Mile Zero

by Sanchez, Thomas

  Hippolyte’s words echoed in St. Cloud’s mind as he clung to Isaac’s hand. Some things are meant to be simply because they exist, that does not make them easier to understand. He thought of what he learned after leaving Hippolyte, returning to Mrs. Mulrooney’s office with its air-conditioned breeze, while back in the vast room men on cots sweated out another day. He was sweating too, listening to Mrs. Mulrooney tell him Voltaire would have died even if he had not been killed on the highway. She said Haitian activists caused such a stink about rumors of female hormones in detainees’ food that doctors made an examination. They found some men had yaws, a flesh-rotting disease the United Nations claims has been wiped out. They found something else, a lingering pneumonia which wastes a person away. The pneumonia is linked to a virus in Africa, started by green monkeys or something, nobody knows for certain, so new it doesn’t have a name. Immigrant Haitians have the highest chance of developing it, except for homosexuals. The doctors had no idea how many men in camp were homosexuals, they knew to a man how many were recent arrivals from Haiti. They asked permission to run tests on blood from Voltaire’s body. He had the green monkey virus, they figured Hippolyte had it too.

  Angelica’s voice floated through to St. Cloud. “Why don’t you go home and get some sleep, honey. You’ve been up all night.”

  St. Cloud squeezed Isaac’s hand, he couldn’t bear to let go. Angelica seemed far away, dawn spreading purple behind her through the window. “You’ve been up all night too.”

  “For me it’s easy, I’m a bartender. Isaac could trust me to stay awake for him. Let’s call his doctor and leave before the press gets here, Isaac would never want his friends to witness that.”

  “Yes … you’re right. If we can’t get ahold of Renoir we’ll have to let the doctor know.”

  “Go on. I’ll make the call.”

  “Sure you don’t want me to stay while you do that?”

  “Go.”

  It was time. St. Cloud reached deep into his pants pocket and withdrew Voltaire’s ouanga, placed it within Isaac’s hand. He folded stiff fingers over the pigskin pouch, then laid the hand atop Isaac’s still heart. He did not need the ouanga, he had Aunt Oris’ lucky bone. Wherever he was headed he considered himself bulletproof. He pushed up from the chair.

  The curtains framing Angelica at the window lifted in the wind, white rising wings at her shoulders, poised for flight. Go formed on her lips. Isaac was a luckier man than most.

  St. Cloud descended into the cavernous foyer, feeling his way through sheet-shrouded furniture. He emerged onto the dilapidated veranda, pushed through the Spanish laurel’s curtain of hanging roots. Whitehead Street opened before him, its pavement stopping where the cement finger of the southernmost point monument rose at the Atlantic’s edge. Stiff wind swung from south to northwest, sure sign the jaws of dog days were finally loosening their grip. The churning ocean was not its usual transparent blue, but opaque indigo. The storm that passed during night left isolated clouds on the horizon, beneath them spun spidery waterspouts, ghosts waltzing toward Cuba’s rattling sugarcane fields and papaya girls flirting with mango eyes. St. Cloud did not heed tropical temptations beyond waterspouts. He headed in the opposite direction, across island toward home, where Lila waited.

  Narrow streets were filled with chorus of frogs croaking from damp gardens as evaporating rain steamed off tin roofs, lizards leapt from sidewalk cracks while rats rustled in palm fronds, on Catholic Lane Lila was sleeping. St. Cloud entered the house quietly, not wanting to awaken her. A note he tacked on the bedroom door was still there: You are the corned beef in my heart’s customhouse, my hunger follows you, no wonder crude. He smiled; beneath his note Lila had written: Your beef is corny but your wonder is not crude! He pushed the door open. Lila lay asleep, ceiling-fan blades stirring a breeze over her curved nakedness. What he needed to soothe his nerves was not a shot of alcohol, but to drink in the vision illuminated on the bed by dawn light. Strange music came quickly to mind. He thought he imagined it. Quickly as it came it went. Maybe what he heard was the fan’s electric thrum. He was afraid he might be dreaming, same way Voltaire thought he was dreaming the glass palace. He touched the lucky bone at his neck. A screeching sound jolted him, sounding like a hawk’s call or a blowing whistle. Lila opened her eyes, shadowy movement flitted across the window behind her. “Stay where you are,” St. Cloud whispered. He walked quickly through the house, stepping out the back door into the garden, pushing through banana leaves. The strange music stopped. Across rowed vegetables a papaya tree rose, halfway up its trunk was Lila’s pug, a spike driven through its skull, its throat slashed. He saw the naked shape of Lila through the bedroom window, one hand covering her mouth. Ajar glinted from blood-spattered cabbages beneath the papaya. He opened the jar and withdrew crumpled paper scrawled with purple ink:

  OL FILOR’S SLY AS DE MOUS! HAH!

  AMONG 2000 TRAPPED SOULS THE ANGEL OF DEATH AWAITS

  HOLDS IN HER HAND RISING SUN OF YOUR FATE

  DON’T BE LATE FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY PARTY!

  St. Cloud let the bloody jar slip from his fingers and tossed the note into cabbages. What Justo said about everything leading to the cemetery was true. He started walking, crushing tomatoes and turnips beneath his feet. He heard Lila screaming for him not to go. He ran from the garden.

  THE GATES to the cemetery were open, someone had smashed the chained lock. St. Cloud hesitated, catching his breath, a line of eight palms guarded the entrance, their frond skirts rattling overhead. In the city of the dead the first thing to greet him was a sailor statue perched atop a granite pedestal amidst tombstones marking casualties of battleship Maine. The copper sailor had weathered a sea-green, as if an underwater vision dreamed above ground by those buried below, one hand held an oar, the other frozen in northward salute toward home. Someone had painted the sailor’s eyes yellow, blinding his vigil for ready rescue. St. Cloud looked in the direction the sailor could no longer see, across a skyline of tombstones and tin-roof mausoleums ensnared by overgrown vines. The metal clasp of a rope dangling from a flagpole clanged in the wind, tapping an inscrutable message. The wind also brought a hollow banging from the far side of a concrete hump housing generational graves. St. Cloud crept to the large tomb and pressed his back against its concrete wall, sliding to the corner, startling a greyhound with its snout caught in a vase of plastic flowers it was trying to drink from. The greyhound slammed the vase against the tomb, struggling to dislodge the improbable muzzle. The vase slipped free, scattering plastic flowers. “Ocho,” St. Cloud called after the disappearing dog. “Where’s Justo?” Only moaning wind came back in answer. If Ocho was around it meant Justo was close. There was no movement in the streets. St. Cloud headed in the direction of the sailor’s blinded gaze, toward the monument to Cuban Martyrs. Strange music began, its sharp sound leading to an obelisk fingering skyward above a forest of marble headstones. From the obelisk tip a hawk eyed St. Cloud as if he were a blundering mouse. The hawk’s beak opened, squealing pithy disdain as it took flight over stone angels weighted forever to earth. Strange music whistled through the air. Tombs and graves St. Cloud hurriedly passed were a blur, anyone could be hiding among the dead. A LOS MARTIRES DE CUBA arched before him in metal letters, he edged past a granite pillar etched with dates of century-old Cuban battles. Where he thought the strange music came from, there was a glass case harboring a fleshlike root, a plaque announcing: Tronco de Tamarindo bajo cuya sombra conspiraban, los patriotas Cubanos. The root was from the tamarind tree beneath which the patriots plotted to liberate Cuba. From his vantage point among buried freedom fighters St. Cloud had an unobstructed view to the sailor staring with yellow eyes. A Green Sailor looks to Cuban Martyrs, where the tree of life grows from their heads. He spun around, back through the gateway to the martyrs was the spread of a breadfruit tree; its massive roots had toppled a line of gravestones like dominoes. Among fallen headstones were three freshly dug graves. St. Cloud peered into one of the deep holes, at bottom
a bufo toad hopped in angry loops, attempting escape up slippery walls. “Justo,” St. Cloud whispered. Only Justo knew the meaning of the Zobop poem. He turned from the graves, searching for Justo, a sign of revelation. The Angel of Death awaits, holds in her hand rising sun of your fate, don’t be late. Don’t be late? Rising from the cemetery’s east, above Jews buried from sight behind a high fence scrolled with B’NAI ZION, was the sun. St. Cloud ran toward the ascending globe. Don’t be late. Ahead loomed an angel, feathered wings arched, cascade of hair falling across shoulders, an outstretched hand offering a bouquet of lilies to a grave lost from sight in weeds. Strange music floated along cemetery streets, converging on the angel bathed in blood-red light. Against the sky a woman’s-tongue tree rattled a racket of seedpods in the wind. From behind the tree a form astride a bicycle appeared, its black rubber skin painted with luminescent bones of a human skeleton, top hat clamped on its head, eyes blacked out by sunglasses, screeching whistle between teeth.

  “St. Cloud!”

  Justo was running from the Cuban Martyrs, gun waving in air, his shouted words lost in wind and tin-whistling.

  The skeleton’s legs pumped the bicycle furiously, a knife flashing in his hand. St. Cloud bent his arm to block the blade’s thrust. Whistling was shattered by gunshots striking the skeleton’s rubber chest. The bicycle’s momentum carried the skeleton onward, knife still poised. Two more shots fired. The skeleton pitched over rusted handlebars, crashing the bicycle to the ground.

  Beneath arched wings of the angel was Renoir, his revolver aimed above St. Cloud’s shoulder. Rising sun behind the angel showered brilliance around Renoir, he disappeared into light.

  Justo knelt before the skeleton sprawled across the wrecked bicycle, pulling the rubber head mask off with a loud elastic snap. The unseeing eyes of Space Cadet rolled white, the released rope of his braided hair unraveling to the ground.

  “A santo de que?” Justo looked up at St. Cloud.

  In the name of what?

  26

  ADIOS Twentieth Century Cha-Cha. Such was the message. No matter which end of the telescope Justo looked at it from, there wasn’t a round world of sense to be made of it all. Such were the facts of the round and flat worlds, as for the other world’s, nether and upper, they were not for him to trifle with. Even if it were possible to salt the tongue of a bufo toad with the speech of spooks and saints, it couldn’t say much with a nail driven through its lips. Space Cadet knew that, Justo knew a thing or two more. The thing that kept him going from sunup to sundown was what he leaned upon in Vietnam, then cashed in when he came back from war; to make a good act of contrition, offer back evil to the source from which it originated. Justo made a good act of contrition after Vietnam, still had his mental health. What he learned in his own defeat of comprehending war was simple truth, a man who believes in contrition will always win out over a man who believes in destruction. Space Cadet believed in purification by destruction, didn’t understand evil exists in the name of many things, good rests uneasily among them, such was the accommodation.

  Justo had been driving the streets of Key West for two days in search of Renoir. The bag of conch fritters on his car seat was empty, just as his head was empty of ideas about where to find Renoir. He had turned the island on its ear, pressed the button of every scammer for information, rampaged every gay bar and disco, flipped every trick who owed him a favor. What he got were looks of fury, as if he were Pontius Pilate asking apostles to squeal where Jesus hid after slipping his guarded crypt. Half the State of Florida was looking for Renoir. No one thought he would stay in Key West after the shooting. From what Justo discovered at Renoir’s house, there was no question his prey would not stray.

  Justo’s gut was on fire from a bellyful of fritters and time was stacking up against him. The search for Renoir had to end at four o’clock or there would be the devil to pay, worse, there would be Rosella to answer to. Today was Isabel’s Quince, three hundred people invited, the women’s ballgowns ironed to a sheen, the men’s tuxedos rented, twenty pigs roasting, the band warming up. Justo was spending a fortune, his belly burned hotter. If he wasn’t at the hotel by four o’clock, smiling wide as a banquet pig with a red apple in its mouth, Rosella would have his hide and the devil his due.

  Ocho leaned over the car seat, his tongue slurping Justo’s cheek. The animal devoured a bag of fritters for lunch and whined for more. Justo pinched the dog’s ear, warning it to get its vice under control or it would be back on the track chasing a metal bunny for a living. The image of the bunny inspired him, he slammed the brakes and wheeled the car around, heading toward the Wreck Room.

  CRAZIES O

  GAYS 1

  BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME!

  The chalked message on the blackboard left no doubt as to which side of the cemetery shooting at least one of the Wreck Room regulars was on. The boisterous noontime crowd pushed at the long bar. The stool next to Handsomemost Jimmy was empty, left open for customers to whisper comforting commerce into his ear before striding purposefully to the bathroom. Justo slipped onto the stool. Handsomemost did not turn to see who his new customer was, continuing to sip his Scotch, his gold rings clanking against cold glass.

  “Whose side you on?” Justo’s voice rose into the crowd’s roar, calling to Angelica as she splashed beer into mugs. He wanted to arrest her for indecent exposure, but this was no time for sport.

  Angelica spun on high heels, the mugs foaming in her hands. “I’m on the side of the true and virtuous. Your side, sugar. The side of common law for uncommon people.”

  “I be see’n a three-sided asshole once,” Handsomemost slurred into his Scotch. “But ain’t never seen no straight cop.”

  Justo leaned toward Handsomemost. “That’s because cops don’t have assholes.”

  “Why you be foolin with me? Done told you where Space Cadet be livin. Not for me, you all never findin what hole that cat crawled from. That cat never had no mammy’s titty milk to suck. That cat sucked acid all his life. Dude was evil, nimble evil. Nimble evil be evilist of all, cause you don’t know where it’s at till it too late.”

  “True enough.”

  “Dog-balls true. So don’t be foolin with me, cause I tipped you where ol nimble evil done lived, if you call all that crazy shit livin.”

  “Didn’t come to pin a good citizen’s medal on you for helping out on that.”

  Handsomemost swiveled slowly, his eyes cloudy within fleshy slits. “We gots no more business. Ought to leave, but you won’t. You’re like an itch lookin for a scratch.”

  Justo nodded at Angelica. “Mind if I have one of those beers? I’m steaming in this coat.”

  Angelica pushed a mug to him. “Never seen you in a tuxedo before. I like that color on you, baby blue, matches your eyes.”

  “My eyes are brown.” Justo lifted the mug, not taking his brown eyes off the cryptic smile poised on Angelica’s lips.

  “Can’t a fishin man get served?” Bubba-Bob slipped up behind Justo.

  “How’d you get out of the hospital?” Angelica leaned across the bar, kissing Bubba-Bob’s cheek. “Thought they were keeping you another week.”

  “Can’t keep a fishin man down. Walked out. They got me wrapped tighter than a ballyhoo on a marlin hook. Got drugs in me a Miami greyhound would envy. Can’t feel no pain, perfect time to look for trouble.”

  “How about my place after work?”

  “Thank God my balls aren’t wrapped in tape too!”

  “How bout you?” Angelica turned to Justo. “Want to get lucky?”

  “Want to get another beer.”

  “You got it.” Angelica refilled his mug. “Never seen you drink on duty before.”

  “See this Palm Beach pimp coat, you think I’d wear this on duty?”

  “Oh yeah, forgot, today’s Isabel’s big day. Just a few hours away, isn’t it?”

  “Justo always be on duty,” Handsomemost mumbled. “Always got de itch.”

  Justo looked at the messag
e scrawled on the blackboard: CRAZIES 0, GAYS 1. “You know where Renoir is, don’t you?”

  “Rabbit gets trouble, gets hisself a hole.”

  “You told me about Space Cadet’s hole.”

  “You owed me for not popping that run-out dog of yours.”

  “You might need another favor.”

  Handsomemost snarled in his Scotch, “Done need no favors, got all I needs. Ladies I gives favors. Mens I gives shit.”