by Tom Molloy
It was a rhetorical question. He knew I took pride in my military service. Although very young when the Korean War officially ended, I was actually a combat veteran of it. I’d been stationed on the Korean DMZ when the nation’s eyes were fixed on Viet Nam. We killed and were killed in our forgotten wasteland because of cease-fire violations, the bastard children of feints and intrigue in far away capitals.
The breeze stopped, as off to the northeast I could see a contrail and a silver speck miles high seeming almost to stand still as it strained against the jet stream.
“Where will you be?” he asked.
“Here. Right here in the city. I know it well.”
I’d been born in Boston, to parents who died young, weeks apart.
“And for money?”
I reminded him I had a license to drive large trucks. The vagaries of my vocation made tangible labor essential for me. I’d been following the want ads for weeks. I would get a job delivering office supplies and office furniture. I would be in and out of many stores, warehouses, and offices, I would be in an ideal position.
On the water a barge long and low hove into view, attended by two anxious tugs. Like dancers cheek to cheek, they hurried the barge up the channel that forked into East Boston and Chelsea. Puma extended his hand and I grasped it.
“Will you be in the city?” I asked.
He shook his head no.
“I’m involved in a complex project.”
As we parted I wanted to ask about the project, but as with so much else about Puma, his reticence seemed correct and proper.
He turned and was quickly gone. I walked rapidly past the L Street Bathhouse, where my father suffered his fatal heart attack at the age of thirty-nine. I went on, beneath the expressway, and watched the faces turn from Irish to brown to black and then to Chinese.
Above a dry cleaners and a small restaurant I rented a room with two bay windows. Through one was a red brick courtyard and through the other I could see the high buildings of downtown. It felt good to be in the city as I lay on the bed holding a newspaper above me with both arms.
There could be no communication with my wife. No phone calls, no letters, no hidden messages among the classifieds.
The sink was made of old porcelain, and it rested on three wide white chipped legs. I undressed at the sink, then washed, careful to get the newspaper ink off my hands and the grime off my face.
Drying my hands carefully, I switched off the lights and parted the drapes, letting in the panorama of Boston.
Like so many American cities by night, Boston seemed like some vast shimmering organism, quivering in contemplation of itself.
Few things are as beautiful as an American city in the dark. Boston, lying between the bracing grip of the Atlantic and the curving, slothful embrace of the Charles River, wore its age like a grande dame her jewels.
In the darkness of the street, the glow of a single cigarette floated in a doorway. Every few seconds the tiny red orb leapt upward as the unseen smoker sucked on the tobacco.
Suddenly the cigarette arced outward and came down in the middle of the roadway, showering sparks.
For a long time nothing moved on the street and no sounds came from the city beyond. At length, a dog came along one side of the street, about halfway between the row of parked cars and the middle of the road. The animal moved at a trot, turning its head to the cigarette like a tour bus passenger to a passing cathedral.
Pulling the curtain shut, I walked to the bed, from where I watched the pattern of light shift on the ceiling. Drifting to sleep, at that point where the subconscious speaks to the mind, I realized that I had not brought a weapon with me. Weapons, when hidden, like secret achievements, bring a certain serenity, a calmness, which makes violence less likely. Reaching with my left arm, my fingertips could just touch the bag on the floor that held the instruments. With that compass, I drifted off in the darkness.
3
In the morning I rode a bus the short distance to the trucking firm that was looking for workers. The wooden building was two stories high, its gray paint peeling off in long curving strips. The structure was set back from the street behind a rutted dirt yard jammed with empty trucks. At odd intervals the gravel was marked with puddles, some of them holding a sheen of gasoline that created pleasant rainbows in the early light.
The door was unlocked and I let myself into the empty, silent room. There were a few red vinyl chairs, bent with use, and around them a number of overflowing ashtrays. I could hear typing from upstairs. Going up the wooden stairs I caught the scent of cigarette smoke.
The typing stopped as I reached the top. A woman in her early thirties was sitting at a desk, a cigarette dangling from her lower lip, both arms resting on an old black typewriter. She was thin, with a firm body, small breasts, a small mouth, and brown straight hair of medium length. When she spoke the cigarette barely moved.
“Don’t tell me, ya forgot your bugle.”
“Bugle?”
“Yeah, the one ya blow for reveille, the place don’t open for two freaken hours.”
“Oh.”
“Well that’s one way to look at it. Coffee?”
“Yeah, please.”
She nodded. “It’s all there, help yourself.”
I opened packets of sugar, packets of powdered cream and mixed instant coffee with the hot water. I sensed her watching before she spoke.
“Don’t go gettin’ no funny ideas.”
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb, just ’cause we’re alone. Don’t try to get cute, I can handle myself.”
I stirred the coffee as I turned and answered.
“Don’t worry I’m only dangerous when I have my bugle.”
She laughed blowing the smoke across the keys of the typewriter.
“Yeah, sure. Have a seat, you here about the ad in the paper?”
“Yes.”
“You know the city, you know the streets?”
“Yes I do.”
She asked me how to get to Logan Airport if the tunnels were jammed, she asked me how to get from one neighborhood to another in the city, she asked me what streets intersected in Brigham’s Circle, and what secondary roads led out of Boston to the south. After I answered she said I was hired.
When I had filled out two forms, she told me a few of the company’s general rules and I asked what I should do next.
“Get lost,” she said. “We don’t open for two freaken hours.”
Outside I climbed onto one of the trucks, opened the door and sat behind the wheel checking the instrument panel. I had experience driving 18-wheelers interstate, but these smaller straight-trucks were a real challenge on the streets of a city. Smaller by far than the semi-trailers, they were nonetheless a job moving through the narrow streets jammed with cars at rush hour. And in Boston’s narrow maze of roads and alleyways, rush hour was all day, every day.
I walked through the downtown streets as they began to fill with pedestrians coming in from the suburbs. Single-minded people, their combination of drive and American timidity had landed them in that godforsaken place of scalped lawns, unknown neighbors, and an endless chain of giving rides to blank-eyed offspring.
I much preferred the sight and company of city dwellers: their wit, their cynicism, their slouching cosmopolitanism. Among such people I had a quiet breakfast at the Blue Diner. From behind the newspaper I listened to their talk, their news of city neighborhoods, of fist fights in corner bars and how many cops it took to bring a guy down to the station, the knowing whispers of who was taking what down to City Hall, and who could set things straight.
And in Boston, just as in my boyhood there, the talk of men always got back to one subject. Even now in the frozen brief days of December they touched on the subject of baseball, analyzing again strategies used and not used in the past year, and of who would and would not be ready for spring training in two months. Baseball was in this city like the patterns in a woven fabric. The contours of Fenway Pa
rk, the sights, sounds, memories, the very smell of the place, dominated Boston in the summer; and even in winter it was always just beneath the surface, ready to be rationed out, offering identity, warmth, and hope through the lengthening grip of the North Atlantic’s winter.
After the meal I walked the streets, now brimming with people, men and women grim against the cold wind, young girls firm beneath long coats and flowing scarves, their wardrobes impeccable but for silly running shoes flashing on their feet.
I walked a circuit of Boston Common, up the slight incline of Park Street and past the golden dome of the State House. In the distance, one could see a statue of Washington on horseback, the animal’s foot raised to signify that its rider had been wounded.
As I returned the streets were emptying, the sidewalks seeming to grow wider as the pedestrians scurried indoors. Back at the trucking company several men were milling about in a low-hanging haze of cigarette smoke. None of them paid any attention to me as I stood in the middle of the room, watching the woman descend the stairs. She had a cigarette, unlit, hanging at a sharp angle from her lips.
Proffering a pile of papers, she called out numbers; one by one the men came forward and took some of the papers from her. At length I was the only one left, and she said,
“Two-two-five.”
She handed me several forms with addresses and items to be delivered. Then she said, “Remember you ain’t a name, you’re a number, two-two-five.”
They had given me a light load because it was my first day and that was fortunate because I lost a few minutes at almost every stop searching for the right street number, and scanning building directories for the correct office.
By lunchtime I was parked off of Summer Street, an area of wide cobblestoned streets, rundown warehouses, and abandoned railroad tracks. The air was fragrant with the smell of the ocean. Finishing a sandwich, I checked in with the dispatcher and found she knew my voice.
“How ya doin’, two-two-five?”
I told her I was fine and asked if she had a number too.
“I’m Frances Lawless, two-two-five.” With that she hung up.
The route took me to the western part of the city, to a Brighton neighborhood where I stopped in a variety store filled with locals, rows of magazines, newspapers, doughnuts, and pots of coffee. Some of the newspapers were from overseas; many of them were the county newspapers of Ireland. I ordered a coffee and stood close by the magazines sampling their covers while a heavyset clerk spoke in a hoarse whisper to a customer.
“Hey the niggers are takin’ over, they’re everywhere, if the Klan don’t stop ’em nobody’s gonna stop ’em, then we’re all fucked and the Russians’ll be here in a week. Ain’t no Rambo gonna stop ’em, ’cause that’s only movie shit, it’s gotta be the Klan or nothin’.”
I picked up a magazine about the American Civil War, and asked for a second cup of coffee. “Yes sir, anything else?”
“No, nothing.”
“Yes, sir.”
I took the coffee with me and dropped the magazine on the front seat. I had a run out to the suburbs where I delivered a swivel chair all wrapped in plastic, and two office dividers, one gray, the other white.
I drove from one suburban town to another, the land, the houses, and the people looking the same, white faces, thin bodies, the men ineffectual, effete, seeming more European than American, and carrying an air of Continental prissiness, like the Paris dandies who look so nice and smell so bad. I wondered if their bloodless circles, their humorless caste, foretold a new social atrophy coming to the nation.
I swung the vehicle northward onto Route 128, the wide curving highway that ran in a great arc to the west of Boston. With the growing acceleration, the truck filled with the rush of the cold air from without and took on the steady rocking motion of a small boat on a lake.
After leaving a small package with a computer company receptionist, I strolled out the tinted doors and into the building opposite.
Its interior was identical to the one I’d just left but for the fact it faced a different point of the compass. At the building’s directory, where people would stop to gaze for the names of companies, or workers would wait for colleagues, I wrote with a tight lettering,
THIRST
I bent close and with a single breath blew at the dry shavings, watching them fall onto the pale blue carpet with its cigarette burns brown and ugly like gypsy moths on a country road.
As I straightened up, I realized a man was standing right behind me. He was white, of medium build and height, and dressed in an expensive three-piece suit, with a too-tight shirt collar. In his late 30’s, he was at that point in life where many men compensate diminishing physical strength with sartorial correctness.
The anger on his face turned to disdain, but as I looked into his eyes, uncertainty tinged with fear began to wrap itself around him.
The elevator repeated its task of opening its doors to the empty foyer. The man swallowed once, and the expensive striped shirt seemed to increase its pressure around his neck. I took a small step closer to him and spoke just above a whisper.
“Don’t worry, it’s only the truth.”
He blinked twice, nodded, and walked to the elevator, which as if rehearsed, opened its doors to him. He kept his eyes on the plastic button he had pushed, as the doors closed and the elevator ascended.
I went out an inconspicuous side door and entered my truck. Glancing up at the office building with all the blank rows of tinted windows, I saw its antiseptic American flag dwarfed by a huge aluminum flagpole. There was a good breeze and the flag snapped and twisted, repeatedly clanging a metal pulley in protest. As I started the engine, I knew the well-dressed man would say nothing about our encounter. He’d be unsure of how it would look in his personnel file and probably had not even dared to look at the message.
As the day passed I worked the route back toward the city and at 4:30 made the last delivery. Like flotsam in a sluggish river, I came with the traffic flow back to the yard with its pallets, trucks, and puddles.
After fueling the vehicle, I entered the office. Frances Lawless did not look up from the shipping form she was reading, as she said, “How’d it go, two-two-five?”
“No problems.”
“Atta boy, see ya tomorrow.”
The winter sky in the west gave forth soft-hued flares of reds, greens, and pinks as the darkness spread on the heavens, bringing fear and magic to the city. The Christmas lights astride the slopes of Boston Common came on, marking the progress of the pedestrians passing before them with twinklings of reds and green.
On the asphalt paths of the Common the darkness came among the insane men and women on the benches, giving them new bursts of energy to shout at the passersby and the joggers, and the energy passed to the teenaged couples so that the boys gave the girls one-armed hugs, lifting them off their feet.
On Tremont Street on the east side of Boston Common I bought three newspapers from a fat, greasy man wrapped in an apron and sweaters and asked him what the news was. He looked around to make sure none of the regular customers was within earshot. Leaning into the air like a runner at second trying to steal the sign, he said,
“Trouble on the horizon.”
“How so?”
“Look around.”
I did, and he watched me as my gaze came back to him. Then he spoke,
“I been robbed a lot.”
He sold three more papers before resuming.
“Know what they want?”
“No, what?”
He shrugged.
“See, that’s it, they don’t know neither.”
I glanced at the front page of one of the papers as he continued, now in a low tone.
“Ya know what they want ya could stop ’em, but hey, if they don’t even know …” He sold five papers, he told a young woman the time, then he spoke.
“How’d the Market do?”
The wind tugged the pages as I turned them.
“Up
22 on heavy volume.”
He nodded, and resumed speaking.
“You remember when you was a kid, paper’s be dropped on the corner box, ya could leave your money on top a the box, no locks, no nothin’, nobody took the coins neither.”
He hefted a bundle and cut the plastic wrapping with a quick thrust.
“Ya knew it belonged to someone else so ya didn’t take it. Ya had respect for other people. That’s gone, an’ it stays gone long enough it ain’t ever comin’ back. That’s entropy, that’s the second law of thermodynamics.”
Again he told the time to a young woman, then resumed speaking.
“Myself, I think it’s the television. I mean them guys on television, they’re assholes from the word go. But everyone wants to be like ’em, so everybody wants to be an asshole. Trouble on the horizon, ’cause personally, an’ I don’t know I ain’t ever been there, but I don’t think them guys in Mecca watch that much TV. I mean, on TV an’ in the movies, they ain’t hardly different no more anyway, we’re whaling hell outta them terrorists, ’cept in real life they’re fucken Uncle Sam five ways to Sunday. Ya ask me, that’s the news, an’ ya can throw in we got a race war more or less goin’ on, an’ a lotta ladies wanna cut our balls off, but I ain’t readin’ it in the papers, if ya get my drift.”
I asked him where the smart money was. He replied.
“Fifteen percent in gold, lookin’ to thirty, an’ Australian real estate, provided it ain’t a pig inna poke. Long term ya gotta like the pharmaceuticals and nursing homes but the latter makes me queasy, and don’t forget drilling equipment—again of course long term.”
A wave of people came out of the subway toward him and I stepped back,
“Thanks, see ya.”
“Sure, pal, that’s the news. Trouble on the horizon, entropy, an’ a long cold winter, ol’ wooly caterpillar knows the score, ol’ Farmer’s Almanac won’t steer ya wrong.”
In my room, the aroma of steaming food seemed to come out of the walls, massaging the senses till the senses grew almost numb to the cooking. I had disassembled the sagging metal frame of the bed and now lay atop the mattress on the floor. I held the newspaper above me, squinting at the shaded print. Trouble on all the horizons it seemed, local, national, and international. Or so the paper said.