When the bus hit a huge pothole, Uli whacked his head against the seat in front of him. The ensuing headache compelled him to sprawl out over two seats and before long he was asleep. Immediately he returned to his interrupted dream.
The mother and son had almost escaped when the last of the marauders, the older man with an eyepatch and walking stick, noticed them passing by. As though inspecting a farm animal, he cupped one of the young mother’s exposed breasts in his hand. She kept moving as though nothing had happened. He grabbed her thick black hair, twisted it tightly around his large hand, and yanked her away from the group. Her crying son clutched her dress, refusing to let go. An older woman protested forlornly, but when the eyepatched man cursed at her, she just looked down and kept walking. The young boy started furiously kicking and slapping the old man with the eyepatch. Without any indication of anger, the guy released the mother and stepped away as though to let them pass. Then, as the two proceeded onwards, he lifted his heavy walking stick and brought it squarely down on the top of the boy’s skull. The child flopped forward, convulsing and gushing blood, and his mother slumped next to his small body. The man with the eyepatch calmly coiled the woman’s long beautiful hair in his hand like rope and led her back up to join the rest of his band behind the pile of boulders.
The last soldier, an older man whose fat head swelled out of his tight helmet, brought up the rear of the prisoners and cursed. As he stepped around the fallen elderly bodies—still alive, yet too injured to keep walking—he shouted angrily at the attackers. For a moment, Uli thought he was condemning the violent assault, but quickly realized why the soldier was outraged: Since the marauders hadn’t slaughtered or taken all the women, he now had to march them into the endless expanse of burning desert.
Suddenly Uli’s vision changed. Someone was holding his arms and legs down. A slender pair of hands were unzipping his pants, reaching into his underwear. Far from erotic, the hands were stabbing a sharp needle into his groin.
An intense pain shot through his body, causing him to leap to his feet and scream. Covered in sweat, still on the bus, Uli felt embarrassed. Yet something was indeed pressing into his groin. Reaching into his pants, Uli found that his missing roll of food stamps had somehow slipped through a hole in his pocket and gotten caught in his underwear.
“Sorry,” he said to no one in particular.
Aside from the weak bus headlights, the streets were pitch black. It had to be at least an hour later. The bus was nearly empty. The working streetlights were far and few. The sporadic buildings in this section of the reservation were mostly industrial warehouses with hurricane fences. There were no other cars or people around. Uli figured they were somewhere in outer Queens. As they rolled past blocks of darkness, haphazard piles of garbage and vandalized solarcars littered the streets.
Soon the road narrowed into a tight single lane as it hugged a concrete retaining wall that went on for at least a mile. When the road lifted above the height of the wall, Uli saw a large enclosed reservoir with a sign that read, Jamaica Bay.
Slowly, vaguely, through the darkness, Uli recognized this moonlit basin from a few days earlier. He had come full circle. He heard a large cargo plane overhead, which reminded him that he was near JFK Airport. At a lonely intersection in a neighborhood that the driver identified as Rosedale, Queens, the bus came to a tired halt, the last stop.
The driver threw open the door and called out, “Pud Pullers. Time for everyone to get rubbed off!”
Looking out the window, Uli saw the four large brownish buildings before him. He remembered seeing them from the far end of Jamaica Bay on the first day he had arrived.
“Hey, this guy’s not moving,” an elderly passenger said, referring to the wounded blue shirt. The guy had flopped sideways and was dripping and drooling into a pool of blood below him. Uli helped the driver carry the street fighter’s body off the bus.
Some strange girl who was waiting outside came over as they laid the dead Crapper’s body on the sidewalk. She took rosary beads from around her neck, dropped to her knees, and started praying: “Jesus, son of Yahweh! This man hath fought in the army of Satan. For him it is too late. Please burn his body for all eternity like the many fetuses he aborted and the countless children and virgins he doubtlessly sodomized. Amen.”
Uli realized immediately that it was the zealous Shub campaigner who had threatened him when Oric was detained. Everyone walked away from the dead man on the sidewalk.
“You’re just going to leave him here?” asked Uli.
“Someone will find him before the dogs do,” the driver assured him. “The local gangcops get a reward every time they bring in a body.”
The driver walked around to the rear of the bus, where he pulled out a lengthy orange extension cord and plugged it into an outlet at the base of a streetlight. It was time for a recharge. He returned to his seat and pulled the visor of his hat over his eyes, instantly falling asleep. Uli followed the small crowd heading toward the complex of buildings.
At the doorway, a plaque read, Pure-ile Plurality: How the Other Half Should Live. A broad walkway led into a narrow courtyard in front of a large well-lit lobby. Only through this central building could one gain access to the overpasses leading to the three neighboring warehouses.
Roughly a dozen women holding infants or pushing strollers dashed past Uli, presumably to catch the bus. Uli thought perhaps he had been misinformed about the EGGS epidemic.
One straggling mother, noticing his eagerness to glance at her child’s face, smiled proudly. She pulled back a small comforter, revealing a shivering Chihuahua dressed in swaddling clothes. Its moist eyes blinked delicately.
“Dat’s mi bebe,” she cooed.
“But it’s—”
“I think I might owe you an apology,” he heard from behind. It was the self-righteous campaigner who had just condemned the lost soul of the dead soldier.
“Sorry?”
“It wasn’t very Christian of me, scalding your poor feeble-minded friend,” she said. “I know I should be more forgiving, but you have to understand that decent people have suffered so much.” Turning to the mother, who was patiently waiting for her dog baby to be adored, the young zealot said, “You better hurry, Consuela. The bus back to Manhattan is almost recharged.”
“Much gracias,” she said, then dashed off with her pup to the bus.
“May I ask what it is you’re doing here?” the zealot said to Uli.
“Actually, I was hoping to volunteer.”
“Great, where you coming from?”
“I just arrived from Staten Island.”
“Let’s go, I’ll show you the way.”
The young campaigner introduced herself as Deer Flare. As she led Uli inside, she softly explained, “These ladies are here for treatment. You’ve got to be very careful.”
“Careful how?”
“Since the EGGS epidemic, many women have been traumatized about being reproductively challenged. The man in charge here, Rolland Siftwelt, has set up a variety of workshops to help them cope with their infertility. He’s also established these furry surrogates.”
A security guard at the central building asked Uli to pass through a metal detector and then took his fingerprints. When Uli turned up without any kind of record at all, the guard stopped him.
“It’s okay,” Deer assured the man. “I’ll vouch for him. Mr. Siftwelt wants to see him.”
On the second floor, she silently led him down a linoleum-tiled hallway, up a short stack of steps, and through a large outer reception area with a middle-aged secretary stationed in front of a tall set of cloudy glass double doors.
“Joane, could you tell Mr. Siftwelt that a new arrival is here?” Deer said politely. Looking at her watch, she added, “Oh gosh, I’m late for a strategy meeting. I’ll see you later.” She abruptly ran off.
“Name?” the frumpy secretary asked Uli.
“Huey, I think.”
The secretary suggested he take
a seat. Looking over at a magazine rack, Uli saw a number of illustrated pamphlets printed on cheap grainy paper. One with a large yellow oval on it was entitled, Making Lemons out of Lemonade. Another pleaded, Join the Gang o’ God! Inside was a cartoon of a robust, happy creature and a puny, gloomy figure. The big fellow was pointing to a multilayered cake. Underneath, in a small font, it said, When Unhappy—EAT!
The intercom buzzed. The secretary smiled and nodded for Uli to go inside—Rolland Siftwelt was ready for him. Uli entered his office, but the chairman of P.P. was nowhere to be seen. A wide variety of trinkets and snow globes filled his shelves. Posted behind Siftwelt’s big desk was a large map of New York, Nevada, divided up by red and blue borders.
Uli heard a flush, then a red-faced man with a muscular chest and huge biceps burst through a small side door that had to be his private bathroom.
“The name’s Rolland Siftwelt.” He gave Uli a powerful handshake and talked in a low, confiding voice: “Remember what New York City was like before we were attacked?”
“I’m suffering from acute memory loss, so … no.”
“It was very, very dangerous. Divided by gangs and drug dealers, the homeless roamed the streets and the average inner-city resident was incarcerated at least once before the age of twenty-five. Teen pregnancies boomed and life-expectancy dropped.”
“Don’t all those things still exist here?”
“We do have some drugs and two gangs, but there are fewer bullets and teens with every passing day.”
Siftwelt’s phone rang and he pardoned himself to answer it. He listened for a moment with a pinched expression on his face, then shouted, “There’s a big difference between a three-foot prototype and one designed to carry people! I’ve got someone in my office.” He slammed the phone down, took a moment to recompose himself, and asked, “Ever heard of Jack Wilson?”
“Yeah, they renamed Flatbush Avenue after him,” Uli said.
“He vanished a number of years ago. Rumor has it he was killed by one of his lieutenants and his body was dumped in the desert. But lately a crazy new rumor has been surfacing—that he learned to fly.”
“He could fly?”
“A plane.”
“You mean … an airplane? He built an airplane?”
“It’s absolutely ludicrous, but the rumor has all these kite flyers thinking they can be the next Wilbur and Orville Wright.”
“How’d the rumor get started?” Uli asked hopefully.
“Someone supposedly found a miniature prototype. But guess what: I can make a prototype by folding a sheet of paper.” Instantly changing the topic, Siftwelt leaned forward in his chair. “Before we go any further, let me fill you in a bit on what we’re about. We started out as a religious mission that went door to door in many of the inner cities of this great country.”
“Does that mean—”
“If you let me just make my pitch, I think it’ll answer all your questions.” Uli smiled and Siftwelt resumed. “For starters, we have a big dorm that most workers live in. Novices usually start with outreach. We pair them up and send them into tough neighborhoods, where they try to spread the word of a good, healthy, violence-free, community-building lifestyle. As well as the value of getting educated.”
“You know, there’s a rumor that the Piggers run P.P.”
“Yes, and one that P.P. runs the Piggers.”
“So it’s false?”
“Let me put it this way: Even when the Crappers were in power, I was friends with Mayor Will just as I am with Shub. Could I get either man to do as I say? No.”
“Are you a religious organization?”
“Everything’s religious,” the man replied.
Before Uli could ask any further questions, a cute thin woman with a box-shaped head and a crisp brown tan entered.
“This is Ernestina Eric,” Siftwelt introduced. “And this is our newest member, Huey. Ernestina is the supervisor for Brooklyn South.” Turning to her, he added, “Huey is going to be working with you. Would you mind giving him a tour and bringing him up to speed?”
“Sure.” Instead of taking a seat, she led him out the door. Uli thanked Siftwelt as he exited the office.
“This job is mainly old-fashioned street-corner work,” Ernestina said. “We have to try to energize a listless people. It’s late. Why don’t you get settled? We’ll talk more over dinner.”
Joane, the executive secretary, instructed Uli to fill out a batch of forms. While he did so, she typed him a temporary ID and mentioned other perks such as a free haircut and suit, both available in the basement. She concluded by giving him a dorm key to a room in Building 4.
He thanked her and headed downstairs, where he tried to see the tailor. A sign on the door indicated he had missed his chance for the day. In the next room over, a bald man was sitting in an empty barber’s chair reading a copy of The Godfather by Mario Puzo. Uli approached him and asked if he could get a quick haircut. “I’d like a little taken off the sides, but leave the top and sideburns intact.”
“Sure,” the barber replied. Uli took a seat and had a large white bib buttoned around his shirt collar. Looking straight ahead, Uli noticed a photo of Vice President Spiro Agnew staring back at him in place of a mirror. He sat for ten nervous minutes as the barber snipped away. Then, without asking, the man applied hot lather to his face and gave Uli an extremely close shave with a straight edge razor. He padded him down with talcum powder and brushed off all the snipped hair.
“Thanks,” Uli said.
The guy nodded. When Uli caught a glimpse of himself in a passing window, he realized why the barber had no mirrors. The old bastard had given him a crew cut. Uli ran his hand over his quarter-inch of bristle and sighed. For an instant, he remembered being in boot camp.
Uli got directions to the cafeteria, which was located in Building 3. It was a large, harshly illuminated area lined with low tables and fold-out benches. The cashier at the entrance asked to see his ID and slowly copied the name Huey onto her clipboard.
Dinner that night was a choice of smoked hocks or meatloaf. There was also a selection of green vegetables, yellow vegetables, and white starches. He moved his tray along a shiny metal counter and inspected the various steamer pans through a glass case. He picked the hocks, potatoes, broccoli, soda water, and a bun. Most of those present were men missing at least one limb. They seemed to have either just completed their day shifts or were coming on for the night shift. By the time Uli took a seat, he was starving.
The vegetables were mush that seemed to undergo a cellular breakdown as soon as they were taken out of their watery solvent. The hocks, which Uli strongly suspected to be reshaped Spam, retained some kind of stringy texture, perhaps protected by the grease, but they only tasted like the salt and pepper he shook on them. The stale bun and flat soda water were the highlights of the meal.
After downing what he could, Uli sat with his eyes closed and tried not to throw up. When he heard footsteps approaching, he glanced up to find Ernestina Eric standing before him with a few battered books.
“You’re literate, aren’t you?” He nodded yes. “I located some material about this place that might be helpful.”
“Thanks.” Uli noticed a film of dust on the cover of the top volume.
“Most people here are nonliterate,” she said, taking a seat across from him. She flipped through one book entitled, T.R.C.N.Y. Inside the title was spelled out: Temporary Rescue City of New York. Copyright 1971 by the U.S. Army.
“This book is just about the New York contingent. It doesn’t really include other protectees who wound up here over the years.”
“Which other protectees?”
“Earthquake and hurricane victims. Some time ago, for instance, three people from the Love Canal area arrived. People who couldn’t find perma-temp shelter anywhere else.”
As Uli flipped through the pages, he glimpsed facts, figures, pie charts, and graphs on the New Yorkers shipped here ten years earlier. Nearly a million peo
ple had initially been brought in from the city. They comprised a little less than one-eighth of all New Yorkers, mostly from the poorest rung of the city.
Judging by a shorter document entitled, S.D.P., or Supplemental Detainee Profile—which had been issued by the Department of the Interior, copyright 1975—over the course of the next three years the core purpose of the place seemed to have shifted from a rescue location to a detention center. A hundred and fifty thousand people from around the country with questionable criminal or political backgrounds had been relocated here. Most of them had higher levels of education.
“How many doctors are there on the reservation?” Uli asked, flipping through the pages.
“Alternate Service was responsible for bringing in all the trained professionals, but they were only able to enlist about twenty-five doctors. That was ten years ago, and ten have been killed or died, so now only fifteen are still active. The good news is that a lot of residents died as well. If you’re unfortunate enough to wind up in the hospital and you don’t die while waiting for treatment, you’ll probably be seen to by a nurse or P.A. They do most of the work.”
“And what exactly will I be doing here?”
“We have a budding educational system. All literates are automatically assigned to go through various parts of south Brooklyn and try to register people in our new school. We’ll give you cartoon brochures for the nonliterates.”
“What’s the attendance now?”
“We have about fifty people currently enrolled.”
“Sounds easy enough.”
“If you can register one person per week, you’ll be way ahead of the curve.”
The Swing Voter of Staten Island Page 14