Big Machine

by Victor Lavalle

  Lake nodded and drove deeper into the hushed woods.

  6

  “WAKE UP, Mr. Rice.”

  What had I been dreaming of? I had a picture of my older sister, Daphne, in my mind. From when we were children. She protected me when I was still too young to handle myself. I suppose that’s why I’d been dreaming of her. Because I wasn’t so sure I could handle myself now. Would’ve been nice to ring her up, but she stayed all the way out in Long Island, and I doubted my prepaid TracFone could reach that far.

  “We’re here, Ricky.”

  Lake had already parked. He stepped out of the truck, came around to my side, and grabbed the handle, but it was locked. He fussed with the handle for another moment before he realized, and I just watched him in a kind of daze. Then he leaned close to the glass, his enormous face filling the window, the hair of his beard flattened like a sample on a slide.

  “Please open up,” he said quietly. “I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”

  He let go of the door and waited for me to do it myself. I opened the door and got out.

  We were in front of a small wooden cabin, as dark inside as the sky above. I couldn’t even make out the full dimensions, only the outline against the snow behind it.

  Lake pointed at it. “This is yours, Ricky.”

  “I own it?”

  “Sure,” he said. “And why don’t we give you a jet plane too?”

  Wind blew over the pickup truck, over the cabin, over Lake and me.

  Lake rubbed his face with one gloved hand. “This is yours as long as you decide to stay.”

  “What if I want to leave tomorrow?”

  “Then we won’t monogram your doormat.”

  “There’s a doormat?”

  “It’s a house, isn’t it?”

  And not the only one either. There were a few more lined up near mine. Six cabins, maybe more, in a cul-de-sac. A half circle of homes. Most were dark, but one had lights on.

  “Most of the others are sleeping,” Lake said.

  The idea that there were other people filled me with both relief and sorrow. Nice to know I wasn’t being thrown into an isolation tank, but maybe they’d been invited here just like me. Mysterious note, one-way ticket. Maybe I wasn’t being singled out. This is the part that brought a little sorrow. How embarrassing. To be a grown man who still wishes the world would tell him he’s special.

  “What is this place, Lake?”

  “We’re in a part of Vermont called the Northeast Kingdom.”

  I waved at the cabins. “I mean all this. Who invited me here? Who do you work for?”

  Lake turned to the pickup while I took a step toward my cabin. Mine. Imagine that. I still couldn’t. I’d been living in this one-room efficiency, sharing a bathroom with four sour men. I expected the cabin to disappear as soon as I touched the door handle. An illusion. A trick. A game. Can you guess that I’m a bit of a skeptic? Doubt has a long history with me.

  Lake returned with my duffel bag. Hanging from his index finger, it looked as small as a fanny pack. “This is the Washburn Library.”

  I reached the steps that led up to my cabin, just a few. I touched the wooden door. A brass number hung on the front: 9.

  “This is a library?”

  Lake set the bag down by my feet, went into his coat pocket, and gave me a set of keys. He got into the truck, started it, rolled down his window. All this while I looked at the keys in my cold hand. Lake shouted over the wind.

  “Turn around!”

  He drove away. Clearing my view.

  There was the Washburn Library.

  An enormous building. One long flat slab of sandstone set down in some of the most inhospitable sod America has to offer. It looked as long as a football field, but because of the snow, the low building was nearly buried. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t seen it right away. Maybe I hadn’t been prepared. Or willing. Now I saw it. The interior lights smoldered, and the Library glowed bleakly in the great woods. It looked like God’s gravestone.

  7

  YOU’D THINK I’D SLEEP for twenty-four hours after that long trip, but I only passed out for five. Awake by eleven, I strolled around my cabin as if its four rooms made it a manor. Bedroom, living room, bathroom, and kitchen. I felt pretty giddy about each one. Nothing too fancy. There weren’t mink blankets or platinum faucets or whatever the wealthy buy with their loot. Instead, the cabin felt like a cozy place you rent for a romantic weekend. Since I was alone, that meant lavishing my affections on me. I began by making brunch. The fridge had been stocked.

  I stood in the kitchen beating eggs in a bowl while the bread browned in the toaster. I turned on a small radio in the living room. Found a station that played classical music. Now, I have to admit, the only thing I know about classical music is that it doesn’t have a beat, but strings and horns seemed like the proper accompaniment for my first morning. They helped to calm me down. My first instinct was to run outside screaming my questions to the wind, but I didn’t want to make an ass of myself. No one respects a panicked man. So instead I made brunch to the sounds of calming music. Like I’d become cool simply by acting that way.

  I dropped the eggs into the frying pan, and they sizzled in concert with the piccolo playing in the living room. Then, as I went to get some orange juice from the fridge, I saw this brother breaking into my house.

  How should I describe him? I’ll be nice. He was portly. A portly black dude, going bald at the top, lifted my living room window and climbed inside, headfirst. The kitchen was adjacent to the living room, so I could watch him even though he hadn’t yet seen me. The classical music almost made his movements seem graceful.

  As he pulled himself through the frame, I opened a drawer by the sink and found a carving knife. Then I waited for him to get all the way through.

  The guy wheezed and huffed as the thickest part of him met with the unyielding frame. He tugged and strained. I turned off the flame under the frying pan as the eggs hardened into an omelet. His legs came through, and he crashed to the floor, then turned toward my closed bedroom door cautiously.

  “I think he heard you,” I said.

  He looked at me, and his eyes fluttered nervously.

  “Well, shit,” he said. “How come you didn’t answer the door?”

  “You never knocked.”

  He nodded. “I guess I didn’t.”

  He wore a blue sweat suit, top and bottom. The fabric snug around his thick legs and pudgy belly. Maybe this was his cat burglar’s outfit. He wore heavy hiking boots on his feet, but no coat, no hat, no gloves. He couldn’t have come from very far.

  “I live next door,” he said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Call me Peach Tree.”

  “I mean your real name.”

  “Why? You going to file a police report?” He sneered.

  I held the knife by the handle, loosely, and wiggled it. “Man, get up off my floor.”

  He leaned back, on his hands, and looked at my kitchen counter, the things on it.

  “Can I have some orange juice?” he asked.

  “Pour it yourself.”

  As he lumbered to his feet, I closed the window. Then I went back to the kitchen, dropped my omelet onto a plate, and took the bread out of the toaster. The pieces were hardly warm now, but I didn’t really mind. I’d found a jar of raspberry jam in the fridge too, so I spread some on the toast. I kept the carving knife with me and took my food to the living room. Meanwhile, Peach Tree poured himself a drink. He filled the tallest glass he could find in the cupboard.

  The small living room had a love seat and a rocking chair. Just to be sure Peach Tree didn’t try to stuff himself next to me, I sat in the middle of the love seat, plate balanced on my knees. A small wooden desk sat in the corner, but it had no matching chair. In the opposite corner was an empty bookshelf. It was as if the room had been decorated with donated furniture.

  “You’re the one who came in last night, that right?” Peach Tree aske
d as he settled onto the rocking chair. Before I could answer, he drank his entire glass of orange juice in a prolonged gulp, like a child, blowing air through his nose so he wouldn’t have to pause. Once finished, he slammed the glass down on the floor with a thud.

  “Had a real long trip because of the snowstorm,” I said. I sighed dramatically.

  Peach Tree shrugged his beefy shoulders. “We all got troubles.”

  I gestured to the window with my fork. “You had enough troubles getting through my window.”

  Peach Tree’s face shined with either sweat or oil. He was clearly a few years older than me, despite how he acted. He had a round face that might have looked distinguished if he’d shaved off the last of his hair. Instead the top of his head looked like a bird’s nest, the brown egg of his scalp poking through in the middle. He looked at my plate, the meal still mostly uneaten.

  “It’s skinny bastards like you that’s always making fun.”

  I couldn’t tell, at this moment, which way he and I were going to go. I had an inclination to be friends, but these early steps can be delicate, especially with black men. None of us wants to be disrespected. We can be pathological about this. Our skin’s so thin it’s a wonder the blood doesn’t leak out our pores.

  “I shouldn’t have snuck in here,” Peach Tree admitted, something like an apology.

  “Well, why’d you do it?”

  “I figured you’d still be asleep!” He leaned forward, laughing at his criminal logic.

  Now I looked at him closely. “Damn,” I said. “What kind of drugs you on?”

  Peach Tree sat back and clutched his belly. “Nothing, man. None.”

  Then he looked over his shoulder, into my bedroom. “You holding?”

  And that’s how me and Peach Tree became friends.

  8

  IT TOOK ME THREE HOURS to get Peach Tree out of my place. During that time we traded rehab stories, criminal records, and the names of our hometowns (Queens, New York, and Kansas City, Kansas). We even came up with a plan to take Lake down if he turned out to be dangerous. It had two steps: (1) steal Lake’s truck, and (2) run him over with it.

  But Peach Tree kept coming back to drugs. He didn’t believe I hadn’t brought a little something with me. Even just a taste. I swore I’d been off for three years, ever since 2002, but he rightly pointed out that three years is a finger snap in the life of an addict. I even let him go through my coat pockets to be sure.

  When I showed him out, I heard signs of life coming from the other cabins farther down. Music here, or some loud conversation from another, even the scuff of someone shoveling snow. But I wanted to get used to my cabin before I made more friends. Peach Tree told me there would be a banquet that night at seven, right inside the Washburn Library, to welcome us all officially. Who’d told him? One of the other newcomers who’d arrived before him. It was like a game of telephone.

  I watched Peach Tree until he went into his cabin, then put the chain on my door. Locked all the windows and drew their blinds. Then I went into the bottom of my duffel bag and found the needle and six baggies of heroin that I’d brought.

  In the bathroom I shut the door and sat with the kit in my lap. Almost three years without a kiss. That’s a lot of love to lose. I felt a little heartsick looking at the stuff. But if I did it now I’d be no use at the banquet. Probably miss the whole thing. So I put the needle and baggies back into their Ziploc bag and hid them in the kitchen, under the sink, behind a stack of pans. To forget the temptation I cleaned my whole house, but I still felt the urge, so I went back to bed.

  WHEN I WOKE UP AGAIN, it was night. I found my clock radio and checked the time. Six eleven.

  The hot shower felt good. So did the shave. They even had cocoa butter in the medicine cabinet, and I slathered it all over, legs especially. My mother, my father, my sister, and me—put us all together and I doubt we would have weighed four hundred pounds. One of my old friends, Wilfred, used to call our family the Boney Bunch. He’d sing our theme song to me. “The Boney Bunch, the Boney Bunch, that’s the wayyyy they became the Boney Bunch, dah-dah, dah-dah, dah!”

  But what do you wear to a banquet at the Washburn Library? I sure hadn’t packed a suit. Had I ever owned one? Sure, as a boy but not since. So I did the best I could, found the outfit I wore when applying for jobs. A pair of khaki slacks and a royal blue shirt. I found an iron and ironing board in the bedroom closet.

  I must have pressed those clothes three times each. I hadn’t brought dress shoes with me, so I had to wear my brown work boots, but I cleaned them off with a hand towel. Even brushed the dirt out of the soles. I could have used a touch-up, but I doubted there were any barbershops on the grounds, so I just patted my hair and hoped it looked even.

  Last, I put on my tie. I remember I bought the tie and shirt together. Both royal blue. At the time, I thought this was a smooth look, but I couldn’t remember why anymore. Maybe I’d hoped they made me look like a gangster, but really I looked like the manager of a copy shop.

  I opened my cabin door at six fifty-five and saw figures walking in the snow. Paths had been dug for each of us, leading from our cabins toward the Washburn Library. A white carpet. I tried to see the others, how they’d dressed. But it was dark, and everyone wore such heavy coats and hats. I couldn’t even tell which were men or women. So I just shut my door, made sure to lock it, and walked the path that had been cleared for me.

  The cold didn’t seem so bad, not for the first three or four steps. I didn’t feel any wind, unlike the night before, so I didn’t feel battered. Didn’t bother to put on my skullcap because I didn’t want to mess my hair. But by the fifth step the cold clamped down around my skull like a parasite. A vampire. I mean it. The life was being sucked out of me.Through my ears, my suddenly dry eyes, my tingling nose, and of course my still-wet hair. Holy hell. What kind of human beings decide to settle down in a place like this? I hurried, but when I reached the building, I was awestruck before it.

  Two tall lamps stood on either side of the entryway a short flight of concrete stairs that led to a single metal door. That was the only underwhelming feature. I’d expected a bank of crystal doors. Maybe you couldn’t have something like that in this kind of cold.

  Anyway, the four lamps threw light upward rather than down. They weren’t there so you could see a door. They were there so you could witness the Library.

  From a distance it had looked buried, but the roof actually sat at a pitched angle, higher at this entrance and tilting backward. From here the roof loomed above me, thirty feet in the air. The building seemed like a great stone throat, and I balanced at its maw.

  9

  “WHAT A SURPRISE, the black guy’s late.”

  This was Peach Tree, the man who’d done a B&E on me earlier, a black man himself, calling me out. He stood with the other invitees, clustered in a knot only inches inside the lobby. They hadn’t even taken off their coats and scarves yet. I thought Peach Tree was cutting on me just to make himself look better, to show that he was the good Negro. But imagine my surprise when I looked at the group and realized they were all black folks.

  Seven black people in the Northeast Kingdom. Sounds like the start of a gruesome old folktale. Seven black people baked in a pie …

  One of the women, a bookish type, crossed her arms and said, “I’m gonna slap somebody if I don’t get some answers soon.”

  The entryway was just a narrow hall. A front desk, like at a regular library, sat to my left, but the chair behind the desk was empty. A coatrack stood behind the desk, seven wooden hangers on it waiting to be used. There were seven of us standing in the entryway now, five women and two men including me, dripping water onto the gray slate tiles.

  But this layout seemed a little off to me. A building this grand had nothing more than a wooden desk at its entryway? So I opened the metal door, looked outside, then let it swing shut.

  “You all realize this is a side entrance?” I said.

  The others looked a
round, stupefied.

  “It was the only door I saw,” the bookish woman said.

  Peach Tree pointed at the women. “I was just following them.”

  The hallway ran another twenty feet and ended in a sharp right turn. I looked down the way and back at my new companions. They stamped their feet or rubbed their arms, blew into their hands, anything to make it seem as if they weren’t just too scared to go forward.

  My childhood had trained caution out of me, for better and worse. My mother and father had been missionaries, and their labors had taken them across the country, into the littlest towns you never heard of, and the roughest cities that blighted the nightly news, and I learned to put my foot forward because of them.

  So I unzipped my jacket, slipped it on a hanger, and walked down the hall alone.

  A part of me really expected to turn that corner and find Lake holding a gun. Ready to shoot me for sport and claim I’d been menacing him. Would the police up these ways even take him in for questioning, or just toss my body in a bin? I thought of that lunatic from the Greyhound bus. I could disappear just as easily as him.

  My eyes were shut when I rounded the corner, but I could tell I’d entered a large space, because the echo of my boots sounded like bass drums. I reached for the wall with my right hand and shaded my eyes with the left. There, in the dim room, sat an enormous circular dining table with tall candles lit in its center. For a moment the table looked like a giant radio telescope, the kind scientists use to survey outer space, and the candles were its great antennae. I watched the flames flicker rhythmically as if messages were being received.

  I walked around the table, but didn’t touch. Wouldn’t even brush the tops of the chairs. There was a plush gray tablecloth that draped all the way to the floor. And nine red place mats.

  “Hey, Ricky!” I heard Peach Tree call from the hallway. “You dead in there, or what?”

  The room wasn’t lit by candles alone. There were recessed lamps in the ceiling, but they’d been turned low. There were framed pictures on the walls.