Big Machine

by Victor Lavalle

  It was still early, only ten o’clock. We moved fast at first, but got slower because it’s tough to hurry in clothes like ours. Adele wore a knee-length gray checked wool coat, and she cinched the belt just above her waist so the coat looked a bit like a dress. She had on brown leather gloves that matched her brown brogues, and a pair of green knee-length socks. The cloche hat from the day before had been replaced by a brown cap. A bicycling costume, that’s what they called it once. The Gray Lady looked stout, but capable. She moved like she assumed I would follow. And she was right. I did. I felt a little warm in my clothes, but it wasn’t bad.

  At one point she looked at me, and I took her attention as my opportunity. There were so many questions I might’ve asked just then, it didn’t really matter which. An answer to just one would’ve satisfied me. But she cut me off before I formed the words.

  Ms. Henry said, “The traitor is Solomon Clay.”

  I stopped walking and leaned against the side of a liquor store, its red brick hot against my palm. Or did my hand just heat up on its own?

  “Mr. Clay?” I whispered. “But he’s …”

  Ms. Henry crossed her arms. “He’s what?”

  I’d practically memorized this man’s handwriting, raised a toast to him two days before.

  “He’s the best,” I said, sounding as certain as I probably ever have.

  Ms. Henry spat on the sidewalk. “You’ve never met him, that’s why you can treat him like a god.”

  I pushed off the wall. “Have you?”

  She undid the belt of her jacket and retied it. She looked away from me and down San Pablo Avenue. “Solomon Clay may have been a good Scholar once, but he’s a fanatic now.”

  She pointed at me. “And we are going to kill him.”

  TURNED OUT we were going fishing out by the San Francisco Bay. Had a good chance of catching Solomon Clay there. After telling me who the target was, the Gray Lady practically jogged ahead of me. I couldn’t keep up, so I kept my eye on her backside. Which I enjoyed. Soon my knee puffed up under my skin and my shin went frosty cold. I dragged my right foot after me the best I could. I enjoyed that part much less.

  We got down to the water to find that the mayor of Garland had decided to hold a press conference right at our destination. He’d drawn an audience.

  Garland had a claim on the bit of the Bay that hadn’t already been taken over by San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland. Not much left after those three cities took their share, but Garland had built a tiny marina and even a shopping court to capitalize on what remained. They called it Stone Mason Square. The crowd wasn’t huge, but the square wasn’t actually that big. It didn’t take all that many bodies to make it seem full. Seventy-five folks maybe. The Gray Lady looked confused.

  “This is a fly in the ointment,” she said.

  “Weren’t expecting a crowd?”

  The Gray Lady looked at me with surprise, as if I had just showed up too.

  “Claude had reports that Solomon was down here plenty in the last few weeks.”

  We got as close to the center of Stone Mason Square as possible, but there were too many people to get far. I couldn’t see past all their heads to the waters of the Bay. The stores of the square formed a perimeter, and the crowd filled the space in between them. I tried to push forward, but the Gray Lady had another idea. She tugged the sleeve of my jacket, just once and just the sleeve, then let go so quickly that my wrist didn’t even graze her fingertips.

  Behind us an enormous bookstore had a small café extension that rose above the throng. It had started filling but wasn’t as tight as the square yet. She went up, and I followed. The Gray Lady shoved through the crowd by using her great green purse as a shield, her forearm braced against one side of the handbag as she bopped the public with the other. A pear-shaped battering ram. People yelped, some shouted, but all of them moved.

  Okay, I thought. She’s an asshole.

  Once we were up top, pressed against the patio railing, I could see the speaker’s lectern at the head of the crowd. Any one of the dozen men and women milling around up there could’ve been the mayor.

  “Why has Mr. Clay been down here?” I asked.

  “Solomon believes the Washburn Library is broken,” the Gray Lady said. “Corrupted. He thinks the solution is to start fresh, start again.”

  I pointed down at the square. “Is he going to build a new one here?”

  She waved her hand over the crowd. “I was so surprised when we got here because Stone Mason Square is usually pretty empty. Most days it’s just bums, passed out everywhere.”

  “Homeless people.”

  Ms. Henry nodded. “Solomon Clay is recruiting them.”

  To do what? I wondered, but felt scared to ask.

  31

  AT THE FRONT of the crowd an older man approached the lectern.

  The mayor played at the microphone, leaning toward it and then away so he could speak with an assistant. His bald scalp glowed red as a lobster’s shell. His thick eyebrows hung over his eyelids. The only strong feature on his face was his arrowhead nose. And he knew it. The mayor gestured with it, poked it at his aides as he spoke. It was the essence of his authority. His ascendancy owed everything to a few ounces of cartilage.

  Not that the nose worked on everyone. His assistants were charmed, but quite a few people in the crowd jeered. When he turned back to the microphone, they hissed. One lady actually howled. The mayor looked tired. He must’ve wanted the job once, but not anymore.

  A camera crew taped the speech while reporters held little recorders.

  Back at the Library the Unlikely Scholars pored over newspapers from every state, but could that tall reporter there, for instance, the one whose braids hung below her shoulders, the woman with a lovely smile, could she imagine the value her work held for us? And me now, acting for the benefit of the Dean. The Dean in service to the Washburn Library. The Washburn Library acting on cues sent by the Voice. One long chain. But can a link contemplate its limitations?

  Behind the mayor, not more than twenty feet, an enormous blue tarp hung loosely. Covering something, but I couldn’t guess what. A cord ran from one corner of the tarp to the mayor’s right hand. He pulled at it absently as he spoke, and a section of the blue tarp bobbled.

  “Hello, everyone,” he began. “Thank you for coming. I can see a lot of upset faces, and I understand that. I really do. This is the last place you expected to see me, isn’t that right?”

  The crowd agreed with more hissing and boos and then, strangely, applause.

  “Well, sure, you remember when I was accused of forgetting Stone Mason Square. Not just me, but the entire city government. ‘Where’s our mayor?’ I remember the graffiti. The activists who held vigils here claimed that all our institutions had failed.”

  The mayor stopped to clear his throat and leaned so close to the microphone that his nose brushed the windscreen. He scratched the nose slowly. He tugged the gold cord, and the blue tarp fluttered.

  “People used to call this Panhandler Plaza. You could barely park your car before ten guys were at your window asking for change. If you didn’t give them something, they insisted. And they could be convincing. Let’s be blunt. People despised them. And eventually people came to despise Stone Mason Square.”

  More people jammed onto the patio. Behind me, beside me, right on top of me.

  But somehow a zone of protection had been erected around Ms. Henry. I don’t mean that people magically gave the Gray Lady lots of space, there wasn’t that much room to give, just an inch or two on every side of her body. She leaned forward against the rail, her purse safe between the metal and her belly, her arms crossed over her chest, and each hand stuck into the opposing coat sleeve. She even retracted her neck, bringing her head down into the lapels of her jacket. Consciously or not people picked up on her anxiety and gave her the buffer she needed. I thought of a few moments earlier, the way she’d grabbed my coat sleeve but never come in contact with me. I’d been arou
nd her two days now and realized I’d never seen her touch anyone.

  I, on the other hand, must’ve sent out invitations to nest in my pockets. These people were all up in my zip code. The guy on my right had become my conjoined twin. But you know what? I didn’t mind. As I scanned the square looking for Solomon Clay, a man I wouldn’t recognize except by some aura, I took comfort in the contact of human beings.

  The mayor said, “But now here we are. Will we stick around for only one afternoon, then just return it to them? Or can we reclaim this space? Make it ours again.”

  Now the mayor tugged the gold cord hard enough that the blue tarp swept away.

  A pair of brass gates were revealed behind him. They looked fit for a driveway instead of a dock. A circular plaque dotted the double gates, half the plaque on one gate and half on the other. Together they bore the image of a great, gnarled tree. Garland’s crest, no doubt.

  A banner hanging on the gates read WELCOME HOME.

  The mayor said, “Ferry service has served our neighbors in Oakland and Alameda quite well, bringing much needed tourist interest as well as an easier way for local residents to reach their jobs in San Francisco.

  “When I became your mayor, I promised that I would work to make sure Garland shared in this prosperity. Well, these gates mark the future site of the Garland Ferry Terminal. We’ll break ground within a month and have the terminal built in a year. That’s record time.”

  The mayor paused for applause, but very little came. People weren’t withholding it exactly. They just waited to hear more.

  “You’ll see that banner reads ‘Welcome Home.’ Wonder who we’re welcoming? It’s you. We surrendered Stone Mason Square long ago. Surrendered the land to people who used it as a toilet. But I’m telling you those days are over. We can make this whole city ours again. Ours, not theirs!”

  The mayor stood at the lectern and leaned into the applause as if the sound alone would lift him. He propped his elbows on either side of the lectern and seemed less tired than before. Even the people who’d only showed up to hate him had been seduced, if not by the speech then by the sight of those brass gates. They didn’t go loopy for the guy, weren’t whistling and crying. The approval might have been cautious, but there were no more jeers.

  The mayor’s aides tried to lead him away from the crowd now. They must’ve been used to making escapes. But not this time. The mayor refused. He had his bodyguards open a path. He moved ahead and shook people’s hands.

  The crowd followed him out of Stone Mason Square. They were all dispersing east, up the corridor of Broadway. The mayor’s car idled there. The freestanding gates already seemed forgotten, and they looked so much smaller now. The gates were odd there without a dock, like a man wearing nothing but a cummerbund. And the lectern, on its own, looked as out of place in that environment as a winter sled.

  A breeze came off the Bay and shook the gates. They clacked loudly. The sunlight made them look silver and tacky, like discarded jewelry. The banner, still strung across them, flopped lazily.

  Ms. Henry and I were some of the only people left on the patio, and Stone Mason Square, below us, had cleared in quick time. This place might’ve been famous for its beggars once, but I couldn’t see any just now. We’d passed so many as we’d walked down San Pablo Avenue. That must have been where they’d all gone. They hadn’t disappeared. They’d been ejected.

  The ferry gates shook again, but this time I didn’t feel a breeze.

  They shook loudly. Fierce enough that the Gray Lady and I turned our heads.

  Then the gates exploded. They cracked in two.

  One gate flung backward into the Bay and landed in the water with a splash. The other was knocked flat and burned black on the ground.

  The mayor’s lectern was a woodpile.

  And the half-incinerated banner blew into the air, snapping like a flag. When it floated back down, it had been reduced to a single singed word: “Welcome …”

  32

  POLICE INTERVIEWED THE GRAY LADY, myself, and the others who’d been near there. They couldn’t possibly take us all to a police station so they just broke us into groups and took our statements across from Stone Mason Square.

  The voices! So many of us yammering beside one another. It didn’t sound like a foreign language but all of them playing at once. I found myself listening to the chorus as if I could find a buried meaning, but I’d be lying if I said the message was clear.

  A squadron of EMT workers herded the witnesses to their ambulances, just looking in our eyes, asking about aches. There were a lot more tears than bruises. I saw a wine bar on one corner and felt like enjoying a few pints, quarts, gallons. After giving my report, I made for the bar, but the Gray Lady hissed at me.

  “Ricky! This way.”

  She cut through the people here just like she had earlier, doing the bump. After we got through, she pulled out a big old cell phone, dialed a number, and spoke into it.

  When she got off, she said, “I told you Solomon was dangerous!”

  “He did that?” I asked.

  “You think it was spontaneous combustion?”

  “Just because you say he did it doesn’t mean I believe it.”

  My right leg was cold again. My foot already dragging. Just a half mile had aggravated the condition. The Gray Lady turned to me, unhappy with my skepticism, but I refused to apologize. Her little round face, her large brown eyes, I’d never met a person who intimidated me more. Forget killing Solomon Clay, just then I thought she might murder me. But she ignored my challenge and looked at my leg.

  “I’ve got aspirin in my purse,” she said. “If you’re in that much pain.”

  “This isn’t an aspirin kind of problem, Ms. Henry.”

  “Well, what do you want me to do, carry you?”

  “You wouldn’t carry me even if I was dying.”

  We kept walking, but slower. People continued to move past us on either side of Broadway. Jogging, sprinting, skipping toward Stone Mason Square. We were some of the only people moving away from the disaster. Around us the great buildings of downtown Garland cast long shadows.

  “He came to my hotel this morning,” I blurted out. She didn’t have to ask who.

  “You saw him?”

  “No, but a well-dressed man showed up and asked for me by name. They told him I was staying on the fourth floor. And he asked about you, too.”

  “It’s no problem,” she said. But then she bit her lip so hard I thought she’d draw blood.

  The Gray Lady went into her purse and then tossed me the bottle of aspirin. A way of making peace. I knew they wouldn’t work because I’d been dealing with this pain since 2002, but how would it look if I complained and then didn’t accept help? So I opened the bottle, popped about five aspirin in my mouth, and swallowed. Closed the bottle and looked at the label out of habit.

  ASPIRIN. That’s all it said.

  The Gray Lady was armed with generics.

  A JetBlue flight, putting me up in a flophouse, now some no-name aspirin. How about some Tylenol? A Bufferin! And I haven’t even focused on the ten-pound cell phone she carried. I thought about the one snow-blower and two shovels that the Unlikely Scholars were forced to share in Vermont. Euphinia and Grace bartering for my office supplies. It was like trying to fund the CIA with a lemonade stand.

  “Where are we going now? The Washburns?”

  “Claude is coming for us. He’ll drop you at the hotel so you can rest your leg. But be down in the lobby by ten.”

  “And then?”

  She pointed behind us, to Stone Mason Square. “We’re coming back.”

  “How are we going to get past all those cops? They’ll have the National Guard out here by tomorrow morning. Homeland Security too.”

  “That’s why we’re going tonight. Claude will get us in. That’s his job.”

  33

  MY FATHER BOUGHT A NEW CAR in January of 1972. Only a few weeks after he realized our hearts were no longer close to his,
and soon after he made my sister melt her ring. I think he just got it out of spite. You don’t love me? Then I’m blowing my money. He’d been rebuffed and would have his revenge. He bought a 1972 Jeep Wagoneer, which was absolutely aberrant in New York at the time. You should’ve seen the way people came down out of their apartments if Sargent Rice tried parking that behemoth between their cars. Even an Oldsmobile or a Cadillac shrank when he pulled alongside to parallel park.

  It was big, brown, and barely manageable on the tighter streets in Queens. It let in too much sunlight and the tan leather seats got so hot in the summer that we placed damp towels underneath us for even the shortest trips. He spent most of our money on that car, even the amounts he should’ve tithed to the Washerwomen. And every year afterward, 1973, ’74, ’75, he traded in the nearly new truck and bought a newer one. Not just Jeeps, but always a four-wheel drive. In the last year of his life he paid more on his car note than his mortgage. The new cars became his only extravagance, and no one could persuade him to stop.

  You have to picture Sargent Rice. Slim and all, but with a little belly. He wore his hair cut close, which only served to outline his widow’s peak. A skinny man with a fat face, a pleasant face, widest at the cheekbones, and small black eyes that rarely focused on you. He’d be going over my homework, but looking out at the skyline, the ceiling, the night-stand. This made him seem energetic, inquisitive, even cerebral. My mother’s the one who introduced me to Manly Wade Wellman and Stephen Crane, but my father’s the one I called wise. Isn’t that always the way? A mother’s reward for running away is hate, but a father’s is adoration. So was Sargent Rice actually so thoughtful? I don’t know, but the farther he drifted, the more I believed it.

  As the first few years passed and these new trucks just kept coming, my dad did hear about it from the Washerwomen. The three sisters as well as the other adults. But the community had much bigger problems than the excesses of one man. Flushing, our neighborhood, was curious about us at first, then amused. Then they ignored us for a while. But their interest returned, as regular as yuletide, and this time they focused on the kids. Were we being mistreated? Were we loved? They could’ve just asked us, but they wouldn’t do that. People used to snap on my father, how could he buy a new car when Daphne and I wore the same clothes for years? But were their hearts really bleeding for the kiddies? None of those concerned citizens ever slipped me a winter sweater.