Brenda, too. She lives in LA, now. I visit her when I’m on the Coast and we go out together, and catch dinner or a show. But she can’t look at me without thinking of her; and neither can I, and sometimes, that becomes too much.
There was no bitterness in the divorce. There was no bitterness left in either of us. But Dee-dee’s illness had been a fault line splitting the earth. A chasm had run through our lives, and we jumped out of its way, but Brenda to one side and I, to the other. When Dee-dee was gone, there was no bridge across it and we found that we shared nothing between us but a void.
The operation bought Mae six months. Six months of silence in her mind before the stroke took her. She complained a little, now and then, about her quickly evaporating memories, but sometimes I read to her from my notes, or played the tape recorder, and that made her feel a little better. When she heard about seeing Lincoln on the White House lawn, she just shook her head and said, “Isn’t that a wonder?” The last time I saw Mae Holloway, she was fumbling after some elusive memory of her Mister that kept slipping like water through the fingers of her mind, when she suddenly brightened, looked at me, and smiled. “They’re all a-waiting,” she whispered, and then all the lights went out.
And Dee-dee.
Dee-dee.
Still, after all these years, I cannot talk about my little girl.
They call it the Deirdre-Holloway treatment. I insisted on that. It came too late for her, but maybe there are a few thousand fewer children who die now each year because of it. Sometimes I think it was worth it. Sometimes I wonder selfishly why it could not have come earlier. I wonder if there wasn’t something I could have done differently that would have brought us home sooner.
Singer found the key; or Peeler did, or they found it together. Three years later, thank God. Had the break-through followed too soon on Deirdre’s death, I could not have borne it. The income from the book funded it and it took every penny, but I feel no poorer for it.
It’s a mutation, Peeler told me, that codes for an enzyme that retards catabolism. In males, the gene’s expression is suppressed by testosterone. In females, there’s a sudden acceleration of fetal development in the last months of pregnancy that almost always kills the mother, and often the child as well. After birth, aging slows quickly until it nearly stops at puberty. It only resumes after menopause. Generations of gene-spliced lab mice lived and died to establish that. Sweet Annie’s dear, dead child would have been programmed for the same long future had she lived.
Is the line extinct now? Or does the gene linger out there, carried safely by males waiting unwittingly to kill their mates with daughters?
I don’t know. I never found another like Mae, despite my years of practice in geriatrics.
When I retired from the Home, the residents gave me a party, though none of them were of that original group—Jimmy, Rose, Leo, Old Man Morton.… By then I had seen them all through their final passage. When the residents began approaching my own age, I knew it was time to take down my shingle.
I find myself thinking more and more about the past these days. About Mae and the Home and Khan—I heard from my neighbor’s boy that she is still in practice, in pediatrics now. Sometimes, I think of my own parents and the old river town where I grew up. The old cliffside stairs. Hiking down along the creek. Hasbrouk’s grocery down on the corner.
The memories are dim and faded, brittle with time.
And I don’t remember the music, at all. My memories are silent, like an old Chaplin film. I’ve had my house wired, and tapes play continually, but it isn’t the same. The melodies do not come from within; they do not come from the heart.
They tell me I have a tumor in my left temporal lobe, and it’s growing. It may be operable. It may not be. Wing wants to try Culver-Blaese, but I won’t let him. I keep hoping.
I want to remember. I want to remember Mae. Yes, and Consuela and Brenda, too. And Dee-dee most of all. I want to remember them all. I want to hear them singing.
THE HOLE IN THE HOLE
Terry Bisson
Here’s a warm, funny, and deliciously bizarre tale, in the tradition of the best of R. A. Lafferty, about some intrepid explorers who dare to venture into the wilds of darkest Brooklyn in search of treasure beyond price … and who find far more than they expect to find.
Terry Bisson is the author of a number of critically acclaimed novels such as Fire on the Mountain, Wyrldmaker, the popular Talking Man, which was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award in 1986, and, most recently, Voyage to the Red Planet. In 1991, his famous story “Bears Discover Fire” won the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and the Asimov’s Reader’s Award, the only story ever to sweep them all. His most recent book is a collection, Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories. His stories have appeared in our Eighth and Tenth Annual Collections. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.
One
Trying to find Volvo parts can be a pain, particularly if you are a cheapskate, like me. I needed the hardware that keeps the brake pads from squealing, but I kept letting it go, knowing it wouldn’t be easy to find. The brakes worked okay; good enough for Brooklyn. And I was pretty busy, anyway, being in the middle of a divorce, the most difficult I have ever handled, my own.
After the squeal developed into a steady scream (we’re talking about the brakes here, not the divorce, which was silent), I tried the two auto supply houses I usually dealt with, but had no luck. The counterman at Aberth’s just gave me a blank look. At Park Slope Foreign Auto, I heard those dread words, “dealer item.” Breaking (no pun intended) with my usual policy, I went to the Volvo dealer in Bay Ridge, and the parts man, one of those Jamaicans who seem to think being rude is the same thing as being funny, fished around in his bins and placed a pile of pins, clips, and springs on the counter.
“That’ll be twenty-eight dollars, mon,” he said, with what they used to call a shit-eating grin. When I complained (or as we lawyers like to say, objected), he pointed at the spring which was spray-painted yellow, and said, “Well, you see, they’re gold, mon!” Then he spun on one heel to enjoy the laughs of his co-workers, and I left. There is a limit.
So I let the brakes squeal for another week. They got worse and worse. Ambulances were pulling over to let me by, thinking I had priority. Then I tried spraying the pads with WD-40.
Don’t ever try that.
On Friday morning I went back to Park Slope Foreign Auto and pleaded (another legal specialty) for help. Vinnie, the boss’s son, told me to try Boulevard Imports in Howard Beach, out where Queens and Brooklyn come together at the edge of Jamaica Bay. Since I didn’t have court that day, I decided to give it a try.
The brakes howled all the way. I found Boulevard Imports on Rockaway Boulevard just off the Belt Parkway. It was a dark, grungy, impressive-looking cave of a joint, with guys in coveralls lounging around drinking coffee and waiting on deliveries. I was hopeful.
The counterman, another Vinnie, listened to my tale of woe before dashing my hopes with the dread words: “Dealer item.” Then the guy in line behind me, still another Vinnie (everyone wore their names over their pockets) said, “Send him to Frankie in the Hole.”
The Vinnie behind the counter shook his head, saying, “He’d never find it.”
I turned to the other Vinnie and asked, “Frankie in the Hole?”
“Frankie runs a little junkyard,” he said. “Volvos only. You know the Hole?”
“Can’t say as I do.”
“I’m not surprised. Here’s what you do. Listen carefully, because it’s not so easy to find these days, and I’m only going to tell you once.”
* * *
There’s no way I could describe or even remember everything this Vinnie told me: suffice it to say that it had to do with crossing over Rockaway Boulevard, then back under the Belt Parkway, forking onto a service road, making a U turn onto Conduit but staying in the center lane, cutting a sharp left into a dead end (that really wasn’t), and following a di
rt track down a steep bank through a grove of trees and brush.
I did as I was told, and found myself in a sort of sunken neighborhood, on a wide, dirt street running between decrepit houses set at odd angles on weed-grown lots. It looked like one of those left-over neighborhoods in the meadowlands of Jersey, or down South, where I did my basic training. There were no sidewalks but plenty of potholes, abandoned gardens, and vacant lots. The streets were half-covered by huge puddles. The houses were of concrete block, or tarpaper, or board and batten, no two alike or even remotely similar; there was even a house trailer, illegal in New York City (of course, so is crime). There were no street signs, so I couldn’t tell if I was in Brooklyn or Queens, or on the dotted line between the two.
The other Vinnie (or third, if you are counting) had told me to follow my nose until I found a small junkyard, which I proceeded to do. Mine was the only car on the street. Weaving around the puddles (or cruising through them like a motorboat) gave driving an almost nautical air of adventure. There was no shortage of junk in the Hole, including a subway car someone was living in, and a crane that had lost its verticality and took up two backyards. Another backyard had a piebald pony. The few people I saw were white. A fat woman in a short dress sat on a high step talking on a portable phone. A gang of kids were gathered around a puddle, killing something with sticks. In the yard behind them was a card table with a crude sign reading “MOON ROCKS R US.”
I liked the peaceful scene in the Hole. And driving through the puddles quietened my brakes. I saw plenty of junk cars, but they came in ones or twos, in the yards and on the street, and none of them were Volvos (no surprise).
After I passed the piebald pony twice, I realized I was going in circles. Then I noticed a chain link fence with reeds woven into it. And I had a feeling.
I stopped. The fence was just too high to look over, but I could see between the reeds. I was right. It was a junkyard that had been “lady-birded.”
The lot hidden by the fence was filled with cars, squeezed together tightly, side by side and end to end. All from Sweden. All immortal and all dead. All indestructible, and all destroyed. All Volvos.
The first thing you learn in law school is when not to look like a lawyer. I left my tie and jacket in the car, pulled on my coveralls, and followed the fence around to a gate. On the gate was a picture of a snarling dog. The picture was (it turned out) all the dog there was, but it was enough; it slowed you down. Made you think.
The gate was unlocked. I opened it enough to slip through. I was in a narrow driveway, the only open space in the junkyard. The rest was packed so tightly with Volvos that there was barely room to squeeze between them. They were lined up in rows, some facing north and some south (or was it east and west?) so that it looked like a traffic jam in Hell. The gridlock of the dead.
At the end of the driveway, there was a ramshackle garage made of corrugated iron, shingleboard, plywood, and fiberglass. In and around it, too skinny to cast shade, were several ailanthuses—New York’s parking lot tree. There were no signs but none were needed. This had to be Frankie’s.
Only one living car was in the junkyard. It stood at the end of the driveway, by the garage, with its hood raised, as if it were trying to speak but had forgotten what it wanted to say. It was a 164, Volvo’s unusual straight six. The body was battered, with bondo under the taillights and doors where rust had been filled in. It had cheap imitation racing wheels and a chrome racing stripe along the bottom of the doors. Two men were leaning over, peering into the engine compartment.
I walked up and watched, unwelcomed but not (I suspected) unnoticed. An older white man in coveralls bent over the engine while a black man in a business suit looked on and kibitzed in a rough but friendly way. I noticed, because this was the late 1980s, and the relations between black and white weren’t all that friendly in New York.
And here we were in Howard Beach. Or at least in a Hole in Howard Beach.
“If you weren’t so damn cheap, you’d get a Weber and throw these SUs away,” the white man said.
“If I wasn’t so damn cheap, you’d never see my ass,” the black man said. He had a West Indian accent.
“I find you a good car and you turn it into a piece of island junk.”
“You sell me a piece of trash and…”
And so forth. But all very friendly. I stood waiting patiently until the old man raised his head and lifted his eyeglasses, wiped along the two sides of his grease-smeared nose, and then pretended to notice me for the first time.
“You Frankie?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“This is Frankie’s, though?”
“Could be.” Junkyard men like the conditional.
So do lawyers. “I was wondering if it might be possible to find some brake parts for a 145, a 1970. Station wagon.”
“What you’re looking for is an antique dealer,” the West Indian said.
The old man laughed; they both laughed. I didn’t.
“Brake hardware,” I said. “The clips and pins and stuff.”
“Hard to find,” the old man said. “That kind of stuff is very expensive these days.”
The second thing you learn in law school is when to walk away. I was almost at the end of the drive when the old man reached through the window of the 164 and blew the horn: two shorts and a long.
At the far end of the yard, by the fence, a head popped up. I thought I was seeing a cartoon, because the eyes were too large for the head, and the head was too large for the body.
“Yeah, Unc?”
“Frankie, I’m sending a lawyer fellow back there. Show him that 145 we pulled the wheels off of last week.”
“I’ll take a look,” I said. “But what makes you think I’m an attorney?”
“The tassels,” the old man said, looking down at my loafers. He stuck his head back under the hood of the 164 to let me know I was dismissed.
* * *
Frankie’s hair was almost white, and so thin it floated off the top of his head. His eyes were bright blue-green, and slightly bugged out, giving him an astonished look. He wore cowboy boots with the heels rolled over so far that he walked on their sides and left scrollwork for tracks. Like the old man, he was wearing blue gabardine pants and a lighter blue work shirt. On the back it said—
But I didn’t notice what it said. I wasn’t paying attention. I had never seen so many Volvos in one place before. There was every make and model—station wagons, sedans, fastbacks, 544s and 122s, DLs and GLs, 140s to 740s, even a 940—in every state of dissolution, destruction, decay, desolation, degradation, decrepitude, and disrepair. It was beautiful. The Volvos were jammed so close together that I had to edge sideways between them.
We made our way around the far corner of the garage, where I saw a huge jumbled pile—not a stack—of tires against the fence. It was cooler here. The ailanthus trees were waving though I could feel no breeze.
“This what you’re looking for?” Frankie stopped by a 145 sedan—dark green, like my station wagon; it was a popular color. The wheels were gone and it sat on the ground. By each wheel well lay a hubcap, filled with water.
There was a hollow thud behind us. A tire had come over the fence, onto the pile; another followed it. “I need to get back to work,” Frankie said. “You can find what you need, right?”
He left me with the 145, called out to someone over the fence, then started pulling tires off the pile and rolling them through a low door into a shed built onto the side of the garage. The shed was only about five feet high. The door was half covered by a plastic shower curtain hung sideways. It was slit like a hula skirt and every time a tire went through it, it went pop.
Every time Frankie rolled a tire through the door, another sailed over the fence onto the pile behind him. It seemed like the labors of Sisyphus.
Well, I had my own work. Carefully, I drained the water out of the first hubcap. There lay the precious springs and clips I sought, rusty but usable. I worked my way around the car (a
job in itself, as it was jammed so closely with the others). I drained the four hubcaps and collected all the treasure into one of them. It was like panning for gold.
There was a cool breeze and a funny smell. Behind me I heard a steady pop, pop, pop. But when I finished and took the brake parts to Frankie, the pile of tires was still the same size. Frankie was on top of it, leaning on the fence, talking with an Indian man in a Goodyear shirt
The Indian (who must have been standing on a truck on the other side of the fence) saw me and ducked. I had scared him away. I realized I was witnessing some kind of illegal dumping operation. I wondered how all the junk tires fit into the tiny shed, but I wasn’t about to ask. Probably Frankie and the old man took them out and dumped them into Jamaica Bay every night.
I showed Frankie the brake parts. “I figure they’re worth a couple of bucks,” I said.
“Show Unc,” he said. “He’ll tell you what they’re worth.”
I’ll bet, I thought. Carrying my precious hubcap of brake hardware, like a waiter with a dish, I started back toward the driveway. Behind me I heard a steady pop, pop, pop as Frankie went back to work. I must have been following a different route between the cars—because when I saw it, I knew it was for the first time.
The 1800 is Volvo’s legendary (well, sort of) sports car from the early 1960s. The first model, the P1800, was assembled in Scotland and England (unusual, to say the least, for a Swedish car). This one, the only one I had ever seen in a junkyard, still had its fins and appeared to have all its glass. It was dark blue. I edged up to it, afraid that if I alarmed it, it might disappear. But it was real. It was wheelless, engineless, and rusted out in the rocker panels, but it was real. I looked inside. I tapped on the glass. I opened the door.
The interior was the wrong color, but it was real too. It smelled musty, but it was intact. Or close enough. I arrived at the driveway so excited that I didn’t even flinch when the old man looked into my hubcap (like a fortune teller reading entrails) and said, “Ten dollars.”
The Year's Best SF 12 # 1994 Page 40