by James Sallis
"Must have been another Lew Griffin."
"Yeah. Yeah, that's what I said."
I shut the door behind him and turned up the music again. Bach, a prelude and fugue, Wanda Landowska at her monster harpsichord, plucking the world back into order.
Visitors gone, Bat shot down the stairs and sat mewing, waiting impatiently for me to provide an appropriate lap. No question which Lew Griffin he wanted.
The one that was here.
7
WHAT I WAS doing was counting, reduced by circumstance (liberals would say) from loftier aspirations—social conscience, the humanities, the pursuit of literature—to simple mathematics.
There were 3 of them. I'd been hit 9 times, kicked 4.1 had 1 loose tooth. It was 1 o'clock. This was, would have been, my 3 stop.
I was also remembering: my mind in defense breaking free, floating above it all, recalling all those other times. Thinking that this sort of thing never happened to Proust, never sullied his remembrances. Give me a madeleine any day.
Maybe the things that happen to us are things we make happen, things we somehow attract.
Maybe all failures are failures of will.
Maybe I ought to stop getting my butt kicked.
Not that I held it against them personally. Fifty-year-old guy wearing a tie and coat, guy no one ever saw before, looks like a cop but he's not or he'd be flashing ID, shows up in the neighborhood asking questions. What else he gonna be but bad news, a repo man, skip chaser, collector of some kind? Sure as hell ain't from the IRS. And looks like he might have a few dollars on him, weighing him down? Civic-minded young brothel's just naturally gonna help the man out, provide him some answers. Natural as rain.
But enough's enough.
It was a trick, a technique, I hadn't had occasion to use in years. Like all technique, at first it happened instinctively. Only later did I ask myself just what was occurring and how. Then I broke it down, from initial impulse or stimulus to response and final result, prodding at disjointed segments, plotting the curve. Building a grammar. It had to be reproducible.
You reach down and find the rage, the frustration, defeat and despair, find that black pool just beneath the world's surface that never goes away. You find it, you bring it up, you use it. For a while it takes you over. You become its vehicle. What voodoo practitioners call a horse.
I turned onto my back, grunted with pain, gasped and held my breath. They all pulled back a moment, and when the one at my feet leaned in for a closer look, I kicked him between the legs. Then spun on my back and took another's legs out from under him as he was looking up to see what happened to his man. That left one standing—but only till I'd slammed my foot straight into the side of his knee. The others would get up, in time. He wouldn't. The second guy was already trying to get up. I gave the side of his head a light kick.
Afterwards, this strange serenity comes over you. The vessel's emptied, no more fright-or-fiight, but adrenaline's still got your senses racked up high. Everything's incredibly sharp, clear, intense. The world shimmers. You hear breathing from an upstairs apartment, a birdsong blocks away. You see patterns of sunlight in the air around you. You hear a cat moving, crouched down low, against the wall. Sirens screaming miles away in the CBD. Boat horns on the river.
That's how it was as I walked back up through the Marigny and Quarter towards Canal, senses ratcheting down like a car on a jack. In others' faces I saw the ordinary world returning. On a clock's face I saw it was almost two.
Morning had been narrative oatmeal: all expository lumps. I'd got home from the hospital planning on a few hours' sleep before I dropped by the school to patch things up and took another shot at tracking down Shon Delany. Never in my life had I wanted a drink more. I settled for coffee. No way caffeine was going to keep me awake. I'd have slept through the Inquisition.
But I only slept through thirty minutes. Fumbling for the phone. Seeing my coffee cup, still full, on the floor by the bed.
I'd been promising myself for some time that I was going to go buy furniture, a bureau or two maybe, bookshelves, some kind of table for beside the bed. A lifetime spent tucking belongings underarm and moving on leaves odd habits. I'd lived here now for over ten years. Chances were fair I'd stay awhile.
"Lew?"
I realized I hadn't said anything. I'd just picked up the phone and lay there with it to my ear, listening.
"Mmmmhn."
Much better. Civility rears its shaggy head.
"Want me to call back?"
"You at work?"
"Yeah. City's funny that way, likes me to show up on a more or less regular basis."
"Give me five minutes."
"They're yours."
I drank the cold, grayish coffee, splashed water on my face and stood at the window for a couple of minutes watching the world hunch its shoulders towards another day. Since it was Thursday, garbage was set out near the street for collection. A woman in a motorized wheelchair rolled from can to can, combing through each, pulling out select items that she dropped in a canvas bag strapped to the back of the chair.
Don, wonder of wonders, was actually at his desk and answered when I called back.
"Must be a slow day."
"Aren't they all. I just said the hell with it, I'm taking a break. Sit here and watch the goddamn storm go on happening."
"They still tiying to kill everybody in the city?"
New Orleans had clocked 421 murders for the year thus far. Even the folk out in Jefferson Parish were getting concerned, as violence spilled towards their precious suburbs. I kept expecting them to announce any day that they were putting up a wall.
Don grunted. "This rate, it'll take them what, ten, twelve years till no one's left? Hang on, Lew." He spoke brusquely to someone, then was back. "Wanted to let you know nothing's come in on the prints or photo. Not that I expected anything, this soon." His voice rose suddenly. "You want to wait a fucking minute? What, you think this is my lunch, I'm eating the fucking phone? No. 7*11find you.
"You still there, Lew?"
"Yeswr."
"Cute. Okay, I talked to the officer who took the call, but he couldn't tell me much of anything we don't already have. Call came in, nine-one-one, at nine-fourteen, from the driver of the sanitation truck. No real evidence of struggle—"
"How could you tell, our alleys."
"Right. Obvious that the truck hadn't been the first thing after him that night, though. No evidence that he, or anyone else, was living in the alley. Could have just wandered in there, or been dropped there afterwards. No sign of personal property or belongings, aside from what he had on him. I've got a copy of the report here for you, you want it."
"Thanks, Don."
"No problem. How'd it go at the hospital?"
Long and shallow. The man stuck resolutely to his story. He was Lewis Griffin, a novelist who wrote about what it was like on the streets, about the city's real, subterranean life. Self-taught A primitive. Working on a new one now. He'd done three chapters just that morning.
You mean yesterday morning, I said.
Whatever. He'dfixed himself a light lunch, some leftover roast pork with Creole mustard on pumpernickel. Had a couple of pickles and a Corona with it. Then he'd gone out for his usual afternoon walk and somebody must have jumped him, because that was all he remembered.
I asked him where he lived.
Uptown.
Been there long?
Ten, twelve years. He told me about LaVerne, how they'd once lived there together, but that was a long time ago. Some days everything seems a long time ago, he said.
I asked him to tell me about his books.
You haven't read them, then?
I'm afraid not.
He shook his head, sadly. Not many people have, I guess. But this new one could change all that.
He had some of the titles right, almost everything else, including the plot of The Old Man, dead wrong.
You wouldn't happen to have any paper, would you? he
asked as Bailey and I were leaving. Thought I might take advantage of this, try to get some work done on the new book while I'm here.
I said I thought that was a good idea. Gave him the notebook and pen I always carried.
When I finishedtelling him about it, Walsh was silent.
"Damn, Lew," he finally said. "That's just plain creepy, any way you look at it."
I told him it definitely was, and he said he'd get back to me as soon as anything came in on the prints or photo.
I was lying on the bed, dipping in and out of dreams and thinking how any minute I was going to get up and put on coffee or maybe start a new career as a test pilot, when the phone rang again. Richard Garces, to tell me that, while the first responses to his request for information on the network were coming in, nothing thus far seemed to merit a closer look. I repeated my update on the hospital situation. He was appropriately incredulous.
"I have that list of local missions and community service centers you asked for. I don't suppose it's possible for me to just zap this over to you by modem."
"Not if you want it to get here."
"And still no fax, right?"
"Nope."
"Wouldn't you know it. And here I am fresh out of carrier pigeons."
"I'll swing by, pick it up."
After I'd done so, myfirst stop was on the stub end of Dryades, just before Howard breaks everything off into downtown streets. Forty years ago the building had probably been one of the big chain stores, a Montgomery Ward, a Sears; now, painted bright blue, it was the New Orleans Mission. Not without difficulty I found someone who finally admitted that well, yes, he did kind of look after things.
"You live here, then?"
He nodded. The only hair he still had was two thin patches, a couple of inches wide, above his ears. These hadn't been cut in recent memory and looked like limp wings. "Room downstairs, in the back, too small for much else. I sweep the place, clean toilets, lock up at night. They give me the room and meals."
I asked if the mission passed out clothes.
"Sure do, when we have 'em. Ever' so often a bunch of stuff'll turn up that somebody's give us. Don't never last long, though. Goes real quick. And then it's likely to be a spell before any more comes our way."
I asked about books.
"We got a few. Got 'em when the flea market up the street shut down, I think, year or so back. Can't say anybody's ever had much interest. They're stacked up down by my room still. Bible's 'bout the only thing anyone 'round here ever reads."
I showed him a picture of David and a copy of the one Don took of the patient claiming to be me and asked if he remembered seeing either of these men. He shook his head and, in exchange for a twenty, agreed to show me around.
Next stop was the warehouse district, until recently a desolate region of abandoned, boarded-up buildings and shattered sidewalks, now quickly filling with art galleries and upscale apartments built into the old hulls. The mission had no name beyond Gold Dew worked into the bricks above the doors, for the beer long ago brewed here.
A peculiarly small man sat at a desk to match in what was once the building's lobby. He wore a brown plaid suit with a bright yellow rayon shirt and blue knit tie that, from the look of the knot, never got untied.
"Hep you?"
I introduced myself and was telling him why I was there, when he interrupted.
"Look, you don't mind my saying, we got two int'rests, them that needs hep and those that's got somethin' for us to hep with. You dressed too good for the first, and 'less I'm mistaken I don't see you carryin' thing one. Have a nice day." He looked behind me. "Next"
No one there, of course.
Putting my hands on the desk, I leaned over him. If rain had broken out among the ceiling's high struts and girders, he'd have stayed dry.
He looked up, thought about it, and decided he might have time to hep me after all.
But he couldn't remember ever seeing either of those two. Couldn't be sure, of course, so many coming and going every day, so many that just needed a meal, a warm coat or a pair of shoes that didn't leak too bad.
I knew: none of them amounting to much more than their need.
We touched base on clothing and books, how the place operated, hours and occupancy, records. He'd think about it, get back to me should something come to mind. In the meantime maybe I had a dollar or two? Not for himself, mind you.
I gave him two twenties and stepped out onto the street. This part of town, it could still be 1940. The ancient brick buildings fill whole blocks, shut off view of the rest of the city: downtown's high-rise hotels, the Superdome. Trucks delivering foodstuffs, bread, beer, liquor and cleaning supplies thunder by. There's only the sky you see directly above you, this heavy, rumbling commerce, an occasional glimpse (high between buildings as you cross a street) of the twin-span bridge vaulting the river to Gretna and Algiers.
I crossed Canal, which not too many years ago was itself on the way to becoming a wasteland, and stopped at the Cafe* du Monde for what remains the best cup of coffee in a coffee-crazed city.
The usual gaggle of tourists, dark-eyed locals and Quarter freaks, all in ill-fitting clothes. Tabletops and floor sticky as ever from powdered sugar. Cringeful out-of-tune calliope music from behind the levee, one of the cruise ships there.
A Swamp Tours van stopped out front to retrieve dropped-off clients, backing up traffic for blocks. Across by Jackson Square, carriage mules shrugged shoulders in their livery, flicked tails and snorted. A young man bantered at passersby on the sidewalk outside, periodically breaking off to perform solo versions of a cappella hits.
I had told myself that I wouldn't spend more than half the day trying to track down Lew Griffi. Then I'd get on with what I should be doing: looking for Shon Delany. Though really I shouldn't be doing either. I should be sitting at home getting notes together for my classes, possibly taking another look at the pages I'd done for what might be (increasingly I thought of it as such) a new book. I asked the woman at the next table if she had the time. For what? she said, then laughed and told me. Almost eleven. Okay. Thirty, forty minutes to walk there, another twenty to have a look around, I'd give myself that. Say one o'clock at the latest. Then I'd get back uptown, stop hunting snipe.
The next mission on my list lay well beyond the Quarter, on Der-bigny out near Elysian Fields, a formidable hike. I had another cup of coffee to fortify myself.
They didn't know it, neither did I, but three guys hanging out at a comer store same as every day, wearing oversize jeans and backwards baseball caps, were waiting for me out there, along with a brushup on my arithmetic.
That's how life happens: angles, sharp turns, snags. Never what we expect. Never the stories we tell ourselves ahead of time. So we're always having to make up new ones.
8
I COULD HEAR Bat chiding me from just inside as I unlocked the door. Obviously much was amiss. I was a great disappointment to him.
One morning maybe six years before, he had shown up on Clare Fellman's screen door, claws anchored in the mesh, hanging there. She shooed him down and away but he kept coming back, till finallyshe let him in. He was little more than a kitten then, mostly skin and bone, with just these huge ears sticking straight up—which was how he got the name.
I'd kind of showed up on Clare's doorstep, too. And when I wouldn't go away, she let me stay.
We'd had a little over a year together, fourteen months almost to the day. With Clare, I'd been able for the firsttime to say things that, before, I'd always waited too long, too late, to say.
Then one night I came in and found her lying on the couch.
The night before, we'd attended a performance of the Kumbuka African Drum & Dance Collective at Loyola's Roussel Hall. Women meet to go about their daily work, scrubbing clothes, preparing food. One stays behind when night begins to fall and the others depart. Shortly she is set upon by a faceless demon. The others returnand findher body. Their wailing and lamentations weave together into a har
d rhythm that's finally picked up, almost unheard at first, by drums offstage. The women begin to dance as, slowly, the drummers come into sight—as together, ever more frantic, they drum and dance the woman back to life.
In the time we'd been together, Clare had discovered a flair for writing, and an unsuspected joy in it. The words that came to her so reluctantly, so haltingly, when she spoke, poured out in a flowwhen she wrote. She had started off writing op-ed pieces; soon she was doing reviews for local alternative papers.
I knew she was supposed to write up last night's performance and that it was due at The Griot's office by six. Furthermore, this was Wednesday, her early day at school, so she'd been home since noon. But the only thing on the computer screen was the ensemble's name, below that the date and time of performance. Two spaces down, indented, the cursor blinked. A stack of students' papers sat untouched on the kitchen table where she usually worked.
I just don't feel very good, she told me when I asked what was wrong.
I . . . feel... really bad . . . Lew... you know... ?
I'd been with her so long that I no longer noticed the pauses, the gropings, the way she drew lines around a word and waited for it to settle in place.
Come on, we're going to Touro, I told her.
Somehow I even managed to drive her car there. Because it was specially outfitted, with brake, gearshift and accelerator on the steering column, I'd never tried before.
In ER I raised enough hell to get her seen immediately. Neither the residents nor the attendings I insisted upon their calling in could find anything wrong. They suggested, nonetheless, that Clare remain overnight for observation.
I'd gone home to pick up a few things for her, pajamas and robe, toothbrush, underwear, makeup, her purse. Back in thirty minutes, I told her.
I knew something was wrong the minute I stepped inside the ER doors. People were rushing into Clare's room from all over.
Another cerebral aneurysm, I was told minutes later. Like the one that hit her when she was twenty-two, the one she wasn't supposed to survive, that scrambled her speech and caused her to have to learn all over again how to stand, walk, reach for things, grasp them.