A Thousand Miles from Nowhere

by John Gregory Brown

  “Yes?” he said, and Latangi explained that the rugs had been purchased by a nearby school, which planned to use them in the entrance to each classroom. “All those muddy children’s feet,” Latangi said. “But do they ask these children to remove their shoes before they walk inside? They do not.” She laughed. “Bad for them. Good for me.”

  “They’re beautiful rugs,” Henry said.

  “Yes?” Latangi said, as if it were a question. She pulled from the sleeve of her sari a yellow Post-it note with an address printed on it. The address was in Lovingston, where Mary had told him Amy was living.

  “Lovingston?” Henry said, and Latangi nodded. She smiled at Henry, and again he had to suspect that she knew much more than she acknowledged—if not by some strange mystical power, then simply by eavesdropping on his conversation with Mary. What were the odds that she would be sending him on this particular errand to this particular place?

  “You just happen to need these delivered to Lovingston?” Henry said.

  “Yes, yes, to Lovingston, Mr. Henry. Just up the U.S. Route 29 highway road.” She pointed as if that would make it clearer.

  Henry looked at her, tried to signal his reluctance. “I’m not supposed to drive farther than thirty miles with this.”

  “Seventeen miles, Mr. Henry,” Latangi said triumphantly. “Seventeen miles there. Seventeen miles back. Google map. Directly north on the U.S. Route 29 highway road.” She smiled. “I would be very grateful for this assistance, please.”

  “Seventeen miles,” Henry said. He nodded at Latangi. “Okay.”

  “Yes, okay, Mr. Henry,” she said, and she left him standing there by the blue truck. He could hear her singing as she walked away.

  Lovingston, it turned out, was an even smaller town than Marimore, its Main Street veering off the highway and running for less than a mile, a few residential lanes sprouting from that one central branch, small businesses gathered along Main Street between large but generally dilapidated clapboard homes with wide porches, many of them rotted out. Henry had felt anxious about driving for the first time since the accident, but as soon as he figured out how to shift using the hand-operated gears on the steering wheel, he relaxed a bit and was able to look around as he drove. Just outside of Lovingston he passed a school named Briarwood Women’s College, and Henry tried to imagine what kind of girl would attend such a place—in the middle of rural Virginia, where there was nowhere to go and nothing much to do. Maybe that was precisely why parents sent their daughters there, in the vain hope of keeping them out of trouble, of preserving what was no doubt in most cases an illusory virginity. If they learned a few things while they were tucked away, so be it. The school to which Henry was to deliver the rugs, though, was a Montessori school. It was situated behind an old red hay barn that now housed a restaurant or bar called Rumpelstiltskin’s, the name painted on the barn’s roof in a childlike scrawl. No ethanol! was painted beneath that, though Henry figured this part was obsolete, that there had once been a gas station out front—or perhaps an angry farmer had simply felt it necessary to proclaim his particular views in the same manner as others had on various farms he’d passed, Jesus Saves or Repent printed on barn roofs and silos, giant white crosses erected at the edge of overgrown fields.

  Henry carried the rugs into the school and spoke with the friendly secretary in the front office. She seemed surprised by the delivery but didn’t object to Henry’s leaving the stacks of rugs in the hall. “You go right ahead,” she said. “I’ll let Principal Stevens know they’re here just as soon as she returns.” And the woman smiled at Henry as if she knew exactly who he was—which maybe she did. Maybe she’d been part of Marge’s phone tree, a fellow soldier in her church’s mission field.

  He then drove up and down Lovingston’s Main Street, turning onto each of the side lanes he encountered. He knew what he was doing—checking to see if any of the houses looked like the sort of place he’d imagined Amy living, some beautifully appointed bungalow shaded by old oaks, the front path leading to a lush trellised garden. Latangi might have known this as well, that he wanted to find Amy before speaking to her, that he wanted all the information that seeing her would provide: how she looked at him when he first appeared to her, how she stood, how she was dressed, what her hair was like—anything that might restore their familiarity. Or maybe she would keep her distance, study him as she would some unfamiliar or dangerous animal. But he was hoping she’d look at him some other way—with relief, with joy, with expectation that he might be better.

  When he actually saw her, she did not look at him at all; she did not even see him. She was sitting inside her car, which was parked in the driveway of a small, ugly plum-colored brick ranch house. In the car with her was a man—stocky, red-haired, bearded, wearing round tortoiseshell glasses—and Henry simply watched as this man leaned slowly toward Amy, put his hand behind her neck, and kissed her.

  When they both stepped out of the car and the man adjusted the cuffs of his sleeves and squinted toward the blue truck, Henry did the only thing he could think to do: he drove away.

  Later that day, Henry would find out from Marge who the man was—a music professor from the women’s college he’d driven past. Later, from a friend of Latangi’s who was one of the man’s colleagues, Henry learned more: He was a composer primarily of sonatas for bassoon, the instrument upon which he was considered something of a virtuoso, but also of cantatas for women’s chorus and percussion. He was a dandy who dressed in fine suits, a bow tie at his neck below his absurdly well-sculpted red beard, and he drove a sleek silver sports car, a BMW convertible, which he parked ostentatiously around the small campus. His name was Hunter McClellan, and though the women of Briarwood—not merely students but colleagues and secretaries as well—swooned at his very presence, he had been, practically since the first day of her arrival in Virginia, pursuing Amy.

  Henry had learned this when he asked Marge about him—he figured, correctly, she’d know who he was. Marge had shown up at the Spotlight to check in on Henry but also to get his signature on some documents that would officially declare him free of any responsibility in Marion Hughes’s death. The rest he learned later, when he met the chair of the English Department at Briarwood, a woman named Rebecca Douglas who had become friends with Latangi while Latangi was enrolled in one of her evening continuing-education courses at the college.

  Marge hadn’t known, of course, why Henry was asking about this man. Standing among all the items that he’d been given by members of Marge’s congregation, he simply told her he’d run across him in his silver BMW and wondered who he might be. All he had to do was describe him for Marge: the red beard, the stocky build, the tortoiseshell glasses, the cuffed sleeves he’d carefully adjusted as he squinted toward Henry.

  “Oh, that’s Hunter McClellan, I bet,” Marge said. “You met him?”

  “I didn’t exactly meet him,” Henry said. “I saw him. With Amy.”

  Marge looked confused, then she nearly leaped into the air. “Oh, I think I know your Amy!” she said, excited. “I’m sure I do!” But then Henry watched her fold her arms across her chest and grow quiet. “But Hunter McClellan,” she said. “That’s trouble.”

  She and Amy had spoken once or twice in the Food Lion, Marge told him, just about this or that—the produce or salad dressing or something—but then she’d seen her again at the annual garlic festival, where Amy had a booth to sell her books, and that was when Marge discovered that Amy wasn’t just anybody but a real live book writer, as Marge called her. “She should be on the Food Channel,” Marge said. “She knows everything and then some. More than Emeril, I bet. Oh, but Hunter McClellan,” she said again, and she shook her head.

  “I should be worried, then,” Henry said, trying to sound lighthearted.

  “Not worried, Henry,” Marge said, patting his arm. “Determined. That’s what I tell Charlie. Worry can’t be put to good use, but determined always can.”

  “That’s good to know,” Henry
said, nodding, again trying to sound lighthearted. What he felt, though, was that determination was—had always been—the central missing ingredient in his life. What had he ever been determined to do? Even the ruin he’d caused, as great as it had been, had been equivocal and half-assed, accidental. He hadn’t had a grand plan for ruin, as he’d tried to tell himself; he simply had the ability to squander every last thing. A squanderer. A coward. A louse.

  When Marge told him that she was headed next to see Mrs. Hughes and have her sign the document as well, he decided he ought to go with her.

  “I don’t think that’s proper,” Marge said.

  “Well, I’d like to set things in order as much as I can,” Henry said. “I’m trying to change course somehow, and that’s part of it.”

  “It was not your doing,” Marge said. “You don’t need to set that right. You can’t set that right.” She quickly shook her head. “Oh Lord, that sounds just awful. But you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” Henry said. “But maybe there’s something I can do. We’ll see. Please let me go along, Marge. I’m determined,” Henry said, and he smiled.

  Marge cocked her head to the side. “My, my, my,” she said. “Determined, huh? Then I guess the two of us are going for another ride.”

  As he and Marge walked toward Marge’s car, Henry spotted Latangi inside one of the rooms. “One minute,” he said to Marge. He went over and stepped inside the room. Latangi whipped a clean sheet in the air as if she were a magician performing a magic trick. She leaned forward to stretch the sheet across the mattress.

  “Latangi,” Henry said. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I was wondering if we might have dinner again tonight. I’d like to speak with you, if I could. I’ve read the poem, Mohit’s poem. I’ve read it, and I want to speak with you about it.”

  Latangi looked at him, letting go of the sheet and gathering the skirt of her sari in her hand.

  “It’s very special,” Henry said. “You were right to think so, to ask me to read it. I’d like to speak with you tonight.” He tried to suggest by his tone the reverence he felt, the gratitude.

  Latangi let go of her sari and stretched out her arms to once again take hold of the sheet. She whipped it up into the air. “No problem, Mr. Henry,” she said. “It would be my honor.”

  “Thank you,” Henry said, and as he stepped from the room, he saw Latangi lower her head. He saw her tears dot the white sheet.

  The squalor was unimaginable. Marge had driven out into the county, turned off onto a narrow dirt road, and then turned again at a gravel drive. Henry listened to the loud crunching of the gravel underneath the tires; they pulled up to a trailer so run down that it seemed in danger of collapsing. Torn sheets and towels covered the windows, most of which were shattered or completely missing their glass panes. Broken furniture—rusted lawn chairs, a tattered sofa, a cracked rocking chair—stood in a circle near the trailer’s metal door, which looked as though it had been repeatedly kicked in. A wooden ramp—for Mrs. Hughes’s wheelchair, Henry assumed—led down from the door to a row of garbage cans overflowing with plastic bottles and trash bags.

  “Oh Lord,” Marge said, turning off her car and leaning her head against the steering wheel. “Jesus said how the poor would always be with us, but I just don’t think He meant this. This makes regular poor look rich, don’t it?”

  “Yes, it does,” Henry said, and he thought of all the items Marge’s church had just delivered to him. He already had more than this. Why did he deserve such kindness and this family did not? Were they somehow responsible for their fate in a way that he was not? He understood now how much the five-thousand-dollar payment would have meant to this family, how much that must have seemed to Marion Hughes as he stood waiting for Henry’s car to strike him.

  As Marge and Henry stepped from the convertible, a young boy walked out of the trailer. One of the boy’s arms hung limply at his side at a strange angle, as if the shoulder had been dislocated and never properly fixed. He raised his other hand to wave hello and then stepped back inside. When no one else emerged from the trailer, Marge called, “Mrs. Hughes?”

  There was no answer, so Marge tried again. “Mrs. Hughes? Can you hear me?”

  “I’ll be right out,” they heard Mrs. Hughes say.

  “We could come in,” Marge said. “It’s Marge Brockman from Judge Martin’s office. I’ve just got some papers for you to sign.”

  Marge waited, but Mrs. Hughes didn’t respond.

  “Mrs. Hughes?” she said, a little louder.

  “Yes?” they heard her say.

  “Can I come in?” Marge asked, and she started up the ramp.

  “I’m coming out,” Mrs. Hughes said again, and they saw her wheel her way into the open doorway. “Who is it, now?” she said, and Marge turned to Henry and shook her head.

  When Mrs. Hughes understood who was there and why, she invited them inside, and Henry was shocked to discover how tidy the trailer was. The furniture was not much better than what was outside, but there were shawls and blankets laid across the chairs, and there were family pictures in frames on the end tables and hung on the walls. A vase of plastic flowers stood in the middle of a folding table near the kitchen, and Henry saw the open Bible there, one of those King James Versions with gold-tipped pages and Jesus’s words printed in bold red ink.

  “I was immersed in my reading,” she said, looking for the first time at Henry. “The Lord’s word is such a comfort, isn’t it?” she said. “Even in the hardest of times.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Henry said. “Again, I’m so sorry.”

  “I got to see him,” she said. “They did fine. They did real fine.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Marge said. “I’ve heard they do good work.”

  “Yes, they did,” Mrs. Hughes said. She continued to look at Henry, though he was not sure she could see him. He now wondered if she was blind—she seemed to be, her eyes turned toward him but clearly not focused, not seeing him. Then how would she have been reading her Bible? And how would she know if the funeral home had done a fine job with her husband? Maybe she’d simply felt his face with her hands, the familiarity of it a comfort to her.

  “Do you know who I am, Mrs. Hughes?” Henry said then, and Marge moved toward Henry, put a hand on his shoulder as if to stop him from saying any more.

  “I don’t believe I do,” she said. “I’m forgetful.”

  “He’s a new friend of mine,” Marge said. “He’s here from New Orleans. You heard what’s happened in New Orleans, Mrs. Hughes.”

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  “Well, don’t you worry about it,” Marge said. “We’ve just got some papers for you to sign.”

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. Hughes said to Marge. “My grandson helps me with those.”

  “Katrell?” Henry said. “Your grandson Katrell?”

  “That’s right,” she said, and she turned again toward Henry. “He’s a good child. Helpful and upright. He walks with the Lord.”

  “I’m sure he does,” Marge said. “But if he’s not here, well, we just need these signed and we’ll be on our way.”

  “There’s only the little one here,” she said. “Katrell’s walked up to the convenience store.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Hughes,” Marge said, and Henry heard the frustration in her tone. She walked over to the folding table and turned to the last page. “I’ll show you right where you sign.”

  “Well, I guess I could do that,” Mrs. Hughes said, and she wheeled her chair over to the table. “I’m not much for writing,” she said, and Marge held her hand and guided it on the page.

  “What’s that I signed again?” Mrs. Hughes asked, and before Marge could speak, Henry said, “It’s so you’ll get your five thousand dollars, Mrs. Hughes.”

  Marge glared at Henry and began to say that this wasn’t what the document was for, but Henry waved and made Marge look at him. He pointed toward his own chest—I’ll pay it, he meant. I’ll find that money. And th
ough Marge glared at him again, she remained silent.

  He’d done nothing with his inheritance but squander it, Henry thought; he should have given it to this woman instead. How much better to have simply given it away.

  “Well, that would be something,” Mrs. Hughes said. “Five thousand dollars. That would surely be something.” And she lowered her head as if she wanted only to sleep.

  Eleven

  IT WOULD be weeks, maybe even months, before anyone could return to New Orleans, if in fact the city even could be saved. That’s what Henry heard on the news when he went back to the Spotlight. They showed the buses arriving from out of town to take folks off to dry land, to places with enough beds to accommodate them, to Atlanta and Houston and Baton Rouge, to Shreveport and Monroe, to Little Rock and Jackson. By now those waiting to be rescued could barely stand, their clothes stained and tattered, the ground beneath their feet covered in trash, a thick sea through which they shuffled. Others awaited rescue in flooded homes, sprawling across rooftops, leaning out of attic windows. Old men and women were carried to boats on stretchers by soldiers wading through dank water; children clung to police officers’ backs. Helicopters hovered above crowds in parking lots, people waiting for boxes of food and water to be thrown down to them. Henry could not determine exactly which areas were still flooded and which were not. They showed maps, presented diagrams, but even the reporters often seemed confused about where they were. Again and again these reports cut to floating bodies and makeshift graves of gravel and brick, to the complicated hieroglyphs scrawled on buildings: how many dead, and where, and when. Buildings burned, the smoke and ash thick as mud, the news cameras lingering there, as if someone, something, might suddenly emerge from the flames.

  Henry sat and watched. He was sorting through more of the things that had been delivered to him: shirts and shoes, cereal boxes and shaving cream, slippers and safety pins, cans of tuna and a flashlight and a baseball cap. He wanted to talk to Latangi about the poem, yes, but now he also wanted to ask her about a job. Maybe she would be willing to put him to work. There must be chores that Mohit had once taken care of that needed doing. He had promised Mrs. Hughes five thousand dollars, and he wanted to make good on that pledge somehow. Marge had insisted the moment they got back into her car that this promise was an out-and-out crazy one to have made, that he owed this family nothing, that he had nothing himself, but Henry told her he was glad he’d said it.