By which time I have found the zipper tabs are stuck on the outside and cut my way out with my straight razor, so I’m ready to vault out when we wrap around the back side of New Calvary Cemetery.
Twenty-four hours?
Not even that. Not one full day on the Island. And somehow, somehow I find myself someplace worse than the Bronx.
You don’t have to work hard to land in this kind of shit. You just have to let go of whatever you’re hanging on to. The shit is right down there under our feet, waiting for anyone who can’t keep their grip.
The next bit, the next bit is the tricky part.
Keeping your mouth closed when you go under.
Maspeth.
One of those names comes from an Indian word that got all fucked up. Someone told me once it means something like At the bottom of the bad water place.
Swamp.
Swamp and landfill.
And the choicest landfill groomed, sodded, planted with nice trees, and filled with dead people.
I lived in Maspeth, I’d look at those massive cemeteries lining the L.I.E., Calvary, New Calvary, Mount Zion, Mount Olivet where they buried the unclaimed dead from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, I’d look at them, and I’d look at the dust and the muck where the row houses and the tenements took root, and I’d start digging up dead people and dropping them in Newtown Creek.
But I don’t live in Maspeth.
Finally, something going right.
Standing at Fifty-fifth Ave. and Fiftieth, where my meet is supposed to take place, I get to celebrate that little fact for about a second before a dozen gibbering cannibal warriors with filed teeth and machetes come boiling over the fence from the truck-filled lot behind one of the warehouses that choke the dry land on either side of the Creek.
Know what’s funny?
Nothing.
No. Really what’s funny is what I forgot.
See, what with all the hubbub and urgency, all the need for me to speed on my way because shit is coming unhinged at the Cure house and this needs to be done last fucking year, what with all that, I forget to ask for a gun.
How funny is that?
Not funny at all.
Not if you’re the clown who just took a job to cross the water again. Not if you’re that sad fucker who just made a call to make a date with some savages.
Still, I almost laugh when I remember I forgot.
Almost.
Instead of laughing, I run. I make it across the street before the bare slapping feet catch me, and fingers capped with chrome claws drag me down.
—She’s a special lady.
—I’m not arguing.
—That’s wise.
I don’t tell him that wisdom isn’t a virtue I’ve often been credited with.
As for him, he keeps his own counsel, clinking the honed tips of the claws on his right index finger and thumb against one another, in time to a drum no one else hears.
—If I were a better man. If I had been a better man, she might be here.
I let my eye take in the stifling abandoned shipping container we’re all crowded inside of. Only Menace has a chair. The rest stand or sit on the piles of old books and newspapers that fill the whole container.
—Think what she’s missing.
His claws stop clinking.
—I do not care for sarcasm.
I think for a moment, come up with nothing better, shrug.
—I could try not talking at all.
—That sounded like more sarcasm.
I scratch my head.
—Like I said, I could try not talking at all.
He holds his hand high over his head, light from the candles illuminating the container reflected in points on the bias-cut sections of sharpened silver pipe fitted at the end of each of his fingers.
—I could flay you and wear your skin as a cloak, and caper in the streets in the moonlight.
He lowers his hand.
—But some might consider that crass treatment of a guest.
I nod.
—Well, some people got no sense of humor, do they?
He brings his hand to his chest, dimples the tight, brown skin over his sternum with the point of a claw.
—I am one of those people.
I take a good long look at Skag Baron Menace. The claws, the filed teeth, the bare feet with soles calloused to leather, the bracelets of finger bones, the broad blade of the machete leaned against the leg of the camp stool he’s sitting on.
I get a cigarette from my pocket.
—Kid.
I light up.
—Why would I think you have a sense of humor?
He nods.
—Yes.
He looks at his crew, all kitted out pretty much like himself.
—Yes.
He looks at me.
—I see your point.
He rises, picks up his machete.
—We’ll take a walk.
He gestures and the candles are snuffed, dropping us into a black pit. Only light coming from the tip of my smoke.
Breathing. Shuffle of bare feet. Claw scratching steel. Steel grating on steel as the lock-bar is unlatched and the door swung open by the sentry outside.
In the starlight that filters in, Menace sweeps his machete in an arc, waving me ahead of him.
I get off the floor and walk toward the door, waiting for the bite of the machete blade in my back, the rake of claws on my neck.
But they don’t come.
Yet.
Put your money on something happening down by the water. That’s where I’d do it. So much easier to get rid of a body when there’s some water at hand.
Wedged into an angle created by the Kosciuszko Bridge, Fifty-sixth Road, and the Newtown and Maspeth Creeks is a fish-shaped bit of land. The tail occupied by yet another warehouse. The body of the fish an open plain of concrete and asphalt, broken by empty foundations, corpses of abandoned refrigerators with the doors still on, swamp grasses pushing through the pavement, and a glittering sheen of broken glass that seems to pebble the whole surface in nearly even perfection.
Menace walks on the glass, leading us toward the water.
—I cannot say for certain, but I think this was once the home of Cord Meyer’s Animal Carbon Plant.
I kick at some of the glass, rearranging the huge, senseless mosaic.
—What the hell was that?
He shakes his head.
—I am not certain. But I believe this is where it was. Whatever it was. I simply like the name. It sounds ominous. Like much of the industry that found a home here after the American Revolution.
He points with his machete at a truck yard over Fifty-sixth.
—Cating Rope Works.
Indicates a warehouse up the water.
—Fisk Metal Casket Company.
Another industrial mass.
—Alden Sampson Oil Factory.
Another.
—And Peter Cooper’s Glue Factory.
He lowers the machete.
—No need to wonder where the sinister quality in that name comes from.
A damp, stinking breeze blows off the water.
—Yeah, sure. Boiling horses. Dreadful.
He stands at least a head shorter than me, looks up, shakes his free hand, rattling bones.
—Esperanza said you had trouble with Lament.
—I did.
—She said you cut a deal with him to get away.
—I cut a deal.
The machete flickers through the air, cutting the tops from a thick tuft of grass shoved up through a crack in the concrete.
—Not something to recommend a person, having cut a deal with Lament.
I look at the distant lights of Manhattan, wonder if Maspeth is where I’ll finally die.
—Yeah, he seems to have a great fondness for you too.
He balances the machete.
—He mentioned me?
—Yeah. Seemed a favorite topic. I was to judge, I’d say he
goes to bed mumbling your name, and then dreams about nailing your head above his door.
He smiles, moves the tip of his tongue from pointed tooth to pointed tooth, realizes what he’s doing and closes his mouth.
—Yes. I am certain he does.
He looks north toward the Bronx.
—And considering the roll he played in educating me, I do not imagine it is any coincidence that I have similar visions regarding his own head.
I spit in the oily water we walk along.
—He has one of those heads people think about cutting off.
—Yes. He does.
He rests the flat of the machete blade on his shoulder.
—When he took me off the street, I thought it was the greatest piece of luck. I was finally going to be part of a crew. Make some money. Other kids, they would join crews. Soon after they would be showing up at school in fresh K-Swiss, And1. Hilfiger jeans. Burberry caps. Soon, the ones who lasted would have cars. Leased Escalades and Mercedes. Tricked-out Nissans.
He frowns.
—I wanted to be in a crew. Everyone I knew wanted to be in a crew. That was how you got things. Kicks. Clothes. Wheels. Respect.
His frown deepens.
—All the things a boy desires. That is a skill of Lament’s.
He catches his lower lip between the points of two teeth.
—To know what young people desire.
His teeth draw a bead of blood from his own flesh.
—After I was infected by one of the older boys, I felt less as if I had been lied to, and more as if I were being invited deeper inside something special. Of course.
He wipes the drop of blood away with the back of his wrist.
—By then Lament had taken my name, christened me Menace. A process of physical starvation had begun, soon followed by a more intense deprivation when he withheld blood. And physical abuse. And emotional abuse. The easiest thing, the thing most of us did, was to surrender. After all.
He drops the blade of the machete from his shoulder and angles it to catch a bit of the sliver-moon.
—Once you have been told that you are worthless, and treated as if you are worthless, put in a place where you are all set against one another in a contest for one person’s approval, approval that is never consistent in how it is rewarded, it is the easiest thing in the world to succumb to that conditioning and believe yourself to be worthless.
He brings the blade up, touches it to his own forehead, like a warrior knighting himself.
—But I am not worthless.
He lowers the blade.
—He had me cleaning. Digging out the piles of papers and magazines he had accumulated.
He shakes his head.
—I have no idea why the word caught my eye. I do not believe in destiny. For whatever reason, I saw it, and I needed to read about it. And so I did. I do not even remember the magazine. National Geographic? Time? It does not matter.
He inhales, exhales a word.
—Mungiki.
He nods.
—Kikuyu farmers. They banded together in defense squads against Nairobi government forces during a land dispute. The government was dominated by the Kalenjin tribe. Enemies of the Kikuyu. The Mungiki prevailed. And thrived. They moved into the cities, the slums. Provided protection, brought down crime rates. They did this through violence.
He nods again.
—Beheadings. Amputations. Vicious beatings. Torture. And they became a source of terror. Blood drinkers. Madmen. Savages so brutal, neither the police nor the military would go into their slums.
I look at the long flat span of empty cement around us, the other Mungiki scattered about. I look at the water. Water’s the way out. Whether I have to jump in it, or that’s where they dump my body, it looks like that’s where I’m going.
He stops nodding.
—They inspired me.
He shakes his head.
—Not that I knew anything about the Kikuyu. Not that I did, or do, have any care about the Kalenjin. I was simply inspired that these put-upon people, outnumbered, the lowest, rose. Made of themselves something to be reckoned with. Regardless of their methods. They made me realize that I could fight back. I could leave. So I did.
He shrugs.
—Physical security is not a concern of Lament’s. He relies on his personality to keep his captives with him. Until he is ready to send them on their way. Escaping was relatively easy. But freedom. That was most difficult. I had already seen the uses of fear in my own conditioning.
He tinks a claw against a bone that dangles from his wrist.
—So. I set out to make myself fearful.
He indicated the black leather vest worn open over his bare chest, the combat fatigues cut off at the knees. The outfit his crew sports as well.
—I designed a uniform for myself and the friends I convinced to join me. And we did things. Engaged in acts modeled on the Mungiki. Are they still afraid of us in the Bronx?
I flick ash.
—They are.
He points north.
—And we are not even there.
He lowers his arm.
—It is strange. That causing fear in others can help produce freedom. But it is also true. It clears a path before one. Creates space, a perimeter within which one can operate with abandon. I am not saying that it is true freedom. But it is a start. And it has given us the space and time to become more dangerous.
He brings a claw to his temple.
—I am not the boy I was. I do not crave the material things of MTV culture. I am not the slave I was. I do not crave the attention and occasional kindnesses of Lament. I am not even the savage I made myself after my initial escape. I do not crave blood for blood’s own sake. I am a rational man. I have made myself into this. I have read and studied and applied myself. I am clear in my thoughts. And in how I express them. While I cultivate mystery about my person in order to project the fear that frees me, I want none of that mystery in my speech. I am capable now of great subtlety. A word I could not have defined just a few years ago. I am capable of that subtlety, but I prefer bluntness. I am all these things, all my past selves, and my new self, because of one reason.
He aims the claw at me.
—Because I have a purpose. And succeed or fail, I have aimed myself solely at that purpose. With no time for anything else. And yet.
He turns his hand over, shows me his pale palm.
—Even a man with a purpose can have regrets. My own regret is that I could not convince Esperanza Lucretia to join me. Though I still have hopes that she might. So, seeing that you know her, and that she recommends you to me, I agreed to deviate my attention from my purpose to meet with you. In return, I will need you to do something.
I wait.
He looks away.
—Tell her I miss her.
I flick my butt into the water, pull out a fresh one.
—Yeah, I know how that goes.
I light up.
—I can do that for you.
He nods.
—Well, then.
He squats, puts the tip of the blade on the ground, folds his hands over the leather-wrapped grip.
—What do you want?
I inhale smoke, killing the smell of the rank water.
—Like I told Esperanza. I don’t know Queens. She told me you two had history. I asked if she could reach out.
—You asked Esperanza Lucretia to reach out to the Mungiki.
—Not saying I was happy to be looking to talk to you. Just saying I don’t know anyone in Queens.
He looks up at me.
—Then what you have to do in Queens must be very important.
I think about the Cure house, and the blood they need. I think about Terry, and the money he needs. I think about Predo, and the information he needs.
I think about me, and what I need. Where I need to be. Who I need to see.
Feel the pull.
—Yeah, it’s important.
I look at
my burning cigarette.
Say it out loud and you don’t go back.
Say it in the open air and there’s no telling where the words drift.
Say it.
—I’m looking for blood.
He raises an eyebrow.
—Are not we all?
I look up from my cigarette.
—No, man, I’m looking for a whole lot of blood.
He looks into my eye, nods, stops nodding.
—Did I mention, Joe Pitt, that I do not believe in destiny?
—Yeah, I remember something like that.
He rises, looks me up and down.
—Serendipity though, that is another matter.
He glances at the water.
—What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen, Joe Pitt?
I look at him.
I could tell him the worst thing I’ve ever seen. But he wouldn’t see it the same as me. Tell someone the worst thing you ever saw was a dying girl being healed, they won’t really get it. But I saw it. And it was bad. So I know better.
He watches me, nods.
—So you have seen many awful things.
I still got nothing to say.
Menace weighs his machete in both hands.
—Have they changed you, do you think? The things you have seen?
I find my lighter.
—How the hell should I know.
I flick the lighter to life, realize I don’t have a cigarette in my mouth for it to light, and snap it closed.
—You are who you are. See things. Don’t see them. You are who you are.
He studies the machete in his hands.
—I was who I was. I saw terrible things as a child. And I was who I was. Taken by Lament, tortured, I saw more terrible things. And I was who I was. Changing, yes, but always who I was. I agree with that. But as I told you.
He holds the machete tight in one hand, as he runs the palm of his other hand down the blade, cutting deep.
—I am different now. Remade. By a purpose.
He looks at the hand, watches the blood clot over the deep incision.
—Remade by what I have seen.
He shakes his hand, flecks of blood spattering the pavement.
—You should go home, Joe Pitt.
He looks at me.
Every Last Drop Page 15