“Why don’t you jerks cool it?” she cried at the radio.
But it was there, to be reckoned as something firm and durable, hard to adjust, even callous, and while it didn’t make her angry it did make her curiously adamant. She would finish what she had begun here, take what was hers, move on. She had the quickest feeling, as the sun cleared the tops of the billboards and trees, that she could do anything she wanted to do and that nothing could slow her down, let alone stop her. Buoyed by this, she drove on, bare toes curled heavy on the accelerator pedal while, as with most euphorias, the strength of that moment skimmed, flittered, and lapsed behind like a powdery dust whipped into tiny cones on the paved shoulder. Cars began to appear on the road; everybody’s day began.
Soon enough the outskirts of Norfolk were upon her and gone were the meditative cocoon of road before her and background from radioland its blues and country voices strung out end on end to make one democratic fugue (she saw) punctuated by the midnight preachers, the faith healers out there smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee all night in their little homemade studios, all scat-hollering and saving people.
She parked at the curb. It wasn’t too late to turn around. The spare set of Krieger’s keys was hidden in her change purse, the rough-hide purse mama Opal had bought for her so many years ago at a county fair in Red Cloud. Krieger would have to leave the apartment sometime during the day, and she could slip in, take what few possessions she had stowed there in the front hall closet, and escape. How hard could it be to disappear into a land of so many millions? She’d never see him again, would she.
The money represented a little security against her having to return to the farm, beaten so soon by the city. It waved like a membrane between an empty space and a void. Hannah squeezed her hands between her thighs (the jeans were worn to white there) and considered the membrane and what treachery she and mama Opal had traveled through because of Nicholas and uncle LeRoy, the one an empty space, the other like a blanket between stars.
Little Miss Nancy. Hannah’s uncle made it one of his habits to call her that. She asked mama Opal what it meant. Little Miss Nancy—it meant an effeminate or overprecise man. She knew what it was he had intended as he pulled on the turnip of a lobe which gave off his magnificent German ear, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and left the kitchen by the screen door which closed with a slap. Her value, she was being told, would never exceed that of oleo or beef tallow, neat’s foot or offal, the throwaways, secondary orders of what butcher could make of beast—and to uncle there was nothing that couldn’t be measured by cattle and land.
Hannah understood there was no direction but forward. She unfolded the map against the steering wheel. Written on the back were addresses, and Krieger’s number in New York. In case something goes wrong but nothing will, he’d said. In case something goes wrong, she thought, disdainful—something goes more wrong than what?
She memorized what was written, tore the map into small squares, released them one at a time out the vent as she found her first destination on a quiet enough street where there were trees and houses and, as often in neighborhoods at the outskirts of a town, no sign of any people under them or in them.
The accident like all automobile accidents was a sort of excerpt, like the paroxysm of a millisecond where time itself gets bunched up and folded back for just an instant, so immediate and present that no crumb or component, no remnant, absolutely nothing subdivisible could be found in it, for its being over and its beginning were a single factor, an element of a piece: that is, the whole moment was over exactly when it began.
It began like this. A deep crunch. A shrill screech of balded rubber. The peal of glass. These were all one.
Hannah’s forehead popped lightly against her knuckle on the top of the wheel. No scream, no hysteria. She was convinced she’d fainted, as there was no memorable sequence between her having started to pull the truck up the gravel driveway of the small clapboard house (front yard cluttered with swingset and some tricycles) and what she could make out now.
She heard the siren—it was above the nurse’s head, a reference point. It began to hurt, then. The siren did. She tried to ask them if they wouldn’t mind turning it off.
“Almost there almost there now,” she heard but, bliss, the siren desisted, some doors fell open, the passionate blue sky appeared above, bluer than usual and not chastened by clouds, as Hannah was lifted out onto a gurney and all the stimulus seemed to withdraw so she put her whole soul into just keeping the breathing going, the beloved elasticity of the breath into her, good old trustworthy air, high-air, heady stuff.
“She’s just fine,” someone told someone else.
“She’s in one hell of a mess,” someone else contradicted, but of all the silly things, how could it be that the overriding feeling which followed her into the emergency room was neither fear nor the pain of her injuries—which proved to be more dramatic than dangerous—but the knowledge that she, the same woman who just a few hours before was reveling in her solitude, had never felt so lonely? No, that wasn’t so hot to feel that lonely. It’s the kind of thing that can push a person into plights like this, just the kind of thing. That was a shame, wasn’t it. How far down can someone get.
“So the fucking rearview mirror ends up on the floor and well the universe that thrives behind big teeth chomping chomping to the tune of the old natural selection waltz, and out of nowhere comes this car smashes into her rear end stop me if I’m wrong, right Hannah?”
Krieger set up the story for Franz, who lay back in the doughy sofa and listened with less interest than his countenance of pragmatism might have suggested, which is to say his mouth was drawn down at the corners under the first evidence of a pencil moustache he had decided several days before to grow (it would be shaved off by evening). Hannah drummed her fingers on her hand cast, wandered down the hall to the bathroom. She noticed the curtains were drawn back in Krieger’s bedroom, allowing light like cognac to filter in on the fish tank. All the fish in the tank were gone. She studied her blackened eye in the mirror. No matter what Krieger told Franz about the excursion to Norfolk, she knew she would have to spend that afternoon finding a room to rent, and a job. She flushed the toilet for the distraction its rushing water would create and came back down the hall—a parolee walking down a hall, she thought. She still felt like the same Hannah that walked down this hall only days before all this happened. Krieger was wrought-up.
“Right, her rear end, the rear end of the truck, and who climbs out of it egos bruised but a rookie cop and his partner warned five times, lawyer says I’m telling you five times, about his hitting hooch on the trail, we’re talking the kind of sump wakes up three in the morning downs the pint of apricot brandy his daughter’s saved away for her slumber party, moral rectitude of a game-show host right? for the love of god, you got these guys flying out the screen doors out back of the house for no reason whatsoever that’s at least obvious to these blues and what the hell you expect them to do?”
“What, what?” asked Franz. He rubbed his nose.
“It’s instinct, it’s bred in the blood, they pull their pieces out of their holsters and go running after these deer sprinting down the alley, I mean you don’t dash unless you’ve done something wrong right?—here she is, Hannah, sit here,” and he caught his breath when she came back into the room.
Franz thought to ask her if she liked his moustache and ran his thumb over it.
“Now listen, and so, one of them, the sober one, has enough of god’s good sense to go back call in for an ambulance and backup happens to notice that as a matter of fact there was a girl at the wheel of the vehicle these assholes have just back-ended, but once the ambulance pulled in pulled out with Hannah in tow, attends to the more immediate and paramount concern of agreeing with the goddamn police dogs, as I understand this monster German shepherd? right Hannah?”
She shrugged, and glimpsed away out the window into the street.
“Sniffing like crazy against the tires
and not in search of a place to piddle, real pro this mutt and without doubt and obviously the only professional within a country-mile radius, sniffing sniffing etcetera until your drunk rookie crawls back not having successfully shot anybody in the back, says, Hey whatz Snuffee zo dern innurst in? Snuffee? hey gal? and having noted the remote possibility the Norfolk Police Department might through the olfactory cells located in goodole Snuffy’s snout have discovered the avenue whereby charges of negligence and extreme misconduct and who knows what else against the officers aforementioned might well be avoided, they proceed to dismantle piece by piece the entire blasted panel truck until you know what they found, I mean, for the love of sweet Jesus you know what the fuck all they found?”
Franz raised his eyebrows—began to raise his hand. Krieger was talking too much. But it was too late.
“Quarter key cut snow, lousy quarter kilo most of it cheap sugar and here’s Dick Tracy going—You cain’t get ya a lobster in a four-star restrunt weighs this dern much, I mean that’s with claws included, no sir you cain’t. And here is all this glee among the good buddies, scored themselves quarter key of snow so proud of themselves buttons flying all around in the air and you can bet the Norfolk PD bowling team this week’ll be hell to mess with, the pins will just drop from the pride of it all—hey Hannah, you remember that tune, ‘Stairway to the Stars’?”
Hannah looked at the Jefferson Airplane poster on the wall and without success tried to integrate its brilliant oranges and yellows which were familiar in shape and sense but whose volatility burst and collapsed forward.
“My aunt used to play Roger Williams’s arrangement of it on the Lowry organ—”
“Whose?”
“Anyway, oh hey that’s pretty good Francis, whose organ, that’s rich, so anyhow they arrested Hannah went over her with a fine-toothed comb but of course no record and she had no idea that stuff was there, so the bail was pretty minimal, I guess she’s supposed to go back down there at some point, but I doubt Franzy’ll let anything like that happen—”
“Anything like what happen?” Hannah asked.
“No, I won’t let anything like—” began Franz. He wiped the back of his long hand across his mouth. Krieger kept talking while each of the others spoke.
“She always, my aunt, she always tried to get me to play along with her, play the melody of ‘Stairway to the Stars’ I mean on a comb with toilet paper or something on it, have you ever seen that? I never did, though. Too weird.”
“Regarding Hannah,” Franz continued.
“I knew Hannah was clean, or I never would have proposed she, what I’m saying is she was competent, clean as a whistle, no record, nothing” (turning to Hannah) “except for that insane call you made from where? nurses’ station? the nurses’ station, okay etcetera, but check what Franzy’s done, old beneficence.” Krieger passed Hannah five hundred-dollar bills folded in half and held together with a paperclip.
“Since when was I supposed to be competent at, at what?” Hannah began, ignoring the money. Her face was beginning to color. “The only reason I even made that call was because of what they found in the truck. There wasn’t supposed to be anything in the truck, you said.”
“I said who knows?”
“That isn’t what you said.”
“Don’t act like it was news.”
Franz mediated, “It doesn’t matter now that Hannah’s back safe and sound.”
“So what’s this, then?” pointing at the money. “I thought you’d said—”
Franz shifted. This was it for the little favors.
“That’s yours.”
“Why?”
“That’s right, but it’s not like you didn’t give the business your all and Franzy, ever-living-loving saint that he is—”
“Peter, please, that’s enough, Hannah’s home, everything’s fine.”
“No, I mean it.”
“I don’t understand,” Hannah said.
“Francis recognizes where the blame lies, blame … call it that, blame, not that you or I had any idea the van was transporting illegal merchandise across state lines.”
“Peter, please,” drifted more firmly from Franz.
“You knew.” Hannah had placed the bills on the coffee table where they fluttered butterflylike.
Krieger’s face settled into temporary ambiguity.
“You knew all along.”
“Knew what?”
“Peter” (Franz).
“I mean, I suspected that the van was some kind of transportation of course I suspected, I told you as much didn’t I? Suspected is the correct terminology suspected I was born yesterday thinking they’d offer you a thousand me a thousand.”
“A thousand?—but you said five hundred.”
“Five hundred, a thousand, whatever, just to drive some college girl’s transportation I mean little Mona, a little short on the stuff upstairs but nevertheless a fervent item.”
“Peter,” Franz asked, “who’s Mona?”
Hannah put the money in the breast pocket of her cowboy shirt.
“Fervent, almost religious in her particular penchant for the great god Cock, if you’ll pardon me, and there she is up at college studying what studying Comparative Religion can you believe? you think you’re having some kind of special like even mystical experience when you’re with her but as a matter of fact, no wait a minute don’t interrupt matter of fact whatever in hell you experience is I am told nothing compared to the Song of Solomon behavior she’s capable of …”
“I’m going,” Hannah announced.
“You’re quite welcome,” started Franz.
“Nevertheless so, Hannah, you took a ride, there were admittedly a couple flustering snafus and here before us is the compensation for our wrongs and what the hell otherwise than, well, welcome to New York, right Francis?”
Franz said: “Hannah, before you go I think it’s important for me to note that I had nothing to do with any of this. It’s very kind of Krieger here to suggest that I’ve been a saint in this, but I deserve none of the credit.”
“Francis?”
“Yes, Peter?”
“I believe we need to have a few words in private.”
“I believe we do, Peter,” and as they stared at each other in disconsolate silence (was this one of their games?) she collected her rucksack out of the closet and only remembered after she quietly threw the lock and opened the door that her toothbrush was back in the bathroom but dashed down the stale corridors and creaking steps as quickly as she could, chest pounding, yet despising the manner in which she was making her escape. They did not follow her out into the street nor had Krieger come to the window to look down through the tangled ginkgo where she crossed between cabs, made the far sidewalk, glanced up, ran toward the corner. She chose turnings through the Village into streets whose names she had never heard of, and tried to be random in her choices. Eventually she came to the docks which jutted out into the river at the end of Horatio, and walked out to stare in the choppy water. Later, at a drugstore far downtown, she bought a fancy French toothbrush and paid for it with the crispest bill she had ever held in her hands. I didn’t think those people ever brushed their teeth, just maybe rubbed Brie around on the gums or something, was what Krieger would have said; she heard the words so plainly she recoiled, turned, half expecting him to be there behind.
The toothbrush was paid for and she owned it. She ordered an egg cream at the long, sticky counter just to be able to go to the ladies’ room and try it out. It was the greatest toothbrush any person could own on earth, she thought, clowning in the mirror, pulling her hair back and sucking in her cheeks so she looked like mama Opal, which made her wonder whether she ought not catch a bus back to … but where? … and the where answered the question even before it could be asked.
2.
“PATRIOTISM IS THE last refuge of a scoundrel.” Krieger quoted Dr. Johnson to Lupi. Hadn’t that contradicted something Krieger’d said earlier? Maybe so, maybe not. It wa
s a bit of a fog, but what matter. He was leaving Honduras, leaving Krieger. The old man had revived a little.
“Last refuge of a scoundrel—” were the final parting words he offered under the burned reds of the range of mountains which embraced the capital. Made in reference to the “other branch” of their operation, as Krieger had come around to calling the fat man.
Lupi anticipated his being finally reduced to a nomenclature of twigness, and a dry twig perhaps at that, one which might be pruned away if it were to the tree’s best advantage. He recognized it for the seduction it must have been and yet it was less clear why Krieger would bother speaking contemptuously of the fat man, especially after having puffed him some just the day before, affirming his credentials as a clever historian, wasn’t that so?
The turn, as he thought back, all seemed to begin out of thin Sierran air, with “People who talk about what they call callchore! by which they mean a smattering of the two dead languages of Greek and Latin, and yes we know how important it is you happen to have currency with one of these tongues, but anyway a smattering of them and maybe some ability at finding a patroness, maybe a Venetian for you, no? and one with a great big goddamn palazzo with central air so in the summer the rot-stink of the Canal doesn’t make you the more nauseous when you have to do your annual servicing of the old cow,” and at that Krieger had slapped his—Lupi’s—knee in a great gesture of friendship. Lupi joined reluctantly in the laughter but stayed aloof as possible to note the next turning. “No, but anyway, what am I saying, nothing really, just that, and to you I can say this with impunity and trusting at the same time you’ll go ahead with what we’ve devised here because as I mention if for no other reason than it is significant and purposeful, right? it’s just that our other branch has as I always used to say a Vichy personality.”
Come Sunday Page 16