Big Machine

by Victor Lavalle

So what could possibly make my parents stay and raise their children into such a thing? That’s the funny part about the Washerwomen. Their doctrine fit my father well. Their main idea was pretty straightforward: the Church is broken. Which one? Take your pick. All choices were correct. The Church, that abiding institution, had stopped working. A new church had to take its place. Something small and defiant and renewed with concern. Which is about as traditional an idea as Christianity has. This appealed to my father because, in his own life, certain institutions had failed him too, and he appreciated that the Washerwomen hadn’t surrendered to despair.

  To show how profoundly they distrusted every church, they even rewrote the Bible.

  And why not? They wouldn’t be the first. The King James Version (1611). The English Revised Edition (1881–85). The American Standard Version (1901). The Revised Standard Version (1952). Others include the Amplified Bible, the Contemporary English, the Darby Translation, the Douay-Rheims 1899 American Version, the Holman Christian Standard Bible, the New Life Version, the New Living Translation, the Wycliffe New Testament, and the Message. That’s just a few examples written in English. So why couldn’t the Washerwomen try?

  And if it had been as simple as one more approximation of the original texts, maybe it would’ve been okay. If these three sisters from Jacksonville had been self-taught in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, then pored over the available source documents and simply transcribed what they’d found, I doubt many people would’ve had trouble with them. The problem is that the Washerwomen’s version wasn’t about translating every line on what to do about stolen oxen or all the names in the priestly class. They deleted that business entirely. When African slaves came to the Americas, they identified with the bondage of the Jews in Exodus, and this, above all else, was why they embraced Christianity so firmly. So the Washerwomen’s version of the Bible didn’t take place in towns like Jericho or Judea. Instead the Israelites escaped out of Georgia and Tennessee. And, for that matter, in this book they weren’t even called Israelites. They were called Negroes.

  LET ME ALSO MAKE THIS CLEAR, the Washerwomen didn’t tell anyone about the mass murder. They omitted that from the official record. Because that would, you know, drive sane people away before they had a chance to hear the message.

  Our small community only found out about it after the news made it from Jacksonville to New York, and it’s sad to say that this took quite a while. What does that have to do with me? New York seemed to say. I’m busy wit my own problems, ovah heah! While a womanhunt electrified northern Florida, and southern Georgia, it only rated grainy “Wanted” posters in the post offices of Queens. In the days before cable news and Internet searches, infamy had a good chance of remaining localized.

  By the time those rumors did filter north, Sargent and Carolyn Rice knew the sisters too well to believe the rumors were true. The whole Washerwomen community felt that way. Because of love they held no doubts.

  This sounds like our great mistake, putting our trust in three women who’d been accused of a massacre. And yet, for all that, it wasn’t the Washerwomen who killed my sister, Daphne.

  It was me.

  39

  THE GRAY LADY AND I CLIMBED OUT of the sewer, and then I hid in my hotel. Never was I happier to see the ratty room at By the Bay than after I’d locked the door behind me. Riding back from the sewer in Claude’s car, I was afraid Claude and Ms. Henry were going to lock me away for observation. But they didn’t. Just left me off exactly as they had the night before. In fact, I’d say the Gray Lady looked more frightened of me. As if I might spread some sickness to her. She practically booted me out of the car that night. I got upstairs, shut the door, and stuck a chair under the doorknob. Had the Gray Lady set me up, or was I being paranoid? Should I search out Solomon Clay myself and hear his side?

  But how could I track him down when I barely had the energy to tear off my soiled clothes? Funny that no one in the lobby knocked me for being saturated in sewage. The only time they noticed me was when my clothes gave off a snotty vibe. When I looked like a mess, they disregarded me. I piled the soggy suit on top of the bathroom sink, but I felt woozy before I could even get a shower going. Nearly passed out on the tile floor. I made it into bed, and there I lay, feverish and aching.

  The Gray Lady didn’t forget me. Phone calls began the next morning, right around eight A.M. That went on, every hour, until noon. Then the desk clerk rang, saying I had visitors. First Claude and then, when I wouldn’t let him up, Ms. Adele Henry. But I denied her too. And, to my complete amazement, By the Bay wouldn’t just let them up. Who expects tight security at an SRO? By late afternoon the desk clerk had been persuaded to come upstairs herself. She knocked at my door, but I refused to open up, and eventually she left.

  For the rest of the night my mind returned to the shadows of the sewer. I thought of the laundry detergent flowing down from that pipe until a citrus scent returned to me. The splash of Ms. Henry and me marching through the sewage. The attack. Being stabbed. The poison.

  As my mind gathered these impressions, my body throbbed. It felt as though each of my muscles was leaping out of my skin. They jittered and sparked so badly that eventually I couldn’t shut my eyes. And finally the next morning, I tried to rise.

  Getting myself to sit up, then stand, that energy all came from the power of positive thought. But when I fell forward, face-first onto the floor, that was hard-core reality. My body couldn’t think itself past its pain. So I lay on the dirty tiled floor, not because I liked it but because I didn’t have a choice. If my mind had tried to rally the limbs just then, we would’ve fallen into civil war. So I lay there.

  Being a reasonable diplomat, I decided on a series of concessions. We’ll lie on the ground for five minutes. Okay, we’ll stay here for ten.

  Twenty minutes, but nothing more!

  After thirty, my arms were willing to press me up, and my legs agreed to take the weight. See that, a little compromise lifts your spirit.

  Like that, a model of statesmanship, peace between body and mind, we ran the shower. Got in and washed ourselves. The fever got worse, bad enough that even a steamy shower felt lukewarm when compared with the temperature in my skin. I came out and found it necessary to enter into a second set of negotiations.

  This time as the body slumped stubbornly on the toilet seat while the mind wandered up along one of the walls. We were in danger of never coming together, but finally my soul mustered the others back around the bargaining table.

  We need help. We have to get out of this place. Is everyone agreed?

  I awaited their answer patiently.

  BY NOON we’d decided to wear a Norfolk suit. It was no less formal than my pinstripes, but more rugged. Have you ever seen one? Probably not, unless you’ve been out shooting in the English countryside in the 1870s. All Harris Tweed and warmer than a bear’s butt. Good for “hard wearing.” It even had a strap that went around my middle, which helped to hold me straight up, like a truss. There weren’t too many old Scholars rocking the Norfolk look, but there had been one guy in the photos, thankfully.

  Add to the suit a pair of calfskin chukka boots and a black and white herringbone newsboy cap, and I looked like Ricky Rice, Gentleman Adventurer. But I felt like Ricky Rice, Terminally Ill. The last thing I did was take out my heroin. I put those baggies in my pocket, thinking of them almost like a talisman, an evil to ward off greater evil.

  In a way, heroin had already protected me. While I felt feverish and achy, while my limbs shivered, I was still able to shower, to dress, to move. Kicking dope so many times had toughened me. All those withdrawal pains had weathered my body. Leather wasn’t even as durable. Everything hurt, but I could still function.

  I got on the creaky old elevator and rode down to the lobby. Leaned against one wall for support. I heard myself huffing even though I’d hardly moved. It sounded like the sigh of a dog when first setting itself down.

  An older guy got on at the second floor, one of those grumpy
-grandad types, wearing a green cardigan all buttoned up. A newspaper folded under one arm. He stared at me the whole slow way down. When the doors opened, he said, “Negro, you are a mess.”

  I pushed myself off the wall and stood straight.

  “Blow it out your ass, Redd Foxx.”

  He took the paper from under his arm, tapped his leg with it a few times. He looked me over again. Then he said, “Mmm-hmmm.”

  We sort of raced for the elevator exit, only two feet, but Fred Sanford hit the lobby first. When you lose a footrace to a seventy-year-old, you know you are not in peak physical shape.

  He met a few of his cronies out there, gathered to the television again. What were they watching? Not basketball. Maybe the news? That guy in the wheelchair held the most prominent position, only inches from the screen and directly in front. I suppose that if he was their leader, this counted as a place of prestige. The man in the cardigan walked over to the lame one and whispered in his ear. Then they both looked at me. Instinctively I clutched at the belt loop of my Norfolk jacket.

  “Hey, Jeeves!” the man in the wheelchair shouted.

  “Spot of tea?” he added in a bad British accent.

  If I’d been feeling better, I might’ve given him a few lines back, but my pride couldn’t overcome my palpitations. Maybe I should try to reach a hospital, I thought. I bet I could find a men’s shelter closer by. Or a church.

  I stumbled toward the front door. I looked back, but they weren’t even watching me anymore. They were back to the big screen. And I misjudged how close I was to the hotel doors, so I bonked right into the glass. The front door opened and I tripped across the threshold, but before I fell, a pair of meaty hands caught me.

  “Careful there, Larry.”

  Then my right hand twisted, Claude pulled my arm behind me, and in a moment he had me hemmed up in a police hold. His Town Car idled by the corner. I couldn’t have seen it from the lobby. He guided me toward the car now, right arm bent hard behind my back.

  “Fucking … !” I shouted, but didn’t have the power to complete a sentence.

  “Close your mouth,” he whispered, “or I’ll close it.”

  We reached the Town Car and he popped the back door open. Claude tossed me inside, really threw me, so I went into the back headfirst. I fought the best I could. This meant flailing around like a dying bird, which didn’t help much. The only good thing is that my slacks glanced off his cheeks a few times and left a faint red mark, a little Norfolk burn.

  Meanwhile, Claude put me in plastic handcuffs.

  One loop tight around my left wrist and the other loop around the grip of the car door so I had to sit at an angle, the right side of my face pressed to the window. Claude slammed the door, which made my ears ring. Then he ran around to the driver’s seat and got in. If he had taken me to a field right then and dumped my body, no one would have known.

  THE CAR RIDE TURNED into a silent battle, like most of my time with Claude. I stopped myself from asking where we were going, and he restrained himself from shooting me in the head. Because he had to hold his anger in, Claude drove badly. He swept from one lane to another on the highway.

  As we passed the Grand Avenue exit, the highway took a slight curve. In the distance I saw a hill with rows of deco homes in tangerine, taupe, or alabaster, three and four stories tall, chimes on a child’s xylophone.

  A large lake rippled below those homes. I saw the calm, green water. It was the color of a Granny Smith apple that’s been left on the counter too long. I sat up higher in my seat, which made the handcuff cut into my skin, and saw a crowd down by the water. A few held signs with slogans, but I couldn’t read them from where we were. My eyes were too blurry for that.

  As we continued, I felt a new, more localized pain in my forearm. Right where I’d been jabbed. I’d thought it was the cuffs digging in, but even after I shifted my body, the burning sensation remained. I still felt feverish and achy all over, but now it was like someone had sewn a spark under my skin. I watched the wound, afraid blood or pus or something worse would leak out. But nothing did.

  Claude finally got off on MacArthur Boulevard. To my right there were three small, lopsided apartment houses, all decorated in late twentieth-century Security Door. Battered cars lined the side streets. It wasn’t a bad neighborhood, just distressed.

  On the opposite side of MacArthur Boulevard, across from the moldy apartments, a big old park bloomed. At least that looked nice. Trees rose three stories high. A chain-link fence divided nature from the neighborhood. We drove alongside the park, stopped at the first traffic light, and then made a left. Into the park. I leaned forward, trying to understand.

  Maybe Claude really did mean to shoot me in the woods. I tried to control my breathing.

  There was a great stone entrance and we drove through its arch, up to a wooden guard station. Claude waved at the pair of guards inside, but they hardly looked at him. It would be a mistake to call the duo “security,” they were too lackluster for that. They were working hard just to keep their eyes open. The threat of napping was the greatest danger they faced.

  “Where … ?” I muttered.

  Claude raised one hand triumphantly. “This is the Washburn estate.”

  40

  CLAUDE DROVE SLOWLY along the main road of the estate. A few white pickups were parked along either side of the two-lane road. Each truck had a familiar W stamped on both doors. Why did that make me feel better? Nothing more than a letter, but it connected this place to the Washburn Library in Vermont. It was only as we passed them that I noticed one truck had two flat tires. Another was missing its windshield, and leaves had blown inside the cab. They littered the front seat and the dashboard.

  Sycamore trees lined the main road, rising thirty feet high, their bark yellowed and flaking. The branches were bare. They leaned across the road, toward one another, and we drove below them. Their grasping, empty branches wove together and formed a ceiling of spiderwebs.

  I had a hard time reconciling the magnificent trees with those broken-down trucks and the third-rate sentries at the gate. Things only became more confusing as we continued through the grounds. There was so much land, but large sections of the lawn had gone brown. Except for at the entrance, I didn’t see a human being anywhere.

  Claude made a right turn.

  “That’s where the Washburns live.” Claude practically cooed when he said it.

  The Washburn mansion. Fifty rooms, easily. Eggshell white. With a great circular driveway leading up to its front doors. Arched windows everywhere, all the curtains drawn. It was time to meet my makers. Through the fever, the pain of handcuffs, I also felt my pulse thump nervously.

  But then Claude drove right by.

  Claude passed the mansion gleefully. I could see him stifling laughter as he looked back in the rearview. It made him happy to confuse me. I twisted as far as I could while wearing those flex cuffs and watched the mansion recede.

  He drove down a narrow gravel road and entered a tiny grove of trees. I saw a few scattered cabins that looked like the ones back in Vermont, except these had shingles missing on their Spanish roofs, and one’s windows had been replaced with sheets of wood. At the end of the lane Claude pulled into a driveway. He stopped the car, popped the door locks, and turned around in his seat.

  “Get out.”

  I flopped my numb left hand. “Want me to chew this off?”

  Claude honked his horn at this cabin, the only one in decent shape. The Gray Lady stepped out. She wore a mustard-gold tam that covered most of her hair and cast a shadow across her eyes. Without makeup she looked oily, shiny on her forehead. A tan plaid gingham housedress covered every part of her except her hands and face. She looked exhausted, actually. And plain.

  The Gray Lady smiled. She flapped both hands in the air as a greeting. I couldn’t tell if she was excited or shooing me away. She looked halfway crazy.

  “Come in,” she said. “Come in.”

  But, of course, I cou
ldn’t. Claude stepped out of the car, came round to my door, and when he opened it, he had a small pair of precision cutters hidden in his palm. He grabbed my fingers and squeezed them tight, a boyhood torture, while he snipped me loose.

  The Gray Lady stayed at the door. “What’s the trouble?” she asked.

  Claude slid the plastic line and the pliers into his jacket pocket without seeming to move at all. Then he straightened, smiled at Ms. Henry, and said, “The boy’s a little tired, that’s all.”

  “You must’ve been great at planting evidence,” I said as I stepped out.

  Claude slammed the door fast, trying to catch my fingers.

  I reached Ms. Henry’s cabin, and as I stepped forward, she stepped back, almost mindlessly. I’d have brushed against anyone else as I came in, but the Gray Lady moved too far, too fast. I’d missed her again. She didn’t trust me, but that was okay. I didn’t trust her much either now. Once I got in, she stepped around me, back into the doorway, and waved Claude off.

  The Gray Lady shut the door, walked through the partially furnished living room and past the dining table. She went into the kitchen and poured me a cup of tea. I heard the trickle. She came back and set the cup and saucer on the dining table. I hadn’t moved from beside the front door.

  “I’m a hostage,” I said.

  The Gray Lady looked at the cup of hot tea again, touched the side with her pointer finger. “Is this about the other night? Because—”

  “This is about twenty minutes ago when Claude abducted me from my hotel.”

  “Oh, come on, Mr. Rice.”

  “He put me in handcuffs!”

  She approached me cautiously now, palms up to calm me.

  “Let me see.”

  I opened my Norfolk jacket and pulled it off. As I stretched my wrist past my shirt sleeve, I peeked at this lovely cabin she had all to herself. Once inside, I realized it was twice as big as the ones in Vermont. One here and one there. She was doing quite well for herself.