The Havana Room

by Colin Harrison

He studied the bulldozer. "I think we can pull it up."

  "You're crazy," said Poppy.

  Jay shook his head. "We got to get him out of there."

  "How?"

  "Drive that thing up. Slope's not too bad. It's made it up grades sharper than that."

  "Oh, you pecker!" spat Poppy. "You'll kill us."

  "You're moving a dead body?" I asked. "You can't do that."

  "And if the slope's okay," insisted Poppy, "why didn't he drive it up himself?"

  "I don't know, because he had a heart attack, maybe."

  "You don't know that," said Poppy.

  Jay ignored him. "You still have that big cable in the barn?"

  "Yeah, but so goddamn what?"

  I listened to their conversation with mounting fear.

  "I saw the forty-five hundred is loaded."

  "Won't work," Poppy announced.

  "Yes it will, if I can get the Cat started."

  "You'll kill somebody. Not me, but somebody. Probably yourself. Cable will snap and whip back and cut off your head."

  "Thank you, Poppy, thank you very fucking much."

  "Then your girlfriend won't have nobody to suck on her tit."

  "You're a gentleman, Poppy. Always have been."

  "Guys, you can't do this," I insisted. "Call the police. It's their business."

  Poppy pointed at me menacingly. "Why did you bring him, anyway?"

  "You got somebody else for me at three in the morning?"

  Poppy shook his head, no fight left. "I been waiting, Jay, is all."

  "You did a lot already," Jay said in a softer voice. "Now we've got just one more thing to do. Go get the cable."

  Poppy grunted, climbed in his battered truck, and drove off.

  Jay headed down the slope, and despite my misgivings, I followed him, slipping my way down the crusty sand. The bulldozer looked like a yellow toy tossed carelessly within a giant sandbox, but up close it was enormous and in notably poor repair. Its yellow body paint was pocked with rust, its hydraulic lines wrapped with duct tape. The driver, Herschel, was a heavyset black man in a plaid work shirt who sat in the seat fallen backward, feet spread wide, chin up and eyes upon the heavens. He might have been fifty, he might have been seventy. The storm had iced his head and body. He was quite dead.

  Jay scrambled alongside the bulldozer. "Oh, Herschel," he moaned. "What're you doing out here?" He climbed up the side of the machine and knelt next to the dead man, his forehead touching the man's hand. "You told me you were done last week! Why did you come out here?" He slumped against the giant treads of the dozer, head down. "Oh, Herschel, oh, man…"

  I was intruding, so I retreated into the darkness, wondering what Herschel had meant to Jay. The two figures were a study in contrasts— white and black, young and old, alive and dead— but Jay's ease next to the dead man suggested an intimate history. Finally he stood and climbed into the cab. He wiped one of the gauges, examined it, then turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. He gave the frozen body a firm push but it didn't move. The dead man's gloveless hand was draped on the shifter knob, not clutching it but making incidental contact.

  He pushed and pulled but the hand was stuck fast. "Frozen."

  "Don't tear the skin," I called.

  "Yes, fuck it, I know!" roared Jay into the snow, his long coat whipping behind him. "Bill, come up here!"

  "What?"

  "Get up here, I need you."

  "For what?"

  "Come on!"

  I climbed awkwardly to the cab, feeling bad about everything.

  "Christ, Jay, I'm supposed to be in bed. Not standing here!"

  The dead man's face gazed upward into the storm. Snow had crusted over the surface of his eyes. He wore a digital watch, the tiny red seconds-light blinking as if its owner would consult it at any moment. I noticed he was not wearing socks and that his shoes were low carpet-paddlers, not work boots high over the ankle.

  "Just put your hands on his, try to start warming it."

  "You crazy?"

  "Yeah, I am."

  "I'm not holding hands with a dead man."

  "I can't move this thing otherwise."

  "Why not just call the police?"

  "I can't, counselor," he said in a low, determined voice. "I just can't do that."

  It occurred to me that I could hike up the sandy cliff, get in Jay's truck, check to see if he left the keys in it, take out the box of cash and put it on the ground, then drive away. Back to Manhattan, drop the vehicle in a lot, walk straight to my apartment. Up the stairs, key in the door, jump in bed, good night moon, and dream about Salma Hayek. I could do that. I could do that now.

  But I didn't. Instead I placed my two warm hands around the large cold one, which was frozen solid. I counted to thirty, then clapped my hands together for warmth and tried again. After several tries, my hands were numb and Herschel's hand was unchanged. Holding hands with a dead man was not why I went to Yale Law School, not why I worked seventy-hour weeks for ten years in my twenties and thirties, not why I said yes to Allison. It was crazy. But despite myself, my mind was working on the problem, figuring it. "Poppy has coffee," I remembered. "In his truck."

  "Right!" Jay shouted.

  A moment later he had scrambled up and down the slope and was pouring coffee from Poppy's large Thermos onto Herschel's hand. Steam lifted through the glare of the flashlight. "This is going to work," he said, shaking the gearshift violently. He poured more coffee out. "It's— there."

  Jay moved the shifter to the side and now the hand stuck straight into space. "Let's see if we can get this started."

  There wasn't much room between Herschel's frozen gut and the steering wheel. Jay wriggled into a crouched, half-standing position, his rear against the dead man's groin. "Herschel, man, I'm sorry about this," he muttered. " 'Course if you weren't so fat…" He turned the key. Nothing happened. He tried again. I heard a faint clicking.

  Jay climbed down from the cab and lifted the toolbox lid incorporated into the bulldozer's bottom step. "Probably left the lights on. Battery's almost drained." He pulled out what looked like a can of spray paint, leaned up onto the engine hood, and sprayed into the chimney-shaped metallic funnel protruding from it. "Ether," he said. "Right on the starter. Get a hell of a spark."

  Jay tossed the can back into the toolbox, then fished inside and pulled out another, smaller can, and staggered through the soft sand around the front of the bulldozer, keeping his hand on the toothed top edge of the huge bucket. Despite his youth and clear physical vitality, he seemed to be laboring. He unscrewed the fuel cap that protruded through the steps on the other side of the cab and upended the can against it, banging it. Then he fingered out a glob of something that looked like blue butter and wiped it into the fuel pipe.

  "What's that?" I called.

  "Gel." He wiped more of it into the pipe. "Warms diesel fuel."

  He threw the can away into the gloom and climbed atop the cab. The controls for the backhoe and the hydraulic pads sat at the rear, downhill side of the cab, and the controls for the bucket and for the bulldozer itself on the uphill side.

  "Get me a stick," Jay hollered. "With a Y on the end."

  My feet were cold and I had sand in my shoes but I looked around and saw a dead tree a few yards off. I broke off a three-foot branch and lurched back to Jay. He took the stick from me. "Usually you can swing around in the seat here."

  This time he sat down on Herschel's lap. Instinctively I looked at the man's face to see what it felt like to have Jay sitting on him. But his stony mask didn't change, of course. Jay turned the key. The engine clicked, turned over, and caught. The bulldozer vibrated loudly. I felt a sort of worried joy. Sand started trickling from behind the dozer. Jay twisted backward and pushed at the hand controls with the stick. One of the huge hydraulic pads descended slowly, settling into the sand. Jay switched off the engine.

  We climbed up the slope. Poppy had returned with the cable and was sitting in the large truck.
A work glove was taped to its steering wheel like a disembodied hand, and I assumed that Poppy slipped his ruined fingers into it for a better grip. He hopped down to the ground and he and Jay pinned both ends of the thick cable to a tow ring on the rear of the truck. They dragged the loop end of the cable down to the bulldozer, where Jay attached it to a ring in the top of the bucket. I could follow his movements by the swinging arc of his flashlight. Meanwhile Poppy dragged a thick log out of the bramble and set this parallel to the cliff edge and draped the cable over it, so that the cable would ride smoothly across the log and not cut into the sand. They knew what they were doing, and moved with very little communication. When they were done the doubled cable from bulldozer to truck lay lightly on the log.

  "Guys, this is fucking crazy," I called. "You're about to break the law, okay? Jay, you should just leave it there, let the police deal with it. Look, I'm a lawyer, take my advice!"

  "This is how I want to do it," Jay said. "Poppy, you start the truck. Keep the emergency brake on. I'll start the Cat. When I hit the horn, I'm ready. Then I'll shift forward easy and you do too. Keep it in low. I'll be going very slowly, if I go at all. I don't want to snap the cable— I'll fall backward. But don't let the cable get slack, either. Tight. Bill, I want you standing right here with the flashlight. Poppy won't be able to see anything and neither will I, but I can see you and so can Poppy in the rearview mirror."

  "This is crazy. I don't—"

  "Bill, I'm doing this whether you help or not."

  "I'm not helping— I'm not."

  "Then stand back, okay?" He stuck out his hand. "Thanks for everything earlier tonight. If something happens to me, it was nice to know you."

  "What?"

  "Hey, if the dozer falls backwards, I'm fish bait, man. Hundred and fifty feet, rolling over and over, then right down into the ocean. It's high tide down there. Like I said, fish bait."

  And with that he scrambled down the sea cliff in his good shoes. "Hey!" called Poppy after him. "Don't run around so much."

  But before I could ask why, Poppy retreated to the truck. I was miserable but shined the light up to the cab as instructed. Poppy gave a slow wave. From my position on the edge of the sea cliff, I could see both men. I signaled to Jay. He'd climbed atop Herschel and started the bulldozer again. He lifted the stabilizing pad and then the big front bucket so it wouldn't catch on the upward slope. A short blast on the horn followed. I signaled Poppy, and the truck lurched forward two feet. The cable snapped tight. The dozer didn't move. Then the treads shuddered and rotated a foot, sand crumbling behind the dozer. I signaled Poppy to pull ahead hard. Jay was shifting the gears with one hand, steering with the other. The dozer began to climb, one foot, then two, the snow shaking off it, the treads biting the frozen dune grass. Diesel smoke filled my nose. I could hear the truck engine grinding. The cable was tight. Now the truck was throwing back ice and mud, tires spinning. But Jay moved upward anyway. The cable slackened. Then the truck kicked forward four or five feet, delivering a jolt to the bulldozer. Both machines moved in sync then, and the dozer reached the top edge of the sea cliff, dragging a couple of small branches with it, and instead of breaking up and over the crest, the dozer crushed the crest beneath it, nearly throwing Jay forward, spinning a thirty-foot rooster tail of dirt and sand and snow backward until the thing was safely ten feet from the edge. I swung the light back and forth, and the truck stopped.

  Poppy jumped down and came running back. "It worked!"

  "Damn right!" said Jay, sitting atop the dead man. He let the dozer idle and climbed down.

  Poppy stood before the corpse, getting his first good look. The stiff hand extending into nothingness seemed to fascinate him most. "Getting too old for this shit," he muttered. Then his natural poison flowed through him again. "I don't want to fucking drive into New York City every time there's a problem, you know?"

  "There aren't going to be any more problems," Jay said. "We got rid of the only problem tonight." He reached into his pocket, pulled out a wad of bills, peeled off five fifties. "Here, Poppy, for your time and everything."

  Poppy held the money. It was more than he expected. He pointed at the truck. "I think the drive train just got fucked, though."

  "Will the truck move?"

  "First gear, ten, fifteen miles an hour maybe."

  "Take it back to the barn."

  "I will. What you going to do with him?" He jerked his thumb at the corpse.

  "I want you to move the Cat over to the blue barn."

  "Onto the old property, you mean."

  "That's what I mean, Poppy, yes. And park it."

  Across a property line. Why, I wondered. "Hey, wait—"

  Poppy understood the plan. "Like he was just kind of parking the dozer near the barn when— right?"

  Jay breathed heavily. "Sure. Make sure the shifter is back under his hand, too, make sure it's perfect. Let a little snow accumulate on the dozer tracks. Maybe go up and down the road in the car a few times. Say you just got home."

  "I was out, I was doing something."

  "Then call nine-one-one and say you found him."

  "Okay."

  "I'm not part of this," I told them. "You're way out of bounds here. Way out. Jay, either drive me back to the city now or take me to a train station. Get me out of here."

  But he was still instructing Poppy. "You're going to have to take the fence down and put it back up."

  "I know."

  "We got that straight?"

  "I mean, Herschel died already," said Poppy, running through the logic again.

  "That's what I'm saying. You just found him out there on the Cat, and you called nine-one-one."

  "That's true. He looks the same, nobody moved him."

  "I'm not part of this."

  "Nobody is asking you to be." Jay turned to Poppy again. "Once you go through the fence, take the dozer down straight to the east road— you have to watch out for the drainage gully on that piece where we used to put in cabbages, and then cut over on that dirt road until you pick up the main driveway to the blue barn. Keep it on the main driveway, because we'll get a lot of drifting. Snow'll pretty much cover the tracks in half an—"

  "Also anybody coming in and out of there, ambulance, whatever, is going to go right over anything that's left. Tracks'll be covered up that way, too."

  "Yes," Jay said quietly.

  Poppy rubbed his hands against each other vigorously.

  "Guys," I began. "You're—"

  "Hey!" Jay interrupted me. "He was already dead, okay? Herschel had a terrible heart. I asked him if he was up to it. He was supposed to be done with his grading a week ago! When it was still warm! I told him I'd do it myself."

  I stood there then, snow in my face, feet cold, dumbfounded by the arc of the evening.

  "It's just bad luck," Jay explained. "Okay? He was supposed to do a little grading to get the property ready. Smooth out the old ditches, as a courtesy." He stared at me, mouth open and eyes unblinking, and I wondered if there was violence in the man. "He called me and said he was done, but I guess he wasn't, I guess he lied to me."

  "So, Poppy, why did you find him?" I asked. "Were you going for a stroll?"

  "I saw the dozer. Wondered what was going on."

  "Hey, it doesn't change anything for Herschel," Jay said. "Also, you've got people walking the beach in the morning. Get a couple of kids climbing on that thing, who knows what happens? Poppy is calling the police. I can't lose the deal, man. I mean what fucking difference does it make whether Herschel died over here or over there?"

  I could have said that clearly it made a large difference to Jay himself, since he'd driven out of the city in the middle of the night and a snowstorm to move the body, but I saw nothing to be gained by the comment. I wanted out of there, plain and simple.

  "Look," said Poppy. He pointed toward the main road. Car lights were coming our way.

  "Take the truck," Jay ordered Poppy. "I changed my mind. Go without your lights to the
barn. I'll take the Cat myself."

  They hurried to their respective vehicles. Poppy unhooked the cable from the back of the big potato truck, leapt into the cab where the door used to be, and rumbled slowly down the road. Jay, meanwhile, unhooked the cable from the dozer, pulled it hand over hand into the bucket, climbed up, again sitting atop the frozen belly of Herschel, and, wind whipping his hair and coat, turned the dozer parallel to the shoreline, keeping the lights off, and rumbled into the dark, the dozer pitching sideways across the uneven ground.

  Which left me there with Jay's truck. The lights continued toward me. Across the field lay only darkness, both vehicles having already disappeared. I hurried over the snow, knowing the truck would be spotted. Twenty yards away I hopped over the edge of the sea cliff and lay down, pressing my chest against the snowy sand, the wind raw against my legs.