He avoided South Providence. When he ran there, he didn’t see streets or people. All he saw was Carl that day in July, chasing Terrance in the red RAV4, racing down Broad or nosing through the backstreets, and Terrance when they trapped him near the port, in the chop shop with that big, smug Liberian guy.
A sister. In Lincoln. It was Lincoln. Why had he repressed that memory?
Levin ran south on Pawtucket Avenue. His knees were stiff. They weren’t going to hold for fifteen miles today. He’d be lucky to get six. Down Pawtucket Avenue. Past the drug rehab place, the chain drug store, the auto parts stores, and the tire stores. Past the hip-hop joint and the tropical fish store. The Old North Burial Ground was across the street, but he didn’t cross, and all you could really see from the street were the greenhouses where they raised lilies to put on the graves at Easter. Levin’s knees were starting to hurt now, but he didn’t slacken his pace. Let’s see how much these old knees can take, he thought. Past the map store and the shopping plaza. Down the hill. Along a mossy drainage ditch. Past the Roger Williams Memorial. Old Rog, old rebellious spirit, never comfortable with any one religion or anybody’s rules, who gives a little antiestablishment juice to this stuffy old town. Over to Burnside Park and around the statue of the general sitting on his horse. Good old Ambrose Burnside. General who almost lost the Civil War. Governor. First president of the NRA, the organization that taught America the freedom to sell counts more than peace, security, and the lives of kids, the organization that made a fool out of democracy. Lots of ghosts in this little town.
Levin’s knees hurt now. He needed to take a break. He walked to City Hall, slowly, letting his knees recover, just quickly enough to prevent the muscles of his calves from spasming up.
And then he headed home. My knees are better, he thought. I ain’t dead yet.
He walked up College Hill and started jogging. I’ll run home on Blackstone Boulevard. I can run on grass instead of pavement and be a little nice to my knees.
But there was still snow on the running path of the Boulevard.
The morning was still clear and bright. There was now steam rising from the black pavement where the sun fell on it. The other side of the street was in the sun. He was running in the shade. He crossed over.
A woman in a fur coat driving a big yellow convertible with the top down passed him from a side street and turned left onto the Boulevard.
In the back of the convertible was a big brown dog with its head over the side of the car. The dog let its tongue hang down with evident pleasure.
When the car slowed to let a pedestrian cross, the dog hopped out of the car, trailing a long lead rope that was tied to a door handle.
Then car started moving again. The dog began to run to keep up. The dog ran on the sidewalk, behind the car and keeping pace with it, the long lead jostling and waving as the dog ran.
Levin shouted to let the driver know that the dog was out of the car.
Then the car gathered speed. Levin shouted again. The driver hadn’t noticed that the dog was out of the car.
The car accelerated. The dog ran behind the car on the sidewalk, the driver unaware that her dog was running next to and behind her.
Levin shouted one more time.
Ahead of the car, a plainly dressed woman walked on the sidewalk. Many domestic workers—all immigrants—walked from the bus stop on Wayland Square to work on the East Side.
The woman walking on the sidewalk was of average height. She was simply dressed and was walking away from Levin and from the car. That was all Levin could see. She didn’t turn when Levin shouted.
The car drove along the street. The dog ran on the sidewalk. The woman walked on the sidewalk between the dog and the car. The rope which tied the dog to the car came up very fast behind the woman who was walking. There was slack in the rope but not much.
He shouted again. No one heard.
The rope hit the back of the woman’s legs. It went taut and threw the woman into the air. She fell backward onto her head.
The rope broke. The dog ran free. The yellow convertible drove away.
By the time Levin got to her, the pupils of the woman in the simple coat were fixed and dilated. Her eye’s looked like a doll’s eyes, the pupils huge and not reacting to light. They looked straight ahead. They kept looking straight ahead when Levin moved the woman’s head. There was a trickle of blood and clear fluid coming from the woman’s nose. She had a pulse and was still breathing on her own, but Levin knew the score right away. Fixed and dilated is fixed and dilated. Brain dead. Brain dead in fifteen seconds. The woman in the simple coat went from walking to work on the public street to functionally dead in an instant. No warning. She never knew what hit her, or even that she had been hit. Perhaps she felt something tug at her knee and felt herself falling and that was it. Lights out. No one home. Done deal. Dead and gone.
Levin called 911 on his cell, his hands shaking. She had a pulse and she was breathing. No need for CPR. There was nothing for Levin to do but be there on his knees next to this woman and wait for Rescue to arrive.
He raised her eyelids. Her pupils were big and round, but there was a rim of faint green around the pupils. She had green eyes, like Sophia Lauren. She wasn’t beautiful. Her features were plain like the way she was dressed, in a domestic’s uniform, and her skin was tired out, thick, and grainy. She was in her forties. Maybe fifties. She was dressed in a white frock because she was on her way to spend the day in the house of a rich woman, slowly cleaning it, moving from room to room. One moment she was a living human being, and the next moment she was brain dead. All Levin could do was to be with her, to kneel on one knee at the side of her head as she was dying, so she didn’t have to die alone. To put his hand on her cheek and forehead. To wipe the blood and trickle of clear fluid from her nose with a tissue.
They sent two police cars, two Rescues, and a fire truck. Levin identified himself and told them to scoop and run. Just get her into the ED, he said. There’s nothing to be gained by treating her in the field. He thought of going in with her, but there was no point to it. The game was over. He called the Emergency Department and let the attending on call know the scoop.
Then he went to the police station to give a statement. It was a simple statement, just one and a half pages. He wrote it out himself and made a very nice diagram, describing what had happened and how it happened. He thought he remembered two letters off the license plate, and that it was a yellow Cadillac, but it could have been a yellow something else. Levin didn’t know the names of cars. Maybe it was some kind of Chrysler or a Chevy Impala.
And that was that. All over in an instant, though the paperwork took hours. He’d never know if the woman in the car ever found her dog, or whether she would understand that, in her own way, she had contributed to death of another human being. Or not. Maybe it was just bad luck.
It was 3:00 in the afternoon by the time Levin got home. He was working an overnight shift so he needed to lie down for a little while. But he couldn’t sleep.
A sister. Carl had a sister. Carl said something that first day, something about driving home to get his things from his sister’s house. Something about Lincoln or Cumberland.
The internet, Levin told himself. If she’s out there, I’ll find her. We’ll find her together.
Carl had a sister. You live with others, but you always die alone.
He called Yvonne. Maybe she’d come with him. He wanted someone with him when he went to see Carl’s sister. You die alone, but you don’t have to live alone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Naomi Goldman, Yvonne Evans-Smith, and William Levin, MD. Lincoln and Providence, Rhode Island. March 18 and 20, 2006
IT WAS SATURDAY, BUT NAOMI DIDN’T SLEEP LATE.
They knew something about her brother, these people. The news wasn’t good news. You always believe, you always hope, even if your better judgment tells you not to.
She hadn’t heard a word from Carl in almost three years. Naomi k
new he was dead. He had gone back into a war. She hadn’t heard a word from him since. The State Department people came, but she didn’t believe them. Even if your better judgment tells you to you don’t believe it. You don’t let yourself think it. You never say it to yourself. You don’t want to touch it, know it, or feel it. But you know anyway and always want to know how and when and with whom. You want to know that he wasn’t alone and didn’t suffer. In any news there is hope. You can argue with information, with its source, or with its logic. You can deny it. But you can’t argue with silence, with absence, with disappearance. The when and how gives you a kind of hope, however vain. You can’t prepare yourself for the pain that comes after.
Naomi had spent three years with the Liberian community, hoping for some word. She worked with other communities as well. Teaching, listening, and learning. “Where are you from,” she’d ask. “No, where in Liberia,” she’d ask, as she taught simple things. Basic English and math. How to balance a check book. How to make a resume. How to apply for a job. How to hold and keep a job. The rights and responsibilities of being a tenant. How to apply for a mortgage. Basic banking. High school equivalency.
They assumed she was Liberian or part Liberian. She went to Liberian churches on Sunday. She didn’t look Liberian, and she didn’t talk Liberian, but they took her in anyway. She loved those churches—the music, the electric piano, electric guitar, and the drums—the way everyone stood together, prayed together, hoped together, believed together, and sang together. If there was a god, God was on earth in those churches, and she could feel that presence, the presence that she did not believe in. But there was no god. If there was a god, Carl would still be alive and would have come back or would e-mail, write, or call.
No one wanted to talk about the war. No one even wanted to talk about Liberia. No one knew Carl.
If he had come home, Carl would not have recognized Naomi’s life.
Naomi now lived in an old house off Broadway, and she had neighbors, real neighbors. She had a big garden that filled her bright kitchen with lettuce and asparagus in the spring, tomatoes, squash, and peppers all summer long. Her hair was natural now, thick and wavy, and she wore dresses and tops made of natural fibers, woven in bright colors—not African cloth but other clothes from around the world, soft to the touch, and she often worked in jeans.
No more pearls.
Yvonne wore a green blouse, a black skirt, her tan coat and orange silk scarf, and black gloves.
It wasn’t quite raining but it wasn’t dry either. Yvonne put her scarf over her head so she could keep her hair dry. Her face was carefully made up—careful eye liner, a smooth, almost undetectable foundation that gave her the appearance of perfectly smooth skin, and purple lip gloss that picked up the purple of her eyeliner. No reason anyone had to see all the lines and creases.
“Will you come Monday?” Yvonne said when Levin picked her up. “Turnabout being fair play. I took the whole day off. I wouldn’t miss it for the world! First woman president in Africa! President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Here, in Providence, Rhode Island. People in all the churches and community organizations are getting ready. There will be flags, and there will be speeches.”
“I’m not working until later,” Levin said.
“So you will come! You must come!” Yvonne said.
“I’ve seen politicians come and politicians go. The president used to work for the World Bank, didn’t she?” Levin said.
“She has the best credentials. She is a graduate of Harvard University,” Yvonne said.
“And the World Bank and Citibank,” Levin said. “It’s okay. Some days I can’t find a good word to say about anyone. I’ll come. Anyone has to be an improvement over Charles Taylor.”
Levin paused. “I don’t know what I’m going to say to Carl’s sister. I’m ashamed. That it took me all this time to find her. That I lived and he died.”
“You’ll tell Carl’s sister what you told me,” Yvonne said. “You’ll tell her when and how her brother died. And where. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You were a good and loyal friend. Her brother died honorably. You are doing this woman a kindness.”
“I’ll go with you on Monday,” Levin said. “Thank you for coming with me now.”
They had arranged to meet Carl’s sister in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel. They were early. Levin dropped Yvonne, and then parked the car.
In two days, the president of Liberia would be standing a few steps away, on the steps of City Hall. If only women could do what men had failed at so miserably, thought Yvonne. If only she can bring us together, stop the violence, end the poverty, and make us whole. Make Liberia one place. Let us be together and strong. Whatever else you say or think about life in America, America is one place, one people, who don’t murder one another for power. Most of the time.
Yvonne saw a thin white woman in her late twenties browsing in the hotel gift shop. The young woman had fair skin and was dressed for business in a sweater and a skirt and pearls, and she appeared to be waiting for someone. Carl ran some kind of organization in Liberia that built village pumps. A white man, Yvonne thought, and that is his sister standing there. But she didn’t approach her. Instead she waited for Levin.
Levin came into the hotel lobby. There was another woman standing near the door, a women with dark tan skin wearing a multicolored woolen poncho.
Levin walked past her, toward Yvonne. Then he turned suddenly to look at the woman in the poncho. Their eyes met and all the color drained from Levin’s face.
Levin staggered, as if he might fall or faint. Yvonne and the woman in the poncho both moved to catch him. But then Levin put his hand on a marble column.
“I’m Naomi,” the woman said. “They always said Carl and I look alike.”
“Bill Levin,” he said. “You look … This is Yvonne Evans-Smith.”
Naomi held out her hand. But Levin threw his arms around her. He pulled Naomi to him. Naomi’s looked uncertain, unsure. Then she held Levin and started to cry. Yvonne held her and Yvonne started to cry. And then Levin held Naomi again.
A beautiful woman, Yvonne thought.
The story was different from the story Yvonne thought she knew.
Carl was a man of color.
Terrance didn’t die alone.
Starbucks was two doors down. They sat in the big club chairs. On the edge of those chairs.
Levin told it all, from the day Terrance tried to steal his car to the day he met Carl at Sally’s to chasing Terrance to the chop shop. About the days across the ocean, about the harbors in Nigeria and Ghana and Ivory Coast and waiting at the port. About Liberia. About Carl and how he calmed them, about how he drove them and kept them focused. About his courage. About his kindness and strength. About how close they had actually come to Julia, and how they would have found her the next day or the day after that. About the night Carl and Terrance died, and how they died, and about how Levin went a little crazy digging in the rubble for them.
“So you never found Julia?” Naomi asked.
“Not then,” Levin said.
“What happened to her?” Naomi said. “Isn’t that all that matters now?”
“I hear from her once in a while,” Levin said. “By e-mail. Once every couple of months. She’s in a village, working as a doctor. She never got over Carl, as far as I can tell. She isn’t ready to talk to me about him yet. She e-mailed me last week about you. Carl must have talked about you, and she remembered. She asked about you, and that got me to track you down.”
“We’re going. I’m going. How can you be sure she’s okay?” Naomi said.
“Going where?” Levin said.
“To Liberia,” Naomi said. “To find Julia. I want to see Liberia. I want to see the place Carl died. It won’t change anything. I want to walk where Carl walked. I want to meet Dr. Richmond. And I want to bring her home.”
“Come with us Monday,” Yvonne said. “Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the new president of Liberia, the first woman president in Afric
a, is coming to visit Providence. Taste Liberia on Monday. And then perhaps later, when things improve, we will go to Liberia together. You want to meet Dr. Richmond. I want to go home.”
Chapter Thirty
What Happened Next to Charles Taylor
IN AUGUST 2003, CHARLES TAYLOR AND HIS FAMILY WERE WHISKED TO A SEASIDE COMPOUND of villas in Calabar, Nigeria. He brought with him three wives, a flotilla of expensive cars, twenty-three armed security guards, and many, many others, including twenty-seven teenage girls who were said to be the daughters of his fallen comrades-in-arms, orphans he was caring for because of his commitment to justice and mercy, in order to honor their fathers’ memories.
There was, supposedly, a deal.
The deal Taylor says he made with Presidents Obasanjo, Kufour, Mbeki, and Conté was that he would leave Liberia and go into exile in Nigeria. President Obasanjo said the deal depended on Taylor staying out of politics in West Africa and living quietly without causing any further mayhem. The deal also seemed to involve a “gentleman’s agreement” that Nigeria would not extradite Taylor, despite the indictment of the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Interpol warrant that was out for Taylor’s arrest.
In any case, nothing was ever written down, so no one will ever know who said what to whom to get Charles Taylor out of Liberia and bring fourteen years of civil war to an end.
But Charles Taylor did not keep his hands off West Africa.
By October 2003, Taylor had figured out how to move money around. He got himself a secure private telephone line and a satellite phone, the tools he had used to wreak havoc on West Africa for many years, and he worked those phones the way a carnival barker works a crowd. Taylor left Liberia with something like two hundred million dollars, money he kept in twenty or thirty shell companies in Liberia, other West African countries, Europe, and the U.S. This was money that could be used to buy and trade companies, money that could be used to keep supporters loyal, money that could be used to buy guns and favors and to position Taylor for an eventual return to Liberia.
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