Big Machine

by Victor Lavalle

  I wonder what to call that color of goo. There was green in it, but a golden cream too. Plus these veins of reddish mud floating at the top. Ms. Henry breathed through her nose, but I opened my lips, catching the air in there because I didn’t want to smell the stuff.

  “Close your mouth,” she whispered. “You don’t want sewage going down your throat.”

  Mouth closed meant nose open.

  I’ve described the color, but there’s still the stench to explain. Imagine a dying mule vomiting a soiled diaper all over your sweaty feet. The pipe smelled worse than that. Plus rancid milk was in there somewhere. What a bouquet. Our sniffled breathing made us both sound panicked as our legs sloshed through this pancake batter.

  The Gray Lady hesitated, stopped moving actually, and I took the opportunity to get as close to her as I could. Rudely, I popped the flashlight right in her face. She squinted and curled her lips and showed her uneven teeth. The little razor bumps on her neck looked like a bad rash.

  We’d gone another hundred feet down the pipe before I felt calm enough to ask a question. “Why did Solomon Clay defect?”

  “He’s not running off to Russia, Mr. Rice.”

  “But why does he think the Library’s corrupt?”

  “He’s a fanatic,” she whispered.

  “You said that earlier, Ms. Henry.”

  And how many times had people called my family exactly that?

  “You think sensible people plant bombs in crowded places?” she asked loudly.

  The Gray Lady wouldn’t answer me, not directly, not honestly. This only made me want to ask more questions.

  But she interrupted me. “I’m sorry, Mr. Rice. Just one second. I have to adjust my cap.”

  This time it wasn’t me who turned the flashlight on her. She simply tucked hers into the top of her waders, and the light rose up against her neck and face. It flattered the woman. Capturing her eyes, large and somber. She wore those drab olive waders, yes, but sable eyeliner too, heavier above the eyelids and faint beneath each eye. Then she pulled the black tam from around her head, and that white hair gathered the light until it flared around her like a pearl headdress.

  Just let me look at her.

  She got the cap on again, moved her flashlight. “Now what were you saying, Mr. Rice?”

  What had I asked again?

  I really couldn’t remember.

  SOON WE WERE IN THE THROAT of that sewer, where the air was so thick it felt like drizzle, and I sweated my clothes three shades darker pretty quick. The air wasn’t combustible, but it did make me feel light-headed. My legs moved in that slow, mechanical way I recognized from dreams, like I’d trespassed into someone else’s hallucination.

  The Gray Lady had a little easier time than me because she didn’t have to stoop beneath the low ceiling of the tunnel, but it also meant the sewage floated as high as her thighs. The coldness in my right leg now had a challenger. The back of my head was scraped raw. I thought it was just decay that made the top of the sewer pipe feel so rough against my scalp, but when I finally trained my light up, I saw a layer of grease seven inches thick and hardened into jagged copper rock. Bits of glass, hair, stone, insects, even eggshells were buried in there. Seeing that, I tried to stoop even lower because my head really hurt, but it was impossible to stay that low and keep moving. I was forty years old! And not one of those jog-around-the-track-with-your-baby-in-a-stroller kinds of forty.

  At first Ms. Henry and I tried to swish through the water quietly, but being stealthy takes the energy out of you, and the more tired you get, the more you just want to hurry. Pretty soon we were kicking our way through, churning the sewage so loudly I’ll bet people heard us from the sidewalk. Though maybe there wasn’t anyone up there. We’d passed Stone Mason Square a while back, I was sure of that, were probably halfway toward my hotel already. Tree roots cracked through the surface of the pipe here and there.

  The Gray Lady stopped ahead of me, and I was thankful for the rest, but it wasn’t me that made her pause. We’d finally reached two offshoot tunnels, one going left and another right. Both even smaller than the main pipe. My back filed a protest and my legs signed it too.

  She put a hand over her mouth before speaking.

  “You go left and I’ll go right and we’ll meet back here in ten minutes.”

  I said, “Lady, if you try to leave me, I’m going to climb on your back.”

  “You’re afraid?” she asked.

  “Terrified.”

  This was one benefit of being a grown man and not a kid: I wanted to impress this woman, but not to the point of getting myself killed.

  “Me too,” she whispered.

  Then I pushed it. I said, “Maybe we should hold hands.”

  A line! I used a line on the Gray Lady as we stood knee-deep in filth.

  Her smile disappeared. No hand extended.

  “We’ll check the left tunnel first,” she said, and went in ahead of me.

  I’LL CALL THIS PIPE JUNKY ROW because there were a lot of used needles floating in the muck. Both the Gray Lady and I kept our black cases in front of us as we walked so we wouldn’t get poked in the legs. Along with the needles there were sheets of wadded paper, razors, pens and pins, buttons, lots of rags. We even passed through a cloud of plastic straws. Above us there were small openings in the ceiling that fed waste down into the water.

  “It’s been sealed,” she said. “Look around. See if there’s anything unusual.”

  “Besides everything?”

  “Yes,” she said sarcastically. “Besides that.”

  The passage ended abruptly, a smooth concrete slab cutting us off. A very new wall, its age obvious because it wasn’t stained, nothing growing through or on it. I knocked the concrete with my flashlight, and it made a quiet sound, -pock- -pock-, that echoed. Up this close the Gray Lady’s flashlight exposed some numbers, code, in orange paint. Nothing that made sense to me. Information for other sewer workers who knew the language. Maybe this was the first work being done for that ferry terminal. Reclaiming Panhandler Plaza. I wasn’t quite ready to move yet, so I stood there, panting, but pretending to study the digits.

  “Do you understand them?”

  “Pretty standard municipal codes,” I answered.

  Sounded good to me, but what about to her? She looked at the wall again, passed her light over it once more. I felt stuck between mistrust and attraction as I watched her move. And I wondered how I appeared to her just now, touching the numbers with my fingertips. In her eyes was I dashing or dim?

  37

  WE BACKTRACKED to the main pipe and then went across, into the other offshoot tunnel. If the left tunnel was Junky Row, then we should call the right one Jelly Lane. The stray needles were replaced by bright multicolored muck, sticky as jam to get through. Looking up at the narrow drainpipes in the ceiling, I wondered if there was a marshmallow factory above us. There were pink globs, purple globs, blue violet, and hot pink globs. They looked like the heads of baby jellyfish bobbing at the top of the sewage. I even thought they might be some freaky marine life spawned in the chemical vat of the sewer. But when I pressed at them with my black case, they simply popped and oozed, like blisters, blending with the sewage that carried them. They weren’t creatures. They were bubbles. They added to the overwhelming spice of the air down there, and I felt the edges of my perception turning fuzzy.

  The globs actually grew bigger as we trekked down the tunnel, growing from baseball-size to softball-size. Each blob had a little weight to it, so when you walked through one, it pulled slightly. It felt like someone catching at your pants. That was bad, but worse was if you walked through a few at once. Then they all seemed to grab together. Swarms of them slowed us down.

  “You doing okay?” I asked her, as if she was the one getting fidgety.

  “Fine.”

  She said this, but my flashlight caught sweat on the back of her neck.

  I looked behind me, just as a precaution, and when I did, I saw t
hat the globs I’d been kicking off hadn’t just floated away. They’d passed behind, but stuck together in my wake, one after the next clinging to the back of my waders. It trailed for yards. I’d grown a glowing tail.

  And that was just about enough.

  I didn’t think, just reacted. Thrashed in the water because I needed to, absolutely got damn had to, get those glowing bubbles off my ass. I spun, but that only made the whole tail wrap around me. They wouldn’t pop. They held. I was under attack by foam!

  And losing.

  I stamped my legs, swung my case, howled and coughed and splashed. Please just give me some space. That’s what I would’ve said if I could’ve said anything. But I couldn’t. Instead I growled as I fought them. And, finally, finally, I tore myself free.

  To find the Gray Lady just watching me.

  “You need a cigarette break,” she said.

  I pointed at her. “Check.”

  She turned her flashlight away from me, then back.

  “I think they sealed this pipe up too. Looks like another new wall just a ways down. It’s close enough that I can see the same orange numbers, but I want to make sure. The Dean would want me to be thorough. So I need you to stay cool for just a little longer, okay?”

  What the hell did she call me? Was she speaking Spanish all of a sudden? Or Creole? It damn sure wasn’t English, was it? I heaved and sighed and caught my breath while she repeated herself, but I still didn’t understand. So she pointed at the spot where I stood and then held up her open hand, and I got it. Stay. At this point I was too exhausted to be scared.

  She left me.

  But wait, here’s a little gift for Ricky while he recovers. The sudden and overwhelming smell of perfume.

  I shined the light behind me and prayed the new scent wasn’t coming from there. Thankfully, it wasn’t. It came from above. I pointed the flashlight up and, just a few inches to my left, saw another small drainpipe. I moved closer. Stood as straight as I could. Pointed my nose at the opening and inhaled.

  Laundry soap.

  Sweet laundry soap.

  Not that industrial kind either, which is mostly just ammonia. This was a combination of a dozen home detergents. We must’ve been underneath some neighborhood Laundromat. The pipe gave off an aroma of berries and lemon and rose and violet and vanilla and lavender and just a hint of ammonia. It was a welcome antidote to the poisonous stench of the sewer. I shut my eyes, and I’m sure I was smiling. Then I heard Adele Henry’s lovely voice.

  “This tunnel is sealed. I don’t see anything that would expose the Library.” I heard her sigh deeply. “I’m going to check under the waterline to be sure.”

  “Don’t forget to hold your breath!”

  I nearly sang the sentence.

  She paused. “Is everything all right?”

  “Don’t I sound all right?”

  “You sound cheerful.”

  “Just smelling the roses,” I said.

  “I’m glad I wore gloves,” she responded. Then I heard the rippling sound of her hand brushing through the sewage.

  I enjoyed the outrageous moment, the ridiculous mental image of my nose pressed to a laundry pipe while the Gray Lady groped through sewage.

  Then I felt a hand touch my arm.

  I wanted it to be Ms. Henry’s, needed it to be hers, but when had she ever touched me? Besides, she was still way down there.

  As soon as I registered the touch, it became tighter. Gripping my left wrist. It did more than hold. It tried to drag me down. And I didn’t fight, not exactly. Not at first. Instead I tried to see who it was. That was my stupid first reaction. Not fight or flight, but understand. But the flashlight was in my left hand, the one that had been grabbed, so I couldn’t do more than wave it over the sewage. The dot of light flickered against the sewer walls.

  Now a second hand touched me, wrapping around my left elbow.

  “Mr. Clay,” I whispered. “Solomon Clay.”

  He didn’t answer. I could only see outlines in the dark. I wasn’t fighting a man yet, only a shadow.

  I jerked my forearm away from him as hard as I could now, and he fell forward, but held on. Then he squeezed my arm harder, and my fingers opened and I dropped the flashlight. It fell right into the muck. I saw even less after that.

  I tried to punch with my right hand now, but without any light, I only swung at the air.

  The silence only felt more powerful the longer it went. I’m not saying this was a quiet moment, not with all the splashing and my own heavy breaths. I mean his lack of words. His hush was worse than a threat.

  I felt an insane pressure around my wrist and elbow. A squeeze like you wouldn’t believe. Can bones turn to dust? I wondered. I was about to find out. But then I heard this ripping noise instead. I swore it was my skin, but it was only my jacket and shirt. He tore off my sleeves at the shoulder, and my whole left arm was exposed.

  “I’m innocent,” I whispered. “I’ve got no fight with you.”

  Then he stabbed me. Just above my left wrist.

  “Adele!” I screamed. “Adele!”

  I looked down, and now my eyes had adjusted so I saw the back of his head. Bald, sweating, sickly, almost green. I had to stop pretending. This wasn’t Solomon Clay. This wasn’t any man. I felt a heated pain in my wrist, as if this thing were digging the blade deeper, until it reached bone. I tried to pull away, but failed again.

  Down the sewer line I heard the Gray Lady. “Mr. Rice?” she called.

  How many minutes passed before she arrived to help? I couldn’t count them, but finally she appeared.

  Flinging road flares?

  That wouldn’t have been my first choice of weapons, but maybe that’s all she had. Either way the pressure on my wrist and elbow weakened. Red sparks flashed around me, nearly hit me in the face. She was barely aiming. So what did I do? To get out of the fire lane? Yup. Plopped right down into the sewage. I didn’t even get to take a breath.

  The Gray Lady chased my attacker down the tunnel, but there weren’t any more flares left. She came back as I stood up. I fished my flashlight out of the gunk with my right hand. She held her flashlight and looked at me with concern.

  “Why didn’t you have a gun?” I asked.

  She crossed her arms. “And what were you doing? Besides panicking?”

  “Blow it out your ass, Ms. Henry.”

  The Gray Lady trained her flashlight on my forearm and asked me to turn it round so she could see. There were red marks around my wrist, like rope burns. The same around my elbow. But no stab wound. Not like the gash I’d expected from all that fighting. No torn flesh. Not even blood. It seemed impossible.

  She leaned closer to my arm. I did too. But when I moved in, she pulled back. Even down there, after all that, she couldn’t relax. Close up I saw just a tiny little pinhole prick in my skin. Nothing more.

  “What was that?” I asked her.

  “Solomon Clay,” she said. “Who else?”

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “Or you’re lying.”

  The Gray Lady looked behind us.

  She said, “I wouldn’t keep anything from you.”

  Of course I didn’t believe her, no one with any sense would. I’d held some suspicions before this, but now I really wondered what I’d volunteered for. Why had I assumed the Gray Lady and the Dean and the whole Washburn Library were on my side? Or even on the right side? Just because I wanted to believe such a thing? And once I’d turned a little skeptical, why didn’t I do anything differently? They told me to fly out here and I flew. They told me to climb into a dark tunnel and I dove in. A domesticated animal. Maybe Solomon Clay had come to my hotel to warn me, not to harm me. Imagine entering a fight without knowing the sides.

  I used to hang around the dope spots trawling for exactly that kind of chump. White, black, yellow, or brown, it didn’t matter. If they were on the block looking soft, then I played chummy. Just give me the money, I’d say after a little conversation. I’ll go upstairs and score us
that dope. It didn’t always work, but worked much more often than you can guess. I’d go up, buy the bags, and sneak out a back way before those fellas ever knew they’d been played. So now I stood there in the sewer wondering at my role. Had the whole Washburn Library made me into a vic?

  I replayed the feeling, something sharp piercing my skin. I raised my flashlight to see the cut more closely. The tiny little wound looked like a needle mark, honestly. I certainly recognized those. Had I been stabbed, or injected? Was it my imagination, the adrenaline, or just fear that made the spot feel like it was burning? No, it wasn’t the wound, deeper than that. This pain was in my blood. What had just been done to me?

  I stared at the spot. Ms. Henry did too.

  It was as if we could see poison flooding my veins.

  4

  Big Machine

  38

  THE WASHERWOMEN WERE THREE SISTERS from Florida who escaped north before the Jacksonville police found what they’d left behind. All three women had husbands and children who would be discovered, six days later, tucked into blood-soaked beds.

  The Washerwomen shot their families, plain and simple. And when it was over, they fled to New York. They’d been born Baptists, but the murders marked a change. They didn’t lose their religion, they resurrected it. After those deaths they became better Christians. That’s what the Washerwomen believed.

  I wonder how that sounds to someone who wasn’t there with them, firsthand. Crazy, no doubt. Terrible. Criminal. Even evil. I can’t really argue. It comes across as pretty nuts to me too from a few decades away. But I was there then.

  Years after our community fell apart, people still called the Washerwomen devils, and when my old apartment building went condo, they had a very hard time selling the places on our floor. As if the living rooms and kitchens and stairwells were still possessed.