Big Machine

by Victor Lavalle

  Somehow my brain wasn’t convinced—it refused to let the rest of me move—but it couldn’t come up with a better plan. We had to go inside because the outside was even less defensible. At least I had a key to my room. If I wandered the streets, I’d collapse, just one more bum, and there were plenty of those around San Pablo Avenue already.

  Go inside, I thought. Let’s just get to it.

  So I opened the back entrance and found a squad of old men huddled in the service hallway. Three sat on a row of chairs, and the fourth held a video recorder, taping them. I thought I’d walked onto the set of a Sunday morning political chat show. But instead of three old white guys in bad suits, it was three old black guys in bad sweaters. They sat in a semicircle and spoke into the camera, slowly, though they stopped a moment after I opened the door. It was such a confusing sight that I stepped backward, even stammered an apology as the sunlight illuminated their faces.

  “Step in or step out,” said the guy doing the taping.

  I didn’t recognize him or the one seated closest to me, but the other two were more familiar. The man in the green sweater had ridden the elevator down to the lobby with me earlier that day. And, sitting in the middle, was that clown in the wheelchair. The guy with all the jokes. I stepped inside, slamming the door shut. Now the director stepped away from the recorder.

  “You ruined our shot!” he said.

  I slapped the corroded green walls. “I did you a favor.”

  I expected a louder response, especially from the one in the wheelchair. At the very least I thought he’d crack wise. If the guy in the sweater thought I had looked bad earlier, I must’ve seemed undead by now. But they didn’t speak, none of them. They only seethed. This made them seem more serious. For the first time I actually looked at the cheap camera, noticed the low ceiling and dim lighting. They were filming themselves, but the image wouldn’t come out too well. The three men would hardly be seen. The director went back to the camera, his face lost behind the machine.

  “Get on now,” one of them said. “This is grown folks’ business.”

  What would they do to me if I stayed? The part of me that likes to argue wanted to find out, but my stomach pitched. I couldn’t catch a break from my body. The throbbing and burning in my neck had stopped, but in their place I felt a powerful nausea. I left those men because I had to a find a toilet.

  I floated from the ground floor to the fourth. Even before I stepped inside the elevator, I imagined myself ascending. As the elevator rose, I was already walking down the fourth-floor hallway. And as the elevator opened, I was already on my bed, comatose.

  So I was halfway down the dark fourth-floor hallway before I noticed the broken lights.

  Every bulb above my head had burst, and because of that every doorway was cloaked. When I’d left earlier that day, they’d been working fine. I turned around, confused by the change, and one foot ground into the shards of a lightbulb. I bent down to pick up one of the pieces, but dropped it right away. It was still too hot to hold.

  I would’ve run right then, believe me, but I didn’t have my balance. Buildings like By the Bay, poorly made and hardly maintained, were famous for falling apart. The uneven tiled floor rose and fell in both directions, and I felt like I was lost on a treacherous sea.

  I pressed my left hand against one wall to steady myself. I felt some vomit coming. My nipples felt raw again. I pressed my right hand against the other wall to help me stand.

  But it wasn’t a wall, it was the door to a room. Not mine. I couldn’t make out the room number because of the dark and my dizziness. I had to lean in nose-close to read the digits: 407. Only two doors down to mine. I could manage that. But when I pushed myself away, trying to get moving, the door to 407 popped open and I could see inside.

  The room was decorated in a style I’ll call Near-Bum, the distinction being that this mess was in a hotel and not on a cart in the street. Stockpiles of clothes and books and random small appliances. Hell, there might’ve been a time machine inside, who would know? But, for all this, it was the door itself that deserved the most attention.

  It had been smashed in. The handle bent at an angle and chips of wood on the floor.

  I turned and looked at room 408 on the other side of the hall and found the same evidence. A damaged door lock, the same easy access, a room as mute as a grave. Instead of following this ugly path toward my room, I traced it backward to the elevator because I am a man who will run away.

  409, 410, 411, 412. All the same. I reached the elevator and pressed the call button. I stood very still while I waited for it to come, as if that would hide me somehow.

  I looked back down the darkened hallway. The problem with shadows is what they hide. Because I couldn’t see anything, I saw everything. I felt like I was down in the sewers again. Where was the elevator? I couldn’t take the stairs for fear that my tired legs would give out. Imagine that: Ricky Rice escapes a monster but gets done in by some steps.

  Finally the elevator arrived. As I stepped inside, I heard a sound in the hall. Wood creaking. I told myself it was one of the rooms I’d been in, just a breeze pushing a door open, but I didn’t really believe that.

  I stared down the dark hall, both hoping to see something materialize and praying that I wouldn’t. Without meaning to I opened my mouth as if I was planning to speak, but I didn’t know what to say. A shadow twisted in the hall. It rose so high it touched the ceiling.

  I pressed the lobby button, but the elevator door wouldn’t close. When I looked down, I saw I was pressing the button that read DOOR OPEN. Even after I realized this, I couldn’t pull my finger back. Not right away. It was like when you know you’re asleep, stuck in a nightmare, but can’t make your body wake up. I didn’t actually move my finger. It just fell away from the button.

  I heard a wet slap in the hall. No mistaking it. Something dragging itself across the tiled floor. Once. Then again. Movement. Coming toward me.

  Why hadn’t Solomon Clay taken credit for my attack in the sewer? He didn’t even mention it, and he wasn’t the modest type. And though I didn’t believe Ms. Henry about much, she did seem as unsure as me about what had gone on in the tunnel. So who knew what happened to me?

  Now the elevator door slid. There wasn’t much space left before it closed.

  In the hallway the silhouette seemed to wriggle like an eel, not a man. Something reached out of the darkness, a flash of puckered skin, all yellowish-green. It slapped against the wall and pulled the shadow forward. But that was the only noise, otherwise silence.

  Then I found my voice. I pleaded with that shadow as the elevator shut.

  “What did you do to me?” I shouted.

  50

  HOW MANY WARS HAVE BEEN STARTED over a little sugar rush? More than just the one in the Washerwomen’s living room, I’m willing to bet.

  Rose came at me, and Daphne jumped into her way. The two bodies tangled and went to the floor. Then Gina leapt off the couch and grabbed my sister by the shoulders. Gina was nearly seventy, but her grip made Daphne scream, and when I heard my sister’s cry, I bit Gina on the leg, right through her polyester pants. That’s when Rose kicked me in the cheek.

  At which point Wilfred stopped the smackdown. He stood at the window, as did many of the other kids now. Must have been something quite dramatic on the sidewalk if it could draw attention from our grappling on the blue carpet.

  Wilfred said, “It’s a cop outside. Cops.”

  Gina and Rose let go of me and my sister. Daphne came over and touched my face. She had carpet fibers in her hair, and I picked them out one by one. I looked back to the window, where everyone else had gathered. Only Karen stayed on the couch, too weak to rise just yet.

  Daphne looked outside too, but I couldn’t motivate myself. I was too busy watching Wilfred use this opportunity to touch Annabelle. She stood at the window, tiny next to his great mass. And when he put an arm around her shoulder, she leaned her face against his chest.

  Gina turn
ed back to Karen. “There’s two patrol cars parked out front.”

  Karen said, “They might not even be here for us.”

  “Well, who else, then?” Rose asked, tapping the glass.

  Gina said, “Maybe that couple downstairs finally killed each other.”

  Rose nodded. “That would be lucky.”

  Karen cleared her throat and huffed as she stood. Gina hurried to her side to provide a little balance, while Rose stayed at the window, tapping the glass as if she wanted the police to take notice.

  We, meaning most of the kids, turned back inside now and wondered what was going to happen next. Maybe the cops were here for the Beltrams on the second floor. A couple who fought so loudly they could be heard across the street. Some evenings you’d see faces across the way, elbows out on their concrete sills, gazes trained on the second-floor windows, waiting to hear gunshots.

  But it seemed more likely the police had come for us. To take away every child, just like they’d done with Veronica Gibbons. This thought was the worst of all.

  Karen said, “We’ll send some people down to ask around.”

  She and Gina moved to the door, but Rose stayed with us. Rose lunged for me.

  “Rose!” Gina yelled.

  Finally Rose followed. But before she left the living room, she said, “You kids keep calm.” Then she took a breath. “Calm as you can.”

  The Washerwomen left us alone, and we stayed at the window. There were two patrol cars, four cops in all, but they weren’t parked directly in front of our building. One to the left and another to the right. They could’ve been responding to calls from our neighbors on either side. Their lights weren’t on, though, and the cops stayed in the car. I watched one, in the driver’s seat, take out a newspaper and flip the pages lazily.

  Police cars generate interest, but not limitless amounts. Small pockets of people waited on the sidewalk, looking at our building with as much curiosity as to the buildings around us, hoping to see someone in handcuffs. But when the police didn’t leap or grab or even mosey, those crowds lost interest, just as we did in the apartment. After half an hour the Washerwomen hadn’t returned, but we’d stopped staring down. A few of us ate the last of the sugar bread, but not me. An hour after that the three sisters returned. The younger kids were half-asleep on the floor. The older ones, like Daphne, sat up like sentries just underneath the living room windows.

  The Washerwomen cleaned while we watched them. They cleared the tray, the empty plates and bowls. Took their glasses back to the kitchen. Wiped the table of sugar and crumbs. This was normal, they always cleared, and seeing a return to the routine really calmed us. When they were done, Karen and Rose sat on the couch. Gina came to the windows and pulled the blinds down. She sat with her sisters again.

  Even the Washerwomen became drowsy soon. This long period of quiet, the crash after the crest, was normal too. Call it prayer or meditation or transcendence (if you’re feeling generous), but we spent the middle hours of every Saturday mute in the living room. All the surprises of the morning passed out of us, the big fight and the shock of those patrol cars, the loss of Veronica Gibbons and even the early return of all our parents from their missionary work. Most of all the looming threat of our impending move subsided. Not forgotten, but set down.

  Finally, Altagracia, not more than seven years old, sat up and crossed her legs. She looked at us on the floor and back to the drowsy Washerwomen on the couch. Then Altagracia posed a burning question.

  “How come The Munsters can’t come on every day?”

  That popped me right up. Most of the others too. My cheek hurt so I rubbed it. We didn’t look at Altagracia, but at the Washerwomen, who rubbed their eyes. Rose bumped the end table, and its glass top rattled.

  Gina asked, “How do you know it doesn’t come on every day?”

  “ ’Cause I don’t see it every day,” Altagracia answered, exasperated.

  Karen said, “But that doesn’t mean it’s not on, Altagracia. Just because you don’t see it. How many days a week do you get to watch television?”

  “Two.”

  Gina said, “Well, then, how can you be sure it doesn’t come on the other five days? You’re asking the wrong question, baby girl. You should be asking why you can’t watch television seven days a week.”

  “Well, why can’t I?”

  “Because watching that much television will turn you into a straight fool,” Rose answered. “You won’t do anything else with your time.”

  Annabelle Cuddy raised her hand. “What if we only watched good shows?”

  Rose asked, “And would you be willing to put your faith in the television producers to make that many good shows? Enough to keep you from seeing nonsense most of the time?”

  “That’s asking a lot of those producers,” Karen added, almost sounding sympathetic.

  Rose said, “We can barely fill one Saturday with you each week.”

  Altagracia hadn’t done anything wrong by asking her question. She had good reason to look pleased with herself. She was so happy, in fact, that she stuck her stubby little thumb right into her mouth, too proud to be embarrassed of her habit.

  We were meant to ask, and the Washerwomen had to answer. That was the next part of our Saturday service. And as they answered one question, we asked another. The point was to challenge them.

  “So maybe you should just work harder,” I said.

  Rose nearly came up off the couch again. I covered my bruised cheek instinctively.

  “What did that boy just say to me?” Rose asked.

  “If you offered us more,” Annabelle said, “we could visit here all week.”

  I smiled when Annabelle said that. It felt like she was defending me.

  Karen leaned forward now, so far forward I thought she was about to vomit, and even her sisters moved their hands to catch her.

  “Seven days a week with a houseful of kids will absolutely kill you,” Karen said.

  “Or them,” Daphne muttered.

  Had the sisters heard her? Most of us on the floor tensed, waiting for a reaction, but none came, and I felt so relieved for Daphne.

  But even without hearing my sister, the Washerwomen went silent and sad. Karen’s statement had them reminiscing, I guess. Maybe to the time before they’d put their families to bed. Gina got up and went into the bathroom for a while.

  When she got back, I apologized a dozen times. Figured I’d started us down the path that had led to the anger in the room. Maybe I’d even started it hours before as I clung to Wilfred’s fat neck. Better to just say sorry. So I did my apology routine, but Karen wouldn’t have it. She didn’t want a child’s pity, so she snapped at me.

  “Are those questions, Ricky? That’s what this time is for.”

  But before I could respond, my sister raised her voice.

  Daphne said, “Okay, Karen. Did you ever think that by keeping all of us out of school and locked away from other kids, you’ve turned us into a bunch of weirdos? You ever think this is all a mistake?”

  How that’s for a question?

  Karen said, “The pride of your heart has deceived you, Daphne. I snapped at your brother just now, and you got angry. I see that. But your question, is it really what you want to know, or did you just mean to hurt my feelings?”

  “Both,” she said.

  Karen sneered. “If you really envy those children outside so badly, then I’ll get up and open the front door for you! You don’t have to stay.”

  I said, “Aren’t you just trying to hurt my sister’s feelings now?”

  Wilfred brought his big legs up to his chest. “Maybe you keep us all closed up so we’ll only listen to you.”

  Rose nodded. “Well, that doesn’t seem to be working.”

  Gina rubbed her right hand on the sofa arm. She said, “You could do a lot worse than honoring our example.”

  “The pride of your heart has deceived you,” Annabelle Cuddy repeated to them.

  There might’ve been a lo
t wrong with the way I was raised, or at least it was plenty strange, but I can’t dismiss the parts that were right. Growing up in a deeply religious household, my mother and I started having conversations about war when I was five. By the age of seven I’d been introduced to the concepts of humility and sacrifice. I was expected to think about realities much larger than my own. Contemplation was considered a worthy pastime for a religious child, and I’m still grateful for that.

  Rose punched her knuckles into her own leg.

  “You go ahead and get on your knees in front of a television, then. Worship some show. Choose that instead of being devoted to us.”

  I said, “So you want us to believe in God, or just in you?”

  My sister turned to me. Wilfred and Annabelle too. Altagracia gawked.

  I hadn’t said the wrong thing. I’d just won this little game.

  Rose said, “Ricky’s right. We’re elevating ourselves.”

  Karen nodded, agreeing with Rose. She smiled at us weakly.

  Karen said, “I remember Gina, Rose, and I were sitting in church on a Wednesday evening in March 1961. We had a guest preacher that night, Reverend Cook. People called him ‘Constant’ Cook because he traveled the country giving sermons every night, had been on the circuit for two straight years. He had a nice way of talking, hardly ever raised his voice. And he had a lazy right eye. He called attention to it. Said he wasn’t born that way. One summer morning, when he was twelve, he had a vision so powerful it just knocked the right one off center.”

  Karen patted her heart.

  “A vision of a church as big as a football stadium, every seat filled. And down on the fifty-yard line Reverend Cook preached the gospel that had built this temple. That Jesus wanted us to be comfortable. The good Lord wasn’t happy if we weren’t rich. And why not us? Our people had sacrificed and died! Only an evil God would deny us our due. And our God wasn’t evil, he was good….”