Big Machine

by Victor Lavalle

  “These tunnels feel homey to you?” Adele asked.

  “I don’t mean standing in water. I mean down below instead of up there.”

  Solomon touched the ceiling, and his light stabbed at the surface like a lance. His case had been full of trusty little items like this: flashlights, batteries, bandages, even face masks.

  But Adele didn’t feel like entertaining the philosophical jabbering of Solomon Clay. Instead of responding to him, she said, “So it’s really true, Snooky?”

  He looked back at her and nodded somberly.

  “Yes, Adele. I guess it is.”

  She hadn’t wanted to hear him say it. The Dean could, Mr. Clay could, but it wasn’t true until Snooky did.

  “Are you running out of money?” She didn’t care if the question sounded coarse.

  “That,” Snooky said. “And patience.”

  Adele’s light played across the tunnel walls. They were only dirt, not concrete, but the earth had been sculpted, smoothed, hardened. Glazed by a process too mysterious for Adele’s best guess. Solomon, Snooky, and Adele sloshed through the heavy water and gave up trying to keep their clothes dry. Soon enough their wet clothes gummed up against their bodies, outlining every paunch and jiggle. Adele kept tugging her shirt off her belly. The water rolled away from them as they moved along, slapping against the tunnel walls on either side, then returning with a slurp.

  “Did the Voice tell you to shut it down or something?” she asked.

  “My accountant told me to.”

  Snooky Washburn was doing the worst of all down in the tunnel. Kept bumping his head on the ceiling and then stooping down too low and getting water in his mouth when it splashed up against his legs. Then coughing violently enough to bring tears to his face.

  And yet her sympathy only came in waves. When it ebbed, it was because she thought of his plans for the Library. He could just shut it down like that? she thought. Shut me down?

  She realized she’d already told herself a whole story about Snooky Washburn and Adele Henry. Teammates. Partners. Maybe in love someday. All this in the span of a day. Despite Cherise. Despite the difference in their ages. And why? Because this is what she wanted. A man like that beside her. Not in front or behind. It took only hours for her to plan out their years, and yet look at Snooky over there, oblivious. Just a man who’d decided to throw her good new life away.

  THEY CAUGHT UP to Solomon in a larger chamber just a few yards ahead. Adele thought it was their destination, but three more paths led out from there. If these tunnels were roads, they’d reached an intersection. She looked up, half-expecting to find a traffic light.

  Solomon Clay clapped once, but the echo in the catacombs made the sound tremendous, as if a set of great doors had slammed shut behind them.

  “Judah waded in these waters, Snooky. Your ancestor touched these walls.”

  Snooky looked at the ceiling. How many times had Solomon practiced these words just to make them seem effortless and improvised now?

  “He had every reason to give up, to just drop in the dirt and die.”

  “But he didn’t,” Snooky finished.

  “That’s right. He maintained. He persevered.”

  “I know where this is going,” Snooky whispered. “But I’m not changing my mind about the Library.”

  Mr. Clay said, “That’s all right. I didn’t bring you down here to talk about that place.”

  Solomon walked ahead again. Snooky Washburn followed him, drawn perhaps by curiosity. And what about Adele? Why should she continue?

  Adele thought of all the troubles she’d faced in the past. Too many. Would that change if she ran away? Trouble comes, that’s unavoidable. Might as well have it out now.

  Adele thought of Maxine Henry again. Her estranged and disappointed mother. A woman practically driven into hiding by her daughter’s criminal life. A relationship that wouldn’t be saved in a thousand years. And despite their history Adele called to that woman now as she trudged toward the Devils’ Well. This wasn’t the first time she’d prayed to her mother for protection. She’d done it in Paterson, New Jersey too.

  Keep me alive, Maxine. Please be with me.

  Adele continued on, behind the others, into the deeper gloom.

  WELL, LOOK AT YOU just standing around in the cold. You remember me?

  You’re my special flower. That’s right.

  I’m lucky to find anything so precious growing in Paterson.

  I told you I wasn’t a cop. Will you trust me this time? Don’t run off like before.

  Climb inside. It’s fine. That’s fine.

  I want you to talk to me the whole time, okay? Call me Honeyspot. Okay?

  Yes, that’s what I said. It’s funny right?

  I’m like a bear, I guess.

  I find a woman’s honey and I steal it.

  EVENTUALLY THE CLEAR TUNNELS DETERIORATED, and rubble turned the ground beneath the water into an uneven pathway. The catacombs became wilder. The air so hot that sweat bubbled out of every pore in Adele’s face. Eventually she stopped wiping it away. Tree roots cracked through the ceiling and grasped at the tops of their heads. It was as if they were marching backward in time. From the modern day, as far back as the dawn.

  They walked single file and kept a quiet line. Thicker tree roots dangled down, and cordgrass grew out of the water; the tops of it brushed as high as her knees.

  I SAW A MOTEL on my way over here. Would you mind going there?

  Don’t worry about the money. I want you for hours.

  Okay. You can have half of it now and the rest as soon as we’re done. That sound fair?

  You know what you seem like?

  You seem like a good girl to me.

  ALL ROADS END. Aboveground or below. This tunnel stopped at a closed door.

  The door was a disc, easily six feet across, and made of gray stone. An aspirin tablet for one very big headache. There was a hole as wide as the tip of a baseball bat right in the center of the disc. Solomon Clay leaned forward, put his hand into the hole, and pushed the door to the left. It rolled open with a rumble.

  Snooky spoke in a hush. “Is this … really?”

  “That’s right, little prince.”

  The inside of the chamber looked even darker than the tunnel where they stood. An impossible kind of night, the last night. The way it’ll look when every star goes extinct.

  Mr. Clay walked calmly into the open doorway, but Snooky hung back, stiff. Adele reached his side, and the man couldn’t even blink. His mouth hung open.

  “Snooky,” she whispered. “Snooky, it’s all right.”

  “I can’t go in there,” he said.

  “You want to run?” she asked.

  “I never believed it,” he admitted.

  “Let’s run,” Adele said.

  Now he blinked. And breathed. He looked at her. “I’ll bet you’ve been through a lot worse than this, Adele. You don’t seem scared, but I can’t even move my legs. I thought this was just a story my father told me at night to scare me. I can’t do this …”

  “You can do whatever you want to, Snooky. And you’d be surprised what you can survive.”

  He smiled weakly. “Can I give you this?”

  Snooky pulled the gun from his pocket and handed it to her, handle first.

  “The way I feel right now, I’d probably just end up shooting myself.”

  Adele took it. “Think of me as your bodyguard,” she said, trying to sound cool.

  But this bodyguard had to face the fact that she’d never fired a gun. The thing was as heavy as a heart attack. She must’ve been looking at it strangely.

  “If you have to use it,” Snooky said, “don’t pull the trigger, just squeeze it.”

  They went in together, side by side.

  THERE YOU GO. Good girl.

  How do you like this room?

  Come, now. No crying.

  Oh, I see. Those aren’t tears. That’s blood. Your scalp’s not holding up well.


  But it doesn’t even hurt after a while, isn’t that right?

  My special flower.

  If they do let you into heaven when this is over, tell God how I plucked you tonight.

  THE CEILING OF THE EARTHEN AMPHITHEATER ROSE to thirty feet. After being stuck in those cramped tunnels, it felt as disorienting as deepest space in there. Adele felt nearly weightless, and she went cockeyed trying to adjust to the dimensions of the new room. She’d become used to reaching out and touching the tunnel walls or ceilings, and without this she drifted. If there hadn’t still been water around her thighs, cordgrass bunching around her shins, she really would have believed she was floating. Adele stood a mile below Laguna Lake, but it felt like she’d left this old world.

  Snooky Washburn rose to his full height for the first time in an hour, and even Adele’s back felt better when she saw him stretch that way. The room was darker than the tunnels, but her eyes adjusted. The beams from her flashlight seemed to float in the air, pockets of illumination that helped her see.

  The cordgrass below the water had been growing and dying for centuries. All manner of tiny organic life had come to be and come to pass in this chamber too. Their fats and cellulose and proteins broken down by bacteria in the mud and sediment of the marshy floor. This process produced swamp gas. Methane, mostly. Colorless and odorless, but not exactly harmless. The Devils’ Well appeared empty, but it was actually quite full.

  Snooky walked ahead, into the middle of the chamber, where Solomon stood too. The water rose as high as each tall man’s waist in that spot. Adele hung back a bit, staying closer to the only door, and took the gun out of her pocket. She pointed it down, toward the water.

  Really she was aiming at her own foot, and when she realized this, she lifted the gun, pointed straight out, and moved her arm until she had the gun aimed at Solomon Clay. But she couldn’t maintain the pose for long because the weight of the gun exhausted her shoulder.

  Solomon Clay said, “I’m disappointed in you, Snooky. And the Voice is too.”

  WHEN YOU SCREAM, it forces me to put things in your mouth.

  SOLOMON CLAY PURSED HIS LIPS. He made a long slow hummed note. He hummed all the way through Snooky Washburn’s protests. And when Snooky raised his voice, Solomon only hummed louder. Finally Snooky stopped trying.

  “I didn’t bring you down here to talk about your money Snooky. I didn’t bring you here to have a debate about your wealth. You could say I’m concerned about your soul.”

  Snooky groaned. “Not one of these talks—”

  Solomon interrupted. “I first met you when you were eleven years old. At your father’s funeral. I walked down the line of family and most of them didn’t even want to shake my hand. Maybe they blamed the Library for your daddy’s death. Maybe they thought of us as a god damn cult, I don’t know. But then I got to you and I introduced myself, and do you remember what you did?”

  Snooky looked away from Solomon, into the empty dark all around him.

  “I offered you my seat.”

  Solomon nodded. “And you wouldn’t let me say no. You had me sit with all the Washburns, like I was just as much your father’s family as any of them, and I knew you had an honorable heart.”

  “That was years ago,” Snooky said.

  “Not so long, Snooky. And I still see that upright young man today.”

  “I appreciate that,” Snooky said. “I really do.”

  The chamber returned to silence. Adele and Snooky had entered shoulder to shoulder, but just now she couldn’t help feeling a little like the odd one out.

  I’M GOING TO PUT YOU in the bathtub now.

  Can’t have you bleeding through the mattress.

  ADELE COULDN’T SEE QUITE RIGHT. Solomon had turned his flashlight in her direction. She squinted in the glimmering cave.

  Snooky shouted, “But how long am I supposed to keep bankrolling you? For real. How long? Fifty more years? A thousand?”

  Now Adele sloshed forward in the water, only two steps, raising her free hand as if she had the proper answer.

  Solomon pointed his light back at Snooky. “I told you, I’m not talking about your got damn money! Keep it all, I don’t care. I want you, Snooky Washburn the third, to come with me and meet the despised children.”

  Snooky spoke wearily. “I meet them every time the Dean sends them from Vermont.”

  Though she knew Snooky meant every Unlikely Scholar who’d arrived by bus, plane, or car, she couldn’t help thinking of when they’d met, tussling on the Greyhound station floor.

  “You think I’m talking about a bunch of puffed-up washouts? They think a brand-new outfit means now their shit don’t stink. Well, the Voice isn’t just a path to prosperity.”

  “I have a family!” Snooky shouted, as if his family were a weapon hidden in his sleeve. “And an inheritance that’s running out. I have to worry about my own.”

  Adele tried to see Snooky’s face. Was he looking her way right then, begging her to squeeze that trigger and protect him? The swamp gas was making her faint, woozy; she swung her flashlight wildly, trying to find him. The light seemed to hover in the swamp gas until a sickly yellow fog filled the chamber, covering the waters like a shroud, obscuring the two men even more.

  There were great splashes, and the water sloshed around Adele’s knees, and in her confusion the water seemed to bubble and churn as if she were being boiled alive.

  “That’s Judah’s real legacy,” Solomon said. “He was selfish down to his soul too.”

  Adele jiggled the gun, which rested in her grip, but her shoulder wouldn’t work as expected. It wouldn’t lift. Too tired. She ran forward, into the cloud of swamp gas, and found the two men wrestling.

  Solomon huffed. “But I’m going to beat that demon out of you.”

  Snooky was fifty pounds heavier and fifty years younger, but the old man was filled with an unquenchable fire. He had Snooky stooped forward, head down toward the water, both arms pinned behind the back. They looked like prehistoric beasts, like two dinosaurs battling. They gasped and panted, and their breath seemed to mingle with the swamp gas until Adele really felt she’d stumbled into a clash at the dawn of time.

  She shouted, “Let Snooky go!”

  Solomon raised one arm and brought the elbow down on the back of Snooky Washburn’s head. The big man went down with a splash.

  Mr. Clay turned to Adele. “Or what?”

  Her right arm felt stronger now, thanks to a sudden rush of self-preservation. Adele held the grip of the pistol loosely, and with a grimace she raised the gun.

  DON’T YOU WANT TO TALK? The others always do.

  Come on. Eyes open.

  I like to hear the begging.

  SOLOMON CLAY PUT HIS ARMS UP, but his smile told her how little he feared.

  “I’ve survived a bullet or two, Ms. Henry.”

  “How about six?” she asked.

  Adele didn’t want to duel with this maniac. Didn’t want to hear about the Voice or Judah Washburn. Real or not, none of it mattered. Not at all. This is why her religious grandmother had never made headway with Adele or Maxine. Her grandmother thought that if she just made a convincing argument for belief, her daughter and granddaughter would come to God. Just as Solomon seemed to believe he could convince Snooky to become magnanimous through the word or the fist. But she suspected Snooky, like herself and Maxine, just refused belief. It held no value for them. A concept that baffles believers. Adele wanted to leave this cave and return to the life she’d been enjoying. That’s it. Whatever got her back to that comfort was the plan she endorsed.

  Snooky recovered and rose from the water. His soggy jeans and sweater clung to him, and he looked like a child who’d been dunked in a pool. He turned to Solomon Clay, whose hands were still up because of Adele and the gun.

  Snooky raised his fists. “You won’t catch me sleeping twice, Solomon.”

  Adele shouted a question, but it was for Snooky not Mr. Clay.

  “Why now?” she sai
d to Snooky. “Why shut it down now?”

  Snooky heaved, caught his breath. “When would be better?”

  “After I’m gone,” she said. She couldn’t help it.

  Snooky nodded gravely. “It’s not personal, Adele.”

  That was the most hurtful thing he could’ve said.

  “It is for me.”

  Adele stepped forward and felt the ground beneath the water dip just a little, but she kept her balance. The tide rose to her pelvis. Her tired arm shivered, then lowered involuntarily.

  Solomon dropped his hands. “You’ll be back to selling your rotten twat within a week when he closes the Library. At least I can take some comfort in that.”

  With great sadness, and exhaustion, Adele Henry raised the pistol one last time.

  And then the Devils descended.

  WAKE UP NOW.

  Wake up.

  We’re not done.

  THEY CAME OUT of the swamp gas, gliding down from the dark. When they twisted in one direction, she saw them clearly, but when they turned again, they seemed to disappear. They were as thin as sheets, human forms but only two dimensions. They fluttered like the fumes above a fire. They had two arms each, a head, a torso, two legs, and the skin looked sea-green in the dark chamber. They looked like they belonged in the deep rather than on land.

  And now she thought the queasy yellow glow in the chamber hadn’t been her lights playing against particles in the swamp gas, but these … things. A yellow radiance seemed to emanate from their bellies. It seeped out through their slick skin.

  Adele felt sympathy for the Heurequeque in an instant. Their repulsion must’ve felt just like hers now. Her mouth pinched as if she’d tasted something sour, and her throat closed until it felt like she was choking.

  There were five of them. And when they landed, they surrounded Adele, and with her free hand she covered her eyes. But then she felt a touch, on her skin, and when she looked, she saw one of them had grabbed her hand. The hand that held the gun.