by Chris Wiltz
He stared out of the truck's window trying hard to imagine how his own reality would be changed if he had to get up every morning of his life and face this barren, disconsolate landscape, live through what made it this way, what kept it this way. And he failed; he could not imagine it, could not fully grasp what difference it would make, only that it would make a profound difference, that it would change the way he looked at the entire world, that he could be exactly the person he was and yet he would not be at all the same.
Bobby glanced over at Burgess, who was scrutinizing the second stories of the buildings they passed on his side of the street. Many of the buildings were in total darkness, obviously vacant. Streetlights, which should have come on by now, could not—most of them were broken, very likely shot out or stoned out, the darkness deliberate. Looking at Burgess, Bobby thought he was a strange one, to have wanted to refurbish a place such as this, where people who preferred darkness lived.
“Why did you take this on, Burgess, fixing up the Convent?”
Burgess, distracted by these apparently vacant buildings, said, “Seem like a good thing to do.”
“That's it? It seemed like a good thing to do?” Bobby sounded incredulous.
Burgess did not answer Bobby right away. He had slowed the truck to a crawl, the muffler gurgling and coughing, his attention caught by one particular building. But when they passed it, Burgess turned to him, grinning broadly. “Yeah,” he said, “that's it—was a good thing to do.”
They reached the top of a T intersection. In front of them was another large empty dirt tract, a playground, Bobby supposed, if there were any kids around this part of the project to play in it. But even as he thought that, he saw lights in some of the distant buildings behind the tract. Burgess made a left turn and for a brief moment they were enveloped in darkness again, then something caught Bobby's eye, a light coming from one of the back buildings but now obscured by the building in front of it. It had been but a flash in his peripheral vision, but there was no mistaking what he had seen.
“Hold the phone,” he said to Burgess, and when Burgess did not immediately stop, Bobby said, “I mean, whoa. Did you see that?" He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb.
Burgess backed up until they had a view down one of the cracked sidewalks. It was in a building with scorched, boarded windows upstairs, but downstairs, through an open door, they could see straight into a living room that was flooded with light from a large crystal chandelier hanging at its center.
“You remember that chandelier I told you was missing from the dining room?”
Burgess leaned over to look through Bobby's window and a rumbling began in his chest that erupted into laughter that shook the truck and drowned out the muffler.
Bobby, his arm propped in the open window, drummed his fingers on the roof of the truck and waited for Burgess to run down. “Of course,” he said, “I can't be absolutely sure that's the same one, not without a closer look.”
“You want a closer look?”
“No thanks. I'll just let my imagination take flight.”
“You want me to find out?”
Bobby shifted in the truck seat to give Burgess a level look. He was vaguely aware of a skinny man wearing ragged clothes, standing on the other side of the street. “You could do that?” Bobby asked, his curiosity piqued.
Burgess answered that by asking, “You want me to get it back?”
“It's up to you,” Bobby said. “I hadn't planned to replace it with anything that fancy.” He shifted back around to assess the incongruity. “Looks pretty good there, don't you think? Just the kind of thing this place needs.” They looked another long moment.
When Burgess straightened up to drive again, the skinny man was standing at his window, right up close, leaning on the truck. Burgess was startled and just barely managed not to flinch. “What you want?” he said harshly.
The man probably wasn't as old as he looked, with his gray skin, his body emaciated from drugs. When he opened his mouth to speak, teeth were missing. “You want some rock?” he asked. The missing teeth caused him to lisp.
Burgess grabbed him by the shirt front, nearly pulling his frail wasted body through the window, his head bouncing off the top of the truck door. “Who tole you to come say that?” Burgess demanded.
“Nobody,” the man said. Burgess pulled him in harder and felt the shirt rip in his hand. Blood oozed from a gash in the man's forehead as he said miserably, “It jus Ferdie saw you passin, no harm meant.”
Burgess got closer in his face and said quietly, “You tell Ferdie I ain't dead yet.” He pushed the man away. “Get on,” he said.
The man backed off, holding his shaky hands out in front of him. “Didn’ mean no harm, man. No harm meant,” he said once again.
Burgess put the truck in gear and rolled forward, no longer indifferent to the muffler's noise making it so he couldn't hear anything else around him. “Let's get goin,” he said to Bobby. “Gets dangerous out here at night.” He got no argument.
He drove through the front part of the Convent again to get to Convent Street and Bobby was glad for the sight of grass, for the buildings with lots of lights on inside them, for what looked like a normal neighborhood in spite of the sameness of it all. That's when it struck him, the enormity of what Burgess had undertaken, and how far he'd actually gotten. And that Burgess had said they weren't going any further with it.
“How come you didn't get to the back?” he asked. “How come you're not going to finish?”
“ ‘Cause a cop got killed,” Burgess said.
Bobby didn't understand everything, but he decided that with this brief tour of the Convent he understood more than he wanted to: he asked no more questions.
23
Early in the morning Burgess went out to the vegetable garden and picked an armful of greens. Their color had deepened and they'd doubled in size in the cooler fall weather. He knew his mother liked them best after the weather changed. He gathered them while the dew still glinted off their broad leaves, which pushed back the weeds that had grown up around them. The whole garden looked as if it could use some attention. But he couldn't do anything about that now; he was bringing his mother a peace offering.
It was quiet at Thea's house; none of the workers were there yet. He wasn't sure his mother was there yet. He knocked softly, timidly, on the leaded-glass door, and before long he saw her, her body broken in his vision by the cames that separated the panes of glass. She rocked as she walked, from one foot to the other, and as she got closer he could hear her shoes, like brooms sweeping along the bare floor.
She opened the door and peered outside around him like some kind of lookout, then stood aside to let him in. He followed her down the hallway to the kitchen. On the table was her cup of tea and the newspaper. She filled the kettle and put it on the stove.
“I brought you some greens,” he said to her back.
“You bring them bodyguards with you?” she asked.
He'd known she wouldn't make it easy for him. He'd come to tell her she was right after all, and he was getting out of the Convent, but she wouldn't be accepting yet: she had to have her say first. He breathed deeply as if to fortify himself with patience before he said, “I know you don’ like seein them bodyguards here, Mama. I ain brought them for a while.”
“Ain't nothin but a bunch of thugs, that's what,” she said. She busied herself getting out a cup and saucer, the canister of tea bags. He held his tongue but the effort made his jaw muscles ache. He hoped she wouldn't go on like this too much longer.
Upstairs, Thea had heard the pickup truck putting along Convent Street. If Burgess was coming this early, he might not show up again all day, and she wanted to talk to him. She left Bobby sleeping soundly and slipped on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She brushed her teeth and splashed some water on her face and went downstairs.
When she got into the hallway she could hear Zora talking, her voice slightly raised. “Don't matter,” Zora said. “Yo
u still actin like a thug.” Thea stopped where she was, shrinking back into a dark corner of the hall.
“Why you say that, Mama?” There was supplication in Burgess’ voice. “You the one always said we should help our neighbors, share what we had with em. We got to act like ever'body in the Convent is a part of our family—that's what you said.”
“That was a long time ago, Burgess.”
“Don’ matter. All I'm doin is actin like you raise me up to act.”
Delzora spoke to him testily. “I never raise you up to be no dope dealer, Burgess.” She poured water over the tea bag and set the cup on the table. She sat down.
Burgess did not sit down. He stood there, still holding the greens. “I ain sayin that. I'm sayin you never raise me up to be like every other dumb fuck in the project neither—stupid ‘cause I'm so poor, mean ‘cause I ain goin nowhere.” He put one hand down on the table, leaning toward her, clutching the greens with the other hand. “I done some good in the Convent, Mama, fixin things up, makin sure ever'body's got what they got to have.”
Delzora was about to tell him he better watch his mouth but she got sidetracked, suddenly picturing, as clear as any photograph, Burgess as a little boy, the way he'd been full of spirit, headstrong, refusing to be squashed by the burden of life in the Convent. Now she saw his spirit, his exuberance for the project as an affront to her, his being headstrong as stubbornness, a refusal to see that he had become part of all the bad things she'd tried to warn him against, get him away from, that he'd taken everything she'd taught him about living in a Christian way and turned it all inside out, so he didn't know anymore what was right and what was wrong.
“Tell me, Mama,” he was saying. “How could I do all that without no money?”
“You think ‘cause you do good with all that money, it don't matter anymore where it come from.” She tilted her head back, looking at him through the bottom of her glasses. “Why all of a sudden you worried ‘bout doin good, Burgess?”
Burgess stood up straight again. He laughed a soft, low laugh. “Maybe I want to see if I can get away with it.”
“It jus be another way for you to be Mr. Big, Burgess, to make everybody think you walk on water, that's what.”
His jaw muscles were aching again. “I got what I got the only way I was ever gon get it. I ain livin like no millionaire. I ain livin like they ain no tomorrow.” He was talking like Janine now, using her words. Janine, who believed he could do no wrong. But this was his mother he was talking to, and she didn't believe that, not at all. He told her truthfully, “The way I see it, they wasn't much of a tomorrow any other way.”
“You wrong about that, Burgess,” Delzora said. “They's always tomorrow, and they's the day after that, and the day after that.”
He stood there a minute longer and then he said, “You want these greens?”
She didn't answer for so long that he was about to walk away. Then she said, “Yeah, gimme them greens.” She held her hands out and took them, not looking at his face but at his shirt, wet and clinging to his skin where he'd held the bundle of dewy leaves up against him.
Burgess turned away from her without ever telling her what he'd come to say. He walked into the hallway and was startled to see Thea standing there. The look on her face told him she'd heard it all, or enough. He hesitated, then went past her, his body turned slightly sideways even though there was plenty of room, as if he understood she wouldn't want to touch him. Thea waited until he closed the door behind him before she went into the kitchen. She sat at the table with Delzora, in front of Burgess’ untouched tea. The two women looked at each other in silence.
Delzora finally got up, removed the two cups from the table, and began washing the greens.
24
It didn't take Thea long to put it all together. Since she'd come back to town there had been an article in the newspaper every week about the city's housing projects, several of them focusing on the Convent. There had been speculation about where the money had come from to finance the turnaround in the Convent. Most of the residents said they thought the city had supplied it. No one said they thought it was drug money. No one believed there was any such person as the Bishop of Convent Street. Thea remembered reading that someone had said if there was any such person, then he was just a step or two below Jesus Christ. From what Zora had said to Burgess about walking on water, Thea thought she must have read that too.
Zora stood at the sink, still working on the greens. Thea spoke to her back. “I heard—I couldn't help but hear . . .” She broke off. She wanted to say something but realized that she didn't know what it was. “I'm sorry Zora,” she said finally. “I truly am sorry.”
But Zora, her voice raised above the running water, said harshly, “Don't you be feelin sorry, I don't want no one feelin sorry for me.”
It was as if Zora, for pride's sake, had dropped a wall of glass between herself and Thea. Thea felt the separation acutely, as if her knowledge of Burgess now alienated her from Zora. The thought of any kind of change in her relationship with Zora, any sort of permanent alienation, made her feel sick and slightly panicky. She forced herself to leave the kitchen and went upstairs to talk to Bobby.
He was just waking up. She sat on the bed. He put his hand out to her and tried to pull her down, but she said, “No, not now.”
“Burgess was just here,” she began in as neutral a voice as possible, not wanting to sensationalize what was already sensational enough. “When I went downstairs, I heard him and Zora talking—actually, I eavesdropped. Zora's been angry with Burgess for a long time, and I wanted to know why.”
She paused; Bobby was rubbing his eyes. He yawned. She went on: “You know all the work being done in the Convent? You know this person who doesn't really exist, the one the media like to call the Bishop of Convent Street?”
Bobby nodded.
“It's Burgess,” she told him.
“What did he and Zora say?” Bobby sounded curious, not surprised. Thea repeated what she had heard.
Bobby had told Thea about going to the Convent with Burgess, but he had told it as a lark, describing only surfaces, mainly telling an anecdote about the chandelier. Now he said, “I knew it when we were in the Convent the other day. People are scared enough of him that he could have gone into that apartment and taken that chandelier.” He stopped, as if deciding whether to say more. Then, “And that guy I told you offered us crack? Well, Burgess told him to tell somebody—he said, ‘Tell him I'm not dead yet.’ He deliberately hurt that guy even though the guy was so wasted from drugs. He wanted to let him know.”
Thea frowned. “Let him know what?”
“That he could hurt him bad if he wanted to, I guess. That he could hurt whoever he was sending the message to. I got the impression there's some sort of power play going on.”
“You didn't ask Burgess about it?”
“Hell, no. I don't want to know that shit.”
“Whether we like it or not, Bobby, we do know that shit.”
Bobby sat up. “It's none of our business,” he said. “Whatever Burgess does in the Convent, whoever he is, it's none of our business.”
“But it is!” Thea protested. “I don't mean we have to tell anyone what we know. We don't have to decide whether we're turning Burgess in or not, nothing like that, but it is our business. We know about it, so it is.”
“Okay.” Bobby held his hands palms up. “So what do we do about it?”
“I don't know. I mean, it's not that we have to do anything about it.” She flipped a hand in exasperation. “I don't know what I mean. It's not our business exactly, except it is, because we're involved with Burgess.”
“Maybe we should get uninvolved, get rid of him.”
“That's probably what he's thinking we're going to do. Is that what you want to do?”
Bobby shrugged.
“Do you feel threatened?” Thea asked him.
“Sure. It turns out he could shoot out a wall of the apartment house as
quick as the next guy. The question is, do you feel threatened?”
“I don't know,” Thea said slowly. “I really don't know. Maybe we should talk to him.”
“And say what?”
Thea didn't answer.
“Well, all I know right now,” Bobby said, “is he's your contractor and he's my tenant.” He glanced at the clock. “Christ, I'm running late. I'm supposed to meet Jared at the apartment house, and I need to go by the hospital first.” His mother had been at Touro for several days with a bad case of bronchitis. He got out of bed and started dressing.
Thea said, “Maybe we should ask him if he's afraid of us.”
Bobby laughed.
Thea stayed sitting on the bed until he left. She had kept her feelings about Burgess veiled, a shadow of disbelief here—except she did believe it—a shade of disappointment there, and something else flickered behind the veil, a spark she was keeping tamped down for fear it would catch and consume her. But consume her with what?
Who could think with all the noise in the house? Mr. Robert and the other workers had arrived. Thea retreated to the third floor. She went with a well-worn copy of The Stranger, thinking she was going to read. But she was really going to commune with Aunt Althea's ghost.