Euphinia’s hand sat on the table, clenched into a fist. Grace set down her wineglass and rested her open hand over Euphinia’s knuckles until the fingers uncurled, lay flat again.
“I tried to run, but I didn’t have the power. I kneeled at the edge of the ditch trying to understand what I was seeing. My nine-year-old grandson—Trevor Lee, we called him—was lying in that ditch. Wearing the suit we buried him in. I figured this was a delusion. Hallucinating from the thirst. So I was able to stay calm. But then that boy opened his eyes.
“He looked right at me, started moving his lips, and I knew what he was saying. I fell right into the ditch, dragged myself to him, and I touched his legs. His body was real. I crawled up to his side and watched his lips moving. I heard him say it was my fault he died. And I cried because I knew he was right.
“I put my hands over my baby boy’s mouth. I felt his lips brush against my palms. He wouldn’t stop damning me. So finally I gave up, I dropped my hands. I leaned over Trevor Lee’s body. It was time to reckon with the way I’d lived my life. I put my mouth to Trevor Lee’s ear and I made my promise.
“As soon as I did, all those birds stopping singing. They flew right away. Their wings sounded like a thunder cloud. Seconds later a heavy rain started. And that’s what saved my life. I wandered out the desert. Two years later, I’m sitting here.”
I raised my glass. “To keeping our promises,” I said quietly.
“Amen to that,” Sunny said, knocking the table with one hand.
Everyone sipped from their cups.
“And to Gartrelle Meadows,” I added.
Why did I mention him? Of all the things I might have said next? He must’ve sat through a moment just like this. The night before the Dean’s door opened. And maybe Euphinia’s story would’ve sounded as familiar to him as it did to me. To us. To all the Unlikely Scholars.
Peach Tree raised his glass and sniffed. “To Audrey Green.”
Each of us raised a cup and chanted the name of a Scholar we’d come across in the Library’s files. They’d become a little mythic to us.
Finally Grace said, “To the Gray Lady.”
“Adele Henry?” I asked.
“Even her,” Euphinia said.
We’d actually set out eight places at the table, on the off chance she might show. I’d slipped a note under her cabin door, for nothing. We gestured toward her empty chair.
“And to Solomon Clay.” I saved his name for last.
I rose from the table after that and returned to my bedroom. Got on my knees and dug for the last bag, hidden underneath my bed. The others swayed in their seats. When I returned, I carried one last bottle.
“It’s time for the bourbon,” I said.
Everyone hopped up to wash out their glasses.
21
AND YET, for all that drinking, I couldn’t fall asleep.
I sent the other Scholars home by two in the morning and spent the next hours uneasy. First, I drank a few gallons of water so I wouldn’t have a hangover. Then I lay on the couch trying to trick myself into dozing. Posing like a sleeper: shoes off, body scrunched onto the cushions, eyes closed, mouth open, a pillow under my narrow head, but my body wouldn’t buy it, and after an hour I sat up. What would I do with all this time? I felt so nervous that I could hardly sit down. By dawn, I’m sorry to say, I’d torn my cabin apart trying to find my dope.
But now I couldn’t find the damn things! I’d hidden them too well. I’d wrapped them in tin foil, I remembered that much, then thrown the tin foil into a Ziploc bag. But what had I done after that? I checked behind the toilet again. In the butter dish. The oven. I’d started out moving my stash every week, but eventually I only needed to relocate it once a month. The Library’s work became my habit instead.
For all I knew, I’d buried the stuff outside over the summer, maybe next to my front steps. If so, I wouldn’t be able to dig it out of the frozen earth now. I checked behind the radiators and even in my overhead lamps. I looked and looked and looked.
When the sun rose, I didn’t recognize my cabin. I’d kept it so neat all nine months before this. Had my friends snuck a hurricane inside while I was using the bathroom? Who’d torn open the couch cushions and pulled out every kitchen drawer? Not me. I felt sick and silly to see so much damage, but at least the time had passed. Nearly seven in the morning now, and I felt grateful for that. Spent forty-five minutes putting everything away and suddenly my meeting with the Dean seemed too near. I had to hurry into the shower. Before getting in I finally found the dope, six baggies stuffed into one of the toilet rolls under the bathroom sink. Too late to shoot up now, but I didn’t throw them out either. As the water ran in the tub, I left them right on top of my pillowcase. Then I washed and dressed. Put on my finest outfit, a three-button charcoal pin-striped suit.
I left the cabin, and as I tramped toward the Library, I saw Violet watching me from her cabin. I waved, but she didn’t wave back. She watched me for another moment, then let the curtain swing closed.
The sun had risen high enough for me to see all the cabins. With their lights off it seemed as if they’d shut their eyes to me. I moved toward the Library alone.
Before I went inside, three wild turkeys appeared in the snow. Their bald heads bopped up and down as they walked. With a clumsy dash they leapt onto the roof of my cabin. They searched for food up there and found nothing and I watched them. Until they hopped down again and beat a graceless retreat into the woods.
Imagine me seeing a thing like that in a place like this. There are people who say life is dull. Just a series of mundane events. But I can’t agree. Things happen. Bet on that.
I MADE IT TO MY OFFICE, but my office wasn’t there. The basics were still in place, like a desk and file cabinet, but my work had been removed. Every last clip, even notes scribbled onto index cards. The only thing left was a small picture I had kept tucked in the top drawer of my desk. Me and my sister, Daphne. A shot from our childhood. The two of us on our living room couch. Daphne’s five, and I’m only six months old and totally naked. I look like a big old Junior Mint in her arms.
“Mr. Rice.”
I looked up and saw that Lake, the enormous bastard, had snuck up on me again.
“You’re pretty quiet for a big guy.”
“Don’t be nervous,” Lake said.
“I’m not.”
I said this, but when I tried to stand, I couldn’t do it. My mind gave two commands: get up, and put that picture in your pocket, but I didn’t manage either one. When I tried to stand, my hand shook and the photo of Daphne slipped out of my fingers, into my lap. And my legs didn’t respond except to quiver.
“Don’t be nervous,” Lake said again, but this time he walked into the office and his colossal head blotted out the lightbulb. He lifted me out of the chair by pulling on my arm, and then, just as casually, picked Daphne’s photo up from the ground. He undid my jacket and slid the shot into my pocket. Then he redid the button.
“Do I look okay?” I finally asked.
But he didn’t answer me. What was he going to do, fix my tie? Darn my socks? The man wasn’t my personal valet. He left the office.
Whenever I’d gone off heroin before, the people who loved me had praised the change excessively. I mean they’d really cheer me on. But was it really my only success? You wouldn’t have known it by the look of me back then, but I always worked. Even when I stole and scammed and pulled knives on junior high school children, I still showed up for my shift at the movie theater, the restaurant, the bookstore. I took some pride in that, but it’s a small victory, I guess. Certainly nobody else ever noticed.
So when I went on methadone, or even tried to totally kick a few times, my friends and even coworkers praised me up through the ceiling. But the more they focused on this one achievement, the more I realized I’d never accomplished anything else. When I was twenty-two, I could convince myself that better things were coming, but by thirty-six their praise sounded like pity. As I left my
office, I leaned against the doorway and I prayed for strength.
“WHAT DO YOU ALL THINK of us?” I asked Lake as we came down the far steps, at the other end of the Library. Lake had a longer stride than me, and I tried to keep up, but soon my right leg went cold. I didn’t mention it, but the sound of my right foot dragging behind me made the statement, so we went pretty slowly as we moved past the staff offices.
“Who all?” he asked.
I pointed at the closed doors. I heard the squeaks of office chairs and the mumble of women on telephones.
“The staff and guards. How do you all feel about the Library? About having a bunch of black folks living up in your woods?”
Lake said, “Vermont has lots of poverty. Especially around here.”
I nodded, but didn’t see how this answered my question.
“The Washburn Library pays regular. And it’s getting harder to find steady work. That’s what we think about.”
We’d reached the recessed staircase that led up to the Dean’s office. I’d only seen that little man come out of the room that one time, for our banquet. At some point we all decided he must have had a back door so he could shimmy out on the sly. We said this, but I don’t think anyone believed it. Speaking for myself, I felt convinced that the Dean couldn’t leave the Library, the same way my brain can’t abandon my body.
Lake looked up at the Dean’s door. He touched the wall with his big bare hand. Rubbed the index finger along the groove of a stone, then tapped the surface slowly. It reminded me of gesture I’d seen years before.
His hand continued to slap against the stone, and I remembered the man who’d done it before. A cop, back in New York. Lying on his stomach, tapping the pavement with his right hand while I stood over him.
“You ought to go up now,” Lake whispered.
How many times had I looked up at that door as I went to work? Me and the other Unlikely Scholars. Every weekday, for nine months. We’d turned a simple flight of steps into a holy mile. You’ll see stairs like these in any office building, a small school, any old house. They weren’t special. Nothing like the ones that led in and out of Scholar’s Hall, that’s for sure. And yet I felt a fire up through my legs as my foot touched the first small step.
IT WAS AN ODD DAY when I saw that New York cop facedown on the pavement, tapping the ground with his right hand. Sunny but cool out, and the sidewalks were dirty, but that wasn’t unusual because it was 1983. I was only eighteen and a stubborn kid, but that’s not unusual either. I hadn’t slept in a couple of days and really needed to eat. Though I didn’t feel hungry, my body refused to pretend anymore. My guts groaned because they’d been ignored for so long. I’d been on my way to St. Mark’s Place because I knew a hot dog vendor who’d sell me three buns for fifty cents, enough filler to get my stomach back on my side so I could then focus on scoring more dope. But when I reached Astor Place, I found a parade standing between here and there.
I came up behind one group of people and expected to see balloons or a marching band or a waving mayor. Instead I heard police sirens. I turned away on instinct, and my feet got the notion to run. Two cops came down the street on motorcycles with their sirens going loud, clearing the road for a patrol car behind them. And behind that patrol car another two cops on bikes making just as much noise. They were in a big blue hurry.
Then this guy on a delivery bike just pedaled out into the road. I mean completely oblivious. The idiot was wearing headphones! Shot out into the road, and the patrol car swerved to miss him and went right into an empty newspaper stand.
It sounded worse than it was. The first noise was just this bump. Made me think they’d hit a person and not a pile of wood. Then the patrol car, moving too fast, flipped right over, upside down. Now, that was louder. The cops on the bikes behind them went flying too. But the two lead cops, who’d been clearing the road with their sirens, only stopped their motorcycles long enough to pick up a satchel from one of the guys in the patrol car, and then they were gone. Looked pretty heartless to me. I only found out later, from nighttime news, that four guys had hijacked one car of a 6 train at gunpoint. The patrol car had been carrying a satchel with the ransom for the hostages. No wonder those cops didn’t wait around.
I didn’t know that at the time, though. And I wouldn’t have cared. The thing with heroin, if you take it long enough, is that you lose that natural sense of concern. Feelings for other people, even for yourself, chuck them out the door. So right after this big wreck I just strolled through the crowd and right into the street. A real saunter. Went straight over to this one cop lying on his stomach. I couldn’t tell if he was tapping the sidewalk to prove he was alive or if it was a Morse code signal or simply a way to pass the time until an ambulance arrived. But what seemed obvious was that he couldn’t get up. Easy pickings. I bent over his body, so casual about it I’ll bet the crowd thought I was an undercover cop helping out his comrade. I put my hand on his holster, flipped the little button, pulled out his revolver, and ran like a fiend.
The human mind, it needs a moment to process such a thing. So by the time the crowd started screaming at me, I was far beyond them. I carried that gun just nine blocks before I found a friend who helped me sell it. I didn’t spend the loot on hot dog buns. New York deserved its reputation back then.
22
THIS EPISODE STAYED with me as I reached the top of the stairs. The Dean’s oak door was as understated as the staircase. I didn’t knock. Just stood there with my chin at my chest. I wondered how I’d fooled the Dean into believing I deserved to be there. First at the Library and then at his door. Did he know me? Did he understand the things I’d done? I should just toss myself down these stairs, I thought. I should steal a truck, drive down to the airport, and fly myself back to wretchedness. I imagined myself forty years from this moment. Who would I be if I ran away?
I saw an old man, sweeping.
Then I knocked so hard I thought the walls would fall down.
The oak door didn’t open, but I heard a buzz so I grabbed the handle and pushed. The office was so dark that even light from the stairway didn’t penetrate it. My feet stayed at the threshold and I leaned my head in.
“Can you hear my voice?”
Months and months since that banquet, but I still recognized the Dean’s croak. I pictured his sneer.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then follow it.”
“Can I get a flashlight at least?”
No answer to that and no flashlight. I stepped in slow, testing the darkness with my foot.
“Shut the door behind you.”
And now, sealed off, I might’ve been floating through the deepest region of space. Fallen into a black hole. I closed my eyes, concentrated on my feet because at least they touched something solid.
When I opened them again, the room hadn’t become any brighter, but the Dean’s voice cut through the gloom. He’d been talking, but I hadn’t heard a bit of it.
“What did you say?” I shouted. “You’re gonna have to repeat yourself.”
“I don’t have to do a damn thing! You better show more manners than that.”
I wanted to smack that gnome already, even reached out my left hand on instinct, but he wasn’t close enough. So instead I felt for the doorknob, just to get my bearings. It should only have been inches away. I hadn’t taken a step yet. But I couldn’t find it. As if some current in the room had moved me, pulling my body farther from shore. So I went down on one knee and touched the ground with both hands, fighting against nausea.
“Do you hear my voice?” the Dean asked again.
“You know I do.”
“Then get off your knees and follow it.”
I stood, but moved slow. I put one foot in front of the other like I was walking on a balance beam. I bent at the knees and stooped my back, one arm in front of me and the other to the side. The Dean spoke to me in the dark. I struggled to listen and keep my balance.
“Judah Washburn is the founder of thi
s Library. A Georgia slave who escaped bondage in 1775. He ran west, into the arms of the Spanish. With them he explored New Spain, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.”
There’d been so little blocking my path that I thought the whole room was empty, that I could just follow a straight line to the Dean. Soon I was moving too fast to stop myself, and I hit a table, hard. The edge got me right in the thigh, and I slammed the tabletop angrily. The thump echoed.
“Brush yourself off now, Ricky. Keep going.”
I used my right hand to find the top of the first chair alongside the table, and once I found that, I edged along to the next.
“Judah Washburn had reached Northern California. But he still wasn’t content. He’d traded an American master for a Spanish master. Was that really the best he could hope for?”
No more chairs, but I kept moving. My head cocked to the left, listening, my hands out in front, my eyes closed.
“Judah escaped his Spanish masters and wandered into the marshlands. Slept under oak trees. Living a fugitive’s life, but still a free man’s life. And one morning, at dawn, he heard a voice calling to him.”
I had my hands out in front, at about waist level, so I wouldn’t bump into another table. Instead I smacked into a lamp. The shade bashed me right in the face, and we both fell over. As the lamp hit the ground, I heard its bulb crack, shards clicking against the wooden floor. I put my hands out so I wouldn’t land on my face, and pieces of the bulb dug into my palms.
The Dean’s voice grew louder now.
“The Voice said ‘Do you hear me?’ And Judah felt too scared to answer. So it asked again, ‘Do you hear my voice?’ Finally Judah cried, ‘Yes!’ And the Voice said, ‘Follow it.’”
I got to my feet, brushed my hands against my pants. Brought my palms up to my face, but my eyes had only adjusted enough to see their outlines. I licked my skin and tasted blood.
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