by James Boice
None of the others know much about the man in the penthouse. Lee Fisher has lived there as long as the handyman has but they have never met. He seems to want nothing to do with anyone. The handmade dinner invitations the handyman’s wife has left in his mailbox have all gone unanswered. The handyman never told him about the sleepwalking. Until recently the handyman has seen him only from afar, hustling out through the lobby to a waiting black Town Car. A woman lived with him for a short time, he believes. The residents below have complained of a baby crying. When there are repairs to be made in the apartment, Fisher always leaves or else locks himself in a back room and communicates through the door. The eccentricities of the rich, the handyman thinks. The idiosyncrasies of the brilliant and effective.
But one day when Clayton is fifteen, Fisher calls to report a leaking sink, and when the handyman goes up to fix it Fisher is waiting in the doorway, a short, pale, quite fat man with a gun on his hip, which is distracting, even alarming, and makes the handyman think he must be a police officer. As he begins to speak, Fisher cuts him off. —Please be quick, is all he says, then turns away and goes inside. The handyman goes inside to the sink, gets to work. Fisher stands across the room with his gun watching.
The handyman says, —I need part. I have downstairs. No problem. My son down there. I will call him, he bring part.
Takes out his phone, Fisher becomes very upset, yells at him, —Give me the phone! Give it to me! I said give it to me! Wrests it from the handyman’s grip.
He says, —What’s the matter?
Fisher says, —No photos!
—No photo, I call son, he brings part.
Fisher lets him use the phone to make the call but demands he turn it over to him after. The handyman does. He is sweating. He will be fired. He has had a fight with this rich white man, this police officer, and will now be fired and kicked out of America. This rich white man can crush him. They all can. Clayton comes, they fix the sink, get the phone back, and leave. Fisher closes the door behind them without a word. They hear his several heavy deadbolts clicking into place.
—Damn, Clayton says, —that dude a dick.
The handyman wipes the sweat off his face and laughs drily. He certainly cannot disagree.
(Sheeple II)
He wants to be a writer, a novelist, studies it at a university in Ireland. He will be a great writer. How does he know? Because something calls out to him from the sky telling him so. Reads, writes. No professors or editors think his work is as good as he does. But he keeps going. Rejection, rejection. Months, years, wasted at his desk with no apparent progress. Starving. Friends around him succeeding in other occupations. Writing begins to feel pointless. Absurd. Still he tries. Begins losing his mind. It is not the work they are rejecting, he decides, but me. And it is not editors or magazines or the reading public rejecting me, it is the universe. Will this be his life—poverty, pointlessness?
Thirty years old now. Nothing published. There is a con, a trick involved that he is not privy to. Something wrong with him. Tries writing some inartistic commercial bunk, cynical, but to make money and feel relevant. When the bunk too is rejected it adds a new degree of humiliation and self-loathing to the usual.
Thirty-two years old. Friends have five-year-olds, wives, one even has a vacation home. He feels like a five-year-old child himself. Why is he doing this? Why did he think he would be a great one? Cannot remember now. Cannot hear the thing calling out to him from the sky anymore. Quits writing, goes to medical school. A doctor is relevant to people. Makes a steady, unremarkable living as a general practitioner. He is not a great doctor by any stretch, but he has a five-year-old and a vacation home. Gets along. Life is gray. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it does not. Often cannot recall details of days from a week ago. Moment-to-moment living. His heart beats, his wife stays, his car runs, his bills and taxes are paid. But he cannot shake a feeling that this is not it, this is not his real life. But everyone feels that way, do they not? A stupid feeling. Useless.
A pimp comes to his office, drunk, wants him to treat the venereal disease of one of his prostitutes. Nurse is pressing him on it. Leave me alone, the doctor says. Not my problem. Pimp buggers off. The doctor sits there thinking about it for a long while after. His nurse, when she was trying to convince him to help the drunken pimp, said, When you were a young man, a writer, surely you were helped by people in the position you now find yourself. He thinks, Surely? No, I doubt that. No one helped me. I did not deserve help. Though, he thinks but does not say, there was the grocer. What was his name? Right around the corner from my little dungeon I lived in. How can I not recall his name? He would leave cans of food and bags of bread out on his back doorstep for me to come and take. Told the grocer, I cannot pay you for this. Grocer said, Pay me when you write your first book and become rich and famous. Did not take the grocer seriously. Just a thing people say to would-be writers. But the grocer was otherwise a cheap, selfish businessman who never gave anyone else even a small one-time discount when times were rough. If not for the grocer’s help, he thinks, I would have starved.
At the time he was ashamed about that, but now, sitting at his desk after the pimp has gone, he is very moved and appalled at himself for thinking he was on his own back then. He was not at all, he sees now. There were more. Suddenly they are so obvious. His friends who were always sure to invite him to their vacation homes for weekends to keep him company and give him a break from writing and relax with their families, who never teased him about his lack of success and never flaunted theirs—indeed, they always treated him as an exact equal, didn’t they? They respected him for the sacrifice and dedication he had to writing. They inquired with sincerity about his work. When he went back to medical school and quit writing, the food stopped appearing on the grocer’s back doorstep. The invitations to the vacation homes came less often. They stopped inquiring about his work. They respected him for being a doctor but not as much as they had respected him for being a writer. He did not need them anymore.
The universe had wanted him to be a writer, he sees now, after the visit from the pimp. It had helped him in every way. He should never have quit. Starts writing again. Sees fewer patients to give himself the time. Soon he is seeing zero patients and only writing. Life bursts into colors. The days are vivid and every detail sticks. The thing calls to him from the sky again. Sells his vacation home. Family okay with it, because he is clearly changed and they like being around this new man more than that bitter, unhappy one. Writes a novel. The decades of distance from the craft have made him a much more considerate writer. His writing now communicates directly and urgently with the reader in ways it never did when he was younger. First publisher who sees the novel accepts it. When it is published the reading public is agog. This great writer appearing fully formed from nowhere. Writes another novel. It’s even better. Writes a third and it’s better yet still. Astounding, unprecedented: three great novels in a span of seven years. Buys back his vacation home. Invites his friends who have suffered financial catastrophes and divorces and cataclysmic injuries and have therefore lost their vacation homes they once invited him to and have lost much of what they once had when they were younger and are as poor now as he was at thirty-two. Respects them, helps them. Locates the grocery store. It is still there, owned by the same man, who is under pressure because a national chain opened across the street, it will drive him out of business. Needs a lot of money to save his business, but no one will give it to him, because he has never helped them even with small discounts in times of trouble. But he gives it to him, saves him. Throws in a little extra for all the food he owes him for, from two lifetimes ago. Hollywood is making a movie of his first novel and gives him money and it is a tremendous amount of money, and he gives it to the homeless shelter where he remembers his nurse (now his research assistant) saying that drunken pimp was living at the time he wandered in out of the blue and changed his life. The pimp is of course long gone by now. He wonders what became of him.
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sp; An American judge reads his third novel in translation. He has read them all but this one is his favorite. The judge is an immigration judge, in New York City. The novel is about a husband and wife who escape war and certain death in their home country by coming to America on falsified papers. They live in America for fifteen years, illegally, raising a son. They are good citizens and contribute to society, but are found out, go before a judge who has no choice, he must send them back. The judge reading the novel stays up all night after finishing the final page, sick with the injustice of it. If he were in that position he would find a way to let them stay. There is always a way. Should such a family ever come before him in that scenario, he vows, he will not send them back. He will find the one way. He will protect them.
4
THE GUARDIAN OF THE FLOCK:
PART I
THE EDUCATION OF BOO RADLEY
Lee cannot wait to get away from his father and the mountain and become a police officer in New York—but to get his inheritance, he must first at least attend college. His mother says he should go to the school in New York she went to and his father went to and everyone else in the family went to, it is an excellent school, very prestigious. His father does not understand the appeal and derides the city and the school, but these days he does not fight for anything, so he gives in and agrees to pay for it. Lee applies and his grades are not good and neither are his test scores or his essay—but they accept him.
As Lee heads out the door to the taxi waiting to take him to the little private airstrip, his father calls derisively from his recliner in the living room, —Have fun—and that is it for farewell. And he leaves the mountain, flies to New York. The occasion calls for his nice shirt, the one with a collar, and the newer of his jeans. On the plane he sits there peering out the window from beneath the low brim of his Remington cap, clutching his military-issue backpack on his lap. The flight attendant tries to take it but he will not let her. One of the two other passengers on that small private plane arranged by the family company is a bald man with a mustache wearing a suit. He seems amused by Lee. He leans across the aisle.
—First time to New York, Lee?
Lee says nothing. How does he know his name?
—Don’t be nervous. Nothing to be scared of. I’ve lived there all my life and I’m still alive, aren’t I? He laughs, slaps Lee’s knee, stands up, goes to the restroom, and never comes out.
After a while the other passenger, a woman, goes to the door and knocks. There is no answer. She looks to Lee, who stands and comes over. He knocks on the door, calls, —Sir, sir. He tries the door. It is unlocked. He opens it. The man falls out, right on top of the lady’s fancy shoes. She apologizes to the man, kicks his body away, and hurries past Lee back to her seat. Lee stands there staring down at the man’s open eyes, his meaty face pulled back revealing small gray square teeth in his mouth. Lee cannot move. The flight attendant comes, pushes him out of the way, and performs CPR. She looks up at Lee with the man’s blood on her lips like she has been feeding on it.
—Gone, she says.
Lee’s legs give out and he collapses into the nearest seat.
—Help me with him, she says.
He can only shake his head no.
—Come on, get his feet.
Lee keeps shaking his head no, unable to speak. She sighs and drags him off herself to the rear of the plane. Lee has his hands over his eyes. Through the space between his fingers he watches the soles of the man’s shoes recede down the aisle.
He lands at another private airstrip somewhere in the middle of nowhere. An ambulance and a black car are waiting on the runway. He gets into the black car, and as it drives off he can see them loading the dead man into the ambulance. The driver asks how his flight was and Lee says, —That guy died on it. The man says, —Oh, and does not ask him any more questions.
He calls his father from the car to let him know he arrived okay and to tell him about the dead man, but his father does not answer, so he calls his mother, but it’s the middle of the night in Africa so she does not answer either. Gets to Manhattan, finds his dorm. Everybody is fancier and more sophisticated than he can ever hope to be. He drags his duffel across the floor of the lobby to check in with the girl with the clipboard. She towers over him. Her arms are the size of his thighs. Metal piercings all over her face. Purple hair. Behind her he sees two girls holding hands. Holding hands. In public. Like they are boy and girl. And nobody seeming to care.
The RA does not even ask how his flight was, but he tells her anyway. He tells her about the man dying and how Lee performed CPR on him but it was no use, and how he dragged the man off to the back of the plane and put a blanket over him, and how the flight attendant was breaking down but Lee helped keep her calm and hold it together. The RA stares back at Lee blankly until it is clear he is done talking, then says, voice flat, —Yikes, and gives him a name tag with his name spelled wrong. He asks her to point him to the nearest McDonald’s for dinner. —Ew, she says automatically.
He finds his room. His roommate has yet to arrive. Lee looks around at the white cinder block walls still dotted with bits of tape holding down the remnants of the previous occupants’ wall hangings. The old gray carpeting has other people’s stains still in it. He closes the door, locks it, takes off his backpack and places it on one of the beds, checks the door again to make sure it is locked, opens the backpack, and takes out the gun. It looks different here—smaller, older. Holding it in his hand makes it feel like his father himself is here, making a fool out of Lee. He has the sudden impulse to get rid of it, throw it out the window or bury it somewhere. The impulse is dispelled when there comes a knock on the door. Lee stuffs the gun under the bed’s mattress, unlocks the door, opens it a crack. It is a girl, Chinese or something. She is beautiful. He feels his face turn red.
—Dorm meet and greet downstairs. Come get to know your neighbors!
He says okay and she smiles and leaves, and he closes the door, plugs in his portable stereo, plays his favorite album. The music makes him feel normal, stable. Can she hear it? Does she like it? Does she like him? His heart sinks when his roommate arrives with about eight hundred of his closest relatives. He knows who he is. He has never met him before, but that doesn’t matter. Mr. Fake. He is a tall prep school jock named Garrett wearing a blazer, for crying out loud, and is tan with broad shoulders—no doubt from the crew team—and he has perfect white teeth he seems to want to show Lee first before showing him anything else. He hates this person.
—Great to meet you, Lee. Garrett cocks his head and gestures to the ceiling to signify the music. —This is hilarious, what is it?
Lee feels his face get red again. He turns off the stereo and sits on his bed as Garrett’s family trickles out, Garrett murmuring to them, —Ciao, ciao.
Then it is just the two of them. Lee watches Garrett looking at himself in the mirror, fixing his hair, obsessing over himself. It is quiet and awkward and Lee feels like that is somehow his fault, and Garrett is taking off the blazer and pulling down his pants and taking off his underwear and Lee looks away but not fast enough. Garrett says as he changes, as if he’s not standing there bare-assed in front of another guy, —You going to that thing downstairs?
—No, Lee says.
—Why not? Might be girls there, you know? That one organizing it sure will be. You see her? That Asian one? Tits are kind of small, but she’s cute.
Lee recoils, offended. —I got things to do around here.
—Like what?
Lee thinks it’s none of Garrett’s business and almost tells him so, but instead mumbles about unpacking and setting up his meal plan.
—Okay, well, if you change your mind, Garrett says. He clicks his tongue twice and leaves.
When he has gone, Lee sits on the bed staring at his stereo, hating it, and at Garrett’s suitcase where it stands against the wall. He wants to drag it out into the hallway and leave it there. He tries his father again. Still no answer. He thinks about his mother.
He hears fathers’ voices and mothers’ voices out in the hall and wishes they were his father’s and his mother’s. He lies on the bed, atop the gun, lies there listening to everybody. Waves of laughter and clapping rise up to his window from the courtyard below. Nobody knows you here, he tells himself. He sits up. He goes downstairs.
In the hall and stairwell he passes other students and their parents. The daughters look as old as mothers and the mothers look as young as daughters. The sons are all the same as Garrett. Everyone is browned and slim after a summer spent on quiet white beaches. —Howdy, Lee says softly to them. They glance at him, not sure if he has spoken, surprised to see a guy like him here at this renowned institution, sensing as well as he does that he does not belong here. He tugs at his nice shirt, his good jeans. Suddenly they feel so tight and rotten. Like he is wearing the clothes of a corpse. He can hardly breathe in them.
Outside he follows the hooting and hollering, finds a small crowd of people around the corner standing between his dorm tower and the neighboring one, fellow students including Garrett and the girl who invited him all gathered around a stepladder. A guy is climbing it, laughing nervously. The group chants something Lee cannot make out. The guys stands atop the ladder, turns so his back is to the group. The guy spreads his arms out and addresses the sky, his voice breaking, —My name is Steve? And I hate my father! The group cheers and chants, —Steve! Steve! Steve! and he sticks his tongue out of his mouth and screws up his face, leans back off the ladder, into the air, and drops. Before he can crack his skull and die, the group puts its hands up and catches him, eases him to the ground on his feet and high-five him, hug him.
The girl says, —Who’s next? Come on, you guys, don’t be scared!
No one is stepping up. Lee makes eye contact with her and puts his hand up and she smiles, and Lee’s feet are heavy but he forces them to move forward. The crowd parts to make way. Lee is buzzing. Everybody watching him, watching him. Garrett drapes an arm over his shoulder like they are the best of bosom buddies and guides him to the ladder. —Know what to do? Just climb up, tell everybody who you are, then say a secret and fall.