her. He closed his eyes, wishing the dimness to come.
He poked at Cornell. “Go inside and find out when they’re coming out.”
“I don’t think they will. It’s gettin’ near dusk. I reckon you can say goodnight to them right about now.”
“Thassright, goodnight!” It was Madge, speaking in a saccharine smooth, brightly pitched voice that hovered in the air before dissipating. He had been plucking random notes and chords on his banjo without rhyme or reason, but suddenly began playing with purpose and began to sing. His words sought out the late afternoon sky with a timbre trilled both high and pure, a sad violin playing to the waning of the day:
Irene, goodnight
Irene, goodnight
Goodnight, Irene
Goodnight, Irene
I’ll see you in my dreams
Last Saturday night I got married
Me and my wife settle down
Now me and my wife are parted
I’m gonna take another stroll in town
Irene, goodnight
Irene, goodnight
Goodnight, Irene
Goodnight, Irene
I’ll see you in my dreams
Sometimes I live in the country
Sometimes I live in town
Sometimes I have a great notion
To jump in the river and drown
Murphy staggered to his feet, feeling a swelling boil of anger and hatred that came from nowhere and led to nothing but no good. He balled his fists into living cudgels. “Hey, cut that shit! No more of that, ya understand? No more, godammit!”
Everyone froze, turned to rock by the outburst. Madge slowly placed his banjo on the ground at his feet and bowed his head, as if offering sacrifice at a shrine. Time seemed suspended, and only the glare of Murphy’s eyes remained alive, darting like a venomous snake from one person to another.
“That’s alright, Madge. Keep on singin’ and don’t worry about him. He’ll be alright.” Irene appeared at the doorway, smiling brightly, appearing like a magical spirit summoned by incantations from the faithful. Andrews stood behind her, in the dark of the doorway. “I heard my name being called so I thought I would come out!”
At that, a great roar of shouts and laughter rang out, wicked jibes, coarse jokes and clever puns. ‘Sure, now you had yo ashes hauled!’ ‘Did you find the right bone?’ ‘You sho’ had yo supper before sayin’ grace!’ ‘Can I get the same bodacious fortune telling?’
Much later, depending on who told the story, it was said that a spell was either broken or woven at that moment. Anger fled, mistrust fell as completely as a flag hauled down on its halyard, and sheer joy erupted. Additional cups were found, and Adeleus disappeared briefly only to return with another cask of corn mash spirits. More neighbors arrived, sailing in like ephemeral spirits and swirling around on the narrow porch in a dense soup of excitement stirred by an unseen spoon. Bishop Tillman awakened briefly, took another sup of liquor, and wandered out to the grass to curl up comfortably for a long night’s sleep. A layer of soft, hazy twilight spread complacently across the nethermost sky, preparing to crown the glory of day with the majesty of starlit darkness.
Murphy felt the release immediately and joined in the hilarity, laughing just a bit too loudly and back slapping strangers just a bit too freely. After draining a ladle-full of liquor in one quick gulp, he refilled it and turned to Andrews, still hovering just inside the doorway. “Join the party! This stuff is good for what ails you!”
Andrews shook his head.
“You afraid? Poor little Johnny. Bet you can’t handle more than one drink.”
Irene rubbed Andrews on his shoulder. “Don’t ever say that about John. Not afraid at all. He can do whatever he want to. He free now.”
Murphy strode the few steps to Andrews and proffered the ladle in his direction. “Well then? John?”
The heavens decree times when the place and the moment, the sounds and whispers, stares, smiles, thoughts and desires, and the urgent prod of pride and self, all align just right, like tumblers in a locked safe falling into place, and so it was with Andrews. He drank the drink, and a short while later, another. And then, as the hours dissolved into a quickly forgotten whirl of blurred speech and sluggish motion, he opened up for himself a space and time he had not allowed in the past, and smiled and laughed and merely breathed from one moment to the next, as if before and after did not exist. He grasped warmly at people who were unfamiliar, locked eyes in deep understanding with unknowns, and confessed the darkest admissions to utter strangers. Later, sleep was to follow, and with sleep a dark exhaustion lit only by corrupt and murky memory.
Murphy watched as Andrews drifted into torpor, sluggish himself but still awake. It was night. The moon had emerged, barely born, but still with enough power to spread its radiance like a magic potion wherever its beams might touch. The revelers were fewer now, and Irene had started shooing them off the porch, discharging them back to wherever their place and purpose determined them to belong. She placed her hands on her hips at the sight of Andrews’ sleeping form.
“No worries. I’ll get him.” Murphy lurched in their direction, trying to steady himself.
Irene smiled at Murphy. “You take good care of him, don’t you.”
“No m’am, not really.” Murphy smiled back.
“But you do. There were many times you could abandon him. You kept him by your side. I’ve already seen that. And I can see you always will.”
“Oh, yeah?” Murphy stumbled and fell to the floor at Irene’s feet. He managed to sit up, leaning backwards on his elbows. “Was that your prediction? Is that why you got him alone, to tell him that?”
Irene sat down across from Murphy, crossed her legs and leaned towards him. Her face shone radiantly under the spell of the moon, and her breath seemed to sing as she spoke. “I think so, that was part of it. But there was more.”
Murphy was drunk enough to want to bend forward to kiss Irene, but too drunk to make the effort. “So what is it? We winning the second race at Belmont this week?”
Without a word, she reached out and placed the palm of her hand on his forehead, pressing hard, so hard it seemed that her fingers entered into his brain, ruffling through it as if searching for a certain folder, the hidden file that was needed to explain everything and to reveal all. “Quiet,” she sang.
Murphy pressed his forehead forward onto her hand even more strongly, feeling both completely aware and falling almost unconscious at the same time. He could feel and taste the sweetness of her mouth and smell the deep aroma flowing from her body, a sweet perfume that flowed from the distant past into the present, and might carry anyone who wished into the future.
Without warning she began to speak loudly, so loudly that everything else around Murphy was drowned out; the porch surrounding him, the wooden boards he sat on, the dark canvas of stars within his eyesight. Everything. Only the words remained, flowing through her fingers directly into his brain.
“If you’re dead to know, then know this.” She pointed straight up towards the sky, and as she did a spray of pungent, almost magical aroma spread from her bosom. “That old man in the moon will guide your way until a roundabout coming break of day. Then listen hard and you will hear a sound, the sound of mighty waters crashing down. Yes, y’all will fear, but none will heed. You’ll be just another body left behind. To bleed.”
Murphy absorbed her words numbly, barely comprehending through the buzzing in his brain. He felt a slowly moving itch crawling down his spine. “When does this happen?”
Irene cocked her head to one side, listening carefully to the cicadas that had just begun to sing, and the breeze drifting aimlessly through the leaves and vines of bonnet squash that nested in her garden nearby. “Not tomorrow, but by the morrow that follows tomorrow followed by the one that follows. Then the time will be fulfilled, the beginning will end and the ending will begin.”
Chapter 32
“So, you’re a spy.”
Koehler took a leisurely, reflectful puff of his pipe before answering. Great clouds of aromatic smoke floated over his forehead like exhaust fumes escaping from the workings of a vast and complex machinery. “No, no, my dear Lieb. An observer. A reporter. Nothing more.”
“A lie, my dear, dear, very dear Koehler.” Jona stabbed his cigarette forcefully into an ashtray already almost filled with stubs, making no attempt to hide his irritation. “You followed me here deliberately, who knows why, to find out what I was doing and to report back, I presume to the Nazi shills running your country. That’s called being a spy.”
Koehler chuckled, pointing the stem of his pipe at Jona. “You have become quite absolutist in your thinking, young friend. We all gather information on everything we can every day, don’t we? And discuss anything we learn with others, don’t we? If your mother sent you to market to find the price of eggs, would that make you a spy? Why, you once told me that Herr Churchill asked you to send him reports about what you observed in your travels. You, a spy, and at such a young age!” He leaned back in his chair and gave a grand laugh, the kind that meant that all was understood, and endured, and forgiven, and too small a matter to require further discussion. “Anyway, your father did much the same thing. Even when younger than you, I believe.”
Jona recognized the familiar siren song slithering through the air towards him and understood its effect as the words wrapped their arms around him, enveloping him in the promise of mystery, adventure, and history. The mere mention of his father was meant to smother him, blind him, disorient him as completely as the most potent narcotic. “Uh-uh, no you don’t, not this time. No more old stories. I won’t be a lapdog begging for treats. Now, tell me why you’re spying on me.”
“My deepest apologies, Herr Doktor. I meant no offense. As I’ve gotten on in years I’ve become more attached to old vignettes, especially when they are unique.”
They both accepted a brief interval of silence, neither looking at the other, both intent on measuring the other. They were seated in Jona’s room, alone, with only the whirring noise of a fan blowing uselessly in the corner. It was hot, much hotter than any morning should be, and Jona could sense drops of sweat gathering along the dimples and lines of his forehead and neck. He felt a deep emptiness in the pit of his stomach and his mind whirled furiously, darting rapidly from one incomplete thought to another. His hands were not shaking, but he knew that it would not be long before the tremors would start. When that happened, he would have to be alone, and promptly. He glanced at Koehler, and then at a small canvas bag lying in the corner of the room. He knew his package was there, but had a sudden urge to search it again, just to be sure. He quickly lit another cigarette.
Koehler coughed abruptly, setting his pipe aside and smoothing the lapels of his jacket. “Look, my boy, there is no need to belabor this whole matter. You’re correct that my friends back home are curious about your presence here. It’s really no secret that you’re carrying some kind of message from your president to the president here. So... Tell me about it.”
“Gladly. Honestly, I would blab the whole thing if I could, it would serve everyone right. But, my dear Naaarzi friend, there is no letter. I’m carrying shit. Tell that to your buddies.”
An awkward pause followed. Koehler searched his pockets vigorously and retrieved a thick, sealed envelope, pressing it to his forehead as if trying to transfer its contents telepathically. He lowered his voice to a loud whisper. “Do you know anything about your grandparents? Your father’s parents for example.”
A blunted siren blared in Jona’s skull, causing his head to drop almost to his knees. He felt as if he were spinning. “OK, I’ll bite. Grandfather was from a long line of bankers and merchants. Wealthy. Grandmother, don’t know much. She was beautiful they say, from Asheville. They were both killed in a train wreck when my dad was seven. When my father came of age he sold everything: land, houses, slaves, everything. Turned everything into cold cash. So go ahead and tell me.”
“Tell you what, Jona?” Koehler resumed a placid, amiable demeanor.
“Don’t insult me. You’ve got something in that envelope about them. What? They were slave traffickers? Moonshine runners? Abortion specialists? Tell me.”
Koehler floated a tentative smile as he cast his eyes downwards. “I don’t know how to tell you this, it’s an embarrassment. There are some in Germany who claim that your grandmother was Jewish. There are certain parties in my government that want to disclose all this, as a stroke of vengeance against you for your behavior while you were our guest, and that’s why I’m here. As a friend. To help you sweep this away, and no one need learn of it. Of course I don’t know if any of this is true. I don’t know what evidence is in these documents, but evidence is not needed to stoke public outrage. Or public action, no matter how regrettable. Help me and I’ll help you, Jona. Please, give me something, some information, and I’ll give you this envelope. You can do what you wish with it.”
Lieb snickered, then chuckled, then broke out in unrestrained laughter. He struggled to get up from his chair, but could not. “That’s it? That’s all you got? Come over here, professor, and let me hug you. You deserve my pity for that half assed attempt at extortion. Honestly, who gives a fuck? I don’t, and I don’t think you do. Your handlers forced you to do that? You’re toeing the party line, I get it.”
“I should think that you should care.”
“It only matters to people like your friends.”
“Yes, I suppose matters have gotten quite complex, at least for us. I hope the situation does not become too awkward. Perhaps all those affected can be encouraged to just leave the country…I often wish we could get back to simpler times.” Koehler gave every appearance of trying very hard to shrink into his chair, and rapidly stuffed the envelope into an inner pocket of his jacket. “Maybe all this material is just invention. I apologize, but I don’t retract my request. Can you offer me anything I can take back?”
Jona reached for his cigarettes with difficulty, even though one still burned in his clasp. He felt both dulled and simultaneously hyper-vigilant, excited and apathetic. “Do you ever wish you could go back, professor? To the simpler times, back to one of your vignettes as you call them?”
“What do you mean by that? Go back as I am now or as I was then?”
“Either way, I guess. No, wait. I wouldn’t want to know the future, but I would want to change what happens.”
Koehler peered at Lieb curiously. “Are you alright? That makes no sense. You mean you wouldn’t want to know the past. It’s already happened. Surely you understand that.”
“I mean the future that follows the past…No, wait. The past that follows the future…I guess I’m not sure. Maybe something different might follow in the future of the past. I might not get polio. My experiments might succeed. Something...Anything. Maybe with Marielle.” Jona rubbed his scalp furiously, feeling the forewarning of what was to come. A craving was searching for him, loping towards him cunningly, tracking him unerringly. He tossed the cigarette pack down.
“Ah, yes. The lady love. That’s always part of the story. For some, at least.”
“And there are others, too. Elfieda. Alex. My father, I guess. I don’t remember my mother well.” Jona mumbled the last part to himself, inaudibly.
“Understood. Tristan and Isolde. Dante and Beatrice. But I gather your situation was a bit more complicated. No need for a chastity belt in your little passion play, eh Jona?”
“Fuck yourself. Ancient sounding bullshit is still only bullshit.”
“Ah, I see you have mastered the apothegm, at least in its most vulgar form. Tell me, have you ever felt ecstatic?”
“No. Maybe yes. Do you mean with something or with someone? I can’t be sure, but maybe, but only for a minute. I could endure eternity with Marielle.”
“I don’t mean that.” Koehler leaned forward with great intensity. “I mean something very different. Have you ever felt ecstasy?”
“Not sure what you mean. I have felt love, I think. What’s the difference?”
“The ancient Greeks had it right; a feeling that a higher being invades you, let’s say a spirit, displaces you, transforms you by becoming you.”
“Like being possessed? Like by the devil?”
“Perhaps. Or by gods. And then you…you…”
Jona waved his hand irritably. “And me, what?”
“Then you are separated from time altogether. In a state of ecstasy, there is no yesterday or tomorrow. There is no such thing as time, in the way you live it now, Jona. Under such circumstances the universe that you know would be both here and not here. That would fulfill your desire, wouldn’t it? Your lady would be here, but blended into everything that has always been, and you in turn would absorb and also be absorbed by all of nature. Everything would become part of you; love, art, passion. Everything but memory, which would blow away like sand in a storm. Go to Rome. See Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. Then you’ll understand.”
“Drop the highbrow attitude, OK? Didn’t you ever love someone? Once? That’s what I’m trying to ask. Didn’t you ever wish you could bring it all back?”
Koehler lapsed into silence for a moment, then offered a quiet smile. “Perhaps. It is said that the deed that was a source of ecstasy can become an affliction.”
“Which is it? Ecstasy or affliction?”
Koehler remained still, drawing slowly on his pipe, sending up clouds of smoke that wreathed around his head, almost cloaking his face completely. Ice cold mornings and star-studded velvet skies swirled quickly through his mind. “I’m only human, after all, Jona. But I take solace in my work, and in art. I believe that time, and the past, and perhaps even the future are somewhat like art. It is all out there, you see, mysterious, or hidden somewhere in here, even more mysterious.” He pointed first upwards and then towards his heart, a ritual genuflection to the power of the unknown. “It is all there, everything, everything that can possibly be, a palette we can sample, hues of our own selection that we can use or not use. Like an artist choosing the right pigments we too can choose. We can create the angle of light, shading, perspective. We can even choose secret symbols to insert wherever we like. Faith. Ardor. Envy. Love, too, I suppose. Anything that stamps us and makes us who we are. Not all of us can touch the inscrutable, but some can, and those are the ones we call great. Artists. Philosophers. Prophets. Even though few can find that path, all of us feel the calling. All feel the tug of ecstasy. So, if you ask if I have ever lusted after the past, or desired to drink again from a cup that passed too quickly from my lips, then yes. And yes, I have also dreamed of painting over parts that I once desired but no longer do. In fact, I have. We all have. It is the hand of the artist within us that compels the change, an unseen hand that scribes the story we want to hear and changes the colors we wish to see. For me, it has happened many times, often because the previous color has faded, sometimes because I just want a different color. Flamméo has replaced incarnadino here and there. Rósa secca has become a sweeter hue than thalassio. How much more suited is bigiuccia than pavonacchio for one as aged as I am. Everything changes.” Koehler stopped abruptly, sighed, and placed down his pipe. “I apologize again, Jona. Forgive me, I am an old man.”
Lieb tapped at his cigarettes morosely. “That was uplifting. What color is polio?”
“That is humanity’s curse, Jona, something we can never escape. We must have flesh and all its miseries here on earth in order to experience the wonders of the unearthly. Mind, spirit, body. Inseparable.” He pursed his thumb, forefinger and middle finger tightly together, raising them towards Lieb as if ready to cast a spell.
“You believe all that?”
“I do. I think your father did, too. He had a saying, did you ever hear it? ‘Were we wood we would desire fire.’ “
Jona slumped back in his chair, allowing his cigarette to burn towards its inevitable end. The fan in the background, meant to give relief from the heat, gave off an agonizing metallic creaking and grinding noise with every turn. Koehler resumed the slow, methodical pulse of drawing on his pipe. When he spoke, it was with a sense of great contentment. “You are agitated.”
“Tired.”
“I have been told about your private soirées, and your current dalliance with Opferwille. Does opium give you visions or give you sleep? They say hallucinogens can open the doors to another universe. Is that what you have experienced?”
“You know about that? Put in your reports to the Aryan Clearing House? Like my genealogy I suppose. Should I be cowering in a safe house, hiding from the Gestapo?”
“Please, Jona. I am your friend. I mean no harm to anyone. I consider myself above all that, I assure you.” Koehler appeared genuinely upset, squeezing his lips firmly together. Both lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.
Jona broke first. “Alright. Tell me your little story.”
“About what?”
“The vignette. About my father being a spy.”
“Of course, if you would like.” Koehler nodded his head with benign satisfaction. “Have you ever been to France?”
“Only once.”
“Mont St. Michel?”
“No. What is it?”
“Oh, my lad!” Koehler shook his head in animated dismay. “It is one of the seven heavens where everyone should go, at least once. Now close your eyes, and imagine very hard, and see yourself high on the battlements of a fairy queen’s castle, on top of a mountain rising right out of the sea. There you are, at Mont St. Michel, and wonderment is your reward. I met your father there, perhaps a year after our first encounter. Let me tell you about it…
I was in Paris, where he cabled me. He was arriving the next day and wanted to meet for lunch at Le Procope. At the time, I couldn’t possibly afford a place like that, but your father always seemed to have money. In any case, I was leaving for Caen the next day to study the architecture of St. Etienne Abbey, and my schedule was unsettled. I suggested we meet a few days later. He answered, saying he would meet me at a strange and wonderful place he had heard of and wanted desperately to visit, a place near Bayeaux called Mont St. Michel. I had already visited there a time or two and was willing to return. I agreed immediately.
As a German, I can tell you that the Hohenzollern, and also the edifice at Heidelberg, and Salzberg too, are second to none as examples of palatial castle architecture. But none compare to St. Michel as a place of spiritual beauty. Ocean waves slap at the rocky shore below, creating a rhythm that echoes eternity. As the sun sets over the western edge of the world, tongues of gold stream down from the skies and over the eyes like droplets of fiery rain, penetrating deep into the soul. At the very top of the mountain lies the main chapel, stone and mortar that is already a millennium old, filled with the ghosts of the past, of the briefest of moments and of the greatest of hours, forgotten vapors vying with one another to come to life once more.
Near the scriptorium was a chevet leading to a few small and now unused chapels. We met in the musty dark of one, its shadows supported by great pillars of granite. He was stark raving mad that day, unable to pause even a second, talking and moving with the energy of an exploding star. It was a mistake to tell him I had been there before. He questioned me about everything; when it was built, who built it, how it was built, how long to build it, who were the architects, who were the monks and abbots...mein Gott, on and on. Of course, I could not possibly answer all that he wanted to know. I led him to the calm enclosure of the cloisters, but as we sat between the slender curving columns, among the reddest of roses, the most stately of columbine, and the most fragrant of rosemary, I could do nothing to inhibit him. Eventually, I led him down to the lower level, to the much older chapel buried in the heart of the mountain. Notre Dame sous-Terre is it named, almost older than memory can record, ancient ancestor to the church that lay above. It was newly re-discovered at the time, lit only by a few alcohol lamps, and quite empty.
I can remember that it was cool down there, a dry cool, not dank. There were no open apertures or lancets, no oculi, no natural light of any kind. The dark corners and blank shadows that were hidden out of sight may as well have been nonexistent, or folded into a separate, extended cosmos of time or space. And so there we stood, within a circumvallation of light and dark, suspended as if within a quiet womb. We were gestating but did not know it, and soon to be born, but did not know that either. He was flowering and I was just budding, but we both bloomed gloriously in the light of the world shortly thereafter.
Lieb leaned against a time-cracked column that might have been placed there by king Rollo himself, rubbed the surface as if communing with dead stone, and recited a poem, an old villanelle that I recognized from my student days. I should not have been surprised that he knew it, but of course I was. The last quatrain was so maudlin, and so very French:
Mort que tant de fois j’appelle,
Prends ce qui se donne à toi !
J’a perdu ma tourterelle,
Je veux aller après elle.
After a few moments of silence, he gave me a wry smile and a soft laugh. ‘That’s the only one I know, to be honest,’ he said. ‘But I can almost feel myself being there. Back then the times were more gentle, life more powerful. And love was more precious. As the poem says, like a turtle dove.’
Well, it was plain that he was both a raving savant and a romantic fool. He knew better, better than what his imagination wanted him to believe. The world he conjured was not a simple heroic saga, a time when gallant Taillefer sang verses of Roland, or when courtly Charlemagne studied at the knee of learned Alcuin. No. Everything he saw and felt in that chapel was produced through suffering and bloodshed, a reprise of the many great wonders that mankind has created over the ages.”
Jona felt a throbbing over his temples as the buzzing from the fan grew louder. He licked his lips but tasted nothing. His nausea increased, burrowing like a deep excavation penetrating into the heart of his bowels. “That’s pretty dramatic, professor. My father howled about changing the world as it is and making a new world. Turning swords into plowshares, turning the other cheek, things like that.”
Koehler leaned forward with a smile. “And that is why I loved him so. He was no innocent, but he genuinely believed all that, a starry-eyed optimist. He had great hope. Abraham’s hope. That’s why he spied. For the Germans. For the Brits a little bit. For the Russians quite a bit, at least for a while. He believed that sharing information actually promoted peace. If there were no secrets, there would be no war and humanity would be all the better for it. But he was wrong, dear Jona. Every great thing has been created through pain. Great accomplishments were achieved by strapping on cuirass and pinning gonfalon to lance in the name of whatever cause was suitable for the moment, or blowing the shofar, or waving the zulfiqar, or raising the oriflamme… on and on, over and over. It is the way of the world.” He leaned back with a grunt, satisfied.
Jona picked up another cigarette but stopped when he realized his fingers were tremoring. He did not want Koehler to see him struggling to light it. “What about great art, though? Michelangelo? Mozart? They were just artists. No artillery, no muskets, no battles.”
“You are a babe in the woods if you believe that. The powerful nobles who sponsored the great masters raped Italy to fund them. And who do you believe attended Mozart’s operas? The same blue frocked aristocrats who controlled their fiefdoms by sword and lash. It is sad but true. The great body of humanity has suffered so that we can be given the fruits of genius. There should be no guilt in that.”
A vision flashed through Jona’s mind, and then others, quickly. He saw paintings and frescoes and renderings and sketches flit by, like a deck of cards that were flung in the air and fluttered down, some quickly and some slowly, swaying back and forth to the driving rhythm of the drums that pounded from somewhere in his brain. His mind began to shudder uncontrollably, along with his hands. When he spoke, he could feel his tongue vibrating rapidly between his lips. “Yes, the great body of humanity. Body, body, body. It has to be a body, right? But bodies become corrupted, right? Believe me, I know.” He hoped he had not slurred the words. He still had some control over himself but knew he was nearing the end of any restraint. His eyes began to dart back and forth with maniacal rapidity. Koehler was gone, imploded into nothingness. Another image came to him, as real as if it were laid out on a table before him. There was a nude body, stretched to incredible length, so that all he could see, and all that was within his sight to see, was the chest and protruding belly with umbilicus at its apex. The head and legs were lost in deep shadows left and right, sucked into the forbidden corners of Notre Dame sous-Terre, where nameless voices laughed and lamented, some piteous and some exultant. From the chest of the body spread a sweeping cornucopia saturated with sweet melodies and vibrant colors and wonderful fragrances. As Jona extended his hand to touch, he could see small creatures crawling within, scuttling from flavor to flavor, ready to sting and bite. He withdrew his hand, afraid. He watched further. From the umbilicus a mound formed, and grew, and began to slowly rise, higher and higher until it seemed to touch heaven itself. As it rose, its shape became sharper and clearer. It was an onion, it’s roots hanging low and its scales spreading upwards. It was a familiar story he was seeing, Jona knew that, but he could not remember how the story went. He had an impulse to grab the roots and be lifted up as the onion arose, but he was too slow, and missed his chance. The onion arose to heaven and he could only watch helplessly. He shook his head violently and focused back on Koehler, who had reappeared. “What did you say?”
Koehler had been talking, his words swarming over Jona’s head like a cloud of wasps readying their venom. “Well, I was just explaining....” The elderly professor appeared flummoxed. “I was just explaining about your father, and how he was willing to be a spy, and that he had already been a spy, and how he knew so many of the powerful after all, and if it helped to change the world for the better....”
“Yes, perfect. Tell me more. About him. About you. What are you? If you were naked what would you be and what would I see?” Jona leaned well back in his armchair, crooked his neck, and feigned a studied stare, looking squarely at a spot just below Koehler’s chin. Words floated by, little motes tossed randomly up and down, to and fro, with no more meaning in their motion than the blind creep of a caterpillar along a long, long stem. Part of him wanted to hear everything that was being said, ingest it properly and understand, but he was distracted by the curious sensation of acid regurgitation rising into his throat. He imagined what it might feel like to vomit, or maybe he actually did, he couldn’t be sure. Jona’s head pulsed with awful pain, and he found himself panting as if breathing was a labor, but he forced himself to examine what had come hurling out of his mouth and became entranced by what he saw. Small figures, little animalcules, were moving slowly back and forth within the pool of emesis on the floor, not easy to spot but there nonetheless, hovering just within the focus of his vision, sitting and waving and shouting, doing something both familiar and somehow odd, all at the same time. With a start he realized what he was looking at. It was an auction, taking place within the puddle of phlegm and saliva and gastric juices, accompanied by a great deal of noise and a ruckus of selling and bidding. It seemed illogical at first, almost crazy, but after a moment or two it all appeared very normal. It was an auction indeed, and the auction was of wonderful things. Jona clenched his fists to stop the shaking of his fingers and hands.
He listened carefully. The next item up to be sold was ‘La Boheme’, one of his very favorite operas. The auctioneer began the bidding with a voice of brass: ‘We begin at one thousand. One thousand for ‘La Boheme’. Who will open?’
‘Excuse me,’ Jona asked diffidently. ‘How do we pay?’
The auctioneer ignored him and went on with his call. ‘One thousand. One thousand lives for ‘La Boheme’. Who will open?’
Jona considered the price, trying to stay cold and calculating about the whole matter, although he could feel a chill sweat coming over him. One thousand lives for something as precious as ‘La Boheme’ did not seem like very much. One thousand anonymous lives? Maybe duplicate lives, or maybe even triplicate? Anyway, would they be lives living now or lives from some remote past, long forgotten, while the music lived on? Maybe not even human lives at all. Ten hecatombs of burly oxen would do just as well perhaps, a sacrifice sufficient to redeem a masterpiece. Maybe, maybe, just maybe it could be imaginary lives. There were thousands of lives in the Iliad and War and Peace, and Les Miserables after all. Surely the genius of this music had to be saved for the benefit of all humanity? ‘Yes, one thousand,’ he said as calmly as he could.
‘Alright then, do I hear two thousand? Two thousand lives?’ The bidding price was repeated several times, with no response. Jona sat frozen, unsure what to do. Somehow, he had not anticipated that the price might go up. Should he bid again? Against himself? Two thousand could not possibly be too much to pay for such a priceless gift, could it?
A quick kerfuffle erupted within the lake of slimy emesis, a rapid flitting and fluttering of shadowy forms and suddenly a new voice was heard. ‘That item is withdrawn,’ the voice said. ‘Instead, the ‘Queen of the Night’ from ‘The Magic Flute’ is being offered. Do I hear one hundred? One hundred lives for the ‘Queen of the Night?’
To Jona, this was a serious blow. He longed for an entire opera, like all of ‘La Boheme’, not just one character. What use was only one? On the other hand, what would happen to the queen’s aria, the famous one, the one where the vengeance of hell blazed in her heart, the one that stabbed straight to the soul with glorious, frightening, staccato notes in high F. What did she say as she sang? The words came floating to him as clearly as if he were lying in bed right next to her with his ear held close to the grammaphone:
Outcast be forever,
Forsaken be forever,
Shattered be forever
All our natural bonds
How strange the words sounded to Jona. What does that mean, he thought. What are natural bonds?
He wanted to bid, and after all, one hundred lives did not sound very dear, but his mind was spinning too fast to speak up. As he watched, the Queen was whisked away, and the great mosque of Cordoba was wheeled up to the auction stand, and behind that he could see Bathers at a Lake, and yet afterwards in line a bejeweled byzantine icon shimmering in the sun, and in the distance Jona could see Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, though he wasn’t sure whether it was a painting or a sculpture. He wanted to see them all, and bid for each, and gift them all to humankind to make up for the lives paid, but his brain began to vibrate violently, and his body began to shake so hard that he could not stay seated. He slid to the floor clutching his sides, curling up in submission to the pain lancing through his belly. He felt himself fading away despite the excruciating spasms. He didn’t want to. He wanted to stay a bit longer, and enjoy the beauty that was unveiled before him, and taste its sweetness. But before the ghastly loneliness of darkness subdued him completely, he could just make out a familiar form in the muck and mucous on the floor, for just the briefest moment. It was he himself, Jona, covered in slime, standing on the auction block, bound, bruised and beaten, back bent and bowed, bleeding as the bidding began.
The smell of roses saturated the air, making each breath a warm, exotic embrace. Small fingers ruffled his hair, and stroked his hand. A vision of his mother came to him. Not her face, because he had no memory of her face, but a vision of what it felt like to be sitting by her side, his arm around her waist and hers around his neck. She murmured something, then coughed a few times, then all was peaceful again.
Time passed.
Time passed.
Time passed.
His eyes opened.
A man sat opposite him. He seemed like a very large man, with a very small head sheathed in a tiny hat, and a stern, impassive face. After a few moments, Jona saw that there were some other men, very tall and ugly men, standing behind him. They appeared stern also.
The large man spoke, saying each word very precisely and somewhat slowly, as if he were practicing enunciation. “Hello Dr. Lieb. I have wanted to meet you.”
Jona nodded but could not speak. His legs and hands were shaking, making a strange jangling sound.
The man waited quite a bit, but continued when he saw there would be no response. “Just curious. Do you know who that was, the old man you were speaking with yesterday?”
“Y-y-yes. A spy.”
The merest flicker of a smile creased the man’s lips, so fleeting it left no trace. “And you, Dr. Lieb. What are you?”
“Please, please…I need a… a treatment. Find my pipe, please.” Jona’s stomach heaved, and a trickle of bile bubbled up out of his mouth. He felt as if he were being eviscerated. “Now. Please.”
“Do not worry. You will get the treatment you need. I ask again. What are you?”
Jona realized he was in a bed with crisp white starched sheets bathed with the smell of antiseptics. He flailed in attempting to sit up and saw the flash of stainless steel on his wrists, and felt an unyielding bite against his flesh. He was chained to the sides of the bed, cuffed at his wrists and ankles to left and right, spread eagled. Unthinkingly, reflexively, he continued to thrash, moving his head mightily back and forth, struggling with his shoulders and hips. Groaning turned to sobbing, then screaming. There were no words, only the frantic wails of injury, and fear, and helplessness. A white clad woman rushed forward from the back of the room, holding a large glass syringe in her hand, but the large man stopped her with a peremptory wave.
“Dr. Lieb, you will hurt yourself. Try not to be too stupid. You are bound and cannot escape.” He paused with an air of supreme command. “I want to do the right thing. With you. With the whole affair that is afoot here. I know you are not feeling well right now. I am sure you are feeling frustrated, both with what’s happening now, but also generally. It must be hard knowing how deeply you disappointed your father in the past. That is quite a burden to bear, I am sure. But, this is where we are. You are due to meet the president the day after next, and so we must decide whether that should happen. So I ask once more. What are you?”
Jona continued to squirm, but less violently, as he vomited again. He tried to blink away the salty burn of sweat and tears filling his eyes.
“What are you?” The question was insistent, unrelenting. “What are you?”
What are you?
Abruptly, Jona went limp. The stink of his own vomit filled his nostrils. His brain whirled with a chaotic string of thoughts, each one flashing like a shooting star, and just like the big man’s brief smile, leaving no trace behind. Something finally congealed in his mind, something that formed tangibly, something coherent he could say. “A message,” he mumbled. “I am a message.”
The man gestured the nurse to come forward, and soon there was merciful oblivion.
Something was moving over his scalp, perhaps a small creature, a gentle one. It awakened Jona just enough to let him dream. He imagined Marielle lying next to him. No words were necessary between them. They spoke to one another through glances and touches, and the almost imperceptible movements of lips and cheeks. She ran her fingers through his hair, massaging gently. The smell of orange blossom enveloped them both, drugging them with the power of its scent. It was a dream he wished never to end, but it did, and he continued to sleep. At one moment he opened one eye barely wide enough to see the splash of a starched white sleeve and a flash of transparent glass next to his skin before he lapsed back into a state of nothingness.
Time passed.
Time passed.
Time passed.
His eyes opened.
An angel appeared before him, smiling, her hand on his forehead, rubbing slowly as if to bring him back to life. Jona closed his eyes again, and slept again. When he awakened she was there still, now sitting at the foot of his bed, gazing at him. He had her in better focus now, and began to make out her face. At first she appeared ghostly, ethereal, somehow other worldly. She was truly angelic. She smiled and slid closer to him on the bed. Her left arm was heavily bandaged, he saw. Her hair was lustrous white, her lips pale, and the pupils of her eyes an almost invisible lucent gray. Her body seemed to shimmer, much brighter than the sterile spill of light from the lamp next to his bed. He stared for a long moment, unable to speak, overcome by her beauty.
She touched him on his arm and smiled. When she spoke, her voice fluttered rapidly, vibrating like the wings of a butterfly. “I am so happy to see you awake, and I do hope you are feeling better.”
Jona tried to smile back. The familiar feeling of nausea arose within him, but milder than previously. “Where am I?”
“You are fortunate that I am here to tell you, let me tell you, because when they brought me in here no one had the balls to tell me where I was.”
Her words entered Jona’s brain piecemeal, making no sense to him. “Where?”
She answered promptly. “The Jefferson Davis Hospital for The Troubled, Deluded, Sick of Mind, and Perfectly Sane. That’s where.”
Jona tried desperately to process what she said. His mind churned sluggishly, lost in a deep fog. “Hospital?”
“Well that’s what they call it. It’s really a prison, though. See?” She flicked one of his handcuffs with her finger. “No escape. They think that, anyway.”
“And you?”
“Oh, you can call me Guinevere. She was a queen, you know. Gwen will do.”
Jona nodded. He wanted to know more but he must have fallen asleep again, and when he opened his eyes once more, she was gone. The large man came in to see him after that, but only briefly. He was accompanied by another, a thin, gawky man with owl’s eyes and a pronounced turkey chin. They didn’t seem to care whether Jona was awake or asleep, and talked freely at his bedside. The words were unclear, but the large man with the shrunken head spoke with choppy, intense importance. Finally, he waved his arms over his head, as if conducting an orchestra, and made a loud proclamation, and by his tone it was clear that everyone had to obey. It was an order strange and inscrutable, as if it portended great things. Announce it on the radio, he said, and that was all, and then he vanished like a hobgoblin whose trick was played and done. The part of Jona’s mind that was conscious drifted in wonderment and confusion. Announce it on the radio, the man had said. Announce what? The Grand Prize Winner? Tomorrow’s weather? Baseball scores? Somehow, it sounded more important than that, but since it had nothing to do with Jona he allowed it all to fade away.
Later, Jona felt the stroking of his hair again, prompting him to open his eyes as quickly as he could. It was Gwen, sitting next to him with radiant amusement in her smile. “I was wondering when you would wake up. I know just about every hair on your head by now.”
“Something told me it was you.” He smiled back. “Gwen, why are you here?” The question was suddenly urgent, her answer an immediate need that had to be fulfilled. “Here. With me. Why?”
Her cheeks flushed the palest possible ochre, her eyes darkened with a halo of blue, and she quickly drew both hands into her lap. “This will sound silly. Crazy, actually.”
“Please.” Jona wanted to grasp her hand, and squeeze it, and try to understand why a woman so beautiful would sit by his side.
“I have always felt that we would meet. I don’t even know your name, but that doesn’t matter. It was you that I would meet, almost as if it were destiny. My destiny, anyway. You were written into my journal from the beginning, the lover that would mark all the days of my life. I don’t know, maybe you are just in my imagination, or a magical creation that’s not real.” She gave a nervous laugh, fidgeting with some loose threads hanging from her bandages. ‘“So, what is your name? Even if you’re a work of magic, you still must have a name.”
Jona stayed stock still, his eyes locked on hers. The buzzing in his brain was better, and he was able to think more clearly. He gave the best smile that he could, trying hard not to show any pain. “My name is Lancelot. He was a knight once, you know.”
“Then I will call you Lance.”
“Speak to me, Guinevere. Tell me about how we came to meet, and how destiny brought us together.”
And so she talked, hurriedly at times and at other times more slowly, but without ever stopping. Gwen explained that Lance had been brought to the hospital in a terrible state. He was unconscious when admitted, moaning incoherently, and trembling like a leaf. Shivering, actually, as if he had been plucked from an arctic sea. He was now O so much better, she could see that, but she was sure they planned to keep him captive indefinitely. As for herself, she was a political prisoner, incarcerated without trial for speaking out against the evils of the regime. They had tortured her as he could see by the bandaging on her forearm, but she had held firm. Shyly, she admitted that she had joined a certain resistance group, one which could not be named, to carry on the work of a past lover named Shylock. Wait, she said, his name was actually Sherlock. Shylock was his secret name. Sadly he had died a cruel death in a shootout with Seminole Rangers while attempting to flee to Peru, and was now considered a national hero by almost everyone. Anyway, she had always known that someone else would come into her life, another hero, a greater hero even than either poor Sherlock or Shylock, a person who would sweep into her life like the north wind. Just to be clear, a person actually from the north sweeping in like the north wind, or perhaps a hurricane, which was so much stronger. Either one would be correct. And so here they both were, Gwen and Lance, together at last, just as the stars had predicted.
Lance noticed that as she spoke her eyes flicked back and forth, as if they were either seeking the light or avoiding the light. He interrupted her. “Can you see?”
Gwen recoiled as if slapped. “Well, Lance, that was uncalled for. It’s somewhat shitty to ask a high born lady like myself a question like that, don’t you think? If you must know, I can see just fine right around where I am. I can see even better over there, and over there, and there.” She pointed in random, far away directions, then laughed. “I can see your confusion. That makes my vision just fine.”
Lance felt disoriented and wanted to close his eyes to rest. Before he did, though, he asked one more question. “How do you know what’s going on?”
“Oh, I’ve been watching.” Gwen began laughing again, almost hysterically, laughing with a soft twang in her voice. “That’s what I do. I’ve been watching. Here. There. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.”
Lance was awake when the nurse came in with his next injection. He was more lucid now, and as his mind cleared his anger exploded. “Get me outta these!” He bellowed the words as loud as he could, yanking mightily on the chains that bound him. His wrists were already macerated from previous attempts to free himself, but he did not stop despite the pain.
“These are for your own protection, sweetie. They’ll be off soon enough, promise. Here now, Doctor wants you to get this.” She plunged the needle into his thigh, rubbed the site with alcohol, and stepped back with a pious appearance of accomplishment. “I guess I shouldn’t tell you this, but you might want to know they’ll be transferring you tomorrow morning. Goin’ somewhere special they say, don’t know where. It will be for your own good, for sure. Well, hon, see you later.”
As he slipped into insensibility Jona’s mind rocked back and forth between two thoughts that shouted at him simultaneously, like barkers at a fair. I’ve got to get out of here, one said, and I want to die, said the other.
“At the very least, he’s an annoyance.” Patton puffed out the words, and immediately began reaching for the gold trimmed lighter in his pocket, as if he were disinterested in any discussion of the matter.
MENTOR made a show of stroking his chin thoughtfully before responding. Inwardly, he smirked at the comment. Very typical of low IQ types, it was meant to be a probe, a non-question form of question that would smoke out the respondent. In reality, it gave Mentor the flexibility to command the conversation and lead it in any direction he wished. He gazed into Patton’s eyes carefully. By no means did he want to underestimate the cocky bastard who sat behind his enormous desk with legs crossed, cigar firmly planted in his mouth, and service beret planted even more firmly over his head. He acted very much like he was king of the world, but to MENTOR he seemed more like a performer on a vaudeville stage, made up as a parody of a military man. Patton wore jeweled pinky rings on both hands, and two rings on his right forefinger, one large enough to accommodate a state seal. His cheeks smelled of lavender, every crease in his suit was razor sharp, and his fingernails were manicured. He was a fraud, but a dangerous fraud.
“Hard to say. Maybe you could use him to your advantage, though, somehow.”
“Yeah? How?”
MENTOR counted to three before answering. “This is awkward. I don’t want to give advice that might prove to be…difficult. Let’s be candid. Some measures, though necessary, might be a bit rough in execution, and might not be considered appropriate in polite circles.”
Patton reared his head back and gave a loud guffaw, then leaned forward aggressively, consuming the distance between the two men. “Did you say rough? You don’t know me very well, Mr. MENTOR. I am sandpaper rough. I’ve got grit. If something needs to be done, I’m not backing down from anything or anybody.”
“Frankly, general, that’s why I’ve admired you from a distance. Your strength. People see that in you. They feel it, too. As far as this fellow is concerned, a demonstration of strength is exactly what’s needed. Remember, there is no possible way the North can do anything about it.” MENTOR pointed at the thick pile of manila folders on Patton’s desk.
He had brought top secret files with him. Many files. He had decided that these would be his entrance fee into Patton’s presence, proving his bona fides as a loyal and capable agent of the southern cause. There were military preparedness reports, infantry fitness reports, naval and marine unit supply reports. Most importantly, an assessment of morale in the northern armed forces. They all spoke to an undeniable conclusion: The northern colossus was an empty shell, completely unprepared for war both now and for the foreseeable future. Patton ruffled through the various dossiers without actually reading any. He threw a glance at Lehr, the Intelligence chief, standing quietly at the edge of the desk. “You agree with all this, right?”
“Yes sir. Actually, they look like punching bags to me. Not one unit is at full strength. As for fighting spirit, they are in the dumps, while we are unrivaled.”
“Alright, then. Good work, both of you.” Patton gleamed. “So, Lieb is a spy, right? An agent of a foreign power, right? And the two goons with him, also agents, right?”
MENTOR nodded his head with each accusation. “Sure seems that way. All three. Agents.”
Patton stood up briskly, allowing a ragged smile to cleave his face. “Need to round up the two bodyguards. Lehr, where are they?”
Lehr’s jaw seemed to vibrate momentarily, causing the rolls of fat beneath his chin to jiggle perversely against his straw thin neck. “We have them under watch. They haven’t left the hospital waiting room since Lieb was brought in, sleeping a lot, drinking coffee a lot, pissing a lot. Haven’t allowed them to see him, though.”
“How devoted. Put them under arrest.”
“Respectfully, sir, we are moving Lieb tomorrow. The doctors say his withdrawal symptoms are better, but his brain may be fried at this point. Why don’t we make all three arrests formally and at the same time in the morning?”
Before Patton could answer MENTOR cut in. “What about the president? What will he say?” He placed a tone of anxiety in his voice, just subtle enough to register but without expressing alarm.
“I don’t give a good goddamn what he thinks. We are going to play it my way, and that’s final. I’ve got a couple thousand troops in town. Three brigades. Who’s gonna say ‘no’?”
MENTOR was satisfied that his immediate task was accomplished. “He’s going to get hot.”
Patton struck a fabulous pose, one he surely must have seen in a movie, jutting his jaw out to an upward angle and to the right, and sweeping his hands to his hips. “Well, stay tuned on your radio dial. It’s going to get a whole helluva lot hotter.”
Jona was awake the next time Gwen came into his room, though he pretended to be asleep. It was deathly black, but a dull white crack of light appeared at the doorway, resembling the first glimpse of a happily waxing crescent moon. She padded toward him quietly, but he could hear each footstep despite the lightness of its touch, sounding like the barest rustle of young spring leaves at the very tip of a treetop. The bed sighed gently as she sat, and then he felt her hand seeking him, touching him finally. He had a quick vision of her, imagining how white and long her legs must be, and how thick her hair, and the thought of her sitting next to him in the dark just before dawn shot an electric thrill through him. Then the shaking began, and all his thoughts turned inward.
“Lance.” She held him by the shoulder. “Lance, are you alright? I have to talk to you.” She squeezed with barely enough pressure to make herself felt.
He grasped her hand, reaching to the limit of his chains, holding it as if letting go would cast him adrift in a roaring tempest. “I am better. It’s not as bad this time. Please help me.” He thrashed weakly now because the abrasions around wrists and ankles caused pain with every movement.
“Listen.” She leaned close, breathing into his ear, rushing on as if she had not heard a word he said. “Stay quiet, we don’t want them to hear us. Lance, we’ve got to get out of here.”
The tremors continued a few further moments before beginning to abate. Jona breathed deeply, seeking Gwen’s face in the darkness. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean is that something terrible is going to happen in the morning. I think they’re going to hang you, or shoot you, or maybe poison you. You, and your police friends too.”
A shock of memory rushed into Jona’s awareness. “Andrews? Murphy? Where are they?”
“They’ve been down in the lobby all this time. People are saying they smell awful, and the burly one wants to rape me, I am sure. Don’t worry about them, they’ll be fine.”
“But you just said…”
“Never mind what I said, Lance!” Her voice rose to a quiet shrill. Lance could feel the heat from her mouth as her lips hovered against his cheek. “Listen! This is the queen talking, and you must obey. We’re all up shit’s creek if we don’t move quickly. Lance! Talk to me!”
Jona tried to shake the fog from his mind. “OK. No. Wait. How? Where? How? Why?”
Gwen pinched him on the cheek. “Can you hear me? We’ve got to move quick, before the nurse comes back for your next injection. We’ve got an hour at most, that’s it.”
“What injection?”
“I don’t know. They’re giving you some kind of something they call fiend of barber medication.”
“Barber?” Jona closed his eyes, squeezing hard. There was something, something very important, floating just beyond the haze that shrouded him. He tried to tick off every item that he could pluck from his memory. Gwen. Hospital. Andrews. Murphy. Jona. Lance. Tiny headed man. Nurse…More began to pour out of the mist, drop by drop, then more rapidly, like off-notes from a trumpet. Atlanta. Mission. Mariella. Elfieda, Alexor, Koehlerman, Yevugeny, Oshter. Bargabazian. Father. Mother…each new name, and face, and word added flesh and bone and sinew, and soon he felt himself begin to emerge from the shadows. He tried to arise, forgetting that he was bound to the bed.
“Sons of bitches!” He roared as loudly as he could, roaring until his head pounded. “Sons of bitches get me outta this!”
“Shush!” Gwen attempted to cover Lance’s mouth with her hand. “Shush, they’ll hear you and come in here and find me and it’s all over. I’m telling you for the last time we’ve got to escape before it’s too late.”
Lance quieted down but shook his manacles in frustration. “What about these?”
“I can get you out of those with no problem. The keys are at the desk and the night bitch sleeps for hours at a time, the fat slut. The orderly is playing poker in the basement. He wants to rape me too, just so you know. He’s already tried. Anyway, I know every hallway and back stairway in this place, and they’re too stupid to care. They can’t even imagine there might be any trouble. You see…” She patted him on the forehead soothingly. “You see, we are the only customers on this floor, my brave knight, and it’s not the bargain basement. We are very special indeed. Haut couture.”
“OK, OK. I want out of these cuffs no matter what.” Lance stared hard at where he thought her face might be, and for an instant thought he could see two pale orbs staring back at him with cat-like intensity. “OK. You free me from these first. Then you get me back to my men. Then we’ll talk about escape. Hurry.”
Murphy found himself daydreaming. Not his usual dream, though. This one was different. Half remembrance, half reflection, half regret and half repine mixed and blended, swirling and skimming in and out of his mind’s eye. He saw his dreary flat on M Street, empty and dark, and watched as the sun’s rays started to pour through the curtains in the early morning. His bed and couch became background silhouettes as the light sharpened in intensity, and gradually the beams of sunlight came to a focus, illuminating a chair, and there he was, just as Murphy anticipated. It was Father Gus, sitting patiently as he always seemed to do. He waved pleasantly at Joseph, then assumed that peculiar look in his eye and stiff curve to his lip, the way he always did when he was sad.
Were you good today, Joseph?
I did my prayers this morning, like you told me.
Did you?
Naw, not really. Can’t say that I will, either.
Then how in God’s name will you be saved?
That’s just it, Father. The world will save me, just as soon as I’m old enough to get out of this joint.
No, Joseph. The world will corrupt you, not save you.
So what? What do you care, anyway?
Father Gus sighed, a very loud sigh, the way he did when disappointment was too great to hide. Imagine, Joseph, imagine that God created a beautiful tapestry, endless in its length, and on it he tells the story of each of us, and imagine it is carefully folded up and stored away forever, and imagine again that you are one of the folds, lying between one above and one below. If I can save your fold from the mildew and rot consuming it, then I can save the one above and the one below, and the next ones to either side, and on and on to eternity.
And save yourself?
Yes.
You’re a nice guy, Father Augustus, but I just don’t believe in that stuff. I want to go out and get a job, and make money, and buy a suit and nice shoes, and meet some broads, and smoke cigars. Until then I want to play baseball is all. You know what I’m talking about, right?
What grade are you in now, Joseph? You’ve grown into a full lad, I can see. Are you a sophomore?
Yes. I’ll be sixteen soon. Then I’m outta here, believe me.
Aye, sixteen. That was a hard age for me. I wanted nothing from anyone but everything from everyone. I can tell you plainly that I lusted, and not just in my heart. I was back in the old country then. Times were rough and people were tough and so I hardened my heart to suit the part. I was your age when my teacher had me read Pascal’s wager. Do you know it?
No. Father, please let me go now. Excuse my French but this is so much bullshit.
Sit there a touch until I’m done, now won’t you. There was a man, his name matters not. He thought and thought about it and didn’t know whether to believe in God. He was smart, though something of a shyster, I think. He couldn’t do it on the basis of faith, you see, couldn’t just believe, so he decided he would make the decision in the same way he would make a bet. Look here.
Father Gus began to draw on an imaginary blackboard suspended in the air, the squealing of the chalk sounding like so many lambs being led to slaughter. He was standing suddenly at a lectern, tapping at the blackboard forcefully.
You see, it’s like this: Place your bet on God. If you’re right you win eternal bliss. Not bad, eh? If you’re wrong, there’s nothing lost. Now, if you don’t bet on God and you’re right, then sure, there’s nothing lost. But if you’re wrong, then beware, you get eternal damnation. And the most important thing to remember: God really does exist. Must exist, actually. Id quo maius cogitari nequit, after all. Surely you agree with that, it’s so obvious. So, Joseph, which would you choose?
I choose No.
You are being illogical, dear boy. You should play the odds and believe. What do you have to lose?
Maybe my mind. You make it sound like playing craps. Does God roll dice?
Father Gus towered over him now, standing at the high altar, extending his hand with the Eucharist wafer held delicately between thumb and forefinger.
Believe.
No.
Believe.
No.
You think that yourself is all you have, but you are wrong. If you don’t believe in this you will never believe in anything, not even yourself.
Murphy’s eyes snapped open. There was a sound, coming from somewhere behind his chair. He sat very still, absorbing everything around him. Andrews was sleeping on an adjacent sofa, head thrown back but completely silent. The lights in the lobby were on but dimmed. The receptionist sitting near the lobby entrance sat with his head down, immersed in a comic book. Murphy heard the sound again, a rubbing or chaffing sound. He decided to turn his head, slowly and carefully.
A poorly lit form stood in the shadow of a foyer leading to the public water fountain, and beyond that the men’s toilet closet. Someone was there, bundled up in overcoat, scarf, and widely brimmed hat, a small man whose face was obscured. He was leaning against the doorway, rubbing his hand repeatedly back and forth against a cast iron radiator, making an almost imperceptible ruffling sound. The man stopped when Murphy turned his head, and then began waving frantically, gesturing the agent to come over. After some hesitation Murphy arose from his armchair, but before he could take a step the man in the alcove pointed repeatedly at Andrews, held up two fingers, then pointed towards the bathroom. Murphy stopped dead in his tracks, now hyper-vigilant. There was something odd about the man, even beyond his bizarre gesticulations. He was dressed absurdly, especially given the time of year, and seemed to be maneuvering himself in order to stay at least partly out of sight. His frame was frail, discerned easily despite the bulk of his overcoat, and his hands appeared unnaturally pale and boney. Three thoughts came to Murphy simultaneously. Shit, it’s a woman. She must be a kook. Either way she’s high as a kite.
He toyed with the thought of sitting back down when another form appeared behind the first, just for an instant, then flitted back into the darkness like a dim wraith. It was a wraith with a limp. Murphy felt a quick thrill as he made a show of stretching and yawning, then sat down heavily next to Andrews. “Wake up.”
His partner barely moved but opened one eye. “Go away.”
“I think I just saw Lieb.”
Andrews sat bolt upright. He followed Murphy’s lead, speaking in a whisper. “Where?”
Murphy nodded in the direction of the vestibule, where the heavily clothed woman continued her mime with short, rapid gestures. Andrews watched silently for a few moments. “It’s a woman.”
“Yeah. This dame is calling us over, and I saw Lieb right behind her a minute ago. They’re together, I’m sure of it.”
Andrews remained impassive, processing the situation. Despite the protests of the two agents, and an ugly confrontation between Murphy and a State Trooper guarding the elevator, they had not been allowed to see their charge since he was rushed to the sanatorium the day before. The elevator was now locked down and the stairwells were barricaded. There was no way up and, in any case, the two agents had no idea where Lieb was being held. A very young looking doctor had come down to tell them that Lieb was in a state of collapse because of chemical withdrawal, and could have no visitors. He also mentioned somewhat officiously that opioid use was illegal in Georgia. They had received no further information since then. They were in a kind of political purgatory, with their fate very uncertain. Murphy had told Andrews that he was sure all this would end in a gunfight.
Andrews glanced quickly at the lobby’s large glass exit doors leading to the street outside. They were firmly shut and undoubtedly locked. A trooper armed with a heavy gauge shotgun stood in the street directly outside the doors and behind him two police cruisers were parked on the sidewalk, blocking egress. There could be no doubt they were crammed with heavily armed troopers.
He poked Murphy with his elbow. “Do you think it’s a setup?”
“I’m thinking it could be. Or it could be Lieb is trying to escape.”
“This is much too fanciful to be a trap. A mystery lady? Too elaborate. I think it’s real.”
“OK. In that case, let’s go to the little boy’s room. I need to pee.”
“I’ll go first. Wait one minute and follow. Unless you hear gunshots.”
Murphy idled as Andrews dissolved into the shadows of the foyer and disappeared around the corner, followed by the woman. He searched the half-illuminated waiting room. The front desk receptionist had placed his head down on his sprawled arms, appearing asleep. There was no one else around. After thirty seconds had gone by, he arose and sauntered casually after Andrews.
The narrow vestibule was poorly lit, but a ribbon of bright light fluoresced below the bathroom door. Murphy opened the door carefully and swung his head forward to look inside. There was Jona Lieb, grinning wickedly, and standing behind him a satanic apparition. It was the woman in the greatcoat. Her hat was off, revealing pure white hair streaming over her shoulders and face, partially obscuring eyes that were so pellucid they seemed to be lenses to a microscope. She looked like a witch from a frightening fairy tale, one where the beautiful princess didn’t make it out alive.
“Hello, Murph.” Lieb spoke with a detectable thickness to his words, as if he were half asleep.
“Dr. Lieb, what’s going on? Are you alright?”
Lieb shot his hand up forcefully. “Stop. My name is Lance.”
Andrews locked eyes with Murphy, lifting one eyebrow briefly. “Alright, Lance. Please, tell us what you are up to. Why are you down here? Why aren’t you in your room? Who is the lady?”
Lance threw his hand up even higher. “No questions right now. We’re going on an adventure. Like a quest.” He turned towards Gwen, placing his arm around her shoulder before turning back towards the two agents. His grin was cavernous, his face was pale, and his eyes darted quickly, unnaturally, from Murphy to Andrews. “First, we get out of here.”
“Settle down for a minute, Mr. Lance. Just how do we do that?” Murphy did not hide his sarcasm.
“That’s easy, you stupid jerk.” It was Gwen, speaking in a high trilling voice while offering her sweetest smile. She placed her arm around Lance’s waist, tugging gently. “We fly.”
Chapter 33
Pickett struggled to find the right words. He was not a natural writer, and he knew he was not a great thinker. Nonetheless, it was imperative to strike just the right chord in his speech to the country. Broadcasting a message to an entire nation was very different from whipping troops into a frenzy before a big fight. He would be speaking into a microphone in a studio far removed from the ordinary folk who would be listening. He wasn’t even sure what they wanted to hear. Wisdom? Not his forte. Reassurance? That would be dishonest. Inspiration? He felt little himself. On top of all that, he steeled himself for the possibility of an awkward confrontation with Patton. He still didn’t know with certainty whether he would be allowed to leave the hotel, now surrounded by a security cordon that extended blocks in every direction. Very possibly, he was a political prisoner victimized by a military coup.
He had a prepared speech, of course. He actually had two. One was very short, just a few words of mindless drivel and meaningless patter, a plea to keep up spirits. The other was a lengthy exegesis, a soulless, matter-of-fact recitation of the national problem list and the measures needed to resolve each one. He could feel that both were wrong. Something more was needed, something that would feed into a new identity and that would help the country through the trauma of a new birth. He pondered some words that had come to him in the early morning, darting into his mind through an unseen back door as he suffered a recurring bout of pain in his chest. The searing spasms were more frequent now, attacking violently even in the dead of night. Once again that morning, the tightness over his heart had caused him to gasp breathlessly, and it was just then that a thought spewed out of the web of agony that gripped him. He wondered aloud what his story was to be after he was gone. What would people say about him? The same thought threaded in and out of his mind the remainder of the morning, pursuing him relentlessly. As he sat down at his desk to write, the words bled out spontaneously from his pen onto the paper.
What is our story?
He stared at the page for a moment, then continued. What is our people’s story?
He paused again. The past has its own memory, and it becomes history. What will history remember?
As if he were a boy again, Pickett licked the tip of his pen, poised for the exquisite instant between that which was present and that which was to come. And then the words came flooding, and he began to write:
They will remember we were brave. For it takes great courage to shake off the shackles of the commonplace and of the comfortable and risk all to seek a new life of freedom. Freedom not just for the one, but communally, together, in a way that lifts every soul and unburdens every heart, and creates new vistas of thought, and hope, and experiment where there had been none before. This is what humankind has dreamed of throughout all history, and what we poor tongued people of today are privileged to pray for and believe in.
Not every heart, and not every soul, however. Brave we were, but not heroic. I can attest that very few, so few of us, can be heroes. Buried within the seeds that blossomed with such fearful exfoliation lay a cancer. We know what it is without having to say it, a curse that shall not be named. Let me swear by all that is holy that I cannot believe we bear any guilt for this sin. That would be too much to bear for any of us. It was thrust upon us by the stormy hatreds and prejudices of the past, bequeathed as a spiteful gift that bore within itself the bitter fruits that we contend with today. We convinced ourselves it was for the good, and it was God’s way, and that it was in accordance with all of mankind‘s natural laws. So we kept on, oblivious to the world around us. Were we wrong or right? Can each of us answer that question, one by one, or must we answer to history with only one choice and one voice, as one nation? In any case, humanity has moved on to new laws of nature, and higher expressions of righteousness, and we are left behind to struggle with how to view the right, and do the right.
In the books of the Holy Writ, we are told of the stiff necked, the proud, the unyielding peoples who persisted in their iniquities even when told to repent. In return they suffered fire and lash, again and again. And so here we are, glorying in who we were, uncertain about who we are, not knowing who we should become. And, just like those of antiquity, not willing to atone.
We are a peculiar people. We were baptized in fire, and those who are baptized in fire must thenceforth be clothed in fire, either enflamed by ecstasy or consumed in agony. Which shall it be? Words and deeds of today cannot change the yesterday, but can chart our future. We are not here to simply relive the past. We are not here to pay homage to old truths that can no longer be sustained. We are here to seize the day, this very day, and fashion it to our will. The road we choose now will become our story, the story of us, the story that history will tell down to the latter ages…
Pickett suddenly threw his pen down, clutching at his vest, digging with his fingertips as if to grasp the very tissue of his very heart, trying to hold back the hoarse moan exploding from his throat. He pushed the buzzer for his secretary, Mosby, who burst into the room within seconds.
“Mr. President!” Mosby checked Pickett’s pulse, which seemed barely discernible. “I’m calling the doctor!” He picked up the desk phone and barked some words into it.
“It’s the last muster, pard, don’t bother.”
“Hang in there, sir, please.”
“Tell me. Do you think we are guilty? I don’t want to have guilt, don’t want to leave it behind.” The words were clear, though spoken through clenched teeth and with the deepest sigh.
Mosby grasped Pickett’s hand. He searched Pickett’s eyes, feeling not sadness but profound regret for the older man. “Only your Maker can decide that. It’s not too late, even now, to implore His forgiveness.”
Forgiveness. Pickett did not understand the word. He had never understood it. What was forgiveness? A word? An act? With a word, conceive an act…and then what? Forgive. The word is the act. And what does it do? Send a ripple through all Creation, changing everything before and everything to come? He found his breath more labored, his exhalations more prolonged, and a low whoop escaped from his throat. “My will…it will take care of Maddy…”
With a firm squeeze, Mosby raised Pickett’s hand to his own chest. “Fear not for Maddy. I will see to it. May I pray? I beg you to allow me…” He began the Lord’s prayer in a barely audible whisper.
Pickett could hear nothing. He felt himself lost in a dull shimmer coalescing around him, one that stretched a long way away, the last awareness he would have before the end would come. He sought the face of his mother by the hearth, or his sweet Martha smiling at him through beams of moonlight, but neither appeared. Instead, he found himself in a warm bath, feeling the delicious tingle of the flesh as drops of water and sweat coursed down his spine and across his muscled arms. He felt himself immersed in waters of remembrance and anticipation, and could feel the supple power of life rustle through him like a blanket shaken gently in the wind, and then, with the barest breath of avowal, he expired.
“Did you read this?” Patton held the paper in one hand, tapping it with the forefinger of the other.
“No sir, I did not. We were preoccupied with the last…moments.”
“It’s good. One part of it, anyway. This stuff about being forged in flames, I feel like I’m in ecstasy right now, get it? I’m gonna read it to mother.” He looked up quickly, scowling at Mosby. “I already know I like it, and I’ll be using that line myself in just a few hours when I give my speech. Just want her to know, is all.”
“Yes sir.”
“Well, this sad affair takes care of the little tussle about who was going to speak to the country this afternoon. Off the record, I was gonna let him say a few words and then introduce me. That woulda been delicious, don’t you think? What did he say at the end?” Patton sat down in Pickett’s chair with a leisurely sprawl.
“Could not hear, I’m afraid.” Mosby bowed his head as he lied, afraid to show any emotion. He had been able to have only a few moments alone with the dying Pickett before his personal bodyguards stormed in with a typhoon of motion and noise, and then the doctor had come with his useless bag of toothpicks, sterile cotton earplugs, scrub pads, probing rods and ammonia salts, clearing out enough space around the body to allow his corpulent frame to settle comfortably. It took him less than a minute to pronounce the man dead, then he trotted off with a smirk on his face and a lock of curly hair he had surreptitiously snipped from the corpse. Mosby had wanted to strangle him on the spot and shoot the clerks and guards and typists and other hangers on who had rushed in to gawk and point and cry, much as they would if a heart tugging movie had just ended. No one seemed to understand or care that a great man had just died.
And then Patton had arrived. He was full of piss and vinegar, or at least acted that way. He ordered the removal of the body, the ejection of anyone not essential, and promptly placed a phone call during which he barked and growled and bayed like a rabid cur. At one point he snarled “Well, find his goddam ass!” To emphasize the point he slammed down the phone with enough force to break the handle. It did not take long to turn his ire on Mosby. “You shoudda made that call right away, not me.”
“What call, sir?!”
“Dammit, to Garner’s office! You remember him? The Vice President? Or were you too busy slobbering over your boss…Sorry, your late boss. Need to find Jack and get him sworn in. Turns out he’s down on the Nueces fishing bass. Guada-lupe bass, pardon his royal ass. Now we’ve got to send a party out after him, track him down, may take two, three days. In the meanwhile, the country’s got no godamm president! That’s a problem, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes, sir. A problem.”
Patton squared his lips into a wicked grin and clapped his hands gleefully. “No, actually I guess it’s not. Not while I’m here it’s not. See, this is a perfect chance to declare that the state of martial law will be extended. Also, that we need to get more aggressive. Get the army out. Everywhere. The thing is, we don’t really know how or why our dear departed president actually died. You weren’t here. No one was. Was he shot? Poisoned? Strangled? Die of a broken heart? We don’t truly know, do we? To me, this has the stamp of a terrorist cabal written all over it. Maybe the North had something to do with it. You never know.”
Mosby felt unsteady for a moment, quailing at Patton’s rant. “You can’t be serious. Everyone knows the president suffered from a heart condition.”
“Oh, I be serious alright. In point of fact, almost no one knew about his state of health. One or two in the Cabinet, and they don’t care. Alden, his only true friend, I suppose. I’ll have to deal with him, but it won’t take much more than a bottle of bourbon and a bucket of ice cream to settle him down. The doctor, but he’s a moron….and…and…” Patton turned his back on Mosby, made a conspicuous show of looking out the window, removed his hat, and rubbed the skin over his bald head with slow, steady strokes. “And you, Captain. And you. You’re still an officer in the reserves, right? Still subject to call-up, I imagine.” He whirled quickly around, still grinning ferociously. “Only a captain, huh? Never made it close to your grandfather’s rank. Didn’t have that military instinct? A wee bit too Christian maybe. Still, everybody’s service is important. That’s right, ain’t it?”
Mosby had felt overcome, barely able to nod his head, and barely able to withstand Patton’s demonic glare. “The autopsy will show…”
“Those results will take weeks, maybe longer. I will insist that the doctors be very thorough. We’ll have to be very patient.” He paused to massage the smooth black mahogany of Pickett’s desk. “You liked him, didn’t you? I mean, you truly liked him.”
“Yessuh, I truly did.”
“Well, you’re a fool through and through. Look, he had one foot planted in the past and one foot planted in the future, but nothing fixed on today. Time don’t run that way, don’t you see? You have to get from yesterday through today before you get to….to whatever. It’s all about today, and his brain was always drifting somewhere else, like he was a goddamn Roman Ceasar. Not me. I’m right here, cuz, and right now.”
Patton chortled gleefully, jumped into the air, spryly clicked his heels, and had then begun to roam the office like a feral cat searching for living prey. Now he sat at the presidential desk, reading the speech Pickett had written just a few hours before, running a finger over the lines and jabbing at them, as if the words were dying but still warm. As he read, his face darkened. His finger wavered back and forth, giving the impression he was reading and re-reading the same line. “Hey, what is this shit about a cancer? A curse? What’s he saying?” He slid the paper across the desk for Mosby to read.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? Our system. How we run our social affairs. It was our original sin, and we don’t know how to expiate that sin. By God, I don’t think we can. I think, I really believe, that it will eat away at us until we turn into dry straw, a husk that drifts away with the tides of time.”
Patton sighed deeply, retrieved the paper, then ripped it repeatedly into small shreds and tossed them into the air. The pieces fluttered down, some slow and some fast, some catching the glint of light and some mere shadows, until they covered the desk like small paper seeds sown by a swift breeze. “Sick of hearing this stuff. Sin is everywhere, mankind was born in sin. You don’t think there is sinnin’ goin’ on among our cousins up north of here?” He jerked his thumb upwards. “Shit, the only place with any honesty right now is goddam Germany, where they callin’ a spade a spade. Anyway, ain’t nothin’ wrong with our system. Ain’t no sin. But there is a storm blowing, and it’s coming from overseas. Like I said, maybe Germany. Maybe Russia, maybe someplace we don’t even know yet, we’ll have to see. In a year or two, though, we’ll all be doing the same thing. You understand, right? With the undesirables.”
Mosby stood his ground, lifting his chin defiantly. As if performing a card trick, he deftly retrieved a pocket bible from his vest, holding it high over his head. “I was always taught that it was a great, redeeming benefit for savages to be baptized into the faith. It has occurred to me that with a small twist of fate I might have been the savage, and I have never understood why it was necessary to be a slave in order to receive the word of God. Now it seems to me our slaves and servants have more faith than we do. They should be teaching us, not the other way around. Every thinking person understands how the Mississippi millionaires got their money, and how the Texas tycoons operate their ranches, or the Birmingham mill owners make their steel. Everything around us is built on the blackbacks of laboring millions, that is the bare truth and the only excuse we can hold up to the mirror. I for one can’t stand it any longer, and others can’t, and the president understood that. Change is coming, General.”
“Bullshit. You’re wrapped up in your fancy ideas. Meet some ordinary people, folks running small farms, stores, gas stations, and ask them what they think, and they’ll tell you. Why…”
“Stop! Don’t say another word. You’ll just make a fool of yourself.”
“How dare you interrupt me!” Patton sprang to his feet, livid. “I will put you under court martial, sir!”
“Just trying to protect you, General. You’re too intelligent a man to believe what you were about to say. Robert Jones ran his operation right under our noses for years. If he was capable of that, he was capable of anything any one of us could do. And he’s not the only one. If you can’t understand that, then maybe you are one of the stiff necked.” He opened the Bible in his hand and thumbed the pages carefully. Straightening his back, he spoke with a stentorious ring to his voice. “So it is said in Micah: Listen, you rulers of Israel. Should you not embrace justice, you who hate good and love evil; who tear the skin from my people and the flesh from their bones; who eat my people’s flesh, strip off their skin and break their bones in pieces; who chop them up like meat for the pan, like flesh for the pot? Then they will cry out to the Lord, but he will not answer them.” He paused and took a deep breath. “So you see, general, the cry for justice still sounds loudly after two thousand years, and it will not be silenced.”
“You stupid, fucking windbag.” Patton took two steps around the desk, squared up in front of Mosby, and slapped him sharply across the cheek. “What are you gonna do about that? Think about it. You can’t do anything more about that than you can about the way things are. And the way things are is just fine with me. I know your kind, always preaching about the golden rule. You know what the golden rule is, you stupid ass? Those with the gold make the rules, that’s what. My momma taught me that and yours should have taught you the same. It’s about power, and I have the government and the army with me. And by the way, I have more than the army with me. I have the people. The whole people, the real army, marching with me. That’s right, the people. Crazed and fearful, self-righteous, shameful, ignorant, calculating, narrow minded, tired, angry, and most of them being more mindful of the shit they took in the morning than of anyone else’s suffering. That’s the people in all their majesty, the biggest fucking joke of all. Now get out, but don’t go too far. You’ll be getting a notice in the morning. Assignment orders for your new deployment, Captain.”
As Mosby performed a sharp about-face, his vision blurred briefly with anger, shame, and fear burning like hot pitch in the pit of his stomach. He marched out of the room stiffly, and as he did a ghostly image came to him. He imagined himself marching in the ranks of a long-lost battalion, part of a great gray army aligned in sad and shiftless rows, blank automatons walking with shoulders slumped and eyes vacant, a great army of the dead retreating from twilight into darkness.
Promise Stone maneuvered the suitcase easily despite its weight. It was bulky, but not too heavy to carry up the short flight of stairs to the radio station. When he got to the top there was another door, much like the one he had broken through at the foot of the stairs. With a heavy crowbar firmly in hand, he had the door unhinged and propped open within a few minutes.
It was dark inside, but not black. Dull yellow and green lights shone feebly from the equipment laid out along a long console in the control room. He could see the vague contours of the large round microphones standing like mannequins in the center of the broadcasting room, and the reflected sheen of the glass panes separating the transmitting area from the rest of the studio. As he surveyed his surroundings and allowed time for his vision to accommodate to the dim light, Promise realized there was a problem. There was nowhere to hide the suitcase where the broadcast hosts and guests were going to stand, and certainly nowhere to hide himself. The wires connecting to the detonator were no more than twenty feet long. He had been instructed to conceal the suitcase, or place it where it would not be noticed, and find whatever shelter he could within the length of the wires. Of course, the wires had to be laid carefully so as not to be seen, but that would not be too difficult to do. He had been told there would be a great deal of electrical wiring criss-crossing the floors of the studio, and it was so. Sheaves and bundles of cables were everywhere, on the floor and along the walls. But he had not been advised exactly where to put the suitcase, simply to place it somewhere near the microphones, and that seemed impossible.
Promise had not expected to think very hard about what he had to do, and the truth was that he didn’t want to think much about it at all. He preferred to carry out his task mechanically, like a machine with brainless valves and heartless pumps that burned kerosene for fuel and smoked when it was about to fail. Right now he felt as if his head actually was smoking from the friction of concentrated thought running through his brain. He vowed not to fail, even if he had to stand like a statue in the middle of the room to trigger the ignition. One way or the other, a detonation there would be. The only question was how many would perish by the force of the blast.
“Hey there, you’re early, arn’tcha!”
Stone froze. He could hear the shuffle of feet behind him, and then silence. Very slowly he turned, squinting into the shadows. A frail looking wraith floated into view, moving quickly towards the opposite wall. Promise tensed himself, readying to leap. Suddenly, the overhead lights blazed on with blinding brightness, and a young man with rumpled, corrugated face and wispy beard stood before him, smiling a vacuous smile. He had the chalky face of someone who rarely ventured outdoors.
“Well I’ll be,” he squealed. “You’re a nigra! I didn’t know they had nigras workin’ down at the company. You workin’ alone?”
A dozen doors snapped open in Stone’s mind simultaneously, each one opening onto a different scene. The most likely one, by far, concluded with the white boy’s dead body stuffed carefully into a closet. He turned fully towards the intruder, hands at his side, shifting his weight onto the balls of his feet. Holding back was difficult, but he wanted to hear more. “Yeah. Alone right now. You expectin’ me?”
“Sure, that’s my job to let you in. I didn’t know when you was comin’, then I heard you callyhootin’ in here like a bee in a banjo, makin’ a brawl with that door. It does stick sometimes, they says, but I’ve never used it. Don’t have the key myself. OK, come on over here, I’ll show you where to go. By the way, you can call me Eddie. You?”
The moment of decision came and went, stepping away like a hungry beast, still gurgling with a rumbling growl close by. “Ain’t got no name, so they calls me Noname.”
Eddie issued a thick chuckle, almost as if clearing his throat. “Sorra to hear that, Noname. But, hey, I like it.” He stepped in front of Promise and ambled towards the control room. “You probably wondering why I’m up so early. I’m doin’ my homework, that’s why. Learnin’ stuff, real serious stuff you wouldn’t understand. Yassir, I’m headin’ up the ladder, that’s what my boss says. I got a real future that’s comin’ to me in two, three, four years.” He gave a toothy grin. “My friend Punky says I shouldn’t take a shit for a coupl’a years, until I can afford to buy myself some toilet paper! Ain’t that funny! Next thing after that, I get myself a little lady for all my own. Well, here we are.”
“What do you mean?” Promise stared at the high metal cabinet that Eddie pointed to.
“I dunno. Boss told me to tell you this is where you connect your equipment, so’s you can record the speech. For savin’? Ain’t that right?”
Promise studied the cabinet carefully. It was hidden in a narrow alcove, pushed against a wall that abutted the broadcast room, four or five feet from where the microphones were positioned. Eddie unlatched and opened the door, revealing a long panel covered with meters, dials, toggles and switches, all connected to a maze of wiring that flowed in a dozen directions. There was ample room on the bottom shelf to accommodate the oversized valise. All in all, it would do.
Eddie touched one of the round gauges reverently, lowering his voice to a husky pitch. “In all sinceritiness, it’s like a beauticious woman, don’tcha think? Real pretty, but real complicated. Anyway, leave you to your work. I got mine.” He hitched up his pants and turned to leave.
“Wait.” Stone pounded the opposite wall with his open hand, listening carefully to the sound. “What’s on the other side?”
“That there is my room. My quarters is back here.” Eddie let out a screeching guffaw. “Punky calls it my hindquarters. He says I should get a girl up here sometime. Into my hindquarters. Get it? Don’t he have a way with words!”
Promise astonished himself by smiling, and then almost laughing. It had been very long since he experienced any sense of mirth, and the feeling was strange to him. “Hey, little fella, what do you do around here?”
“Real important job. I clean the place, don’t ya see. Without me nothing works. You know what they says: Cleaningless is next to Gawdiness.”
“Sure. So they says.” Stone settled back on his heels, appraising the situation, calculating his chances, and sizing up the simple-minded Eddie. It was hard to blame the skinny youngster standing before him for any of the world’s many woes, but life could be very cruel, as Promise knew, and usually unfair. Eddie was the whitest white boy he had ever met, but there was something about him, maybe that he spoke and acted like a true halfwit, that was somehow engaging. “Let me aks you somethin’, little man. You got any part of a black man in you? Any part at all?”
Eddie screwed his eye sockets into an impossible contortion, wrinkled his brow and pursed his lips at least an inch out of his face. “Why, never been asked that before. What the thing is, is that the thing is that my pa used to say I was nothin’ but a toothy coal skink, that’s where I got my nickname of Skink, but I don’t prefer to be called that nowadays. It’s sorta like a little lizard, if you ever seen one, and I’m aimin’ for bigger game, if you know what I mean. Like badger, maybe. No, don’t believe so. Far as I know, I am one hundred percent Georgia. Sorry about that.”
Promise Stone took a deep breath and without any pity at all patted Eddie on the shoulder. “So am I, boy. So am I.”
Dawn streamed its first tentative tendrils of muted color directly over their car, spraying the horizon with mottled hues of canary yellow, clay red, and unsettled blues. Soon they were immersed within a welkin transformed from silent dark to breathless light by a rim of gold peering over the surrounding muddy green hills. Andrews glanced at his watch. They had been driving for two hours without letup. He checked the gas gauge, which now measured below one quarter tank. It was hard to know, but that might be only enough for another forty miles at most, and the grimy map on his lap indicated at least twenty five more miles to go. At best, it would be a close run. He just hoped the map was accurate, because the engine vibrations from the beat up Renault they had stolen seemed to be increasing with the passage of every mile.
He was glad sunrise was coming, and he hoped for clarity with the arrival of daylight, because so far their only plan was to drive to the hamlet circled in red on the map. Echota, the map said, the name written in letters so small that the eye had to strain to find that it existed at all. Echota was where Lieb insisted they go, seconded by Gwen, the albino woman who was glued to his side. What they were going to do when they got there, or afterwards, was as unknown as Gwen’s true identity. She had rescued Jona, it was true, and guided their exit from the hospital, but it was quite obvious that she was unbalanced. She had described their escape as a flight aided by sorcery and incantations when in reality it required nothing more than a wriggle out the bathroom window and soft drop down into a pitch-black alley.
Andrews cast a quick look into the rear-view mirror. Gwen and Lieb were huddled together in the back seat, leaning against one another. He could not be certain because of the engine noise, but he thought he could hear her singing softly in a high pitched, mewling voice, a lullaby in an unknown language. No, both in looks and in actions she was not normal. Lieb seemed scarcely better. He slumped without a word, still shaking in withdrawal from whatever they had been giving him in the asylum, and whatever he had been smoking before that. It might be days before he would be dry enough to be rational.
Murphy was wedged tightly in the front passenger seat, sleeping. He was different somehow since their stay in Atlanta. His demeanor had changed since the night at Irene’s, but as far as he knew Murphy had done nothing but get drunk while they were there. Even so, he had become quiet and withdrawn ever since, and there had been no further drinking.
As for himself, Andrews knew he was out of sorts as well. It was because of her…Irene. In the nights since their meeting, he had recurring dreams of her form and face, tight as a mask, floating in and out of his awareness. During his waking hours he attempted to suppress her memory, or relegate it to some corner of his mind where it could be sequestered with all the rest of the crumpled refuse of his past. That had worked for him with all the other things he had chosen to forget. This time, though, he could not shake her, and could not reverse the feeling that she had tossed him inside out and shaken him until he could barely recognize himself. It was not passion that he felt, or desire, or even a wish to see her again. All that had gone away with the passing of a single day. Still, her memory clung to him, insinuating itself into his thoughts without mercy, as if she had reached inside and somehow spliced herself into his marrow, becoming a permanent whisper in his mind. And with her, inevitably, came the memory of all the others gathered on her porch. He couldn’t remember them exactly, couldn’t even recall their faces, but they were there.
Very quickly, he stole another glimpse of the two in the backseat. He knew what everyone thought had happened while he and Irene were alone, yet it had not been quite that way. Not exactly. Yes, the moment came when they both exhaled with the sweet ardor of desire, and yes, they had both knelt by the roiling pool of passion, and savored it, and let it drench them in intoxicating waters. But there was more…A silent mystery unwound itself as they lay together. She had spoken to him. Not with words somehow, but with the curve of her lip, and the touch of her hand, and the deep thousand-year stare of her eyes into his own. The walls surrounding them, thick with ghosts of the long dead past, imploded upon them as she stroked the warm tan tips of her fingers against his, and rubbed the obsidian skin of her forearm against his, and pressed the gentle red of her breast against his. Somehow, she had caused images and thoughts and memories to tumble through his mind like the fluff of clouds fleeing a mighty wind. Some were of his mother and sister, and the little baby who died so young, and the two sad gravesite plots in Baltimore that were dug deliberately where they would be overgrown and forgotten. Other images also came to him, piling one upon the other like inmates pushing through a breach in a prison wall. Strangely, he remembered his own thoughts from when he was a boy, and the dreams he had then dreamed, and the plans that had long ago poured themselves into the long narrow spout that led to today. Even more intensely, coming on the heels of forgotten memories came questions that repeated themselves over and over, leaving no space for escape. He felt changed, body and soul, and uncertain about whether he wanted to return to the comforting and familiar space of how his life had been, or step out of his protective cage into the uncertainty of the unknown.
As if on cue, Irene’s face coalesced in front of the windshield, wearing a high turbaned purple crown and a necklace of pearl white shells. Andrews waved at the image as if swatting at a bee.
“Hey.” It was Murphy, awake now, though his voice sounded muffled and distant.
Andrews startled, momentarily taking his foot off the accelerator. “Hey back.”
Murphy contorted himself to draw a pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket. He lit up quickly, instantly filling the closed car interior with noxious, penetrating fumes. After a few deep drags he turned to stare at Andrews, his eyes fixed. “So.”
“You want to know where we are? An hour past nowhere coming up to someplace else.”
“Naw. Don’t care, I really don’t. We’re all gonna wind up in a puddle of piss anyway. Naw, not that. You know our assignment is concluded, right? Over. Finished. I don’t know what will happen, but for me at least this will be the end. I know that in my head, and I feel it inside as well. Everything looks cock-eyed to me. Different. If we get back, I’ll be done with the Service, and they’ll be done with me.
“You should wait.”
“Don’t say anything and just listen to me for a second. I was dreaming. I mean I had a dream. I was dreaming that I was you and you were me. Never had a dream like that, about anybody. In my dreams I’m always me, but here I was, I was you.”
Andrews steeled his focus on the road ahead. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I didn’t like it, not in the beginning. It was like…I dunno. Cold. Like living on ice, walking in a valley of ice, flat white and frozen as far as the eye could see. I knew I had to keep going, keep walking, get to the next valley over. It was gonna be warm there, somehow. I was gonna make it, I just knew it, but in the meanwhile I was freezing my ass off.”
An alarm went off in Andrews’ mind, a warning bell that told him not to respond, not at all, or else turn the talk to the fuel gauge, or the need to eat, or the miserable quality of the road, or the fact that they were fugitives in a hostile country with no means of escape. “You said in the beginning?”
Murphy took a quick drag, then twisted around to look at Lieb and Gwen. They appeared to be sleeping, nestled together like two pigeons on a ledge. “This is crazy right now, what we’re doing. You know that. We hitched our wagon to this guy, but he’s gone off the deep end. And so has the dame. This little whoop-de-doop we’re in may get us killed, and soon. Jail time at least.”
“I know. What about your dream?” Andrews could not hide a sense of irritation mixed with curiosity.
“I was plastered in my dream. You know, like after a few drinks or whatnot. A little loose. Maybe a little unsteady. I wasn’t afraid, just feeling lonely. So I climbed a little hill, expecting to see everything from the crest, from there to beyond, and get my bearings. No such thing. I staggered up to the top, but it was hazy all around. And you were there. You, meaning you being me. You were standing there, shit grinning like I do, your hands on your hips like I do. When I saw you, I recognized you right away, but you were aloof, like you weren’t interested in talking. ‘Who you?’ I asked. You didn’t give me a straight answer, you said something like ‘Who do you think I am?’ So I said back ‘You look like me. I believe you is me.’ And that’s when I kinda lost it. I kinda lost my mind because then you said ‘Then who are you?’ I couldn’t figure out what you meant. I didn’t know whether you meant ‘Who am I’ me being you, or ‘Who am I’ you being me, or who are…’ ” Murphy stopped abruptly, rolled down his window furiously, and plunged his head out into the windblast of cool morning air. Instantly, the car was filled with the roar of wind gushing in through the window followed closely by the smell of dank soil. The road, the trees, the dark brown dirt, the swirled and streaked maroon and yellow and purple of the sky above, the high pitched throb of the engine, all blended together with a sudden whoosh, engulfing them like a newborn sprite.
“You OK?” Andrews’ voice was neutral.
“Shit no. Feeling kinda lost. Kinda mad. Kinda crazy maybe. Feel like I want a drink, but I want to lay off for now.” He took another long suck of smoke, then flipped the cigarette out into the cool of the dawn. Sparks from the stub flew away, resembling a shower of falling stars rushing to their death. “How old do you think I am? Any idea?”
“You’re thirty eight. Says so in your file.”
“Yeah. Seems longer. A lot under the bridge. Truth is, Andrews, I’m not scared of dying anytime soon. That fear left me a long time ago. But I don’t want to end my days in prison. No.” He shook his head decisively. “No. I won’t go to prison. I want you to know that, get it? Even if I get my can in a crack, I won’t go to prison. Too much time alone doesn’t work for me.”
They were quiet for a while, each of them watching the golden arc of sun arise, each of them estimating how long it would take the blazing orb to clear the last hindrances of earth and rock and tree before it sprouted to its full glory. Andrews dared not look directly at Murphy but did steal a sidelong glance in his direction. His partner seemed transfixed by the birthing of the sun, and had inched his head out over the edge of the window with his mouth open, savoring the taste of a morning tainted and flavored by the dark Georgia hillsides. “So what happened? In your dream? Did you figure out who was me and who was you, and who you were talking to?” The words, to his surprise, slid from his lips effortlessly, as if gliding down a polished chute.
Murphy shook his head, saying nothing.
“What did you do, then?” Andrews tapped the wheel impatiently.
“I shot you, Johnny. I shot you ‘cause I couldn’t take it anymore. I shot you ‘cause I needed to know which one of us would die. I shot you cause I thought it would be me. I didn’t think it through real well.” Murphy covered his mouth and nose as he let out a loud, hoarse, coughing moan. “I don’t mind dying, Johnnie, I really don’t. Thing is, I didn’t realize I was killing us both.”
Echota was not a town, not even a village. It was no more than a spread of squalid appearing shacks shooken out like animal droppings over a few acres of brown dirt, scrub grass, and lonely sycamores. There were no streets, no roads or fences, no gardens, no stands of corn or wheat. The houses faced in random directions, as if each had been built in a different era quite apart from the others, each an archeological relic from successive eons of time. One ramshackle shanty was surrounded by rusted car parts, fragments of carpet, oddly tilted tables, and stacks of chairs. A wooden sign propped over a canted porch read ‘Cash or Nothin’.
The road into Echota turned first to gravel, then dirt, then into a rocky, bumpy, weed strewn cow path sloping down towards a thick copse of trees. As they descended, a river could be seen beyond the trees, appearing dirty brown and sluggish in the early morning light.
There were people in the river, standing in the water.
At first they were seen as blurred wraiths, wisps of mist forming and dissolving and reforming into shoulders and heads, upright arms and flashing swatches of white shirt and blue dress. Andrews stopped the car under the broad, twisting arch of a live oak and cut the engine. Immediately, the air was filled with the sound of singing. The voices seemed to spring from the trees surrounding them, and the ground beneath them, and the sky above them, merging into a chorus of imperceptible words and indistinct rhythms.
Murphy craned his neck and sniffed the already warm air of morning, turning his head left and right as if trying to pick up a quick decaying scent. “Smells like fire. Not from the woods. A bonfire maybe. I’m going down to check out whatever the hell is going on.”
“Wait!” Andrews opened his door and spun out of his seat in one motion. “I’ll come with you.” He pounded on the rear seat window. “Dr. Lieb, we’ll be right back. Do not move from the car under any circumstances.”
As the two men disappeared into a dense growth of scrub pine, tall fern, and curling laurel, Gwen arched her back to watch. Jona remained slumped against her shoulder, clenching the tumble of her hair. Time passed. The sounds of singing could no longer be heard. Long black shadows stretched along the ground like greedy fingers grasping at the coming of the light. The descending trill of warblers and the woodpecker’s staccato strikes blended with the soft sways of boughs and branches, and for a few moments the world seemed still.
“Lance, wake up.”
Lieb raised his head but did not respond.
“Why did that man call you Dr. Lieb? Was that your name once?”
“Yeah. Once.”
“But not anymore.”
“I don’t know. Yes. Maybe.” He sat up, propping himself with both hands to remain steady. “I’m so woozy right now, I don’t know what to think. You can call me Lance, I guess.”
Gwen clasped his cheek, turning his face toward her. “That’s all right. People do change, after all. I was once Beatrice, back when I sold cigarettes and cigars in nightclubs. What were you? Before you were Lance?”
He gave a sarcastic laugh. “I took care of dead people.”
She let out a shrill cackle, clapping her hands. “How wonderful that must have been. Some dead people need a lot of care, I’m sure. What was the most interesting part?”
Lance remained silent for a moment, concentrating fiercely. An image, a faded memory, curled around and around before landing gently on the verge of remembrance. “Blowflies.”
Gwen tossed her long, closely combed hair in astonishment. “You are shitting me!”
“Diptera Calliphoridae.” Lance spoke quietly, appearing mesmerized. “That was my student research, about blowflies. Do you know how long it takes a blowfly to lay eggs on a dead body? Could be within ten minutes of death. Somehow, they know. Amazing, right? Death leads to their life. They lay their eggs on eyes, in mouths, on open wounds. My study showed that the eggs go through different stages about every twenty-four hours, becoming maggots with different shapes in each stage. So depending on what kind of maggots are present, the time of death can be estimated pretty closely. Find a dead body in a forest and presto you can tell when it happened.” He hesitated momentarily, struggling to remember more. “But that’s only true at seventy degrees. Things have to be perfect for the life cycle to go well. Perfect. Otherwise, it all gets screwed up, the whole cycle. That can happen easily.” He chortled as sleep-laden saliva dripped from his mouth. “Could say that about humans, too.”
“Lance, you know so much about dead shit, don’t you. I’m very impressed.”
“Yeah. I’m remembering more now.” He tapped his temple with one finger. “Now I’m remembering why I wanted to come here.”
Gwen slapped him playfully on the cheek. “It’s a woman, isn’t it?”
“Yes. A woman. But not like you think.”
“Oh, I see. Something more grand, more noble. Tell me, then, Sir Lance. Oh, take up your lyre and sing, and do tell me. Tell me of beauty. Tell me of courage. Tell me of love. Tell me of all the screwball lies that people believe.”
“No, not lies.” Lance grasped at his stomach, feeling deep nausea. “It’s true. There was a woman once, and now she lives here. Long ago, she was with my father.”
Gwen smirked. “Your daddy’s woman? You are a weird one, I knew it right away. So what exactly did you have in mind?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know, actually, but I’m hoping. Maybe she can tell me the real story. About him.”
“And you’re going to believe anything she tells you?”
“Why not? Why would she lie?”
“People may not lie, but they may not tell the truth either. Not the truth you want, anyway.”
“You’re wrong about that. Somewhere there is the truth, and I’m going to find it.”
“Not the way you think, your lordship. The truth is like the fly’s eggs you talked about. It goes through stages, and you only see the latest one.” With the tip of one finger Gwen stroked a line over Lance’s face, from the point of his chin, up over his lips, nose and onto his forehead. She stopped there and pressed hard, as if pushing a button that would open a hidden doorway. “And always, always, always, the truth you see is born from something dead. Is your daddy dead, Lance?”
“Yes.”
“See what I mean? You say you want the real story from this woman. But watch out, my lord, she may be dead too. Long dead, and whatever flies from her mouth will tell you just how long.”
Gwen paused abruptly, hoisting her flouncy, flowery dress up high above her waist. With a wriggle and twist she retrieved a small brass flask hidden within her underwear. “Now here’s some honesty right here, but I’m not sharing. You’re drying out and there’s some shit in this that will set you way back.” A dramatic pause followed as she lifted the flask up above her head. “I would like to thank the Pickett Clinic for the Defiantly Insane for this moment of truth.” She took a cautious tipple, then a long swallow, then another. Her face flushed a faint pink, and the darting dance of her eyes accelerated furiously, until they seemed to flicker with the dulled intensity of a dying light bulb. Without warning she fell backwards on the car seat, torso rigid, her face a mask, her arms fluttering rapidly at her side. She lapsed into unresponsiveness.
“Gwen!” Lance shook her by the shoulder, feeling helpless and terrified. “Gwen! Come to!”
“Let her be.”
Lieb turned his head in astonishment. A woman’s head protruded through the open window where Murphy had sat, filling the forward space with a looming, disembodied presence, her face shadowed as she pushed in further and further. “Let her be,” she repeated. “She’s having a seizure. It won’t be long. Hopefully. Tilt her chin up.”
As the woman spoke Gwen stopped shaking and became limp. Lieb felt for her pulse, mortified. “Of course, a seizure. I should know that.” His eyes snapped back towards the woman. “Who are you?”
“An inhabitant of these parts. And you? You must be Jona Lieb.”
Lieb felt an electric jolt run through him like a thunderbolt exploding within his vitals. His jaw moved up and down repeatedly before he could speak, his voice hushed and quavering. “How do you know that?”
The head smiled. “Oh, I would recognize that face anywhere.”