by Tim Green
“It’s all right,” he says, patting my hands. “I love you like my Seth. It’s unconditional, and so is this gift. You do with it what you want. That’s not for me to decide.”
I tell him what I think, but it comes out in a mutter.
“What?” he says.
“You said destiny,” I say. “It’s my destiny, Lester. It just is.”
When night comes, we climb back down into the tunnel. After only a few minutes, the dirt becomes damp. A slow trickle begins to run back down the pipe. My throat grows tight as I imagine the water bursting in and washing us backward into the cistern. It grows to a steady flow, but rises no more than five inches.
It takes me less than an hour to dig through the last layer of soggy silt. I can hear the river’s song and feel the cool air rushing in. In anticipation, Lester puts out his waning bulb, but a large stone is wedged into the opening. Try as I might, I cannot push it aside with my hands and the claw hammer does me no good.
Lester and I crawl back down the length of the overflow pipe, then worm our way back, feet first. I roll splashing onto my stomach and wedge my frame against the walls of the wooden pipe. Then, with all my might, I press my legs against the stone. It moves half an inch at a time, but it moves.
The stone scratches against its sandy bed. I hear Lester’s low chuckle bubbling toward me from deeper in the pipe. My heart swells and my legs burn, and in less than two minutes I’ve shoved that rock aside enough for us to squirm out.
I don’t stop to enjoy it. I don’t see the stars or the towers or the vertical plane of the wall aglow and stretching up into the night. Instead, I keep my eyes fixed on the darkness around me and I slide over the rocks and into the swift water of a deep pool.
I am free.
27
I SWIM ACROSS THE CURRENT, not down. This is the plan. They will look for us downstream. They will close off all the roads around the city and squeeze it until they find us. No one has escaped Auburn since the new wall was constructed back in the thirties. Hell will be raised.
It requires great effort to swim through the current. When I feel the rocky riverbed beneath my feet I turn to look at Lester. Water slips past me, but not without a strong steady shove. I see now that Lester is flailing. The sound of splashing rises above the steady hiss of water over stone, and my eyes go up to the tower. It stares down like a dull monolithic eye in its bed of stars. The shadow of the guard is nowhere to be seen. The other towers too-there are three in all-are blind.
Lester is almost to me. I stretch out my arms, digging in at the same time with my heels to keep from being swept back into the pool. Lester is four feet from me when he cries out and goes under.
I dive and bump heads with him. We swirl in the water. I have his waist and I scissor-kick my legs until they’re numb. My feet hit the riverbed and the darkness is destroyed by white light. The scream of sirens breaks the night. Bullets zip past, humming like angry bees. The water is shin-deep now and Lester is on my back. I run for the railroad bridge.
The thud of a bullet striking him knocks me facedown into the water, but I scramble up without letting go. I slosh upstream, desperate for the cover of a bridge. Two feet from its protective shadow, another bullet strikes Lester, knocking us both forward and down. This time, my elbow strikes a rock and Lester rolls off my back.
His eyes stare up at the underbelly of the bridge. His mouth hangs open, spilling blood. There is yelling above and the strident ringing of alarms.
“Lester!” I shout, lifting him.
I see now, even in the shadows, that the last bullet struck the back of his head. Blood and matter spill from his skull. I retch and drop his body. Frantically, I search around me. On the upstream side of the rail bridge, someone has dumped a bag of garbage and it lies wedged between two great stones. I strip the shirt from my back without unbuttoning it and jam the black bag of garbage inside.
I tie the sleeve of my shirt to Lester’s wrist, then I wade toward the deep flow. When I’m close to the middle, I shove Lester’s body and the floating bag into the stiffest part of the current. They swirl and shoot downstream. They are pushed out of the shadows and into the beam of the spotlights. The lights stay with Lester and my shirt. There is more shouting. Bullets rain down, breaking the water’s surface, striking Lester’s dead body and the garbage as they rise and fall in the current, spinning madly down along the wall. I return to the bank and move with stealth up under the road bridge.
Shots and yells echo up the riverbed. I leave the cover of the bridge and find myself in a thick tangle of vegetation. Above me is Curley’s Restaurant, and I can hear the people spilling out onto the bridge to see what has happened. I keep sloshing upstream. Vertical concrete embankments replace the undergrowth where the river bends through the middle of downtown. I stay close to the shadow of the wall where the water is below my knees.
Up to the left is a stately old brick building with a white cupola. Black-and-white police cars are lined up along the rail that overlooks the river. The police station. The dark shapes of men are jogging out. Red and blue lights spin and tires squeal as they back out and head for the prison. I am almost to the next bridge when I see one figure approach the rail with a flashlight.
A wide drainpipe opens in the wall and I throw myself inside. A moment later, a beam of light sweeps past the mouth of the pipe. I can feel the hammer of my heart between my ears. I wait another minute, then creep toward the edge. The figure is gone and so is the light. I slip out and wade as quietly as I can upstream. When I reach the darkness of the next bridge, I start to run.
I pass under two more bridges and under the shadow of a stainless steel diner with a red neon sign, then the shambles of some tenement apartments before the concrete wall ends and the shadowy overgrowth of bushes and trees crowds the riverbed. The river widens and the going is easy for a time. Stars wink from above and they give the rippled water a pale glow. As I step carefully between the rocks, my ears are filled with a hissing that soon grows into a roar.
I round a bend and see the misty white sheet of water spilling over a dam. There are darkened brick buildings above harnessing the water flow and turning it into electricity. I leave the water for a rocky service road that climbs the right side of the bank up to the top of the dam. Two streetlights give off a blue glow. The pool above the dam is still and black and I stare around, breathing hard. There are a handful of houses with amber light spilling from random crooked windows. A string of laundry hangs in the backyard of the one closest to me and a small dock juts out into the still pool. Moored to it is a small aluminum skiff with an outboard motor.
Destiny.
I case the house as I wade through the bushes and creep across the grass. I can just make out the sound of a radio above the roar of the dam, but see no signs of life. I strip a man’s white dress shirt and a worn-out pair of khaki shorts from the line, tuck them under my arm, and hurry toward the boat. After unmooring the skiff, I use the oars and row quietly up past the houses. When I am completely surrounded again by trees, I pull the starter cord and race off.
The skiff finally runs aground and I hop out. I can see the next dam, not nearly as dramatic as the first, but when I get to the other side, I see what I’ve been looking for. The inlet. A marina. Dozens of boats, covered and waiting for their owners to take them out on the lake for a day of fun. Across the inlet from the marina, cottages stand clustered together under the trees. I hear the sounds of laughter and smell the campfires of people on vacation. I strip out of my prison pants and T-shirt in the shadows, then change into my new clothes and roll up the sleeves of the shirt before walking through the yard of the marina like I belong there.
I find a boat similar to the one I used to own, an open-bow Four Winns, and uncover it in plain sight of the people on the other side of the narrow inlet. Hotwiring this boat is easier than with my dad’s heavy equipment when I was a kid. Two wires clearly exposed beneath the dash. I flip on the running lights, back the boat out of its sli
p, and wave to the revelers as I ease up the inlet toward the open lake.
The water’s surface is smooth, and I am zipping along like a ghost, skimming the surface, flying through the night. The hillsides are dark except for a sprinkling of lights from the homes on the water. I pull up for a few minutes in the middle to strip and wash the scum from my body. The wind soon whips me dry and I stop again to put the clothes back on. Owasco is fourteen miles long, so in less than half an hour I am idling in toward a lively restaurant and bar tucked into the lake’s last cove.
This is no coincidence. Lester learned from an electrician about the place called Cascade Grill on the end of the lake. Our plan all along was for me to get us transportation this way. To be obvious and invisible. I was going to drop Lester at a bus station in Binghamton. Lester, my friend.
There is a long dock sticking out into the water. More than a dozen other boats are moored along its edge, bumping gently up against the car tires looped down over its metal support poles. The stillness of the air gives way to the steady hum of people talking and laughing and the vibrations and thumping of a band called the Works. I know because a huge banner stretches across the back of the one-story pale blue building: CASCADE GRILL WELCOMES THE WORKS.
The narrow dock leads right up a ramp and onto Cascade’s deck. Bugs swirl in the halos of the small lanterns nailed to a tall fence that blocks out the neighboring cottages. The orange wood of the deck is new and topped with dark green plastic tables and chairs with matching square canvas umbrellas. It’s wall-to-wall people. I ease through the crowd with my head bobbing gently to the beat like everyone else, and slip inside and up to the bar.
From my pocket, I remove Lester’s baggie of money and the map and I strip off a twenty from 1973. The bartender is a big teddy bear of a man with a walrus mustache and baggy pale green eyes. Even in the smoke of the bar, I can smell stale cigars on his clothes from behind the taps.
“Got any wheat beer?” I ask.
He scowls and shakes his head as if he doesn’t even know what I’m talking about.
“Löwenbräu?” I say.
He gives me a funny smile and says, “And you want to borrow my Foreigner eight-track too, right? Come on, buddy, I’ve got customers.”
I see a Bud tap handle and ask for a bottle of that. He reaches down into the cooler, keys off the top, and sets it down in front of me. I point to the twenty and leave the change on the bar like everyone else. With the bottle tipped up to my mouth, I look around. On my left are two muscle-heads in tank tops with crew cuts and big tattoos. To my right is a couple in their fifties wearing leather chaps and vests. The man has long gray hair pulled into a ponytail and his chick’s poorly bleached cut is windblown.
In front of them is a pile of small bills and change, two bottles of a brew I’ve never heard of, and a heavy chain with a set of keys. It takes me only a minute to see that they’re fall-down drunk.
I cock myself their way on the stool and buy them a drink. He’s a math teacher in Union Springs. She’s a psychologist from Seneca Falls. Every nice weekend in the summer, they get on their bikes and ride across the state. He rides a 1953 Indian Chief.
“Rebuilt it myself,” he says, throwing back his shoulders. He butts out his Marlboro and his eyes take on a sheen. “One of the ones they made in their last order for the New York City police.”
I tell them I’m a lawyer from Syracuse with a summer cottage halfway up the lake. We communicate all this by leaning close and yelling above the sound of the band and the noise of the bar. Through the window, I can see the throng swaying with their hands in the air. People start taking off their shirts.
The math teacher finishes off his Saranac Ale and staggers to his feet.
“Be right back,” he says, clasping my shoulder and using it to keep from falling on his face.
He disappears around the corner where the bathrooms are before the girlfriend stretches a smile across her face, blushes, and says, “Me too.”
She slips off her stool. I put two more twenties on the bar, ask the bartender for another round and whatever the big guys next to me are drinking too. This keeps him busy while I slip the keychain over the lip of the bar and into the pocket of my baggy shorts.
I wait for them to come back and start working on their fresh drinks before I excuse myself for the bathroom. I push through the bar and around the corner. Left is the bathrooms, right is the front door. I go right. Across a small lane is a two-tiered stone parking lot. The Indian Chief is up in the second lot alongside an orange Honda 650. They’re parked between a white van and an old Ford Escort.
I look around quick, then mount up. I had a dirt bike growing up, so I know how to drive, but I’ve never been on something as big and heavy as this. I take it easy down Route 38 into Moravia, scanning ahead of me for the flashing lights of a roadblock.
It’s too soon for that, though, and instead of making a right in the center of town to keep going south on 38, I pull over under a streetlamp to check my map. Straight through the intersection takes me out of town on 38A. Less than a mile after that, I turn off onto a farm road and weave my way across the bottom of Skaneateles, past Glen Haven, through Otisco, across Interstate 81, and on up the other side of Syracuse on Route 46.
Sometime after I was born, in a brief fit of nostalgia, my mother bundled me up and took me to the reservation to show me off to her older half sister. A week later, my mother received a proud phone call from her sister. Of her own volition, the sister had registered me as a member of the tribe. Because my mother was a Mohawk, I was a Mohawk too. Nothing to be overly proud of in the Onondaga Nation, but still, one of the people.
With that lineage came certain rights. For the same reason my father and Black Turtle had been able to line up some help for me to leave the country at the end of my trial, I zigzag my way up along the Adirondack State Park. Sticking to back roads, I go through towns like Ava, Lowville, and Colton all the way to the St. Regis Mohawk Indian Reservation.
I ease the big Chief down Route 37 onto the reservation and into the town of Hogansburg. Right there off the highway is a long single-story building, newly built. Longhouse of the twenty-first century. The Akwesasne Casino. The sky is beginning to lighten in the east as I pull into the lot. I am teetering on exhaustion until I see a bundle of newspapers that have been tossed onto the curb. I yank one out from beneath the plastic band and search for news of my escape. There is nothing. Yet. I know by the evening edition, my face will make page three at the least.
Inside, I am greeted by a weary-eyed Mohawk whose nameplate reads: UNCLE BUCK. Behind him a single blackjack table is illuminated in the gloomy cavern. A sluggish set of players take their cards from a big red-lipped blonde who just might be a transvestite.
I step into a small grill for a coffee and some eggs. Real eggs. I devour them and order four more, over easy, sopping up the yolk with buttered whole-wheat toast. I wash it down with the sweetest orange juice I’ve ever tasted. The coffee too is rich and it energizes me from the inside out. I pay with a hundred-dollar bill from 1977. That kind of bill might raise eyebrows, but this is a casino and I leave a tip that’s good, but not crazy enough to draw attention.
I return to the entrance, where Uncle Buck is affable enough and apologetic that the casino has no hotel. He tries to direct me across the border to the Canadian side of the reservation and a Best Western, but I know there will be customs agents at the bridge and, rather than risk it, tell him I want something local.
He shrugs. The only place in town is the Rest Inn Motel.
“People complain sometimes that you can smell the cow pasture,” he says, “but there’s a good gal that runs it.”
“I grew up near cows,” I say with a smile. “Will she mind me showing up at this hour? I’ve been riding all night.”
“No,” he says, his teeth gleaming beneath his regal nose. “She’s used to all kinds of things with the casino here now.”
My pride in the nation to which I am official
ly a member continues to deflate as I pass by sagging and decrepit one- and two-story homes with yard dogs snapping after me without restraint. The road needs repair and the scent of filth wafts up out of the ditch, reminding me of the prison’s belly.
The motel owner is a stout middle-aged Mohawk woman. I slip her my last hundred and tell her I’d like to pay for two nights. Her small dark eyes look deep into mine before she smiles and gives me a key. I draw the shades and use the bathroom before I lie down on top of the bed and fall into the pit of sleep.
I don’t know what time it is when I wake up, but I know what woke me.
The cold barrel of a revolver is tickling my nose.
28
THERE ARE THREE OF THEM. All Indians. All younger than me. Late twenties, early thirties. Long dark hair, flat angry mouths, and scowling brown eyes.
The smallest one has the gun. The two by the door are goons.
“You came to the wrong place to pass your shit, white man,” the little one says with a low growl, flipping a hundred-dollar bill at me with his free hand. “We’re gonna send you on your way, but we got a little present for you first. Get up.”
I get up off the bed with my hands in the air. The gun is still pressed into my nose. I glance down at the bill on the bed and see that it’s my own 1977 Ben Franklin. I need to use the bathroom and I tell them.
“You can piss your pants you got to go that bad,” the little one says.
The two goons snicker and they shove me out into the bright daylight. Puffy white clouds on a field of blue. The stout motel owner is scowling at me from the shadow of the porch in front of the office. Her hands are on her hips. My stolen motorcycle has already been loaded into the back of a big dark green Chevy with an extended cab.
They drive me down Route 37. Another pickup with a bed full of Indian men follows us. We pull over in a field behind a big billboard that welcomes the rest of the world to the St. Regis Indian Reservation. The biggest goon shoves me out of the truck. The other one dumps the bike out of the back and it crashes to the ground. The other truck pulls up. Everyone piles out and they make a loose circle around me. The little one they all call Bonaparte stuffs the pistol into the waist of his jeans, walks over to the bike, and pisses on it.