Black Maps

by Jauss, David

  I looked around for the waitresses, but they were still in the kitchen. I heard the sizzle of the grill through the nasal whine of a country singer complaining about his woman running around. I wished they would hurry up.

  “Have you talked to someone?” I asked. I meant a minister or a doctor, but I don’t think she understood.

  “He won’t talk to me,” she said. “He blame me for it all. He say I the one made Freddie do it, I the one after him all the time to do his schoolwork, clean his room.” She squeezed her eyes shut.

  I could have asked “Do what?” but I already knew. Now I wanted more than ever to get away from her and her grief.

  “Excuse me,” I said, and pulled my arm out of her grip. “I need to go sit down.”

  She followed me toward the booth, talking to my back. “I beg him not to do it,” she said. “I beg him and beg him, but he say ‘Go away and leave me be or I do it now.’ And when I reach out for him, he do it. My boy, he do it.” Then a sob shuddered through her.

  It may sound strange, but I was embarrassed by her grief. I felt sorry for her, I truly did, but I was embarrassed too. Maybe it was because she was a stranger and I couldn’t possibly share her grief. Or maybe it was because her grief had taken her so far beyond embarrassment that I felt some odd obligation to be embarrassed for her. I don’t know. All I know for sure is that I wanted to get away from her more than I wanted to comfort her.

  I started toward the men’s room. “Where you going?” she asked.

  “I can’t help you,” I answered, more bluntly than I intended, then went in the men’s room and locked the door behind me.

  “What’s wrong?” she said. She knocked on the door. “What’d I do?”

  “Nothing,” I said. But the way I said it I might as well have said, “Go away.” Then, her voice wavering, she started talking about her son again.

  I looked around the room and tried not to listen. The walls were covered with graffiti—phone numbers, drawings of naked women and penises, a dirty limerick or two—and on the gray metal toilet stall someone had scratched the words KEEP AMERICA BEAUTIFUL and, underneath, KILL ALL THE NIGGERS. I thought about all the blacks who came into that room and read those words, and I looked back at the door. The woman was saying something about a bridge then, and that’s when I remembered the story. A teenaged boy, a student at Emerson Junior High, had climbed out onto the ledge of an old railway bridge and dove to the rocks below. But it hadn’t happened that day, as she’d said; it had happened at least two weeks ago. I remembered proofing the story. It’d been too long to fit the hole in our Police Beat section, so I had to cut the last paragraph, which mentioned that the boy’s parents witnessed the suicide.

  “Cars be going by,” she was half saying, half sobbing, “but nobody is stopping, everybody is just looking out at us. One of them even points at us like we are something interesting. And I say, I say, ‘Freddie, come back, everything be all right,’ and he say, ‘No, Mama,’ and I reach out for him but he just lean forward. He just lean forward and I feel him going like it is me going and oh, his sweet head, his sweet, sweet head!”

  I opened the door. She was standing there, swaying back and forth and holding her head as if it were about to shatter.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. But she didn’t seem to hear me.

  “Ohhh,” she moaned, then slumped into one of the booths. She put her face down on the tabletop and covered her head with her hands, like a soldier under fire.

  The younger waitress—Carol Sue—appeared at the counter then with a white paper bag. “Sir, your order’s ready,” she said.

  As sorry as I felt for the woman, I was glad to have an excuse to leave. I stepped up to the counter and took the bag. Looking over my shoulder, Carol Sue said, “Excuse me, ma’am, but we have to close up now.” Then she came out from behind the counter with a ring full of keys in her hand.

  The woman gradually stood up. She wasn’t crying anymore. “I ain’t got nowhere to go,” she said.

  “You can go home, can’t you?” Carol Sue said. “You do have a home, don’t you?”

  The woman shook her head. “No. Not no more.”

  Monica came out of the kitchen then, wiping her hands on a towel. She smiled in a stiff, controlled way that didn’t reach her eyes. “Is there someone we can call for you?” she asked the woman. “Or a taxi?”

  “Ain’t no one,” the woman said.

  By this time I was at the door, waiting for Carol Sue to unlock it. I turned my back to Monica and the woman and tried to listen to the radio. But still I heard Monica say I’m sorry but and police. Then Carol Sue turned the key in the lock, and I hurried out to my car, opened the door, and jumped in. As I put the key in the ignition, the woman stumbled out of the Burger Palace and ran toward me. “Wait,” she said. “Stop.”

  But I didn’t wait. I started the car and began to back up. She ran up alongside the car and knocked on the passenger window. “Help me,” she said. As I stopped to shift into drive, she put her face up to the window, her wet cheeks glistening in the light cast by the streetlight. “Please,” she said. And she leaned against the car as if it were all that was holding her up.

  I could have shifted into park. I could have rolled down the window and asked what she wanted. I could have talked with her for a few minutes or even offered to give her a ride. I could have put my arms around her and consoled her the best I was able. But what I did was reach over and lock the door.

  She stood up then and watched me as I turned around and headed out of the lot. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw her standing there in the middle of the black asphalt. Then I turned onto Calhoun and pressed on the accelerator.

  As I drove down the street, I once again imagined driving away from everything. I saw myself on the freeway, driving in my dark car through the anonymous night, on my way to a new life, a new self. But this time that thought didn’t give me any pleasure. This time it scared me.

  When I turned down Fremont and saw the Courier building looming in the dark, I accelerated and sped past the turnoff to the parking lot. I wasn’t sure where I was going. For a moment, I thought about going back to the Burger Palace and comforting the woman—Lucy, I told myself, her name is Lucy—but I didn’t. Why didn’t I go back? Part of it, I’m ashamed to say, was that she was black. I asked myself, would I have comforted her if she were someone else? What if she were white, and pretty? What if she were Monica? Or what if she were Dana? And then I saw Dana in the Burger Palace, drunk and staggering up to a stranger to tell him her life was ruined, and I felt something narrow inside me open wide, like a wound.

  But still I did not go back to the restaurant that night. I went there the next three nights and then occasionally after that, but I never saw Lucy again. I asked Monica and Carol Sue about her, but they didn’t know any more than I did. I thought of checking the police report for her address, but I didn’t. I still think about doing it, sometimes, though I know I never will. It wouldn’t make much difference now. Whatever I said or did would be too late to help.

  I didn’t go back to the Courier that night either. Instead, I went home. At first I didn’t realize that was what I was doing, and when I found myself turning onto our street, I thought I must have done it through force of habit. But it wasn’t habit. It was something like habit, only deeper and more powerful. Whatever it was, it’s what I most miss, now that Dana and I are divorced.

  When I went inside, Dana was in the kitchen, washing dishes. She turned when she heard me, and I saw that she’d been crying again. Her eyes were red, and there were some Kleenexes crumpled on the counter beside her.

  I stopped next to the refrigerator. On it, held up by magnets, was a picture Amy had drawn of a purple flower with a smiling face.

  Dana pushed a strand of her black hair behind her ear with the back of a wet hand. “You’re awfully early,” she said.

  “I’m not fired, if that’s what you’re thinking. I just came home for a minute. I’m going right
back.” I still didn’t know why I’d come home; I only knew that I’d had to.

  “Good,” she said, wiping a plate with the washcloth.

  “Let’s not fight,” I said.

  “Who’s fighting? If I state a simple fact, does it mean I’m fighting?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Then leave me alone.”

  She kept on washing dishes and stacking them in the rack. I watched for a moment, then cleared my throat. “You’ve been crying,” I said.

  “Very observant of you.”

  “Please,” I said. “Don’t.”

  She whirled toward me then, her face red and pinched and her lips quivering. “Don’t what?” she said, her voice rising. “Don’t hit you? Don’t yell at you? Don’t make our daughter cry?”

  I didn’t say anything. She turned back to the sink and began violently scrubbing a pot. “Just leave me alone, will you,” she said. “Just go away and leave me in peace. Leave us both in peace.”

  “Is that what you want?” I said.

  “That’s what I want.”

  I felt groggy, as if I were just waking up. “You mean, you want a divorce?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I just stood there, watching her back. Then I heard Amy’s footsteps in the hall.

  “Mama,” she called.

  I looked at the doorway and there she was, standing in her pink pajamas, rubbing her eyes.

  “Hello, honey,” I said, and went over and squatted down beside her. There was a pillow print running down her cheek like a scar. I kissed it and, as I did, I heard Lucy saying “his sweet, sweet head.”

  I made myself smile. “What are you doing up so late, little lady?”

  “A dog was chasing me,” she said. She spread her arms wide. “A big dog. And he was barking at me.”

  “It’s just a dream,” Dana said, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “I’ll take you back to bed, sweetheart.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.” And I hoisted her up and carried her back into her dark bedroom and tucked her in. Then I brushed her hair away from her eyes and kissed her forehead. Fear was feathering in my chest, making it hard for me to breathe. I knew this might be the last time I’d tuck my daughter into bed in this house. “Good night, honeybunch,” I said.

  “What if he comes back?” Amy said then.

  “If he comes back,” I said, “I’ll chase him away.”

  “Don’t hit him, though,” she said. “I don’t think he means to be mean.”

  “Okay,” I said, and kissed her on the nose. Then I went back into the kitchen.

  “Don’t you think you’d better get back to work?” Dana said. She was still doing dishes, her arms sunk almost to her elbows in the sudsy water.

  I thought about the bag of food in the car and imagined the copy editors checking their watches and cursing me for taking so long. “Yes,” I said. But I didn’t move.

  Dana kept on doing the dishes as if I weren’t there. I watched her for a long moment, and I thought about Lucy and wondered where she was. Then I said, “I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t say anything; she just shook her head. I wanted to walk up behind her then and take her into my arms. I wanted to tell her I loved her. I wasn’t sure it was true, at least not anymore, but it had been once and maybe it would be again. There were so many things I wanted to say, but my thoughts withered to one word. “Dana,” I said.

  “I don’t want to talk about it now,” she said. “Just go, and we’ll talk about it later.”

  Something funny happened then. I don’t know why—maybe it was because I was thinking about going back to the Courier—but I suddenly saw that plane going down in Detroit—not just the words of the story, the black ink, the typos and style errors, but the plane itself. I saw it rock back and forth, then begin to plunge, saw the left wing strike the Avis building, shearing stone into sparks, and the plane skid, streaming fire, beneath the railroad trestle and the interstate overpass. And through it all I saw the terrified faces in the fiery windows.

  I felt lightheaded, dizzy, as if I’d drunk the bourbon Lucy had offered me. I had to do something or I’d start to shake, so I stepped up to the sink and took Dana’s arm. She turned and looked at me, her lips set in a hard thin line. I knew then that it was too late to change her mind, but there was something I had to say, something I had to make her understand, though I didn’t know what it was myself until I’d already said it.

  “There’s been a terrible accident,” I said. And my voice shook as if I were breaking the news about a death in the family.

  RAINIER

  When Barbara called to tell me about Chuck, I was so drunk I said, “Chuck who?” Then she knew I’d started back drinking again.

  “Damn it, Alec,” she said. “You’re drunk.”

  I said no, I hadn’t been drinking, only a small glass of champagne with dinner. Then she started to cry.

  “Don’t cry,” I said. “I won’t drink anymore, I promise.” I was feeling awful. Only a month before, I’d mailed her a Xerox copy of my diploma from Intercept, the alcoholic treatment center in Missoula. I sent it to her because she spent half our marriage trying to get me to go there and I wanted to show her I’d finally done it. Maybe I wanted to make her feel a little sorry for me too, like if she’d stayed with me a few more years everything would have worked out. But now she knew I was drinking again. “Please don’t cry,” I said.

  “You stupid drunk,” she answered. “I’m not crying about you.” Then she hung up.

  It wasn’t until then, I think, that I understood what she’d said about Chuck. I don’t know why it took so long to sink in. I mean, I was drunk, but not that drunk.

  I sat there in the kitchen holding the phone for a minute, then went into the living room and turned on the TV. I wasn’t going to watch; I just wanted the noise. I sat down in the La-Z-Boy and picked up the bottle of Cold Duck from the coffee table and took a slug. It was warm and flat. I took another slug and laid my head back and closed my eyes. But that didn’t work, so I got up and started walking around the apartment. I thought about getting out my tool box and planing down the closet door that stuck. I thought about calling Betty, my new girl. I even thought about trying to sew up the old tear in the bedroom drapes. But I just stood there by the window and watched the snow fall. It was coming down in such big soft flakes it almost looked fake. Down the street, the Greyhound sign flickered, slowly shorting out. I knocked back the last of the Cold Duck, then sat on the edge of the bed, staring out the window.

  After a while, I went back into the kitchen. There was no more champagne in the fridge but I had some Early Times in the cupboard. When I took it down, I noticed the blender on the shelf above it. It was avocado-colored, the same as the fridge and stove Barbara and I used to have. I’d bought it for her on one of our wedding anniversaries, but she forgot to take it when she cleaned me out after the divorce. I’d never used it, even once, so I took it down and turned it on, trying all the buttons. Chop. Purée. Blend. It worked like new.

  Later, I called Barbara back. Her new husband answered the phone, his voice hoarse, like he’d been crying or had just woken up. I’d never met him. All I knew about him was the little Barbara had told me: that he was a geologist at the oil camp outside of Rose Creek, and that he was a good father to Chuck. When Chuck graduated from Officers’ Training School, Barbara sent me a picture of him in his dress blues, standing between two men in civilian clothes. One of them was lanky and stoop-shouldered; the other, squat and red-faced. On the back of the picture, Barbara had written “Ensign Charles F. Denton, with Gale and Uncle Zack.” I knew Gale was her new husband’s name, but I didn’t know which one was him. I tried to imagine each of them making love to Barbara, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t imagine them tousling Chuck’s hair or taking him trout fishing either. So I didn’t know who I was talking to. “Hello,” I said to him, whichever one he was. “This is Alec.”

 
Then he said, “Yeah? Alec who?” and I knew Barbara had told him what I’d said. I didn’t blame him for hating me. I would’ve felt the same way if I was him.

  “Listen,” I said, “I’m sorry. I was drunk when Barbara called. I was out of my mind. She threw me for a loop. But I’m not drunk now and I want to say I feel awful and I want to be there with you and Barbara now. Maybe I don’t deserve to be there, but I need to.” I stopped, but he didn’t say anything. I was afraid he was going to hang up on me. “Mr. Denton?” I said. “Are you still there?” He didn’t answer. I closed my eyes and listened to the three hundred miles of silence between us. “I just need to see him,” I said.

  When he finally answered, I decided he was the lanky stoop-shouldered man who was standing on Chuck’s left. “All right,” he said. “Of course you can come. After all, you were his father too.”

  There’s not much you can do in a car except think. During the long drive from Bozeman to Rose Creek, I kept a twelve-pack beside me, and every now and then I drank a can. I listened to the radio too, when I could stand the sort of music they play on it these days, and watched the wipers clean the snow from the windshield until I was half-hypnotized. I even kept track of the gas I bought and the distance I drove, so I could figure out how many miles per gallon the old Nova was getting. But no matter what I did, I kept thinking about Chuck. I remembered the strangest things. Like those Hawaiian swim trunks he had—“jams” he called them—with yellow and maroon flowers. The time he fell off his skateboard and broke his collarbone. The way he once did a drumroll with his fork and knife when Barbara set supper on the table.

  But mostly I kept remembering the lie I told Chuck about Mount Rainier. I hadn’t thought about it for years. Chuck had just turned twelve, but I hadn’t been home for his birthday. I’d been gone for four days, drinking, and when I came home he wouldn’t even talk to me. I said, “Your dad’s home” and he looked away; I said, “Are you mad at me?” and he ran back to his room. I’d been gone on binges before, but never that long, and never over his birthday. I felt so miserable I went back to his room and told him I’d take him out to Mount Blackmore the next day. He’d been begging me for weeks to take him there so he could earn his mountain climbing merit badge, but when I told him I’d take him, he didn’t look happy or anything. And the next day, when we hiked up the mountain, I couldn’t get him to talk. I’d say something about the trees or rocks—ask him what kind he thought they were and things like that—and he’d just answer with a word or two. So by the time we were halfway up the trail, I was getting scared that he wasn’t going to forgive me.