by R.J. Ellory
Nathan was beside me, heel-to-toe, and we burst out through that door and started down the street. I caught an image of him as he flew past me - not the young, strong man he now was, but a small kid with jug-handle ears. We were running from the baying mob at Benny's, we were running towards the witch.
My heart thundering like an interstate hauler, my insides cool and loose, I barreled down the sidewalk, the sound of raised angry voices behind us.
'Faster!' Nathan was shouting. 'Go faster, Danny,' and it was only then that I realized the trouble we had collided with was not staying put.
The sound of feet, a door slamming shut, and then an engine… a car engine.
'Motherfuckers,' Nathan hissed, and before the word had barely left his lips the lights of the car illuminated us against the night.
'Oooh shee-it!' I remembered screaming, and even as I tried to turn the corner at the end of the street I collided with the wall. I felt the skin had been torn from my shoulder beneath my jacket.
The sound of the engine was louder, roaring in my ears, and then I could hear the sound of their voices beneath that.
Fucking nigger-lover! The voice screamed. Fucking niggeeer-looover!
I knew we were done for when I turned the next corner.
A dead-end. We'd run right into a dead-end. The car came upon us, the headlights brilliant, and I turned to see Nathan backed up against the wall, his eyes wide, his mouth open in an expression of frozen terror.
I started to scream. I don't know what, but hell I started to scream.
The car came forward, backing us even further into the cul-de-sac, and even as it slowed the first man came out of the passenger side brandishing a pool cue.
'Fucking nigger and his nigger-loving buddy,' he said, and faster than either of us could react he lurched forward and brought the cue down over his head onto Nathan's back.
Nathan didn't go down but he arched forward and howled in agony.
I made a run down the side of the car, but the driver jerked open the door and floored me. He floored me with a single roundhouse to the side of the head.
I'd felt that before, back there in Benny's. Then it had been for the honor of Sheryl Rose Bogazzi. Now it was for my life.
I tasted blood in my mouth. I could hear nothing but a rushing tide in my head, beneath that an insistent squealing that neither fluctuated in tone or pitch.
I tried to get up. A foot came from somewhere, a foot encased in a heavy work boot, and that boot seemed to drive a hole the size of California through my stomach and chest.
I believed, I really believed, that I was going to die.
I remember wondering then if there had been anything that day that had been an omen, a portent of what would happen, and then my attention was snatched from wherever I had put it by the sound of Nathan screaming.
There were two of them beating on him, the man who'd come first from the car, and the third man from the rear. The passenger still held the pool cue, and with the heavier end he was just whipping Nathan across the back and shoulders. Nathan was curled up like an embryo, howling excruciatingly with every collision of that cue, and as I tried to stand I felt every color and sound imaginable rush through my head like a tidal wave of broken glass.
And then Nathan fell silent.
All I could hear was the labored breathing of the two men standing over him. The one who had floored me had stepped over me and joined his buddies at the end of the passageway.
You think he's dead?
Fuck knows.
Let's get 'em the fuck outta here.
Where d'ya wanna take 'em?
Fuck knows… any place, far as you can get.
You go get your car.
Fuck it, you go get yours… I ain't havin' no nigger bleed all over my upholstery.
I think I went then.
Lost it completely.
There was a sound like a freight train grinding to a halt on a broken rail line somewhere behind my ears. I remember staggering to my feet, gasping for breath, and even as I stood, even as I raised my arm to hurl it I felt blackness rushing towards me.
And then there was nothing.
For a long time there was absolutely nothing at all.
And then I could smell something. Something bad. Smelled like someone had eaten a dead raccoon and thrown it up over my clothes. I could feel something cool and moist on my hands. And that smell. Never smelled anything so bad in my life.
When I moved I heard sounds like rustling paper, something skidding beneath my foot, something solid and unforgiving, and as I raised my arm and stretched it I felt a cool metal surface.
It was dark, but there was also the sound of cars somewhere.
I tried to sit up. I felt like a bridge had fallen on me. I closed my eyes and strained to move. There was no traction, nothing to grab onto, and in my fumbling and groping there in the darkness I felt my hand brush across something.
It was Nathan's hair.
I struggled again, somehow managing to maneuver myself into a semi-seated position. I raised my hand, and again found a cool metal surface, something that didn't resist me as I pushed upwards. With every ounce of strength I possessed I heaved upwards, the surface seemed to rush away from me, and suddenly my eyes were almost blown out the back of my head by the daylight.
We were inside something.
It took a minute or two for my eyes to become accustomed to the light, and then I looked downwards.
Garbage, rotten, stinking, infested with mould and shit and Christ only knew what. We'd been thrown into a garbage dumpster.
I remember cursing and swearing, retching even, and then I tried to rouse Nathan.
There was blood all over his eyes and nose and the upper part of his head. I grabbed his arm, pulled it, shook him, shouted his name - Nathan! Nathan! Nathan! - but there was nothing.
For a little while I thought he was dead.
I grabbed his wrist, and pressing there against the artery I could feel a weak pulse.
I knew then, knew with greater certainty than anything I'd known before, that if I didn't get him to a hospital he would die.
Nothing else was important then. Not our identities, where we'd come from, how we'd ended up in a garbage dumpster in Panama City… none of these things were relevant or significant. If I didn't find medical help Nathan would be dead. I came up out of that dumpster like a crazy man, and within minutes I had found a phone, called Emergency, and there was a medic unit on its way.
I sat there on the side of the road, stinking and bleeding, crap in my hair, in my shoes, and I watched the waves of red and black fighting with my consciousness until I heard voices around me. I looked up and saw a man inside the dumpster trying to help Nathan out and onto a stretcher, and everything was washed out and vague, and the sound of the cars sounded like the coastline up around Apalachee when you'd smoked too much weed and Emily Devereau was trying to get your shirt off and laughing so much you thought you'd spontaneously combust right there on the sand…
And then there was nothing once more.
The most appreciated and welcome nothing I'd ever known.
They wanted names, home towns, dates of birth, all manner of things. They wanted to know where we'd come from, why we'd been beaten up. They wanted to know if we'd beaten each other up and gotten into the dumpster to sleep it off. They wanted to know my address, my Social Security number, my mother's and father's names, they wanted to know who to call and when they would be there and if we'd be willing to make a statement to the police and look at some mugshots.
Every question they asked me, I told a lie. I lied good. Like a professional.
And finally they told me that Nathan had a couple of broken ribs, but they'd not been broken the previous night, they'd been broken some time before. He had a gash across the top of his head, needed fourteen sutures, and the thumb on his right hand was dislocated.
That was it. Apart from the bruising and some abrasions that was it.
My cert
ainty that he would die had been wrong.
Later I would see that as a premonition, a misplaced premonition, and with that premonition came that oh so familiar sense of guilt. I was carrying it like a sleeping child, carrying it close and tight for fear of losing my grip. I believed perhaps that my duty to carry this guilt served as some reason to go on.
The nurse who dealt with me said we'd be there just as long as it took to check all our details, sort out some way of paying for this, and then the police would want to question us about the incident. I agreed with everything, agreed and kept on asking if I could see Nathan. After an hour or more the nurse said okay.
They took me to where Nathan lay in another curtained area. They'd given him painkillers, he was drowsy but coherent, and when I explained what they wanted to know, that they wanted us to talk to the police, he told me I had to figure us some way out of there.
I left him there, returned within a minute or two with a wheelchair.
Nathan levered himself off of the gurney and dropped into the chair like a dead weight. He grunted painfully.
'You okay?'
He nodded. 'Figured I'd race you to the street corner and do some press-ups.'
I smiled.
'Whup your ass any time white boy.'
'Can it, Nathan… just can it.'
We seemed to glide then, glide mysteriously from the hospital emergency room, and there must have been a guardian angel because there were no voices calling after us, and even as we approached the Reception desk the girl there turned and looked away as we passed, and I knew there was something else going on.
I would tell Father John Rousseau of this many years later, and he would smile, and nod, and then he would say the last thing in the world I would have expected him to say.
'Nothing to do with God,' he'd say. 'Nothing to do with the Archangel Gabriel or secret guardians of the Netherworld… all comes down to decision. People make powerful enough decisions and they can do some incredible things. You ever hear of a woman lifting a car off of her child's legs? Skinny little woman, nothing to her, little more than a hundred pounds, and she lifts a car off of her child. That isn't God, Danny… that's people.'
Whatever the reason, we made it out of there, and then we were on the street, the wheelchair abandoned in the lobby, Nathan Verney limping along, me holding him up so he didn't fall flat on the sidewalk, and me with my face all swelled up on one side like I was trying to chew a baseball.
We made it out of there and we were three blocks away before we realized that things like this were not supposed to happen. Despite the pain, despite the previous night's events, we were laughing. Laughing together. If I think back now that moment was the closest moment we would share before the end.
Seems odd to me that the most terrible circumstances seem to bind people together. But they do, and that's what happened to me and Nathan Verney in Panama City, Florida in the summer of '69.
We didn't leave, we stayed right where we were. We avoided Ramone's Retreat, we stayed on the north side of the city where things seemed a little more liberal and understanding. We kept our jobs, our car, and every once in a while we'd go out and find some company. It was simple, uncomplicated, and it stayed that way until Christmas. For the best part of six months there was no Vietnam, there were no questions, no-one looking for us, and Nathan and me got along just fine, possibly better than we'd ever done.
Nathan had forgotten the burden, either that or he was remarkably good at pretending there was nothing on his mind.
I had not. I thought of it often. And more often than that I thought of my ma.
And it was she who closed up the chapter of Florida in December. It had been a comfortable chapter, the sort of chapter you go back to and read once more, perhaps again and again, because there seems to be some kind of emotion encapsulated there that you connect with. I connected, at least I thought I did, but like all things it came to a final paragraph, a final line, a final word.
The word was family.
Helluva thing.
Christmas was coming and we - Nathan Verney and I - figured it might be okay to call home, just one call each, just to check everything was fine, that there was nothing too serious going down.
We'd been gone eighteen months, and whoever might have been sent down to find us had given up by now.
Surely.
There was only one way to tell.
We called on December 17th, eight days before Christmas, and it was that date, that date and no other, when the real nightmare began.
* * *
Chapter Eighteen
'She's dead.'
It was Dr. Backermann, his voice like the dry scratching of insects trapped in a cardboard box.
He'd been there when Eve had died, and now he was here, here on the end of a telephone line telling me something I couldn't even begin to comprehend.
'Daniel? Daniel, you there?'
'Yes,' I mumbled.
'Back in August, the first week of August. She passed away in her sleep, Daniel, no pain… but she did die, Daniel. The house has been closed up since then waiting for you to come back… where did you say you were?'
I was numbed into silence.
'Daniel?'
Backermann's voice sounded distant, as if he was whispering at me from the bottom of a Pepsi can.
'Daniel… you still there?'
'Yes,' I said, or at least I thought I said it.
'I think you need to come back, Daniel, come back and sort everything out. You can't spend your whole life running away from things.'
I was surprised by his words, angered even.
'What d'you mean, running away from things?'
I could hear Dr. Backermann smiling. How that happens I don't know, but you can hear the slightest change in timbre and pitch and know that someone is smiling, somewhat condescendingly, even though you can't see them.
'We understand what happened, Daniel, we understand that you were influenced by the negro boy.'
'The what?'
'You know, the Verney boy, the negro you used to spend so much time hanging around -'
I exploded. 'Asshole, you're a fucking asshole. You're a Jew, Backermann, and the last fucking person in the world I'd expect that kind of bigoted redneck bullshit from is you -'
'Now steady on there, Daniel -'
'You steady on, you dumb fucked-up piece of shit, you steady on… you go fuck yourself, you go goddam fuck yourself!'
I hung up.
I was seething.
My heart was thundering, my mouth was dry, a taste like I'd been chewing copper filings.
I turned and saw Nathan standing no more than three or four feet away.
We were in a diner near our apartment.
People were looking at me.
I felt as if the world could suddenly close up around me, suffocate me. Never felt anything like it before, never ever felt anything like it any time in my life.
The expression on Nathan's face was one of complete shock and bewilderment. I shook my head. I didn't want to speak. I walked towards the door. Nathan came after me.
'Danny? Hey, what's happenin', man?'
I said nothing, didn't turn, merely shoved the door and walked out into the street. I could feel the eyes of people in the diner following me. I didn't care. They could go fuck themselves too.
'Danny! Hey, Danny, hold up there!'
I didn't stop, I didn't slow down, and when Nathan's hand touched my shoulder I turned suddenly.
My expression must have surprised him because he stepped back suddenly and raised his hands.
'Whoa, man, what's the fucking problem here?'
I shook my head. I looked down at my shoes. Somewhere inside of me, somewhere buried beneath a ton of memories, emotion was beginning to stir.
'She's dead,' I said, and my voice was cold and flat and strange.
'Dead? Who's dead?' he was asking.
His voice sounded like Backermann's, somewhere out there, somewhere
in the distance, echoing all the way from Greenleaf perhaps… a whisper carried back from the glassy, still surface of Lake Marion…
'My ma… she's dead, Nathan, she's gone an' died, man…'
'Oh shit,' I heard him say.
I felt the emotion even stronger, reaching up towards me from somewhere I didn't even want to look, and it came, it all came on home, and I could see myself sitting there on the sidewalk, my head in my hands, my hands resting on my knees, and sobbing I think, sobbing or crying or something. It was a new thing. A new emotion. A release perhaps.