Nick

by Michael Farris Smith

  35

  The St. Mark’s sanctuary had been keeping a continuous vigil for two years for those lost. Open all day and all night. On the outside wall next to the front doors a sign was hung and each Monday morning names were added to the list of the deceased or wounded or missing and each Monday afternoon and night people walked from neighborhoods all over Frenchtown to come and look at the list. And then, as if the casualties abroad had not been enough to suffer, the casualties at home became real as the Spanish flu had spread into the cracks and crevices of America in a fistful of hard and cruel months that took the young and old alike. Inside, candles burned in each corner of the sanctuary. At night an organist would play. On Wednesday evenings a children’s choir would sing. There was always someone on the wooden pews crying or praying or blaming God.

  With so much left to mourn in the aftermath, St. Mark’s had left its doors open. Misery was still to be shared. The list of names had grown so long that a chalkboard was added where people could write the names of those they knew who had not yet been reported. Eventually there were no more names to add and the church removed the list of the dead but it left the chalkboard outside and it kept the candles lit and a note taped to the chalkboard read NAME THOSE TO MOURN AND WE SHALL MOURN.

  The chalkboard had since borne the names of hung criminals, family pets, dead writers, famous showgirls, baseball legends, and Billy the Kid. Still the doors remained open because in between the gimmicks came real people with real hurt who needed to sit in the dark and believe they were saying goodbye the right way.

  Tonight there was only one name on the chalkboard and it read JOHN LAFELL AND SON.

  Nick sat in the sanctuary alone. He had been there for an hour and the only other person to have entered the sanctuary was an old woman to exchange the candles. On a table at the front of the sanctuary was a bouquet of flowers and a name card of the father and son. The stainedglass windows were dark with night and the candlelight was soft and wavy and Nick sat with his hands folded in his lap. He thought to pray but his mind wandered as he watched the candlelight move and he listened to the clip clops passing in the street outside. He several times looked over his shoulder to see if he had missed someone. If maybe there was at least one more soul in the sacred place interested in a man like John LaFell. But there was only him.

  He coughed. A slight echo into the arched ceiling. He then reached into his coat pocket and took out gloves and put them on and was getting ready to stand and leave when the door to the sanctuary opened.

  He sat still. Kept his eyes ahead. Tried to look prayerful.

  The footfalls moved down the aisle, small thumps of bootheels that moved closer to him and then stopped. Then from the corner of his eye he saw the figure slide into the pew across the aisle and he turned to see Colette. Her coat collar turned up high around her neck and her hair was down, long waves of brown that draped her face and trailed over her shoulders and softened her hawk eyes. She did not look at Nick but only stared ahead and Nick knew better than to talk.

  They shared the silence. He sniffed and coughed again. He had thought about her so much and now that he was alone with her he could not think of one thing to say or do but he didn’t have to as she finally broke the quiet and spoke first.

  “I wonder what it would be like to have a child,” she said. Her voice just above a whisper. A notion of regret.

  Somewhere in the high ceiling of the sanctuary Nick could see the image of Ella. Curled on the attic floor as she hemorrhaged and hurt. Alone.

  “Do you know?” she said.

  He was grabbed by a sudden grief and he leaned forward and put his head down on the back of the pew in front of him. He put his hands around his throat and squeezed as if to choke it all back down and thought I could have known what that was like and I should have known what that was like but I don’t and I didn’t and I don’t want to ever remember again. He squeezed harder until he made himself grunt and then he let go. Leaned back against the pew.

  “Judah will die,” he said.

  She looked at him for the first time. He had leaned his head back farther now as if wary that something may fall from the shadows above.

  “He’s already dead,” she said.

  Nick turned to her. Whatever softness he had noticed before was gone. Her eyes cutting past the strands of hair and piercing through him.

  She stood from the pew and walked to the front of the sanctuary. She stopped at the bouquet and she lifted the name card. Without looking at Nick she said when he’s good and gone and his name is on the sign outside there will be two less people here to mourn him than there are here right now. That’s what you need to know about Judah. He tears it all down and he’ll tear you down before he’s done.

  She then set the card down. He expected a stomp or a fist against the table but instead she held still and he thought he noticed her shoulders moving up and down in slight huffs.

  “You don’t have to be like this,” he said. “Neither does he.”

  She raised her eyes toward the crucifix. Shook her head. She then turned and walked back to Nick.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Nick.”

  “You were over there.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can think of no other reason why you and Judah would be in the same room together.”

  She moved a step closer to him. Rested her hand on the end of the pew.

  “Do you know who I am?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a little strange. Aren’t you?”

  He moved his eyes from her. Looked down at his hands and pressed them together. She crept closer. Leaned to him. Her hair falling down and brushing the side of his face.

  “I’ll have a new place soon. When you’re ready to have something more than coffee, you come and see me. I’ll get your mind onto something else if you’ll let me.”

  She stood up and took one more long look around the sanctuary and then she moved along the aisle, pausing at the door and glancing over her shoulder to see if he was following behind. But he was slumped forward again. Head against the pew. His hands around his throat.

  36

  On the first day of December the cathedral chimes began to play O Little Town of Bethlehem each evening at dusk and as if summoned by the echoing, angelic tones, an unexpected bitter cold fell across Frenchtown. Specks of ice fell throughout the day and night and bounced on the uneven streets and rooftops in quiet taps. Fountains froze and along the streets trash fires burned in barrels. Children were wrapped in layers with whatever could be found to use for layers and saloon and brothel doors that typically remained open and beckoning were pulled shut to hold in the warmth of the fireplaces and coal-burning stoves. Along Canal half the businesses hung signs on their doors that read CLOSED FOR COLD and even the men with the bottles disappeared from the street corners except for a brief appearance at noon when they sold to the workers looking for something to pour down their throats.

  No one knew what to think. The Frenchtown gossip had decided Judah was to blame for the fire and Colette had done nothing to squash that talk. Merchants and brothel and saloon owners began to wonder who was next. And so did the rest of the inhabitants of Frenchtown. Who else does he hate? The cathedral chimes signaled the beginning of a season of hope but an air of apprehension of the fear of smoke and fire and burning flesh cast its pall over the neighborhood.

  Twice Nick walked to the train station. Twice he bought a ticket and stood on the platform waiting for the train. Twice he could not get over the feeling that there was something here he needed to see finished. Twice he left the station before the train arrived.

  37

  Judah and Nick sat in the backroom. The movement of a lunch crowd thumped from the saloon.

  “I am the only honest man I know,” Judah said. Eyes heavy and gray. “I’m sure you think the same thing.”

  “I didn’t ask if you were honest,” Nick said. “I’m asking again if you did what everyone a
round here thinks you did.”

  “Who is everyone?”

  “Everyone. This whole town.”

  Judah reached into his pocket and took out a penknife. He opened it and picked at his fingernails.

  “There’s more than one way to answer a question.”

  “I don’t care if you did it or didn’t do it,” Nick said.

  “Then why are you asking?”

  “Because if you don’t tell me I’m leaving.”

  Judah was filled with opium vapors and he floated somewhere between the world that exists in the vast expanse of all we have known and done and seen and the world of what touches us now. He bled a little from the nose. Coughed up phlegm. He sat in his chair with his head leaned back and the thought crossed his mind that Nick might have arrived in Frenchtown solely as a kindred spirit that would allow him to confess.

  So he tried.

  He began by explaining the saloon had been owned first by Judah’s grandfather and then his father. He had known nothing but Frenchtown his entire life until he got on a boat and traveled across the ocean to kill or be killed. On the morning he had left Colette he wouldn’t let her come with him to board because he wanted to remember her in their apartment and the way that she smelled after a bath and the way she brushed her hair as she sat on the edge of the bed and the way they sat together at the table and shared coffee or a bottle of wine or plate of redfish just out of the skillet. He didn’t want to remember her standing and waving with the others, their arms in long and desperate motions that couldn’t comfort or save but only seemed to him like some flagging symbol of execution.

  When he spoke of Colette his voice softened as if there were someone standing on the other side of the door and Judah didn’t want them to hear. He told Nick that he and Colette had grown up together, that her father had owned a tobacco store at the end of the block. Their summer days were spent out in the streets while their parents worked. They ran around with a horde of other kids but she and he had always picked one another when choosing teams or hidden together during hide and seek or taken up for one another when whatever game ended up in a fight. And she was good in a fight. Bloodied more noses than I ever did. They would sneak away from the others and walk along the river or steal oranges from the market or find their ways into alleys that closed off the rest of the world and allowed them to see one another more clearly in the shadows. As he spoke of their childhood days Judah sat up to press the back of his hand to his mouth and say she was as real to me as hunger or fear and I think I was born with her in my mind.

  They were Frenchtown kids who grew into Frenchtown teenagers who grew into Frenchtown lovers. And then they got married and Judah’s parents died and he took over the saloon. They had lived upstairs in the apartment with a balcony where she grew basil and oregano in small ceramic pots and then he had to leave and the last thing he wanted to see was her waving goodbye. So he had gotten up the morning of his departure and gone down early to the saloon and made them eggs and bacon and brought it back up and they ate breakfast in bed and she cried between bites and he thought to try to keep her from it but couldn’t figure out any goddamn reason not to let her cry because he wanted to do the same thing. And he finally did and he moved the plates of barely eaten food off the bed and they just lay there and held on and watched the time go by until he couldn’t stay any longer.

  His voice trailed and he paused to heat an opium seed. The smoke rose and he took it in. His breathing slowed. He unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt and revealed his neck and shoulders. The memories of the poisonous gas spread across his body in wild, red patches. That was a dirty surprise, he said. I been trying to figure out how to think about it the right way but there ain’t no right way. How do you think about it? Goddamn rats and possums are what I hated more than anybody that shot at me. Shit blowing up all around you day and night and you got your head between your legs and you look over and through the flying dirt you see some critter making off with the last crumb of anything. I couldn’t take being stuck and the whole time little shits crawling all around and over us in those fucking trenches.

  I thought I was going to look like some monster and maybe I do. I laid in that bed burning like hell and I promised Colette that goddamn I’m gonna sit on our bench at the river and hold your hand and we’re gonna make some little ones and I’m gonna build a big fucking house. All I wanted to do was make it home. They did everything but bury me over there and looking at it now I wish I would’ve let them go ahead and do just that.

  Nick rose from the chair and rubbed his hands together. It was cold in the room and he moved over to the bare bulb of the lamp and held his hand over it.

  “I never told anybody that,” Judah said.

  “You remind me of someone I know,” Nick said.

  “Who’s that?”

  Nick blew hot air into his cupped hands. Then he said I made my own promises when I was over there. But I made them to God. I didn’t have anybody else to make them to. And I’ve changed my mind. I now believe you did it.

  “Did what?”

  “Burned down the brothel. Killed the child. Killed the father.”

  Judah moved some, touched the scar around his eye.

  “You can believe whatever you want,” he said. “I’m too close to being gone to tell you a fairytale.”

  “I don’t see the profit in lying about it.”

  “I will never lie.”

  “Maybe you didn’t light the match but you set the fire.”

  A slither of smoke remained from the opium pipe and Judah leaned over and took in the last of the vapors. He inhaled and then held his breath until he couldn’t any longer. Then he pulled open a drawer and set John LaFell’s pistol on the desktop.

  “You start that war?” he asked Nick.

  “You know I didn’t.”

  “But I know you killed. Sons. Brothers. Fathers. Maybe even somebody’s daughter for all I know.”

  “So.”

  “So. Why?”

  “I had to. Like you and everybody else.”

  “You didn’t start the fight but you were a part of it. Maybe indirectly I burned down Colette’s. Maybe indirectly I hurt that child. I only play my part now. It ain’t your fault what you had to do. Just like it ain’t mine. That fire was lit before I was even born. We only drift toward what we already been set to do.”

  “You had a choice,” Nick said.

  “If that’s what you think,” he said.

  “You don’t have to hurt people because they hurt you.”

  “Yeah. You do.”

  His voice was tired now. The words coming out between thinly parted lips. He seemed to be on the edge of unconsciousness. Nick stepped to the desk and picked up the pistol. He held it up. Examined it. Set it back down.

  “But what did she do to you, Judah? To deserve any of this?”

  Judah’s hand raised and paused. His eyes were closed now and he held the pose of someone dreaming and reaching out in desire. Nick turned and walked to the door and as he touched the doorknob Judah asked him, his voice low and slow as if conjured from somewhere else, how would you feel if you had escaped a tomb and then by some goddamn miracle been delivered back to the one you loved only to find out that when she thought you were dead and gone she was selling herself and a houseful of others to any animal with the money to pay the fee.

  “I don’t know,” Nick said. “I don’t know how I’d feel.”

  “There would only be two choices. Love or hate.”

  “And you chose hate.”

  “I didn’t choose it. She did.”

  “And what about your promises? The ones you made to Colette.”

  Judah grinned. Void of repentance. He reached for the opium pipe and held it in his fingertips and said Colette’s promises were promises to the world and those are the easiest to break. And as far as the promises we all make to God, if every person who had ever made a promise to Him went through with their end of the deal then there’d scarcely be a
lost soul in this world. He knows we won’t keep them but He’s got to listen. He don’t have a choice. And neither do we.

  38

  The house was a dependable den of addiction. The door always open. Always someone to provide. Always an empty space. The windows rattled with the wind and a draft weaved from room to room like a spectral thread. Floorboard slats were missing here and there and gave the floor a gaptoothed grin and the only light came from the sun or from the moon or from the burning matches that lit the burning pipes. Sheets and drapes had been hung from the ceilings to hold the smoke low, to allow the opium haze to hold you and lift you and carry you where you wanted to go. Stray cats meandered from room to room.

  As he had gradually shifted into a more permanent state of pain, Judah had begun to discover solace in the strangeness of others. He lay on the floor in the backroom with his head resting on his folded coat and his body limp and at the mercy of vapors. His cane and pipe and bowl lay next to him and the tip of the cane was covered by his spotted handkerchief. His lips moved randomly in the silent, idle chatter that he shared with the creatures of his dreams. Dried blood crusted in each corner of his mouth. Across the room a man and woman, both with matted hair and both stinking of the street, lay slumped over one another. With spacious, empty eyes she stared at the sheet that hung from the ceiling and shifted with the moving air and he slept with his mouth open and his arm crossed over his brow as if he had long since seen enough.