Black & White

by Lewis Shiner

He was the son of Nun

  He never stopped his work until

  Until the work was done.

  As far as Michael could tell—it happened so quickly he wasn’t sure of his own eyes—a hooded figure reached out and swung his outstretched arm into the back of Charles’ knees, then vanished into the crowd. Charles collapsed backward and fell hard into the windshield of the squad car. Before he could recover, the police were on him.

  You may talk about your king of Gideon

  You may talk about your man of Saul

  But there’s none like good old Joshua

  At the battle of Jericho

  Two patrol officers dragged him down onto the sidewalk and one of them punched him hard in the gut. Charles went down, doubled up. Michael, without thinking, ducked in and knelt by Charles’ head. “I’ve got him,” he told the cops. “I’ve got him.”

  They hesitated, and it was long enough to break the mood. “Get him out of here,” one of the cops snarled.

  “Okay,” Michael said. “I will.”

  The cops slowly backed away, batons in hand, jumpy, scared, and angry.

  “Come on,” Michael said to Charles. “We have to get out of here.”

  Now the Lord commanded Joshua

  “I command you and obey you must

  You just march straight to those city walls

  And the walls will turn to dust.”

  “Let me go,” Charles said.

  He wasn’t the only one upset by the song. People in the crowd were booing and shouting, barely audible under the massed voices of the Night Riders. Bottles and cans and other trash had started to fly from the sidewalks into the mass of hooded figures.

  “You stay here, we could both get killed,” Michael said.

  Charles dragged himself to a squatting position, slow rage winning out over his pain. “I been waiting for this my whole life. Somebody to answer to me. All this here?” Michael assumed he meant the protesters. “All this was my idea, to be here for this. Face to face.”

  Straight up to the walls of Jericho

  He marched with spear in hand

  “Go blow that ram’s horn,” Joshua cried,

  “For the battle is in my hand.”

  It was like watching kids play with fireworks in a dried-out field. It could go up any minute, taking the entire neighborhood with it. Charles was beyond logic, and Michael understood that he would have to leave him behind. He turned toward the barricades at the south end of the street.

  The lamb ram sheep horns began to blow

  And the trumpets began to sound

  And Joshua commanded, “Now children, shout!”

  And the walls came tumbling down.

  Michael looked up as they sang the last line, and there in front of him was the brick chimney, 200 feet high, looming over the complex.

  He remembered the sight of it from the room where the Duke signing was at that moment underway.

  If the base of the chimney exploded, the entire tonnage of smokestack—brick, concrete, and steel reinforcement—would come pounding down on the Washington building, smashing everything inside it to ruins.

  Joshua fit the battle of Jericho

  Jericho, Jericho

  Joshua fit the battle of Jericho

  And the walls came tumbling down.

  He fought his way to Charles, standing at the ropes, about to wade into the sea of white hoods.

  “Charles!”

  “What?”

  “The smokestack! They’re going to blow up the smokestack!”

  “That ain’t my concern right now. You find Harriman and tell him.”

  “Charles—”

  “Go on, get out of here!”

  No use, he thought. No use.

  *

  It was 2:15. The bomb, he thought, would be set for three or thereabouts, as the autographing started, to create maximum havoc. Not much time.

  He dug out his cell phone and called Bishop. After four rings, a voice said, “This is Sgt. Frank Bishop of the Durham Police department. If this is an emergency, hang up and dial 911. Otherwise leave a message after the tone.”

  “This is Michael,” he shouted into the phone. He didn’t know if Bishop would be able to hear him over the background noise; the Riders were singing the song again from the beginning, and the boos and catcalls were getting louder. “I think Vaughan is putting a bomb in the smokestack. Call me!”

  Harriman’s number was busy.

  Michael fought his way back toward American Tobacco. It was like trying to swim through wet cement, that nightmare feeling of trying to run with limbs barely moving, paralyzed in sleep.

  He made it to the office in five minutes. Anika was there alone, on the edge of hysteria. All six lines on her phone console were lit, five of them blinking. “I’ll tell him, but you’ll have to wait. Wait!” She put that line on hold, punched another. “Walter, one of the Riders just punched a little girl. Get a reporter there. North end of the Reed Building.” She stabbed the hold button and looked angrily at Michael. “What?”

  “I need to talk to Harriman.”

  “He’s not here. What do you want?”

  “Tell him it’s the smokestack. The Lucky Strike smokestack.”

  “He’s supposed to know what that means?”

  “That’s where Greg Vaughan is. I think.”

  “You think?”

  “Just tell him, will you?”

  “If he checks in. I’m a little busy.” She held up her thumb and forefinger, nearly touching. “We’re that far from a race riot out there.”

  Michael ran outside. The place was empty of police as far as he could see. All on Blackwell Street, he thought.

  He started toward the smokestack. A long line of people stood against the wall of the Washington building, shuffling slowly forward, the line eventually disappearing through the door where the signing would start in less than half an hour.

  He pushed his way through to the security guard. “I need you to call the police,” Michael said.

  “Slow down, son, and tell me what this is all about,” the old man said.

  “I’m working with Sgt. Bishop of Homicide. I…I’m an informant, okay? You need to get him a message that I think it’s the smokestack.”

  “You think it’s the smokestack?”

  Michael pointed to the red brick tower halfway across the courtyard. “The Lucky Strike chimney.”

  “That’s the old powerhouse there. They used to burn coal in that thing, make their own electricity. What about it?”

  “Tell him that’s where it’s going to happen. He’ll know what I mean.”

  “Your name?”

  “Michael. He’ll know.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell him.” The old man waved another ten people through the doors.

  “Could you do it now?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Could you call him right now? This is an emergency.”

  “Be patient, son. I got a job to do here.”

  Michael was out of patience. He ran to the end of the covered walkway, vaulted the handrail, and sprinted across the grass toward the two-story building at the base of the smokestack.

  That, at least, got the guard’s attention. He was standing at the rail now and shouting, “Hey! Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Call the cops!” Michael shouted back.

  The smokestack itself was freestanding, rising up from a concrete pad where a corner had been cut out of the surrounding powerhouse building. There would have been space enough to squeeze between the building and the smokestack, had Black Star not closed it off with heavy-duty chain link fencing. If there was a way to get inside the chimney, it lay on the other side of the fence. Peering through, Michael saw an open doorway leading from the inside of the powerhouse to the chimney. That meant all he had to do was find a way into the building.

  He turned back and circled the outside. The place was partway through renovation, with new floor-to-ceiling windows
set into the outside walls. The inside, when Michael looked through the glass, had been cleared out, if not substantially changed. The floor was concrete, with standing water and piles of rusting machinery. The top half of the building was a maze of rails and girders.

  He found a doorway in front, facing the water tower, boarded up with plywood. Maybe, he thought, Vaughan had not been able to get in, and he’d worked himself up over nothing. Michael pushed against the plywood, felt it give, and saw that he’d been wrong again.

  *

  All he meant to do, really, was see if it was possible. If Vaughan could indeed get into the smokestack, then Michael would have to get help somehow. It was just that time was running out, and help seemed very far away.

  There were two sheets of plywood over the doorway, one loose where it joined the other. Michael pushed the first one back until he could squeeze past.

  The dim interior smelled of damp and rust. It was a single open space, a hundred feet on a side and forty feet high. What should have been the second floor was crisscrossed with catwalks and ladders. A set of steel tracks led to a hatch high up in the face of the chimney, where they must have brought the coal in on carts and dumped it into the fire. It felt like the kind of place you might find giant rats and used hypodermics and the occasional dead body.

  Michael eased the plywood back in place after a long debate with himself. On the one hand he wanted the attention of the police. On the other he didn’t want to have to argue if there was a bomb about to go off where they stood.

  Noise filtered in from outside: the bass guitar from the band, voices of people passing nearby, faint crowd noises from Blackwell Street, chaotic and angry. Michael was operating in a mode of utter fear. Each step forward was harder than the last, each new smell and sound was like a physical blow, making his breath come more shallowly, his stomach knot itself more tightly.

  He pushed the stem on his watch face to light up the dial. Ten minutes until three. Move, he told himself, or this is all going to be in vain.

  He crossed the floor, climbed three steps, and came out into daylight. The smokestack was directly in front of him, 15 feet in diameter at the base and narrowing as it went up. There was an iron door at waist level, a larger version of the door on the outside of the fireplace at the house on Wildflower Drive in Dallas, where Michael had shoveled out ashes as a kid.

  The door was big enough for a person to crawl through and Michael was suddenly sure that Greg Vaughan was on the other side. The craziness of what he was doing fully dawned on him. This was a job for armed cops; if Vaughan were in the smokestack, it would be suicide for Michael to catch him in the act.

  But there was no time for bomb squads and evacuations. If Vaughan had already left, and there was a bomb inside, and he could somehow defuse it…

  No, he thought, this is crazy. He was reaching for his cell phone to call 911 when he heard a clank and saw the metal hatch begin to open.

  *

  He turned and ran. He was running for his life and he knew it, and he put everything he had into it. He didn’t look back and didn’t need to. He heard Vaughan’s heavy footfalls behind him. His lungs had caught on fire the instant he began, and it left him unable to cry out. It was all that he could do simply to run.

  Now he saw that he should not have closed up the plywood. It was twenty feet away from him, and he bent forward as he ran, putting his right shoulder out to slam into the loosely anchored wood.

  He didn’t make it. Something caught him by the left arm and spun him around. A long metal flashlight, the beam arcing wildly around the empty building, rose and came hurtling down toward the side of his head.

  Then he was lying on the floor. His hands were behind him, jerking spasmodically. Then he felt his legs move, first one, then the other, then both together. There was a spider web only inches from his nose, and that finally made him try to squirm away.

  With the pain that flashed through his head then, he filled in the missing pieces. He’d blocked most of the first blow from the flashlight with his right arm. A second one had taken him down. Then the light had shone full in his face and Vaughan’s voice had said, “Cousin Michael. Fancy meeting you here.”

  Staring at the spider web, Michael tried to move again. His wrists and forearms were stuck together behind his back. His legs and ankles wouldn’t move either. “That ought to hold you,” Vaughan’s voice said.

  He rolled Michael onto his back with one booted foot, then grabbed the front of his jacket and stood him up against the wall, none too gently. Michael, unable to use his arms or legs for balance, felt himself about to topple. Before it happened, Vaughan ducked and took him over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  “You could stand to lose some weight, cousin,” Vaughan said.

  Michael didn’t answer; most of his higher brain functions had yet to return. He saw the floor moving under the two of them. He saw Vaughan’s navy blue coveralls, the standard uniform for maintenance workers, the kind of clothes that made you invisible.

  Then they were in daylight, and then Michael was in motion again, being propped up against the foot of the chimney. Vaughan climbed over him, through the hatch, then reached down to drag Michael in after him, head first. It was a bumpy ride, and bursts of white light went off in his head with every stop and start.

  At last he found himself flat on his back, staring at a translucent panel that fit inside the tube of the chimney like a lens, 50 feet above his head. He could make out the blue of the sky through the weathered plastic. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  The inside of the chimney was 12 feet in diameter, the bricks discolored but not blackened. The floor was a soft, concave bed of ash, aged to a dusty brown, finer than beach sand, finer than the ashes of his father that he had dumped on Mercy’s grave. Mixed with it were chunks of brick and broken bottles, which dug into his back and legs.

  Directly across from the entrance hatch, now closed again, a set of rebar rungs were set into the brickwork. Between the rungs and the hatch, Vaughan knelt with his back to Michael.

  “Don’t do this,” Michael said.

  “I had some hope for you, the way you were with Henry and all,” Vaughan said. “And then you betrayed my trust. Henry’s trust, too. Breaking into Mr. Bynum’s house, and now this. Even if you’re not blood kin, I expected more of you.”

  Vaughan extended one hand to flex the fingers. He was wearing blue latex painter’s gloves.

  “The funny thing is,” Michael said, “we are related. You’re my uncle.”

  “I know who your mother is, boy,” Vaughan said. “I expect you got the taste for dark meat from your daddy.”

  “My grandfather had it too.”

  “Your grandfather?”

  “Wilmer Bynum. He was Mercy’s father.”

  Vaughan was on him instantly, crouching, left hand grabbing the rebar ladder for support, the heel of the right hand coming around and smashing into Michael’s cheek below the left eye, knocking his glasses half off his face. Michael’s lip split, and blood trickled down his throat from the back of his nose.

  “You lie,” Vaughan whispered.

  “He was Mercy’s father,” Michael said thickly, “and he was your father, too. Mercy was your half-sister, like Ruth was.”

  Vaughan slapped him again, this time with the back of the hand, the knuckles catching him in the mouth. Michael turned his head and spat blood. He ran his tongue along the inside of his teeth. One of the incisors felt loose.

  “Who told you those lies?” Vaughan said.

  Michael spat again, carefully, and swallowed. “Ruth,” he said. “Ask her yourself. She’ll tell you.”

  Vaughan pulled himself to his feet. “I heard stories, when I was a kid. I heard Mr. Bynum was my daddy, heard I had half-brothers and sisters all over Johnston County.” The longing in his voice was not obvious, but Michael recognized it. “He never once said it to me, never gave me any reason to believe it, so I figured it was a lie, like the re
st of it, like all those lies about him having colored harlots.”

  Michael thought his nose might be broken. He couldn’t breathe through it. He raised his head to keep from swallowing blood, and his glasses slid back into place, letting him see the silver duct tape wrapped around his legs. It would be the same thing with his wrists, he supposed.

  And now that Vaughan had stepped away from it, Michael could see the thing he’d been working on. It was the thing Michael had feared, worse than he’d imagined because of the ugly detail that made it physical and real.

  Vaughan had duct-taped 20 sticks of dynamite to the brick walls, two rows of ten each, staggered so the lower row overlapped the first. The rows were perfectly even, the blasting caps like short, silver pencils jammed at perfect right angles into the tops of the sticks, the wires running neatly to the floor. The cylinders of dynamite were not red like in cartoons, but yellow-brown, waxy, and damp-looking. The wire ends came together at a battery alarm clock, sitting on a scrap of plastic that might have come from a shower curtain or a dropcloth.

  Vaughan saw where Michael was looking, and it brought him back to his work. He knelt in front of the clock, this time not obscuring Michael’s view. He attached alligator clips to the wires that led to the dynamite. Another set of wires ran from the clock to a big, oblong, six-volt battery.

  “You can stop this,” Michael said. “You don’t have to go through with it.”

  “I want to go through with it,” Vaughan said. “The brothers are out there counting on me. I ain’t going to let them down.”

  “How many people are going to die because of this? How many innocent bystanders are you going to murder? There are kids in that line, all they want is to get autographs. Basketball fans, just like you were at that age.”

  Vaughan turned to look at him. He was smiling. Michael saw that this was the high point of Vaughan’s life. “Hope they’re black,” Vaughan said.

  Michael opened his mouth to try again, knowing it was futile, and Vaughan said, “Got my hands full just now. Don’t make me come over there and tape your mouth shut. We got to finish up here and be on our way.”