Big Machine

by Victor Lavalle

  I played with the volume knob, was tempted to turn it all the way to the left, until the radio clicked off. But I didn’t do it. I wanted to know what was being done for Garland.

  “Mayor Brandy has reported that he’s spoken with Governor Lilyfield, and the governor promises Garland is not being overlooked. The president has also guaranteed federal support, saying the American government would never abandon a U.S. city in crisis.”

  The newscaster paused there, and I heard a snort of breath, derision, the sound of his professionalism being punctured by his disbelief. It seemed Garland was facing a revelation like Adele’s only minutes before, looking up at the mansion to find there was no one inside who would help.

  I stopped listening because Ms. Henry came back from the kitchen with our cups of 100 proof whiskey. I took mine and held it tight.

  “You just had to turn that on,” she said. She sat again and held her drink to her breasts.

  Now a different reporter coughed once into the microphone, a live feed. I heard the sounds of traffic behind him.

  “I’m standing below I-580 in Garland, and even though it’s only five-thirty you can already hear the sounds of gridlock. The National Guard have set their checkpoint on the western end of Stitch Bridge. Any car or truck entering San Francisco is to be thoroughly searched for any potential threat. While this is an important security measure, it’s causing a backup that threatens to cripple an already nervous East Bay. The highways are turning into parking lots. Mayor Brandy has asked employers to give people the day off, but he can’t demand it. So far most employers have stated that in this economy they simply can’t afford to close for an entire day.”

  Ms. Henry held the glass of whiskey to her chin and shut her eyes, as if the Old Grand-Dad fumes were helping her think.

  She said, “Solomon doesn’t care about secrecy like the Dean. Can we agree on that? He doesn’t want to hide with his people in Vermont.”

  “That video was a threat to Garland and a commercial for the Church of Clay,” I said.

  “Okay. And why would they want to advertise?”

  I said, “It gets a certain kind of person interested in Solomon Clay.”

  Adele finally sipped her drink. “He won’t need to send out handwritten invitations. The despised will come find him. He got the news to broadcast a recruitment tape.”

  “I’m afraid two bombs and a video still won’t be enough, though,” I said.

  Adele brought her cup to her lips a second time, but she didn’t drink.

  “He’ll need to do something even bigger.”

  “A real display of his power,” she said.

  On the radio the reporter started interviewing people stuck in their cars. It sounded like he was just moseying from one driver to the next. They weren’t going anywhere.

  “All those people,” Adele said. “Just sitting out there.”

  Both Ms. Henry and I finished our drinks in a swallow. I waited to see her eyes shut, but instead both Ms. Henry and I fell asleep. Not even that. We blacked out.

  Right in our chairs.

  Facing each other across the dining table.

  Unconscious for an hour and a half.

  I WOKE UP and Ms. Henry had left the table. I listened for the shower running, but the only sound was of the radio rattling on with breaking news reports.

  The doors to her office and her bedroom were open. I stepped into the office. Empty. Peeked into the bedroom, one hand over my eyes. Nothing. I heard a flush in the bathroom. Then another. And a third. I would’ve laughed if I hadn’t needed to get in there myself.

  The bathroom door opened, and Ms. Henry looked up at me grimly. She lifted her right hand: six empty baggies.

  61

  “YOU DON’T KNOW what you’ve done,” I said.

  I couldn’t even look at her face, too mesmerized by those transparent glassine bags.

  “I saved your life,” she said. “ ’Cause if you shot up, I would’ve killed you.”

  “Like Snooky Washburn?”

  Yeah, I meant to hurt her. But she was invulnerable because of her indignation.

  “I figured the whiskey would pacify you. Then I could see what you were holding.”

  “Is that why you kept pouring?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Why else?”

  “ ’Cause you’re an alcoholic?”

  I stepped backward, and she did too, me toward the office and she into the bathroom.

  “How’d you even know I had anything?”

  “You’ve been staring at your coat pocket since we left the hospital.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t become a poker player, that’s my advice to you.”

  Now what? A fine question. I slumped against the doorway to her office.

  “And where did you find that needle?” she asked. “In a corpse?”

  I waved her away. “Why don’t you let me take a shower.”

  She grabbed the doorknob with the same hand that held the baggies I listened to them crinkle, like a bear hearing the last gasp of its cub.

  “I didn’t throw them out to hurt you, Ricky.”

  “And yet …”

  Ms. Henry walked into the living room. She took our glasses to the kitchen.

  IN THE BATHROOM I shut the door, washed my face, dried off with a towel, then looked in the mirror. I tried to see if I looked any different. Were my cheeks puffier? Did I already see jowls at the bottom of my face? How could I feel so different, but appear unchanged?

  I remembered when Gayle used to do the same thing. Standing in the bathroom, pulling at her face. Gayle said she knew she was pregnant long before we took the test, but I only believed her in retrospect. Years later I would think back and remember the way we’d lie down for bed at night, and at some point she’d just rest her right hand on her belly. Not directly on top, but slightly to the right of her belly button. She wouldn’t squeeze, just lay her palm flat against the skin, like she was checking a special temperature.

  I took off my dress shirt, hung it on the doorknob. Looked at my bare chest in the mirror.

  Where are you? I thought.

  What are you?

  Ms. Henry knocked lightly. I heard her lean against the door handle for balance. She didn’t say anything, just stood there.

  “How come you never told the Dean what the Voice said to you?” I asked.

  “I went back to Vermont and chose to forget it.”

  “I guess the Dean can’t see everything in those field notes.”

  She spoke again, as if I hadn’t said anything. “The words didn’t even make sense.”

  I touched my collarbone, my chest, my side. “But you didn’t forget them.”

  “Of course not,” she said.

  I might’ve pushed, asked what those four words had been, but I had my own troubles. Let them remain her burden. I had my own hiding under the skin.

  “I thought I’d take that story about Snooky to my death,” she said.

  “I can see why. You don’t come out looking too good.”

  She hit the door once, hard, and stomped off. I ran myself a shower.

  Once under the water my legs shook so badly that I had to lie down in the tub. Lay flat and let the shower pulverize me. It felt better than a bath because my muscles needed the spray to force out my poisonous fatigue. I turned around and stayed on my hands and knees so the water would do the same for my back. When I did this, I felt a quivering under my skin, right in the middle of my spine.

  I’d been attacked only days before, but now I realized I’d really started down this path three years earlier.

  62

  I FLEW OUT from LaGuardia Airport to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with twenty-four thousand dollars strapped around my knees. It’s harder to move cash than people might think. You can’t just wire that much money through Western Union. Using a courier is the surest way. It was my first time on an aircraft. I mean ever. This happened in 2002.

  But I wasn’t nervous about
getting caught at the airport, because the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had changed my threat status. Before September 11, the skinny, jittery black guy made security think one thing: drug mule. But after the attacks, security only cared about bombs. So it was the Arab guys, the Puerto Ricans and Indians, even white men, that got searched. I was too dark to make people worry on a plane. Still caused fear in elevators.

  The flight went fine because I’d brought a couple hundred milligrams of Thorazine too. I shut my eyes in New York and opened them again in Iowa. I took a cab directly to the address I’d been given.

  My host opened the door of his HUD home, a building that would’ve been condemned if the government hadn’t zoned it for the poor. He looked me over and smiled.

  “You old crackhead,” he said.

  “You fat fucker,” I answered back.

  I stood face-to-face for the first time in a decade with my former rival for Annabelle Cuddy’s affections. The only other of the Washerwomen’s children still alive. Big Wilfred Tanner. He’s the one who’d invited me out.

  We hugged each other like men do, without touching below the waist, just that stooped clutch like grappling bears. I smacked his back with an open palm, and he squeezed my neck with one soft hand.

  He led me inside and showed me to the back. He silently directed me into the bathroom, and when we were both inside, he stood blocking the door. There was a big hole in the ceiling where snow and rain could come through. He’d laid a plank of wood on the roof to cover the gap, weighted bricks on top so it wouldn’t blow away. We stood there a little longer, quietly. He wouldn’t step out of the way.

  Finally I said, “You going to show me the rest of the place?”

  He sniffed. “Take off your pants.”

  I said, “I can’t get a sandwich or something before we do business?”

  Wilfred gripped the doorknob so tightly it yelped.

  I took off my pants.

  He pulled the money from my legs so fast that the tape left burn marks.

  WHILE HE WAS GONE, I took a nap because that Thorazine was still in my veins. Even with a bit of a rest it kept me cloudy. When I moved, it felt like I was dragging a couch by my ears. I settled into the sofa in Wilfred’s den.

  Den. That’s me being polite. I think a family of rats would’ve decorated his place with more class. Where some people hang artwork on the walls, Wilfred just had promotional posters from bars. Killian’s, Heineken, King Cobra malt liquor. (I think he had the last one up just so he could masturbate to the woman in the ad.) Seeing the state of Wilfred’s place made me feel better about myself. At least he hadn’t cleaned himself up either. I might’ve been a junky, but this man was a booze-hound.

  When he came back, he brought a couple of pulled pork sandwiches and a twelve-pack of Leinenkugel’s Honey Weiss. This was the celebration for a job all done. We didn’t talk about the money. He’d tracked me down in New York, said I was the only person he’d trust to take some loot across the country. I figured it was just that his drunk ass didn’t have ties to anyone else in the East. We’d been in contact now and then, so he knew I was all about the heroin. Why trust a junky unless you had no choice?

  We sat on his lopsided couch, and he finished three beers before I’d opened one.

  “You still on that stuff?” he asked me, his mouth full of pulled pork.

  “I’m on a lot of stuff,” I said.

  He sneered, which made him look like a sow. When he snorted, I wanted to check for a curly tail. “You ain’t doing no drugs in my fucking house, you feel me?”

  “But I brought enough for both of us!”

  The pork rested in the space between his lower lip and gums like a wad of chew.

  “You always had jokes,” he said.

  We went like this for a little while. He and I were the last two child survivors of a long-forgotten cult. We’d suffered through mass murder in a stairway. Had both been fed into the foster care system at age ten and had spent the next eight years in the same group home, one that was affiliated with the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center.

  It was funny to me that Wilfred could be intolerant about heroin, but turn a blind eye to his own abuses. That reminded me of my old friend Bottlecap, the one who used to hear from the Lord. He was such an infamous drinker that even the beer distributors around Troy knew his name. His favorite bar, the Alleycat, used to send him birthday cards by certified mail if he stayed away too long. If he signed for it, that meant he was still alive. And yet that drunk looked down on me for being a junky. Bottlecap, like Wilfred, believed that if your drug wasn’t fermented, you were out of order.

  After a half hour of sniping I’d had three beers and he’d finished eight.

  “You want to get some pussy?” Wilfred asked.

  “Always,” I said.

  He suggested we visit Czech Village. A tourist zone that celebrated the ethnic origins of the city by selling glass figurines, garnet jewelry, baked goods, and meat. He knew two bowlegged women who worked down there. They might let us buy them drinks. Wilfred drove us in an old cargo van, the kind you could live in but shouldn’t.

  Before we actually got moving, he gave me my money. Eighteen hundred dollars. All fifty-dollar bills. I counted and recounted them as he started the van. It took him a couple tries, so I counted twice. Right then I believed I really loved Wilfred.

  Ten minutes into the trip he said we should stop at his friend’s first. A guy who sold cloned cell phones and doctored driver’s licenses. Those were the kind of crooks I enjoyed. I liked my criminal life lite. Wilfred said everybody called this guy Murder, but I shouldn’t take that too seriously. They only called him that because he had some Belgian last name no one could pronounce correctly, so no one bothered. Murder was close enough.

  He didn’t have to convince me. I wasn’t scared of anything just then. Not anymore. I’d expected to land in Cedar Rapids, bring the money to my cousin, and be greeted by two ugly guys who would cut me into pieces. Then feed the parts to a dog. I was afraid Wilfred had started hanging around with heavy crooks like that, but in this life you couldn’t always avoid such a risk. So why did I come to Cedar Rapids if that was my fear?

  Eighteen hundred dollars!

  And Wilfred suggested that it could lead to more. So when I didn’t get killed, I coasted. We drove past Mount Mercy College, which watched Cedar Rapids from a hill, then alongside Tomahawk Park. Soon we reached Longwood Drive. I memorized the names of places and streets in case Wilfred abandoned me in a cornfield. As long as I kept track, I could find my way. I had no fears, but I wasn’t dumb.

  We parked, and I stepped onto the sidewalk. It was warm out. The air smelled like cereal, even this far from the Quaker Oats factory. That made the afternoon seem fun, even silly in a good way. Wilfred and I shared a smile.

  I felt positively sanctified as I entered Murder’s home.

  63

  A SUIT LAY FLAT on Ms. Henry’s bed. I heard her in the kitchen and I smelled toast. Didn’t even bother acting bashful as I walked from the bathroom to the bedroom with only the towel around my waist. See me shirtless if you dare, Ms. Henry!

  She’d left me a fine outfit, two-button double-breasted brown worsted wool, serge weave and a green pinstripe. A white dress shirt lay underneath. No tie. I’d have to go without, back to a Byron collar for me.

  I thought of Adele’s story again, the two suits she’d found hanging in the closet of this cabin when she’d first arrived in 2003. Some Unlikely Scholar had left the outfits, never returned to reclaim them. He never reclaimed this cabin either. It was as much of a relic as his coats—both had held his body. Where was he now?

  As I dressed, I remembered Gartrelle Meadows. The Unlikely Scholar whose files I’d been reading in Vermont the week before. The man who’d walked into the South Bronx parking garage and recorded the ghostly voice repeating itself. Electricity. Electricity. I’d felt warmth for my man as I’d leafed through his notes. Camaraderie. Even though I’d n
ever met him, I knew him. But what about the people who’d been a part of his life before the Library? Would they have been as charitable about his memory as me? I doubt it, and I don’t blame them. You can only abuse people’s faith in you for so long.

  How many years had I been doing it?

  In the living room Ms. Henry had already set out the toast and butter, some jam and a small plate of sausages. Her order at one end of the table, and mine, six feet away.

  I walked into the kitchen. She looked wrecked. It didn’t help that I had showered and changed but she hadn’t. Her riding suit had dots of Claude’s blood along the right sleeve.

  “You need help?” I asked.

  “I’m all done. Go sit down.”

  She came out with two glasses of orange juice, put mine next to my plate of toast, and walked to her table setting.

  “I wouldn’t have thought you’d do all this,” I said. “Making a meal for a man. Like you want his company.”

  She sipped her orange juice, then sighed.

  “I need men, Ricky. Men are the ones who act like they don’t need me.”

  “It’s only an act,” I said.

  We ate quietly.

  Finally, she said, “I’m used to knowing exactly what I need to do to get what I want.”

  “But you don’t know what to do now?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what I want.”

  “You and me could go anywhere, Adele. You got our money back from Claude. We could buy two bus tickets. All the way to Seattle.”

  “You think we’re going to blend in, in Seattle?” she asked.

  “They’ve got black people in Seattle,” I said. “Don’t act like it’s 1910.”

  She took a couple bites of her toast. “Is that what you want to do, Ricky?”

  “Part of me does,” I said. “But the rest would be ashamed if I did.”

  Adele looked to her right, out the window of her cabin, at the handful of trees growing a few yards down the hillside.