Big Machine

by Victor Lavalle

  My father finished first. Then the other dad, Mr. Ward, returned a little out of breath. Sweat ran down the front of his nose. I looked up, waiting for them to smash these last two lightbulbs so we could scurry away in the shadows. But they didn’t do that.

  The fourth-floor lights stayed on.

  “Consider this our lifeboat,” Karen said.

  It wasn’t just me, but all the children, who looked down at the stairs, confused.

  Karen hushed us, as if our stares made sounds.

  At the far bottom of the stairwell I heard the door groan as it opened. A man’s voice shouted up at us from the lobby.

  “Hello! Hello! Please be advised that the New York City Police Department has been ordered to enter your premises!”

  We didn’t speak, not the adults or the kids.

  The man at the bottom shouted again. “We are sending units up. If you are armed, you will be shot. Do not fuck around!”

  I turned toward my dad, expecting what? I don’t know. An explanation. A solution. Even a wink. But he didn’t offer any. He, my mother, and the other adults only locked their arms in a way that penned the children in. The parents at the bottom did the same. I watched my dad. His eyes were shaking so bad I thought they’d spin right out of his head. Sargent Rice seemed even more scared than me. I never understood him so much as I did just then.

  “It’s all right,” I whispered to him, but I can’t say if he heard me because Karen cleared her throat just then, and it drew our attention to the Washerwomen.

  Rose spoke. “Get your backs up!” she shouted. “Stand straight!”

  Which we did without thinking.

  Gina smiled. She pointed down the stairwell, into the dark.

  “They think we’re shipwrecked, but we know the song of the sea.”

  Gina reached into her pants pocket and came out with her gun.

  I lost my breath. I mean straight hyperventilated. I dropped my stupid little suitcase. Its clump echoed so it seemed like all the kids had dropped theirs too. The stairway seemed to get hotter, but it might’ve just been the fear inside me. I reached out for some hand, any hand, and found Wilfred’s. He didn’t pull away. He didn’t push me back. Wilfred held on just as tight.

  Karen said, “It was two years before Reverend Cook’s death really hit me. Our part in it. The guilt became so strong my sisters and I, we about lost our minds.”

  “Yes,” Gina said. The gray pistol looked feral in her veiny hand. Something that wouldn’t be tamed.

  “By that time we’d built three houses right near one another, on property we bought with Reverend Cook’s money. I was sitting in my kitchen, snapping the ends off some green beans I’d just washed. I heard a woman’s voice calling my name from the parlor room.

  “But when I reached the parlor, it was empty. Then I heard her calling from the entryway and when I got there, it was empty too. When she called for me again, I followed, but didn’t expect to find anyone. That voice led me through whole house, all three floors. Every bathroom, every closet, every bedroom. It took me so long to pass through every room that when I ended up back in the kitchen, the beans I’d washed were bone-dry. I felt this shame come over me, so powerful and cold I thought my heart would give out. What was the point of all this space if there was nothing inside?”

  Karen said, “I felt like I was standing on Reverend Cooks grave, and I finally faced the truth. We’d mistreated that man. Me, my sisters, those preachers we’d paid off. Their congregations. Even our families. We tore apart his church and used the timber in our hearth. Everyone who’d benefited shared the guilt. A guilt that would last for all their living days. That night we pardoned our families. But more was required of us. We were meant to build a new church. Save as many souls as we could from the corruptions of this world. The temptations we knew all too well.”

  Karen lost her breath. She inhaled slowly. She whispered, “I hoped to rescue so many more. But I won’t be ungrateful.”

  Which of the kids cried first? None. It was our parents. Some were scared, but maybe others felt relieved. Escaping this hard world is number one on many wish lists. Some grown-ups yelped, and the kids followed.

  “Stop that shrieking!” Rose demanded. But who could listen to her now?

  The stairwell door creaked down below, and I imagined a mouth opening as wide as it could go. How many cops were they sending up there? The same sound came from the roof, a door moaning there. They must’ve climbed up the sides of the building. I heard the shuffle of boots on the steps, but they weren’t coming too quickly. No one wants to run blind into a potential firefight.

  Karen and Rose reached into their clothing now, maybe their pockets or their purses, I can’t say. It really looked like they pulled those guns out of their sleeves. They looked calm. I mean their faces. Flat and empty eyes.

  I didn’t scream because it still seemed impossible. The Washerwomen weren’t going to shoot anyone. No, no, no. But then each sister put a gun to a child’s head, and those kids still didn’t run. Bernard Hub-bard. Greg Yarbrough. Altagracia Munoz. It sounds insane, I know, but we refused to accept that they’d pull the triggers.

  Until they did.

  The stairwell didn’t get loud, like I would’ve expected. It got quiet instead. My ears went fuzzy, like I was nearly deaf, and I couldn’t even make out my own voice. Not the voices of other children either. But I felt that we were screaming. I mean the vibrations of our cries hit my chest. The bodies of those three children slammed against the stairwell walls. I can’t say I saw Altagracia die. I guess I refused to see.

  My sneakers squished in blood. I knew that’s what it was, but wouldn’t look down. The walls of the stairway stank with it. I felt as if the hall had filled with steam, a new heat that wet my hair, the side of my face.

  The Washerwomen put their guns to the heads of two more children, Keisha and Olivia Broom. And now one adult, Mr. Ward.

  -Sssswump!- -Sssswump!- -Sssswump!-

  The pulse of those muddy gunshots felt like an unearthly heartbeat to me.

  Now our meekness was beat by our fear. The first six victims had basically fed themselves to the pistols, but the rest of us kids would have to be caught. We went crazy trying to escape. We clawed at each other, climbed over one another. Beat at each other with our little suitcases. We did anything to get away.

  The police finally reached us and scuffled with the parents at either end. Were our folks defending the Washerwomen at this point? Hard to say. The cops couldn’t be expected to differentiate. They wrestled anyone who’d hit puberty.

  Then the last of the stairwell lights went out. I wasn’t sure if the police knocked them out or if they broke in the struggles. Each cop came down with gun drawn, one hand on his pistol, the other underneath to steady his aim. And in that second hand each one held a flashlight. As they moved in the total darkness, their flashlights threw bright spots onto us, onto the walls, onto the ceilings.

  I didn’t register them as flashlights. Blame a boy’s imagination, but in my frightened mind something of the dead had been released by the bullets. Those weren’t lights. They were souls. The spots and flashes zoomed across our faces, and I felt I was being touched by holy kisses, my lost friends saying good-bye.

  Rose stood right behind me suddenly. She pressed the muzzle of the gun against the left side of my neck. It was still hot from the previous shots. I felt that fiery bite and I knew what came next: bullet escapes the barrel, slug enters my head.

  I kicked backward instinctively. Harder than I’d ever hit anything. And Rose fell back. Just a step, but it was enough. The lights continued to dance against the ceiling. It looked like a map of heaven. I moved hysterically. I didn’t run, I climbed.

  I never doubted that our parents could do this to us. Tackling and smashing the cops who’d finally arrived. Even offering up their own children to the guns. I never doubted they could do this because they adored the Washerwomen too.

  You should’ve seen me all those times w
hen I ran errands for my family. If the cashier at the supermarket told me the bill was $3.25, I’d ask her to go over the figures with me again, right there, even recalculating the tax on the back of the receipt. If the DON’T WALK sign flashed at me on the street, my first instinct was to ask, Why not?

  Doubt is the big machine. That’s what they told us. It grinds up the delusions of women and men. Well, we doubted every damn thing the world could offer.

  Except them.

  Even though us kids heard snippets about what they’d done to their families. Even though we’d guessed at the rest. We didn’t want to believe it. That hadn’t been Gina, Karen, and Rose. Those were the Robins sisters. Three women we’d never met. What happened in Jacksonville had been the nightmare, but our community was meant to be the dream.

  But now I fled from Rose’s pistol, practically flew over the girl in front of me. I grabbed at her hair and used that to pull myself over her. One of her hands tried to grip the railing, but the railing was slick with blood. I felt no remorse, only the grind to survive. But as I leapt forward, I looked down. The flashlights, those lost souls, illuminated this girl’s face.

  I’d grabbed the back of my own sister’s head.

  Daphne.

  I didn’t see her pupils because they’d rolled into her skull. She looked blind and helpless. She screamed, but everyone was screaming. She’d been moving forward, but now bent backward because I pulled myself over her. Then Rose’s gun touched Daphne’s temple.

  -Sssswump!-

  It’s true that Rose squeezed the trigger, but I sacrificed my sister to save myself.

  Our community ended that night. News of the gunfight spread so fast that everyone in Queens claimed to have heard the shots thundering.

  A cult called the Washerwomen committed mass murder. That’s how the papers reported it. That’s the story that stuck. Every adult who survived got jail time, including Sargent and Carolyn. Group homes for the children. Daphne and the other victims were given to the grave.

  No mention of the lights was ever made.

  53

  HIGHGROUND HOSPITAL SHOT UP before us, an off-white tower on a hill. It stood amid small, quiet, private homes and hovered just above busy 14th Avenue. Claude pulled into a curved driveway and stopped in front of glass admitting doors.

  The Gray Lady leaned close to me so she could look at him around the headrest. “Why don’t you just park in the garage?” she asked. “We might be here for a while.”

  “Parking on the sidewalk is free,” he said.

  He remained there, clinging to the steering wheel just to make clear he wouldn’t be carrying me. I remembered that bus driver leaning forward as he drove us through the heavy snow. The Gray Lady would have to do the lifting, and I wondered how she’d manage the feat. I admit I felt a bit excited: we were finally going to touch! No getting out of it now. It wouldn’t be skin, I understood that, but the idea of her hands cupped under my arms moved me.

  I took so long fantasizing about the moment that I didn’t notice the Gray Lady run into the waiting room without me. She returned moments later with a nurse pushing a wheelchair.

  Ah, Ms. Henry, you got away from me again.

  The nurse wheeled me inside the waiting room, and left me at a desk while she walked around to the other side. Asked for my name, my symptoms, a home address. Then she told me I’d have to wait. Wheeled me over to an empty chair and lifted me into it before I could protest. I looked worse than most others in the waiting room but better than a few.

  You have to be catastrophically sick to pass to the front of a public hospital’s line.

  A large crowd was waiting there. Half of them were children of patients who just couldn’t afford a babysitter. The kids tried their best to use the emergency room like a jungle gym, climbing onto end tables and hiding behind potted plants. Inventing fun is a child’s true genius.

  I sat in one chair, arms balanced on each arm rest, with the Gray Lady beside me, hands in her lap. I tried to meditate, concentrate on my aches. I located that hot pain sitting between my shoulder blades and talked to it as if it was alive. Just leave me alone, I thought. Why not get out of here? I know it can’t be comfortable stuffed up in my narrow back. Wouldn’t you be happier somewhere else? You know, Claude has a very roomy belly.

  But it didn’t work, of course. The fire in my spine smoldered.

  I leaned back in my seat, pressing against my shoulder blades, and when I did that, my upper body twitched, nerves scrambling, all the way up to my neck. A jolt so powerful I jerked forward and took the pressure off. As soon as I did that, the harsh pain went away.

  “What was that thing at my hotel?” I asked Ms. Henry.

  That’s what I said, but my sentence came out mumbled. I had a lot of saliva in my mouth now, and it took concentration to keep the drool from spilling past my lips. I thought I’d throw up again, right there. Ms. Henry looked at me and scrunched her eyebrows. Had she even understood what I said?

  “I saw you look up at the sky,” I explained once my mouth was dry.

  The Gray Lady whispered, “I have to call the Dean and find out what to do about Claude. My phone won’t work in here. I’ll be right outside.”

  “No,” I huffed. “You know what it was.”

  She bounced the phone on her right knee. It looked as big as a bike engine in her fat little hand. My mouth filled with saliva and I sucked it down again, a little louder than I meant to. People waiting in nearby chairs looked at me with disgust.

  Ms. Henry spoke softly. “They,” she said. “They’re called the Devils of the Marsh.”

  “Come on.”

  She looked at me calmly, like she wouldn’t bother arguing.

  In the sewer I’d been sure it wasn’t Solomon Clay, wasn’t any human, and felt the same in the elevator at my hotel, but I couldn’t bear the idea now.

  And yet. And yet. What had I seen in Cedar Rapids? Did “Devils of the Marsh” sound any more impossible?

  “And what are they?” I asked.

  “You know how we go out in the field and do the Library’s will?”

  “Yeah.”

  She said, “They do the will of the Voice.”

  “So they’re good?”

  She touched her neck, covering the small, healed scars.

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  I sucked in again and didn’t bother to register the loathing of those nearby. I wanted to know more. At least she was finally telling me something. But before I could ask, I coughed and couldn’t stop. It got so bad my throat burned and my eyes watered and Ms. Henry’s only reaction was to wiggle her big phone.

  “I’m going to call the Dean. Find out how I should proceed. You heard what Claude said. He’ll turn us in easy as that.” She snapped her fingers.

  The Gray Lady opened her green purse, rummaged around. Stared down into the bag. Meanwhile, I struggled to catch my breath.

  “It’s our job to keep the Library secret,” she said, more to herself than to me.

  She stood up. She looked at me. I’m sure I was a terrible sight, but she seemed unconcerned.

  “Take care of yourself, Mr. Rice.”

  She took a breath.

  She left me there.

  54

  I NEVER SAW A DOCTOR WALKING through the emergency room, and even once I was moved to the little examination stalls in back, it took a while for me to meet one. Nurses ran the show. Husky women in their forties who distinguished themselves with different sets of festive scrubs.

  They wheeled me back before the Gray Lady returned, and even though I craned my neck to see through the big waiting room windows, I didn’t see her outside. I thought of leaving a trail from my chair to the back room, but I didn’t have any bread crumbs. Besides, how did I know she’d follow the path? Who was I kidding? That lady was gone. How could I have believed that nonsense about calling the Dean? She wasn’t off to deal with Claude. She’d abandoned me. In this condition I was more trouble than I was worth.
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  The nurse helped me into a stall, then pulled the curtain shut and left me alone again. Ten minutes may have passed, but it felt longer, and I couldn’t even lie down for fear of aggravating the sore spot between my shoulder blades. With each minute I imagined Claude and the Gray Lady driving another mile, another mile. By the time the nurse came back, they were far away. Even this stuff about the Devils of the Marsh seemed like part of the trick. A way to shock me into shutting up long enough for them to flee.

  The nurse checked my blood pressure, asked questions about my pain. She took some blood. Left again and returned with a doctor some time later. Dr. Leonard France. White-haired and lean, his eyes as red as radishes. The kind of man who’d been tired for years, maybe even generations. I heard patients in other stalls calling out for attention, and after checking me, the doctor went to them.

  This back-and-forth, the same nurse and doctor leaving and returning to my stall, went on for another hour. They gave me a paper robe and told me to change. I kept looking at the double doors that led out to the waiting room. When they swung open, I hoped to see Ms. Henry’s round face there. But I never did.

  My nurse might’ve gone on break, but Dr. France returned to me more often, even to the detriment of other patients. When he came to take my blood for the third time, one of the other patients, a muscular man, started yelling about why I got so much attention while he was left to sit there like a jerk. I wondered the same thing.

  The doctor came again. This time he said, “Are you willing to go upstairs with me?”

  “What’s up there?” I asked. “The morgue?”

  He laughed, and I realized I’d come to like this guy. Whenever he did something, he asked my permission first, rather than just doing it and explaining only when it was done. Even something as simple as checking my pulse for the fifth time.

  “Nothing like that,” he said. “I just want to rule a few things out.”

  “Okay, then.”

  I slid myself off the exam table.

  He put me in a wheelchair, which I didn’t mind, and took me up himself. That part scared me. These doctors only paid such close attention to the real crisis cases. We passed through the waiting room quickly, less than five seconds, and I made one last sweep for the Gray Lady, but she wasn’t to be seen. That’s when I felt the deepest fear. That I was truly alone, penniless, had no one to stand with me.