A Thousand Miles from Nowhere

by John Gregory Brown

  And so that’s what Henry had thought he’d done. He figured his father had gotten into his car and headed north up I-95. He imagined him pulling up at the gates of the baroness’s mansion, imagined him telling whoever it was who answered the door why he was there, starting out the same way he did when he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his brow, and put his foot up on people’s rotting porch steps: Good morning to you. I’m Professor Joseph Henry Garrett from down the road at Tulane University.

  But he’d have to say something else, Henry knew. He’d have to say, I’m here to speak to Mr. Monk. He’d have to say, I just want to shake Mr. Monk’s hand. Or, I think maybe I can help him.

  About four years later, when Henry read in the newspaper that Monk had died—from a cerebral hemorrhage, it said—he had felt like he was reading not just about Monk’s death but about his father’s, that Monk’s dying meant his father must now be dead. Mr. Monk had resided with his wife, Nellie, in the Weehawken, New Jersey, home of the Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter, the obituary said. He hadn’t performed for a decade, hadn’t spoken publicly for years. There was no indication that during this period he had produced any new compositions. And Henry had set down the newspaper and cried—not for Monk, not really even for his father. He was crying purely for himself, for the silence that only now, this very moment, he had come to understand would never be broken. It was 1982; he was eighteen years old. He would never see his father again, never learn why he had left, never think of him again as someone still alive and breathing, capable of showing up one day at the door of his own house just as Henry had imagined him showing up, tired and disheveled but elated, at the house where Monk lived, knocking on the door, smiling, announcing exactly why he was there.

  “How can I help you?” Henry heard, and he opened his eyes and realized that he was crying now, weeping with exhaustion and from the interminable clatter in his head—the sounds and images there, the memories, the endless cacophony. He could hear his own voice reading out loud to his students, imploring them to grasp the awful allure of Kate Chopin’s words in The Awakening, of blue-grass meadows with no beginning and no end, of the sensuous sea enfolding the body in a soft, close embrace. Her arms and legs were growing tired, he had read out loud to them, but what had he ever managed to say to his students, to these children, that contained even the tiniest shred of wisdom, of insight or eloquence or grace? What could he have possibly said? Shouldn’t he have warned them that the shimmering, translucent pool in which a book like this bathed its heroine’s longing and despair was a mirage, as ridiculous as the swooning women in the silent movies he and Amy had seen, as deliciously sordid as Clarissa Nash dangling her schoolgirl breasts above him, nipples just above his mouth, just beyond the reach of his blunt thick tongue? Shouldn’t he have told them how ugly it all truly was? Shouldn’t he have realized how ugly it was all going to be? Some of them, some of those children, might still be there now, floating in oily, shit-smeared water, unrescuable, dead.

  Marge was holding out a box of tissues, and when he didn’t take it from her, she set it on the corner of the desk. “You’re just breaking my heart, Mr. Garrett,” she said.

  And Henry managed to tell this woman everything there was to say—that he’d fled the hurricane and wound up in Virginia, that his wife was here somewhere though he didn’t know where or if she’d even want to see him, that his sister was in Baltimore but they hadn’t spoken for more than a year, that he did not have a car now or money or a telephone, that he did not know what to do, that this man Hughes was dead, that hundreds and hundreds of people, maybe thousands and thousands, he didn’t know how many, were dead in New Orleans, that maybe all the ones who had managed to survive had lost their homes, lost everything, that he felt helpless and angry and confused and sad. So terribly sad. All the time, he wanted to shout but didn’t. All the fucking time.

  And the woman was standing now. She stepped around the desk and stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders. “Mr. Garrett, Mr. Garrett,” she said as though she were trying to quiet a wailing infant. “We’ve been praying on this, Mr. Garrett. The women’s group at my church—every one of us has been praying on this. We’ve been talking and praying about how we might help with what’s happened from this hurricane. And now here you are, Mr. Garrett. Here you are.”

  She took her hands off Henry’s shoulders and stepped back around her desk. “We’ll care for you,” she said. Henry looked up and saw that she was smiling. “Don’t you worry one bit. We’ll care for you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Henry said. “I didn’t—”

  “Listen, now,” Marge said. “I’m going to attend to this just as soon as I can. You give me one day, and you won’t know what hit you. We’ve got a phone tree, Mr. Garrett. We’ve got movers and shakers in our women’s group the likes of which you’ve never seen.” She leaned across her desk toward Henry and whispered, “Here’s our official name in the church. It’s the Marimore First Presbyterian Women’s Auxiliary. But that doesn’t exactly roll right off the tongue, does it? So we call ourselves the Hounds of Heaven. Reverend Timlin doesn’t care for the name. He says it’s a sacrilege and an abomination. But do you think we care, Mr. Garrett? Forgive me for saying so, but Reverend Timlin has a stick up his you-know-what. The women in our group are a different breed, Mr. Garrett. The Hounds of Heaven like to laugh and have a good time. That’s what we do. And we take action. The men’s group, I’ll tell you, can’t hold a candle to us when it comes to action.”

  “My sister,” Henry said. “I need to call her.”

  “I’ll take care of that too. You’ve got your own mending to do, so I’ll start mending that fence for you. You just tell me her name, and I’ll find her number.”

  “Mary Garrett,” he said. “In Baltimore. There might be more than one.” He thought about Latangi searching for his name on the Internet, finding out where he worked. “The Walters,” he said. “It’s an art museum. You could call her there. I should call her there.”

  “You’re ready to do that?” Marge said. “She’s worried sick, I’m sure. She’d be so relieved just to hear your voice.”

  “If you could just find the number,” Henry said, “I’ll call her. I’ll call her later.”

  “Yes indeed,” Marge said, and he closed his eyes again as she typed into her computer, her fingernails clacking on the keys. “Walters Art Museum. Baltimore, Maryland,” she said. “Easy as store-bought apple pie.”

  Henry waited, eyes still closed. He imagined hearing Mary’s voice, the censure in it, the relief. He thought about Latangi saying that her husband’s words had been waiting for him, just as this woman now said her church group had been waiting for him. It seemed so absurd, this notion that some divine plan had been steering him here. Was this the same plan that had placed the man in the road as he drove by, the same plan that had covered New Orleans with water, that had plagued his sleep with endless dreams, his head with endless clatter? He could see Louise Hart, a sweet girl, dumb as a toad, standing up before the class. He could hear her voice, its desperate hope, its pleading: Well, I just don’t believe it, Mr. Garrett. It doesn’t say Edna drowned. It doesn’t. So how do you know for sure?

  “Here you go, Mr. Garrett.”

  Henry opened his eyes to see Marge’s hand stretched out toward him. He took the sheet of paper. “Thank you,” he said.

  “What’s next?” she said. “Let’s move right on down the list.”

  What was next? Money. His car. But before he could answer, an old woman in a wheelchair appeared in the office doorway. Henry could see that her legs were gone, the hem of the black dress she was wearing tucked beneath her seat. Behind the woman, pushing the chair, was a boy. He looked taller than Henry, his hair carefully trimmed. Henry knew immediately who he was, who they both were. He could see the resemblance in the boy’s eyes, in the shape of his head.

  “I need to see him,” the old woman said, and the boy, maybe fifteen or so, looked apologetically at Henry an
d then at Marge. “They told me I can’t see him, but I need to,” the woman said, and she slapped her bony hands on the wheelchair’s armrests. “I need to say my good-byes.”

  She had been looking at Marge as she spoke, but now she turned to Henry. “Can you please help me, sir?” she said. “Can you please, mister, sir, make them let me see my husband?”

  Eight

  A NARROW metal cot, sagging as though someone had slept on it for years, stood in the corner of the room, a tattered white blanket on top. By one window was a desk with a green banker’s lamp, a wooden stool tucked beneath it. Below the other window were shelves filled with books so worn that the titles on the spines were illegible. The walls were bare, the floor covered with a cane rug. Henry pulled out the stool, sat down, and switched on the lamp. There was nothing else on the desktop, its surface polished to a smooth sheen, but beneath were two wide drawers, one on each side of the desk, and Henry assumed that they held Latangi’s husband’s poems. He gripped the brass handles and gently tugged at them. He wanted to test the weight of the drawers, to be certain that they weren’t empty, but he did not yet want to face the task of reading. Her husband had devoted his entire life to writing, Latangi had told him, but Henry was afraid that a single poem, even a single line, might be enough for him to conclude that all that devotion and effort had been wasted, just as Henry had learned that all he had to do every fall was read a sentence or two of a first assignment and he would know just about everything he needed to know about its author: whether the student possessed enough imagination to appreciate the books the class would be reading and, if by some stroke of luck this was the case, whether he or she already knew how to give that imagination a persuasive, distinctive voice.

  That first assignment was a simple one: What is your favorite word? Most of the answers were predictably uninspired. The girls would choose love or family or faith, the boys truth or honor or responsibility, their essays neatly packaged in the five-paragraph formula previous teachers had taught them, as if everything in the entire world, no matter how vast or sprawling, could be broken down into an introduction, points one, two, and three, and a conclusion.

  But there were always a few students who understood the opportunity they had been offered. Asked to discuss their favorite word, they chose seagrass or Natchitoches or whimsical or raspberry or willow. They described the delicious taste of these words on their tongues; they rummaged through their memories, summoned moments from childhood they thought they’d forgotten; they moved forward one sentence to the next with the satisfying precision of a mower through tall dry grass. He felt an immense gratitude for such students, for the pleasure he knew they would offer him through their words; they nearly offset the helplessness and despair the rest of the students provoked in him, the awful knowledge that he faced nine months of prodding and poking them to understand—to truly feel—the books they read, how the whispering voice of the sea might indeed be seductive, how its touch might enfold the body in a soft, close embrace, how the words on a page might not simply describe the world but actually create it, make it more real than it had been before those words were written, before the writer had imagined them.

  He had come here now to this room, though, with little hope—with none, really—that he would find such a world in the words Latangi’s husband had written. He had come simply because he did not want to sleep, did not want to be visited by more dreams. He no longer had the strength for them, for their absurd horror, the endless wandering and violence and desire. He had not known what to say this morning to the old woman who’d asked to see her husband, but he knew that she would find her way into his dreams—the bony hands with their crooked arthritic fingers, the blunt stumps of her legs, the worn black dress with its rust-stained white lace collar, the awful entreaty that she be allowed to see her husband’s body, say good-bye to him.

  Helpless, mute, he had looked away—had looked to Marge, who had quickly rescued him, walking over to the old woman, taking her hand, and telling her that she would do what she could.

  “Where is he, Mrs. Hughes?” Marge had said. “You just tell me where he is.”

  “Out Madison Heights,” the old woman answered, and she turned her head to look up at the boy, her grandson, who was still holding her wheelchair. He nodded.

  “At Pearlman?” Marge asked the boy, and he nodded again.

  “That’s fine,” Marge said, and she went back to her desk, quickly hunted through the phone book, and then called the funeral home. Henry listened as Marge explained the old woman’s request. She tapped her fingernails on the desk and then said quietly, with the slightest suggestion of impatience, “Well, Mrs. Hughes is right here at Judge Martin’s office, and Judge Martin has just now asked me to tell you to do what you need to do so Mrs. Hughes can see her husband.”

  She looked up at Henry and winked, acknowledging the lie she’d just told.

  “That would be just fine, then,” she said. “I’ll ask them to wait until three.”

  Marge hung up the phone, walked back to the old woman, and took her hand again. “They’ll let you see him, Mrs. Hughes,” she said. “They’ve just got to tend to him a little first.” Henry listened as Marge comforted the old woman, making sure that she and her grandson had transportation out to the funeral home and asking if there was anything else they needed.

  “I suppose we’re all right,” the old woman said, and she lowered her head to hide her weeping.

  Henry wanted to say something to this woman, to acknowledge that he was the one who had been driving the car that struck and killed her husband. When she looked up and slowly turned her gaze from Marge to Henry, he could see, from her pronounced cheekbones and high forehead, in the oddly delicate grace of her eyes and mouth, that she had once been striking, that even now, despite her wasted, ruined body and missing teeth, despite her horror and grief, some faint trace of that quality remained. He remembered how he had once stepped into his mother’s bedroom to find her sitting with Mary beside her, art books scattered across the bed, each of them open to a different painting depicting Saint Sebastian, his stomach and arms and legs pierced with arrows. In all of them, Saint Sebastian’s back was arched in a posture that looked less like agony than exquisite pleasure, long hair swept back from his face, cascading across his bare shoulders. Henry had stared at the paintings, embarrassed that they reminded him not of anything having to do with religion or art but of the pictures of naked women he’d once seen taped to a bathroom wall in a barbershop he’d gone to with his father, women whose backs were arched in precisely the same way, whose long hair was swept back across their shoulders, their bodies the same voluptuous shape as his father’s bass. His mother had smiled at him and said, “We’re deciding if we agree with what Lorca said about Sebastian,” but Henry hadn’t let her explain. He’d made some excuse and left them there. He had not known who Lorca was; he hadn’t cared what this person had said about Saint Sebastian. He’d remembered the dumb stirrings of desire he’d felt in the barbershop bathroom, the uncomfortable swell of his penis, the sickening sweetness of cologne and hair tonic in which the room seemed drenched, the rank scent of urine.

  It was me, Henry wanted to say now to the old woman. It was my car. But he knew that this admission was not what the woman needed right now. She needed comfort; she needed relief.

  She looked at Henry, seemed to study his face despite the cloudiness of her eyes. Marge stepped forward and led the old woman and her grandson out. “Who’s driving you, Mrs. Hughes?” she said. “Are they waiting?”

  “Pastor Rose,” the boy said, and for the first time he looked at Henry. “He’s out front.”

  “Then let’s get you to him,” Marge said, and she called to Henry, “Sit tight, Mr. Garrett. I’ll be right back.”

  While Marge was gone, Henry looked at the piece of paper she had handed him, the number for Mary written on it. At the top of the sheet was a bloated orange cartoon cat—Garfield—curled up in a ball and sleeping, the bubble over h
is head depicting the dream he was having, which was simply the same image of a cat curled up and sleeping. He knew that he should call Mary now, let her know that he was alive, that he’d gotten out of New Orleans. He imagined her watching the news reports on TV, desperately searching every image for a glimpse of him. Was he trying to punish her with his silence? Was this his means of retribution for the fuck-you sunset card, for her failure to understand why he couldn’t deal with the funeral and the estate? That’s exactly what his mother had done; she’d punished him with her silence when his father left, refusing to talk about it, refusing to acknowledge a moment’s pain or grief or regret. But Mary had been punished as well, of course. Why was she okay and he wasn’t? It was all so stupid. In class he’d always pushed his students to analyze every character’s motivation. Why had a character done what he’d done? What about him had led him to do it?

  “He just felt like it,” at least one student would always say. “It’s just what he felt like doing.”

  And Henry would comically, exaggeratedly stomp his feet and throw his hands up in the air. He’d pace the classroom, weaving between the desks. He’d explain that this kind of response to literature, to life, was inadequate, that it displayed a failure of insight or imagination. “It’s just lazy,” he would say, glaring at the offending student until the class laughed and the student, embarrassed, squirming, tried to formulate a better answer.