Big Machine

by Victor Lavalle

  A single green folder sat on the left side of her desk, with a two-inch stack of papers inside it. Violet opened the folder for us and took out the contents. There were typed notes and handwritten memos, faded receipts for meals and travel, and a series of Polaroid photographs.

  Snapshots of a small mountain, taken from a distance. Then closer. And closer still. Until the shots were taken on the mountain, moving up a vague, overgrown trail. At the base of the mountain the camera caught thin tufts of grass and clusters of trees on all sides. The next shot moved farther up, and the grass went from green to a dried brown. The trees became thinner, even sickly. And the last picture was taken at the summit, but low to the ground, as if the photographer were crouching. In the distance I made out the gables of a decaying home.

  No more pictures after that.

  Alongside the photos Violet showed us the notes of a woman named Merle Waters. “Pimentel Hill, off Hollow Road, Onondaga County, New York state.” These words were printed in block letters on the back of each photo. As well as the date: 1992.

  Now I understood where this file had come from, those shelves in Scholar’s Hall. This woman, Merle Waters, must’ve been an Unlikely Scholar too. One who’d been sent out to take pictures and make notes about Pimentel Hill. Why hadn’t I thought to go through those old files? As Violet spoke, I watched her with admiration, but envy too.

  Violet said, “I used to be a librarian, assistant librarian, at East High in Cleveland. And while I was looking at these papers, I thought about when we helped some of the kids practice for the SATs. You don’t score well by learning everything there is to learn. You score well by learning what the test expects you to have learned. And how did we teach that to the kids? We showed them the old tests. That’s what the prep schools do.”

  Violet set her glasses back on her face. She turned the sheets of Merle Waters’s file.

  “Instead of sitting here trying to guess what the Dean expected of me, I figured I’d go back and see how the Unlikely Scholars before us did it.”

  She got to the very end of the file, and there, flattened and yellow, lay a small newspaper clipping. Violet held it up for us to read. We huddled around her like she’d just invented fire. Five words were written in ink at the top of the page: “Daily Star, Oneonta, NY, 1991.”

  The headline of the article read: FAMILY CLAIMS TO HEAR MOUNTAIN SING.

  At the bottom of the page, in the same handwriting: “Filed by Andre Dupree.”

  Violet set the old clipping back into the file, then gathered all the loose pages back into a pile. She stacked the Polaroids on top and shut the folder again.

  She said, “This guy, Andre Dupree, found an odd little item, a weird story they stuck in the back of The Daily Star on a slow news day. But he clipped it and he passed it on. To the Dean, I guess. Then this other Scholar, Merle Waters, is sent to check it. And she finds this house there.”

  I pointed to the file. “Did she make it back? Does it say what happened to Ms. Waters after that last photo?”

  Violet dropped her eyes. “No.”

  Peach Tree said, “But our part is just finding the news, right?”

  Violet pursed her lips, raised her eyebrows. What answer did she have to that?

  Peach Tree crossed his arms. “I’m not climbing no singing mountain. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Violet turned and lifted her chair. She said, “I think we’re like the scouts, gathering information. Remember what the Dean told us at our dinner: there’s a voice crying out in the darkness. Our job is to listen. I’m going to look through my stack of papers and see if I find any more news like that. And when those guards come by this evening, I’m going to pass it on to them.”

  “I like that,” Verdelle said. “We’re scouts.”

  This struck us dumb. I think we were just trying to process all that we’d been introduced to in the previous week. Voices and cabins and this god damn library in the woods. Was I frightened or excited? I felt overwhelmed, but rather than admit this, I just got sarcastic.

  I said, “They brought us all this way to cut newspapers? That’s your big theory?”

  Violet sat and rolled toward her desk. “You’d be happier if they gave you a mop?”

  Peach Tree pointed at me and smiled. He said, “Burnt.”

  I returned to my office, but I had trouble. Like, what constitutes weird? An article about the alarmingly high rate of peanut allergies in today’s children? The profile of a local car dealer who went to and from work on a ten-speed bike? If I looked at any article long enough, I imagined an unwholesome angle. Maybe the kids weren’t allergic to peanuts. They were just being poisoned by their parents. Maybe the car dealer preferred a ten-speed because he’d stripped all the cars on his lot to sell for meth. Neither scenario was supernatural, but they would both be creepy.

  Things only got worse as I heard others—Sunny, then Euphinia, then even Peach Tree—hollering about what they’d found. I felt like a dupe. Maybe I just wasn’t smart enough to do this. That fear only got stronger when Verdelle and Grace eventually cried out in triumph too.

  My sister, Daphne, used to tell me to act like I was sure of myself and eventually I’d come to believe it. But she was wrong. It’s hard to fake faith, in yourself or anything else. At the end of the day Violet handed her articles to the young guard who appeared. If she’d done anything right, he didn’t show it, just took the pieces of paper and shuffled away. The others held on to theirs, hedging, just in case Violet got it wrong.

  After that they all went back to their cabins, but I stayed, working through the night.

  14

  I WOKE UP at eight-thirty in my easy chair, six Unlikely Scholars staring down at me. A green Scholar’s file sat in my lap. I’d gone into Scholar’s Hall the night before and grabbed one as a study aide. Mine had the notes and photos and original article. Even audiocassettes. My ration of newspapers spread across the floor and my desk. The Unlikely Scholars gazed down at me and my mess.

  I’d experienced those looks in the past, but back then it was because I’d nodded off in the middle of a subway train or nodded off in the middle of a supermarket or nodded off in … the middle of a sentence. In fact, their expressions were so familiar that, for a moment, I actually felt high. I couldn’t get a sentence past my tingling jawline, and my eyes felt like they were sliding off my face.

  Peach Tree leaned closer than all the others and said, “This boy is zooted.”

  I had to rethink my night in a millisecond. Had I gone back to my cabin, found my six bags of dope, shot them up, then come back to work? Stress certainly made it easier to relapse, but I felt sure I hadn’t done it this time. And as soon as I felt sure, the drowsy memory of a dope high left my face.

  “I’m not zooted,” I said, trying to sit up, which only made the folder fall to the ground, its contents landing on the newspapers with a plop.

  “I’m not,” I said again.

  Euphinia and Grace stepped back and watched me. They both squinted their left eyes, tilted their heads, and pronounced judgment.

  “I believe him,” they said, nearly in unison.

  Peach Tree sighed because he’d been outvoted. “Well, if he’s going to look this bad, he might as well shoot up.”

  Verdelle slapped Peach Tree’s shoulder lightly. With her other hand she helped me stand. She took my left and Sunny took the right.

  Violet had already gathered up the loose sheets from the file and set them back in the green folder. Now she crouched over the newspapers I’d spread on the floor. She looked at all the articles I’d cut out. I’d even snipped some ads.

  Violet grabbed one of the papers, the Arizona Daily Star, and said, “You been busy.”

  I sighed. “I just can’t seem to get it.”

  She said, “Maybe we can help.”

  And just like that, following her call, the other Unlikely Scholars gathered all my newspaper clippings. Rather than returning to her office, Violet just plopped down on the floor
in mine and read through each article, looking to see which she’d choose to send along.

  Then Verdelle sat beside her. Peach Tree wriggled his big butt in between Verdelle and the bookshelf. Sunny sat in the doorway, and Grace took the seat at my desk. Euphinia stood in front of me, and when I didn’t step aside, she said, “Think you might offer that seat to a lady?”

  Once I moved, Euphinia sat and opened her paper, the Mohave Valley Daily News.

  Then we heard footsteps in the hall. A heavy tread on the grand stairs. None of the guards had ever caused such booming. So when Lake appeared in the hallway, we weren’t surprised. It had to be him or a triceratops. Lake reached my office and leaned against the clear wall, his body so big I thought we’d see cracks form in the glass. His bushy head poked into the room. We looked up from our places on the floor. To him we must’ve looked like a kindergarten class.

  “Violet?” he said.

  She raised her right hand.

  “The Dean sends congratulations.” He paused. “The rest of you should follow her lead.”

  Lake pushed himself off the wall, waved once, and left. The rest of us watched Violet quietly. Violet indulged a proud smile as she picked up the Arizona Daily Star again.

  EVEN WITH A TEAM of seven it took a while to go through my stack. Hours, I mean. There were bathroom breaks and trips to have coffee, and debates about whether an article should be disqualified or passed on. As the pile of excluded articles grew, I got better at recognizing the difference. So did the others. We made progress in small ways.

  Finally, when we had two dozen likely contenders, the others had me go through each one and explain why it had made it to the semifinals. I got it wrong a few times, but not often. And together we pared the pieces down to three undeniable favorites. That night, when the guards arrived, I’d send the trio to the Dean. All the others still had the pieces they’d clipped the day before. Only Violet had nothing new to offer since she’d spent the day training us. But she was the star pupil, so no one thought it would hurt her much.

  At six o’clock we heard footsteps in the hall. All seven of us were still inside my office, and the steps weren’t seismic enough to be Lake’s. They were faint, someone small. Not one of the guards, but smaller.

  I knew it wasn’t the Dean even before I rose up, like the other Unlikely Scholars, and pressed my face to the glass wall of my office. (Sunny had commandeered the doorway.) I knew because the Dean wouldn’t wear shoes that squeaked like that. So loud I thought a duck had snuck into the Washburn Library.

  It was a woman.

  She came down the hallway, walked to office four, unlocked it, and went inside.

  She couldn’t have been older than me. Thirty-eight or thirty-nine. And her thighs were so thick that she wobbled when she walked. Now, let me say that I don’t mean that part as an insult. In fact, I mean it as the highest compliment. She was shaped like a bowling pin. The kind of figure that makes a man like me feel vigorous. And if I hadn’t seen her in the context of the Washburn Library, I would’ve asked that thick little woman on a date.

  Her face reminded me of a pinecone, just as brown. And she had these little nicks and bumps on her neck, half a dozen. They were razor scars. The kind you get from fighting, not shaving.

  She opened her desk drawers and removed a few spiral notebooks. She stepped into the hall again, shut her door, and locked it.

  I went to my toes so I could see her over Peach Tree’s head. I guess you might say I was ogling. Then I caught myself and relaxed. I hoped nobody had noticed.

  Right then Violet whispered, “What is wrong with her hair?”

  If the woman heard Violet, she didn’t show it. Just squeaked herself away. We watched her climb to the top of the great marble stairway and cross over again, into Scholar’s Hall.

  She didn’t even look at us once.

  After she disappeared, we were left to imagine her story, but we didn’t even know her name. Instead we made up tales for an hour. None of them were nice. We gathered in the break room and gossiped over coffee.

  The only idea that persisted, and thus seemed true, was that that woman had arrived at the Washburn Library years before we had. She was an Unlikely Scholar, but not from our class. We thought this because Grace claimed to have seen her posed in one of the photos in the lobby. We tried to solve the mystery, but didn’t have enough evidence.

  Finally, Verdelle, who’d claimed she wasn’t any type of criminal, used a nail file to shred the shoulder off the key to her own office. Within half an hour she’d made it into a decent bump key. Verdelle then worked her bump key into the lock of that lady’s office, and after a few minutes of jiggling she got the door open.

  We didn’t find much inside. Those spiral notebooks must’ve been about the last item left behind. She probably did all her work in her cabin, tucked in there day and night. Who knew that was an option? Then Violet found the envelope. At the back of a bottom desk drawer. The name handwritten in a penmanship we recognized from our own envelopes.

  Adele Henry.

  We left her office and returned to the break room, and Violet asked her question again. What was wrong with that woman’s hair? Of all the strange bits, her hair remained hardest to forget.

  Entirely white. Like polished bone.

  She kept it short, a close little Afro, so it looked like she wore a swimming cap. A strange sight on a woman so young. And on dry land! When we talked about her, it kept coming back to the hair. As if this summarized the trouble with Adele Henry.

  Violet first gave her the nickname. By nighttime, as we left the Library, I doubted we’d ever refer to her in any other way. The Gray Lady, that’s what we called her. The Gray Lady.

  My future wife.

  15

  OVER THE NEXT TWO MONTHS the Unlikely Scholars became friends. Forget standing outside in the snow. Now we had one another over for dinner four nights a week. Verdelle and Peach Tree turned out to be admirable hosts; Peach Tree knew how to cook his meats, and Verdelle loved to entertain. They didn’t have dinners, they held soirées.

  Wasn’t quite the same with the rest of us, but we did serviceable work. Each week the office staff accepted grocery lists from us, and the guards drove to some nearby town and stocked up. I wasn’t the only one to put beer or wine on my list, but none of us ever got a can or bottle.

  Once a week I had the Scholars over to my cabin, so I got into the practice of moving my stash before each meal. If I’d left the baggies and needle under the bathroom sink, then I shifted them to the bottom drawer of my bedroom dresser. The week after that I changed to the top shelf of my broom closet. I couldn’t leave it in one place too long because addicts are better than bloodhounds when it comes to chemical scents.

  Violet and I became close. She liked me. And it wasn’t one-sided. She was exactly my type. A bookish little thing. In Cleveland she’d been an assistant librarian and a meth addict. She knew how to pack a pipe and carry a conversation. That is a well-rounded person.

  And yet I didn’t do more than make time with her. Verdelle and Peach Tree set up house. Euphinia and Grace might as well have been conjoined twins. And Sunny did just fine for herself. She was juggling two young ladies from the office pool. Me and Violet had to boil over eventually. We were isolated too long to avoid it.

  Two months, that’s how long it took. A Thursday evening when Violet and I made Hanky Pankies for a dinner at Sunny’s place. Violet brought the recipe from Ohio. Sausage, ground beef, Velveeta cheese, some garlic salt, and Worcestershire sauce. All of that heated and stirred until it became this glorious gloop, which we spread on slices of pumpernickel bread. Then we put them in the oven until they toasted. In a fine restaurant they’d be called tartines.

  Violet and I left her cabin. Me carrying the warm cookie sheet, no oven mitts, her twirling a spatula in one hand. The sun had gone down just enough for the snow to turn a faint blue. Our boots on the packed snow sounded like we were walking across cardboard. We were nearly at the
cabin, and I could see Grace in the window, setting dishes on the table.

  “I feel like an old couple visiting the in-laws,” Violet said.

  I nodded. “Well, they must be your relations. Peach Tree’s too ugly to be from my side.”

  She slapped my arm with the spatula. “I hope your parents came to our wedding at least.”

  Violet’s words, and my own, replayed in my head as we walked quietly. Then she looked up at me and I looked down, and I knew she expected me to kiss her. Our first kiss.

  Instead I said, “There’s not going to be no church service.”

  “We’re going to elope!”

  “Violet,” I said, “I could never mess with a little girl like you.”

  Violet dropped the spatula. It landed with its handle upright, the rest lost in the snow.

  She had a very wide mouth and such full lips. There were dark patches on her cheeks, which only made her more imperfect and endearing to me. She wore large silver hoop earrings that day, like every day. A truly beautiful woman, in other words.

  “Don’t include me in your little fantasies anymore,” I said.

  Her eyes bugged wide and her eyebrows arched for a moment before they settled, but then her nose flared and her lips pursed shut as she sucked them in. She looked to the right, down at the snow, shook her head and sneered. Then she reached down and pulled the spatula from the snow.

  “Fuck you, Ricky,” Violet said. “Nobody wants your shriveled old dick.”

  She snatched the cookie sheet off my palm. Violet walked to Sunny’s cabin, knocked too hard with the bottom of her spatula handle, and when the door opened, she went in alone.

  WHEN THE DEAN’S INVITATION FOUND ME in Utica, I’d been trying to have a child for years. Three years. I’d impregnated a whole series of women in that time, but not one of them ever gave me a child. Weeks into the process and every single woman had a miscarriage. I mean, it just wasn’t working at all. Eventually sex produced so much tragedy that I stopped having it altogether. Hadn’t even masturbated since after my date with Cheryl in Utica. Have you ever known failure so deep it feels biological? If I hadn’t found something else to sustain me, if the Library hadn’t sought me out, I would’ve eventually committed suicide.